new stuff

Sorry, we've been a little busy over here.

As noted, Sam was sick for a whole week, and since then I've been scrambling to try to catch up on all the work I fell behind on. I think part of the nature of academia (and maybe other professions, I really only know this about academia) is that there is more work than one could ever really hope to get done, and so one ends up chronically feeling like one could and probably should be doing more.

While Sam was sick, he liked to sleep with his head on our bed, either resting on his knees with his cheek on our mattress, or else like this:



It looks pretty uncomfortable to me, and I tried to put a little pillow under his back to support him, but he'd move somewhere the pillow wasn't, so I guess it was working for him.

The week after Sam was sick was Thanksgiving, and J's parents and sister, and my brother, all came and stayed with us, and J's brother and sis-in-law came for the day on Thursday and also hung out with us on Saturday. A 20-lb turkey from Stillman's Turkey Farm was successfully roasted, and served with two stuffings (kale/dried fruit/hazelnut/whole wheat bread, and bread/pinenut/tarragon, both featured in the previous week's NY Times, and both tasty), sweet potatoes baked with ginger and maple syrup, the best gravy I have ever made and which I must remember to make in the future (from The Best Recipe, which is usually a tad boring, but reliable for stuff like roasting and gravy), and cranberry-orange-ginger sauce. Grandma and Aunt L. made the family-recipe broccoli-corn casserole, yum, and Grandma brought her justifiably famous pumpkin-cranberry bread. We started off the meal with squash-apple soup and the bread, followed by a nice salad that J. made. For dessert, a delish pumpkin pie that J. also made. Lots of orange-colored food, and much gluttony. Oooh-- and I discovered my old favorite blended table wine, which I found while working weekends at a gourmet food shop in the SF Bay Area, at the local Trader Joe's. Big House Red. It went very nicely with the turkey. I think I might have to pick up a case... it's that yummy (and so cheap!)

The rest of the time we hung out and talked, and ate leftovers, and went to a nice museum in town, and looked at ducks and geese by one pond, then the next day at another pond, and went shopping a bit (well, everyone else humored me by looking around while I bought these boots I'd been eyeing for a long long time and finally decided to buy... and boy do I love them. Mmmm. Comfy, no heel, but still styley.) and out to dinner. Sam totally thrived on all the attention, and a week later is _still_ asking for More (M., my bro) and More (L., J's sis). And points out Grandma and Grandpa in pictures. They're doing a family unit in daycare this month, and making family trees from photos we printed out and brought in, so that's great timing-- especially since we're going to see my parents later this month.

It was especially nice to see my brother, since he's moving to Japan to (finally!) join his wife later this month, so I will see him even less often than I currently do. But I'm very happy that they get to be together again-- they haven't lived together for, geez, I think a couple of years now.

The night after everyone left, we restarted Project Nightwean, which we'd initiated with some success a month prior, but then after two weeks (by the end of which Sam could be soothed back to sleep during his one usual 1-or-so AM wakeup with just a bit of talking and a pat on the back) he got sick, and in his stuffiness and screaming and dehydration I started nursing at night again, and wow, stopping again after that was HARD. There was a LOT of crying in the night last week; J. moved back into the bed in the guest room just so we weren't both totally exhausted, but by the third night of angry yelling-for-hours, I couldn't handle it alone any more either. Between that and the previous week of nightly nose-suctioning with accompanying screams and howls of protest, our neighbors surely think we torture our child regularly. But hey! now J. can put Sam back to sleep when he wakes up, as was demonstrated twice last night before midnight (yeah, we're still working on not having any wake-ups at all) and I'm not exaggerating at all when I say I danced in the living room as Sam eased quickly back into dreamland without me. Evening outings for me!!! Whee!!! Um... and at the least, some less-interrupted sleep. We are DEFINITELY doing this earlier with the next (gah! next!) kid.

In other Sam news, he's basically recovered from the nasty virus, but he now has conjunctivitis, which has been cycling round the daycare since he started there, it seems, so it was only a matter of time. It's viral, but they're allowed back after 3 applications (i.e. 24 hours' worth) of antibiotic eyedrops, so the ped. prescribed them over the phone this morning... but then cautioned that he's still totally contagious, because of course antibiotics don't touch viruses. So we have a dilemma: do we bring him to daycare knowing that he's contagious? or keep him home, thus losing even more work hours, when he (a) is totally perky and not much bothered by his slightly-red and gently-oozing eyes, and (b) clearly picked up the virus there, so it's not like he's bringing it in where it hasn't already been. I'm leaning towards bringing him in, clearly... Thoughts? Am I a bad daycare citizen? The ped. laid out the choice very clearly, and basically exactly as I put it here; she didn't say what she would have done, but she didn't tell me not to bring him in, either.

I have the same thing, though a milder version (and his isn't particularly bad, either); I do have to wear my glasses, though, which I really hate. I'm going to have to exacerbate the irritation by wearing contacts tomorrow-- I have my first haircut appointment in something like 9 months and I can't possibly show up at the Hip Salon wearing my Old Dorky Glasses.

In other meat news (other, in addition to the turkey discussion above, you see?): Stillman's Farm is starting a meat CSA, so we have a good source of pastured/sustainably-farmed/humanely-raised meat, finally, and our neighbors N. and M. picked up the 1/4-steer we'd ordered from River Rock Farm over Thanksgiving weekend, which they're splitting with us, so we now have nearly a quarter-cow, butchered and neatly wrapped in labeled paper packages, in our chest freezer in the basement. (I'm including all the links because we've been really happy with both the meat and the people raising/selling it at both places, and we feel really strongly about doing as much as we can to support local farmers who are growing food in sustainable, humane ways).

Speaking of food, here's a pic of Sam from about a month ago. He's enjoying a smoothie I whizzed up with juice and frozen blueberries and maybe a banana, I can't remember exactly-- he had some with a spoon, and then some in a cup, then he poured from the cup into the bowl, and back and forth, sampling and "mmm!"ing all the time.



Sam is all about combining words these days, which makes him seem more and more like a Kid, and not a Baby. Everything is "big" (as in "big truck!" "big bear!") even if it's not really big, or else modified by its owner ("Mommy boots" "Daddy swippers" "Sammy hat") or a color ("owange tayon"). And he announces his actions-- whenever he's angry, or just feels a lack of attention, he says "hit mommy" or "hit daddy" or even "hit car" or "hit book", sometimes but not always accompanying his announcement with the act (always reprimanded, of course), and requests specific actions like "Mommy readdabook". When he enters his daycare classroom, he calls out happily, "Hi, Sam!" , and when he leaves, or pretends to leave, he says "Bye, Sam!" but he does say to the fish, "Hi, Fish" and says "bye, (name)" whenever he's saying bye to anyone. [Added later: right now Sam and J. are building another arch. While orchestrating the delicate brick balance, J. sometimes asks Sam to hand him a brick of a certain color, and Sam complies, calling out "Tenkyu Sam!" (Thank you, Sam) as he helps out.] He also repeats the end of about anything we say, multi-syllabic words especially ("capable!"), with a little smartypants grin, so our carefree gossiping/snarking days are just about over. He is a big fan, already, of "no", which he says whenever asked a question by someone he's anxious about (i.e. anyone new), and in some moods when asked any question by anyone at all. And he loves to hide-- he slides into one of two favorite hiding places, and then calls out "Hiding!" or "Where's Sam?" until one of us starts "looking" for him, narrating our search as we go: "Where's Sam? Is he under the bed? Is he outside the window? Is he in the bathtub? Is he in Daddy's closet? Is he in Mommy's closet? Hey! Here he is!" whereupon he immediately says, "More hiding!" meaning he stays there, and we begin the "search" process again.

Whew! What a novel! Next time I'll post more pics; our recent ones haven't come out very well, not sure why, so I'm scrambling to find November and December pics to put into a new Sam calendar...

Sam and J. reading Sam's latest library-borrowed obsession, the Hanukkah Bugs pop-up book. The library version, predictably, is missing some pop-up features, so we may have to acquire our own copy: