Watching Blue

While Mommy was in New York...

Pleasant Grove Hike

Playing with the new Webcam

Christmas Pix

Finally, December

It's finally December, it's finally less than 70 degrees here and I am finally over my cold. It took about 3 weeks. How many people have a deathly cold in 75 degree weather? I was hacking like a fiend at my dr's appt last week and she put me on antibiotics which seem to have started to nip it, finally. Whew!

Despite my cold, I spent most of last week watching Jake while Mike worked against his intense project deadlines. It was a nice week, actually. We did our grocery shopping on Monday, in town at a new store that allowed Jake to ride in style - in a big red fire engine with two steering wheels (for him) and a great seatbelt (for me). He kept turning around to tell me, "buy, Mommy, buy!" which basically meant: "Stop reading labels Mommy, we need to keep moving!"

We went to Kindermusick on Tuesday morning and he had a real blast there, playing drums and dancing with a scarf. I worked on Tues afternoon, 1-5, getting several of my class guests set and discussing the content of their visits with them. And I read about 10 business school cases to see which I wanted to replace in my class. We called grandma that night and Jake loved talking to her. On Wed am, we went to a new playgroup over at Ashleigh's, and Jake played very independently and happily. We also spent lots of our warm afternoon time at the playground, where Jake played with friends he knew nearly every day. On Friday, we spent the windy and rainy morningat the local library, a thrift store, and out to lunch with Gram and Ashleigh at the sandwich shop overlooking the golf course. A very social week!

Then I spent all day Thursday and the entire weekend working on my course for next semester. From 8 am to 6pm for two days straight. Mike got lots of Jake time and I got nearly the whole first coursebook done. Felt hugely satisfied last night and sat down in front of the TV to discover only reruns of Desp. Housewives and Brothers and Sisters. My one weekly night of the pleasures of network TV, ruined.

We also turned down another photo client this week. We're way too busy to worry about another shoot this month.

Jake has spent the week playing with a small tractor he got at the dime store nearby. It rumbles and moved by itself and he wants to take it with him wherever he goes. I think of all the holiday toys we picked out and look at this $1 toy that thrills him and wonder why we bothered!

Forts, Cars and Portraits

Jake and I built a fort last month in his playroom. He crawled inside, grabbed his "baba" and "didi" and settled in. With a few cars, of course. A man's home is his garage, and all that...





Soon the camera become much more interesting than the fort. And Jake decided to take some portraits. First, his beloved Didi:

Upon view of this one on the back of the camera, Didi was reposed for a reshoot:

And Mommy:


And then Mommy wrapped up the shoot with a last one of Jake:

My Sister's Keeper

At my mom's club book club session tonight we had a great conversation about My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult.

It's about a couple who finds out that their 3 year old daughter has cancer, and on the advice and help of their doctor to implant the perfect embryo, they decide to have another child so they can get a perfect match of cord blood to save her. The story takes place 13 years later, as Anna, the second daughter, tired of being the child who exists to save the first, refuses her fourth major medical procedure: donating a kidney to save her sister.

There are many other plot twists, but the critical questions came through very starkly:

• Can you ever love your children equally?
• How do you balance the interests of one child with another in the same family?
• As a mom, or a dad, how dedicated and obsessed should you be with saving your dying child?
• Is it ethically right to conceive and grow a child with the thought of organ and tissue donation?

The family in the novel was an extreme look at these issues, involving a court case to allow the 13 year old to wrest medical power of attorney from her parents (which she won), a pyromaniac older brother trying to get attention from his firefighter father, and a big, big lie that is revealed at the end of the story. We were all quite disgusted with the mother of the story, who was truly dismissive of her other two children in the guise of saving just one. She decided she had to be in control of saving her daughter herself by giving birth - misplaced heroism as one Mom insightfully pointed out. But the issues about balance, ethics, and genomics were very real.

We had two nurses and one pediatric nutritionist in the group. They had lots of very interesting stories to share abuot real families and how they deal with sick children. It turns out the latest thing is training parents to deal not just with their sick kids but their whole families. It's common for the sick children to be infantilized, spoiled, and developmentally behind their peers, and for the other kids to become quite troubled as well.

And no one could answer my question about whether they'd consider having a child to save a child. Everyone seemed to be saying, I don't want to be like that mother, but it would really depend on the situation, wouldn't it? What if that were the only thing you could do to save your child? I found this both understandable and quite frightening.

Revelling in Affection

I realize that I am a very lucky Mom right now. And that I should memorialize this reality while I can.

My 2 year old son is so affectionate and loving, it is amazing. He starts his day by kissing and hugging me hello in his crib. These are quick kisses, and I have to ask for them each time. He hugs and kisses his bear, Didi, and often asks me to do the same. I kiss and bite his toes while changing his clothes, and can his forehead as much as I like while he's getting dressed. Every time we walk downstairs together, I squat at the bottom to reward him with a big good job kiss and bear hug. Today I walked away before doing it and was reprimanded. "No mommy, (kissing noise)!"

Whenever I am away from him, and I or he comes back to the house, he runs at me with huge open arms, screaming "Mommyyyy!!" with big open arms and if I am not down on his level to receive his hug, he wraps himself tightly around my leg with selfless devotion, sometimes with his best reunion kisses. Every day, usually twice a day, we have a go to nap and then bed ritual which ends with me turning out the light while he sits on my knee to sing songs. He used to sit on my lap quietly while I sang but recently he's turned himself to lie sideways against by body and trails his hand up and down my arm, and sometimes he even plants tiny whisper kisses up and down my arm, his glee in feeling close to Mommy kisses. At the end of the song, we trade cheek kisses, at his insistence, three times before I put him into his crib. When he gets there, his refrain is "more (kissing noises)" and I have to promise more once I've gotten him his bed-time water. Then I get a full tight-mouthed heavy duty smack and hug, and then he lies himself down, face on top of Didi, to get ready to rock himself to sleep.

The last kiss of the day is the most romantic. From his rocking position and my position at the rapidly closing door, we look into each other's eyes from across the room and blow each other one last kiss, to last each of us until the next day.

That's probably about 20-50 kisses a day between us. How delightful it is to be loved by a toddler!