cant d'ocell

Birth story part II

2012-02-16T21:51:00.000+01:00

I'm enjoying writing these posts, and since I love reading birth stories, I hope they're fun for others too. After Gabriel was born I had two conflicting impulses: on one hand, I wanted to tell everybody all the details of his birth (it seemed strange just to announce it without explaining what had gone down!), but on the other hand, I was so ecstatic about it all that I just wanted to savor it for myself. Since "telling everybody all the details" isn't exactly considered societally acceptable, the latter impulse won out.

But now it's fun to revisit the experience, especially since in a few short months we'll be facing another round of labor and birth, and I hope to bring everything I learned then to bear on what we do now (even more so since I will barely know my doctor, and since labor and delivery staff here tend to be very oriented towards a medicalized birth--in other words, M. and I will need to advocate strongly for a natural birth, a task that I think will be easier having gone through it once before).

So where were we? The middle of the night, February 15, 2010. Labor was quiet and calm, but painful and intense. I thought we had hours of labor ahead of us, and so did our midwife and nurse. I had repeatedly asked to labor in the tub, but they kept putting it off, saying that it would be much more effective and a greater relief later in the course of labor. At this point I asked again, and in order to determine whether it was a good moment for the bath, my midwife gave me a cervical check (the first since the beginning of the evening, when I was less than a centimeter dilated). I was eight centimeters dilated! This surprised everyone, especially me, because I had been prepared to discover that I was only at a 5 or a 6.

At this point, my midwife and nurse left the room, and so did my mom, who was getting tired and needed a cup of tea. Precisely then, while lying on the bed after the cervical check, I experienced two long and strong contractions, along with a very strong urge to push. I whimpered to the Mister that he needed to get the midwife. Our nurse came in, discovered that I was at a ten, and asked me to give just a tiny push. The baby was ready to come out! She told me to hang on, not to push, and I held my breath.

Suddenly, the room filled with people. I hadn't expected such a transformation when it came time to actually deliver the baby! Surgical gowns, trays of instruments, a bright light centered between my legs, extra nurses. And my mom walked in with her tea, shocked at the new state of affairs in a room she had left, dark and quiet, only a few minutes earlier.

Pushing with each contraction actually felt great, and not too painful at all. It was more an exertion of energy and strength than anything, although I felt like I wasn't quite getting the hang of it, because they would give me differing instructions about how to push or how to curl around the baby. They dropped the bottom half of the bed and I was then able to grip a squat bar, which gave me a lot more traction, but still, no baby appeared. I was losing energy, even half-dozing between contractions, utterly out of it and waiting for the next contraction to swing me forward. This process by now had taken over an hour, with the baby still caught under my pelvis. He would descend and recede, descend and recede, which is what is supposed to happen, but it felt discouraging. Finally, after nearly two hours, the Mister and my mom could see the baby's head. Their excitement and exclamations gave me some badly needed oomph, although it felt abstract until the midwife told me to reach down and feel his hair. So soft, so present: our baby was arriving!

Even with his head nearly out, the baby just refused to exit his cozy harbor. My heart rate and the baby's were flagging, and they put an oxygen mask on me, which felt supremely annoying and sweaty, and kept slipping off my face anyway. Worried about the baby's heart rate, my midwife gently asked about an episiotomy. I hadn't wanted one, but at this point, after two hours of pushing, I was ready to agree to anything. I didn't feel a thing when she made the small incision, and then with a rush, at 4:15 in the morning, Gabriel was born.

He cried right away, with soft tremulous cries, and was covered in white vernix (he didn't look like a 41-weeker, said my midwife). He lay on my chest, and although my mom and I had been sure that I would cry when I saw him for the first time, I didn't: I just felt so happy to see him and relieved that he was out. Plus, I felt an overwhelming sense of familiarity: it's YOU! You're here!

I was also somewhat distracted, because there were some distinctly unpleasant sensations still going on below, including the delivery of a very stubborn placenta and the stitching of the episiotomy. We watched, meanwhile, as Gabriel latched on and began to breastfeed, vigorously and contentedly, and pooped meconium all over my dressing gown. Thanks, dude! After about an hour the nurses weighed and measured Gabriel--8 pounds, 13 ounces, and 21 inches--and gave him the eye drops. The Mister got to hold his son for the first time, and my dad arrived in time to take some beautiful photos. We called M.'s parents in Spain on skype, while nurses kept telling us we would be leaving the delivery room but never actually showing up to move us (turns out four other women were delivering their babies at about that time, so the staff was a bit harried and had more important matters to attend to)! At long last, we gathered up our belongings onto a little cart, I got a new gown and was moved to a wheelchair, and Gabriel got his little wheely bassinet so we were on the move. As dawn arrived to reveal a snowdrifted scene outside the window, we settled into a cozy recovery room as a brand new family of three.

Two years (and birth story, part I)

2012-02-15T23:20:00.000+01:00

Our dear Gabriel turned two today, and we had a quiet family celebration for him this evening. He loved blowing out the candles, turned up his nose at the cake (not sure why, since cake is his favorite), and oohed and ahhed over every present, in both wrapped and unwrapped states, playing intently with his new blocks, exclaiming over his new books, and delightedly slicing his wooden fruits and vegetables. "More open?" he asked politely after he had finished opening them all.

Two years ago today, in the midst of a snowstorm, we were cozily gazing at the face of a tiny person who seemed wholly familiar and yet startlingly new. We were suddenly parents, in charge of a squawking, snuffling, demanding creature who knew no such notions as day and night, but whose tiny body fit so perfectly in the crooks of our arms.

But let me back up.

I've meant to write down Gabriel's birth story here for a while now, and what better day to do so than his birthday? I did write it down, every last detail, shortly after he was born, but that came out to nine single-spaced pages so I will have to abbreviate somewhat. It still may require more than one post...we shall see. In any case, I won't be too circumspect about the more unpleasant or more...bodily aspects of labor and birth, so if you'd rather not hear about those, you can stop reading now.

Valentine's Day, 2010. A week past my due date, a week during which I, along with my mom and the Mister, had been constantly wondering when the time would come. The big moment came not exactly as we imagined--rather, it came that morning in a gush of amniotic fluid as I was brushing my hair, and M. was on the phone with my cousin, who was in town to play a concert. When my eyes widened in shock, he thought he had misspoken to her, but it was simply my realization that my waters had broken. Today was the day.

Despite the unpleasantness of fluid leaking out every time I moved around, no contractions were forthcoming and I felt fine. My midwife told me we should wait for labor to start, but that we needed the baby "on the outside" within 24 hours. I still felt very relaxed, as well as excited, so we had my cousin come over for breakfast instead of going out, made a bunch of phone calls (particularly to my dad, who immediately got a new flight to Indianapolis for that day), and ran around collecting hospital bag items that we still needed.

By the afternoon, labor still hadn't started, so the Mister and I tried massage to get things going. I had a few very mild contractions, but nothing that felt like real labor. Still, that brief time was especially important for me, as one of the things I had envisioned was laboring at home in a peaceful and intimate collaboration with the Mister. Destined not to be, but at least I got a small taste of it then! I even fell asleep, and dozed for about an hour, which I credit with sustaining me over the night to come. When I woke up, I woke to Valentine's flowers from M., and a phone message from my midwife, who was getting nervous--not only about my labor, but also about the building snowstorm.

We agreed to meet at the hospital at 7:30 pm, much sooner than I had been thinking, because she was convinced that if labor hadn't started by then, it wasn't going to start on its own, and because she thought the snow might cause her to have difficulties getting to the hospital later in the night. I wasn't worried about the snow, since we lived a block away from the hospital, but felt comfortable with the plan. Plus, my dad was on the way, his flight already landed, and would be driving into town right around 7:30--we'd meet him at the hospital! I took a shower, ate a banana, and we headed over in the fast falling snow.

Walking into the hospital, I thought of how I had imagined this moment--doubled over with contractions, or timing them carefully, deep into labor. Instead, I felt perfectly normal except for a few scattered contractions and that constant amniotic gush. I felt almost giddy, in fact, just eager to move forward in the adventure this night would hold. Our room was spacious and our nurse extremely sweet; it was her first night back on duty after her own maternity leave. She would make a few mistakes throughout my labor and commented on how things had changed since she was gone, but I didn't mind because she was incredibly supportive and encouraging. I got into a gown, she confirmed that the constant gush was indeed amniotic fluid, and asked us a lot of questions and made us sign papers. I was glad not to be in labor during that process.

At this point I also got "hooked up"--the fetal monitors strapped to my belly with itchy velcro, and the IVs that would drip fluids and pitocin. Neither was very pleasant: the straps kept slipping and needing adjustment, and the IV required several painful jabs, and of course, the spindly stalk on wheels with fluid bags dangling from it had to be with me at all times. These were definitely not on our labor and birth wish list, but once it had to be, I decided to ignore them to the best of my ability and I think I succeeded pretty well. They didn't interfere with the overall experience of labor and birth, and in my memory the only part of the evening they came into play was during early labor.

My midwife came in, noting that I looked "way too happy," and did a cervical exam: well effaced but barely 1 cm dilated. My dad arrived then, too, in time to take some pictures before labor started in earnest. Around 9:30 he and the Mister went off in search of food (the cafeteria long since closed) and the pitocin started to kick in so my mom and I walked around the halls as the first contractions hit. I could still easily talk through them, the pain very low in my belly, and every few laps around the delivery ward my nurse turned up the pitocin. Contractions came steadily, every two minutes or less, which remained true throughout labor.

Finally dad and M. were back after what seemed like a long absence (not much open in our town on a Sunday night in a snowstorm, it turns out), and M. and I took a few laps around the hallway together. But by then, the contractions were hurting a lot, so we headed back to the room and, after a quick prayer, said goodbye to dad until the baby was born or the morning, whichever came first! I felt incredibly peaceful at this point, even though I was in pain. The nurse asked me to place the pain on a scale of one to ten, and I said 4-5, sure that things were still going to get much, much worse. (Plus, I find that pain scale really hard to judge. Compared to what?)

By then I was moaning with contractions, and needed the TV off, the lights low, and the room quiet. My midwife had reappeared, and was reminding me to keep my vocalizations low and loose, to feel heavy and relaxed. Basically I moo'ed through labor, but it really did help. She would tell me when contractions had peaked and were lessening, and even though I knew she was looking at the computer readout it still felt like a miracle of divination--how does she know? I thought. I tried lots of laboring positions over these hours, some of them suggested by my midwife and some of them just what I thought would feel better, what I remembered from birthing and yoga classes. I leaned over the bed with the yoga ball on it, I squatted on the bed in child's pose, I draped myself onto M., a chair, and so forth. All the time, swaying, swaying--that's what felt the best, that small movement back and forth, back and forth. The best position by far was sitting on the yoga ball and leaning into a pile of pillows on the bed. I stayed that way for a long time, because it felt the most open on my bottom and the least painful. I remember this period as very inward, keeping my eyes closed and focusing on a small dark place, even between contractions. I held the Mister's hand tightly, and the nurse and my mom kept putting cool cloths on my neck and forehead.

At several points during the night, I threw up. Unpleasant, to say the least, and I hadn't really known that it would be part of labor. Early in the evening I had requested a Zantac, worried that heartburn would bother me (hah!). I promptly threw it up, just as the nurse gently warned me I might. At one point, deep in labor, I said into a quiet room, "I'm going to throw up," and all four people jumped up and offered me various receptacles in which to vomit. It would have been comical if I had been in the mood to laugh...

Around 2 am, I thought the pain scale number was at about a 7: I was still sure it would get worse, much worse. Only a few contractions had really gotten the best of me, in that I would tense up and try to curl away from the pain instead of loosening and leaning into it. I also still expected the pain to rise up and consume my whole belly, because the contractions continued to be low and underneath. Still thinking that I had a long, long way to go.

(To be continued...)

Sweet hearts

2012-02-14T11:39:00.001+01:00

Happy Valentine's Day to all my beloveds!

Gabriel and I dressed in our red sweaters this morning, and he was especially cuddly as if he knew that today is a day for celebrating those we love. He even said "baby brother" for the first time (instead of just "baby"), patting my belly solemnly. He also asked for "cho-tate" for breakfast, but that in itself is not unusual because he often asks for chocolate lately, even though he hardly ever gets it, and certainly not for breakfast!

I'm happy that Gabriel wasn't born exactly ON Valentine's day (he only missed it by a few hours), but it is kind of nice that he came into our family at this time of year, when the cold doldrums of February are relieved by the bright red hearts of the holiday, when we have a particular opportunity to tell the ones we love just how much we love them.

Last year, the Mister and I celebrated Valentine's Day as much as we celebrated a year of being parents, a year of making it through the sleepless, exhausting, exhilarating experience of a baby's first year on earth. My parents were in town, and they shooed us out the door, even though we were hardly sure we could stay awake for a long meal. This year, since we don't have a babysitter, we'll all three go out for an early, quick, decidedly not romantic dinner, but that sounds pretty nice to me: hanging out with the two (now three!) boys I love most in the world.

Or, why we love the Ergo

2012-02-13T23:58:00.000+01:00

We are back in cold, but not quite as cold as it was when we left, Belgium. A brief thawing out in sunny Catalonia did me good, and having grandmother/auntie/cousins to entertain Gabriel did my sore neck and sore...whatever muscles are at the base of my belly...good. It's actually kind of amusing to hear our family and friends there complain about the cold, and solemnly admonish us to put on winter hats and scarves when we go out, because it's so cold "your fingers tingle."

The flight today presented different challenges than the flight going to Barcelona. It wasn't full, hallelujah, so Gabriel got his own seat. I'm actually really relieved this is his last trip as a "lap infant"--such a misnomer, and has been a misnomer for close to a year now. But since it was a mid-day trip, it fell right during Gabriel's nap, and of course he didn't fall asleep, despite our greatest encouragements, until the final descent into Brussels. Which left us with too many carry-ons (as always, we're transferring a large assortment of objects, such as stored baby clothes, G's birthday presents, inherited items, and books we need here, from one city to the other), a dead-weight sleeping two-year-old, bulky coats, and oh, a pregnant belly to haul through the long hallways of Brussels airport.

For here's something that makes me fume just about every trip we make: in European airports, they no longer bring up the stroller to the airplane after deplaning, leaving bedraggled families everywhere wondering how on earth to corral toddlers or lug heavy babies or sleeping children through large airports to get to the baggage claim. Even with modest amounts of carry on luggage, this presents a serious challenge, and it is beyond me how airport planners can allow the most urgent items--the strollers--to appear LAST of all, long after the last suitcase has rolled through and the rest of the passengers are merrily on their way. This is the moment when travel-weary children are at the end of their tether, when parents are exhausted and just want to get home, when the last thing you want to do is stand and wait without a way to contain or carry a child. Over and over again, I've watched parents having to make sure kids don't crawl on the baggage carousel, or escape in the crowds, or get in the way of large rolling objects and their human carriers. And of course, I've been that parent.

Thank goodness for the Ergo baby carrier: we always wonder--especially now that we don't use it much anymore--if we really need to bring it and we are always SO glad we brought it. I carried sleeping Gabriel on my back in the Ergo, plus assorted winter coats and Gabriel's mini-backpack, and the Mister carried two (pretty loaded) backpacks plus our two rolling suitcases plus a heavy bag with four landscape paintings in it (originals painted by his grandmother, which have always hung in her apartment and which will now hang in our house here). Needless to say, we went very slowly, taking breaks every once in a while.

This time, the one other family on our flight with kids (three! a tiny baby and two tots) were waiting, too, when we finally got to the baggage claim, and the father had gone off to find out where the strollers were. Of course they appeared while he was gone, and the mother asked the Mister to pull her strollers (plural!) and car seats off the baggage claim. But he couldn't open them (why does every stroller have a unique, non-obvious trick for opening?) and she couldn't explain how to open them due to a language barrier, and her arms were full with the sleeping infant, while the two older kids ran around in circles. So I offered to hold the baby (I was sitting down, with Gabriel still on my back) while they figured out the strollers and even though my back and belly ached I cooed at the baby and was glad I was not in her shoes, while simultaneously worrying that someday I could be.

Anyway, a short train ride (free first class for pregnant ladies!) and a fifteen-minute walk in the misty cold of Leuven later, we were home. With the stroller, everything was so much easier, although Gabriel whimpered the whole way, having woken up from his nap into the unpleasantly cold air, and the Mister still carried most of the luggage weight, with our ridiculously torn-up, still under construction, muddy, rubbly street being sort of the last straw.

The week ahead will be busy, but busy in happy ways: tomorrow is Valentine's day, of course, and M. and I had planned to meet for lunch in Brussels until I realized that I wouldn't make it back for my first (second, really, since I missed today's) Dutch class. So we'll probably go out for a not-terribly-romantic dinner with Gabriel in tow tomorrow night. Then Wednesday is Gabriel's actual birthday, and he already caught a glimpse of the presents that I wrapped for him before we left ("Open! Open!" he said until I distracted him with a short-lived valentine-making project involving doilies and felt shapes). I still have to figure out a snack for him to bring to school and something special for dessert that night.

Friday--or actually Saturday, but for the schools Friday--is Carnival, which in Europe means dressing up in costumes. Gabriel's got a cute hand-me-down ladybug costume made by M's mom and worn by his cousins. Then, Saturday, we're throwing a bash for Gabriel's birthday, to which we invited basically all the families we know who have kids. It's not necessarily a ton of people, but it's the most we've ever had over, and there will be soup and sandwiches and I plan to make an owl cake and some simple goody bags for the kid attendees, so there's (fun) work to be done. So! A week of celebrations, of all sizes and shapes. But mostly all about a charming two-year-old who we are so, so proud of, even when he's a heavy, sleeping lug needing to be carried through a very long airport.

Boy times two

2012-02-12T10:00:00.000+01:00

The big news, the holding-my-breath news, is here: it's a boy! Another boy, a baby brother, a boy cousin to add to the passel, another scrumptious munchkin.

I was terribly worried before the ultrasound (which happened on Wednesday) that I would be disappointed if it were a boy, that I would be upset that we don't have the girl we wanted to add to our family. But on seeing him, all those worries went out the window, and in fact I felt sure that I had secretly known all along. Buying girl baby clothes, the dream of a pigtailed daughter--the last few weeks of not-knowing gave me time to indulge in those impulses and then set them aside.

Because he's HIM! He's been a boy this whole time, of course, so it seems silly to wish for the girl he isn't. We got to see his feet, all tucked up by his head, his little hand hanging on to the umbilical cord, and his face--a shadowy glimpse of his perfect innocent face. He's a robust baby, measuring bigger than we thought, with plenty of room in the amniotic sac for growing even bigger.

Indeed, what struck me this time was just how cool it is to get this glimpse inside not only my body, but inside my boy's body. This (and our 30-week ultrasound) will be our only glimpse of his cerebellum, his ventricled pumping heart, his femur and aorta, his liver and bladder (happily full of fluid). The last time we saw Gabriel's insides was when he was in utero, and (barring sickness or injury, Lord willing) we won't have occasion to see them again. So this is a very special view into the miracle of a whole body growing out of nothing, but also the simple miracle of everyone's body--the intricate dance of organs and neurons, bones and skin.

The more I think about it, the more I'm excited about Gabriel having a brother, partners in crime. It's comforting to know that we've at least got two years of experience raising a boy under our belts, and the thrifty part of me is happy that Gabriel's adorable stripey clothes will be put to good use again.

Mostly, now that we know, it will be fun to start dreaming of who he will be (and debating over his name--boy names are tough). Will he be a dark curly-haired copy of his father? Or will he be blonde and blue-eyed like his big brother? Will he be a daredevil and a spitfire or will he be a cautious fellow like his brother (and his parents)? Will he be a good sleeper, quite unlike his brother? (Oh Lord, please let him be a sleeper...)

Baby (and not such a baby) on board

2012-02-11T11:47:00.000+01:00

We flew from Brussels to Barcelona on Thursday evening, and the flight was simultaneously wonderful and horrible. Horrible, because the heat was cranked up and I was sweltering the entire time, even more because of my built-in incubator, I'm sure. M. put his hand on my belly at one point to feel the baby move and I couldn't even stand that iota of extra warmth. Gabriel was sitting mostly on his lap, but also stretched out onto mine, and my feet swelled up to the point where I laboriously took off my boots and wasn't sure whether I would ever get them back on. The seats seemed impossibly close together, my kneecaps smashed against the row in front of us, and I couldn't manage to reach anything on the floor (and of course Gabriel regularly dropped his crayons). I got a violently painful knot in my shoulder that I couldn't shake out, and I had to pee but couldn't fathom getting out of my seat, unbuckling the kid (who would refuse to be buckled again), and crawling back over the seemingly insurmountable distance of three airplane seats with no leg room.

The flight was only two hours but it felt like ten.

However! There is the wonderful part I mentioned. The schedule was changed from an afternoon flight to an 8:30pm flight, which meant checking in at around Gabriel's bedtime, landing at 10:30, and arriving at my in-laws' house at nearly midnight. But Gabriel surpassed all expectations, sitting quietly during the whole flight and coloring or reading. For the first time ever, we didn't bring a diaper bag, just a little backpack for him to carry himself, and he wore it onto the plane and off like a little champ. (In fact, the only time he did cry was when we made him take the backpack off after boarding.) When we got off the plane, we had to climb down the stairs to a waiting bus, and since the Mister had the suitcases, I was in charge of Gabriel. Instead of trying to carry him, I had him walk down himself, holding my hand, and even with the loud roar of the plane engines, the cold and semi-dark and rushing wind, he bravely marched down those stairs. I could tell he was a little scared, but he didn't stop or beg to be carried, and I was SO proud of him. We hopped onto the bus and he sat there, pleased as punch, and walked all the way through the airport with his little backpack, giddily running into the arms of his grandfather like something out of a movie. He didn't even fall asleep during the car ride home, and stayed awake to greet his grandmother with equal joy, then playing delightedly with the toys that are here.

In sum, Gabriel made the trip twenty times more tolerable. (Not sure where that puts the math...)

(It makes me wonder, as does much of his great behavior lately--solidly sleeping through the night without bedtime protest, eating well, understanding our explanations and responding to them, and so forth--how crazy we are to introduce infant chaos back into our lives just when things are getting so good!)

Me, in an alphabet

2012-02-09T13:27:00.003+01:00

Here's a mid-February meme just to keep me writing blog posts...I'm on a roll, lately, and I really do want to keep up! I've also managed to write in my 5-year journal every day of the year so far, which I'm pretty proud of. However, we're flying to Barcelona this evening, and we're flying light: first time with no diaper bag, only a couple of changes of clothes, one computer (the Air), and so forth. Which means I'm not bringing the journal, which is a kind of heavy book full of mostly empty pages. Should I try to write the weekend down after the fact, or should I write on a different piece of paper and then transfer to the journal? Not sure. Anyway, here's an alphabet meme:

Age: 33. I will be 34 by the time the baby is born, which isn't a bad time to have a baby. Although sometimes I wish I were 24 and that much more energetic.

Bed size: European bed sizes, frustratingly, do not exactly match American bed sizes. We have a 160-cm-wide bed, which is just slightly too big for most of our American queen-sized sheets. Terribly annoying. I've taken to putting flat sheets on the bottom instead of fitted sheets, since we use a duvet and duvet cover instead of top sheets anyway. (Fortunately, those seem to be the same size.) Pillow sizes are yet another mismatch, so our pillows are often wedged into American pillowcases that don't quite fit them.

Chore you hate: Mopping. But I don't mind vacuuming or sweeping. So I sweep and M. mops: it's a good system. I also dislike washing dishes, but mostly because it hurts the eczema on my hands. So I usually cook, M. usually washes up, and one or the other of us puts dishes away out of the dishwasher. Similarly, I rather like doing laundry, but I never ever iron, so M. is the "iron man" of the family if he wants wrinkle-free shirts.

Dogs: We aren't exactly pet people. M's allergic, and neither of us can quite see how they're worth the expense and effort. The only time I wish I had a dog is when I am in a park watching dogs frolic with their owners.

Essential to start your day: Food, and plenty of it. Usually a banana, a big bowl of cereal, one or two slices of toast with butter and honey or jam, and sometimes orange juice or tea. The other day I only ate a banana and toast and I about passed out by lunchtime.

Favorite color: Recently, my bank in Indiana decided to redo their security system, so I had to establish new passwords (the annoying kind, with sixteen requirements) and new security questions. But the security questions were all impossible! Like, What is your favorite restaurant? What is your favorite food? Who is your favorite person? What are we, five years old? On any given day, the answers to the food questions might change, and even the favorite person might not be obvious. M? Gabriel? Anyway, favorite color was also on there, and although my favorite has historically been blue, any shade, my wardrobe consists of an awful lot of purple, a good share of gray, and lots of green. So I didn't choose that question, either.

Gold or silver: M. is definitely a silver kind of guy, so all the jewelry he's bought me over the years is silver or white gold, and my wedding and engagement rings are white gold. But I hold a soft spot in my heart for gold, too, so I have a few special items here and there. The necklace that I received from M's family that had belonged to iaia is gold, and I've been wearing it a lot recently. I particularly like the combination of gold with pearls.

Height: 5'11'' (and a half). I always wanted to be six feet tall, like my aunts, but never quite got there. Still, I love being tall, even though I'm taller than the Mister, and even though I was always taller than ALL the boys until about the 7th grade.

Instruments you play: The piano, badly: I took lessons for years, even in college, but was never serious enough about it. I wish I could sit down and play anything, but I'd say I never really got beyond "advanced intermediate." I do love playing the piano, though, and am pretty good at sight-reading pieces within my reach, or hymns and simple songs. I really long to have a piano again (for the original Brussels piano saga, see here), and we will want one for sure in the future so Gabriel can learn. Oh, I also play the organ a little bit after taking lessons for a few semesters in college, and of course, I sing.

Job title: Scholar, writer, translator, editor, poet, and hoping for a more official title someday. And always: mom, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend.

Kids: I'm a fan, generally speaking. We have two, our Gabriel and our yet-unnamed baby, a.k.a. Junebug.

Live: In Belgium, in a beautiful university town, in a little row house with a sweet little walled-in backyard.

Mother's name: Rhonda. I think it's a really nice name, but it's definitely a bit old-fashioned now, right? No one really names their kids Rhonda any more... I've always liked having the same initials as my mom. She also goes by Grandma a lot these days.

Nicknames: Rob. Really just family and a few close friends use that one. Some of the guys in high school used to call me Roe-bine, but it's a good thing that one died an early death.

Overnight hospital stays: Just the one, when Gabriel was born. I kind of liked it, and kind of didn't (mostly the part about people coming into the room all the time).

Pet peeves: Rattly wrappers, even my own, in an otherwise quiet environment. Price or information stickers on a brand-new item that won't come off and leave a gunky, sticky smear.

Quote from a movie: I'm not very much of a movie-quote person, but I can still throw quite a few Princess Bride lines at you. I recently watched it again (25 year anniversary!) and was surprised at how vividly I remembered it all. It was the first movie I saw in the theater, and my brother and I would run around the house yelling stuff about Inigo Montoya and inconceivable and dropping your sword and so forth.

Right or left handed: Righty.

Siblings: Four awesome younger siblings. They all lived in the Boston area, conveniently enough for us, until one moved away to Texas of all places! The three oldest have married equally awesome people, and the two oldest have produced even more awesome kids. And my in-laws on the Spanish side are fantastic too. Lucky, lucky me.

Underwear: Um, in favor of? I'll usually go for a hipster style. No, not that kind of hipster. Recently all of my underwear is getting too small, leaving red welts in my hips, and I'm going to have to switch over to my pregnancy and postpartum stash. Ugh.

Vegetable you hate: I can't think of one. Even veggies that aren't my personal favorites can be delicious when well prepared.

What makes you run late: Oh, everything. I always think I'll just sneak in one more task or wait just a few more minutes, because I dislike the idea of being early, but then I'm perpetually five to fifteen minutes late. Now that I have a child I have a built-in excuse for the lateness, but it's really not his fault (or at least it hasn't been since he was a little infant, when it really does seem a mountainous ordeal just to get out the door).

X-rays you've had: I suppose they would equal the number of broken or sprained bones I've had. There was the broken collar bone when I was about 2 (my mom says I charmed everyone by explaining that "I broke my clavicle"), the cracked wrist when I fell from a jungle gym in elementary school, and then mercifully nothing until the x-ray I got last winter when I slipped on the ice and sprained my wrist. Oh, I guess there are the usual dentist x-rays, too.

Yummy food that you make: Lots! I have a pretty decent repertoire of things I can make without a recipe and with whatever vegetables or grains I happen to have on hand: curries, stir-fries, burritos, pasta, and so forth. I am very proud of my vegetarian BLT (butternut, lettuce, and tomato): Slice butternut rounds and sprinkle them with some cumin, chili powder and salt. Fry them up until soft. Pile on toast with lettuce, tomato, and chipotle mayonnaise (made my mixing mayo with some chopped up chipotle and adobe sauce). YUM. Even the Mister doesn't miss the bacon.

Zoo animal: Zoos always leave me feeling mixed emotions, happy to have seen such amazing animals and sad that they're cooped up in a zoo. The last time we went was to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and we were pretty taken with the pandas and that big chimpanzee who was sitting up against the glass.

Cultural etiquette

2012-02-06T20:08:00.000+01:00

We attended a kids' birthday party on Saturday, and we brought a gift, but nothing else. Turns out that other guests brought food as well. Which leaves me wondering if I was expected to bring food. In general here, I've been surprised at the lavish bearing of gifts and food when invited to someone's home: when we had two families, colleagues of the Mister, over for a casual lunch, they each brought a (substantial) gift for Gabriel (when it was nowhere near his birthday or Christmas), plus chocolates, wine, a gorgeous bouquet, and homemade cake between the two families. It was lovely, of course, but to me that seems a little...excessive? When we went to their respective homes, we brought gifts for their children and something homemade, plus chocolates, but it was mostly because I felt we needed to reciprocate their generosity. And it leaves me wondering what the "usual" or expected thing is. In the US, we usually ask what food we can contribute to the meal, or just bring a bottle of wine, and in Spain, we almost always bring a bottle of wine or a dessert or something (totally acceptable if it's purchased, because bakeries are so good) and that's what our friends usually bring to our house, too. It feels a little more casual, and can be adjusted in complexity to the formality of the event. But the multiple, deluxe offerings for a simple gathering of friends? Also, the gift for the child(ren) of the family is also new to me, and I don't know if it's always expected? Or just the first time you visit? I'm glad, at least, that we had these folks over before they had us over, so that we could follow suit. These sorts of expectations are usually unspoken (and of course everyone is totally nice, so I'm sure they wouldn't be shocked or upset if, say, we hadn't brought a gift for the kids) but still, they exist, and one wants to do the correct thing. I'm on unsure footing, I guess is what I'm getting at, and I don't like it, because I want to "quedar bé" as they say in Catalan, "turn out well," or make a good impression.

Another little etiquette thing that I find varies from the US to Europe is the culture of thank-you cards and Christmas cards. In the US, both are pretty de rigueur, and even if they don't get written, there is usually the aspiration to write them. (I'm very bad about thank-you notes, but have been trying to send out Christmas cards the last few years.) In Europe, I don't think we've ever once received a handwritten thank-you note, and can count on one hand the Christmas cards we've received from non-political or non-business entities. Certainly, none of our peers in our friends group send them out, short of an email greeting with a picture of their children. So I haven't sent Christmas cards to friends/family in Spain, and nor did I write official thank-you notes for, say, baby gifts that were given in Spain when Gabriel was born (although, of course, we thanked the giver informally, and we always thank friends for meals via email and so forth). But I still wonder if I should have, because that's the ingrained American response! And I sometimes wonder if I'm wrong and am committing a huge faux pas without knowing it? And now, living in Belgium, I am once again in the dark. Does one write thank-you notes here? We received a thank-you note for a birthday gift after a party we attended a few weeks ago, but that was from an American, so not necessarily an indication of the culture here. I guess I would need to give a gift to someone from here before receiving one in order to find out, but seeing that Gabriel's birthday party is in a few weeks, it's likely that he'll receive some presents first. The best bet, I suppose, is to err on the side of politeness and send good, old-fashioned handwritten thank-you notes!

Getting around

2012-02-04T14:57:00.000+01:00

After two solid weeks of miserable rain, I commented to a friend that I much prefer those very cold sunny days, or cold and snow, to the slog of winter rain. We had a day of relative warmth and sun as a lovely respite, and then the temperatures plummeted and I've gotten my wish and then some: at least a week so far of temperatures in the teens with crystal clear skies, and now a true snowfall! (Gabriel is very excited, as this is his first real experience of fluffy snow--seeing as we didn't have a white Christmas in Boston this year.) But the experience of extremely cold temperature is actually a little more than I bargained for. In Vermont or Indiana, when it got this cold, we would hop from a warm house to a soon-heated car to get to our destination, whereas here getting to and from places requires a bit of a walk that has me (and poor Gabriel!) out in the frigid air for upwards of a half hour at a time--bringing him to daycare puts me outside for about 50 minutes. We bundle up as best we can but he still cries when the sharp wind buffets his little rosy cheeks. I've taken to putting the rain cover on the stroller, which he hates but actually keeps him quite a lot more comfortable, since it blocks the wind and creates a little cocoon of warm(er) air.

Anyway. I've been considering and coveting alternative modes of transportation now that it's this cold. Most of my friends here (and most of the population) ride bikes, and I'm longing for one of those sturdy European cruisers with a little kiddy seat on the back. We'd zip to daycare in ten minutes! But the Mister and our families are a bit skeptical of that plan, especially since I'm 22 weeks pregnant, and only getting bigger. Plus, a bike means a colder, even if shorter, commute, and the snow days would probably require walking anyway. When it rains, bike riders just grin and bear it, and wear waterproof coats, but it still doesn't sound very nice, especially for the little passenger. Although: I get soaked anyway, when it rains, because it's pretty impossible to steer a heavy stroller around bumpy cobblestone streets, narrow sidewalks, and parked-bike hazards while carrying an umbrella. Plus, everything is really designed for bikes. Pedestrians definitely don't have right-of-way, given that there are many places where zebra crossings dead end into bike lanes, and you simply have to be very aware of whizzing bikes at all times. There are bike lanes literally everywhere, as well-organized as the roads themselves. I feel like we might even be safer on a bike (especially wearing helmets, which we would, even though most people here, even kids! don't).

I have great memories of the times in my life when I've been a bike commuter. When I lived in Salzburg, I rode one of the free Seminar bikes to get downtown, and I loved the freedom it gave me to zip around easily. In Oxford, I sometimes rode a bike to get from our student house to the center, although probably more often took the bus. In Barcelona, I was for a brief time a frequent user of Bicing, the bike transport system, which worked well even though Barcelona's roads aren't quite as well prepared for bicycles. In Bloomington, my first year there, I bought a bike at police auction that turned out to be a complete dud, but I did drive it to campus for a while. I'm not the most confident biker ever, but I have enough experience to be comfortable, and here I'd just be one of the crowds, and riding mostly on dedicated paths rather than the street.

And then there's the car option. We don't have a car, and we love it: we love walking everywhere, taking buses and trains, and we love that Europe makes it possible to live car-free. We love not having car payments, or the expense of gas and maintenance. But, we've always sort of imagined that we'd eventually buy one, especially once our critical mass of children makes it more complicated to get around. I'm not sure when that tipping point will happen, but I have to admit that on cold days like these the idea of getting into a quickly-heated car is awfully appealing. The schlepping is already sometimes uncomfortable with one child, and I can't quite imagine what it will be like with two. I have much more to say on this subject (the car seat dilemma, especially: not lugging one on trips means traveling more lightly but it means we can't take taxis, which means dragging suitcases around on our own, and while I handle the stroller that leaves the Mister with the bags...). Then again, I don't relish the thought of driving around narrow-laned Europe, and there's the whole driver's license issue, which merits its own blog post. (Short version: I was supposed to be able to trade in my American license for a Belgian one, but annoying and unnecessary red tape has put that notion to the test.) So. I go in circles, I think about the various kinds of wheels we may have someday, and meanwhile, I walk.

Kijk!

2012-01-29T20:55:00.000+01:00

Friday afternoon I attended a parents' meeting for Gabriel's classroom, during the course of which we watched a video of the kids doing their daily activities: playing, singing, naptime, painting or drawing, stories, and puppets. It was a great glimpse into what the day is like for Gabriel, since he can't quite explain it to me himself, and he's clearly enjoying his time there. But watching the video, for the first time, I had a twinge of guilt for sending him to a Dutch-language daycare. It's one thing for him not to understand directions or instructions, because if the teacher sees he doesn't understand she will translate for him. But the poor darling wasn't able to participate in the many songs they sing and the hand motions and hand games that toddlers so enjoy--mostly because they're not the same songs we sing or games we play at home. He sat and listened and watched, but didn't join in. He laughed at the puppet show, but couldn't sing along or call out answers like the other children. And I felt so sad for him!

But. We're still confident we're doing the right thing. It's a great gift for him to be immersed in three languages at such an early age, when he will pick them up easily. Having him in daycare now means it will be that much easier when he starts school this fall, already knowing some Dutch. To address the participation issue, I thought that we can get some sort of CD (or watch YouTube videos?) to learn some of the Dutch kids' songs so that he will be able to join in.

And every day he learns more words; his teacher has told us that he has started to understand more and more. Lately he's been using a few of those words at home, which is pretty adorable. For a long time he's been saying "dag!" (with appropriate "gh" sound at the end) as well as "hello" and "hola," but now he's added "kijk!" to "look" (he says "ook" in English) and "mira" as well as "nee" for no and--this is a fun one--"mooi" for neat/nice (used to express approval of, say, a drawing). I didn't recognize the word, but the Mister did, and it's a sign that all too soon he will know more Dutch than me (because I really hardly know any). Oh, he also likes to say "komm!" oh-so imperiously, easily distinguished from the English because in English he says "mon" as in c'mon. ("Mon, Dada!" he'll say, enticing M. to leave the dinner table and go play--"Pay!") It's also interesting to me how he chooses to use his Dutch words--at a recent lunch with friends who have a young daughter, Gabriel said "nee" and "kijk" to her exclusively even though she's an English speaker. He just assumed that any kid he doesn't know speaks Dutch.

In general, I've been fascinated watching his language change and develop over the last months. He's certainly not as verbal as some other kids his age (especially girls), but in some ways the slow progress allows me to see those step-by-step changes more clearly, in both pronunciation and grammar. For example, he's recently added prepositions to his nouns, and the prepositions tend to change the formulation of the base word altogether, which I find very cool. Whereas before he called shoes "oof," now he says "shoes on" like "toot-on," and obviously "oof" is very different from "toot."

I think he has trouble pronouncing "s," so that many words lose the s altogether or transform it into "th" or "f." So sleeping is "leeping," snack is "nack," nose is "nofe," and oops is "oopth." (This is so cute that I wouldn't mind him retaining these pronunciations forever if it wouldn't put him at a disadvantage for, say, a job interview.) Come to think of it, though, consonant combinations are difficult in general; clean up becomes "lean up," and so forth.

Along with adding prepositions to nouns, he is adding other nouns to them to create possessives or adjectival nouns. "Mama 'at" and "Babe-il 'at" (Gabriel hat), he likes to say when we get our coats and hats on. Or, he gets very excited to identify mother and baby animal pairs in our books or puzzles: "mama moo" and "baby moo," "mama pig" and "baby pig," "mama wee-wee" and "baby wee-wee" (penguin). He says all of these quite fast so sometimes they get jumbled, the syllables of "mama" and "baby" intermingling.

One recent change I'm a bit sad about--for the longest time, he's said "Ah-nee" to mean "all done." It was one of his earliest phrases, appearing right when he started speaking. We're not quite sure how that pronunciation came about, but it was always so cute (and he said it often, whenever he was done eating/wanted to get down from somewhere/finished with a toy or object, etc.). Now, though, he suddenly says "ah dunn," much closer to an accurate pronunciation of the words. But then again, he now says things like "nee-no" for piano and "eh-pane" for airplane, so the cuteness is compensatory.

Meanwhile, on the Catalan side of things he often surprises us by pulling out a Catalan word for any of the above, especially when the Mister is around, and even more especially when we're in Barcelona. In general, his spoken English dominates, but he understands the Catalan just as easily as English, and uses it when he needs to. He usually asks for "bed" (bread), but today he asked M. for "pa," the Catalan word for bread. He pronounces the word for book, "llibre," astonishingly well, and uses it just as frequently as "book." And so forth.

As a language nerd, I love watching (well, listening to) all of this mix of language and acquisition of words, and I'm so proud of him! Writing down some of the complex soup of language development will hopefully help me remember it as it is now, because it changes so quickly and subtly day by day, and I don't want to forget any of it.

Connections

2012-01-22T21:13:00.001+01:00

Gabriel's superfun aunt and uncle left this morning, after a great visit. It rained basically the whole time they were here, but we still fit in a lot of walking around Brussels and Leuven, and managed to include the real essentials for any local tour: Belgian waffles, Belgian beer, Belgian platters of meat, and Belgian chocolate (although I personally could only indulge in two of the above). Plus lots of relaxed hanging out, dinners at home, and solid nephew-aunt-uncle time.

We abandoned them for a little while yesterday to attend the birthday party of a friend's four-year-old, pretty much a selfish move, because I was hoping to expand our circle of acquaintances here in town. And so it was: we met a bunch of really great people, many connected to the university, most with small children. In short order, I was invited to join a book club, and was asked to be part of a small poetry discussion group with two theology doctoral students, their side interest being modern and contemporary poetry. I am SO excited about both of these, as much for the getting-to-know people part as for the getting-to-talk about literature part. (Especially for the poetry discussion: I am very eager to get to do more in-depth study of some of my favorite poets. We're going to start with Celan, and move on to Akhmatova and maybe Dickinson, then Vallejo, then Rukeyser... You'd think a PhD would have made me tired of all this but I'm ridiculously happy to get back on board! There are still such gaps in my knowledge, and I always want to revisit favorites, so this is the perfect way to read broadly and deeply.)

Then today we were invited to lunch at the home of a colleague of the Mister's, whose wife is doing a postdoc and has already published her dissertation (she studies literature too). So she had some good advice for me and has warmly told me to come to her with questions about the whole process of post-PhD next steps, which I'm sure I will. They are a cross-cultural couple, too (Irish and Portuguese), and they have a little girl, and she's looking for an academic job in the area, so there is much common ground and it's nice to have spent some time with them.

Plus, Facebook has reconnected me with a host of people: Bloomington folks, especially my mom-friends there and a strong parenthood support network, as well as long-lost friends from middle school before we moved away from Pennsylvania. It's so much fun to feel a part of things and see what people are up to.

All in all, the last few days have been more social than the norm (my norm, I should say), which is encouraging and makes me happy. Peering ahead into the newborn-stage wilderness (it may be beautiful, but it's also wild and wooly), I know that it helps ever so much to be supported and surrounded by community, and we're slowly building that community here in this new place.

Random endorsement

2012-01-17T12:33:00.000+01:00

A week and three days after getting home from our long trip, I finally finished clearing out our suitcases and putting everything away. The last step of the process was to buy some plastic bins for bathroom storage and divide up the travel-sized or rarely-used items from the jumble of toiletries and makeup, and stash them along with the travel cases and extras.

This activity got me thinking about makeup, and travel, and my top product recommendation, for what it's worth coming from me. Because I'm not much of a makeup person, in that I don't wear a whole lot--usually just a sweep of blush, maybe some lip gloss or lipstick, and if I have an extra few seconds, some mascara. But I love makeup anyway, which I think has mostly to do with the petite size of the products: the cunning round pots or square palettes or oblong tubes, the tiny brushes, the glossy glints of metal, the hint of bright colors inside. Oh, and the satisfying snap of a compact, the sound a lipstick cap makes when you put it back on, the click of a shadow box, the way they lie smooth and weighty in the palm of your hand.

For this reason I love makeup samples, because they are even tinier, cuter versions of themselves, and also, since I don't wear much makeup, I can actually use them up (or not feel bad when they expire and I need to throw them away). I never buy full-sized mascara, for example, because I never can finish a tube before it's time to toss. Plus! Since I travel so much, they are the perfect size for taking up less of my precious carryon space.

Which brings me to my recommendation. It's not for makeup, but for a face cleanser, one that travels really well. I have always had rather dry, sensitive skin, prone to random pimples, although the latter has--thankfully!--all but disappeared since I had Gabriel. I try to wash my face consistently, but I hate putting harsh products on it, and although I need something scrubby, most exfoliating washes hurt too much.

Enter Lush's Angels on Bare Skin. I've been using this face cleanser for probably eight or nine years now, and if a day goes by that I don't use it, my skin feels simultaneously dryer and less clean. It's a bit hard to get used to: a clay-based paste, it has actual lavender buds in it and ground-up almonds for the scrubby bits. You break off a small piece of the paste, mix it with a little water in the palm of your hand, then use as a cleanser. The clay cleans and moisturizes, the almonds scrub all the dirt away, and the lavender freshens and restores. I'm a huge fan of Lush for its eco packaging, great scents, all natural ingredients, and sparing use of preservatives, but this is my favorite item ever (second and third favorites: Honey I Washed the Kids soap, and Each Peach massage bar). It's not very expensive either, as the small container lasts me for months.

The other great thing about this stuff is how well it travels. I take a knob of it and smoosh as much as I can fit into one of those clear little plastic pots, the kind that come in those travel container sets (mine is very small, not much bigger around than a dollar coin, and quite flat, no thicker than a chapstick). The beauty of it is that because you need so little for each wash, that tiny pot lasts for about three weeks of daily use. I brought two for my five-week trip this holiday (the second pot was even smaller and I didn't pack it quite full) and I ran out the day before we flew home. Plus, it's not a liquid, so you don't have to put it in the carryon plastic bag, but I just stick it in there anyway since it takes up so little room. There's no worry about leakage, either.

There, that's my big beauty recommendation, one product I really would endorse. Of course there are a number of more boring items I'm also loyal to, like Cetaphil face lotion, Dove deodorant, Body Shop body butter, and Clinique lipstick, but people probably already know about those. I'm very fickle when it comes to things like body wash and shampoos and makeup because I like trying different brands and colors and scents, but I can't wear drugstore lipstick (they have some ingredient I'm allergic to).

Writing this, I had a funny memory from a few years back of my little nephew, 3 or 4 years old at the time, dashing into the guest room where I was staying at my sister's house. He was carrying my little pot of cleanser and had opened it, and he said, breathlessly, "Robin, look what I found! It smells SO GOOD!" So I guess I'm not the only one who endorses it.

Nerd dream

2012-01-16T11:51:00.002+01:00

I've been having especially vivid dreams lately, a development directly attributable to pregnancy. Usually I don't remember much of my dreams, if at all, but recent mornings leave me feeling confused, like I've just dropped out of an important new part of my life. Some are stressful, some are pleasant, and almost all of them are richly detailed and complex.

Surprisingly, hardly any of the dreams are about the baby. A lot of them have been teaching related, where I either have a great teaching experience or have a panic-y dream of not being prepared for class. This week I had an elaborate mountain climbing dream, in which I was a team member on a serious expedition up a near-vertical mountain face. I also had a drawn-out dream about shopping, of all things, where I find this fantastic coat (that in the light of my awake brain I think supremely ugly) and have to go through all sorts of complications to get one in my size.

But my favorite dream so far is so deliciously geeky that I had to share it. I am my current self, but back at my undergraduate institution for some sort of general assembly of students and alumni. At the end of the assembly, the president announces that they have prepared a special overnight assignment for every person in the room: we are to report to our areas of study, and meet with a professor. We are to select a book, read it overnight, and write a paper on it the next day. 24 hours only.

I guess it says a lot about me that this was not a stress dream: it was a happy dream! When I get to the literature conference room after some delay (I think because I have to find someone to watch Gabriel?), sitting around the table are many of the professors who I had never gotten to take a class with but always wanted to--both from undergraduate and graduate school. Each of them has one book to promote, and I get to sit at the table and hear them talk about a wide selection of books, many of which are outside of my specific area. I end up selecting a medieval text, which (in my dream) I had heard this professor speak on once.

I don't remember how or when the dream ended, but I remember being eager to get home and have a completely sanctioned all-nighter for reading and writing. And I distinctly recall waking up and wishing the dream were real. I know specifically who some of the professors were, and even find myself wishing I could remember what the books were because they all sounded awesome. So. A book geek with her book-geek dream. If there's one sad part about achieving a PhD, it's that I probably will never again get to take literature classes in the same way that I did as an undergraduate and master's/doctoral student--indiscriminately exploring what interested me, having a legitimized excuse to read madly, widely, and deeply.

A tremolo rises

2012-01-15T13:00:00.001+01:00

A funny gift coincidence, this Christmas. For the longest time, a few years perhaps, I've had a volume of Tomas Tranströmer's poetry, The Great Enigma, languishing at the bottom of my Amazon wish list. I hadn't read much of his work, but what I'd read always made me want to explore more of the Swedish poet's writing. So when I came across that very book the day that I defended my thesis, as I wandered around town happily, I bought it without hesitation as a little "go Dr. me!" reward.

A couple of weeks later, opening gifts from my parents, what should I unwrap but the very same book! I had even been careful to delete it from my Amazon list after I bought it, but my mom had her shopping done early this year, and for whatever reason that was the one she chose to get. Accurately, it turns out, guessing that I really wanted it if it had been on the list for so long (she's very good at picking out good gifts)--too accurately in this case, as I never dreamed anyone would go for that one instead of the cookbooks or new novels also on my list.

In fact, I had been worried that I'd get a duplicate copy of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, since the Mister gave me that as a present just before we left for the US when we had our little family Christmas. I've just started delving into it this week, with all the anticipation that a nice fat hardcover of a favorite writer brings, and I'm already loving it. All the hallmarks of Murakami's fantastic blend of real and surreal are there, even in the first pages, as one main character, whose odd name means "green peas," climbs down off a gridlocked freeway via an emergency ladder, and another is tapped to rewrite a young author's literary prize entry.

Anyway, back to Tranströmer. I realize it's been a very long time indeed since last I posted any poetry here, so I thought a selection from him today would be nice. It was below freezing but a bright sunny sky as we walked to church this morning, the kind of cold air that hits you hard but makes you somehow happy. I think Tranströmer captures that in this little winter poem, and surprises you in the end with a comparison to a summertime experience.

There Is Peace in the Surging Prow
~by Tomas Tranströmer

On a winter morning you feel how this earth
plunges ahead. Against the house walls
an air current smacks
out of hiding.

Surrounded by movement: the tent of calm.
And the secret helm in the migrating flock.
Out of the winter gloom
a tremolo rises

from hidden instruments. It is like standing
under summer's high lime tree with the din
of ten thousand
insect wings above your head.

Miscellaneous Saturday edition

2012-01-14T11:53:00.002+01:00

Regarding yesterday's post: for now I've decided not to make the link to this blog available on Facebook, for a number of reasons, mostly having to do with privacy for both me and the Mister, and general wariness. I do think most people know about it who are immediate family and friends, anyway. As a friend pointed out, I can always let people know individually if I want to.

In unrelated news, I signed up for this semester's Dutch class at the university (KU Leuven). Basic level one, but I'm very excited about it. The class ends on May 31, a week before my due date, so if the baby decides to come early, I might miss the exam, but oh well! If I do a later level someday, I can always take a placement test. But I'm nervous already about day one, for two reasons. First, because our plane from Barcelona arrives at 12:45 and the class begins at 2 (I would be horribly stressed to be late on the first day), and second, because if they make us go around the room and say our names and where we're from, etc., I will be at a total loss (it's what happened on the first day of my French class, but at least in French I could manage those basic phrases). Maybe I'll study the Mister's "Le néerlandais pour les nuls" (Dutch for Dummies). (It pleases me probably more than it should that each title is alliterative in own its language.)

Today we are taking it easy and enjoying being at home for a weekend by ourselves. We will shop the sales later this afternoon, trying to fill in our list of still-needed items for the house. It's time for Gabriel to get an actual bed instead of being on a mattress on the floor, and we urgently need a coffee table (for Christmas my brother gave us the thoughtful gift of some money towards this purchase), plus the guest room could use some bedside tables and lamps. Because we have guests coming this week! Another of my brothers and his wife will be arriving mid-week, and we can't wait! Gabriel will be overjoyed.

On Facebook

2012-01-13T12:37:00.000+01:00

So, I finally took the plunge and joined Facebook. I told myself I would do it after I finished the PhD, and now's the time. I am eager to finally feel like I'm in the loop--so many announcements and people assuming I knew things that I totally didn't know! (Mostly about pregnancies and babies born and so forth.) It'll be nice to be able to stay in touch more easily with distant family members and far-away friends. I would check the Mister's account every once in a while, but he wasn't friends with all of my friends/family, and their posts would often be buried under the avalanche of semi-acquaintances and political "friend"-ings and world news updates on his Facebook page. Now, hopefully, I can stay up to date, and people can keep tabs on me. I do hope that it's not too much of a time suck or a privacy complication (I've already configured my settings so that things tend towards the private, I hope).

One thing I'm not sure about, however, is whether to put this website on my Facebook page. Do I really want every person who friends me or whom I friend to read my blog (and its archives...)? I guess I've set myself up for this by having a public blog, but I don't know if I'm ready for ALL the people to read... Ugh, I guess I should just take the plunge. It's one thing to know that my immediate family and close friends are reading this blog, plus any other people who stumble on it but I don't know in real life, or online friends. It's another to realize that many of the people I know in real life, maybe some not that well, plus extended family--anyone who's my Facebook friend--can read about all the ups and downs of our experiences. Still, it's not like my blog is totally intimate or embarrassing, right? It's hard to judge because even detailing, as in the last post, the particulars of this pregnancy might come off as TMI for some. (I do realize I want it both ways: I want to put my thoughts out there, but I want to keep control over who sees those thoughts, probably impossible to reconcile...)

A related question. I've made a couple of friends here so far, moms my age who have young kids Gabriel's age, one through church and one through daycare, and I'm really excited about it. They're both American (although I'd also love to make some Belgian friends), one of them has two kids and is doing a lit PhD, like me (or like I *did*!) and the other is pregnant with her second, like me. Anyway. Should I tell them about the blog? On one hand, it might fast-forward the getting-to-know you stage, but on the other, the getting-to-know you would be completely one-sided. And maybe too much for the first steps of early friendship. Maybe a little awkward? Perhaps if they friend me on Facebook, and I do end up posting my blog there, they'll find it anyway. I guess we'll just see if it comes up naturally...

[Edited to add: There's one other major consideration I just thought of. Facebook uses my real name, and the Mister's, and has a lot of the information that I have tried to at least keep somewhat anonymous here. Would linking from Facebook to the blog compromise that semi-anonymity?]

Round two

2012-01-12T12:42:00.001+01:00

Once we got pregnant, I was eager to see how this pregnancy would compare to the last. I know that each pregnancy is unique, but it's still my same old body, so I imagined that I might respond similarly to all of these lovely hormones (even as I worried that I'd get crazy morning sickness, or something).

So far, I'm right: things have been very very similar. But it's still fascinating to me what *has* been different. Mostly different in good ways, thankfully!

The first trimester with Gabriel I did experience some morning sickness, early on, while my body adjusted to being pregnant. Even when that ended, I continued being quite uncomfortable with stomach digestion issues, and was often dizzy/faintly nauseous, but food didn't appeal to me normally: my rational brain would tell me "I like that food!" but my stomach said "ICK." Of course, the surefire way to cure the dizzy/nausea/I'm dying feeling was to eat, but I didn't want to eat. Good thing my mom was around most of those weeks to say: just EAT. Usually did the trick.

This time, I only had a few scattered days of nausea, not really at the beginning (and not intense at all, just mild discomfort). I had the same familiar grumpy, gassy stomach, although to a lesser degree, and would get dizzy REALLY easily if I didn't eat all the time. Like, pushing Gabriel's stroller to daycare would nearly wipe me out--the shakes, actually about to faint--if I didn't carry crackers in my purse, even though I'd eaten breakfast an hour before. The lightheadedness this time around was probably exacerbated by the presence of a demanding toddler and lots of picking up and picking up after said toddler. Fortunately--and this is the BIG difference this time--I still loved all food! Yay food! So it was mostly no problem just to make sure I ate often enough.

Rounding the bend into the second trimester meant, as before, returning to feeling entirely like myself again, with one notable exception: this time I've got a big belly. Last time, I could have almost fooled myself into thinking I wasn't pregnant, since there was very little belly poking out and I felt so darn normal. I barely showed until about 20 weeks. But this time, there's a basketball-sized reminder that, hoo boy, am I ever pregnant. I started showing (at least in my eyes) almost immediately and we've grown from there. Guess those muscles just let go, having been through this before!

Another big difference--this is a fun one--is feeling the baby kick. Last time, I didn't feel the baby at ALL until maybe 18 or 19 weeks (not sure, memory is fuzzy), and I was so impatient to feel him, especially when the books say you might start noticing movement at 15 or 16 weeks. My midwife told me the placenta was lying in front of the uterus, acting as a cushion against feeling those sensations.

This time, at 14 weeks, on my flight to Indiana, I thought I felt something...and over the course of the following week I was sure of it. Baby! We have a kicker! I expected that feeling the baby earlier would result in those "fluttering" or "quickening" sensations the books talk about, but from the start it's been distinctly "thump"-like to me, albeit the tiniest tenderest thump there could be. By now, at 19 weeks, the thumps aren't quite so tender any more, as they are getting pretty insistent and distinctly elbow- and knee-like. Still, I've just loved feeling the baby move around--there's nothing like it in the world--and it's been a real reassurance during the time I was in the US and not having any checkups. Recently we've been trying to get the Mister to catch one of these earlier movements, but it's still hard; I've felt him/her from the outside myself only once or twice, although it seems so amazingly strong from the inside. In fact, our little Junebug is at this moment poking my lower abdomen quite confidently, as if to corroborate my writing of it. Thanks, buddy!

Aside from those details, the minor side effects of being pregnant seem to have remained pretty consistent. My usually-managed eczema is worse, and I'm getting overall itchy during the night. That happened last time too. For a while there while I was in Boston, I suffered from daily pressure headaches (did not happen last time, that I recall), which were mostly cured by drinking gallons of water. Which, of course, exacerbated that classic pregnancy symptom, the constant need to pee, making an appearance since about day one. But all in all these are minor things and I've felt great (both with Gabriel and now). I'm only just starting to feel the downward pressure that causes the pregnancy waddles, and I wonder if those big-belly third trimester symptoms will show up earlier this time around. With Gabriel I wrote that the ninth month was really when all the classic "oof"-iness of pregnancy came to a peak, and again, that may happen earlier for baby number 2. We shall see! If things seemed to fly by last time, I'm sure it will go even faster now, seeing as I have an external kid to distract me from the internal one.

I know that, even though I suspected that the pregnancy itself might be similar, the whole scenario of labor and birth is still a complete wild card. They are the big question marks of having a baby: the when?! and the how!? Those experiences can differ radically from child to child, so I'm eager to see what will happen and praying that things will go as beautifully as they did with Gabriel. I never did post his birth story, did I? I wrote it down, but wasn't sure about sharing such an intimate thing--maybe I just wanted to keep it to savor. Now, I think, I could post it, although edited down. Plus, I have a lot to say about the experience of having a baby in Belgium (what I know so far), so that will come up one of these days, I'm sure. So, more to come, that's what I'm saying! It's so fun to be free to post again, and looking over the posts I wrote when pregnant with Gabriel has reinforced how precious it is to have that record of what I was feeling and thinking during that time. Pregnancy really is like nothing else, so crazy and normal and blissful and uncomfortable all at once.

[PS: Not sure what's up with the spacing when I hit publish. I don't like the way the text gets all tight but I can't figure out how to fix it...]

Chickens before the hatch

2012-01-11T23:50:00.001+01:00

I did something this afternoon that maybe I shouldn't have done. I bought baby clothes, and not just any baby clothes--girl baby clothes. We won't even know for another month if this one is a boy or a girl (I'll be 20 weeks in a week but couldn't get an ultrasound appointment until February), but I was completely unable to resist the little wee blouses and dresses that I saw at my favorite kid's clothing store (not least because everything was 50 or 70 percent off). I justified the purchase by thinking that either I could return them if the baby is a boy, or (more likely) keep them to give to friends or family who have a girl baby, or (even more likely) keep them in case we have yet another baby and that one turns out to be a girl. I did buy a couple of gender-neutral items, too, but really the little girl clothes had all my attention.

As with Gabriel, I have no real intuition about whether this baby is of the boy or the girl variety, but it would sure be fun to have a girl. Well, it would sure be fun to dress her in the little summer dresses I bought, that's all I'm saying. But I'd be really pleased about another boy, too: for one, we already have a wardrobe for a boy, and for another, I am pretty fond of them, and of the idea of brothers. Plus, we'd add a sixth to our troop of boy cousins on my side!

The store where I was shopping, called Obaibi, is my absolute favorite--probably half of Gabriel's wardrobe comes from there. In fact I was just stopping in to get him a couple more basic turtlenecks. They have such adorable and well-made clothes at reasonable prices--the European style without the ridiculous European prices of, say, a Petit Bateau. And, they have sales all the time. Let's just say I'm a card-carrying client.

This little blouse is maybe the cutest thing I bought this morning, in a sweet blue/gray color with tiny little owls. Even if it's not my little girl who ends up wearing it, she's going to look adorable.

2011 in review, Part II

2012-01-11T11:35:00.000+01:00

This is Part II of the 2011 meme/questionnaire. Part I here. I got a little verbose yesterday so broke the thing up into two sections.

***

13. What did you get really excited about?

Our new house/home town and exploring Leuven (back to the land of amazing beer! and fries and waffles and mussels). My new iPad (for the story, see below, question 22). Finally finishing the diss, of course. Getting pregnant! Getting Gabriel to sleep through the night! Finally getting Gabriel into daycare! A number of memorable meals at great restaurants, including a fish restaurant (Beluga) here in Leuven that serves only a chef's tasting menu based on the day's catch, Casa Calvet, where we went for our anniversary dinner in July, a PhD celebratory meal at Harvest in Cambridge with my family, and several great meals throughout the year at Restaurant Tallent in Bloomington. Our vacation in Cape Cod with my family, and an internetless week on the Costa Brava with just me and the Mister and the babe.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?

This question has stumped me. I guess I don't have a theme song kind of life, although that's something to aspire to. Finding and listening to new music has kind of been on the back burner compared to other things. Plus, for the first time in a long time I haven't been part of a choir (I miss it so!), which usually forms the soundtrack to my days.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

I can't remember precisely how happy I was at the beginning of 2011 (and don't have any record of it in my blog), but I was probably pretty happy, having completed a great semester of teaching literature for the first time, enjoying Bloomington, and enjoying my almost-one-year-old--and because my normal state of being is happy. Although I'm reeeealllly very happy now, so I'll go with happier.

I'm fatter, due to the little baked-potato-sized person taking up room in my midsection (and who is also directing my hips and thighs and boobs and face to take on a bit more padding). Right now I'm wearing jeans that I bought a few months postpartum last time, thinking that my weight would go down no further. I was wrong, thankfully, since I lost so much weight while breastfeeding that I actually went down a pants size from before the pregnancy. So the jeans got stored. Turns out they're perfect for four months pregnant! When I left Leuven in early December they still hung on me and now that we're back I'm happy to see that they fit and to have another pair of pants to add to my scant number of maternity-appropriate bottoms.

Richer, since the Mister has an actual full-time, year-round job that doesn't rely on us cobbling together semesters' worth of teaching salaries.

16. What do you wish you'd done more of?

More poetry writing, more getting down on the floor and playing with Gabriel instead of fiddling around on the computer, more singing, more baking, more making out with the Mister.

17. What do you wish you'd done less of?

As usual, less worrying, less procrastination, less assuming that the Mister can read my mind (in my defense, a lot of the time he can) or expecting praise over stuff that's just part of my job as a wife or mom or, you know, citizen of humanity.

18. How did you spend Christmas?

An odd, sad day this year. Iaia died in the afternoon, Spanish time, so by 9am we were skyping with the family just after she passed. The rest of the family went to church, taking Gabriel with them, and M and I sat in the quiet at my sister's house and watched a few snowflakes fall, while we cried and processed what had happened. I fell asleep. When they got home, we all sat around and talked while the kids took naps, then went to my brother's house and ate leftovers.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

Most nights, M and I watch one episode of a TV show online or (more rarely) on DVD. This year, we watched Big Love, which we liked pretty well although the last few seasons got kind of annoying (and we didn't like how it ended). For his birthday, I gave the Mister the Derek Jacobi BBC miniseries I, Claudius, which we watched and enjoyed greatly for its crazy 1980s vision of ancient Rome. We've been devoted followers of The Good Wife, and we've lately discovered Downton Abbey, which I rather adore. We're thinking of trying Boardwalk Empire or Homeland next. Any recommendations?

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

I always wish that I'd kept a list of the novels I read over the year, so maybe this year I'll actually do it. It's hard to remember them all, so this list is likely to be skewed to more recent reads. One book that still stands out is David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which took a while to get into but left me bereft when it was over, because I so wanted to stay in that world of 18th-century Japan as lived by a Dutchman. I really liked Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and after the Mister read it, I read Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) and liked it better than The Corrections. Oh dear, I know I'm forgetting books. Let's see... A set of essays called The Art of Travel by Alain de Bottom. I read The Hunger Games trilogy the week Gabriel and I arrived in Belgium, the house empty of any furniture except an air mattress and a pack'n'play, so those books will always remind me of that time (I'm kind of looking forward to the movie(s) because they'll lend themselves so well to that medium). I think I read Room this year (maybe last, though?), and I adored it for many reasons--the gripping plot, the voice of the child, the portrait of the mother-child relationship. I still think about it often. Also might have been 2010, but I loved Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone. Oh I know: another favorite definitely from this year was Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. It wasn't perfect, but the whole invented jungle world/tribe was pretty engrossing.

21. What were your favorite films of the year?

Harder to say. Unlike book-reading, which is only partially limited by this whole thing called being a parent, movie-watching is severely limited by it. We went to the theater only a handful of times, usually to see whichever least-objectionable movie happened to be playing the night we had child care. The rest of the movies I see in a year are mostly on plane trips or when at my parents'. Ones that stand out, although I hesitate to call them favorites...We saw Carnage in the theater in Barcelona. We saw The Descendants in the theater in Boston. (Thank you, grandparent babysitters!) I saw Another Earth on the plane. One weekend we rented Beginners on iTunes, which I liked but the Mister didn't. Of Rotten Tomato's list of 2011's top 100 movies, I saw only four. We've been wanting to see The Ides of March for a while, and hopefully will find a time to rent it soon.

22. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 33 this year, on Mother's Day. In retrospect, I can laugh about it but that day I was hoping for something extra special because of the conjunction and kind of got (childishly, unreasonably) crabby when it was super low key. We spent most of the day attending the bris of a friend's new baby, and M. didn't realize that the whole Mother's Day thing was so important to me, and he really didn't have time to prepare anything because he was flat-out busy at the end of the semester and was about to leave for Belgium and his new job. I do remember how beautifully sunny it was that day, though, and how nice it was to play with Gabriel in a park while M. took pictures. I made a chocolate cake.

But then! A couple of weeks later, while I was in Boston with my family, we had a small celebration for the May birthdays, and M. arranged for his gift of an iPad to be delivered. I was so bowled over/touched/surprised/excited/humbled that I started to cry when I unwrapped it, realized what it was, and, a few beats later, realized who it was from. I had not an iota of an idea that M. was planning to give me an iPad and hadn't even been angling for it (although of course I was secretly dying for one of my own). People, I don't think I've cried over a gift since I was six and got a Cabbage Patch Doll for Christmas. I guess, to put it in SAT terms, Cabbage Patch Doll : 6-year-old :: iPad : 33-year-old. But it wasn't just the gift itself--it was M's thoughtfulness, and his way of surprising me yet again, with yet another attentive gesture at a time when we were going through a big change in our lives (and yes, more than making up for that birthday/Mother's Day). I love the iPad to pieces. I've read so many books on that thing, and adore the experience of reading magazines on it, and finding recipes, and all around exploring different apps. Of course, Gabriel thinks it's his, and we have to keep it hidden most of the time he's awake, but that's another story for another blog entry.

23. What one thing could have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

You know, I can't think of a thing! I believe that's good. One thing that I really regret is not documenting Gabriel's first year by creating a photo book, or a video montage, or even keeping up a baby book, or writing enough in this blog. The one-year photo book has been on my to-do list since he turned one and is still not done. Argh. I worry that I will forget the many thousands of details of his incredibleness and sweetness as he's changed each month of his life.

24. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My mom, who came to the rescue so many times. She flew to Bloomington on a moment's notice when I hurt my knee (oh, I guess that was fall 2010--another unblogged story, in which I badly twisted my knee on a plane when we flew to Barcelona and proceeded to be on crutches for several weeks both in Barcelona and upon our return to Bloomington, no picking up baby allowed!) and she and dad came for Gabriel's birthday. Then, she deserves a medal in itself for being there in May to help me pack up the apartment, put on a yard sale, and drive out to Boston with me and an antsy kid in a car stuffed to the gills while M. was already in Belgium. Then, she came for a visit this fall in which she helped us get Gabriel to sleep through the night (!), and watched him while I furiously edited the thesis. And, I should note, she cooked SO MANY great meals for us throughout the year. Then, THEN (!), she (and my dad, who deserves his fair share of amazing-grandpa accolades too) took care of Gabriel for a week while I defended my thesis in Bloomington. She has already booked her tickets to be here and help watch Gabriel when this next baby is born. All of this, I should say, she does while being SO respectful of what M. and I want for Gabriel. She has raised FIVE kids, so you'd think she would bring up that small detail more often, and in fact she totally would get a pass for insisting on her experience and doing things her own way. Instead, she always defers to what we want and quietly offers her help and (invaluable) opinions when we ask. She knows just the right balance between offering ideas and setting back and letting us fumble around and learn parenting by doing--which is really the only way you can learn. Man, she's amazing.

And then there's the Mister. I could never say enough about how supportive he is, how much he does to make our little family a safe and secure one, how he does more than his share of housework, uncomplainingly. He treats me like a queen and pushes me when I need it. We're complementary in so many ways that I feel so lucky we found each other (complementary both in the sense of similarities and in the sense of making up for one another's weaknesses: for instance, he's better at long-term planning and I'm better at short-term planning; he's better at big-picture cleaning and I'm better at small-scale organizing; he knows more about politics and history and I know more about literature and science; he has an amazing memory for dates, but I remember where we keep things...and so on!). He's currently working a full time job AND writing his dissertation. And not least of all, he is such a fantastic dad--I just love watching him with Gabriel and seeing how much Gabriel adores his Dada.

And finally, Gabriel has been a total sweetheart. Apart from the whole sleeping challenge, he is such a good-natured, easygoing child, and I love hanging out with him. When he gives me a kiss and says, "I lub oo," I swoon every time. My darling, my big boy.

25. What kept you sane?

The Mister and our rascally, endearing, wide-eyed, charmer of a child. His piping little voice. Friends and family. Faith in God's provisions for our life. Good books, good food (the cooking and the eating of it), and good hard work.

26. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

I blogged about this one before, but it's about letting go...not worrying so much because most of the time the things you worry about are not the things you end up struggling with. And when you do struggle, you make it, somehow, with the help of God and family and friends. As I say in that post, "You'll get what you get and you'll deal with it when you do."

Relatedly, motherhood has taught me that "this too shall pass"... Stages that are so frustrating go by more quickly than you imagine. When you're in the trenches, things seem to drag on forever but all too quickly you look back and realize that it was just a blip in the bigger picture.

The inverse is true, too. I'm sometimes sad to see how quickly Gabriel passes through stages of utter adorability...all too soon he no longer says "nigh nigh" in that new-speaker voice he had, and he says "moo" now instead of "moh," and he runs instead of toddles, and he lost his baby curls when he got his first haircut and so on and so forth. But then! There are things to look forward to: him talking in full sentences and telling me the wonderments in his head, teaching him to read, the wonders of school and a million things to learn, and it goes on from there. Every stage has its new frustrations and delights, and I suppose that will continue long into the future (until adolescence, maybe?!). There's a lot to look forward to, not just from Gabriel, but from our lives together. 2012 is just the first step, and I can't wait to see what it brings.

2011 in review, Part I

2012-01-10T12:21:00.001+01:00

I must have skipped last year, but I dug up my old internet meme post with all the year-in-review questions and thought I'd try it again, especially after a friend mentioned it recently. 2011 was a really amazing year, these last couple of months in particular. So much of it didn't get blogged, I'm realizing as I look over my archives, because I (deliberately) let the blog slide while I worked on the dissertation. It makes me worry that I'm forgetting important details of the year, and even before, because I see that I basically stopped blogging in October 2010! Maybe I can catch up on a few stories in this way, however, and remind myself of some of the more momentous experiences of the 2011. (This might get a little long, so hold on to your hats [actually, I've broken it into two parts so it's a little more digestible...part II to come tomorrow.])

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?

Unfortunately, moving internationally was not a novel process for us. Although it seems as dauntingly new as it did the first time, I've now moved from Bloomington to Brussels, from Brussels to Barcelona, from Barcelona to Bloomington, and from Bloomington to Belgium (there are too many B-places in my life, methinks, and that list doesn't even include Boston or Burlington).
I weaned my son, definitely a novel process and an involved one.
I went to the MLA conference in LA. I wish I could say that I had some job interviews, but in the end it's better that we could head to Belgium without any conflicting job decisions to make.
I got one of my poems published in a book.
I finished my PhD!

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Ah, here's a happy story. I don't remember if I made resolutions, but I certainly made wishes. Last Christmas in Barcelona, the adults were lolling about after a huge meal and the kids were getting antsy. M's mom, creative as always, came up with a project for them that involved taking a stack of empty jewelry boxes from her soon-to-close boutique (she retired this year) and making "wish boxes" out of them for each one of us. The girls dressed up as Santa-fairies and delivered them with orders for us to write down our secret wishes for 2011 and seal them in the box with stickers.

Fast forward to last week. On New Year's Day, M's mother unearthed those boxes, and we opened our wish boxes to read out the scraps of paper (the girls hadn't left a lot of room for big wishes). I had written:

acabar la tesi (finish my thesis)
un germanet o una germaneta pel Gabriel (a little brother or sister for Gabriel)
feina pel M. i per la Robin (work for M and for Robin)

Not bad, eh? We're still baking up that little brother or sister, and of the two of us only M has work, but I'm still pretty happy with the outcome of this year's wishes.

As for the coming year, I haven't made any grand resolutions, but I do wish to do the following (in keeping with last year's "wishes"):

achieve basic proficiency in Dutch
rent or buy a bike and get used to riding around town with Gabriel
revise the dissertation and get it published (I first wrote "attempt to get it published" but one should be more assertive about one's wishes, right?)
publish an academic article and a poem or poems
get a postdoc, a teaching job, or something similar
find a prenatal yoga or exercise/movement class
blog more actively now that the diss is done
adjust to being a family of four (this one, I think, we will have to do in any case!)
(there are a whole category of wishes surrounding the birth and newborn months of this new baby, but I'm sort of thinking of that in its own separate category right now, so...I'll leave it at that)

Plus, there are a few more resolution-y type things that are only worth mentioning because it's always better to write them down: floss teeth every day, go to sleep earlier, and clean the house (especially the bathrooms) more often.

And! for Christmas, my mom gave me and my sister and sisters-in-law each a five-year diary, the kind where you jot down just a line or two each day but then get to review each year as you build the diary. I'd like to see if I can maintain that all the way through the year. I haven't kept a diary since high school, but this seems doable and I love the idea of thinking about where I was a year or two or five ago (once I manage to complete them, first!).

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My friend Ashley had a baby just a couple of days before we left Bloomington. I'm so glad we were still there when her baby was born! [Edited to add: I forgot about my dear friend Sara, who had a little girl, her third baby!]

4. Did anyone close to you die?

M's grandmother passed away on Christmas day. We will miss her so much.

5. What countries did you visit?

Belgium doesn't count because it's home, and neither does Spain or America, because they're home too. So...Holland, I guess, is it! We visited a few towns across the border while my parents were here in November and had a rental car. We especially liked Maastricht and would love to go back.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

A job--an official, even if part-time or adjunct or temporary one. A bit more published material to put on my CV. A squishy little baby! A bike. A Belgian driver's license. Time to write more poetry.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

December 9: the day I defended my dissertation. It was such a happy event, my committee so warm and encouraging and altogether palpably proud of me. I felt such a sense of achievement and completion even as I handed the set of signed papers in, somewhat anticlimactically, at the Graduate School. I wandered around town in a happy daze, just absorbing it all, and bought myself a book and earrings. Then I celebrated with my friends by eating cupcakes and going out for a fancy dinner, where I ran into my dissertation director, of all people, who then proceeded to say such kind and humbling things about me and my defense/work that I still get all fuzzy thinking about it.

Let's see...there aren't any other particular dates that stand out, except maybe February 15, the day my no-so-little babe turned one, and Christmas, the day iaia died. Everything else was a blur of our usual comings and goings, moving out and moving in, work and meals and walks, the daily trials and charms of life with a small child.

Ah yes, one more date: October 5, the evening it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't gotten my period yet. I had discounted getting pregnant that month due to a previous pregnancy test a week or so prior, but I leapt out of bed anyway and fumbled open the second-to-last pregnancy test in my stash, eking out what little pee I could since I had already gone before getting into bed. A rapid, resolute plus sign: we were pregnant! M. was coming up the stairs after locking up the front door and I sort of jumped out at him and speechlessly showed him the test. I had imagined a romantic surprise reveal but in the event there was no other thought but: !!!! Then I proceeded to get worried because the test was technically expired, so I got out the very last test, a digital one, and had to look up on line how to use it, and of course found myself completely unable to pee. I had to glug water, and think of waterfalls, and there was a lot of jumping nervously back into bed and out of bed while I waited for the water to take effect, and then more waiting while the test turned its little digital cogs, and finally we got that unmistakable confirmation: PREGNANT.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Um, duh. Those three additional letters after my name stand for a lot of hard work and a long, long effort of perseverance (and amazing support from the Mister and our families).
After that, there's getting pregnant again, which didn't happen quite as quick as last time.
Weaning Gabriel ranks up there, too, because of how hard it was and how long it took.
Then, there was packing up a household and moving back to Europe, this time with toddler in tow for added excitement. M getting a new job wasn't my achievement, but it was a great day for us, a solid career step for him, and a big relief to end the uncertainty--which eats away at him even if I'm usually able to blithely focus on the day-today--of what we would be doing next.

9. What was your biggest failure?

There are many failures, I know. Laziness is always at the top of the list, as is procrastination and fretting about unnecessary things. Failure to listen fully to my husband. Failure to push myself out of my comfort zone, whether in making friends or follow-through on career-related possibilities. In terms of parenting, I feel a continual sense of failure to do "activities" with Gabriel...I always aspire to do crafts and come up with games or age-appropriate learning activities but most of the time I fail pretty badly to do so. And I completely and utterly failed to exercise, although I walk around an awful lot pushing a really heavy kid in a really heavy stroller.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Last winter, on the iciest day of the biggest snowstorm that blew through Indiana, I wondered whether it was safe to even walk outside for an appointment I had with Gabriel, especially considering I'd be holding him. So I stepped out onto the walkway leading to our front door to test the ice, and immediately slipped down the ice-coated step and crashed hard onto the cement, catching my weight with my left-hand wrist (thank heavens I hadn't attempted it with the baby!). My wrist was badly sprained, and I had to wear a brace for a long time. It took forever to heal, mostly because I still had to pick up/hold/nurse Gabriel.

As for illness, nothing major, except for an extremely unpleasant bout of achy-flu-ish cold coinciding with Gabriel's start of daycare, the beginning of my pregnancy (before I knew I was pregnant), and the final countdown for finishing my thesis. There was a day when, trying to get Gabriel to sleep in his stroller walking up and down the street in the sun, I could barely stand up or open my eyes in the bright light, and the kid just refused to sleep. I finally gave up after an hour of dogged pacing and went home, bursting into tears which Gabriel had never seen me do so he laughed and giggled. Which made me cry more. Which resulted in me calling the Mister and asking him to come home from work. Which of course, he did.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Plane tickets are always worth it, getting us back to our families. I think, judging from a few weeks' use, that our new camera was a great purchase. That really good knife. My mom and the Mister convinced me to buy a goose down winter coat at the end-of-season sales last year and I have been SO grateful for that coat.

12. Where did most of your money go?

Plane tickets and moving expenses, especially new furniture for our new home in Leuven (still slowly working on that to spread out the damage). Rent and mortgages. Food.

****

OK, OK, so this is getting ridiculously long. I'll publish in two parts, first one today and second tomorrow. I guess I have a lot of processing to do about the past year and a lot to write about.

Holidays (and days...)

2012-01-08T13:42:00.000+01:00

It's already well into the new year, and I have meant to write an update all throughout the holidays. We just got back to Leuven last night, at long last. It was a five-week journey for me and Gabriel and felt like even more, spanning several countries and several states and many celebrations. We've been all kinds of busy over the last weeks, happy busy and sad busy, travel busy and visit busy and organizing/cleaning/packing/renting busy.

First, we celebrated a fantastic "Christmas" day with my family on December 24th, after a fun get-together the night before to open our stockings. It's a joy to watch the five little cousins romp around and open presents and hold spontaneous Christmas-pajama dance parties (oh the stripes!). We had a delightful time over the course of several days talking and eating and dreaming (we're starting to talk about building a family vacation home in conjunction with my parents' move to Maine) and just enjoying one another's company. And did I mention the eating? As for gifts, the Mister and I gave "each other" a new camera (a Canon G12), which we've had fun trying out, and then he surprised me with a cool AirPlay speaker that we can use to play music/radio/movie or TV sound wirelessly from our computers, iPad, or iPod. I got a pair of slippers that are keeping my feet toasty right now, and some great books and travel-related items.

Christmas itself was a sad, quiet moment for us, because the Mister's beloved grandmother, our iaia, passed away that day. She had been sick for the past couple of months, at home with my in-laws, and in the hospital a few times, but the doctors couldn't find anything wrong. But just a little over a week prior to Christmas, they found a tumor in her intestines, and the end came quickly after that. We had really been hoping to see her one more time, especially knowing that on the 27th we were due to fly to Barcelona, but it didn't work out that way. We did make it in time for the funeral, literally hours after our arrival. She was a wonderful lady, with a lively appetite for life and listening and talking, and a gift for hospitality. She was my neighbor and friend during the years we lived between Barcelona and Belgium, showing me around the neighborhood and sharing countless memories of a long-ago Barcelona.

But I'll backtrack a moment. The day after Christmas, just before our departure, we had planned a no-kids lunch at a wonderful restaurant in Cambridge, which I thought was just that--a no-kids lunch. But it turned out to be a surprise celebration of my completion of the PhD! My family members prepared poems, both touching and humorous, in my honor, which moved me to laughter and tears in equal measure. They presented me with a beautiful necklace and I was so touched by their thoughtfulness. It was such a fun time together that we're already talking about doing it again next year. (Not the PhD part, obviously, but the nice-lunch-out-without-kids-after-Christmas part.)

Packing for the flight back to Europe was crazy as usual, given that we had accumulated gifts and purchases including lots and lots of books (as always) as well as bulky items like coats and shoes that are more reasonable to buy in the US. Not to mention a stack of baby clothes and cloth diapers that needed to get from Boston to Belgium now that there's a baby on the way. We managed to squeeze most of it in (and are thankful that my brother and sister-in-law are coming for a visit in a few weeks and are willing to bring another bag full of things). The flight itself went really well, with the tyke sitting in his own seat the whole way (the lovely Aer Lingus people managed to find us an extra one two days after Christmas!) and watching movies. We didn't sleep on the long flight, then all crashed in the Dublin airport and on the shorter flight to Barcelona. M. went straight to the funeral home and Gabriel and I slept for a couple of hours at home once we were there, then went to the funeral home for a moment in the viewing room and then the funeral. I was exhausted and emotional and confronted by a sea of faces, and as soon as I saw iaia's body--her but not her--it was incredibly hard. Death of a beloved family member, even someone 96 years old, is never easy.

We spent the next days in a blur of cleaning up the apartment, shopping for the upcoming Reis (Kings) holiday, visiting with friends and having people over for meals, not sleeping (toddler jet lag is the worst), and preparing the apartment for the renters who are taking it on for the next months. Plus! Organizing piles of baby clothes, both those that I had brought from the US, and those that were stored in our apartment. Deciding what needed to come first, on this trip, and what needed to be moved to an accessible place so we can bring them on later trips.

New Year's Eve we celebrated at my in-laws with them and some of their friends, mostly because all of our friends already had plans! But we had a delicious meal and a fun time ushering in 2012. Due to jet lag, Gabriel was ready to party, and hung out with us all the way through midnight, dancing to the music and getting passed around the table.

This past week we had another, more intimate remembrance of iaia when they interred her ashes at the cemetery. M's sister and her family had been away to their in-laws in Africa, so this was timed for their arrival. It was a windy, cold day, fitting somehow for the moment. Gabriel was overjoyed to see his cousins, and directly afterwards we headed to my in-laws for our last couple of days in Spain and the big celebration of the Reis holiday. More presents, more food (oh, so much food over the last weeks!), more time sitting around digesting food and chatting with family. This year, we had exchanged names among the adults for presents, and as I opened a small box I expected to see some jewelry, but I did not expect to see the gold necklace with a little cross and heart that iaia wore every day since I've known her. It turns out she had my name, and the family decided to give me this gift. One that saw me yet again bursting into tears. Oh! And M's parents, earlier in the week, gave me a gorgeous four-volume set of Catalan poetry as a PhD gift.

And then it was time to leave. One more packing session, two more airports, one more flight, one more round of goodbyes, and at long last we are home in Belgium. It feels very good to be here. Gabriel is enthusiastically pulling out all of his long-lost toys and new Christmas/Kings gifts, and we are sitting around enjoying a day of respite between travel and tomorrow's return to work/daycare/reality, eating dried pasta and tomato from a can because that's all we have in the house.

It's been an amazing trip: a PhD and ongoing celebrations of it, Christmas and New Years and Kings, plus a death and a funeral, Gabriel's first solo stay with his grandparents, all of this with a brand new year ahead of us. Meanwhile, my belly is growing bigger and the little one is kicking away pretty happily in there. I'm so, so thankful for how everything went on this long journey that I could barely contemplate for its intricacies ahead of time. I'm so thankful for a good-natured toddler, for a strong husband, and for a healthy pregnancy that has me feeling pretty darn good and able to travel, not to mention defend a PhD and chase after that toddler (but gives me a great excuse to eat lots and let other people carry the heaviest suitcases). I'm thankful for friends and family, and I'm thankful for the many places we call home.

Doctor

2011-12-18T19:20:00.000+01:00

Well, folks, I did it. A defended dissertation, which in the end didn't need a whole lot of defending, because my committee was behind me wholeheartedly. The defense itself was wonderful and humbling, a delightful conversation that greatly encouraged me in terms of the possibilities the book has for publication. They passed me with no fanfare at all, just a "So, where do we sign?" from my director, and they ended up nominating me for the best IU dissertation award!

I basically floated out of the room, and proceeded to celebrate in the best ways possible over the weekend: a very nice dinner out with my dearest friend in Bloomington, cooing at her adorable baby, baking and cooking to our heart's content, crossword puzzles and Christmas decorating and reading-- all in all, a blissful, well-deserved, and utterly relaxing break.

Of course, I missed my little boy quite a bit, that trip being our first stretch apart since his birth 22 months ago. But he did fabulously in the care of my awesome parents, and our reunion when I returned was very sweet. The Mister flew into Boston a day after that, and thus we are all together again in time for the holidays, the brand-new doctor and her boys.

We have a lot to celebrate this Christmas, as my newly minted PhD and growing belly attest. The only worrisome news is that the Mister's beloved grandmother, 96 years old, is in the hospital with a tumor in her abdomen that the doctors discovered this week. It's always hard to be away from family when they are suffering, and there's a lot we don't know yet in terms of her prognosis. We will be eager to see her when we fly to Barcelona two days after Christmas.

Throughout the years of writing my dissertation, I kept a (digital) pink post-it note on the desktop of my computer that slowly accumulated a selection of the quotations I found most inspiring for my work. I finally deleted that post-it today, deciding that the quotes had served their purpose, but I thought it would be nice to record them here. They are snippets of encouragement and perseverance, patience and prodding, all leading to this moment, the satisfying feeling of having achieved a huge goal.

***

Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. ~Helen Keller

Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves liked locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. ~Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

I have homes everywhere, many of which I have not seen yet. That is perhaps why I am restless. I haven't seen all my homes. ~John Steinbeck

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. ~Paul Klee

Cada ferida la sang d'un poema. ~Joan Salvat Papasseit

I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day, for the Night cometh wherein no man can work. ~Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

The worst has already happened and been repaired...All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. ~Julian of Norwich

Flight log

2011-12-06T17:22:00.001+01:00

Well, friends, we made it across the wide ocean, me, my toddler, and the stowaway in my stomach. We flew Aer Lingus for the first time, and I had a great experience going through mellow Dublin airport, where we waited in exactly zero lines, chatted with friendly officials, and found abundant places for Gabriel to expend some energy. When you fly to the US from Dublin, you go through customs before you even get on the plane, a genius concept, so that upon arrival you simply grab your bag and walk out the door. At the tail end of an epic flight with a jet-lagged child, I appreciated not standing in a neverending customs line more than I can say.

Facing a 7.5 hour flight, after having woken up at 6am and already endured a flight and two airports and a child who does not want to be in a stroller, I quailed. That's...a whole DAY, I thought. HOW on earth will we make it? So I only considered the half hour in front of us. Half hour at a time, we conquered that flight. A few things worked in our favor: the plane was far from full, which gave us room to breathe and ultimately a whole middle row of four to ourselves (the smart guy who was initially seated at the other end of the row took one look at us and moved). The one advantage of a very long flight is that there are long stretches where the aisles are free of service carts or people, and we could run loops around the airplane or sneak into other, empty seats for the exciting new perspective of another identical seat back. Another little girl the same age as Gabriel shared her toys, and I could even prevail upon her nice German parents to keep an eye on him while I ran to the bathroom, etc. Dirty diapers did not appear at inopportune times (usually he times them for turbulence or takeoff/landing), and we did not recapitulate the morning scene in the Brussels airport during which he so resisted laying still on the changing table that we ripped the entire diaper in half (I learned my lesson and brought a new toy for each diaper change).

The kid did not sleep a wink the entire day, despite one tantalizing moment in which his eyes drifted shut and I made the excruciating mistake of trying to shift him off my belly and he woke up never to return to dreamland. But the lack of sleep did not translate into utter breakdown. I had enough of a supply of novel dollar-store doodads and gift-wrapped toys and sticker books to pull him out of his few tearful episodes, and didn't even need to resort to the iPad until four hours into the flight. I was most dreading landing, when you have to pull a tired toddler who does not understand why one must be in a seatbelt onto your lap, and the iPad is off limits just when you most need it, but some songs, a 68-cent lion puzzle, and the promise of finding grandpa and grandma at the airport saved the day. Then, oh blessed relief, we were landed, both overjoyed to see my parents, and minutes later he was asleep in the guest room and I was relaxing on the couch.

In some ways, the long aftermath of overseas flights is more exhausting than just getting through the hours of the flight itself. Jetlag has never hit us so hard: I'm adjusted but the child keeps waking up at 4am, which makes me want to cry. This morning I fell asleep on the couch at 8am while he puttered around with tinker toys, a tiny portion of my tired brain dedicated to noticing whether he was safe and the rest in an utter crush of exhaustion. I slept until 11, my mom taking over once she woke up. I had hoped to get him adjusted to East Coast time before leaving myself, but it looks like she'll have some early mornings.

Because tomorrow comes the next step: I fly to Indiana for my dissertation defense. This will be the first time since Gabriel was born that we spend the night apart, the first time that I travel solo, so I will simultaneously be sad to say goodbye (I don't think he'll be sad, though, because he gets to stay with GRANDMA and hang with his beloved cousins and aunties and uncles) and kind of giddy at the prospect of reading on the plane like a grown-up person, traveling without a diaper bag, and sleeping in a bed by myself without being woken up during the night or at the crack of dawn.

I am anxious about the defense only insofar as getting everyone in the room together to make sure it really is happening! Then, they can say what they will but I'm pretty sure my supportive committee wants to give me my degree as much as I want to get it. After that, and the submission of the document and sundry paperwork, you can just call me Doctor Cantdocell.

Thankful

2011-11-24T22:52:00.001+01:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am so thankful for a thousand things, but one deserves special mention today:

The little blobby, squirmy BABY bobbing around in my belly!

He or she is due to arrive in June of 2012, our Junebug. I am twelve weeks along, and I've been feeling great (another thing to be thankful for, especially in the midst of final thesis revisions).

Today was a normal day for us here in Belgium, but this weekend I plan to make us a mini-feast and do a mini-Christmas as well, so that Gabriel can open our (few) gifts for him in advance of our departure for the US. A holiday omnibus. In any case, I won't stop giving thanks any time soon for the joys of family, faith, work, and life we are blessed with. Especially this new life.

Back on the road

2011-11-16T11:03:00.001+01:00

While the big, major thing is out of the way (i.e., writing a dissertation), there is still the small matter of the defense. I am nervous about it, but only in the sense of getting everyone actually in the room (there are health issues for one of my committee members, and distance to travel for another). Once we are actually assembled, I will breathe a sigh of relief. Then...to defend! My only real visual for a defense is one I went to of a friend in Barcelona (there they call them "tribunals"), which was extremely formal and attended by quite an audience of family, friends, and faculty who seemed to get rather critical of the defendee. Mine is likely to be very different, with just me and the committee (fortunately!).

In order to defend in person, I will be flying to Boston by myself with Gabriel (gulp) on December 2. I will then leave Gabriel with my parents for a week while I fly to Indiana (it will be our first time apart!), defend and finish up paperwork and submissions, then fly back to Boston. We'll stay through Christmas, the Mister joining us on the 14th, and then we fly to Barcelona on the 28th, staying through Kings until the 7th. I'm a little dizzy about it already.

Today we fly to Barcelona for a long weekend, but the little one is sick with bothersome cold, so I'm a little nervous about this one too! We just have gotten his sleep and nap schedules consistent and now we're going to go and mess them up again...oh dear. The life of the peripatetic family.

Big boy

2011-11-09T13:28:00.000+01:00

So I realize I just wrote a post but I've got to write more! It's a banner week not only in that I sent off my dissertation, but in that Gabriel is...drumroll please...finally sleeping through the night.

After nearly 21 months of waking up multiple times every night, and more recently, of sleeping with a restless, hair-pulling, kicking child, we have managed to get him to sleep, and stay asleep, in his own bed. Last night he slept for 12 hours. I cannot get over it. I might be more...gobsmacked by this fact than I am about the dissertation.

It's all entirely thanks to my mom, who was here for a three-week visit (and my dad, who was here for part of that time as well). I don't think we could have stuck with it if it weren't for her actually putting Gabriel to sleep on the first, hardest nights, and encouraging us to keep going.

Wait, let me back up and describe what we had been doing before that. Every night, we laid down with him in or beside his bed (uncomfortably, on the floor) for usually an hour or so while he got still enough to fall asleep. We were exhausted, and invariably one of us would fall asleep during the process, wrecking the evening in terms of general alertness. He then usually woke up an hour or two after falling asleep, requiring another long process of soothing, and woke up again as we went to bed or shortly thereafter, at which point we would bring him to our bed. If we were lucky, he stayed relatively sound asleep all night and we only got an occasional kick to the kidneys or pulled covers. But most nights, he woke up several times, and getting back to sleep required pulling my hair as a soothing technique or grabbing and fiercely squeezing my head as if it were a stuffed animal. I would pull away, which would make him more awake and more mad...rinse, lather, repeat.

So. First we worked on the bedtime. After stories, prayer, songs, a goodnight kiss and then we leave. He screamed, of course. Called our names. But each night less and less. We would hear him flop down on his mattress and just...go to sleep. Wow. Pretty quickly he was crying for less than ten minutes. But he was still coming to our bed in the middle of the night.

After one particularly awake-all-night night, I said he can't come to our bed any more. That's it. So we let him cry when he woke up during the night. And he cried, but more quickly than I ever imagined possible (over the course of just two or three nights) his crying went from 10 or 15 minutes two or three times during the night to one brief, barely one-minute cry, to...nothing. Sleeping all night. Like I said, I can't get over it. He wakes up happy, alert, and noticeably more well-rested. Twelve hours! Unbelievable.

Also! He started his new, permanent daycare last week. It seems kind of bad timing to have started that as well as sleep training, but I think somehow they have reinforced each other. He really likes his new school, looks forward to going, waves "bye-bye" cheerfully in the morning, and gets all good and tired out during the day. Plus, his first full day there was yesterday, and he even NAPPED there. I was sure he would cry and they would call me, but no. He just...fell asleep. Crazy. (Naps are yet another story...I should not even admit this on a blog but I have been putting him to sleep for his nap by walking him around in the stroller every day since we weaned two months ago. So yeah, I didn't think he'd lay down and nap at school.)

I must make a few disclaimers. I know all of the sleep stuff is different for every kid, and I know cry-it-out is controversial, as is the family bed, which I've loved for many reasons (I even told M. last night that I kind of miss Gabriel sleeping in our bed...but I don't miss the hair pulling, kicking, no sleep thing). I myself was pretty against cry-it-out, and the few desperate attempts we made when he was younger--as an infant, at 12 months, at 15--were all disasters across the board. I am not even sure why this worked, and why it worked now. But it did. Part of is that he is older and able to process and understand more...along with all of the actual nighttime stuff, we've been doing a LOT of talking to him about it, telling him throughout the day and as we go to bed in simple terms what would happen at night, how he's such a big boy and will sleep in his bed all night long, that mom and dad are right here and he's safe and can go to sleep. He listens with wide eyes, very still. He gets it. He likes this "big boy" idea, says "buh (smushed barely there word) BOIeee." He says it when he points to himself in pictures.

I say: yes. A big boy. A very big boy indeed.

Disser-done

2011-11-09T11:56:00.000+01:00

It's done. It is done. DONE!

I handed in the final draft of my dissertation yesterday. No more edits will be made, no committee member will send me suggestions for revisions, no more research can be undertaken, no more doubts will be had about maybe moving that section in front of that other section or deleting that sentence or choosing a better synonym for that word. It's done. It looks newly fancy, with a title page and an abstract and acknowledgements (just like a real book!) and a table of contents and figures and footnotes (well, those guys have been lying around for a while, all piled up lazybones on the bottom of the page).

This has been a long time coming. That last sentence is an understatement. Let's see, shall I detail how much of an understatement? In 2002, I started graduate school (yes, that would be NINE years ago). In 2004, I got my MA degree. In 2006, I got my MFA degree. Also in 2006, I passed my doctoral exams. Also in 2006, I got married and moved to Brussels. (It was kind of a big year.) Between 2006 and 2007 I wrote a proposal for the dissertation that at first didn't resemble the document I would go on to write but eventually turned into a legitimate plan. I flew to Bloomington to get my committee's approval of the plan. Then I spent a couple of years living in Brussels and Barcelona, translating and editing and always TRYING to write a dissertation but really just eking out dribs and drabs in fits and starts and mostly researching, reading, and reading some more. (That was the fun part, the reading and researching. Actually making something of it? That was the hard part.) I had one chapter done (Chapter 3, a perfectly logical place to start, right?), and little floaty pieces of others, and that was all, depressingly.

In a major turning point, both M. and I realized that if I was ever going to get this degree, I would have to be back in Indiana at school. So we made plans for me to live in Bloomington by myself for a semester. But then! We got pregnant! So M. came with me, and a semester turned into a year and a year turned into two years. He got hired as a visiting professor. We had a baby. I wrote and wrote--Chapter 1 and the Introduction--and taught, then I didn't write or teach while I nursed a newborn, then I wrote and wrote--Chapter 2--in Barcelona over the summer, and then I wrote and taught and graded and wrote, and wrote some more. The last semester in Bloomington I didn't teach, just finished writing Chapter 4. So then it was kind of done! A complete draft! But everything was also kind of a shambles, written in the most haphazard way and missing details that I was supposed to fill in later but never did. Then we moved back to Belgium, to Leuven this time, and I edited and edited and edited. And edited. Which meant writing and rewriting and adding new, better ideas, now that I had the whole thing before me. And all along my directors sent me their input and we embraced track changes and comment flagging in Word. Then it was the fall and my committee gave me the green light to defend in December, which gave me a deadline for submitting the final complete set-in-stone dissertation: November 9.

Today is November 9.

I hope the above saga communicates the fact that I NEVER would have finished this dissertation if it weren't for the Mister. He worked and worked while I wrote and wrote (or, ahem, didn't write). He unhesitatingly supported the idea of me spending time back in Bloomington, and then when--oh, we're having a baby!--he unhesitatingly picked up and came with me. He took over baby duty a million and infinity times so I could work, he cleaned the house also a million times so I could work, he sacrificed weekend or evening fun so I could work. He taught extra classes in Bloomington so I could take time off from teaching, the semester Gabriel was born and the final semester we were there. He pushed me when I needed it, listened when I needed it, didn't say anything when I needed him not to say anything, reminded me why we were doing what we were doing, and rubbed my shoulders when they ached.

I wrote this in my acknowledgements, of course, but I want to write it here, too, so everyone knows, not just the ~~eight~~ six people who might read my dissertation: thank you, my love. This dissertation is dedicated to you.

Adventures in food

2011-09-29T15:09:00.001+02:00

Gabriel ate his first peanut butter and jelly sandwich today. He loved it. It's my fault for withholding this principal childhood pleasure from him, because I'm not really a fan of peanut butter and jelly, and I tend to give him food that I'm eating or would at least care to eat if he doesn't finish.

I showed him the inside of the sandwich to get him interested in eating it, and he went "Ooooh!" then snarfed the thing down. He managed to get gobs of jelly inside the bib of his overalls (how?), and his face and hands were covered with schmutz, but boy it was worth it to watch him enjoy that sandwich.

**

We thought he had an allergic reaction to a kiwi the other night. We've been relieved that no allergies seemed to appear so far, and had sort of relaxed about it. When he started crying and wiping his tongue, and then we imagined we saw a red rash around his mouth. I thought, hadn't he eaten kiwi before? Is kiwi a known allergen? We got concerned and kept him awake a little extra to observe and we got on doctor google. But then we saw that his lip was a little swollen in just one place, and it turns out he had bit the inside of his lip pretty hard, and he was fine, and the red was just because we wipe his mouth so much. [Update: seems that he really did have a reaction to kiwi. It, um, came through the pipeline (we could tell because of the kiwi seeds), and he had a terrible red diaper area, and was waddling around in pain. So what we thought was a bite...wasn't? Or he must have bitten his mouth because of the pain? Or broken skin from the rash? Or the mouth was swollen so he couldn't help but bite it? An hour or so later, the red had died down so we were convinced it was just regular chapped skin.]

The pediatrician we saw in Spain were shocked about American laxity in terms of infant food introduction. "In America, they allow children under two to have red fruits!," she declared, shocked. I told them I heard that the new research seemed to indicate that unless allergies run in the family, exposure sooner or later won't affect the severity of the allergy and there's no greater risk introducing the food after a year. The doctor looked at me grimly: "I know." And apart from allergies, it's interesting to see what "baby" foods are different: in Barcelona, soft fish is one of the first and most basic foods for babies and toddlers. In America, it's like, "your kid eats fish!?" I'm not even sure what differences there are here in Belgium, but I'm sure we'll find out.

***

Most of the time Gabriel eats what we eat for dinner, but when I second guess him, he always triple guesses me. To wit: last night I made soba noodles and green beans in a dashi/soy sauce broth for us. I didn't think Gabriel would like it (plus thought it might be too salty for him) so I made him regular letter-shaped pasta with green beans. Once he saw what we were eating, he unceremoniously dumped his bowl out and begged for the soba. Which he slurped with such abandon that in Japan he would have been the picture of politeness. He ate the soba green beans but not the letter pasta green beans, although he did abandon (after trying, at least) the cabbage and scallions we used to top off our bowls.

To be sure, if I served him the same thing tonight he just as well might turn up his nose at it. One day he is a passionate fan of, say, clementines, and the next day, he will throw every piece on the floor. The moment I'm convinced he loves something is the same moment he decides that it's repugnant and that he would rather not eat it, thank you very much. (This expressed with a swift toss to the floor or by thrusting the offending, usually smushed food into my hand.)

He ate a plum for dessert last night and did so with such relish that we laughed. "Mmmmm!!" he said, after every bite. Today I gave him a plum for a snack and he took one bite then, you guessed it, threw it on the floor.

**

Currently one of Gabriel's most consistent favorites is hummus. When I bring it out he beams and wiggles with glee. He dips a pretzel in it and licks that pretzel off, then dips again, until the pretzel is soggy and he asks me for a new one. The other day, while I was making him some eggs and my back was turned, he decided to dip his whole hand in the hummus. But he doesn't like the feeling of goopy hands, so he whipped the hand back and forth, coating every surface in the room with tiny splatters of hummus. The same thing happened the next day with his oatmeal. Aaargh. There is oatmeal and hummus in the cracks of the floorboards, and I'm not sure how to get it out, short of letting it dry and hoping that it will vacuum up someday. If you come to my house pretend you don't know that.

**

I think I've cleaned up more food messes lately than in his first year and half together: he's now much better at making much bigger messes. Part of the problem is that our kitchen storage is entirely located under the cabinet, in big drawers that he can easily open (the stupid little Ikea tab handles prevent us from putting in child safety locks, but there must be some system out there? I hope?). He likes to peruse the contents of the drawer, and beg for a snack but then reject it because he sees OTHER even better snacks right before his eyes. He also likes to get into the non-snack pantry drawer, the one that holds all the dry goods and bottles and pastas etc.

Most of the time he brings me these items, or I'm with him and can put them back immediately, but occasionally I think he's doing something else or my back is turned and... boy, he's fast. So, messes I've cleaned up recently include: a kilo of sesame seeds (a kilo of sesame seeds covers the entire surface of the kitchen floor in a blanket of tiny white skittery bits, if you're wondering), a shattered bottle of sesame oil that spread glass and oil everywhere (that one happened while he was trying to carry three glass bottles at once by their necks and I was saying "NOooo!" as he dropped it, which necessitated a quick evacuation to his high chair), entire boxes of spaghetti, shaken-out oatmeal, crushed packets of crackers, and I'm probably blocking out more. Yes. Must get drawer locks ASAP.

**

Gabriel's food words are fascinating to me, because he tends to use words for one item to mean a category of similar items. Apple ("app-uh") covers all fruit, cracker ("ca-kuh," sort of hard to distinguish from "caca," or poop, which as you imagine might lead to some misunderstandings) covers all cookies and crackers and other snacks, "wa-wa" (water, or aigua--we can't decide whether it sounds more like the English or the Catalan word, but it's kind of nice that it's right in between) covers all drinks. But then there's "ee-ya" (tortilla), and "chz" (cheese), "bl-luh-luh" (banana, which also means "I want breakfast" because it's usually the first thing we eat when we get downstairs, but oddly he still sometimes calls a banana an "app-uh" and his pronunciation of zebra sounds exactly like his pronunciation of banana), "ehs" (eggs) and a few more. Pointing, reaching, and "ah-ah-ah!" whining cover the rest. I can't wait for him to learn more words, to cut down on the whining, but also because it's awesome: new foods and new words, two of the best things in the world, and all brand spanking new. I bet you don't remember your first peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I bet it was great.

Tailor-made

2011-09-23T19:49:00.001+02:00

Although no one in our household is going to school this fall, properly speaking, we’re going through a number of beginnings and changes. I’ve met with a professor at the university here and am invited to take part, informally at first, in a major project/grant they are starting that just happens to fit with my field of research. I’m madly finishing up revisions on my dissertation chapters, but I also hope to be able to do some writing for the folks here, and I have a few other projects on the horizon, which feels great.

Gabriel is going through some big changes, too. Last week I weaned him even from that last bedtime feeding, and it’s been hard, for me and for him. I’m surprised at how tough it is both physically and emotionally. We knew, for a number of reasons, that it was time, really time, but knowing this doesn’t make it any easier.

19 months of nursing was such a great experience with Gabriel. It was like a superpower I never knew I had, a multipurpose cure. Is my child hungry? Nursing fills his belly. Is my child tired? Nursing will soothe him to sleep. Is my child stressed or in pain? Nursing will comfort and calm him. Especially when he was little, sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between these needs, so it was wonderful to know that one action could fill them all. Of course I have other tools that can serve the same functions (um, except maybe for soothing him to sleep…still working on that one), but breastfeeding was a perfect and always-available response.

I knew he was better protected against sickness, and I knew he was getting the perfect balance of nutrients, a tailor-made recipe. Of course it wasn’t always easy: there were many (many!) times it was painful, times it was boring or frustrating or exhausting. Times I didn’t WANT to wake up at 3 am, times I didn’t WANT to stop the car or find a bench or possibly be a bother to fellow passengers or diners or friends. But it was always worth it. Always.

And did I mention the milk was always available, never left behind? We nursed in malls, in church, at rest stops and in parks and on city benches, in changing rooms and restaurants and conferences and airplanes. I nursed him in a moving vehicle (both of us strapped in, of course!), on the beach, in the midst of parties. And of course, we nursed nestled in our bed, rocking in that yard sale rocking chair (the hardest thing for me to leave when we left Bloomington), perched on a stool or the floor or the sofa, and sunk into the gigantic recliner my parents rented for me when we first brought Gabriel home. (Boy was it ugly, but boy was it comfortable. My parents were relieved I burst into laughter instead of bursting into tears when, just back from the hospital, I saw it smack dab in the middle of the living room.) We nursed in the pitch dark and utter silence of midnight, in the noise and chaos of a Barcelona morning, in the quiet of midwestern sunshine, in the everydayness of a living room scattered with baby socks or toddler books.

I feel super lucky, so blessed that breastfeeding went as well as it did for us. Gabriel never took a bottle (or a pacifier for that matter), even though we tried very hard, so I imagine that a different work situation could have meant the end of breastfeeding. As a grad student I was able to be at home with him a lot of the time, and the Mister and I could work our schedules around feeding the baby. When Gabriel started daycare, at 11 months, it was only a few hours a day, and I could tell how much he looked forward to nursing and a nap when he got home. I never had to leave him overnight—even when I gave papers at conferences the Mister hovered in the hallways so that I could feed Gabriel during the breaks. It was a true team effort—the Mister supported me 100%, even in the midst of pain and crying and despair. I could never have fed Gabriel the way I did without him.

I’m in awe of my friends who pumped exclusively from day one to feed their babies breast milk, or who pumped when they went back to work, or who struggled mightily to continue nursing despite some major challenges. Breastfeeding does not go easily for everyone, and it makes me even more grateful for the experience we had.

There! Now I’ve gone and written a treatise on breastfeeding. I didn’t mean to. I was going to tell you about Gabriel’s other big change: starting Flemish daycare! He said his first word in Dutch today! I’ll have to write about that later. I guess I needed to reminisce in a wash of hormones about what the nursing relationship was like, and just how much it meant to me.

Sun, son

2011-08-13T22:18:00.004+02:00

We are on the eve of our last hurrah of summer, a few days at the beach on the Costa Brava. Gabriel simply adored everything about the beach in Cape Cod. When we had to head home after our first day's beach sojourn, during those perfect late-afternoon soft-sky beach hours, he flopped himself into the sand as the boardwalk ended in the parking lot, sand-angels-style. Although he couldn't say as much in words, his message was clear: I like it here.

A Costa Brava beach is an entirely different experience than a Cape Cod beach, but I'm pretty sure he'll like it, too (assuming he doesn't remember last year). And although posting this after not having written since we were in Massachusetts makes it sound like we just spend our summer jaunting internationally from beach to beach, we actually spent a couple of weeks in Belgium in between these two trips. And those weeks were...challenging. First, because they were rainy and cold and requiring of sweaters, and second, because they were dominated by a jet-lagged, molar-teething, suddenly-more-savvy toddler.

We didn't sleep much. Gabriel seems to have learned how to hit us deliberately. In the face. He had his first time out. Bedtimes were battlegrounds. Our street is still a mud pit.

But! The hitting (which thankfully has already died down) is part and parcel of a bigger growth spurt: he seems taller to us, is saying more and more recognizable words, chattering away in his toddler tongue, running faster, throwing and catching and singing ("Uppa Buh" is his favorite, which is what he calls "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," from the beginning of its second line; followed closely by "Cargol treu banya" which is about a snail and prompted by the many snails crawling the walls in our back yard).

He dances by spinning in circles and tries to snap his fingers, or does a up-and-down move with his arms that makes him look like a 1950s teenybopper. He makes surprising and funny connections between his books and what he sees in the world and vice versa, and by gum if he didn't recognize the front door of our building the night we arrived in Barcelona. His curls continue to slay me and he is liberal with kisses, but only when circumstances call for it (goodbyes, hellos, night time, wake up). He slept in this morning, then woke up without a peep and surprised us by walking into the dining rom and just giggling, so happy to see us. Lately he has started to smack his lips together when he bumps his head, which means, "Mom, please kiss it to make it better." I happily oblige.

18 months of this kid, and it's only getting better. The summer sun we'll have to soak up while we can, but his sunny golden head is ours for keeps. Making our lives warmer always.

The Cape

2011-07-24T22:17:00.003+02:00

Two days ago we made the trip back over the Atlantic to join my family at that lovely curving hook of land jutting out of New England, Cape Cod. We did the trip without a stroller for the first time ever, so my back is a tad sore from lugging baby G. around, but it was also fun to see him proudly stomping around in his little red sneakers and holding both of our hands tightly as he navigated the airport. It was one of our smoothest trips ever, since we were traveling so lightly, and had oodles of time.

With a four-hour layover in London, we enjoyed a nice meal of fish and chips, then hung out in our little secret Heathrow Terminal 3 corner, the wheelchair waiting room, which provides an enclosed, relatively quiet space with comfortable chairs that gets us away from the shopping center chaos that is the terminal at large. As is Murphy's law, the trip on which we had extra time and little luggage was the one where we encountered short lines and few problems. Still, even a smooth and easy 6-hour flight with a toddler on your lap is neither exactly smooth nor exactly easy--it's six hours with an active toddler on your lap.

But oh, it was so worth it. Summertime heat, for real. Beautiful beaches, sand. Cape Cod hydrangeas and weathered shingles. Cousins romping around the house in their matching t-shirts. Little tow heads and dimples. Time for reading, iPad and iPhone games, photo sessions. Walks. Board games and card games with siblings and parents. Seafood. Bundling a happy, sea-salty shivering kid in a towel and holding him in my arms as the evening sun warmed us. And we've only been at the rental for a day!

I brought the book Cod by Mark Kurlansky, and I'm already in the middle of Moby Dick on my iPad. Perfect reading for Cape Cod (isn't it good geeky fun to match books and location?!). I also have David Mitchell's new novel, which I was half way through when I had to leave it in Boston two months ago (and um, really doesn’t match our location since it’s set in a Dutch trading outpost in Japan), plus a pile of other books on the iPad. I can't wait to devour them all.

Fuzzy

2011-07-14T17:21:00.004+02:00

In order to go to the grocery store today, I layered up in jeans, warm socks and shoes, a fuzzy sweater, a striped jersey scarf, and a bright coral trench coat. I bundled Gabriel in his fleece and zipped him into his stroller's raincover (he doesn't like it very much). I pushed the stroller with one hand, and with the other held my blue polka-dotted umbrella.

What I'm saying is: it's cold. And rainy. I do the best I can with the cheery colors but it sure doesn't feel much like summer around here.

So when I get home, I open the big bag of ripe peaches that I had carried home (technically earmarked for the banana-peach-yogurt popsicles I plan to make for the kids who will be over for lunch tomorrow, along with their parents--M's coworkers--in yet another attempt to pretend it's summer). I eat two of them, one right after the other, standing over the sink, juice dripping down my wrist.

What I see, looking out the window, does not look like July.

But what I taste...ah, that's July.

Happy-making

2011-07-05T09:31:00.005+02:00

I've decided to write about two things making my life great this week, in order to combat the frustrations induced by wading through dissertation revisions; a toddler who now thinks that the appropriate response to any of life's indignities, large and small, is to throw himself on the floor in a sobbing heap; and the discovery that this city has many more children than it does daycare spaces, but no one who can clearly explain how one goes about getting one of those spaces.

***

If you had asked me how I liked our lightweight Combi Cosmo Ex stroller, until the day we moved to Belgium I would have said it was great! Particularly good for hauling up stairs and easy to maneuver due to its narrow width and small footprint, Gabriel had been comfortable in it since around three months old and had taken countless naps, eaten countless snacks there, happy as a clam.

But then we got to our new home town, and the cobblestones and work zones and uneven pavement and curbs chewed up our Combi and spat it right out. The wheels got stuck in every crevasse, it balked at every curb, and half the time we ended up hauling it around with sheer force.

Fortunately, we had another stroller waiting in the wings. The bumblebee yellow, super deluxe Quinny Buzz that I randomly won on the internet. We had brought it with us to Barcelona in March, aware of our future move Europeward, and left it there. Honestly, I'd thought it would stay there until another baby comes along, because it's heavy and wide and takes up the entire trunk of my father-in-law's midsize (=compact in American terms) car.

But oh my lands. We did the switcheroo this trip, so the lightweight stroller good for carrying up many flights of stairs to our elevator-less apartment stays there, and the heavy-duty, air-filled tires of the Buzz can help us push Gabriel around here (not to mention giving him a more comfortable ride). There are no stairs here, just one step up to our front door, so the weight isn't as much of an issue. I was worried about the width, and in some places we'll have to take detours or abandon ship briefly, but so far it's not too much of a problem.

The difference is, no exaggeration, life-changing! I schlep so much stuff around with the stroller (no car=frequent heavy loads of groceries), and I can now steer the thing with one hand, even while it's fully loaded. In fact I did steer it with one hand, pulling a suitcase with the other, when we came back from the airport this weekend, and never felt so much as a twinge of stress on the steering arm. It easily rides over curbs with no extra lifting on my part, and it even fits through the narrow alley on our street that skirts the large, deep pit we have dubbed "the Hatch," due to its imposing metal substructure and our Lost geekery. The thing practically drives itself.

***

The second miraculous item is a knife. I should backtrack a minute and explain that when we got married we registered for a perfectly lovely set of Henckels knives, but I made the mistake of selecting them without trying them, and I've never been completely satisfied with how they sit in my hands, the length (too long), the weight (too heavy), the blades (too thin), etc. Then we moved to the US, and my mom loaned us a knife. This particular knife was a gift to her from my brother, brought home from a trip to Taiwan, I believe, and (am I remembering correctly?) made from recycled bomb metal. It has a santoku blade, is shorter than the chef's knives I was used to but still plenty long, and I fell in love with how it felt in my hands, how sharp it remained despite daily use (and even some unauthorized trips through the dishwasher). I was loathe to give it up, but mom wanted it back, naturally, when we moved out of Bloomington.

So I was on the hunt for a new knife to furnish my empty Belgian kitchen. While we were in Barcelona, we made a quick trip to the store where we registered when we married, and where we still have store credit, even though we've been steadily chipping away at it. Come to think of it, I guess it was kind of appropriate that we used up some of our registry money the week of our five-year anniversary! Anyway, I was determined to buy a knife that would equal or surpass that beloved old Taiwanese friend. I tried out a bunch as best I could, and settled on a 16-cm chef's knife by Global, hoping that the feel would translate well once I actually started chopping.

I opened it eagerly once we unpacked our suitcases and got to making Gabriel his latest favorite food, lentils in the Catalan-grandmother style (seriously, I've never seen him open his mouth so wide). I pulled out a few onions and carrots and garlic and tomatoes, and sliced away. Since I already gave away the punch line, let me just say "wow." Even carrots feel like butter under this blade. It handles so well, and I love the size, the weight, the feel of the handle in my palm. My only wish is that it had those santoku-like divots so food would fall away from the blade (the store didn't have any santokus), but it's a small quibble for something that will be practically the only knife (I've got a small paring knife and a slightly bigger prep knife) I'll need now and forever amen.

Like I said, it practically drives itself!

One in...

2011-07-03T01:10:00.004+02:00

OK. So, what are the chances, if you take a random girl born in Iowa, and a random boy born in Catalonia, that they have a friend in common?

Let's just say, for the sake of argument...one in a million.

And then? Boy and girl meet. In another random place. Say, Austria. And they don't know they have a friend in common.

So, what are the chances, that when she goes to visit him for the first time, that THIS friend, the one-in-a-million friend who connects them without them knowing it (already a phenomenal coincidence), is AT the airport at the exact moment that the girl arrives at the airport to see the boy, nervous as all get-out? She hasn't seen the friend for a couple of years since he dated her pal while they were at Taizé in France, and he hasn't seen the friend for over a year since they studied together in Italy, but when the boy is about to go find the girl at airport arrivals, he runs into the friend and tells him to hold on, and then brings her over a few minutes later to introduce her, and she says, "hey I KNOW you!"

Let's just say the chances are...one in a billion.

You've probably figured out by now that the girl is me, and the boy is the Mister. This story happened just over ten years ago, and we got married five years ago today on a perfectly sunny happy day in Vermont. I still get goosebumps when I think about that day I flew to Barcelona for the first time, to meet a boy I liked, and how we ran into this guy we both knew, like we had lived around the corner from each other all our lives.

I guess we sort of had, just in a more...global sense.

***

This morning I took a peek at my wedding dress, hanging in a closet at my in-laws' house. It's still as perfect and as glowy as I remember, much like our wedding itself. Every memory of that day is suffused in a peaceful light, because--as all weddings should be--it was a day of true promises, simple beauty, the love of family and friends, and the joy of shared hope for the future.

I admit to being one of those insufferable people, who, when she reads about weddings in glossy magazines or blogs, however adorable or fancy or beautiful or clever, smugly thinks that OUR wedding was the best. Well, of course it was, because it was ours.

***

This post is probably really disjointed, because we've just come home from (a real! live!) date at a restaurant designed by none other than Antoni Gaudí himself, where we ate delicious fancy food and drank a whole bottle of wine. I haven't had half a bottle of wine in I don't know how long, so it's making me both sleepier and more verbose than usual. The Mister's parents are here as kangaroos (which is what they call babysitters in Spanish/Catalan), and it turns out that after we put our little munchkin to sleep and tiptoed away to our date, he woke up and watched TV with the grandparents, king of the castle and adamant refuser of sleep. Ah well, it was totally worth it.

***

Here's to five (and five before that) beautiful years, my one in a billion. I love you.

No other words in the world

2011-06-25T11:37:00.004+02:00

A propos of yesterday's post on toddler words, I just came across a George Oppen poem written to a newborn, part of which reads:

....Sara, little seed,
Little violent, diligent seed. Come let us look at the world
Glittering: this seed will speak,
Max, words! There will be no other words in the world
But those our children speak. What will she make of a world
Do you suppose, Max, of which she is made.

From "Sara in Her Father's Arms" by George Oppen

From Barcelona

2011-06-24T18:24:00.000+02:00

After the exhausting solo overseas trip with little G., a two-hour trip to Barcelona (light on the luggage and an extra helping of hands in the form of grandparents) was a breeze. We flew here Wednesday morning and are luxuriating in the actual summer weather, after a solid week of drizzly gray days requiring layers and umbrellas. Having M's parents around, though, was a treat: not only did they watch and entertain the tyke, they also cooked and shopped and tidied our garden and assembled huge furniture (those super-tall Ikea PAX wardrobes are no joke) and hung curtains and accompanied us on yet another epic Ikea trip and generally were very, very helpful.

With their help, too, we have managed to begin the weaning process in earnest; Gabriel hasn't nursed during the day in almost two weeks, with the exception of the airplane. Night weaning will be another stage, but we'll wait to establish the daytime thing first. I'm a little bit sad about it but also eager to experience the possibilities accompanying the fact of a child no longer requiring my body as sustenance: I can be away from him for longer than a few hours! I can wear a dress! Someday, maybe, we'll be able to hire a babysitter and go out on an actual nighttime grown-up date! We're already seeing the effects on mealtimes: over the past few days he's shown unprecedented hearty interest in his food....lentils and fish and eggs and yogurt and peaches oh my!

As always, arriving in Barcelona makes me deeply joyful. There's something about this place that makes me breathe easier--the light, the warm air, the simple delicious food, the plazas full of people, the smell of sea, the familiar, the new. I love getting back to our little nest, too, the welcoming spines of books, neighbors happy to see us, the breeze on the balcony, our big bed, Catalan TV, the round dining room table worn smooth with age. Work has begun on the elevator, at long last, so the days of hauling child+stroller+bags+shopping are numbered (even if that number be large, given the sluggishness with which all building projects take place in Spain--the building residents approved the elevator ONLY, what, three or four years ago?). Over time I'll remember the faults of this place too, but I take it, warts and all.

I'm heartily enjoying watching toddler Gabriel interact with his two cousins and aunt and uncle here, and seeing how his Catalan language acquisition develops more quickly when he is immersed here. His language exploded right at 15 months--at his May checkup in the US I could list maybe a dozen words (mama, dada, no, all done, panda [his stuffed lovey], woof, dog, nigh-nigh, bye-bye, knee, moo, and I'm probably forgetting a couple) and then over the next days he proved me wrong by easily doubling that number. It's been cool to see him modulate his vowels: "knee," for instance, began as "knay" and when I repeated it I could hear him try "knay-ee" until it morphed into "knee," although he still says "knay" sometimes. "Moo" also is often "mohhhh," which I find adorable. I repeat it correctly, though, and he says "mohhh-ooo." With gusto. His early words were also, funnily, spoken in a softer, higher-pitched voice...he'd be babbling along in a lower register and very carefully, precisely say "nigh-nigh" in his sweet upper register. Too cute.

So far, his English vocabulary dominates, but he's always said "Hola" along with "Hi" (I walked downstairs this morning at our in-laws' house and said a general "Hola" and Gabriel was the only one who piped up with his tiny, bright "HOLA!") and "bye-bye" along with "adeu." To that he's added, in recent days, "gràcies" and "ja está" (all done), "sí!" and "iaia" (grandma), "va" (come on, or go) and "té" (here you go, used when handing off an object). In general these days, he repeats words at surprising moments, so you are caught off guard and charmed to death when he suddenly decides to echo, quite adorably, "tomato" or "cake" or "uh-oh!" He's pleased as punch, too, of course, so there is all around beaming and repeating of words. I've also witnessed him easily sliding between languages--the aforementioned "va" appeared when he was saying his favorite "Go, go, go!" (always used to refer to cars, sounds a bit like "doh, doh, doh!") and I translated it for his relatives here, at which moment he immediately picked that up and said "Va, va!"

We'll see what happens when we throw a Flemish daycare into the mix! (Enrolling in said daycare is priority number one when we get back to Belgium.)

Anyway, being fascinated as I am by developmental psychology/neuroscience AND languages, I am bound to get geeked out by this and prattle on about it on my blog (which also serves as something of a record for posterity given that Gabriel's baby book remains sadly, woefully blank). Apologies if I'm one of THOSE moms.

From Leuven

2011-06-16T15:30:00.004+02:00

Hallo from our new Flemish digs! Gabriel and I have been here in for just over two weeks now, and there's so much to write about...packing up our lives into a single carload, driving to Boston, the overseas plane trip alone with an energetic toddler and a staggering amount of luggage, long days alone with said energetic AND jet-lagged toddler in an almost entirely empty house while M. finished his dissertation proposal and worked full time (let's just say that we've taken a whole lot of walks), an epic (EPIC! or should I say EPICLÖRP) trip to IKEA, the pleasures of being back in Europe, the frustrations of being back in Europe, the joys of exploring our new town.

So far we're really super happy with our choice to live in Leuven instead of Brussels this go-round...it's a city of the size that we love (see: Oxford, Salzburg), a college town with a nice student vibe, just really beautiful with some amazing architecture and the exquisite beguinage right around the corner from us. We're also really happy with the location of the house--I love that we're within short walking distance of pretty much anything in the center, and that I can easily grab the stroller and go get what we need (well, if it weren't for the obstacle-course construction zone that is our street). Plus, our little backyard backs onto a park, so things are quiet and pleasant and perfect for a toddler running around. And hopefully the fact that we HAVE a backyard (with roses! strawberries! a magnolia tree!) will combat gray-skies fatigue. I'm excited to learn Dutch and really settle into a life that feels connected to the place we've landed--Brussels always felt so anonymous and international, everybody there temporarily. So far M. has made some good contacts with the University and I'm planning to do the same.

Today my parents-in-law arrived to help us out, which is why I am even able to write this... These days little G. is always begging (=whining, crying, clawing) to be in my lap if I'm typing and if he's in my lap he's either pulling on my arms or hitting keys which is about as productive as it sounds. So computer time requires sneaking behind his back during the short-attention-span play periods. Ah, the magic of grandparents to engage the attentions of a child. For the week they're here (and the following week, while we're back at home in Barcelona) I am planning to actually get some work done on thesis revisions and get that thing done!

Goody! The sofa guy just came and not only was the delivery truck able to pull up to the front door (you never know where the gigantic holes or massive construction vehicles will be on our street on any given day), the sofa fit just fine through the doorway (my two worries concerning sofa delivery). It looks great and now our living room actually has a piece of furniture in it!

Oh I know--In parting I'll show you the little polyvore scheme I had fun putting together this weekend while M. took Gabriel to the park to let me hang out in bed until embarrassingly late. We had just done our Ikea trip the day before so I was trying to see how the living room would all fit together. I think if you click it you can see my comments? Maybe?

Leuven Living Room by RobinV on Polyvore.com

All song, all singing

2011-04-25T17:19:00.004+02:00

Happy Easter! It's been raining for what seems like forever, but spring is in the air. I'm hoping that these April showers really do bring May flowers. We had a lovely Easter yesterday. Gabriel joined in the egg hunt like he's being doing it all his life, spotting all of the colorful eggs, toddling over to them, cracking them open, and holding up his treasures with a big "ooooh!!!!" for us all to marvel at.

I handed in my beast of a dissertation draft a week ago Friday, and have now had two work-free weekends, which felt glorious. The first time in ages I read the Sunday paper from start to finish, got some baking done, and took afternoon naps. There's still a long haul of editing and chopping and reworking to be done (I'm creating an additional chapter out of a way-too-long chapter, and all of them are already too long), but the defense is that much closer. And now comes the move: sorting and packing and selling and migrating from Bloomington to Belgium!

The Sunday paper printed a lovely selection of spring poems, of which I really adored Li-Young Lee's "The Word from His Song." Sometimes I find his poems a little too zen-ohm-goggly, but I liked the sing-shoutingness of this, and "It's all song, all singing, the body's seat / and number, the mind's pleats, time's hem."

The Word from His Song
by Li-Young Lee

The sparrow on my rooftop shouts,
"All roads be blessed." His voice a ring
for the finger of the beloved.

And he wouldn't work harder at his song
if all the world prized it,
nor temper what sounds like ardor
if a public thought him wrong.

He says singing redeems the body's loneliness.
All praise is homage to an older praising,
a drastic sum and ruling mean,
earth's urging the grapes to a clearer fate,
sun's pressing them to a more potent praise.

Flying fixes the heart to the sky's wheel, he says.
Salt cures the script.
Light is a fractal script.
Imagination is branched, flowering,
and each fans the buds himself.

He says every atom burns.
Hunger rends the kingdom by mending,
marrying voices and wings.

Singing builds a throne
for hearing, sets up a swing
between our one night and our day.

It's all song, all singing, the body's seat
and number, the mind's pleats, time's hem.

The voice is a sighted brink.
Its mission is to sort the world.
The tongue is a mortal flower.
The dew at last. The guests arrive.
The child learns his name,
a virgin bell. And even that
iron note is God awake in two worlds.

God seeks a destiny in all things fired
in the kiln of the sun or the mind.

That's the word from his song.

A motherhood mantra

2011-04-06T16:27:00.004+02:00

(***I know I'm not supposed to be blogging right now, as I am in the throes of crazy dissertation-writing, but I've been mulling over this one and had to write it out and so I'll post it anyway.)

Pregnancy is a big grab-bag. There are a million and one pregnancy "symptoms" (i.e., things that make your life uncomfortable and/or awkward and/or a miserable pit of misery), and before you are pregnant, they all sound incredibly awful or especially annoying or downright scary. And then you get pregnant, and the symptoms you were sure you'd have fail to appear, and the symptoms you never heard of show up and make you think you're a weirdo, and the symptoms you never thought to worry about end up being the worst. And you deal with them, and life goes on.

To wit:

Nausea--I was super worried about morning sickness, but only had fleeting upset stomach, which usually went away with a bit of a lay-down and some crackers, and even that only lasted a few weeks. But the gas and intestinal distress had me doubled in pain for weeks.

Oh, and the heartburn at the end? I never once worried about it beforehand but it was the WORST. To the point where I asked for a Zantac when I was in labor because I was worried about the heartburn pain. Hah! I was about to give birth without pain meds but I wanted a ZANTAC! In retrospect, this is very funny but at the time I was really serious about it (they gave it to me but I immediately threw it up...yeah, labor makes you throw up, which is something I also did not know beforehand but am glad I did not know).

I was sure I'd get swollen ankles. Nope. I got swollen armpits (hormones, glands, yadda yadda). I got carpal tunnel syndrome and achy fingers.

I was worried about stretch marks and post-partum hair loss, but instead I got skin tags (which went away) and weird blotchy face spots (which didn't).

I was scared about episiotimies/tearing. It happened, but I barely had any pain and healed super quick. But the hemorrhoids? Worse than childbirth, and I'm not exaggerating.

SO. All of this is to say that maybe? It's not worth worrying. You'll get what you get, and you'll deal with it when you do.

Which I am saying to MYSELF (this is all an exercise in self-therapy), because having a kid is JUST like that.

You'll get what you get, and you'll deal with it when you do.

I was worried about the not-sleeping, and thought I'd never survive. The newborn stage tricked me into thinking the baby was a good sleeper (little babies sleep all the time anyway), but time has proved me wrong. My kid doesn't know how to fall asleep on his own, and still wakes up several times during the night, and man I am SO tired. But we are surviving.

I was worried about having a clingy, crying baby, and guess what? He's barely exhibited separation anxiety once in his thirteen months. He loves hanging with other people, and from day one has practically skipped to the door of his daycare.

I was convinced we'd have a voracious eater, because we are nothing if not good eaters, and besides his cousins all were champs at eating. But for heaven's sake we have a picky eater. I suspect this is because he is still nursing, and I'm trying to roll with it, offering him lots of various foods. He does eat, just doesn't eat a lot, and is very choosy about the things he'll actually chow down on.

I was worried about that whole "nipple confusion" thing so we made sure not to offer him pacifiers or bottles for the first couple months. But when we did offer them he refused and to this day has never used a pacifier or a bottle for self-soothing. Which might be related to the no sleeping thing. It didn't occur to me to worry that he WOULDN'T take the pacifier but now I so wish he did.

I was so nervous about traveling with a baby/toddler, knowing that we'd have to do it so often. You hear horror stories, and sure--there've been blowouts and crying and neverending flights--but you know what? The kid is a champion traveler, so much so that I'm actually going to be flying alone on a transatlantic flight with him. (I must admit, I am a little nervous about that one...)

I could go on. There are a million examples.

The things you think are going to be impossible and/or horrible turn out to be fine, or at least bearable--you just deal. The things you spent so much energy worrying about turn out to be non-issues. And the things that never even crossed your mind turn out to be the things that try your soul when they happen.

I suspect this will be true for the next pregnancy--all the things I worry about now, based on the last one, will turn out to be moot and there will be new and improved and weirder symptoms! I suspect this will continue to be true for the boy as he grows and we face new challenges I never imagined and skip over issues I worried about needlessly. And even when the things I worry about do come true, the ways of facing them are not what I imagined they'd be when I worried.

So. It's NOT WORTH worrying. (I tell this to myself, and to the other beloved worryworts in my life.) You'll get what you get and you'll deal with it when you do.

Hiatus from hiatus

2011-03-22T16:23:00.004+01:00

So, I promised I would check in on ye olde blog if there was news, and there is:

We're moving back to Brussels!

The Mister got a job at his old stomping grounds, the European Parliament, but doing something that's even more suited to him and his multi-hatted credentials. It was a long time in coming (the recruitment process took over a year) and at several points it didn't look like it would happen, but it did.

We are excited about this, because it's a great job, and we'll be happy to be back in Europe. We're not 100% super enthusiastic about returning to the land of gray skies, nor did we jump for joy at the thought of living in smeary dreary Brussels city again either, especially with a ~~baby~~ toddler. So we're not going to. We've rented a home in Leuven, which is just a 20-minute train ride away, a place we've loved visiting, and is home to one of Europe's most important universities.

The idea is that I'll try to get a job/visiting position/make connections at the university there. As my foray on the job market resulted in zero interviews or job offers, we are relieved of the burden of making hard decisions between his job or my job, and I can focus my energies on finding work when we land.

I'm in the full steam end-stages of dissertation writing, and plan to have the thing written and done before we leave. Revisions and the defense itself may have to wait until late summer or fall, but at least it will look and act like a book with regular chapters and everything before we pack up and move out.

The Mister will fly to Brussels a couple of weeks before we do in May, and my mom will come to help me out with the packing up and moving out and driving to Boston to return their generously loaned car to its home. May is not too long from now, I am realizing, with a panicky feeling in my stomach...

I am writing this from a hotel room near JFK, because we got stuck here after a long delay out of Barcelona (13 hours on the plane yesterday, which was as unfun as it sounds) and missed our connection to Indiana. We spent the last couple of weeks in Barcelona for spring break, dragging with us every bit of luggage we could, knowing that we need to get as much of our clothes and books and baby gear to Europe as possible. Also, if spring break in Barcelona sounds like a lot of fun, I should tell you that it POURED most of the days we were there, plus, all I did was hole up in my in-laws' bedroom and write write write that aforementioned dissertation, while other people watched the kiddo. Well, I did eat a lot of yummy fish and we did sneak out for a date night sans aforementioned kiddo.

Speaking of whom...I just re-read that last old post and was shocked to think of him as a little eight-month old, because he started walking a couple of days after turning one last month, and he hasn't looked back. He is quite the little person with OPINIONS and likes shouting "HOLA" and "OOH" at everyone and has very particular food preferences (help) and an adorable cloud of curls at the back of his head and has just progressed, when he hears music, from bobbing his head to wagging his behind to shuffling his feet. He's obsessed with phones and now holds them up to his neck/ear quite charmingly, even though I don't think he ever sees us talk on the phone, since all we ever do is skype. What I'm saying is: he's growin' up, and it's a bit too fast but it's really really awesome.

I plan to resume this blog when the dissertation is done and we are back in Europe, and I also plan to join facebook and in general rejoin the internet from my self-imposed hibernation. Looking forward to it!

Hiatus

2010-10-06T17:31:00.004+02:00

If it isn't painfully obvious already, I am having a hard time keeping up with this blog. Mini blog posts run through my head all the time--I seem to live my life with constant narration, the effect of a literary mind, perhaps?--but I don't have time to get them written.

This semester is, to put it mildly, GO GO GO. Well, no, that's not exactly right either. Because the Mister and I are handling child care ourselves, when it's my turn to be home with the baby, there are plenty of peaceful moments. Time to play peek-a-boo and nurse little G. off to the land of nod, and feed sweet potatoes into his baby bird mouth, and make him laugh as much as I can. But in between, in the cracks--when he's sleeping, like right now, or when he's playing on his own and not crawling full speed towards some electrical cord or tipsy breakable object--I have to use the time to WORK. Because oh, my friends, there is so much work.

Let's see, where does it begin? Teaching, of course: that means reading and grading and lesson planning and handout making. Then dissertation writing. That's a big one. Oh, and this week I have to finish a book-length translation. It was due last week. Plus, I'm on the job market this year. I'm discovering just how much work is involved. I'm applying to at least 50 schools, and just preparing all the required materials--application letter, CV, dissertation abstract, writing sample, teaching philosophy, transcripts--was a monumental task. Now I'm basically just tailoring those materials to each school, but that's a hugely time-consuming effort in itself.

So, you see: blogging doesn't really fit. Not when you factor in stuff like, LIFE: hanging out with the Mister, Saturday farmer's market, church, making meals and eating them as a family, reading the newspaper on the weekend.

I have to say, I love and appreciate being able to work AND be at home this much with the munchkin. I miss him when I'm away, but I also love walking out the door in my teaching clothes, carrying my tote instead of a diaper bag. Then, his toothy (four already!) grin when I walk back in the door is pretty much the best thing ever.

But it's hard. My mom was here last week, and she was a life saver babysitter supergrandma. M. and I got to go out to a fancy dinner for the first time in eight months, and out to the opera for our first real date night since who knows when. We got to both go to the office at the SAME time! It was a week of deadlines and piles and overwhelming work, so I don't know how we would have gotten through it without her. Plus, we fit in a few shopping trips and meals out and a visit from my brother. But when I dropped her off at the airport, I thought: now HOW are we supposed to do this, again?

That was Monday. Today's Wednesday. I guess we're figuring it out. But, like I said, blogging doesn't really fit. So I'm going to say goodbye until the dissertation is done. I might pop on to share any important news (like, a job?), but for now: hiatus.

Eve of a New Semester

2010-08-30T04:13:00.002+02:00

The syllabi are printed out, the shiny new instructor's copy books are in a neat pile on the coffee table (I am still kind of dizzy about the fact that they will send me novels for free and all I have to do is ask! well, that and teach the novels in the course, i.e. get 25 students to buy them), and I've already decided what I'll wear tomorrow. At 7 am I'll wake up with nervous stomach, but when the students walk in the classroom door I'll simply be eager to begin. It will probably be the only day of the semester when I will be totally alert and with it for our 8 am class.

I'm teaching literature for the first time, and am ridiculously happy about it. I'm hoping my students won't dash my hopes to the ground and stomp them to smithereens, just as I'm hoping that I will come out of the course still loving the novels that we'll be reading together.

The Mister and I spent much of the weekend in his office, the baby asleep in his stroller or playing on the floor, while we polished off our syllabi and prepared for the courses. He is teaching three and I'm only teaching one, and we are trading off child care which means that I'll be racing back from class in order for him to get to his on time. Should be...fun!

Sorry I've been AWOL again on this blog; we had even more adventures, like a week in the Canary Islands! and a weekend in Vermont! an overseas flight during which they lost our stroller! two days in the car with a six-month-old baby! baby's first teeth! baby's first solid foods (he LOVES peaches)!

But we're here now, and it's lovely to be back. And I always, ridiculously, love the beginning of the school year. I love collecting my pens and my books and the buzz of campus in the fall. I love that someone's paying me (not much, but still) to talk about books with other people. And I love that my little family is along for the ride: caught up in the spirit of the school year, I bought Gabriel a couple of new books today, too. He mostly chewed on them, but it's the thought that counts. Books ahoy!

Waxing and waning

2010-07-21T23:49:00.004+02:00

Yesterday at the gym I weighed myself for the first time in nearly three months, and was quite shocked to discover that I weigh less than I did before I got pregnant over a year ago. I knew that breastfeeding meant easier weight loss, but I didn't think that the scale would actually tick negative, if "zero" is what I weighed the moment we got the little plus sign on a pee stick.

It's not like I'm exercising much: I have gone to the gym maybe four times this summer (whereas last year I was in better shape than I've ever been, due to gym classes and swimming). It's not like I'm eating less: I am always hungry and require generous portions of food. The only conclusion is that the baby is quite literally sucking it out of me. I'm fine with that system.

I've been thinking this week about how it felt to be pregnant, and caught myself really missing it. I can't quite mentally recapture that sensation of movement in my belly--it's so physical and so fleeting and so normal all at once--now that it's no longer there. I loved the wondering and waiting; I loved the roundness and fulness and heaviness of my body; I loved pressing the Mister's hand to me to feel our baby move. It's hard to explain, but when pregnant, I felt so rooted and so... sure.

That, combined with Gabriel living up to his name and being a giggly, smily, squealing little angel (the other day after waking up at 9, he napped from 11-2, 3-4, 6-8, and then only woke once during the night), meant that when the Mister raised the question of when we should get pregnant again, I just about said: as soon as we can! I mean, I know we probably shouldn't get pregnant when our first child is only five months old, but as far as M. is concerned, the sooner the better, and I'm almost inclined to agree.

(Disclaimer: much more discussion is needed, and the future is uncertain, and I know these things don't happen just because you want them to, even if we had an easy time of it the first go-round...)

Cloth on the road

2010-07-20T13:26:00.003+02:00

I packed Gabriel's cloth diapers for a week's vacation in France, and although I had been told by the owners of the apartment we were staying in that there was a washer available, I did not know the details of layout and access. Turns out the washer was in their private home rather than in the apartment. They were terribly nice, and offered to take the laundry and do it for us (before they knew what it was), but as awkward as it is to show up with a bag full of your child's poopy diapers and be escorted to a cluttered laundry room, it would be even more awkward to expect someone else to handle it.

Plus, negotiating all of this in French was tricky (I didn't even know the word for "diaper," but now I do: la couche bébé). They did insist on taking the laundry out and bringing it over to us, so I was relieved when the woman told me that they had done cloth diapering for a few months when their babies were little, too. (They quit because of rashes.)

I only ended up doing the one load, though, relying on disposables for the middle part of the week, and back to cloth when we were close enough to departure to make them last until we were reunited with a familiar washing machine. Because the other thing I hadn't taken into account is that washing the diapers cuts into sightseeing time; the two hours needed by the durn European machines meant waiting around instead of heading out for the day, and in this case we had to try twice before we found our innkeepers at home.

Other trips have been fine with cloth, because we were in the homes of family or friends and could do laundry easily, and the agenda mostly included hanging out in the house. In other cases, we've brought them along for jaunts of a couple of days (Valencia, the Costa Brava) that were short enough that I didn't need to wash them before heading back. But in the future I'll think twice about doing cloth for longer trips where I'm not sure of the laundry situation, or to hotels.

Besides the travel snafus, I've really loved cloth diapering so far. It's easier than you think when you're contemplating it (the choices are overwhelming and the ick factor is bigger in imagination than in reality), and I find the little bright-colored bottom of a baby so darn cute. Plus, for me it's hugely satisfying to know that I can avoid creating massive amounts of waste, reduce the factory and transport demand of disposables, and skip all of those chemical-laden plastics and fibers next to my baby's skin. Oh, and the cherry on top: it's way cheaper!

The find

2010-07-20T00:38:00.003+02:00

I love interior design magazines and blogs, love drooling over images of other people's homes--people with great taste, innovative personal style. I love the "sneak peeks" feature over at design*sponge, because the homes are loved and lived in, not the ones in the glossy magazine spreads devoid of all signs of actual human habitation. I'm a sucker for casually but tantalizingly arranged vignettes, and especially those involving vivid typography of some sort...prints with words, old signage, rusty letters, vintage letterpress blocks.

But what gets me every time is the text that accompanies the image. "We found the [adorable, perfect, just-worn-enough item] in a flea market in France!" Or, "We stumbled across that [awesome mid-century piece] on the street!" The words "flea market find" get real old real fast. (Also overused: "I'm obsessed with..." Really? Obsessed?) Here's a perfect example: In a lovely budget redo, somebody airily mentions a print they "picked up at a Paris flea market."

Sure, I think. "Picked up," as easy as an errand to the dry cleaners. As if we all rummage around in French flea markets every day. As if there is anything besides cracked and water-swollen particleboard furniture on our street.

But then. We went to France, see. Last week, on vacation, with my parents. We rambled around Provence, bought bunches of lavender, lived in a little apartment in a town so small it didn't have a boulangerie (just a madcap baker who showed up with deliveries from the next town over, beeping his horn like the roadrunner at 9 am). And we went to a flea market. And behold! The flea market had woodblock letters, in big ramshackle piles, in which I could rummage to my heart's content, smudging my fingers with dusty ink.

We came home with a lovely selection of letters, and it's like candy to me. But I heretofore promise that I will not be the jerk who says offhandedly, "oh, we just picked those up in a French flea market." I will instead admire the letters, and point out how, among the other letters we picked just because they looked funky, we chose a tall mommy R, and a bold daddy M, and a little baby G.

Now I need to figure out how to arrange them in my own little vignette. On a table? A shelf? On a wall? I think this project is so cool (and yes, the words "a flea market in France" appear once again), but I don't have enough of them to pull it off. I'll have to experiment a little, which of course is half the fun.

Books and baby

2010-07-04T21:34:00.003+02:00

One of my greatest worries before becoming a parent is that I would never read a book again. Unless it was called Your Child and You: Techniques for Eating with One Hand and How to Do Midnight Feedings without Waking Up, or something. Oh, of course I knew I'd read books for work; it's what I do, after all. But what about "fun" reading? I worried that, like movie-going and fine dining, I'd have to wait until the baby was in elementary school before doing it again.

But I've been more than pleasantly surprised, in that I've plowed through more "for-fun" books lately than ever. In the early weeks, when I spent a whole lot of time nursing, I read a few hefty novels while feeding the baby (the only trick to which was how to turn pages when at least one hand was occupied). But the main thing is that my bedtime reading hasn't really changed; if anything, I read more because we're home more often.

Plus, we don't have a TV, either in Bloomington or here in Barcelona, so the lure of a random television show doesn't affect my decision to read a book.

And finally, my mom lent me her Kindle, loaded with a bunch of great novels, and I've been gobbling them up. The Kindle is FANTASTIC for nursing (see one-handed problem above) and travel (lightweight, barely uses battery, pack many novels at a time). The Kindle will never replace that big stack of novels I have by my bedside, but it sure is great for the airplane, the train, or the metro.

As with many aspects of parenting that I find easier than I thought they would be, I am acutely aware that when we add another kid (or two or three?!) into the mix, all bets are off. But for now, I am so pleased that I am able to continue, post-baby, one of those things that defines who I am, which means--surprise!--I am still the person I was pre-baby. Just with a baby.

Valencia

2010-07-02T10:20:00.003+02:00

In the spirit of relaunching regular blog posts, today I am writing from Valencia, Spain. When the Mister suggested that Gabriel and I tag along on this business trip, I couldn't resist, even though our lives have been very busy lately, and my parents arrive for a visit the day after we get back. It's a whole new city! A whole new Autonomous Region of Spain! I actually have stood on a mountaintop on the spot where Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon converge, but I had never visited the capital of Valencia (which is beautiful, from what I've seen so far). Just a three-hour train trip from Barcelona, and besides, a good way to celebrate the anniversary of our wedding day!

So Gabriel and I are about to head into the city for some sightseeing, while the Mister sits in the kind of conference room that has little microphones, water glasses, and hard candies at every table, and listens earnestly to people talk about the kinds of things he's heard a thousand times already. I think we get the better deal.

I do have some more blog posts in my head, so I will try to continue to update regularly.

Also: happy anniversary, my Mister. Four years ago today was one of the best days of my life, but every day since then has been better than it would have been, just because you're in it.

Sidekick

2010-06-30T16:58:00.003+02:00

I'm not living up to my end of the blog-bargain, am I? I have in my daily care the most fascinating and adorable creature on God's green earth and I don't even write about him, or--worse--post pictures of him? In my defense, it's been a very, very busy summer so far, and also, my camera has decided to disallow downloading of photographs. (Only days after the flip video went berserk, too. Grrr.)

Gabriel is 4.5 months old already (and still 90th percentile for weight and 98th for height!), and I can't believe how awesome and alert and wide-eyed and funny he is. Every week I think back to the previous week and realize he's doing or paying attention to something entirely new. Breathtaking. And how fantastic it is to have him around all the time, the best sidekick ever. There's always someone grinning at you wildly when you walk into a room, someone to force you to break out of even the most boring and serious grown-up-type conversations and laugh or coo or make baby-talk with abandon.

Actually, that's related to what for me has been one of the biggest surprises of parenthood. I knew there would be great parts, but honestly I also thought it would be an eternal DRAG, having to leave the party/tv show/movie/meal/conversation to respond to a crying baby or feed a hungry baby or change a dirty baby or whatnot.

But really? Whatever I'm leaving doesn't hold a candle to the satisfaction of being able to answer whatever need the baby has, the pure straightforward joy of feeling a child get heavy with sleep on my shoulder, the calm bliss of nursing, when his little hands wave like starfish, or even making him clean again.

Also, there's an added bonus. In party-like situations, where I've had to retreat from the festivities to feed the baby quietly so he falls asleep (or even when he refuses to calm down and it's just a long arm-aching shush circus) I actually RELISH the feeling of everything going on outside while we do our own thing. It's a legitimate, socially-approved excuse to be an introvert! There was one gathering (I won't name names) where M. and I actually squabbled over who would get to stay in the quiet room with an unconsolable infant!

When I lived at the unofficial department-party-house, and we hosted the semi-annual barbeques or halloween fests, after hours of hosting and socializing I would run up to my room in the wee hours of the morning to get something. Invariably I would sit on my bed, and lulled by the blissful feeling of being in my own safe cocoon while the hum of music and conversation filtered through the floorboards, I would lean back and drop to sleep. That's what retreating with the baby feels like: creating a hushed, safe place for just the two of us.

Once the baby is asleep, and I come out blinking into the light, there also exists the perfect awkward conversation exit, which is that I better check the baby or I think I hear the baby crying.

Anyway. It comes as a surprise to me that precisely what I thought would be one of the worst, or at least most annoying, parts of being a parent, is actually one of the best.

Departures

2010-05-07T22:04:00.000+02:00

It seems like every half a year or so we pack up one household in a crazy rushed effort to stash our belongings somewhere, all in order to go to another household. That's what we did last weekend. We have subletters living in our apartment this summer, so we had to find unobtrusive corners of our place to stick things and then move boxes and suitcases to M's office and the home of our longsuffering friends, leaving the apartment scrubbed of too-personal items.

And then we will get to the other place (which has been similarly sublet), and face the task of unpacking the same kind of too-personal items that we stored at M's grandmother's house and in our pint-sized second bedroom. (Pint-sized is the right size for a baby! And we have one of those! But it's full to the ceiling of random crap that a closetless apartment is bound to accumulate, plus all that stored clothing, PLUS a ton of stuff from our previous Brussels-Barcelona move.)

So. After packing up, which was accomplished in due time, we drove for twelve hours with an eleven-week-old baby. This went much more smoothly than I had feared, with the crying jags limited to easily-fixable episodes: hungry! wet! So we would: stop car at nearest rest area/ gas station (ideally coinciding with our need to eat, pee, or fuel up, but not always), feed and/or change the baby, get back on the road. He is now marginally distractable with jangly toys, so M. jangled some toys in front of him every once in a while and that helped.

And now we're in our nation's capital! Happy to be at my parents' apartment, although I think M. will be happier when grading is finished. We spend a week here, then a week in Boston (which means, yes, another long car ride), and then off to Barcelona.

In the midst of all of this, Gabriel has decided that sleeping through the night agrees with him. We went from waking up every. two. hours. like clockwork to sleeping for five hours at a time, say, from 10 to 3 and from 3 to 8 (no transition nights of three or four hour stretches, which is strange). It's like he's growing up or something! It's like I have a new non-fogged brain!

We went to the national zoo yesterday. Zoos always make me a little sad for the animals in their enclosures and cages, but also fascinated by these gorgeous creatures that I would never otherwise see so up close. Gabriel slept through the whole thing, pretty much, and when he was awake, his hands were way more interesting to him than lions or pandas. He's just discovered that there are these objects stuck on the end of his appendages that he can move back and forth and this requires intense scrutiny. I'm sure he'll have a detailed report on my desk in the morning.

And speaking of tomorrow morning: I turn 32! Which is basically the same as 31, so it's not too big of a deal. But then again, it's so not the same, because now I have a baby, and if that doesn't blow my mind... Convenient that it's Mother's Day one day later. It took me several weeks of seeing Mother's Day advertisements and store displays and thinking about my own mom before I realized that Oh! This applies to me now! I'm a mom. Wow.

2010-03-11T17:01:00.015+01:00

Oh dear. It seems I have a two-month old baby and I have not made one peep about it on this here blog. The problem is there's so much to write about, and what little extra time there is we like to spend oogling over our baby. Plus, we've had a long stream of guests, some of them repeat comers (hi mom and dad!) and we've made outings of our own, including two trips to Chicago, one of them to assure that the little guy is officially Spanish, too.

Anyway, I have nothing more to offer than a sort of stream-of-consciousness bullet point scramble, thinking over the last weeks, as a way to get back to writing in this space...

**

During those first weeks, I thought I had given birth to a baby pterodactyl, because he made the loudest, screechiest, cawingest sounds you ever did hear. Now he has started to coo and squeal and they are the sweetest sounds on earth. I even laugh at his crying sometimes because it is just so sweet, those piteous little high pitched waaahs, complete with lower lip stuck way out.

**

I still get a giddy, fierce feeling every time I drive by the hospital (which is often, since we live only two blocks away). I think of what happened there as a sweet, secret thing of which I am immensely proud and it is a little disconcerting to realize that everyone's mother went through the same thing.

**

Speaking of which: having a baby was HARD, don't get me wrong, but it was way less hard than I thought it would be. They keep asking you "on a scale of one to ten, how much pain are you in?" It's an impossible question to answer, because even when it hurts you think it's going to hurt way more, so you put yourself on the lower end of the spectrum. The furthest I got, just before the nurse discovered I was completely dilated and ready to push, was a 7. And pushing didn't hurt too much, but boy was it strenuous, requiring every muscle of my body.

**

I was totally unprepared for the aftermath. The next day, I didn't just hurt...down there, but EVERYWHERE. I felt so wiped out: everything ached like I had participated in an iron man competition, my arms felt weak, my boobs were sore from nursing, and I had a weird side effect of...adrenaline? the nurses didn't know...that caused my skin to tingle all over and feel like my limbs were just waking up from being asleep. So I was scared to hold Gabriel and jealous of all those people who could pick him up so easily from his bassinet and walk him around the room. Plus, hormones were going haywire, and I wasn't really sleeping, and someone was coming into the room every five minutes to take my temperature or weigh the baby or bring me food or ask me questions... I had prepared so much for what would happen in labor&delivery that I was caught unawares by the postpartum hospital say. That said, I felt very cared for and was so happy to have that time to recover and be in our own cocoon. A snowstorm raged outside the whole night Gabriel was born and during the next two days, but we were so warm and cozy and happy inside.

**

The first day in the hospital, post-partum, I asked my mother: "Do they put something in the diapers? He just smells so good!" My baby smelled like the most heavenly elixer of flowers and sweetness and light. I couldn't believe he could smell that good on his own and so assumed there must be an additive somewhere. But he does smell that good.

**

I am So! Excited! to read books to this baby. I can't wait until we can get him all of my childhood favorites, and until he can understand the stories, and then I can't wait to introduce him to a whole world of books he can read on his own. Yesterday was the day of Sant Jordi (Catalan Valentine's day, in which men and women trade books and roses), and we made sure to read him a few books, including one which annoys me to end because the last page rhymes "drum" and "Mom." I can only assume it was written by a Brit and the American version altered "Mum" to "Mom." Anyway, we had a lovely Sant Jordi, with my brother and sister-in-law in town, and I have a new pile of summer reading that I am smacking my lips over! Includes: Stieg Larsson, Herman Melville, Irène Némirovsky, C.D. Wright...

**

Gabriel was baptized on Easter weekend during the Easter Vigil service, a two-hour marathon, candlelit service that begins at 9 pm. Perfect for a newborn, right?! But he was an angel during the part that mattered, and I love how beautiful and symbolic that moment was: we began the service in darkness and quiet, and after the ceremony of baptism, the sanctuary burst into light and bells pealed. New birth, new life, Christ's victory over death.

**

We finally got a washer and dryer, just three days ago, and we finally get to use the cloth diaper stash that I've been carefully building up! Yay for cute bediapered bum and no more insane accumulation of chemicals and plastic that won't biodegrade for hundreds of years.

**

There is no good system for baby clothing. Fumbling at tiny little snaps in the middle of the night: no good. Zippers that risk pinches on baby skin: no good. Elastic-bottomed gowns that ride up under baby's armpits: no good. A day after Gabriel was born, at 7 in the morning, our pediatrician (very nicely) laughed at our totally botched job of snapping up Gabriel's pajamas, while we tried to appear totally casual and with it despite being utterly groggy in our rumpled hospital gear.

**

Speaking of which: those same pajamas, which swamped his little body that first day, were so quickly outgrown that at 4 weeks we could barely button them. Gabriel weighed 14 pounds at 6 weeks and 15 pounds 3 ounces at his two month checkup. I knew we'd have a big baby, but wow!

**

I spend a lot of the day hoping that Gabriel will fall asleep so I can get something done, but then he'll fall asleep in my arms or on my chest, and that feeling is so delicious that I just hold him and stare at him, and still don't get anything done.

**

I had no idea just how chest-explodey Gabriel's first smiles would make me. Those first fleeting times that he smiled AT US were so fantastic that we became big goofballs in efforts to make him keep doing so, but of course he just regarded us with his serious tiny baby face. Now he smiles much more often, and it still makes you drop everything and grin like a fool back at him.

**

We leave for Washington, Boston, and Barcelona in a week. While Gabriel is already relatively well-traveled, I'm kind of overwhelmed by the idea of a 12-hour car ride and a 12-hour plane trip. The amount of stuff, for one, and then the crying, for another. But as with many things in life, I know that it'll happen and it'll be fine because, well, it's just what we've gotta do. We're looking forward to introducing Gabriel to everyone back in Barcelona, especially his 95-year-old great grandmother. We're going to throw him a heck of a party and invite everyone we know.

**

In case you don't know, we've decided to come back to Indiana after the summer. As much of a hurry as I was in to leave this place when it meant marrying M. and heading to Europe, I'm discovering that it's pretty great here, and there's a lot to be said for small town life when you have a kid. We're going to learn the ropes of city living with an infant, too, this summer, but I'm guessing we'll be relieved to be back here. And it'll be with a SIX-MONTH old. (Alert: motherhood cliché ahead.) It's already going too fast.

The wait is over

2010-02-20T04:38:00.003+01:00

And it was really really worth it.

Gabriel was born on Monday, February 15, at 4:15 in the morning. My water broke on Sunday morning, and because labor didn't get going on its own, and because of the risk of infection if he wasn't out within 24 hours, I was induced. That was scary because of all the possible scenarios, but labor and delivery went so beautifully and peacefully that I still feel euphoric thinking about it.

More to come soon...I want to write down the whole birth story before I begin to forget things. I'm not sure yet whether I'll post it all here, but I hope I find time to get it written. Meanwhile, the cutest baby in the world is calling my name.

Waiting game

2010-02-13T19:50:00.002+01:00

The goal: avoid thinking about it too much.

Reality: impossible to not think about it.

Coping mechanisms: distraction! Cook, bake, read, shop, nap, eat. Mall walk, yoga. Singer/songwriter cousin in town! Going to hear her play!

Distracted from distraction: skype ringing, baby kicking, Braxton-Hicks contractions, BabyCenter updates that tell me my newborn is one week old, worrisome benchmarks loom.

Worrisome benchmarks: Monday, a non-stress test to make sure the baby is, um, non-stressed (I'm pretty sure he is: chillin out, maxin, relaxin all cool). Thursday, when the midwife will start talking induction. Next Sunday, when my family leaves.

The goal: avoid thinking about it too much.

Due date

2010-02-08T22:40:00.003+01:00

Here it is, the day that we've mentally circled in red for over half a year. The day that means this baby has been growing for forty weeks, a long time by anybody's counting, but time gone so fast that I'm a bit sad it's coming to an end. I wouldn't mind being pregnant for a little while longer.

Just not forty weeks pregnant. At this point, all the expectation and the excitement and the very heavy crampy belly are hard to handle all at once. There's the scary and exhilarating thought "it could be today/tonight!" tempered with the relief and dread of "it could be a week from now."

We've spent record time on Skype with family and friends in the last few days, and there's never anything to report, although it's reassuring to talk to them all and makes me feel totally surrounded by their love even though they're far away.

We went to the opera that we've had tickets for since September, always knowing that we might not get to go. We went, and enjoyed it, and lo and behold! my water didn't break.

My mom and I have been cooking and baking up a storm (no-knead bread is the best thing ever!), and we watched the Super Bowl at a nearby hotel (even though M. and I are total football philistines).

I am trying to appreciate everything that is still easy to do unhampered by a baby (an external one, that is): sleeping in, taking long showers, jumping in the car at a moment's notice, watching movies, eating out, shopping, reading for long stretches of time. Tonight we're going out for a nice meal to celebrate the due date.

But even late-third-trimester indolence has its limits, and I can't wait to have a good reason not to be able to do all of those things for a while. A *really* good reason.

Clothes woes

2010-02-01T22:10:00.004+01:00

As my belly gets bigger and bigger--the growth is quite exponential in these last days, and to think that I was impatient even to have a belly for most of this pregnancy!--my wardrobe gets smaller and smaller.

I didn't purchase too many "maternity" clothes to begin with. The entire lot of my own purchases consists of 1 pair of jeans (absolutely essential, and I swear by the Gap 1969 line now so much that I will buy an identical but non-maternity pair when I can wear non-maternity jeans again), 1 pair of thrift-store black pants, 6 long-sleeve shirts or lightweight sweaters (all Gap), 1 short sleeve t-shirt and 1 tank top (both Target). Oh, and another warm cowl-neck Target top that is not maternity but is long and comfy and (still!) handles the bump with ease.

My sister loaned me a few more maternity shirts and a couple of sweaters, and my mother-in-law brought me a couple of non-maternity but still roomy tops from her boutique. Besides that, I've relied on my bella band to make a few of my regular pants last until around Christmas time, two pairs of yoga pants, LOTS of cardigans to make it seem like I wasn't wearing the same darn shirt again, a few of my old shirts and t-shirts that were stretchy enough to accommodate a belly (these are fewer and fewer now, maybe 4-5?) and a couple of stretchy-banded skirts. I've been wearing my regular winter coat, although the buttons no longer button, and my regular pajamas, although my belly now pokes out of them quite comically.

Anyway, the point of this inventory is that compared to the amount of clothing I have at my disposal when I'm not pregnant, my wardrobe is pretty tiny. My choice of pants comes down to: Am I going anywhere today? If yes, the jeans. If no, the yoga pants. My choice of tops comes down to: Have I worn this in the last four days? If not, it's time to wear it yet again! Maybe with a different cardigan!

But the funny thing is, I kind of like this state of affairs. It makes things easy. Jeans and black yoga pants match everything! I don't have to worry too much about looking cute, because I have an excuse not to (and because I'm not teaching this semester). I do like most of the clothes that I've ended up with here at the end of the game, so I feel pretty confident that I look decent, if not a fashion plate (not that I ever was, or ever will be, a fashion plate). The colors I have to work with--for some reason, a lot of jewel colors like deep purple and jade green--are bright and make me happy. I guess the lesson here is that in my normal life I have more clothes than I need. Plus, in the last week, I've gotten new slippers, new boots, and a haircut--three things that have made me feel cozier and kickier than anything, and don't depend at all on belly girth!

Meanwhile, as my wardrobe shrinks, the baby's grows. I've tried not to go overboard in buying baby clothes (actually, until after Christmas we had barely bought a single thing) but the other day I got nervous that he didn't have enough basics so I went to the thrift store and bought him a rather impressive pile of $1 long-sleeve onesies in cute stripes and solids (I've banished made-up logos and fake athletic wear--what's up with that anyway?), sleepers, and assorted little jackets and jeans.

He is, without a doubt, going to be the cuter of the two of us. Not that I'm complaining.

Spicy

2010-02-01T20:27:00.003+01:00

One of the unfortunate side-effects of this pregnancy has been the near-constant pain of fiery heartburn. This has been mostly kept under control with the blessed relief of doctor-approved Zantac, taken twice daily. But I still have breakthrough pain: mostly due to my inability to stop eating spicy foods.

I never realized just how dependent my diet--or, I should say, my cooking repertoire--is on the spicy foods. In the last week of meals, I have made:

1. thai green curry with shrimp, spicier than I had planned because the curry paste already had a lot of heat built in
2. rice and beans with chipotle chilis
3. burritos made with the leftover beans and extra (hot) salsa
4. fried rice made with the leftover rice and plenty of pepper flakes
5. this broth with soba noodles, to which I could not resist adding judicious glops of sambal oolek
6. home fries, with plenty of red and black pepper

I'm probably forgetting some. Each time, I dither about whether I should make the dish because I know it will cause (usually late-night) distress, but I still make it. Each time, I try to make the dish only a *little* spicy and still end up with some degree of fire. Why?

Also, I drink loads of cold water with the spicy meals and the midwife told me that drinking liquids with a meal can increase the effects of heartburn. She also told me that drinking water before bed can make things worse, but I can't help it because I'm continually thirsty, and can't stop drinking as much ice-cold water as I can get my hands on. Then there are the smoothies... because aside from the spicy dishes I keep making, mostly I crave cold, frosty beverages. I NEVER drink soda and I've even had a few cokes in the past weeks because the idea of a really cold one sounds so delicious to me.

Looks like I'm creating a fire-and-ice situation in my gut that is bound to end badly. Oh well, the Zantac takes care of most of the problem, and this all should go away once this kid is out and about and no longer hogging my personal gastrointestinal space.

In other news: my mom arrives today! I guess that means this baby is really supposed to make an appearance, and I'm actually going to be, like, the mother of an infant. Huh.

Body, mind

2010-01-28T00:33:00.005+01:00

I had a prenatal massage this afternoon, a fantastic Christmas gift from my parents. I always love getting a massage (not that it happens that often; maybe the last time was a year ago?) and I was especially looking forward to this one, given the extra aches and pains associated with loosened joints and a squirmy baby's worth of extra poundage hanging off my frame. Also, last night I found it nearly impossible to sleep in any comfortable fashion, so I was really ready to relax.

The body-length bolster that I was to curl myself around looked promising, and the room was, as one would expect, suitably soothing. The massage itself was fantastic, thoroughly working all the sore spots I knew I had and some that I didn't. I was just disappointed in my inability to just let go, TURN OFF my brain and fully enjoy the moment. And then I found myself analyzing the fact that I couldn't turn off my brain, an endless loop of internal narrative.

One among many of the subjects that flittered across my consciousness concerned the music playing in the room: the obligatory Native American flute and oriental plucked strings. Who decided that this kind of music says "relax" to people? What if I would relax more easily to the strains of Bach or some smoky jazz? In fact, the more I thought about it, the more the airy flute and pseudo-eastern plucking got on my nerves. Counterproductive, to say the least.

Then, various anxious reflections on the state of my body and continual self-reassurance that any massage therapist will have seen things much, much worse and that's his job anyway and if he was grossed out by touching other people's feet he wouldn't have chosen this career.

And of course, the background hum--the insistent basso continuo of my days--of wondering about baby. When? is the first bone to worry over pointlessly, and then, scenarios of labor and delivery, and postpartum recovery and visitors and in general...life. With a baby. I'm constantly trying to visualize it but no matter how much I imagine and plan it seems impossible and distant and not something that is going to happen to me any moment. Technically, I could have a baby--our baby!--in my arms by this time tomorrow. If that isn't an overwhelming and scary thought, I don't know what is. Both because of what has to occur before getting to that point, and because of what being responsible for a whole new person means.

For what it's worth, though, I don't feel like anything is about to happen. My due date is another week and a half, and I think it'll be at least that, if not beyond, before baby makes an appearance. There are no signs--no further contractions, no nesting (I wouldn't mind a little of the nesting urge!), no dilation. But again, maybe it's just my inability to imagine it happening that makes it seem so far away!

Sigh. I'll just keep on with my daily smoothie fix (20 degrees and snowy outside and all I want to eat is frozen and cold food!), running around to appointments, trying to get enough sleep, and lots of leaning forward to encourage the baby to stay in a labor-friendly position. And then one day it'll happen. Just like that.

Ninth month

2010-01-14T23:03:00.004+01:00

At my checkup this morning I met with a doctor instead of my midwife in case the midwife is gone when I go into labor (this is a real possibility, since she is away for a conference during the four days leading up to my due date). Anyway, he asked me if I've been feeling well and I basically told him that it's been a pretty easy pregnancy so far, and he said, "boring is good!" I responded, "I wouldn't go so far as to say it's been boring..."

Because even the most "uneventful" pregnancy is still so crazy and rollercoastery... nonstop fireworks, really. My body is an old dog with some seriously new tricks.

But what has been surprising to me is how much rounding the corner into the ninth month has meant pretty much all of the classic pregnancy symptoms show up en masse. Until recently, I slept through the night, never experienced the whole peeing every five seconds thing, didn't have backaches or sciatica or strange skin eruptions or weepy hormonal jags or achy joints or swelling or nasal congestion (and attendant champion snoring--sorry M.) or super tiredness. Heartburn was my main complaint, and in the first trimester, indigestion and food issues. Now? Welcome to a whole passel of pregnancy fun! The weirdest new thing is that I wake up with really sore finger joints, like I scaled a rock wall with my bare hands during the night. The coolest new thing is just how present the baby is; I feel every movement so intensely and I can practically see his feet and pat his bum.

The most WHOA nelly! new thing was last night, when I had my first contraction! I hadn't had one before, and as I was swinging my legs out of bed to get up and turn off the light, the whole lower half of my belly got really crampy with shooting pain. It lasted 30 seconds or so, settling down rather slowly. I asked the doctor about it today and he said, "Yep, that's a contraction! You can expect to feel more of them over the next weeks." And then, um, a *whole lot* more of them before we have a baby on our hands. Like I said, Whoa nelly!

As of Sunday, the baby will be considered full term (37 weeks), so this whole shebang really is imminent... and there's so much to do! But the likelihood for a first timer is that I'll go past my due date. I vote for that, despite the list of complaints above. I've got a chapter to finish and we have a lot to do around the house and we urgently need to get a washing machine...gulp. That's just for starters.

The human whirl

2010-01-08T17:51:00.003+01:00

The Mister gave me a really nice edition of the works of Umberto Saba, poet of Trieste, whose life spanned both World Wars. He fought as a soldier in the first war and was forced into hiding during the second. The poems are beautiful in their simplicity and autobiographical matter-of-factness.

We returned the first copy to the store because the book was missing pages, and this morning I got the replacement in the mail--it, too, is missing the same pages. So sadly I will have to choose another book (well, to be honest, that's not so sad a prospect). Before I have to relinquish my gift, though, I've been skimming through as much of the book as possible, and I thought I'd share a poem (written during World War I).

The Egoist

You wonder at me and at the thing
so firmly locked in my heart
that I keep hidden from others' eyes;
because the human whirl may be peace to me,
because great gentleness holds fast in me;

because I seek the calm of meditation
even as bodies and minds are consumed by war,
I seem to you a really wicked man.
But wicked I am not, nor am I good.
You should know, then, that I am a poet.

Things tempt him, but not much,
that men make on the face of the earth
either with blood or in play.
He digs deep, deep is his treasure,
at the heart of the Earth, the golden heart.

Umberto Saba, tr. George Hochfield and Leonard Nathan

New Year's Meme 2006/2009

2010-01-07T21:15:00.000+01:00

So I did this meme in 2006, and I was going to do the 2009 version, and when I looked up the blog post I found out I never even posted it! So this year it's a two-fer, from the me of 2006 and the me of 2009. Both were pretty good years, I'd say: wedding bells and baby booties...

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Drove a massive stick-shift van across Europe. Appeared on Catalan television and at the Palau de la Musica with my choir. Went to the gym a lot, and liked it. Became an official resident of Spain. Visited Budapest. Got pregnant. Told my husband we were pregnant over Skype. Spent the 4th of July in our nation's capital.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I did keep many of last year's resolutions. One of them was to get in shape, and in general get my health taken care of, which I am really pleased to say I did before getting pregnant.
A joint resolution that the Mister and I made was to go hiking a lot. We went hiking... once. But it was a memorable hike, with my siblings up the familiar slopes of Mount Mansfield! And I did it while pregnant, so I was pretty proud of myself.
This year I probably won't make a lot of resolutions, knowing that it's going to be full of the unexpected and getting used to a cute little life-changer.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
A couple of cousins and a few friends.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, and I am thankful for that.

5. What countries did you visit?
Spain, Belgium, France, Hungary, the US. It's funny to me that the concept of "visit" during this year has gotten pretty twisted around. Now that we're living in the US again, we "visited" Spain for Thanksgiving. When we were living in Spain we "visited" the US. This summer was one whole mishmash between the two.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A whole little person made out of my genes and my husband's genes and God's handicraft.
And a completed dissertation, if it's not too much to ask.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
June 10. Holding a pee stick up to the computer's video screen, unable to speak because of the simultaneous, uncontrollable laughing and crying. The look on the Mister's face.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
See above. Also: moving from Brussels to Barcelona. Then moving from Barcelona to Bloomington.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I am still writing my dissertation.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, phew!

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Fortunately, this year we haven't had to buy much. One good buy was a local farm share. Also: some baby accoutrements, which are "the best" more for what they represent than what they are.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The Mister. Obama. Our families.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Hmmm...

14. Where did most of your money go?
The usual...mortgages, rent, food. Plane tickets.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
This creature growing in my belly! The inauguration, Budapest, my brother's wedding, friends' weddings, last hurrah in Vermont, baby shower in Boston, Thanksgiving in Barcelona, Christmas in Maine.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Bach Magnificat. The jazz cantata we sang in my choir. "Parlez-moi d'amour."

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder?  b) thinner or fatter?  c) richer or poorer?
a. Happier. b. I *was* thinner, but then this whole baby thing happened and I am currently, shall we say, portlier than last year. c. Poorer. Associate instructor incomes as opposed to European politician incomes will do that.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Writing. Spending time outdoors.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastination. Worrying.

20. What was the best book you read?
That's a tough one. There were so many, and right now I can't remember them all. I remember loving Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, and Jeannette Winterson's The Stone Gods. A random one that has stuck in my head is Central Park in the Dark, a nonfiction book about New York City wildlife, by Marie Winn. It was an antidote and an escape this summer.

21. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Pandora internet radio! Not new, or much of a "discovery" but I'm behind the 8-ball on things like that.

22. What was your favorite film of this year?
I really liked Away We Go, but probably because I was newly pregnant and we were deciding where to live and the whole pregnancy/road trip to find a home theme really resonated with me.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 31. I spent it with the Mister, and family and friends. A nice lunch with M. and a low-key party. Just about perfect.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
To have made more progress on my dissertation.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Unfussy, work-at-home comfortable. Which pretty much means: jeans, simple tops. This hasn't changed a whole lot with the pregnancy.

26. Who did you miss?
My husband, during the part of the year where he was in Brussels half the time, and when we were apart for so much of my first trimester. My family, when we were in Europe. M's family, when we're here.

27. What kept you sane?
The Mister. My mom. Music. Books. Sleep.

***2006

1. What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before?
Got married.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Probably not. I can't remember what they were. Did I write them down?
Yes.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Only, like, everyone.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My grandfather passed away in February.

5. What countries did you visit?
Spain, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, the US

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
Can't think of a thing.

7. What dates from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
This is a no-brainer. July 2, 2006, marrying the man I love.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Making a wedding happen. Tied with: passing my doctoral exams and writing my MFA thesis.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not getting my dissertation proposal done before the end of the semester.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, phew!

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A 75% on-sale wedding dress that was perfect.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Our families. They were awesome with the wedding, helping with it all and never complaining.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
A host of movie stars and politicians.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Travel. We, um, sort of stopped paying attention to how much money we were spending on our honeymoon, and, um, oops.
Also: mortgages. I married into one of them, and signed on for the other only a few months later.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Again, duh.

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
I'm not sure songs remind me of years, exactly. But the chorale from the Saint Saens' organ concerto was the music playing when I walked into the church...
And I will remember my house of love roommates when I hear Serge Gainsbourg.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder?  b) thinner or fatter?  c) richer or poorer?
Happier, fatter, and, both poorer and richer. Poorer because I'm not earning a penny at the moment, and richer because my husband's earning a few more than I ever have.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Exercise, time with friends.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastination.

20. What was the best book you read?
David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. I looooved it.

21. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I don't think I'd be able to say I truly "discovered" anybody. I'm not very hip like that.

22. What was your favorite film of this year?
I'm bad with films. At the moment, I can't remember the title of a single one that I saw in the past year.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 28. I went out for a schmancy dinner with friends.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
It was pretty satisfying as it was.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
I think I'd be embarrassed to own up to a "personal fashion concept" even if, in practice, I have one.

26. Who did you miss?
For most of the year until the wedding thing, M.

27. What kept you sane?
Knowing that the wedding thing would happen, and then we'd be married.

New year, snow

2010-01-07T20:30:00.000+01:00

Today has been a quiet, hot cocoa kind of day. The snow hasn't stopped coming down since last night, so we are enjoying the feeling of being blanketed in a soft sweep of white. The Mister stayed home instead of going to the office, we got to have lunch together, and we worked quietly throughout the day. To-do lists seem to be put on hold (and they are many). Peppermint hot chocolate in the afternoon was a must. Students still haven't returned to campus, meaning the streets of the town have been quiet and peaceful. We went out for dinner last night and had to try four restaurants before we found one that was open.

Oh, and the Kings made it to Indiana! I pretty much forgot that the night of January 5, the three Kings deliver presents, and when I woke up on January 6 sure enough there were some surprise packages on the breakfast table.

The baby's bum is currently wedged tightly under my ribs, and his hiccups are making my whole belly shake. He seems to be running out of room...his goal for the new year, I think, is to find a different residence. But he has no idea what he's in for. We finally set up his furniture, which doesn't amount to much: a pack n' play, a stroller, a car seat. Probably none of them will feel as cozy as his floaty round cocoon.

I'm so glad we had this time between our Christmas trip and the beginning of the semester. We've spent time with friends and with each other, and have continued to get ready (as ready as we can) for the February newcomer. These days have each felt like gifts, as the first days of a new year should.

Christmas week in Maine, by the numbers

2009-12-29T19:49:00.004+01:00

approximate hours spent in pajamas: 100

games played: 11
(Nerts, Oh heck, Catchphrase, Trivial Pursuit, Tick, Apples to Apples, Go Fish, War, Old Maid [these last three particular favorites of our 4-year old nephew], Bunko, Boggle)

types of sweets eaten: 18
(although not exactly countable since this involved ongoing grazing, there was: pumpkin bread pudding, apple crisp, chocolate sour cream cake, coconut macaroons, raspberry coconut bars, toffee chocolate bars, caramel chocolate nest cookies, mexican wedding cookies, date bars, butternut squash bread, banket [Dutch almond patties], puppy chow, maple pound cake, homemade candy [truffles, peppermint patties, caramels, and maple candy], french cherry pie)

entire containers of Tums chewed due to pregnancy/overeating hearburn: 1

bookstores or booksales visited: 6

books read and/or purchased: 9
(I finally got to read Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, finished but was disappointed by Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, and got a beautiful edition of Umberto Saba's poems, plus a bunch of small-town library book sale finds)

suitcases checked due to unwieldy piles of books on return trip home: 2

Christmas-eve candlelight services: 1

weeks pregnant: 34

airport delays: 0, thank heavens

sub-freezing walks on the beach: 1

snowfalls: 2

matching t-shirts donned for matching t-shirt photo: 15

Christmas plays performed: 1 (I was pregnant Mary)

stockings hung by the chimney with care: 15

moments I thought what an awesome family this kid is going to be born into: countless

30 weeks

2009-12-03T00:43:00.005+01:00

Ah, yes. I have a blog. I'm sorry I haven't written, and surprised I haven't written much here, because pregnancy is such a weird and cool and shocking thing, and I'm weirded out and shocked almost every day. And I love reading about other people's pregnancies, have survived by doing so. Yet this at the same time it is all so personal and interior and inward...all so our experience that I want to savor it with the Mister, and friends and family--writing about it just seems to place me squarely in cliché-land. Oh, yes, I suppose there's another reason I haven't written much: trying to eke out a dissertation, grading the never-ending pile of student papers that threatens to slope off of our coffee table, and making lesson plans (only a couple more to go!) have just been a *tad* bit time-consuming.

We flew to Barcelona for Thanksgiving week; it was our last chance to see everyone there before baby, and to show off the belly (I finally have one!). We filled the too-quick trip spending as much time as possible with our friends and family, especially the Mister's grandmother, and eating as much tapas and delicious seafood as possible (fortunately, these two agenda items were perfectly compatible, although not with my smooshed heartburn-prone stomach). We made a Catalan-American Thanksgiving dinner: I contributed stuffing, potatoes, and an apple pie to others' roasted chicken, salad and vegetables. It only tasted a little like Thanksgiving, but at the same time I was so thankful for...everything...that it was indeed a Thanksgiving day.

However. I don't exactly recommend a 9 and a half hour flight crammed into the tiniest seats known to man plus two layovers when one is thirty weeks pregnant. It didn't help that our alarm didn't go off the morning of our return trip and at 6am the taxi driver woke us up. But at the same time, the travel went well and I stayed hydrated and on my feet (although my ankles resembled tree trunks by the time it was all said and done).

Speaking of which, how did 22 weeks become 30? How did I suddenly turn into the pregnant lady who "oof"s and groans every time she sits down, stands up, or rolls over? I really do think it happened overnight, because only a few days ago I was still amazed that I felt rather sprightly and was surprised every time I looked down--what I looked like didn't correspond with what I felt like. But now the two are starting to come closer together: I am definitely starting to feel like what I look like. As one of my students oh-so smilingly pointed out today, I am huffing and puffing a lot when I arrive to class. (Thanks, buddy! I hadn't noticed!) Also, turning the corner into the last ten weeks makes it seem a bit more real--in the 20-something weeks you're only about halfway. But in the 30-something weeks it's all a countdown to the big day.

There's still so much to do! So much to buy! My mom, sister, and sisters-in-law threw me a fantastic baby shower in Boston the day we flew out from there to Barcelona, and in addition to being really fun and a perfect chance to see some of the Boston-based lovely ladies in my life, they gave us some wonderful gifts. Then in Barcelona we were also given so many cute little outfits and bedding and hand-me-downs that we came home with quite a nice start to filling out this baby's wardrobe and swaddling needs. (We got so many striped outfits--I love them!--that the Mister expressed worry that our baby might look like a broken television...) But it is just the beginning! I finally ordered some of the cloth diapers we'll need, which I feel very triumphant about, and we plan to make another run to Indianapolis for further baby equipment, including the sort of obligatory crib and carseat.

Christmas is right around the corner, and I know that will make these last ten weeks (or less?!) fly by. I want to savor them all, remember every drop of them. I love being pregnant, love seeing how my body is changing and what it's capable of. I don't want this to go too fast, but at the same time, the arrival of our son can't come fast enough.

Snips and snails

2009-10-13T17:32:00.004+02:00

Last Thursday we went to our 22-week midwife appointment and ultrasound, eager to know what variety of human we would be having in February, eager to have a pronoun to use when referring to this child of ours, eager to narrow down our name speculation by half. The Mister had a feeling that it would be a boy, while I had absolutely no intuition in one direction or another.

As the technician rolled the rolly ultrasound thing over my belly, she pointed out kidneys and brain hemispheres and heart chambers, a nose and fingers and toes, femurs and ribs and the umbilical cord. At last, hovering over another grainy image of round shapes, she typed BOY in big yellow letters on the screen. The Mister was right! It only sunk in, a few tears escaping of their own accord, when the technician started talking about "his legs" and the way "he's kicking." And kick he did! It was rather wild to watch him kick and feel it at the same time, hard enough that the little ultrasound wand bobbed up and down too. We watched him (him!) swallow amniotic fluid, we admired his little feet waving around, and found his little curled fist tucked under his jaw.

We were able to tell all four grandparents in person, since they were all in town over the weekend. As the Mister's only sister does not plan to have any more kids in addition to her two girls, the news was greeted with special joy by the Catalan family. But a new baby is always joyful, and since my parents adore their three grandsons (and surely have quite a few more grandchildren on the horizon--there are five of us, after all), they were just as thrilled with the boy-baby news as all of us.

I surprised myself by feeling both thrilled and a little let down, too, sad about the girl that we don't have, even though I had no preference one way or the other and was equally excited about the possibility of both. I was puzzling over this to my friend, and she told me: until now, it was like I had two imaginary babies, and both were equally present in my mind's eye. Now there's just one, so it makes sense that I would feel a tiny bit of loss for the other. If it were the day of birth, the emotions of meeting our son would probably wipe away any lingering regret about a daughter, but since it's all still so abstract, I've lost one world of possibility, one of tiny dresses and a mother-daughter relationship.

But those feelings were short-lived. After all, I may still have that daughter some day. And for now, we are looking forward to *this* kid, the one who will wear stripes and gurgle and fit into the crook of our arms.

Punkin'

2009-10-13T12:20:00.000+02:00

I don't know if I can chalk it up to pregnancy cravings, or to my annual obsession with fall foods, or to the awareness that next year we may again be without easy access to pumpkin-flavored goodies, but I have been on a pumpkin streak over this past week or so. It helped that we ate out and cooked a lot, in the name of giving my parents-in-law a taste of a broad variety of American foods (items they had never eaten before this week: quesadillas, French toast, breakfast sausage, grits, portobello mushrooms, pecan pie, zucchini bread, dill pickles, jumbalaya, bagels, fudge, grilled cheese sandwiches, and yes, pumpkin-flavored things, with the exception of the pumpkin desserts I made last year for Thanksgiving).

The list of pumpkin foods I have eaten over the past week alone:

pumpkin cream cheese muffins
pumpkin spice doughnuts
pickled pumpkin salad with crunchy pumpkin seeds
spicy pumpkin soup
pumpkin cheesecake
pumpkin bagels with pumpkin cream cheese
pumpkin pie fudge
pumpkin ice cream (two versions)
pumpkin gnocchi with sage brown butter sauce (which I made from scratch!)
pumpkin bread pudding (this is the most delicious and easy dessert ever: it impressed my guests and I'm considering making another pan of it just for myself)

When everybody began to notice my penchant for nabbing any pumpkin item from every menu and making as much pumpkiny food as possible, they started to joke that we should name the baby (oh! the name debates! they are raging) Pumpkin, or Carabasseta (little pumpkin, in Catalan). It's not half bad, at least as a placeholder until we have a permanent name. Our little pumpkin baby, round and chubby and scrumptious.

Week in review

2009-10-03T21:14:00.005+02:00

It's been a good week at Can Cant d'Ocell (=Chez Birdsong). It started in Boston, where I made a quick trip to attend my nephew's baptism and first birthday party: a beautiful occasion and a great chance to spend time with my family. I figured I should take advantage of being nearby and childless--two situations that won't last much longer. My flights went so smoothly and quickly (what a novelty: a direct flight landing in the same time zone one takes off in!) and the new Indianapolis airport is so work-friendly that I actually hung around after arriving to take advantage of the comfy seats and free internet.

The highlight of the week was finally having the Mister home, waking up at 6:30 am the next morning (he was jet-lagged; I was restless) and discovering that the baby was restless, too: we could both feel those tiny extremities making sturdy bumps and thumps against my stomach.

My parents-in-law also arrived from Spain for a visit, and their first day here was the perfect kind, a real fall day with a chill in the air and warm sun, all the better to show off the lovely corners of campus. We were invited to my thesis director's house for dinner, which I was a bit nervous about but turned out to be a fabulous dinner party, and probably the only possible event in town that could allow my (non-English-speaking) parents in-law to converse with other Catalans.

Today we went to the Farmer's Market and enjoyed taking in the bounty of southern Indiana's fall produce. My in-laws were charmed by the Amish and other local farmer types, the folk music, and the abundance of pumpkins and gourds. And for further exposure to Bloomington's back corners, we drove to a few yard sales and found some bargains for our kitchen (glassware), closets (shoe racks and one baby item, a gender-neutral yet adorable pair of denim overalls), and winter preparedness (snow shovel). Total cost: $2.00. Tonight we're headed to the opera, which should be a nice ending to a great week.

Ommm

2009-09-25T01:12:00.003+02:00

I just got back from my first prenatal yoga class at the local birth services center. I haven't been to a yoga class in months, since long before we got the news, so the beginning of the class was just a process of readjusting my body to the stretches of yoga.

Then, about ten minutes in, the teacher instructed us to "inhale, directing the focus to your baby."

Me: "wut?"

I had sort of forgotten about the "prenatal" part of this yoga class, at least on a physical level. On a social level, I was a little embarrassed at how underwhelming my belly was, in class full of women either about to burst, or who like me are around 21 weeks, but who unlike me are sporting big robust stomachs.

Between the distractions of belly comparisons (I know, silly of me) and reacquainting myself with yoga, I was completely caught off guard by the reminder that this was no longer about just my body and that there was an entire *other* body involved.

So then I was amused by this sort of freakish state of affairs and started laughing silently in the middle of our cat pose, which didn't really fit the whole serene flow that the teacher was aiming for, I suppose. I wondered if the baby was getting the good vibes of my movements, or maybe even doing a fetus version of yoga poses.

At the end of class, during the relaxation time, sure enough, he or she started thumping around down there. It wasn't very relaxing, but it was quite entertaining to consider what kind of baby yoga moves were being conducting inside of my uterus.

Does this pregnancy thing ever stop being totally bizarre?

About face

2009-09-23T00:05:00.003+02:00

Here is a question that I do not know how to answer: Should I join Facebook?

On one hand, pretty much everyone I know is there, and I have received many requests to join, and I think it would be a nice way to keep up to date on people's lives, while they keep up on mine. The Mister is on it, and I see the value of maintaining connections with people who otherwise would be lost to my past.

On the other hand. Oh, the other hand. I haven't joined so far because on a practical level, I think it would be just one more time suck on the internet. I also haven't joined because I'm exceedingly wary of managing my online presence under my full name. There's a reason this blog never mentions my last name, the Mister's name is not public, I don't post too many pictures, and many topics are off limits.

I also don't like the jumble of everybody in one's life being thrown under the category "friends" and everyone being privy to the comments and conversations of everyone else. (Which, admittedly, is part of the attraction of Facebook on the voyeuristic end.) I tend to have very distinct and small knots of close friends from the many places I've lived, and I don't think the kinds of relationships I have across the board necessarily "translate" from one group to the other. They're all facets of me, but they're different facets. I can imagine this leading to awkwardness. Maybe I'm too concerned about how people view me, but that's part of being a quiet/private person.

As a simple example, back when we first told our family about the pregnancy, one of my aunts congratulated M. on Facebook--perfectly natural and very thoughtful of her to do so. But he hadn't told any of his work colleagues yet, including those who were doing legwork for potential job placements for him. So he had to delete her comment (awkward) and hope that no one had seen it. I can imagine situations even more awkward than this one.

In addition, having resisted Facebook so far, I'm really indignant about the assumption that *everyone* is on it. I have missed important news from friends and relatives--the "we're moving!" news, the "I'm pregnant!" news, or worse, "the baby is born!" news--because they assume posting it as a Facebook update means that then everyone knows. In other words, I feel like Facebook sometimes cuts into the (dwindling) amount of personal connection we have with our friends and family (even if it's just an email) under the guise of a purported greater connection. Maybe we're mistaking connectivity for connection?

All of that said, I'm still really tempted to join, especially now that we're pregnant. It would be a good way to let friends and family have quick snapshots of our lives and our growing child, especially as it gets more difficult to write more thorough updates, and the blog might be too public a forum for baby pictures and so forth. So I'm open to being convinced. Should I join Facebook?

Halfway

2009-09-21T01:28:00.002+02:00

Today I am officially at the midpoint of my pregnancy, twenty weeks.

This is a tad disconcerting, because the first half went by really really fast. Granted, we were kind of busy (see: previous post), but still, if the second half goes at all as quickly the first, I should start packing my hospital bag immediately.

Actually, packing is just one of the many things that I am apparently behind on, the things most pregnant women have started to do by now that I haven't even begun to think about, like buying baby clothes out of the "just can't resist" urge or registering for a bewildering pile of apparatuses and baby holders and whatnot.

We've been concentrating on outfitting our house rather than outfitting a tiny person who's just fine hanging out inside me for the time being, so there's that. Also, we want to acquire only the bare minimum of baby accoutrements, limited to what we can take back to Barcelona with us.

There's also the fact that I hardly look pregnant. Close friends assure me that they can see a change (and obviously *I* notice the changes), but I'm certain that I look at best like I've got a bit of a beer/nachos belly. Not unusual for a college town. I'm wearing my regular clothes, and although they feel tight to me they look pretty normal. My students had no idea at all; I told a few of them last week and they commenced to stare at my stomach for the entire class, probably wondering where I was hiding the baby.

They say tall women with long torsos take longer to really show, so I know there's a reason for this: I had all kinds of room in there for the little one to grow into. And I should see it as an advantage, because I'm not yet unwieldy or waddly or uncomfortable. I'm sleeping great, walking to campus, eating normally, and generally just feeling like, well, myself. And I'm sure the ultrasound in a couple of weeks, the one that tells us if we have a boy or girl (if you're wondering: I have no "intuition" or leaning either way and am totally psyched for either), will help me feel more like myself plus one.

So yes, I'm eager to look and feel more pregnant, but for now I'm happy to just *be* pregnant. Come to think of it, there isn't much that's "more" or "less" about it, right? You either are or aren't. And I am.

Begin again

2009-09-19T16:49:00.001+02:00

I didn't mean to leave a cliffhanger of a post up for nearly three month. Will the heroine and her Mister stay in Barcelona? Will they move to Bloomington?

But I did. And one of the reasons that I did is a little six-inch person currently doing somersaults in my belly.

Yes, the Mister and I are expecting a baby!

In fact, that last post, the one that's been sitting on this page for eons, was written just a couple of weeks after we found out I was pregnant, before we had even told all of our immediate family. When I said that I missed the Mister, I *really* meant it: I had never imagined that I would tell my husband the big news over Skype! When I said that I was tired, I *really* meant it: I was both travel weary and first trimester weary.

I had only just begun to experience the bizarreness of pregnancy, that sensation of being taken over by something other than myself. Although I had only a couple of days of true nausea, by the time I got to Washington, DC I was continually hungry yet uninterested in foods that normally are my favorites. I would have moments of bone-crushing exhaustion and painful episodes of indigestion, interspersed with periods of general malaise and achiness that made me glad that at least there was a good reason for it all. And that made me glad that my mom was taking care of me. Through all of this, the Mister and I (over skype!) were trying to make major life decisions about where we would live for the upcoming year, and where we would (gulp!) have our first child. Barcelona meant living in our own home, being close to family, and access to guaranteed medical care. It also meant staying where neither of us had a job. Indiana meant a job, for me at least, but beyond that all I saw were insurmountable hurdles.

By the time I had hitched a ride with my brother and sister-in-law up to Boston, collected the Mister from the airport at long last, and driven to Vermont, we were surprising ourselves by leaning towards an Indiana baby and had begun to search for a university visa for him and housing for the fall. Plus, as I turned the corner from first trimester to second, I began to feel much more like myself again, and we made the most of our week alone before the rest of the family arrived, working as much as we could but also enjoying the jaw-dropping gloriousness that is a Vermont summer.

That next week with my parents, siblings and nephews was a delight: we climbed Mount Mansfield, ate outside with views of the same, splashed around in wading pools, made trips to Burlington and Stowe and poked around in the meadowed corners of the state. This all happened with special intensity this year, because it was our last vacation of that sort for a long time, as my parents have rented out their house and moved to Washington, DC. In fact, as much as I spent time outside, I spent an equal amount of time in the basement, sorting through the boxes that represent my entire life from childhood through graduate school, as well as the bulk of my personal library. The fact that I consolidated the boxes from 30 to 22 does not sound as impressive as it should, given the hours of organization and the ruthless culling and the aching back bent over endless piles of paper and books.

By the time we flew to Barcelona, we had solidified most of the details of our move to Indiana, not that the prospect was any less frightening. We spent two weeks at home, furiously cleaning out our apartment for a renter to move in--a friend, thank goodness, meaning we only had to truly move our things out of the bedroom and the bathroom, although we did undergo a thorough cleaning and reorganizing process for the rest of it. We enjoyed a few precious days at the seaside, had our first ultrasound glimpse of baby, saw as many friends and family members as we could to say goodbye, then *poof* once again we were on our way back to Boston. The next morning, we began our drive out to Indiana with my parents' car--they've generously loaned it to us for the year-- stuffed full of our suitcases and miscellaneous donated items from my family, me a bundle of nerves the whole way.

And so here we are: I've settled back into the rhythm of teaching, which I suddenly remember that I truly enjoy (except the grading part, harrumph). We've outfitted our little rental with donations from friends, craigslist purchases and yard sale finds, and are enjoying the gorgeous, still summery fall weather. There's the farmer's market to look forward to every weekend, the walks to campus, the forgotten perks of a quiet small town existence.

The Mister is currently in Europe, because he had to finish up the visa application process (we were sort of late to the game, you see) and attend a couple of conferences. It's been surprisingly hard to be away from him, given how accustomed we are to long separations. But we had just settled into a lovely rhythm of life here, and I can't wait for him to see how his baby's tiny knobby knees can already poke hard enough to feel from the outside.

More wanderings

2009-06-29T18:19:00.008+02:00

My midwestern sojourn has come to an end, and what an end it was! Saturday night I attended the wedding of two beloved friends, and although I had planned to leave early (because of my four-thirty-am wake up the next morning), it was impossible to tear myself away. So: three hours of sleep, a bleary-eyed shuttle ride to the airport, two cramped flights, and a drive home, only to throw on my dress again and attend the wedding reception of another friend (my flight arrived too late for the ceremony). I was ever so glad to be able to be at both weddings, but I did a zombie swan dive into bed when I got home from the second one.

Another reason it was hard to leave Saturday's party: Over the course of those two weeks, including a fantastic bachelorette party in a swanky Chicago condo overlooking the lake, and the pre-wedding preparations, I had gotten to know some of my friend's friends. And--as is logical, since we are all friends with the same awesome person--I was really enjoying their company. But when it was all over, it was farewell for good--when would we see each other again?

Oh, and the Indiana wedding was my first Jewish wedding ever! And it was so much fun. I do believe I shed tears during the hora, when the inner circle of family members widened and intertwined and spun and linked arms. So darn...sob...symbolic!

Anyway, the two weeks flew by in a good way. The first week I stayed with the soon-to-be-marrieds, and the second week I housesat for some people from my old church, which was a good deal given that I got to use their car and only was required to water a few plants. We cooked lots of yummy food, including my first batch of homemade gnocchi and the best paella I've personally ever made (which isn't saying much, but it was delicious). I spent a lot of time holed up in the library and had a series of meetings about teaching in the fall and about my thesis with the department chair and my committee people, which all went swimmingly. And speaking of swimming, there were bits of Bloomington summer fun in the sweltering heat: the outdoor pool (the night swim was possibly the most peaceful swim I've ever taken), the always delightful farmer's market, porch swings and strolls to the ice cream stand and fireflies and flowers. And there were wedding projects! Buying plants and jars and potting terraria for the wedding centerpieces, cutting out and inscribing seed-packet name cards...

I was reminded of what I like about Bloomington, and all the reasons it might be fun to live there during the school year. That said, there is still some debate as to whether I will actually be there in the fall. If I am, though, the Mister will be tagging along, and that, my friends, is a good thing. (Boy do I miss that boy!)

Now we're off to Boston, for just a quick stay and a celebration of my nephew's fourth birthday, and then down to Washington, where I'll be staying with my parents for a couple of weeks, until the Mister flies in and it's time to head back up to Boston and Vermont. It is a wandering kind of summer, that's for sure.

Living the questions

2009-06-12T04:36:00.001+02:00

"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves liked locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

- Ranier Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

Squish

2009-06-11T22:50:00.000+02:00

This has happened before. I leave home to embark on a long American sojourn, and I abandon this little blog, which languishes while I galavant.

I guess the reason is partly because I am seeing the actual people who form my primary blog audience, and partly because I'm, well, on the road. And come to think of it, not much more time has gone by than the usual too-long gap between blog posts; the difference is that I've been more places in the meantime and family life landmarks overbrim the mere record of them.

But just to keep track, I'll enumerate my recent whereabouts. Basically, it's been a tour of the Northeast Corridor. Two weeks ago today (only two weeks?), I flew to Philadelphia, and so did the Mister, although not on the same airline. Boo. Then we drove (er, were driven) to Bucks County to attend my brother's wedding, and sing in it, and in general be happy that I have one more sister-in-law to add to my collection of Awesome Sisters-In-Law. They had a exquisite day, the ceremony was delightful, and the bride and groom were beautiful. Our nephew ever so studiously and carefully carried the little pillow, and forlornly asked at the end of the day, "Am I still a ring bearer?" There was a moment of panic before the ceremony when my dad noticed that one of the rings was missing from the pillow, but did not realize that they were aluminum stand-ins.

The post-wedding day was one of intense Hanging Out with all the lovely friends and relatives who were present. (As the Mister noted, the English phrase "to hang out" is a great catch-all that doesn't actually mean much. Case in point: one can "hang out by [one]self.") The kind of thing where breakfast turns into a four-hour gabfest with all the people who are coming and going in the hotel breakfast nook, plus snatches of the Sunday New York Times. A whirlwind Philadelphia visit ended the weekend. I hadn't been there since my childhood, so it was fun to revisit the Liberty Bell, take a carriage ride and be impressed by good ol' Ben Franklin all over again. I never did get a water ice, though.

After the wedding weekend a bunch of the immediate family caravaned down to DC, where my Dad has new digs for his temporary job. We spent the week eating and museuming and yes, hanging out, and I got some solid time to research at the Library of Congress (getting a library card is always a thrill, but this one was special) and the Mister had meetings where he gave talks and debates and so forth.

We made a trip to the Natural History Museum, too: after my nephew and I gazed at the record-length squid for a good while, he rushed over to my sister and said breathlessly, "Mom! I just saw a giant SQUISH!"

The Mister flew back home last Friday, and I spent Saturday in the back of a minivan with a lot of luggage and two adorable squirts as we drove up to Boston's North Shore. We had a lovely time together for a few days, and managed to get together with the newlyweds, tanned and honeymoon-glowy. Then down to Boston for a couple of days at my brother's with the littlest nephew, and now on Saturday it's off to the great midwest for the next chapter of this summer marathon!

It's a bare-bones record, but it's the last few weeks in a nutshell. Still, there are times when lists of places visited do not suffice; so much joy and even sorrow is squished into such a fragile frame. The unsaid will have to remain so, the lists a reminder of the lived.

Should

2009-05-26T13:31:00.003+02:00

I shouldn't be blogging. I should be:

1. packing

2. writing any of a gazmillion emails I have to write

3. attending to details for renting for the downtown apartment (new renters move in soon! but too many pesky things to do/fix/print/sign/move)

4. finding housing for a semester

5. finding housing for several of the five cities of my summer peregrinations

6. buying plane tickets and changing old ones

7. sorting through rafts and reams of papers and books to figure out which ones to take with me, with is basically:

8. packing

I really would like to bury my head in a hole, ostrich-style. (Do ostriches really do that? Or is that a myth?)

Oh! I would also like to write about Hungary, and how cool Budapest was, but that's not what I should be doing.

I should be packing.

May days

2009-05-19T11:29:00.003+02:00

I realized the last post is a little too "woe is me!" so I should add that despite it all, it's May, and May in my opinion is The Best Month. When I was in high school, my birthday was just a week before a good friend's birthday, and in calculus class we declared those five days--by writing the words across the empty squares in my calendar--a week of AWESOMENESS. So in my mind, when May rolls around, the awesomeness begins.

This weekend we celebrated my birthday and my sister-in-law's birthday and my father-in-law's saint day in an omnibus outdoor dinner, and I got to choose new clothes from my mother-in-law's store, always a fun prospect. Meanwhile, back in New England, celebrations for my nephew's birthday and my mother's birthday (today!!!) and mother's day and some April birthdays thrown into the mix were also underway. It's a transatlantic party for both sides of our family!

The weather is perfect, the kind of weather I wish it could be year-round, sun and breezes and cool evenings. Our plants are going gangbusters, the balcony doors are permanently thrown open, and even though I don't like the haircut I got yesterday, my husband tells me I'm pretty.

Like I said: awesomeness.

Happy birthday, mom!

Budapest

2009-05-19T10:43:00.003+02:00

One would think that we've got enough on our plates, what with moving a truck of stuff out of one apartment in order to trip over it in another apartment, and with cleaning and fixing up yet another apartment so we can (finally!) get renters moved in. Oh, and there's the question of preparing for our trip to the US next week, which for me may turn into a seven-month stretch rather than a two-month vacation if I decide to just change my return ticket instead of buying new ones. Because it seems that I am going to be back at my university stomping grounds in order to teach for the fall semester. Which also means finding yet another apartment to live in (will we never tire of not living in one place?), and also implies the terrifying prospect of packing a suitcase that will suffice for seven months.

But no! That's not enough, evidently, because we're leaving for Budapest on Thursday. Thursday, as in the day after tomorrow. The trip--the Mister will be speaking at a conference and I'll be a plus one--is actually a compromise, because he was initially planning to be in Budapest and then Bucharest until next Wednesday night (we leave for Philadelphia on Thursday morning). I said I didn't that would be a good idea, except I said it in a slightly more forceful manner. But after we ruled out Bucharest, compared to returning the day before our flight to the US, returning four days before from a shorter trip seemed totally doable, and I was tempted by the glittering idea of a weekend escapade in a country and a city I've never visited. So I said I'd go along, and that's how I find myself about to go to Budapest.

Maybe Budapest will be a good break, though, because all of the other stuff is, to say the least, stressful. I'm nearly paralyzed by the magnitude of "to-do" and the spiral of "what-if" and the sadness of "don't-want-to-leave." The not wanting to leave Barcelona part is not just about spending Fall Semester in the great wide midwest; it's also about the Mister being a candidate for a (really really fantastic and prestigious) job in.... Brussels. Yes, the place that sapped our energies over several years with its uncannily gray skies, and the place that we just turned our backs on in a diesel-puff of exhaust smoke.

Which is why I'm counting on Budapest, one B-city that at least has no emotional connotations in my life, to be a clean slate of a weekend getaway.

Beastly

2009-05-14T19:35:00.004+02:00

In my last post, I referred to the van as a beast, and I after four solid days of driving it, I did not waver from this opinion. We encountered a bit of everything: mountains and rain tempests and hailstorms and border-crossing traffic, and I freaked out regularly (am I doing this right? is the engine supposed to sound like that? what gear am I supposed to be in? should I wait for him to move or try to squeeze into that spot? how will I get out of this space? what if something is behind me and I can't see it?). We learned that big huge vans, especially ones loaded with books and furniture, go pretty slowly, and that it takes sixteen instead of twelve hours to travel from Barcelona to Brussels or vice versa. But there were long stretches of smooth sailing, I learned to trust my sideview mirrors and find the clutch's sweet spot, and we had really good luck across the board.

First of all, the city driving went very well on both ends. And secondly, we were buoyed by the kindness of strangers and friends: the passer-by who parallel-parked the van for me in a tight spot (in front of our house!) in Brussels, the neighbor who carried furniture down the stairs with the Mister, the car rental agent who gave us a 35% discount, the neighbors who took other items off our hands for us, the Sicilians at our favorite neighborhood pizza place, the friend who cooked us dinner when we had no kitchen, the friend who gave us a ride when we didn't want to move the perfectly parked van, family who arranged for help when we arrived in Barcelona, and so on.

We sure did need help; those four days of driving were interposed with one and a half days of frantic packing and paperwork and carting of heavy objects up and down many flights of stairs. The good news is that the van is gone and the stuff is now in our apartment, even the sofa (we planned to sell it, but the buyer backed out and the van was so big that we could take it for its first road trip to Barcelona).

The bad news is that the stuff is now in our apartment.

As in, we now have two households worth of things crammed into our already-small space. This morning we did some major rearranging to accommodate piles of boxes and suitcases and furniture, none of which we have room for. I'm quite disheartened by the impossibility of it all, and the major projects we will have to tackle just to incorporate and/or sell or give away the stuff we didn't have time to deal with in Brussels. On our drive back, we solemnly vowed never to buy anything ever again.

But it feels really good to have one less household. For the first time all of our wedding gifts are in one place! My summer clothes and my winter clothes are in the same city! The two Murakami books that were in Brussels can sit on the shelf next to the two that were in Barcelona! All of our financial records can be merged! And so forth and so on. All thanks to the beast.

First gear

2009-05-09T11:53:00.004+02:00

Of the rental car companies that I consulted, only one had vans available that we could take out of the country. But they were out of minivans, so we had to go with a cargo van, the size-of a nine-passenger dealio. But then they didn't have any of those actually in the lot, so we were upgraded to an even bigger size, the kind with the roof pushed up like a bouffant hairdo.

The idea of me driving this beast through the French countryside is simultaneously amusing and terrifying. We have reservations at a little bed and breakfast for tonight, but I have visions of getting the van wedged into a tiny village lane, so I might just end up parking on the shoulder of the highway and hiking in from there (kidding, I think).

I've hardly driven in Barcelona, and never in Brussels, so I'm also nervous about negotiating my way in and out of the cities, neither of which is known for its pleasant and patient drivers. I guess there's something to be said for learning as you go, but: gulp!

If you need me, you'll find me in the slow lane.

Birthdays are the best

2009-05-08T18:28:00.003+02:00

Over our fancy-schmancy lunch, I was reminiscing with the Mister about birthdays of my past. They range from the bad (during college there were always exams on my birthday or my friends had already skipped town) to horrible (sleeping in a dingy train station before arriving at a new place where I knew no one) and the fantastic (surprise parties on two occasions, once in high school and once in Salzburg) to the ideal--days like today.

I have had a smile on my face from the moment I woke up--well, not entirely true, since I almost never have a smile on my face when I wake up--and even though we have been cleaning the house like crazy, it's been a perfect day. The Mister made me breakfast, with presents on the side, and took me out to the aforementioned fancy-schmancy lunch, with presents on the side.

This year also marks the first time I'm in Barcelona for my birthday, and I'm quite irrationally happy about it. In a few hours many of our beloved friends will arrive to celebrate with us, and I've been able to talk to my mom and my sister and my nephews over the internet (to everyone else: I'm online, give me a ring!). The best part, though, is simply being with the Mister and loving our life together.

I'm thinking thirty-one is going to be a great year.

The game

2009-05-06T22:44:00.004+02:00

During the historic Barça-Madrid soccer (football) game on Saturday, the Mister and I were sitting on a little spit of land near the lighthouse in the Costa Brava town where his family has an apartment, and where we had gone to spend the sunny long weekend.

We had intended to watch the game, of course--this being the one game of the year that even non-sports people like us really should watch. But we were going to watch it at a bar with our sister- and brother-in-law and our nieces (games like this are available only on cable), but then they got invited to a friend of a friend's house, and we didn't really feel like being the fifth-wheel relatives of the friends of friends. Besides, we had a lot to talk about (see previous post) and the sun was setting so prettily over the Mediterranean.

So we found ourselves strolling out onto that spit of land, with a perfect view of the round curve of the harbor, and had been happily ensconced for some time, when all around us came a roar, as if we were smack in the middle of a stadium field while the crowd was doing The Wave. Followed by air horns and firecrackers, so we knew: Barça had scored.

And in that way we kept track of the game, which basically consisted of continual Barça scoring. Back at the apartment later, we watched replays of the (six!) goals and the delirious crowds at the Canaletes water fountain on the Ramblas, the traditional place for fans (culers) to gather and celebrate.

I am reminded of this tonight because right now as I type, the town is going wild: horns are honking madly all over the city, firecrackers are going off every few seconds, every sleeping dog is now barking, and people are screaming their heads off. I can pick out a voice yelling "Baaaarçaaaa!" over and over. I reach the only possible conclusion: Barça just beat Chelsea for the Champions league semifinal. (Or not: a bit of googling reveals they actually tied, but it's as good as a win because their goal gives them enough accumulated points to advance to the final.)

If I hadn't known earlier that a game was going on, I would have thought that a large group of men were having a nasty, curse-laden fight in one of the apartments below, because they just kept yelling and swearing. All the building windows are open due to the weather, and one can hear any of the neighbor's louder activities.

And on nights when Barça is playing at home, we can even hear the roar of the crowds from the stadium, just a few blocks away. With this kind of excitement, who needs cable?

Next move

2009-05-04T19:41:00.004+02:00

It's May. Our plans for the future change every day. They now may involve any or all of the following: teaching in Indiana for a semester, moving back to Brussels, staying in Barcelona. For the first time in a long time, I can't concentrate on what I'm reading and have trouble falling asleep because I'm worried about big abstract puzzles, like The Future, and What I Am Going to Do in It, and How We Are Going to Get There.

There are also short term complications. For instance, given that the Mister only needs to travel to Brussels a few more times over the next few months, it made sense to move out of the apartment there. We did manage to find someone to take over the lease so as to avoid paying a two-months'-rent penalty, but now that means, um, actually moving out of the apartment. By May 15.

The Mister looked into moving companies, and the cost of moving our furniture is more than the sum total of the worth of that furniture. So our new plan is to sell what furniture we can, and abandon or give away the rest of it. But there still remains a goodly pile of clothing, bedding, books, kitchen items, paintings, decorative objects etc. etc. that we want to bring to Barcelona.

So, if all goes well, next weekend you will find me driving a minivan or a small truck over the midsection of Europe with the Mister, in a marathon session of highway miles and heavy lifting of boxes up and down flights of stairs (remind me why don't we ever live in apartments with elevators?).

It's not how I envisioned my first large-scale European road trip, and it's not how I envisioned spending my birthday weekend. But a road trip it is, and in that sense it should be fun, I hope.

We're still stuck on what to do with the piano, though. Yes, the piano that cost more to hoist up to the second floor than it did to purchase. Any ideas?

Unsinging

2009-04-24T18:55:00.005+02:00

Pre-concert warmups, the prova de so--"sound test." A chaotic scene, violinists dashing in at the last minute, choir members trying to squeeze onto the risers. We flubbed the run-through of our opening piece. But that was the least of my worries. After coughing all day, I had been nervous about how my voice would hold up. At the moment, it was doing all right, especially in the higher registers. With judicious dosing of cough syrup and lozenges and water, I thought I could do it, I could sing this concert.

They pinned sweet red roses on all the sopranos and altos--this was the day of Sant Jordi, after all. People rushed about applying makeup and ordering their scores. We scrambled to line up in our positions, and then we were marching out, folders clutched in the hand facing the audience.

We nailed the first piece, the Monteverdi we had flubbed before. Our director smiled as the final syllable of the Amen hung in the air and prismed in a million directions through the church archways. I smiled, too, because I felt good. My voice was holding up, feeling limber.

We performed the Bruckner "Libera Me" with feeling and movement, and I almost forgot about my precarious voice. The Schumann, the Duruflé...they all sailed. A quick swig of water and a discreet cough at each applause, and I was doing fine.

But then, near the beginning of a cheerful Murcian ballad, that tickle in my throat. More than tickle. I had to cough, but it would have meant a doubled-over bout of hacking, which really wasn't an option, given my position at the top of the risers, highly visible and without an escape. Also, it wouldn't have made a very pleasant accompaniment to this acapella piece. So I held it in, my whole body tight with the effort to swallow a wrenching cough. Sweat trickled down my back, I became slightly faint. My throat was closed, so singing was not an option. I just stood there and turned pages, fighting away waves of whatever it is that makes one need to cough, telling myself to breathe.

At the end of the piece, I quickly bent down and gasped, nearly choking, swigging water and trying to calm my constricting throat. I made it through the last two songs of the first half, but barely, singing only at half-throttle and with a wretchedly strained, whispery sound. As we exited the hall, I knew I would have to sit out the second half, and the thought nearly made me cry--I had been so looking forward to it.

I felt sorry for myself only until the orchestra's first downbeat. Then I realized that I would be able to hear the choir perform the great Bach Magnificat as I had never heard it. Our familiar voices, our familiar sound, but smoothed round by distance and acoustics, so that my experience was not overlaid by the tenor and the ever-so-slightly sharp alto next to me. Instead, a wholeness. With fresh ears I absorbed it all, both from within and without, hearing the details of well-rehearsed counterpoint and the grand geometric heartbeat that Bach achieves so well. I sang without my voice, I sang immersed in the music, like the slender hand of a geiger counter swinging wildly off the chart.

Deeper than all roses

2009-04-23T11:44:00.004+02:00

Today is the day of Sant Jordi, a day of books and flowers and romance. You can read about the history of the day in last year's post, in which I express my wish to be in Barcelona for the festivities. Wish granted!

It's a perfect, warm, day, and I am looking forward to perusing some bookstalls in the gothic quarter, although if the rumors I hear are accurate, leisurely perusal is pretty difficult in the midst of masses of frenzied book-buying crowds (bookstores do close to ten percent of yearly sales on this one day alone). Plus, my cold/cough thing has returned with a vengeance, and I can barely breathe without hacking and gasping. Which does not bode well for singing tonight in our Sant Jordi concert. Boo.

I had the occasion this week to hear Chenjerai Hove speak on the power and fragility of the word, and Derek Walcott, one of my poetry heroes, speak on the "spectre of empire," although mostly he didn't talk about that at all. What he did talk about was contradicting oneself, and the idea of home, and Obama (he read two occasional poems on the elections), and Pasternak. Disjointedly interesting, but especially enjoyable during this week of celebrating literature, language and the book.

A poem is in order. On this springy day, I thought of e.e. cummings, the consummate poet of spring, and one of his rose poems, "somewhere i have never travelled."

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

[photo credit: flickr user Píxel]

94

2009-04-15T20:54:00.004+02:00

The Mister's grandmother turns ninety-four years old today. This boggles my mind. First, because of the sheer length of that time, nearly a century, enough to have lived through wars and dictatorships and so much of this world's crazy history. Enough to remember this neighborhood when it was a town outside of Barcelona, to remember how she could see clear from the balcony of their apartment (the one the Mister and I live in today) across the farmers' fields and to the skyline of the city.

Second, because if you look at her, you would never guess that she has lived for ninety-four years. Yes, there are a few lines, but don't let her twinkly wrinkled face fool you. She has more energy and a busier social calendar than me. Seriously. I often call to find her out with one of her girlfriends, either shopping or attending mass or bringing them an example of the delicate lacework that she makes by hand. She is a whirlwind of activity, making meals for others even when she isn't expecting company, just in case someone stops by. We can't get her to stay seated at the table. She has a greener than green thumb; her balcony is full of beautiful plants and bursting with color year round.

Her memory is also better than mine; she has a clear mental map of just about every establishment in this neighborhood and can perfectly recall what each shop used to be, the owners' names and those of their children. She remembers events from the lives of her friends, long-gone family, and neighbors in detail, and often recounts their stories to me. She tells me of her childhood working as a maid in a convent in exchange for her board and schooling, of her young adulthood as a seamstress in the factory a few meters from where she now lives, of her marriage and the many trips she took with the Mister's grandfather. Once in a while, she tells me stories of her experiences during the Civil War, of what she saw and the fear she endured.

When I spend time with her, as I did today, bringing her flowers in the morning and stopping by for lunch at her house (faves a la catalana again, yum!) , I wonder what she was like when she was younger, and conversely, I wonder what I will be like as an old woman.

This kind of speculation is a favorite pastime of mine. On the street I pass so many versions of what an elderly person looks like, women twenty years her junior with curved backs and canes, or women like her who still move with a spring in their step, straight thin ladies and round pillowy ladies, some with silver hair and some with thinning hair and some with brown. I envision myself as an old woman, and it's like trying to imagine a me who is not me, a body that is mine but not mine, a wrinklier and creakier shadow of myself superimposed over this thirty-year-old frame. This is similar to trying to imagine myself pregnant, an altered, twilight zone version of myself, submitted to the vagaries of nature and the inherent weirdness of a whole person growing inside another person. A healthy dose of pure curiosity makes me wonder: will I that pregnant girl, or that one? Will I be that old lady, or that one?

In any case, watching the Mister's grandmother turn ninety-four with energy, sparkle, and grace definitely gives me something to aspire to. Happy birthday, iaia!

Risen

2009-04-12T11:22:00.000+02:00

Today, after the dark mourning of the crucifixion, is the bright morning of the resurrection. I think trumpets are called for, and flowers.

George Herbert agrees. This Easter poem (actually, just the first half of the poem; the second half is quite different metrically and in subject matter) weaves a beautiful metaphor of the cross as a musical instrument of praise. The third stanza compares the trinity of tuneful lute, joyful heart, and holy spirit to a three-noted musical chord, made harmonious only by the addition of that third element.

The poem almost demands a musical setting. If you can find it, listen to Ralph Vaughn Williams' version. The first line alone, with the soloist's declamation of "Rise heart; thy Lord is risen," echoed by the choir, is Easter in a nutshell.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Easter
by George Herbert

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all musick is but three parts vied
And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

A change in plans

2009-04-08T13:28:00.003+02:00

Last weekend the Mister found out that he will be without work come July. This was half-expected, given that his job relies on the election cycle, but all recent indications had been that he would continue his work in Brussels for another term. That is, until Friday, when--in a turn of events that I can't detail but that involves nasty political last-minute behind-the-scenes machinations--he was told that he was out.

We barely had time to digest this news when he had to board his plane for the fifteen-hour flight to Tokyo, so we're still in the midst of processing. For now, it all pretty much boils down to two things:

1. No work in an economic downturn. The next few months will be spent job-hunting. For both of us, perhaps. (I even had an interview of sorts yesterday!)

2. No more commuting between two cities, no more maintaining apartments in two cities. I'll have the Mister here seven nights a week. This makes the idea of growing our family suddenly seem much more feasible.

I'm thinking point number two greatly outweighs point number one.

Palms

2009-04-08T12:48:00.003+02:00

Palm Sunday here in Catalonia is known as diumenge de rams, or "branches Sunday," which is funny considering that there actually are palms, in abundance, in this Mediterranean locale. Unlike, say, Vermont, where our palm branches must be imported from who knows where.

In fact, as I learned last weekend, Palm Sunday is actually more Eastery than Easter Sunday, in the sense that even if you never go to church during the rest of the year, Palm Sunday is the day you dress up your kids in patent leather shoes and pastel outfits, and take them to mass. According to the Mister's grandmother, everyone is supposed to wear something brand new for the first time. She debuted a lovely blue coat.

Another important ritual is the buying and waving of the palmons or palmes, the former being tall straight palm fronds gathered into a bundle and traditionally carried by little boys, the latter being palm fronds woven into miraculously intricate confections and carried by the girls.

These are sold the Saturday prior to Palm Sunday on the Rambla Catalunya, and since Saturday was a beautiful day, I took a bike ride down to see all of the handiwork. Each booth is laden with palms of all shapes and sizes, from delicate floral fingerlings like the one my mother-in-law gave me to elaborate works of art several meters high. In addition, they sell the candy rosaries, ribbons and tiny toys that are used to decorate the palms, as well as large bunches of laurel and thyme, which are also carried to mass on Sunday morning. (I would have taken pictures, but the Mister has the camera in Japan, with instructions to take pictures of the cherry trees. The photograph above comes from another blog, in Catalan, about the holiday.)

On Sunday I met the Mister's grandmother, mother, and our little niece in the plaza in front of the church, along with a huge crowd of other families. When the priest came out and read the Biblical passage describing the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, at every "alleluia," the palms and branches were lifted high into the air and shaken, and the straight bundles of palms carried by the boys were tamped into the ground. (From what I understand, they compete to see who can end up with the greatest length of frayed "broom.")

After Easter, many families hang the palms on their balconies, where they spend the year until the next Ash Wednesday, when they are burned to make the ash. If you're ever in Spain, if you look up from time to time, you'll notice the drying palmes strung across balconies' metal fretwork.

Drip, drip, drop...

2009-04-03T11:26:00.003+02:00

...little April showers... That song from Bambi has always stuck with me, and I tend to sing it whenever the rain comes down. The other rainy day lyric that always comes to my head is "It looks like rain, now won't that just be jolly? It looks like rain, I must go and get my brolly" (sung with the best-worst British accent I can muster). I always thought that this came from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, but a little pause to consider the logic and some internet sleuthing seems to indicate that it's from Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo. Boy, it's not easy to keep all those Old Testament musicals straight.

The reason these little jingles come to mind is that we have had quite a rainy beginning to April here in BCN. Today the sun is showing its face again, but we had a solid week of chilly, gray, and wet.

We spent last weekend visiting the Priorat, a beautiful wine-producing region south of Barcelona, with the intention of enjoying its terraced hills and tiny towns, wineries and winding roads, but after a couple of miserably cold stops in deserted villages, we went straight to the cavernous farmhouse (one of the B&B places known as a casa rural), with its fireplaces and space heaters, where we feasted well and spent the night.

Anyway, that's about the extent of the excitement around here. I'm just getting over my lingering cold/cough thing, the Mister is off to Japan, and my Easter week promises to be quiet and (hopefully) productive.

Cough, cough

2009-03-24T16:40:00.003+01:00

I guess March is just... not my blogging month. I've been under the weather over the last week or so, battling laryngitis that was initially caused by a cold, then made worse by my insistence on singing in a concert last week, and accompanied by a persistent cough, the kind that feels like it's out to strangle you to death. I was virtually voiceless over the weekend, and it is only today that I actually can speak somewhat normally again.

Ironically, the day I fell sick was the day I had my first blood test in the Spanish health care system. Brandishing my brand new health card, I had asked for an appointment for a checkup the week before, and two days later I met with my new doctor, after practically no wait. He kind of insinuated that as a healthy thirty-year-old, I didn't need a "revisió general," but he asked me a few questions about my overall health, took my blood pressure, and sent me on my way to schedule a blood test. I was a bit put off by his summary appraisal, but I discovered later that it's true that the yearly checkup may not be necessary. Most medical sources I looked at suggested a checkup every three to five years, so I guess I'm on the mark for that.

Still, I'll be curious to see how medical care stacks up in the nationalized health care system. So far, I've been favorably impressed, by the friendliness of doctors and nurses, the ease of making appointments (and lack of waiting time), the organization of medical care (you're assigned to the nearest "ambulatori" which for us is only about a seven-minute walk away), and of course by the fact that there's no exchange of money whatsoever. It's all entirely free. Of course, I have yet to (and hope not to!) require any serious care for serious issues, so it remains to be seen how things go when the going gets tough. (Or if the tough, say, get pregnant.)

Tomorrow I will go in to pick up my blood test results. Do blood tests show that you have a cold? If so, under the microscope the medical technicians will probably see little blood cell guys duking it out for the chance to strangle me with coughing fits. (I know, my grasp of medicine and physiology is astounding, right?)

Stairs of song

2009-03-16T10:42:00.006+01:00

Spring has well and truly come to Barcelona. The sun is steady and bright, the breeze is gentle and pleasant, and buds are bursting out everywhere. We had guests this weekend and they probably stumbled upon the most ideal weekend of the year to see the city. Lucky for me, showing them around involved long strolls by the waterfront; a stop at that welter of sensory overload, the Boqueria market; midnight tours of the gothic quarter; a sunny afternoon at the park; and lots of truly delicious food.

Our internet is mysteriously not functioning today (this will be posted via a tenuous neighbor wifi signal), which I think is the perfect excuse to scoop a couple of books into my arms, grab my sunglasses, and find a park bench or a café table and soak up this pleasant spring sun.

Other of the weekend's activities were musical. My choir debuted a jazz cantata set to Salvador Espriu poems. These works are beautiful in their simultaneous expression of despair and hope, in their expression of love for a place, for a people, for a language. I did a quick translation so our guests could follow along, and here is one of the more hopeful poems, set to a rollicking, exuberant swing.

(If the Catalan title looks a little funny, it's because it's in medieval Catalan, which Espriu took from an 11th century troubadour poet.)

"Levem nos bon mayti e no'ns adurmam plus"
We Awake in the Morning and Sleep No More

by Salvador Espriu

If you want to listen,
open your windows.
Truths climb quickly
on the stairs of song.

In the very heart of night
a new canticle begins
and will accompany your step
at the threshold of hope.

We must burn every memory
of a yesterday full of sorrow
in the bonfires of tomorrow
that today it is time to light.

Look always ahead,
leave your tears behind.
The young sun turns red
rising from the depths of the sea.

Awoken by my nightmare
cry, the eager, slow radiance
of every furrow
walked the wide earth.

It rests on the sand,
white sails burnished.
Riding on the wind’s back,
the keel crossed the mountains.

Within the order of light
we saw the house resplendant
that we wanted to watch over
when thieves misruled.

The air carried the good smell
of new wheat, of goldenrod.
The poppy is saved
from the danger of dying.

Now you hear how the song
broke holes in the chain,
the villainy of fear
that tied up our tongue.

One voice, two hands,
strong hands stretched out.
Wake up, laborers,
for now it is time for work.
Wake up, people of the land,
for now it is time for the harvest.

Card, credit

2009-03-03T11:16:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I finally got my Spanish residency card. It's colorful and iridescent and conveniently fits in my wallet. Hooray! Now I can legally... get started on yet another pile of paperwork that was awaiting my official identification number. Still, it's nice to be official.

Speaking of paperwork, I got a scary loan default letter yesterday, threatening all kinds of dire bad credit issues if I don't cough up the money.

But wait! I have paid off all my college loans! Why am I being bugged for money?

It is because of the folly of youth: in college, I co-signed a loan for a friend. I have not spoken with this person since college, so evidently it was not the kind of friendship that outlasts working together in the resident assistant program. But since she is not paying her loan, I am being hounded (my parents get all kinds of calls as well).

I have tried to find a way to contact this woman, but all I have at the moment is her street address. I guess I'll have to write an old-fashioned letter and ask her ~~indignantly~~ politely to pay her stupid $8.10.

Yes, all of this is over an unpaid eight bucks. Still, it really kind of stinks to be facing bad credit over not a lot of money, and I worry that she will continue to not pay off her loan, especially given the economy, and that this could get a whole lot worse.

Wandering words

2009-02-27T13:34:00.003+01:00

I spent some of my morning with the two Paul Celan poems that deal (obliquely, in ciphers) with the Spanish Civil War ("Shibboleth" and "In One"), as well as Jacques Derrida's brilliant essay about them. Even if the poems fall outside of the scope of my thesis, having been written in the 50s and 60s, you better bet that I'll be drawing on both Celan and Derrida in my discussion of the "No pasarán" slogan.

I learned a new word, too. It's always fun to learn a new word, and I guess I didn't look it up the first time I read the Derrida essay, a couple of years ago, during a graduate seminar. The word is "gnomon," and as cute and gnome-like as it sounds, it actually refers to the stick part of a sundial, the horizontal blade that casts a shadow to tell the time.

After reading through the essay, I got sucked into Felstiner's translations of the Celan poems, reminding myself of my favorites and falling in love with others. If it wasn't so long and spread out on the page, I would reproduce "Stretto," an incredible poem and one I used for a course I taught on poetry and music. But I'll content myself with "Speak You Too," a haunting meditation on language.

Speak You Too

Speak you too,
speak as the last,
say out your say.

Speak--
But don't split off No from Yes.
Give your say this meaning too:
give it the shadow.

Give it shadow enough,
give it as much
as you know is spread round you from
midnight to midday and midnight.

Look around:
see how things all come alive--
By death! Alive!
Speaks true who speaks shadow.

But now the place shrinks, where you stand:
Where now, shadow-stripped, where?
Climb. Grope upwards.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!
Finer: a thread
the star wants to descend on:
so as to swim down below, down here
where it sees itself shimmer: in the swell
of wandering words.

~Paul Celan (tr. John Felstiner)

Favas and kohlrabi

2009-02-25T17:14:00.005+01:00

February hasn't done much for me by way of blog inspiration. I seem to be stuck in a rut. So sorry!

But the weather has been lovely, springy, sunny and good for my all-around energy levels and productivity (um, other than blogging).

As one more sign of spring in these parts, the fava beans have started to appear in the market. They come in long, knobby pods, and they are the fundamental ingredient in the Catalan dish faves a la catalana. I got to talking with the Mister's grandmother, and she promised to show me how to make them, minus the botifarra (blood sausage) that normally is another fundamental ingredient. (So fundamental, in fact, that when the lady at the market stall where she bought the beans smiled and asked if she was making faves a la catalana, iaia said no. I guess without the sausage, it's not really Catalan.)

Anyway, yesterday I accompanied her to the doctor's office, and after our little excursion it was time to make faves. We shelled the fava beans as well as some peas (she says the peas cut the acidity of the favas), then rinsed them and put them in a pot with a couple of roughly chopped tomatoes, quite a few whole garlic shoots (which also show up at this time of year), a few branches of spearmint (or mint, but spearmint is what she had growing on her terrace), plenty of salt, a pinch of sugar, and a bit of moscatel (she says anis--anise-flavored liqueur--is better if you have it). You don't add any water, as the beans and vegetables produce their own cooking liquid; only add a little bit if it gets dry. Covered, over a low burner, let it "xup-xup" (not sure how to translate that charming expression that evokes "soaking up" the juices; Catalan cooks use it to mean a slow simmer) for a good while, twenty to thirty minutes, I'm guessing.

The end result isn't pretty, but boy is it good. The silken beans are sweet and soft, and I pretty much ate until I was stuffed.

At which point iaia brought out the fish. (Despite my protestations, no meal is considered complete at her house unless there is meat or fish involved.) I ate leftovers for lunch today and they were just as good.

Here is a similar recipe, with pictures that are much better than any I would have taken, if I had had my camera, which I didn't, because the Mister has it, because he's in Bulgaria and promised me some photos.

Now the trick will be to see if I can replicate the deliciousness in my own kitchen.

Before that, though, I have another experiment to perform. Every time I go to the market, I've been trying to come home with one unfamiliar item--usually a vegetable I've never cooked before. Saturday, I spotted a lumpy green round thing that looked sort of like celery root or fennel but wasn't. It had shiny green skin like the stalk of a broccoli, and small stalks coming out of the top. I asked the market lady what it was, and she said it was a cross between a cabbage (col) and a radish (rave). Intrigued, I brought it home and consulted my trusty How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (Mark Bittman). Sure enough, his description of kohlrabi fit the bill. I should have figured it out in the first place, from the Catalan, col-rave : kohl-rabi (from the German, for cabbage-turnip).

I found some suggestions here for what to do with kohlrabi, but I'm not sure which direction to go...

Florid

2009-02-18T21:18:00.012+01:00

The gargantuan bouquet of flowers the Mister brought home for me on Saturday was almost too big; it was hard to take it all in. So when the flowers started getting a little droopy and the water needed to be changed, I decided to spread them all around the house, a bit of brightness in every room.

There are gerbera daisies on my desk...

Blue irises in the bedroom...

Roses in the living room...

Lilies on the dining room table...

And on the coffee table, a, um... a lily-winged flying cow.

Off key

2009-02-18T20:33:00.003+01:00

There was a time in my life when I didn't have any keys. I had sold my car: no car keys. I had moved out of the House of Love: no front door keys. I had left campus: no office keys or mailroom keys. I was living at my parents' house, and they never lock their door (it's Vermont, after all), so I didn't need keys while I was there. In those few months between moving away from Indiana and getting married, I felt a bit unmoored.

Because keys are like little metal dog tags; they tell you who you are and where you belong. I guess they're a sign of possessions, as well, and not having them might be freeing. But they also do what their shape promises. They unlock, they allow access, they permit you to enter the familiar interiors of your life.

I saw keys in a different way, however, when I watched a beautiful documentary about a young Bulgarian woman working as a cleaning lady in Amsterdam. The camera follows her through her lonely days in empty rooms, communicating with upper-class Dutch families mostly through notes, as she straightens and sweeps and vacuums and scrubs. Speaking to the camera, she says she thinks she is losing herself. She feels like a ghost.

But she also takes pictures. Self portraits of herself in the cleaning closet or the bathtub, surrounded by household cleaners. Empty rooms with rumpled sheets. They could be out of an interior design magazine, but because of the point of view threaded through the whole of the collection, they present a diametrically different message.

To the back of the photograph she pastes the words from those notes, repetitive in their obligatory "how are you" and their demands to sweep the back stairs, wipe out the cabinet, change the laundry, a never-ending to-do list. She hangs these photographs and the notes inside a paper cut-out house, and on the floor of the house, she places her large collection of front door keys, all pointing upwards, a menacing carpet of jagged metal.

For her, the keys mean alienation, entrapment; they are a barrier and a burden. She is permitted to enter everywhere but is denied anything that make a home a home. Far from her family, working illegally, she is stalled and alone. Remarkably, though, she seems genuinely optimistic and her smile is always at the ready.

The woman's name is Hristina Tasheva, and the documentary is called The Houses of Hristina (see the trailer here). You can see many of her photographs here (click on the collection "A better life" for the ones shown in the movie).

By following the story of one woman, listening strictly to her voice, the documentary presents a beautiful meditation on domesticity, immigration, interiority, gender, social class, and art.

I'll never think of keys in the same way again.

Loverly day

2009-02-14T12:30:00.003+01:00

I get why some people don't like Valentine's Day, and I agree that it's an over-hyped, commercialized holiday. But it doesn't have to be, and I think it's a great idea to take time to celebrate all of our loved ones, not just our gooshy, swoony, romantic sweethearts, but also our there-for-you friendships, our fierce-hugs and belly-laughs family, the spinning-in-circles nephews and nieces, and our gone-but-deeply-missed grandparents.

If you fall into any of those categories for me: I send my love from Barcelona! I wish I could bake you all a chocolate cake.

As for the gooshy, swoony part, the Mister and I had a fabulous meal last night at this place, and then chocolates and strawberry champagne and candles at home. I woke up this morning to a big bouquet of beautiful flowers.

We decided to celebrate yesterday, since today we'll be at the hospital--actually, the Mister was there (and helping out at his parents' house) all day yesterday, and I was there Thursday--and we were supposed to go hiking with a friend who had an unexpected wisdom tooth removal, so no hiking after all.

But that brings me back to my point, I guess: what better way to spend Valentine's day than being there for family, the ones we love? Actions speak louder than words, but words are pretty darn good, too: Happy Valentine's Day!

Drive on

2009-02-10T16:20:00.004+01:00

I haven't written in a few days because of good things and bad things. There was my mom's visit, which was fun and relaxed. It rained almost the entire time, which was bad timing, because that's not what it usually does around here, but we still had a good time and ate yummy food and had fun shopping and chatting and just hanging out.

Then last weekend my father-in-law fell off the roof while he was doing some spring cleaning, and it was very scary for everyone while we waited to hear what the doctors have to say. He will be in the hospital for a few weeks, totally immobilized, while the cracked bones in his pelvis heal, and then the recovery at home will be another couple of months. It will be hard for him to be still for so long, and hard for my mother-in-law in terms of juggling her work and his care and so forth. We'll of course help as much as we can; while he's recovering at home I may take my laptop and work from their house so I can be available to lend a hand.

This unexpected turn of events prompted the Mister and I to think about certain Big Picture things, which brought us around to the rather mundane topic of driver's licenses and cars and if we should get one and if so when. Right now I'm perfectly happy--more than happy, really--to be living without a car. Not only are we saving money by not having the expense of car payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, and parking, but we are doing the environment a good turn by relying on public transportation (and taxis in a pinch). I love that we CAN get everywhere we need to go with the metro, a train, or a bus. And we can always rent a car if we want to take a short weekend trip.

The reason this came up in relation to M's dad is that we do, however, tend to rely on him and his car every once in a while for, say, transporting big items like furniture, and he also did a lot of ushering of M's grandmother back and forth from her apartment (around the corner from us) to their house outside of the city. And that's something we can't pick up the slack on, although it would make sense because we ARE around the corner, because we don't have a car. And even if we could use M's dad's now-unused car, there's the pesky detail of neither of us having a license. (!)

You see, the Mister, who has lived in public-transport-friendly Europe all his life, has just never gotten his, and when I started investigating how to have my American license converted into a Spanish license I learned some pretty depressing things.

First of all, there's no "conversion" process. I have to get my license again, from scratch, just like when I was seventeen and ran a red light during my driving test. (You might imagine that I have no desire to go through THAT again.)

This would not be a problem if getting a license was like in the States--relatively cheap, easy, and painless--because after thirteen years of driving experience I am now unlikely to run a red light during my exam.

But it is not cheap, easy, and painless. It is expensive, hard, and painful.

Here in Spain, the AVERAGE (and now I'm going to get all-caps squealy because I'm outraged) cost of getting a license is 936 euros. NINE HUNDRED THIRTY SIX. That is ALMOST A THOUSAND EUROS, people. You have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to the "autoescuela" to teach you how to get through the ABSURDLY difficult written exam (which you pay also ridiculous amounts of money to take), which asks HORRIBLE questions DESIGNED to trip you up (I read some samples), and then do practice hours with an instructor in a car with dual gearshifts and brakes and then take the exam in one of those same cars. In other words, your hands are TIED because you have to pay the schools for the use of the stupid double-sided car, but they won't let you use their stupid car for the exam unless you sign up with them for a huge sign-up fee and spend a minimum amount of hours in the classes. Oh, and if you fail either exam within three tries (total, for both exams) you have to pay--surprise!--ridiculous amounts of money to take them again.

It's as if the autoescuelas and the department of motor vehicles are in CAHOOTS because they both earn OODLES of money from the whole setup. Harrumph.

You'd think that at least, with such a rigorous examination system, Spain would have good driving safety record. On the contrary. It is, with Portugal, the EU country with the highest highway mortality rates.

So you can understand why the Mister, with all of his traveling and living abroad, has never gotten his license. And you can understand why I am despairing of getting mine.

After learning all of this depressing information, I looked into getting my license in Belgium, because any EU driver's license is valid in all other EU countries. Belgium has an examination system much more like the US--a provisional driver's permit after the written exam, and then a driving exam in your own car, without requiring classes. They even allow you to "convert" your American license, but only within the first six months of living there. Oops. So I may eventually try to find a way to use someone's car for the test? Or buy a car there, when and if we decide to buy one? But then I may not have a legit Belgian ID anymore? Doing it in French would be extremely daunting, to say the least, but it beats boring hours of classes and the nightmare of getting a Spanish license.

I'm hoping a magic fairy will come and tell me something I failed to discover in my research, such as that there's a Vermont-Spain secret treaty and that Spain will recognize my Vermont license and will just stick a little A-OK stamp on it.

Sigh. At least I had lunch in the sun today, soaking up every little particle of warm oozy light that I could.

Chandelierward

2009-01-30T11:08:00.003+01:00

Last night the Mister flew in from Brussels bearing a big pile of books I had left there, most of them poetry. Isn't it fun to be reunited with books? Like seeing old friends again.

In honor of my mom's visit, I've chosen a Wislawa Szymborska poem about music (mom is a musician) from out of that stack. It's one that has long impressed me as much for the inventiveness of Szymborska's conception as for the virtuosic translation by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak. I wish I could read the original to get more of a sense of the work they've done, but it comes through quite brilliantly anyway.

**
Coloratura

Poised beneath a twig-wigged tree,
she spills her sparkling vocal powder:
slippery sound slivers, silvery
like spider's spittle, only louder.

Oh yes, she Cares (with a high C)
for Fellow Humans (you and me);
for us she'll twitter nothing bitter;
she'll knit her fitter, sweeter glitter;
her vocal chords mince words for us
and crumble croutons, with crisp crunch
(lunch for her little lambs to munch)
into a cream-filled demitasse.

But hark! It's dark! Oh doom too soon!
She's threatened by the black bassoon!
It's hoarse and coarse, it's grim and gruff,
it calls her dainty voice's bluff -
Basso Profondo, end this terror,
do-re-mi mene tekel et cetera!

You want to silence her, abduct her
to our chilly life behind the scenes?
To our Siberian steppes of stopped-up sinuses,
frogs in all throats, eternal hems and haws,
where we, poor souls, gape soundlessly
like fish? And this is what you wish?

Oh nay! Oh nay! Though doom be nigh,
she'll keep her chin and pitch up high!
Her fate is hanging by a hair
of voice so thin it sounds like air,
but that's enough for her to take
a breath and soar, without a break,

chandelierward; and while she's there,
her vox humana crystal-clears
the whole world up. And we're all ears.

**

Have a wonderful weekend. I know I will!

Dregs

2009-01-27T17:45:00.004+01:00

The end of January is a tough part of the year. Christmas is over, the shiny newness of those resolutions has worn off, and it's still winter. I find myself:

Eating a lot of cheese.
Spending too much time asleep.
Battling the dreaded dry skin of winter.
Unmotivated to work.

Fortunately, there are some things that help:

My mom is coming to visit!
The sun is bright and the sky is blue, bearing a hint of promise for an early Spanish spring.
Warm tea and simple soups.
Actually getting the hang of some of those aerobics spins.
Nephews' smiles and laughter.
Good swinging jazz.
Dogged perseverance.

Hah! There are more things on the second list than on the first--take that, winter!

(PS: Happy birthday, sis!)

I heart google (or, why the internet is awesome)

2009-01-23T12:59:00.003+01:00

I was hired to translate some poems recently (hurrah! paid to do something I do for fun!), and as I was working, I noticed that I had the following pages open as tabs in my web browser:

1. Google mail, from which I opened the text of the poem
2. Google docs, where I was translating the poem
3. Google search (actually constituting several of the tabs), where I sought out some obscure vocabulary about rocks (the subject of the poem) and an Auden poem to which this poem makes a reference
4. Google books, where I found a Glossary of Geology that was invaluable for finding synonyms for, say, "pebble"
5. Google reader, where I was NOT at the moment actually reading blogs, many of which are about language and translation
6. Google image search, where I WAS, out of curiosity, trying to get a glimpse of the face of the poet I'm translating

If you had caught me at another time, I may also have been perusing Google analytics to check out my blog's site statistics, or Google maps to quickly find that street where we have to meet for rehearsal.

Thrown into the mix were a couple of Wikipedia pages on marble and other stones, three of my trustiest online Catalan dictionaries, and the online OED, accessed through my university library.

All of which leads me to think: Google is taking over the world! (And I probably couldn't live without it.) Also, in the days before the web, translators must have been surrounded by towering piles of dictionaries and other reference books, and must have spent ages in the library looking through, say, the 779 pages of the Glossary of Geology or whatever other specialized vocabulary the text at hand called for. Now, it's all boiled down to a few virtual tabs on a flat color screen. It's dizzying, isn't it?

There but not there

2009-01-21T12:54:00.005+01:00

I called my husband and dad on skype yesterday, eager to hear how the inauguration had gone... And it turns out, they didn't even make it inside! They stood in line starting at 8 am, and the line simply didn't move. There were no signs, no authorities, a sea of bodies as far as they could see, and the crush of people made it impossible to go anywhere. Other ticket holders started to protest, it was a chaotic scene, evidently, people clambering over walls, even some arrests after a while, and although they did everything as they were supposed to, they, along with hundreds of other people holding tickets, never got through the gates into the Mall. How disappointing! I'm glad I wasn't along, because I would have been just devastated. My husband, much more able to take these things in stride, was laughing about it already. He flew thousands of miles to attend the biggest event in recent history, only to stand in the cold for a few hours, unable to see or hear any of it! He was interviewed by a reporter and is already in the news, if that's perhaps some consolation. Sigh. He'll just have to watch the inauguration on the internet, like the rest of us poor overseas saps.