turandot's blog

Mr. Nice

Giada calls Boris "Nice". As in, I think my saying "Nice! Be nice to the kitty!" somehow became "Nice! Nice is the name of the kitty." She runs around the place stalking him all the while going "Niiice! Nice!". It's pretty hilarious, but poor Boris.

What I am struck by is how much my big orange fluffy cat loves this little girl. You heard me. He loves this strange creature whose only overtures towards him are to chase him and do something like giving him open handed slaps to show her affection. I know he loves her, because he's cut numerous gashes across my arms for lesser infractions than this, whereas he has taken all her abuse in stride. We've never been able to put him in a carrier without him trying to cut us open in retaliation. Sometimes I will pet him a fraction too long, and he will bite my hand firmly but gently as if to say "Enough, lady!" Meanwhile, when Giada harasses him, he'll sit there very still and and give me a pained look. If cats were able to think human thoughts, I'd bet he'd probably be thinking "Well, what are you gonna do? She's just not good at this petting stuff, but you gotta admire her for trying".

When the petting gets to be much, he silently wiggles out of the way and hides under my bed.He has never scratched, bit or even hissed at my daughter. Sometimes he'll willingly go up to her and curl up next to her, usually when Giada and I are taking a nap together (perhaps this is him having faith in my ability to keep the toddler at bay, but he could accomplish that just as easily by lying next to me, which he doesn't). This is why he gets a pass for meowing for food at 3 AM (one hour before the feeder goes off), hacking hairballs out  with surprising regularity (about once a week, twice if it's been a busy week for him), and occasionally deciding to sit on my laptop ("closed, open, sideways... what's the difference?").

About the only thing he doesn't get a pass on is not being nice to Gracie. Sometimes Boris decides that he needs to play king of the cats, which means he's uncharacteristically rough with Gracie. We can tell because Gracie has a very distinctive "What the h...? Get off me, you fat blob!" meow she only uses on those occasions. This often results in my picking him up, holding him in my arms gently but firmly, and then telling him "That was NOT being a NICE kitty." Then I will usually give him a "mom" stare and release him.

The mom stare must be universally understood among mammals, because while Boris has made ignoring suggestions not to do things into an art (examples include: opening cabinets with his paws, shredding TP, playing with plastic bags, or clawing at furniture),he will usually walk away from the situation after said stare has been given. Oh sure, he'll turn around once and look at me, at which point he gets an "I mean it, buster!" follow up stare, but it's the end of the game of war for another week or so. When the mom stare does not happen, he usually goes right back into harassment mode upon release. Give him that mom stare, and you can count on finding him curled up on the couch with Gracie within an hour, as if those outbursts never ever happen.

Big kid

It's been nicer than usual in Seattle lately. Even today, which started out threatening rain, turned out quite nice, if a bit breezy. We've been enjoying the outdoors a lot.

Someone also went to the pediatrician this week. She got her last two immunizations for the foreseable future, and got weighed and measured. We found out she's 33 inches tall. That means that she's on course to be taller than me for sure when she's all grown (not hard, little old me is just shy of 65 inches). Gonna make it hard for me to "mom" her, because I'm not sure the mom stare will work if I'm looking up, rather than down at.

At the same appointment, I also found out that her head circumference is off the chart for her age group. I chortled at that, and the pediatrician went "husband had a big head too, huh?". "Yep."

That night, the blame game started.

"It's your fault I had to have a ceasarian!"

"That doesn't make sense, her head size was normal once upon a time!"

"Nuh-uh. She's always been above the 75th percentile for head size, which apparently was just the start of her having a ginormous head, like someone I know."

"Well, I'd argue it's your own fault. Clearly, you knew I had a big head before you decided to have a kid with me. Clearly, I am not to blame if you chose to undertake the risk of having a big headed child."

"Doesn't work. There was a 50% chance that she would be normal sized. My 50%. It just so happened that your big headed genes got in the way of that."

I just talked to my mom, relaying the above conversation. "Can you believe it? He's making it my fault!". Her reply: "Well, honey, if it has to be someone's fault, maybe it's both of you." To which I had to say "Oh well, at least you're not automatically taking his side, like you usually do." :P

Really though, that shouldn't have surprised me one bit. My 18 month old now wears 3T sized shirts because her head and torso are too big for 2Ts. She wears 2T sized pants because she's just plain tall. People that meet her do a double take when they're told her actual age. She's bigger than the few 2 year olds we know, and as tall as a few of the preschoolers at her day care. 

On second thought, forget the mom stare. By my calculations, I will fit into one of her pants pockets by the time she hits 15. It's gonna be hard to have her listen to anything I say when her pockets are going to muffle my voice.

Toddlers should come with an ON/OFF switch... but they don't.

This is what my little munchkin is like ALL! THE! TIME!

Today we had to go rent a car because my car is in the shop early (long story, will write the book sometime in 2030, the way things are going), and she kept trying to play with the car reservation guy.  

"How old?" he asks. "Eighteen months old" I reply. "Ah, right around the corner of the terrible twos" "You mean there isn't a 'terrible one' stage? Because there should be, and my kid could write the blueprint for it."

He laughed at that. I was being serious, though.

For the love of cheese

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons I'm looking forward to having another kid is that I'll be able to eat cheese without having to pay the price for it shortly after consuming it. This one is Giada's fault. 

Before being pregnant, I wasn't that big on cheese. Nothing against it, per se. It's that we hardly had dairy around when I was growing up, so it wasn't such a big deal. The reason dairy was not featured in our household is that my mom is lactose intollerant. Through years of trial and error, mom has figured out her limit is about 6 oz of milk or other dairy. 

It just so happens that I'm married to a cheese lover. Chris will eat anything if you put cheese on it... Well, anything I'm willing to cook (I'm kinda picky, so no organ meat or other "gross" food). And I swear the way to that man's heart is through Alfredo sauce. So it's an understatement to say that for the ten plus years I've known my husband, I probably have more than made up for the previous lack of cheese in my life.

This isn't to say that I feel in love with cheese as easily as I fell in love with the guy. Hardly. Turns out I'm lactose intollerant too (as the allergist we visited recently for Giada put it "most allergies pass from mother to child"), so anything cheese and cream heavy would reliably cause a riot in my digestive tract, unless precautions were taken (lactaid tablets were my best friends for most of my adulthood). 

... Until I got pregnant. Oh, they warned me in various teacher lounges years beforehand. The best and worst thing about being pregnant, a teacher I admired told me, was no longer being lactose intollerant. It was awesome because she didn't have to watch what she ate. It was awful because once she had the kid, it came back in full force.

You could say that I was prepared for it. Somewhat. The part I wasn't prepared for is that cheese is most of what I craved those nine months. A good thing, too, because after being diagnosed with gestational diabetes, cheese was one of the few things I could have as much as I wanted of (low carb, good source of protein so it keeps you full). I'd say "Yep, this kid is definitely a Jones" while having eggs and cheese for breakfast. It got to a point I was having cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I LIKED it.

After Giada was born, breastfeeding her provided an extension on the whole "free pass on lactose", so of course that was an extra incentive to make the whole thing work (we went through two months of working on proper latch, where I was tempted to give up oh so many times).

Now that we're weaning, I'm right back where I started, except that I've gained more of an appreciation for cheese. However, when one wedge of cheese with crackers means you feel like crap the rest of the night going into the next day, you know that your cheese days are over.

For now.

Greatest Hits

Remember that time I got rear-ended by a jerk while trying to get on I-5? This time I was actually rear ended by a fairly nice lady (for one, she stopped, for two she admitted fault), but my car actually got damaged. It also made me late for class by about... oh... 45 minutes, counting the 30 minutes or so spent on the phone with our auto insurer.

Could have been better. Different day, different neurochemicals and all that, so I wasn't as together as last time. I may or may not have gotten enough info to get the other party to cover our deductible. We'll just have to hope for the best.

Could have been worse. Baby had been dropped off at daycare already, so at least I only had to worry about myself and the car. I am okay (maybe I just cried a little on the way to the auto shop), and the car is gonna be fine once it's fixed permanently. The auto shop that the insurance sent me to were really nice: they didn't have an opening for a couple of weeks, but they did fix my exhaust pipe so it won't fall off and/or kill us all while we drive the car.

And anxiety prone-me has to stop saying that we're not gonna get on the highway from Mercer Street anymore. That's just crazy talk.  But that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish I'm dealing with.

Food for thought

The other day, I got to meet someone in a field related to mine (some sort of Educational Psychology, I'm not always sure about that these days) talk about how he got started doing what he does for a living (and the interesting places, both physically and metaphorically, that it has led him to). 

The interesting part is, he said, he did not set out to be a neuroscientist. It just so happened that while he was working on his bachelors' in Marine Biology at UCLA, there was an opening in a psych lab, and his dad was friends with one of the researchers. So he took the job, and found that he liked it. He eventually graduated with a degree in psychobiology. Then he worked his way up to a PhD in psychology from UW and got a job halfway across the country at a medical school, where he ended up teaching brain anatomy. Long story short, he worked his way back out west, and he now officially works as a bioengineer, despite the fact that he does not have an engineering degree. The funny part is, he admits, his original interest in the brain has not changed. What changed was the educational culture around him, which consistently resulted in new and unexpected windows of opportunity opening for him.

I'm going to see my advisor sometime soon (have to work out a window in my schedule). I'm a bit nervous about it, since I am not sure what she'll tell me. I imagine I will tell her what I want to do, and the gamut of responses on her part may range from "Yes, this is totally doable", to "Hmmm... you might want to rethink this a bit", or perhaps even "I'd love to help you, but long term you'd be better off at [insert program halfway across the country]". I don't doubt for a second that she'll be supportive, mind you. It's just that some days I wonder what kind of window I'm gonna end up looking at (hint: read a pharmacology paper about the effects of certain stimulants' on the drive to play in rats last weekend. It might not be the last time I do that).

But hey, I have a not so nebulous plan. I have half a notebook full of notes and possible leads. It's a lot more than I could claim to my name just a year ago.

I just have to hope that whatever the window, there's a way for me to open it.

Mean Mommy

This is not a brag: my kid loves books. 

Problem is, she can only say about 25 words, and she mostly loves the interactive part of books, whereby one magically transforms text into spoken words that tell a story. Long story short, my child has been stalking me daily, books in hand, insisting I read to her.

I would not have an issue with it, were it not for the fact that she also has decided that out of a library of children's books easily nearing 3 figures (that doesn't include my stash of school age books, we're talking books for the 4 and under set), she only likes about six books. "Goodnight Moon", "Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes", "The Big Red Ball and the Little White Kitten", "Cat's Colors", "Puppies and Kittens", and "Kitten's First Full Moon".* I never thought I'd say the following, but here it is: if I have to read "Goodnight Moon" one more time, I am going to scream, tear my hair out, and rend my clothes.

No offense to "Good Night Moon". It's just that it's relentlessly pushed upon me, hurled almost. I can't sit down and do anything like reading my own books or working on my laptop (did I mention I'm a grad student?) when she's around. The only way to avoid having to read it 15 times a day is to look busy enough, which means no sitting down, and preferably doing something "too boring".**

You might think I'm exaggerating, but being up and preferably moving from room to room is the only way to have a moment's peace. Otherwise we have a conversation that sounds like this:

"AAAAh!"

"Giada, do you want me to read that book"

"AAAAAH!"

*reads book*

"gain"

*reads book again*

"moar"

"Giada, mommy wants to read a different book"

"AAAAAAH!"

"But I...."

"MOAR"

"..."

So here's where the mean mommy part comes in: I spent dinner time in her room, cleaning it up. More importantly, I've hidden the aforementioned six books. I think that's the only alternative to "mommy loses it and starts screaming incoherently". I've even told her dad, who has no problem with any of the six books, that he can NOT reach for them, either. "She's just gonna have to expand her horizons a bit", I told him. Yep, I'm a pretty mean mommy.

* I am fully aware of the fact that I might be raising a future animal hoarder.

** Which means that I have never done as many loads of laundry in my life as I did today. Seriously. I think I'm on load #6 in a mere 12 hours right now.

Apparently I am more culturally sheltered than I thought

My usual bus didn't come when it was supposed to today. It was very frustrating, since I got there with plenty of time and then, nothing. I eventually took two diffent busses, and got where I needed to go, about 20 minutes late.

That's on part with my experience in Chicago with buses, which is why I used to take a 20 minute walk from Union Station, rather than take a bus from there to work. When people I knew asked why, I told them that I could reliably get there in 20 minutes by walking. On the mercy of a bus, it could take anywhere between 30-45 minutes if you took wait time into account, and I just wasn't up for that kind of uncertainty. Besides, I don't mind long walks.

That said, It would approximately would take 1 hour 25 minutes for me to walk to school according to Google Maps, and though I'm a better walker than Google gives me credit for, I doubt I could walk to school in less than an hour, which would make it a pain in the ass.

Back to the bus ride. While on the second bus, another rider asked me for the time. I politely gave him the time, which apparently was an invitation to talk my ear off. About two minutes in, I tried to give out some "checking out" signs (looking at my phone intently, answering questions with "uh uh", avoiding eye contact), to no avail. At some point, the guy goes "Hey, tomorrow is 420. Do you like 420?".

"I have no opinion on it"

"Why wouldn't you like 420?"

*shrug*

"Do you smoke weed?"

"Nope, can't say I do"

"Because 420 is weed"

"I see"

Finally, guy gets the hint, and I can get back to "Draw Something" undisturbed (I draw good! :P). That would be the end of that, except for the following conversation I had with my husband several hours later.

"How was your day?"
"Good, I guess. I learned what 420 means. Did you know that's slang for marijuana?"

"Yup."

"You do? How do you know?"

"I don't know... I guess I've just run across it before."

"Ooookay."

So there you go. I've never smoked weed, and I had no idea what a 420 was before today. I just don't think I hang in the right circles to know that, which probably says something about me. Well, other than that I apparently not only have I ever had weed even if offered, but I also don't get offers for it that often. Maybe it's that I give off a narc vibe (note: I've always thought that it's okay to be a narc, so long as you keep your distaste to yourself)? *shrugs*

Or maybe you kids and your slang just need to get off my lawn. :P

Cutting out that night feed

I was sitting outside my child's room tonight, listening to her cry, and having no option but to let it go. I've been trying for months to wean this child, especially out of that night feeding she demands before bed. Mind you, it's not out of hunger. She eats like a champ right before bath time. It's an old habit we established when she was a newborn, the only way to ensure she'd fall asleep. I hate to get "tough" but without cutting that crucial feed out, my child would be happy to be the only child in the world still nursing in Kindergarten (I know, hyperbole, but I've been attempting to wean her for six months!). 

Chris has been helping out this week, by letting me slip out the door at bedtime, so that Giada knows that mom nursing her is just out of the cards. It was working pretty well, except that Chris is at work late tonight, which left me parenting solo, which meant that the gig of "momma leaves the house" was up. I steeled my resolve, read to my child after bath, and put her in her crib right after. 

It didn't go well. She sat up accusingly immediately, and gave me The Look. The Look goes roughly like this: 

It's hard not to cave. Just look at those big grey eyes that threaten to tear up. Faced with something like that, I put on her night time music, I said goodnight, and hightailed it out of her room. Cue tired baby tantrum. She didn't cry for very long, but I'll be darned if I don't feel like the worst mom in the world, even if I know it's time to teach her that she can sleep without momma's help, even at night (she has no such problem with naptime).

Ideally, I would have hugged her, kissed her and held her before bedtime (which is what dad can do easily, because he has no boobs), whispering comforting things and saying goodnight to the menagerie of stuffed animals before leaving the room. I hope I get to do it someday soon, but for the time being, my hugging her at night time turns into nursing too easily. :(

Short are my tired musings

Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing in grad school. I'm not doing badly, mind you, far from it. That said, when I have sparks/ideas about what I would like to do with myself in my chosen field, I can't shake the feeling that my musings might be pie in the sky, and therefore not necessarily something anyone else might ever care about. 

Or maybe it's late, I'm tired from a combination of lack of sleep (daughter waking up in wee hours of night again) and fruitlessly searching for information that no one else seems to care about cataloguing, and my insecurity is rearing its ugly head.