Flotsam

Dec

The Reason for The Season.

Guess who Simone found in her stocking on Christmas morning?

Do you recognize him? No? Here he is with his customary companion:

Yes! It’s Schmutzli! See the cane, for child-thwacking? I think St. Nicolas has a rather resigned look on his face in this picture—resigned for a finger puppet, I mean. I sense that he and Schmutzli have a complicated relationship.

I doubt anyone will be quite as delighted by this as I am, except perhaps Jaywalker, author of the excellent Belgian Waffle. Jaywalker lives in Belgium, where they have Pere Fouettard (FATHER WHIP!), a Schmutzli analog, Her children were charmingly convinced that if they failed to leave beer for St. Nicolas they would be soundly beaten by his henchman, and I think this is a clever way to trick one’s offspring into pouring you a little drink before they hie themselves off to bed. If only St. Nicolas’ Day were every day.

So, yes, we had a lovely holiday, thank you for asking. My knee is much better—I got myself a spot of Vicodin, and after a few days of that, my recovery made a series of exponential leaps, and now Advil is sufficing for the remaining ache. Pain control really does wonders. At some point during my labor with Ames and Simone, it became impossible to tell whether the contractions were getting stronger or whether they were merely magnified by the fact that my uterus was so battered from hours of this abuse that even breathing hurt, and I think something similar was going on with my knee.

If we were religious, perhaps it would be gauche to visibly delight in the material aspects of Christmas, but as we are not, I feel no shame in telling you that seeing Simone with her presents was easily the highlight of the holiday.

Some favorites included the moose pictured above, a small tag-festooned piece of blanket, and most especially this:

This squeaking, rubber giraffe is essentially an overpriced dog toy, but was recommended by so many people that I bought one for Simone (actually, the tag said “FROM SCHMUTZLI”—very out of character of him to be bringing gifts). She has spent the past few days sitting with her toys piled companionably in front of her, sometimes grabbing one in each hand and squealing with the excitement of it all, then seizing the poor giraffe and stuffing its face into her teething maw.

It is hard to predict what toys babies will find most diverting. Simone’s hands-down favorite had been this…thing I found hanging on a clearance rack at Target and spontaneously tossed in my cart as I passed by. I can no longer find it anywhere online, which means it must be long gone, but it was by Dwell Studio and comprised several plush pieces festooned with various plastic rings, crinkly bits, a little mirror, etc. Of course MY favorite thing of Simone’s is a book she got last week from her aunt Amy, so if you are in search of a baby gift geared toward an easily-amused parent, may I suggest Louise: The Adventures of a Chicken.

My Christmas presents were almost as exciting as Simone’s, though they engendered (slightly) less drool and shrieking: a bottle of perfume, a Shinzi Katoh schedule book, and my gift to myself (besides the Hayden Harnett black patent Corcovado tote I got for $110 marked down from $650, can I get an AMEN) was a batch of these cookies, to which I added a splash of vanilla-infused cognac, because the bottle was just sitting there on the counter, so why not? I also added some cinnamon and used half pecans/half walnuts for the nuts, if you are interested, which you shouldn’t be if you have any desire to maintain your girlish figure.
I kept the cookies in an airtight tub to preserve their freshness, but let me tell you there is no way to preserve your dignity while calling “Could you bring me my tub of cookies?” to your husband as you recline on the couch. Scott laughed and laughed at my cookie tub, finally declaring that he is going to call me TUBBY from now on. Which I assure you he is not, not if he likes having his scrotum conveniently attached to his body.

I hope you all had lovely winter holidays, however you celebrate them. Personally, I find the family/presents/cookies combo particularly festive. Saxby Chambliss, friends.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (30)

Dec

Christmas With Tolstoy.

During Level One of my beloved Shred, Jillian says:

“For those of you at home who are looking for a modified version of a jumping jack, look elsewhere… I’ve got 400 lb people who can do jumping jacks. So can you.”

OR CAN I?

Feast your eyes upon my new, bionic knee. I spent this morning getting x-rays and being fondled by an orthopedist. Specifically, someone who specializes in Sports Medicine. I never would have imagined that a time would come when I would require the services of someone specializing in the medicine of sport, but life is full of surprises.

My left knee continued to get worse last week, despite discontinuing my morning date with Ms. Michaels. And then I slipped on a patch of ice while taking my jeans to the tailor, and before I knew it things had disintegrated to the point that I was going to bed early in an attempt to avoid the pain with sleep…only the pain prevented me from sleeping, so I spent an hour or so every evening crying and rolling around clutching a heating pad. Early to bed, early to writhe. Makes a girl consider a home amputation.

My knee began refusing to descend stairs, and experimenting with other methods of bending—backward, for instance, or to the side. Sometimes it would rudely comment upon my weight by neglecting to support it. My mother arrived on Thursday, and while we were at dinner, my knuckles white around the stem of my wine glass, she blithely mentioned that she has had faulty knees since Junior High. Apparently, one day she was walking home from school after a particularly vigorous lesson in the Trampoline unit of her PE class, when her knees simply gave out and she tumbled to the pavement.

{Let us pause for a moment to delight in the fact that TRAMPOLINE was a gym class subject in my mother’s small North Dakota town. It was as a result of that particular unit, by the way, that her peers nicknamed her “Crazy Legs.”}

The point is, it turns out that bad knees run in my family—I am physically akin to an overbred puppy-mill Cocker Spaniel. According to the doctor I saw this morning, I have something about an IT Band, and a Hamstring Whatsit where it attaches to something, and Possible Meniscus Involvement. I am to wear this brace, and begin physical therapy, and return in six weeks. I should be much improved by then, and if not she will order an MRI. I have been taking 800 milligrams of Advil every four hours for days and days, to the chagrin of my sensitive stomach, so I asked her whether I couldn’t have something else for the pain. She displayed a miserly attitude toward dispensing medication, and instead of something useful like Vicodin (I’m allergic to Codeine), prescribed me Ultram, the effect of which is to make me feel sleepy and vaguely stupid while leaving my pain virtually untouched. Though I hate feeling drugged—I requested my Morphine be discontinued early after my C-Section, because I found it unsettling—I will put up with a little drowsiness in exchange for pain relief. But this Ultram? Not cutting it.
And the one pill I took will be my last, because I looked it up online and found that it is ABSOLUTELY CONTRAINDICATED during breastfeeding. Thanks for the heads up, doctor! Simone only nurses about twice a day now, but still. Back to gnawing bullets and muffling my screams with a pillow.

The orthopedist said that I can work out in some sort of low-impact way once my knee feels better—like with an elliptical machine. Unfortunately I do not have an elliptical machine, or the room for one, but I do need exercise I can do at home. I loved the 30-Day Shred, and am desperate to find a suitable replacement. I didn’t lose any weight in the two weeks or so before my knees mutinied, but I felt much stronger. Besides, I don’t trust scales: we moved ours to another part of the bathroom, and apparently over THERE I weigh four pounds more than I do next to the bathtub. When I have a little more time on my hands, I am thinking I will try moving the scale around from place to place until I find some forgotten alcove behind a radiator where I am already at my goal weight.

My knee is distracting me, so I will leave you with my favorite moment of my mother’s visit so far:

She was staring out the large sliding doors leading to the deck. It was dark and blizzarding, and she gave a sorrowful shake of her head.
“Oh…Look.”
“What?” I asked.

Here is where she meant to point out the wind blowing the snow across the deck. But instead she misspoke, and for the rest of the evening, from time to time my brother or I would lapse into silence before heaving a sigh and then saying broodily, as she had: “Oh…Look. The wind, blowing the snow across the dead.”

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (56)

Dec

Sybil.

I didn’t mean to be gone so long. The thing is, I’m feeling funky, and not in a good, James Brown kind of way. My mood seems to lurch from one place to another, and as a result I keep starting to write about, say, how annoyed I am, or how sad, or how wistful, and ten minutes later Simone summons me imperiously to her side, and by the time I return to my computer, I feel another way entirely. Happy! Grateful! Amused! And so I start to write about that, and then AGAIN with the imperious summoning, and…you get the idea. I end up with five scant paragraph-long entries, each of which could have been written by a different person.
So, to catch you up, let’s run through my recent emotions:

WORRIED
Simone doesn’t care for solids. Every bite has to be stealthily slipped (ok, wedged) past her lips, and most is spit back out again. Some foods are better than others—she will sometimes masticate a spoonful or two of carrots or sweet potatoes—but the only food she will open her mouth for, that has been anything like a success, is a mixture of butternut squash and corn. On the suggestion of her therapist, we tried a less pureed texture (a mashed potato) and Simone just gagged in horror.
I haven’t talked much about this here, and it’s not because I am afraid of boring you with such a tedious and inconsequential topic. On the contrary, I am perfectly comfortable boring you with tedious and inconsequential topics—it is something of a hobby of mine, as you have no doubt already gathered. No, I haven’t discussed it because I KNOW I am slightly hysterical on the subject, and veering dangerously close to obnoxious milestone-obsessed mother territory. She’s only seven months adjusted, so who cares, right? But lots of preemies have feeding issues, and when you have a preemie, sometimes it is hard not to worry preemptively about all the monsters that could be lurking just around the corner.
Up until now, Simone has been eating like a champ—she weighs sixteen buttery, roly-poly pounds—but I am afraid that when she is supposed to be getting her nutrition from solid food, we are going to lose all of that progress. Being the parent of a micropreemie seems to mean CONSTANT VIGILANCE, what with the therapists and specialists and waiting-and-seeing, and it’s exhausting. It is also impossible not to compare your baby to others, which brings me to my next emotion:

ENVIOUS
When I was on bedrest, the nurses told me about the girl in the next room, who had an incompetent cervix and was laying in trendelenburg (feet above head) trying to keep her baby in. One night everyone was rushing around in the hall, and it turned out that she had delivered. She was only 23 weeks and 1 day, and the baby wasn’t expected to make it.
Less than a week later I had Simone. Throughout her time in the NICU, the nurses and doctors would remark upon how similar her course was to that of another baby, named Max. They were the two tiniest long-term residents, and they did everything together: were put on the oscillator, were extubated, then failed extubation and were reintubated on the same day. Simone’s primary nurse and I used to joke that when they were older Simone and Max would meet and fall in love—obviously they were destined for one another. They finally made it off the ventilator at the very same time, and by then even the respiratory therapists were talking about “Simone and Max.” They were discharged within the same week. It wasn’t until later that I found out that Max was the 23-weeker whom I thought had died after his mother left the bedrest wing.

He was born only a week older than Ames was when he died, at an age many hospitals do not consider viable. I sometimes lurk on his family’s website, to see how he is doing, and you know what? He has been far ahead of Simone in everything, from sitting to crawling, and while Simone’s appointment at the NICU follow-up clinic was a disaster, he sailed through. Simone was immature for her gestation, and had a small placenta, but she was almost a 26-weeker. I know better than to compare, I SWEAR I do, but they were progressing at the same rate when they left the NICU, and now they’re not, and I am alternately jealous and certain that I am doing something wrong.

EXCITED
My mother comes home from Switzerland for the holidays on Thursday, and I am so, so, SO full of glee at the prospect. Last year at this time she was in a hospital full of German-speaking nurses after being hit by a car (we are an exceptionally lucky family), so this year we are going to do it up right, and no crutches, bedpans, or foreign nurses allowed. I got her a fabulous present, too, if I do say so myself. I wish she didn’t have to leave again in January, but GOTT EN HIMMEL are we going to have fun while we can.

PROUD
I have done The 30-day Shred almost every single day for the last week and a half. After the first time I had to take a few days off on account of I couldn’t walk, but now I can do it for days and days in a row and I’m not even sore afterward. I still want to die while I’m in the middle of the routine, but it is over so quickly, and it’s strangely addictive. I had to skip it the other day because of an injury and I was actually DISAPPOINTED, and practically sprang out of bed to do it this morning. I haven’t lost any weight at all in the past two weeks, even though I am eating well, but I feel so smug and strong and hardcore that I don’t even care about the scale. Probably I am storing a bunch of weight in this little muscle that is developing on my inner arm. Also? I owe it all to this site, which I find massively inspiring, and makes me feel like part of a team, somehow–a team of people who aren’t perfect, but keep trying anyway.

PAINED
The one problem with The Shred (That’s what we Shredders call it. It’s “The 30-Day Shred” to you) is that it seems to have ruined my knees. Yesterday I couldn’t really move about, and I had to skip the workout, as mentioned. Today I resumed The Shred, and while I felt fine at the time, a few hours later my knees were back to howling and shrieking whenever I tried to do something strenuous like bend my leg. Am I old? Is Jillian Michaels trying to kill me? Do I need one of those ICY HOT patches or some sort of athletic supporter?

ANNOYED
Both of Simone’s bottom front teeth have broken the surface, and as a result she has been an insufferable little shit for days now. I know, I’m not supposed to say that, but it’s true. Last night I wrote her a letter:

Dear Simone,
BABIES HAVE BEEN GETTING TEETH SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME. GET OVER YOURSELF.
Love,
Mama

I am back at that place where I feel I am doing a pitiful job in all arenas, failing as a mother, a writer, and a regular old person, and the way my daughter refuses to be quiet and/or still for even one minute of the day aggravates me to no end because I keep thinking that if only I had one uninterrupted hour, oh the things I could do! So I am irked and short-tempered, which makes me feel…

GUILTY
I don’t read to Simone enough. She recently went over a week without a bath before I remembered (I am embarrassed just typing that). The other day when she was crying and I was ready to snap at her I caught myself thinking “Thank god I don’t have twins,” and then I burst into tears, because why don’t I just spit on Ames’ grave, while I’m at it? Except he doesn’t have a grave, and his ashes are currently IN MY BEDSIDE TABLE.

SAD
One year ago today I looked like this. I had babies—plural. A week ago last Sunday marked one year since we found out we were having a boy and a girl. I remember that day so clearly, how soaringly happy I was. The babies felt real to me, and I was starting to believe they might be coming safely home in the spring. In a way, that was the high point, the peak of the rollercoaster, and I can see myself there paused for a moment, hand on my belly, before events began their descent. Within the week I was diagnosed with an infection, and I wonder now, was that THE infection? Is that when it started? It is certainly when smaller things began to go wrong: more pain, more nausea, gestational diabetes, and a rising tide of anxiety and panic. I have reached the part of the year where every day I feel something akin to the memory of a dream.

WISTFUL
What if?

GRATEFUL
Sometimes I still sit and stare at Simone while she sleeps. Asleep she is small and milky smelling, and when she is awake she is like a sudden gust of squeals and smiles and drool. Even on our bad days, she makes everything better; even when she’s part of the problem, she’s the solution as well. Just today I had to put her whole hand in my mouth and nibble on it a little, to calm myself so that I wouldn’t be tempted to swallow her whole. I have A BABY, and when she sees me in the morning, her mouth drops open and her whole face lights up and she erupts into wriggles: MY GOD! she seems to say, IT’S YOU!!
And I think, MY GOD! HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY?

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (98)

Dec

Pointless, Adj., Not Having a Point.

A person with my particular dimensions should never attempt to buy a brassiere anywhere other than Nordstrom, a specialty lingerie shop, or the Internet. But, as it is quarantine season, it had taken me a week to get around to my much-needed Target trip for groceries. I knew chances of coordinating a separate bra-shopping outing were negligible, so I figured I might as well TRY to find something there.

I know, it sounds just as stupid to me, when I see it all typed out like that.

I really did need a new bra, because people are coming to take pictures of me next week and no, I can’t hire a model to play the part of Alexa, because my editor reads this website and she knows what I look like. Things have changed since my initial nursing bra shopping expedition, and by “things” I mean “my breasts” and by “changed” I mean “deflated in the manner of a once buoyant, now despondent balloon.” My comfy wireless nursing bralettes aren’t doing me any favors.
I originally planned to do the sensible thing and order something online, but I found the measuring process confusing. No one seems to agree about where you measure, and whether you add inches to that measurement, and I don’t own a soft measuring tape and so instead wrapped a belt around my chest and then measured the belt. As best I can tell, I am about a 32Elephantine or 32Fearsome, but I figured if I could find a 34DD that ran a little big, that would do, in a pinch.

I started off thinking I would like something that came in black or a pretty color. What can I say, I’m a dreamer. It didn’t take more than a few cursory glances to tell me that anything that came in a shade other than white or nude was out of the question. So I decided that all I really needed was something in my size—or rather the size I had decided I could wedge myself into—no matter how menacing and vaguely Germanic the construction, no matter that it was made with girders and rivets and the fullest sails of a noble Viking ship.
The only DDs had band sizes nearly a FOOT too big. A foot! That’s practically the circumference of my smallest cat! Eventually I found one lone 34 that was shoved in the middle of a rack of unrelated items, and because I had already spent an absurd percentage of my precious out-of-the-apartment-time on this fool’s errand, I snatched it up and went on my way without trying it on.
And…guess what? It gives me the dreaded Quadraboob, and the overall effect is of trying to corral a large quantity of pudding with a thimble. Now trust me, I am not that large-breasted, really. I see bras that look too large for any human who has the capacity for bipedalism, and then somehow, once on my body, they are too small. Do my breasts have some sort of stealth technology that enables them to conceal their true dimensions? Am I going to have to order something with my sad, cobbled together belt measurements and hope for the best? Do I really have to drag my ass to the Mall of America, where joy goes to die, during the holiday season? Did I really just spend seven paragraphs discussing my bosom?

Let’s move on!

At least three of you have commented upon how often Simone seems to be unclothed, and lest you think we are closet nudists over here, let me assure you that she begins every morning fully dressed. By the end of the day, however, she has soiled every garment within drooling/butternut squashing distance, and frankly it is easier to hose her down post-supper if we feed her wearing nothing but a diaper. Wait, that’s not right—if she EATS wearing nothing but a diaper. I haven’t worn a diaper in ages.
We live on the top floor of our building, and even with all our radiators off save one, it is always broiling. I am typing this in a nursing tank and Capri-length yoga pants, and it is maybe 15 degrees outside. So there. And just to end any crazy-closet-nudist speculation:

See? Clothes. Three of those pictures feature her March of Babies NICU team shirt from last year. The smallest size they had was six months, and it was big enough to serve as a caftan when she got it, in April. Now it is getting a little snug.

It has become difficult to get a picture of Simone without something in her mouth, because as of yesterday, her first tooth has shown its sharp little tooth-head. It’s just a sliver so far, but at least it has broken the surface at last, after months of on and off teething symptoms. Frankly, I was starting to doubt the existence of these “teeth” you speak of, but there it is. Drool pours from her mouth by the cupful, now, and she can’t get enough of those refrigerated teething rings. Can you imagine how odd it must be, when you have no concept of teeth, to one day wake up and find some painful, pointy THING taking up residence in your mouth? I mean what the fucking FUCK is that? Sometimes I think babyhood must be like one long acid trip, only with more milk and fewer Lava Lamps. Number of viewings of The Muppet Movie are probably comparable, though.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (54)

Dec

This One’s For Jenni.

My dear friend just finished writing a WHOLE BOOK, so I felt some sort of congratulatory gift was in order. She is a vegan rollergirl with a Gilmore Girls fixation, and I admit I was stumped. I have been pausing occasionally in my work for the past two weeks to consider and discard various options: Kneepads? An Alexis Bledel t-shirt? A block of rare Andalusian tofu?

And then it came to me. So here you go, Jenni: 35 seconds of the very finest baby laughter, since you missed it before.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

Comments (31)

Dec

Mash, Mish.

I have a bunch of little updates and, once again, no conceivable way to string them together, so I am resorting to my old friend the bullet-point:

• We are pretty sure that Simone is allergic to rice. Once we discontinued the rice cereal, her eczema improved rapidly and dramatically. It’s still there, but in a much milder form, and the itching must be better as well because there are no more bleeding ears and rubbed-raw eyelids. Of course it is hard to know for certain that removing the rice was what did it—maybe the salves and unguents finally kicked in. I suppose the way to tell would be to reintroduce rice and see what happens, but I’m not eager to do so. I suppose this means no rice pudding or baby-sized handrolls for the foreseeable future.

• I started doing something new, exercise-wise, and it is my favorite routine yet. Though I should warn you that as a result I cannot go down a flight of stairs without wincing in pain and causing my husband to inform me that I am walking like the Tin Man. And yes, I’m going to make you go over to Lemondrop if you want to read about it. It’ll be fun, I promise! I even changed my bio picture!

• Tonight I am meeting my best friend from Junior High for a drink, all thanks to the magic of Facebook. I haven’t seen her in almost ten years, though from the ages of 12 through 16 we wore a literal path between our houses. To be honest, I don’t really “get” Facebook just yet—I have a blog, an email account, and Twitter, so in some ways it seems redundant—but I have to admit that rediscovering people I haven’t talked to in years has been kind of amazing.

• I don’t usually do product reviews, no matter how charming the marketing representative, but someone sent me something I really like, and since we have talked before about the challenges of swaddling older babies, it seemed cruel not to share this with you. Aden + Anais makes large all-muslin swaddling blankets, and when I say large, I do mean large: frankly I don’t think they would have worked for Simone when she was teeny tiny (it would have been like wrapping a mouse in a bedsheet), but for a wriggly almost-16-pounder, they are PERFECT. They would probably work for full-term newborns as well. I use the “winter-warmth” version, which I prefer to the original. It isn’t as heavy as the term “winter warmth” would have you believe, and muslin is very breathable, which I appreciate as I have been paranoid about Simone overheating ever since the apnea nurse told me it was a SIDS risk. We only swaddle Simone’s arms (then bundle her into a sleep sack, which takes care of the legs), but even so, she can wriggle herself free of most blankets. I SO wish I’d found these earlier.

• I finished the poll for the ELVER AWARD Readers’ Choice winner. I intended to narrow the field to ten, but eleven was the best I could do. And yes, I KNOW there is another platypus verse—what can I say, I like Platypi. You can view the entries here, and then vote below.

• And finally, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, tomorrow is St. Nicolas’ Day, and I think you all know what that means. This weekend, a certain someone comes to visit. I have been warning Simone all week that she had better be on her best behavior if she doesn’t want to be beaten, thrown in a sack, and roasted over a makeshift campfire in the woods. May Schmutzli spare you!

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |

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Dec

Thoroughly! Trivial! Tuesday!

This week, allow me to present Aka-Beko:

“Aka-beko” is Japanese for…”Red Cow?” “Red Ox?” For some red ungulate, anyway. Long ago—in 807—a temple was being constructed in Fukushima, when a large red ox appeared and made itself useful ferrying construction materials from place to place. The story of the ox became popular among the people of Fukushima, as did small papier-mache replicas of same. The children of Fukushima couldn’t get enough of these things.
At some point, a smallpox epidemic devastated the area, and legend has it that the only children who survived were those who had aka-beko toys. Today, papier-mache aka-beko are sold as talismans for good health.

I got mine from my brother when I was in high school. I went through an intense Japanophilic phase back then, and Aka-Beko has been one of my dearest possessions ever since. The head of Aka-Beko was originally attached by a string so that it might bob at me reassuringly, but at some point the string broke: