the horsey tree

C has been refusing to eat solid foods for the past two months.  I tried consistently for several days when he was right around six months old. At first, he was curious–would get super excited to see the spoon and would express his enthusiasm by a little hyper-ventilating-type breathing. He would take a couple of bites and move the cereal around in his mouth, swallow a bit and drool out the rest. He seemed to be gravely disappointed that the stuff on the spoon was not quite the treat he had been expecting.  Then, even novelty seemed to wear off and C decided that the taste of the food was really just intolerable.  He would meet each spoonful with an awful grimace and would push out his tongue along with whatever food I had managed to get in there.  So, after a few brief encounters with rice cereal, baby oatmeal, green beens, and carrots, we decided to take a break. I have tried again every now and then to see if his feelings towards food might have changed–but no. He would have none of it. He was evidently perfectly content with milk, thank you very much. 

Yesterday, however, I tried again.  This time, I brought out the sweet potatoes….I thought I’d try to give him a little extra motivation. Perhaps the child has a sweet tooth; perhaps he had just had a happy dream about sweet potatoes; perhaps I had managed to warm them to a proper temperature. Regardless of what made the light bulb go on in his little head, it certainly went on. When I put the spoon to his mouth, he began to grimace out of habit, changed his mind, swallowed, and opened up for more….and more….and more.   One would think he’d been eating for weeks. He looked like an old pro—a hungry old pro.

My son is a thumb-sucker–a trait I find absolutely adorable.  I am not yet entertaining the idea of how on earth we will break him of this habit when the time arises. Right now, I am perfectly content with his self-soothing habit of choice.  The thumb-sucking started just around the time of the famed sleeping through the night. I am absolutely convinced that the two coincide. Thus, in addition to him looking so very cute when he sucks his thumb, I also appreciate the habit for very practical reasons. Well, back to eating.  He has begun, between bites of sweet potato, to stick his thumb in his mouth for a quick suck….between every bite. Sweet potato, thumb, sweet potato, thumb.  This is hilarious to me.  It is also super messy.  The sweet potato in the mouth gets on the thumb which comes out of the mouth and onto something to turn that something a delightful shade of orange before going back into the mouth and collecting more gooey potato. The end result is a full, happy, orange baby wearing an orange bib and sitting in an orange high chair.  

I pulled out some baby toys that I had forgotten about for C to play with this morning. He was enthralled. I am not sure how I feel about toys, in general.  I do not want my children to have lots and lots of toys–I do not want to live in a house full of toys. The toys that are in my house I would like to be quality, educational, well-built, aesthetically appealing toys…..toys that encourage imagination, creativity, storytelling. Good goals, I think.  But, I probably need to relax a bit and realize that some toys are just fun. This past Christmas, I set out to buy C a couple of inexpensive toys.  It was terrible.  I analyzed to death every little plastic chewy, squeaky, bouncy, rattly, popping toy in the baby aisle at Target. I ended up with some plastic fisher-price links and a plastic "book" of alphabet cards. 

There are a couple of toys that I very distinctly remember playing with in childhood.  One was a yellow and orange plastic lion. He had wheels and was big enough to ride on. He also had a handle that stuck up out of his back for pushing around when learning to walk.  I loved this lion.  What I most loved about him was that there was a compartment in his back for storing things.  A little door opened up from his back and I would fill it with all sorts of smaller toys, close the door, sit on his back and ride around with my stash underneath me.  I often found that the necessities for my journey around the room could not all fit easily into the special compartment in my lion’s back.  Thus, I would have regular sessions of cramming and wedging and often the little lion traveled around with his door half-open because of the too-big collection of loot he was carrying.  I also had a wooden ducky.  Surely this was a popular toy: He had leather feet on wheels and a push stick. When I pushed, the wheels turned and the feet would flap, flap, flap on the floor.  The faster I pushed, the faster he would flap, flap, flap.  Great invention. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a push ducky.

Today, I went up to the "Unique Thrift Store." Although I would not choose such a name were I to open my own thrift store, it is indeed for it’s unique-ness that I enjoy shopping here. They manage to aquire a large array of unusual items–especially furniture. Much of our house is furnished with purchases from the store. I have recently become even more fond of the Unique Thrift Store because they have designated Tuesday as Customer Appreciation Day and are appreciating us with a 25% discount off of all merchandise. They used to just appreciate Senior Citizens on this day.  I am glad they have widenened the scope of appreciated customers and I will now visit the Unique Thrift Store on Tuesdays.

Today, with my 25% discount, I bought C a toy. It is a quality, well-built (even hand-made), wooden doggy pull toy.  I bought it, in part, because it reminded me of my ducky. When you place Doggy on the floor and pull him by his rope, his front paws (attached to wheels) go round and round like he is running and his mouth opens and closes and clacks on the ground.  He is very fun. C, of course, was most interested in chewing on the rope….I plan to tuck Doggy away for C’s first birthday. As we checked out, the ladies at the counter admired my little guy and played with his new little doggy. They will, I think, have great fun together.

Our dog went un-named for about four days after we brought him home from the doggy adoption fair.  We had pretty much decided to go with a name of a St. Louis Cardinal to commemorate our recent move to the city and my husband’s long-time love of the team.  "Rolen"  (in honor of Scott Rolen, the Card’s third baseman) won out in the end because "Musial" was too hard to say. I am now quite fond of the name.  It suits him.  My three-year-old neighbor affectionately nicknamed him "Roly," and now we have all adopted this name and use it more often than his proper one.

Rolen (my Rolen) is an excellent fielder, as is his namesake.  He LOVES to catch tennis balls and many times throughout the day he brings his ball for me to throw.  The problem is, Rolen’s desire to chase after and catch a tennis ball is closely rivaled by his desire to play tug-of-war with the tennis ball.  So, it takes much effort to convince him that he would really rather catch the ball and in order for that to happen he must let go of the ball for me to throw the ball.  When he sees the logic in my argument and does release the ball, he has a grand time catching it.  He is, I must say, very talented.  He also has a "Kong" toy–one of those big hard rubber dog toys that you stuff with a dog treat or some peanut butter.  Rolen likes to play fetch with this, as well. It has a funny shape, so when it hits the ground, it bounces off in a new direction and adds a whole new dimension to the play. When I tire of throwing the ball or the Kong (Rolen never tires), I ignore his pleas and leave him to find some entertainment of his own.  

A couple times recently, after I have refused to play fetch, Rolen has sought out baby C and dropped the toy at his feet expectantly.  Perhaps this little human could be useful after all.  Baby C is certainly amused leans over to look at the toy, but, to Rolen’s dismay makes no attempt whatsovever to throw it.

The other day, I had C in the johnny-jump-up and Rolen was running around somewhere.  I had, I think, thrown his ball for him a couple times and then decided that I had humored him long enough.  I realized baby C was awfully quiet and turned to check on him.  I guess Rolen had tried again to test out the little human’s throwing ability and had placed his ball on C’s tray. The baby was hanging out with a bright green doggy-chewed tennis ball balanced between his two little baby hands and his little curious baby mouth. Hopefully, he will, in future, learn more from his daddy than from his doggy about how to play ball.

I forgot the most favorite thing of all: church bulletins. We have a holy boy on our hands, folks.  He is fascinated beyond all measure by the church bulletin. Of course, he has determined it to be wholly edible and somehow much much more tasty than the baby food that he still refuses to digest.  Perhaps some clever person out there should take a cue from J.K. Rowling and invent not just jelly beans of all flavors, but baby food of many textures (ie: paper, hard plastic, and all other things babies are determined to gnaw on).

Coming up on 8 months, here are a few of baby C’s favorite things:

1. Mommy’s zipper pull–yum.

2. The strap on his high chair–yum, yum.

3. Sitting up on his changing table and playing with the wipes box–a great drum.

4. Sitting on the bathroom counter and talking to the baby and the mommy in the mirror. (note: yesterday, he seemed to have a revelation. He looked at me in the mirror, smiled, looked at me in real life, smiled, back to the mirror, back to me, etc., several times. Fascinating: in the bathroom there are two mommy’s.)

5. Trying to get Daddy’s glasses off of his face.

So, why is it that we own baby toys? 

Ok, ok–he does adore his johnny-jump-up and a certain bumble-bee/butterfly hybrid teething toy. 

Baby C is a spitter.  He has reflux and is medicated for it.  The medicine is great for the discomfort but does nothing to cut down on the spitting.  Thus, since he was about 8 weeks or so, quite a bit of what has gone down has come on back up and out. We have learned to have a burp cloth at the ready. My dog likes to lick up the regurgitated milk when it hits the floor.  He knows the sound of the splat and comes running.  My husband thinks this is disgusting and scolds the dog.  I think it is disgusting but am secretly appreciative that he’s cleaning up the mess and don’t scold. The worst thing about the spitting, in my opinion, is the smell.  Baby spit-up is not a very happy smell. At least, it is not a very happy smell to have one one’s clothes all day long.

This morning, I gave baby C a bath.  He was beginning to stink a bit.  He has graduated from the baby bathtub in the kitchen sink to the grownup one in the bathroom.  He has fun chewing on his rubber duckies. They squeak. Rolen, therefore, is intrigued by what is going on in the tub and comes to visit. Mind you, Rolen is typically deathly afraid of the tub when water is running, lest he might get thrown in himself.  But he LOVES things that squeak. C peed in the tub.

After the bath, I got C dressed for the day. The last snap snapped when he had major spit-up number one.  I found a second outfit.  He was jumping in his johnny-jump-up when he decided that he really really wanted to get back in the tub.  Apparently.  At least, after attempting to clean up his monstrous poopy diaper, that’s what mommy decided. Tub time #2 was quite fun, with lots of splashing and another spit-up which he proceeded to rub all over his tummy. 

After the bath, we found some baby lotion. Rolen liked the taste. Apparently.  He began licking C’s clean and lotioned legs. We just covered them up with some pants and I got C dressed for the day (take 3). Back in the johnny-jump-up, there was more spit-up. It’s barely noon. 

Where do birds go when it snows? Well, the birds in my neighborhood congregate on my back porch.  This I discovered yesterday after waking to a few inches of springtime snow.  We have had several very nice, very warm days here in the past few weeks.  During one such lovely day, I decided to fill up the birdfeeder that had been sitting, empty and toppled over on my back porch all winter.  The problem with the feeder last summer was that we could find no place to hang it that would give us a good view of the birds when they came to visit.  So, for a little while, it just sat on the edge of the porch railing.  It got some visitors, many of whom were squirrels, but it also got knocked about and was more of a mess than anything.

Inspired by our recent warm weather, I filled up the bird feeder with seed from last year’s half-used bag and decided to find a way to hang it.  We have had a plant stand on the porch–a less-than-stellar yard-sale purchase–that refuses to stand up properly, no matter how much tightening one does of the screws.  So, I decided to put the wood to better use. I disassembled the plant stand and used a few long and skinny boards to build a functional but rather tacky-looking hanger for my bird feeder.  I nailed it to the porch.  I stared at it for a couple days and had begun to think that perhaps it was too tacky-looking. Then the birds discovered it.  And a cheap, plastic bird feeder hung by a disassembled plant stand suddenly looks just fine when graced by a brilliant red male cardinal.  So, my bird feeder hanger stayed in its place.

It’s just been a few days since that first cardinal found the feeder and just a few days since we had Spring-like weather.  Now, it technically is Spring and Winter decided to have a last (I hope) hurrah. Perhaps the birds were as befuddled as the rest of us who had thought our warm puffy coats would stay in the closet for a while.  At any rate, they decided that those worms were too far under the snow to be worth the effort, and came on by the diner on my back porch to eat to their hearts content.  And so came every winged friend in the neighborhood.

C, Rolen, and I spent much of the day watching the antics of these feathered little guys–Cardinals, wrens, some sweet little dark grey fellows with white bellies. We got a lesson in avian group dynamics. The Cardinals were higher up in the pecking order than the little wrens and white-bellied ones.  These little guys were mostly content to hop around on the floor, picking up the seed that had been knocked out of the feeder.  They’d raise their heads with a bit of snow on their beaks, spit out the shell and hop around for another bite.  They left sweet little birdy tracks all over the snow.  Occasionally a little fellow would flutter on up to the feeder for a quick snack before returning to peck around on the floor some more. The Cardinals lorded over the feeder. They didn’t have time to hop around picking up one piece at a time. When they weren’t filling their bellies, they were keeping away the other cardinals that were challenging their personal claim to the feeder. The males didn’t like the other males and seemed to only be ok with their particular female.  At one point, we watched a male cardinal dart at a female several times until she finally gave up and left the porch.  Shortly thereafter another female arrived and was welcomed (or at least ignored) by the same male. 

As the day progressed, more and more birds found the feeding spot.  I guess the word was spreading. At one point, I counted sixteen of them on some part of my small porch. Late afternoon, the bullies arrived.  Big black birds. Even the cardinals moved aside for the showy, slick newcomers who ate with a fury.  They were too big to sit on the feeder’s perch.  Some tried hanging from the bottom and curling their heads around to get the food.  Then they found that they were tall enough to stand on the ledge of the porch and crane their necks up to reach the feeder which hangs maybe six inches up.  I tried to scare away the bullies, but the little guys didn’t know I was on their side so I let them work out their own differences. 

Some of the snow has melted today.  But, my guess is that eating "out" at my diner will still be more appealing than worm-digging.  And so, my tacky little feeder has earned me the gratitude of worms and birds alike.

So, the dresser has a new home….in my bedroom. After a few potential buyers inquired further about the possible smoke smell and were discouraged from the purchase, I began to think that I was going to be stuck with the dresser after all and might as well embrace it as a project and start scrubbing.  I sprayed, scrubbed, gave myself a splinter, aired out the drawers on the back porch overnight, and began to feel a renewed attachment to the dresser.

It was at this point that a new potential buyer inquired and was due to call me back. I began screening my calls so as to have more time to consider whether the dresser was still, in fact, for sale. Somewhere during this debate I was in the kitchen doing the dishes and caught a whiff of some awful smell reminiscent of the dresser drawers.  I was disheartened and overwhelmed by the stench that I immediately labeled as "smoky."  On further inspection, however, my not-very-discriminating nose was led to sniff the countertop and discover that the smell was really an ammonia-based cleaner I had used on the counter….the same ammonia-based cleaner I had used (per a suggestion on a website) to conquer the odor in the drawers.  So, I have determined that my good ol’ Italian nose was so stressed out by the pressure to detect the smoke that I feared had seeped into every pore of wood on the dresser that it mistakenly identified the household cleaner smell (awful in its own rite) with the smell of smoke.  I do not like this ammonia smell either but at least I know it is a sanitary smell….and it is much less poignant after a night out of doors.  And, I have lined the drawers with blue polka-dotted and baby-powder-scented drawer liners. 

All said, I fear I gave the dresser a bad rap.  I have since turned down at least five more inquiries. "The dresser is no longer available."

My husband and I desperately need a dresser.  All we have is one of those tall skinny ones (technically called a "lingerie chest") which I attempt to stuff everything I own into.  My husband has a two foot tall rubbermaid thing with three little drawers to hold his boxers and socks.  Everything else he owns (shirts, pants, undershirts, jeans) gets hung up in his closet.  Now, the "everything" I own does not fit in the lingerie chest and the "everything" he owns inevitably does not all get hung up.  So, this means that very much of our combined everythings get scattered on the floor or thrown over the rocking chair.  And we run into MAJOR problems when I am actually on top of the laundry and all of our clothes are clean at the same time.  So, I have been in search of a cheap (ie: fitting into our miniscule budget) dresser to contain the mess that is our wardrobes.  Let me make a minor note here that we do not have overly extensive wardrobes–we could do some weeding out but the reason that there’s a large mass of clothes is that there is nowhere to put them.

Well, I found myself a dresser–a $25 real wood maple dresser.  What more could one ask for. Where did I find this gem, you ask?  Craigs list.  I’m assuming you’ve heard of craig’s list.  Great invention.  Anyways, I email the owner of the dresser, hoping to pick it up on Thursday or Friday.  It is currently Tuesday early evening.  He informs me that yes he’d be able to put it in my car but that it probably won’t still be there on Thursday. So, determined not to miss out on this opportunity to forever abolish the clutter in my bedroom, I pack the baby in the car seat and head off to beat the other potential buyers that are due to arive sometime after 7pm. It is rush hour. There is a detour.  "South City" is much farther away than I thought it was.  I pull over at a White Castle and call for directions.  I become more and more aware of the fact that I am not in the best neighborhood ever. I finally find the house, park across the street and C and I go to see the dresser.  The house is smoky.  I had neglected to ask if the seller of the dresser was a smoker. Evidently he was. Yet, there was the dresser. It was a nice dresser.  We desperately needed a dresser.  I had driven a loooong way to get the dresser.  I couldn’t just leave the dresser there for the hords of people that were coming after 7pm.  At this point it was already almost 7 and, the seller told me that some lady had just offered him $30 if he’d hold onto it for her.  I had a mometary pause, convinced myself that wood couldn’t really lock in smells, and I took it. And, as I sat in my car about to pull away, somebody pulled up behind me and started to walk up to the seller’s door. Ha ha! I beat you! I got the dresser!

The whole way home, I smelled smoke.  Perhaps it was just on my clothes.  But, if it got on my clothes after a minute of exposure, surely it was in the dresser.  I came to grips with the fact that yes, wood is porous and it really can absorb smells. I got home and began to search the internet for ways to get cigarette smoke out of wood.  Ammonia-based cleaners, baking soda, charcoal brickettes. Maybe I could fix it.  But, I hadn’t really been wanting a project. I have enough projects. I’d just been wanting a dresser.  

So, now there is a new listing on Craig’s list–for a maple dresser.  This time, it’s up for $30–the extra $5 to pay for my gas money.  The problem is, I have told them–my potential buyers–about the smoke.  I don’t want someone to drive all the way to get the dresser and then turn it down because of the smoke smell. And, it just seems dishonest not to say anything.  If I was a smoker, I might not think to mention that it has a bit of a smoky smell.  But since I am a non-smoker and am myself rejecting the dresser because of the smoky smell, I cannot leave out that bit of pertinent information.  And it is that specific pertinent information that has deterred the 3 potential buyers I have had thus far.

 So, here’s to another disasterous attempt to simultaneously live within a tight budget and an organized house.  Anybody know a smoker in need of a dresser?  I have one for sale. 

This past weekend, my sister came to town to visit her baby nephew.  Gone are the days when she would come to town to visit her sister.  I just happen to be the mother of her baby nephew.  I’m ok with that.  I am, after all, rather fond of her baby nephew myself. 

My sister moved from the east coast to the west about ten years ago to pursue film.  She worked for "The Academy" for a while and got the perk of an annual trip to the Oscars. One year, her then-boyfriend and now-husband got down on his knee on the red carpet and pulled out an engagement ring.  Another year, she took her little sis to the big show–my claim to fame.  Somewhere out there is a certain associated press picture of Hilary Swank from the 2001 Academy Awards. I am the unknown in the background. 

A few years ago, Jen switched careers and decided to become an elementary school teacher.  She now teaches a third-grade class at a private school in L.A.. She is the type of teacher that every second grader desperately hopes for.  She is super-creative and energetic and, as one of her students recently wrote in a letter to her, "a little knuckle-headed." She sits up on a table cross-legged to read aloud to her students and employs different voices for all the characters in the story.  Jen has found her perfect job.  She absolutely loves her students. She even had them over to her house ON A SCHOOL HOLIDAY to watch a movie of a book that they had studied.

Jen likes to share things about her life with her students.  She likes for them to enjoy things that she enjoys. She has a crazy and beloved boxer named Lily.  The third graders know all about Lily.  They hear Lily stories and see Lily pictures. When I had a baby, my sister, who has never beed a "baby person" (she prefers kids who are old enough to interact with her), was surprised to discover how much she enjoyed my little guy.  She loves him about as much as anyone can love another’s child. So, now the third-graders know all about baby C. They hear baby C stories and see baby C pictures.  She informed me yesterday that he and Lily are the official class mascots.  When Jen went back to her class after her trip to visit baby C, she showed her students a 10 minute long slideshow of pictures of her nephew.  It was at this time, with a hord of third-graders huddled around her laptop to look at the pictures, that the principle came in for his daily surprise visit.  Surely he enjoys my sister’s quirks. They’re what make her such a wonderful teacher. Surely he knows that ten years from now these kids will still talk about their third-grade teacher who was pretty and wore stylish clothes and big glasses and who had a dog named lilly and that cute little nephew.  (Not to mention all the things she taught them about westward expansion, and literature, and the civil war….). He joined the kids to look at the pictures and agreed that "That’s a cute baby."