Girl With Curious Hair

It's the title of a collection of stories by David Foster Wallace, the author of Infinite Jest, who gained a certain notoriety by committing suicide last year at age 46. Apparently it is very, very sad to be a creative genius. I've never read anything by him but would like to at some point. I've been reading an article about him in the New Yorker for around a month now. The articles are too long, or perhaps it is that fancy New Yorkers have more reading time than we Texans. When I am old and gray and nodding by the fire, as Yeats would say, I will read esoteric, rambling fiction. Speaking of being old and gray, I was having a conversation about weddings with our friend Izzy, age four and one half, a couple of weeks ago and she wondered if I would like to come to her wedding someday. I assured her that nothing would make me happier. She seemed pleased then, after a moment's reflection said, rather matter-of-factly, "Unless you are dead." Indeed.

Speaking of curious hair, I got mine lopped off. I don't have a picture of it yet but it is short, probably the shortest my hair has ever been. There are two types of curly hair--good curly and bad curly. My two eldest children have Good Curly, as do my friends Seana and Christine. It is the kind of hair that makes lovely ringlets. There is also Good Wavy, exhibited by my friend Brenda. It's hair that can be wavy OR straight with very little effort. As a child, I am told that my hair was Good Curly. As an adult, and once the high school perming madness grew out, my hair was relatively Good Wavy. When I began having children, my hair became BAD, VERY BAD Wiry, Poufy, Enormous Hair. It does not want to be curly or straight, it simply wants to be a Brillo Pad. So I got it cut off with hopes that the Brillo padness would waft gently to the floor and be swept away. No such luck. Again I am enslaved to the Chi.

Helena is now nine weeks old. She still sleeps for long stretches and is just generally pleasant. She is starting to smile and coo a little. She does get a little fussy between 5-6pm and the only thing that makes her happy is to be held. It is unfortunate timing. She doesn't mind reclining in the Boppy as long as someone is sitting next to her and talking directly to her. That can't really happen either so she ends up pretty sad. I try to end the time of sadness by giving her a bath, which she loves. One night, she was floating in the warm water in her little bath hammock thing AND the husband was vacuuming nearby AND I was talking and singing to her AND she found her fist to suck on. She was so blissed out--it was a baby nirvana.

Harper and Hudson have really been enjoying play-doh. And the book Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton. And I am tired so that will have to be all for today. Here is Hudson telling you where to go to find the elephants.And pretending to be Daddy. If you go to school long enough, you too can wear this jaunty tam-o-shanter.

If all the world were Elmo's World

We've been going to the park as a family quite a bit, much to our delight. Hudson and the husband fly kites and kick a soccer ball, while Harper, Helena and I stroll around the perimeter and stop to play briefly between laps until Helena decides she needs to move again. Last weekend Harper was watching a seven year old boy go across these little wobbly lilypad things with poles through the middle (no idea what the technical name of this playground fun might be) and she walked right over and started chatting. "Be careful now! You don't want to fall!" Seven year old boy cut his eyes at his dad who was sitting a few feet away, as if to say, "Is this little girl talking TO me? What should I do?" Harper, undeterred, continued to chat at him. "Wow, I like baseball! How about you?" He decided he might as well answer. "Um, I like baseball." Harper enthused a little more about exactly why she is such a fan (I missed some of this because Helena started crying but it had something to do with the fact that "now that it's summer Daddy lets me watch baseball with him and stay up late before bed") and then I told her we needed to keep walking, much to the boy's relief. I wondered where she had acquired the baseball ice-breaker and a few days later I found out. It seems that not only is "Sesame Street" teaching my son to count, it is also teaching my daughter her social skills. On "Elmo's World" there was a catchy little tune about how to be a friend and one of the verses instructed that a good friend would ask a new friend if he liked baseball. Harper was sitting on the couch humming along, her puppy was dancing in her lap. For some reason I started crying and had to go to the kitchen so she wouldn't notice. It just made me sad, wanting her to always be this simple and this happy. Wanting her to always think that making friends was as easy as remembering a little song.

Here is Helena, showing off. All of the tummy time is making her really strong. She even flipped herself over on Tuesday, much to her displeasure.

If I had a pony..

We took Harper and Hudson to the rodeo Saturday. We parked, walked a really long way, rode ponies, looked at some animals, looked at some tractors, walked a really long way back to the car, and came home. It was enough to satisfy everyone. Maybe next year we'll ride the bumper cars or something. It is impossible to take decent pictures of a pony ride. They all looked like this:
I have tentatively re-entered society this week with my many small children. Helena would prefer to stay home and take a 3 hour morning nap but she has done pretty well. We are having spring here in Houston. It generally lasts around a week, at which point the temperatures rocket and it's summer for around 9 months.

I watched a really affecting movie on HBO called "Taking Chance." It stars Kevin Bacon as a Marine colonel who, feeling far removed from the war in Iraq, volunteers to escort the body of a fallen soldier home. I pretty much cried through the whole thing. Not because it is overtly sentimental or manipulative, but because it is so quiet and spare and stunning in its presentation of the process. I was particularly touched by the scenes showing the soldiers whose job it is to prepare the bodies when they get stateside. They were so reverent in their solemn duty and each dead soldier is put in the coffin impeccably dressed in his uniform even if he will never be viewed by anyone else. I'm not one for ceremony in general, and my highly unusual opinions on funerals deserve a post of their own, but I absolutely love it when a movie can make me ponder the deep things the way this one did.

On a lighter note, we have been enjoying ourselves some of the jazzy vocal and guitar stylings of Jason Mraz. I think he would probably enjoy the fact that every time we listen to him in the car Harper asks, "Mommy is this a lady?" I enjoy the fact that Mr. A to Z looks an awful lot like my very own husband, who has also been known to entertain us with his own jazzy vocal and guitar stylings.

It's funny how with your first child you spend lots of time deliberately teaching them stuff. Like, for example, teaching them to count to 10 in four different languages by their first birthday (not that WE did that. Ok, yes we did. You should've heard how cute Harper sounded counting in Hungarian). But with the subsequent kids there is all of this accidental learning. I heard Hudson count to 20 today when he was sorting his cars and I had NO idea he knew how to count that high. I'm sad to report that "Sesame Street" probably gets the credit.

Helena has slept an EIGHT hour stretch at night three times this week. This is an awesome feat not achieved by the other two until they were many, many months old. I am thankful. Here are she and Hudson having another, slightly more conventional, conversation:
And here they are today enjoying watching little animals sway to and fro to the tune of "Old McDonald". Right after I took this picture, Hudson got up and started swaying and doing a little karate dance. Helena was duly impressed.

Use words when necessary

Hudson and Helena had their first conversation yesterday. He was playing with Lightning McQueen, Sally, and a small Caterpillar backhoe. She was in her swing nearby. It went a little something like this:

Hudson: Hi, I'm fast! Beep, beep, beep. DIRT!

Helena's bottom: SQUIRT!!

Hudson: (with mouth agape, squatting to make eye contact) Oh NO! WHAT is THAT?

He stayed there for another minute or so, patiently waiting for an explanation for her, um, outburst, got none, and went back to his cars. Helena continued to gaze adoringly at nothing in particular, until I could stop my convulsive laughing long enough to get her and clean up the effects of said interaction.

This boy I love

Is 33 today. He deserves an epic tome of a post rhapsodizing about his wonderfulness. And I will write one. Soon. For now I'll tell you this: he loves me, his children, and dogs. He enjoys teaching, reading J.D. Salinger, Boethius, and Augustine, and smoking a pipe. He is a vegetarian who likes guns and wears a bow-tie. He is a flier of kites. Happy birthday, dear husband, happy birthday to you. (I wish I could get you that Triumph motorcycle. Maybe next year.)

One month

And three days, but you'll forgive me the delay. Helena has changed her mind about a few things: she now likes the swing and the pacifier, and tolerates the sling. She has mixed feelings about the Miracle Blanket. She starts off with a quizzical expression which quickly leads to one of extreme indignation when she discovers that her arms are tightly swaddled to her sides which means her hands are down there somewhere too. Now, the faint of heart might unswaddle her at this point, but I have discovered that the loud protest only lasts 5 minutes and then leads to 5 and sometimes 6 HOURS of uninterrupted night sleep for Helena. And, perhaps more importantly, me. She really prefers, as you see from the photo, to be on her stomach, which is, of course, a big no-no. With Harper, I adhered to the Back-to-Sleep mantra so strictly that she got a flat head. I am pretty much mantra-free at this point. Harper (her head did round out nicely once she could roll over on her own) held Helena for the first time this week.We are all about ready to re-enter the world. We have pretty much been wearing our pajamas for 34 days. We do change them occasionally. Harper has grown so weary of being inside that she has taken to dressing up her stuffed animals to "take them places." Yesterday I was surprised to find out that there is something of a familial structure to her menagerie. "Just the kids are going to the dinosaur museum today," she announced as she put a lovely frock on her brontosaurus and gave him a good brushing, "and the grown ups are staying home." I asked who the grown ups were, and she said Wolfie (who is actually a lamb) and Brown Bear, who are the largest of her animals. I thought that made good sense. She has been keen on this idea of going places by herself for a few months now. At one point she had a grand plan that at some undisclosed point in the near future I would drop her off at a bus stop and she would get on the bus and go to karate school. All by herself. On this she was emphatic. She would also be wearing a gi. She had not yet decided what color her belt would be.

Hudson has, for some mysterious reason, decided that when Daddy goes to work, there are horses involved. As soon as the husband walks out the door, Hudson launches into a dramatic monologue that sounds a little like this, "Daddy work gerbuhhhgaghdkifin gububb HORSES!! alllajoutuchudrim lackshimi!! Daddy, ababidododjerrubuduh and the HORSES!!!...." Is Daddy a cowboy? A rodeo clown in a really nice suit? A jockey? We don't know, but I'm sure it does not involve any motions for summary judgements or depositions.

All of my children just pooped within 3 minutes of one another. So.

Abstaining from complaining

The other title choice was "Content for Lent." I couldn't decide which was cheesier. They are both pretty awful. A Lenten fast is supposed to involve the abstention from something we enjoy. I decided that I must really enjoy whining and complaining because I do it on a daily, hourly, and sometimes minute to minute basis. So, here is what will happen if a person (for example, me) decides to give up whining and complaining for Lent:

On Thursday night, I filled up the bathtub to give Harper and Hudson their bath and noticed the water looked rusty. So rusty that I decided not to give them a bath. How dirty can they be, really, when we've been home all day? I also decided that I would wait until morning to take a shower myself, because I noticed the rusty water also had a Smell, and it was decidedly not pleasant. A little later, during her night feedings, Helena rather uncharacteristically spit up. All over me and herself. Twice. We smelled good. Friday morning as I'm changing her on the changing table, she spits up again and it goes all over her hair. And as I am washing my hands I realize the rusty water has slowed to a trickle. That's right.
We.
Have.
No.
Water.
Not even rusty water.

I desperately need a bath. Helena desperately needs a bath. Hudson, after enjoying his bowl of oatmeal, desperately needs a bath. So does his high chair. Now, this is the THIRD time since Helena was born (4 weeks ago tomorrow) that our water has been turned off, but the apartment complex had given us fair warning the other two times. I called the office and they claimed this outage was the fault of a water main break a block or so away, and that the city had NO IDEA when the water would be back on. You know, with three small children, there is an immediate need for water. Lots of water. Toilets to be flushed, faces and bottoms to be wiped, and hands to be washed, and washed and washed again. Hudson, inexplicably, had three monstrous Bad Diapers by early afternoon. Helena continued to spit up and poo at intervals of approximately 8.6 minutes. The internet was down, which had nothing to do with the water, but meant that even when I got a minute I couldn't blog or check email to get everyone to feel sorry for me. Hudson only napped 45 minutes (it's usually 2-3 hours). Harper didn't nap. When the husband got home at 5:45 bearing the wondrous gift of 9 gallons of water, you can imagine the Mood that Welcomed Him Home. More Roseanne than Mrs. Cleaver, I'm sorry to say. He was very sympathetic and took over so I could take a very, very cold "shower" with a gallon jug of water. As soon as I finished my invigorating splash off, the water came back on. That's funny, huh?

Speaking of funny, my use of quotes around "shower" reminded me that Jamie linked to a blog dedicated to the misuse of quotation marks. It is hilarious. I wonder if she could leave the link in the comments so we can all enjoy it?

And a couple of photos to show some of the many things in which I should find great contentment. The second one is the ONLY shot I have of all three kids together. Great, huh? Christmas card worthy. But instead of whining about my lack of photography skills, I'm going to read the manual that came with my camera, as my friend Robin, Master Photographer, suggested in her recent blog series on taking a good photograph. If only I knew where to find it.