- I finally found a benefit to Noah being sick. Since all solid foods came back up in seconds, all he’s eaten is milk. I have lost 5 pounds since Thursday.
- There were 273 comments in moderation. 272 of them were spam. (Go read Eric at DI-Dad — interesting guy!)
- Noah seems to be feeling a little better this morning, and very happy to be home. I think he missed his turtles.
Dec 262006
Dec 262006
Christmas was lovely, and I’ll blog about that too, but this is the part I need to get off my chest:
An Open Letter to the Occupants of Seats 10D and 10E, Delta Flight 699 from Milwaukee to Atlanta, December 25:
If any member of my family gets pneumonia in the next few days, I consider it entirely your fault. Please take my overprotective mother characteristics into account when this note descends into being petty and mean.
Adult daughter: when you are so sick that you cough, on average, every 12 seconds during a 1 hour and 46 minute flight, you are too sick to fly. Especially if approximately 25% of those coughs are the kind that sound like a goose honking and cause you to double over in pain and exhaustion.
Also, when you cough like that on an airplane, it really is unfair of you not to cover your mouth. The handkerchief you used to blow your nose would have worked quite well for that purpose also.
Finally, you may want to find a new hairstylist who specializes color — that blonde? Looked like actual Barbie hair.
Mom: I’ve sat behind calmer, less disruptive toddlers on airplanes, and I don’t think that martini helped your cough either. Also? You probably would have been warmer — less likely to get sick in the first place? — if your pants and shirt met, instead of being separated by your muffin top. In the immortal words of Whitney Houston, “crack is whack.”
The only reason I did not flip out completely on you people is because today my son is on day 3 of a 5 day antibiotic that Dr. Madelaine assured us would even kill pneumonia if whatever-he-got on the first plane trip turned out to be that. But really! Jill and I don’t need pneumonia either.
Dec 202006
We fly to Milwaukee for Christmas, leaving Thursday morning. Most likely, there will be no new blog posts until 12/26.
Noah says, “Yay for Christmas!”
I’m leaving comment moderation on, so if you are a new commenter, please be patient. Also, your comment is more likely to appear without my help if you include all the info that only I see, and no actual hyperlinks in the text. But it is a filter, and text based filtering has some limitations. (Right, librarians?)
Dec 182006
This is going to be a quick and tired post made up from random thoughts and observations that don’t quite justify their own entire post:
- One of the ways that we get the hint Noah isn’t hungry any more is when he begins to sweep everything off of his high chair tray. But that isn’t the only large flat surface he prefers completely clean. No shelf in his reach is safe; he prefers the books and toys in a sea on the floor, so he can bang on the empty shelf. Baby OCD?
- I wonder when I will next get to go to work and not discover that my shirt is streaked with snot. Or my pants.
- Our copy of Pat The Bunny is missing the page with daddy’s scratchy beard.
- On the web preview for the season finale of South of Nowhere, the B@rbie dolls get more action than the romantic leads. Why can’t Ashley and Spencer actually kiss?
- Noah is learning to talk!
- We knew that he could say “good” and “ooooh” and “book.”
- Yesterday when we went for a walk, we heard a dog, and Noah started calling out “whoo whoo.” Back at home, he pointed to a picture of a dog in a book and made the same noise. We think it’s “woof woof.”
- He also makes that sound in contexts appropriate for cheering, as in “Whooo! Whooo!” and making cheering motions (wild arm flapping).
- The Big One: Gentle. Yesterday there was an excess of face slapping, which I really don’t enjoy so much. So I began to stop it FIRMLY and then take his hand and touch my face gently, using the same intonation of “gen-tle” that you have heard every English speaking parent use since the dawn of time. Today, a teacher told me she thought he said “gentle” while touching her face. While I told Jill the story at dinner, Noah started stroking his own face.
- Unfortunately, he still thinks the sign for “nurse” is to whack me on the chest, or as he did while I was on the phone near bedtime tonight, grab my shirt in an effort to provide “self serve.”
Hello visitors from Earthling and from the Weblog Awards. I thought maybe I should offer you something light for your first impression, before you dive into the next post.
So I bring you my son, Flying Boy.
Dec 172006
The Washington Post ran an opinion essay today, written by an 18 year old woman who is among the first generation of children born by way of anonymous donor sperm.
She’s pretty bitter about it. And while I can’t argue with someone about their feelings, I think she’s also naive, or maybe thoughtless. For example, she says:
I was angry at the idea that where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the “parents” — the adults who can make choices about their own lives. The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his “donation.” As long as these adults are happy, then donor conception is a success, right?
Yes.
But.
For one thing, I’m not aware of any circumstances in the US where someone other than the parents are generally consulted about a conception. (Scary fringe religious cult groups?)
And I don’t think there is a single person out there who has used donor sperm or donor eggs who hasn’t thought about how their child will feel about that when they are old enough to understand it.
I suspect there are whole lot of unplanned pregnancies out there, which resulted in children whose parents have given a lot less thought to how their children might feel about their parents.
I think all of us who have used donors to help us grow our families know that the fantasies about having been adopted, with magically nice and indulgent ‘real parents,’ that most children have at some point in their childhood, get an extra layer of detail and longevity because of our circumstances.
But the fact is, ours are not the only children who did not ask to be born “that way.” Children do not ask to be born. Children are not born from “perfect” circumstances very often, and even among those who are, there is no guarantee that the circumstances won’t change.
As it happens, we went with a “totally anonymous” donor, although I can certainly imagine Noah wanting to know more about his biological father when he gets older. We thought about limiting our choices to one of the banks that offered “identity release” at some later point in time.
We didn’t, out of fear that what happened to the essayist would happen to our child:
After a bit, though, I noticed that his enthusiasm for our developing relationship seemed to be waning. When I told him of my suspicion, he confirmed that he was tired of “this whole sperm-donor thing.”
What a heartbreaking thing to hear from someone you’ve been imagining as “dad.”
I can’t prevent that from happening to Noah in the future, and if he wants to seek out the donor, I will support him fully in his effort.
I’ve thought about joining the Donor Sibling Registry, but haven’t because for now, I don’t think that’s my choice to make. If Noah wants us to when he’s older, of course we will.
I don’t think it will necessarily be an easy journey for him, but I think he’ll have a solid foundation from which to make those choices.
And that foundation comes from the fact that he has two parents who love him very much and are committed to building a stable, nurturing, environment — to raising a healthy, independent, productive, and loving young man.
I know that a lot lot lot of you have also used unknown donors in building your families. What did you think about the Post essay? Are you afraid your children will grow up as angry about their circumstances as the author?
Dec 172006
We live pretty close to an extremely strange and surreal state park, which began life as a memorial to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, and evolved later into a scary kl@n rallying point.
Now it’s an internationally integrated (if still heavily redneck) tourist trap, but with pretty walking paths, and this insanely huge carving of Davis, Lee & Jackson at the end of a bigger-than-a-football-field sized sloping lawn.
Noah liked it.
Actually, Noah loved it.
He was a little taken aback by being allowed to play in the prickly dead grass, we are still working on gracefully getting in and out of the ergo carrier, and we did have to fish a leaf out of his mouth, but on the whole, good times.
In spite of the surreal environment.
