A Born Piano player

Tell me these aren't the hands of a maestro?

...or if we send her to the wrong schools, an expert lock-picker.

Either way, she's already able to flip off Boston drivers on the Pike.

That should do it

Lets just see her try to get a cold this winter.

Take my Baby, please

(with apologies to Milton Berle)

I never understood before this urge that parents have to pass their children, particularly the tiny ones, to other people to hold. It always struck me as somewhat presumptuous and in more than a few occasions risky. There's the danger of the transfer, particularly in an unsupported head. Some people may have colds, and risk infecting a baby with no developed immune system. And on more than one occasion, the recipient isn't really begging to hold the child in the first place.

There's the logistics of how you're supposed to hold a baby as well. It takes some getting used to, but quite easy once you learn the tricks. Most start off with the two arm cradle, like your hands are sunburn and you have to carry a watermelon to a picnic. Perfectly fine, but gets tiring after awhile, and looks inelegant. Then there's the over the shoulder one arm, but it means she is looking behind you, and all you're left with is a small pair of pants covering a bubble butt of diapers and a hundred layers of unnecessary clothes. Myself, I prefer the Heisman. It offers good control of the head, her body rests along one arm, leaving the other free to read a book, drink coffee, or just shake somebody's hand.


I was that reluctant receiver a long time ago, when my cousin had her first child. There's not only this sense of crushing responsibility (please God, don't let me drop him), but the idea that baby's, like dogs, have a special sense of whether or not you are "good". Hand a sleeping baby to somebody, and if they start crying it obviously isn't because they were just woken up, or are cold, or any number of reasons. It has to be because, being closer to heaven than the rest of us slobs, they recognize our darker nature. A crying baby is assumed to be a moral Geiger counter of sorts, and who of us wants to be revealed as the duplicitous Iago we know we really are.

With a chirping and burping kid of our own now, predictably, we have a new perspective on this. For so long, she was simply an idea of a kid, a theoretical construct that we could insert into some fantasy lifestyle we would discover down the road. Can't tell you the countless visions I've had from teaching her to throw a baseball, to putting Band-Aids on her scraped knees. All of the sudden though, she's become a physical thing, an indisputable fact. My thought today is, the handoff has more to do with sharing in the "there-ness" of her, rather than what she "means". It's too easy to get swept up in all the ideas of what she will become someday, that I'd hate to miss out on what she is now. By holding her, it's hard to ignore the little gassy, yawning, 7 lbs of the best Corrie and I have to offer.

Starting early

It's her one-week birthday today, and so much has already happened. She slept for a 4-hour stretch last night, which we're very proud of. Took her first bath in the kitchen sink, which was probably more harrowing for us than it was for her. Things are going to start happening pretty quickly we guess, so best to do what we can while we can.

In a few weeks/months she might be just a bit too big to carry like a football all day. She'll not stand for me reading to her without getting bored. She'll figure out that Dad has no food to give her.

This week though I'm starting in on her musical education. There may come a time when she prefers that freak purple dinosaur, but right now she doesn't know from him yet. Both Corrie and I are trying to catch up with actual lullaby lyrics instead of just singing about Walter and poo (we don't yet have what the kids refer to as 'flow', and are forced to resort to what we know). To that end, I wanted to impart an appreciation of good music.

Below is a partial list of songs that seem, at least in some respects successful in calming a fussy child. Feel free to offer suggestions in the comment section if you know of anything that may have worked in your experience as well.

Pale Blue Eyes - The Velvet Underground
I want some sugar in my bowl - Nina Simone
Such Great Heights - Iron & Wine
Lua - Bright Eyes
Heartbeats - Jose Gonzales
Had me a girl - Tom Waits
Orange Sky - Alexi Murdoch
City of New Orleans - Arlo Guthrie

The log book

From a medical perspective, it's apparently very important to know how often our daughter poops. We can't really tell how much milk she gets at each feeding, and short of running blood tests, there's no other way to track her digestive system, if she's dehydrated, or if she is sleeping too much because she isn't getting enough food, or is just a good sleeper. So we're forced to keep a "log book" as it were. Something that no doubt she'll be mortified of when we bring it out right before her first date.

Without getting too descriptive in terms of viscosity, color, texture, or sheer explosive announcement, here's a brief look at what our nights are like:

Diaper Changes:
12:40 - Poo
12:45-1:00 - Feeding
1:20 - 1:30 - Feeding
2:10 - Poo
2:15 - Feeding
3:55 - 4:45 - Big Feeding
4:30 - Poo & Pee
5:25 - Pee
5:30-6:00 swaying in the living room in the dark while reading John Banville's "Athena" to her to get her back to sleep. (fantastic book, but perhaps too much murder and depression when she is able to actually understand the words)

Oddly enough we're not nearly as tired as we should be. Afternoon naps have been a godsend. Right now I have no idea how any father can function at work the next day, or how any mother can do this alone.

The "blow by blow"

Well, we're finally back home, and have loved reading all the e-mails, messages, and comments that we've gotten since we left home on Saturday. We were allowed to stay at the hospital until about 3:00 this afternoon, but had just enough cabin fever to chase us out of that cramped, though nice recovering room closer to 9:30 this morning.

Mom is taking a nap after pulling some yeoman’s work this morning (feeding and singing to Mia from about 4:00 - 6:30 this morning, letting me sleep). Our daughter is safely swaddled in a pink Miracle Blanket in the co-sleeper that's been pulled into our living room. NPR is on for the first time this week, which feels as comforting and refreshing as a cold glass of water. I'm oddly wide-awake, so wanted to take a moment to run through the story of the last few days for the official record.

Without getting into the biology of it all, we had a sign of progress around 1:30 Friday morning (2/17). If anybody reading this is pregnant right now be careful with that eggplant, it's potent stuff. We had even further indications that things were progressing on Saturday morning, again about 2:00 in the morning, so that's two nights sleep just plain lost to excitement and anticipation.

We waited until an appropriate and polite time to call our Dr. for advice on how to interpret these signs, and were told to relax, take a shower, eat some breakfast, then make sure all our bags were packed and get to the hospital. There was the outside chance that this was another false start, but of course it turned out not to be.

Given that there's no way to tell the story without a minimum of the science, Corrie's water had broken. Once that happens, we are immediately put on a downhill track that one way or another has to end with a baby being born within a specific time frame. We had wanted to have a natural birth, but plan B was fast becoming a reality.

By the time we reached the hospital, we hadn't really started laboring in any way other than the water breaking, and there was a long way to go before this kid was coming out. In such circumstances, our Dr. suggested helping nature along with the dreaded "Pitocyn".

It also helps to know the fear this word can invoke, particularly on those that want natural births. In short, it ramps up the contractions so they come closer to 30 seconds apart, as opposed to the more common 5 minutes. We've been hearing many a tale of just how painful this could be, to the effect of "practically everybody that takes the Pitocyn ends up with an epidural." With little in the way of options, Corrie was hooked up, and started having contractions fairly soon thereafter.

7 and a half hours later, with me and the Doula doing all we can to help her relax through an unending series of contractions, she is almost halfway there. By now it's just past midnight on Saturday, and we hadn't had a decent sleep since Wednesday. Best-case scenario, she's not expecting to be able to push until 9:00 the next morning, and the really hard work had yet to begin. Given that, and after some long conversations, we decided to go with the epidural, just to get some sleep.

And it helped. Sweet lord did it help. She didn't get much sleep as nurses had to check her temperature and blood pressure every 15 minutes all night, but she could at least rest. The Doula and I managed to steal a few hours on borrowed gurneys next to Corrie's bed. Around 4:00 though I just couldn't sleep anymore. Leaving a half passed out wife with our Doula for 5 minutes, I ran downstairs to grab some strong coffee and freak out in private.

So she finally gets to a point where she's ready to push, and with just that sliver of rest, is ready to go. We help her push through each contraction for an hour before the Dr. comes to tell us that we're making no progress. Her head had turned and gotten stuck, what would we like to do? Clinging to the idea of at least a partially natural birth, we stuck with the pushing and redoubled her efforts. Her face turning purple, sweat running down her forehead, Corrie pulled off some Herculean effort, only to have the Dr. come back after the second hour to say, "no progress, what do you want to do". Still unwilling to give up, we plunge back into the fray for a third hour of pushing, and at this point I'm worried she's going to grind her teeth to nubs. Again, no progress. At this point, wiped out from lack of sleep and exhaustion, and feeling thoroughly defeated, we decide to go with the C-section.

And this would have to count as our low-point. Every decision we had made before going into labor had been taken away from us, and we were in exactly the position we wanted to avoid. Corrie and I both were somewhat afraid of not only the surgery, but the 6-week expected recovery time. In the operating room the drugs are causing her to shake like a leaf in a storm. I'm trying to affect a calm and supportive demeanor with limited success, and them we both hear our daughter cry.

And everything changed at that point. There's no way to describe the moment without resorting to cliché’s, but we all just lost it at that point. Both of us choking back tears Corrie and I were just totally unable to say anything to each other or anybody else. I don't remember there actually being anybody else there, though there must have been an army of nurses and surgeons. They bundled her up and handed me my daughter, who I brought back to Corrie. She wasn't able to hold her or nurse, but we had a daughter from that point on.

The Doula stayed with Corrie as I followed Mia up to the ICU. Corrie had developed a fever after 36 hours of labor, so they thought Mia might be at risk of an infection. For the next two days our little girl had to be hooked up to an IV to ensure she didn't suffer from any potential brain damage, but as you probably have guessed by now, she was/is fine.

So after 4 nights of learning how to swaddle, breast feed, and change diapers, we were set free today and brought our daughter home. She's been sleeping a good chunk of the afternoon away, I read to her for a bit, and Corrie fed and changed her once already. She's working on a sleep during the day, eat all night, routine, but this seems perfectly acceptable right now. We've already had a few nights that involved feedings at 10, 12, 2, 4, and 6, and have picked up what has to be the most important trick any parent can ever learn. Namely the ability to get some deep, DEEP sleep in 15-minute chunks. There's no other explanation for us not being drunk with sleep deprivation these days.

So in short that's what our week has been like. Looking forward to so many things, having a blast being parents already. Walter is with his grandparents in CT, so we get to find a rhythm before introducing him to his sister.

Thanks again to everybody that's been there with us through this seemingly endless process. We would not have the confidence and strength to do what we're doing daily now without all the advice from family and friends, all the practice babies we've borrowed, or the small library of literature we have yet to return. You all rock.

MIA ROSE JOHNSON

WELCOME TO THE WORLD !

Mia Rose Johnson joined us at 3:15 PM yesterday, Feb 19th. She weighed 7 pounds
7 ozs and was 19 inches tall. Mom and Dad are doing very well, inspite of being very tired, long work oiut for Mom and supporting Dad.
Posted by Grandma and Grandmom and Granddad. Pictures to follow.

SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE 8:00 AM

Almost there. ETA is now about 10:00 AM and everything is going well. Weasie Bars were a success, the familiar doctor was on call this weekend, Doola is a big plus. Everyone got some sleep last night thanks to the wonders of modern medicine. Arlene has Walter happy and cared for and the Johnsons are headed to Boston.

And how is your morning going?

Warning!!

Potential false start alert.

Hold on to your booties everybody,

We're OFF TO THE HOSPITAL!!!

For the record, this post was written some time ago. I'm not that kind of heartless husband that I'd leave her in her moment of need to write on our blog. It's been sitting here as a draft for what seems like some time now. If you're reading this, it's game time baby.

Probably won't post anymore until we get back home. I don't think the hospital has any wireless connection, and between catching up on sleep, learning how to breastfeed, and general recuperating, I'm sorry to say the blog falls down the list in terms of priorities.

So let me just stress one more time, this could be a false alarm. We're getting her checked out and will take it from there. It does by all accounts though, appear to be a good day to be born.

No turning back now

She ate the eggplant. I repeat, the eggplant has been eaten. According to legend, we have no more than 48 hours left. This of course is not backed up by any scientific double blind studies so take all this with a grain of salt, but the old wives that tell their tales can't all be wrong.

Can they?

The comfort of superlatives

(oh, looks like a spot of weather on the way)

Assuming we still have some time before this kid arrives, you're going to be subjected to even more random musings than either you or I hoped to see. Nobody's happy about this, but lets just suck it up, ok?

Every time it snows in Boston we take a perverse pleasure in hoping for more and more snow. What fun is it if we just get 10 inches? Nobody feels bad for you, and all the old timers will keep bringing up the winter of '78 (or some such famous storm). I can barely remember the weather yesterday, so forget about remembering snows from years past. But when we get a Hum-dinger, oh that's the fun stuff. It's completely worth the backbreaking shoveling, and the dangerous driving to just know that somewhere, somebody else that wasn't around will think to themselves "Whoa. That's impressive"

Which brings us to this massive child Corrie is working on now. Looks like we got ourselves a big 'un, at least according to the Dr. That rumor about bigger babies sleeping better has been soundly and completely dismissed (Thanks S.MS. for that one). The world record currently stands at 14 lbs, but there's just no way we're ever going to approach that. So what she's looking at is really the worst scenario. Delivering a baby that's by all legitimate standards, pretty fr*****g big, but having to undergo the indignity down the road of hearing from at least one person in each mommy-group, "that's nothing, little Sheldon here was 10 lbs, and it took me 72 hours of blindingly painful labor to get him out, but it was all worth it wasn't it?"

We hate those people.

One to go

Looking at one last final week until the due date and don't even want to think about the possibility of going past it. Our doctor will induce if she goes more than a week past the 23rd, so one way or another, this girl is coming out by March 2nd at the absolute latest.

The snow is melting and the roads are perfectly safe. We've got President's day weekend coming up, and our list of things to do has been thoroughly exhausted. If you happen to run into my wife on the street, go ahead and pop that paper bag behind her, yell "Boo!" when she comes around the corner, or slip a little castor oil in her tea. Together we can make this happen.

It takes a village, people.

All analogies fail

We've reached an interesting phase in this long, long road towards parenthood. It's that part of the climb when you can see the top of the mountain, passing 26 miles and knowing you only have 0.2 miles to go, it's lining up for graduation....

Except it's none of those.

The single most salient fact of our lives right now seems to be that we have no idea if this pregnancy will end in hours, days, or even, god forbid, weeks. Not that we're complaining about it. Far from it. A wire has to be pulled taut to really sing after all. In a number of strange ways it's invigorating, waking up each day, thinking, "it could be today". (Of course I'm not the one with the back pain and leg cramps, but she's left the chronicling to me, and this is the best I've got). But it strains the imagination to come up with a similar circumstance. We've been waiting for what seems quite some time, we know with certainty that she will, eventually go into labor, (and know also that it will be a difficult process to boot), but we just don't know when.

It's that moment when you’re sharing an elevator with a passing acquaintance. You've exhausted all small talk, get to your floor, end the awkwardness with a perfectly polite, "well, have a good one", only to stand in front of those doors that for some reason don't open right away. And now your standing in an elevator with somebody you just said goodbye to.

And so we wait.

Genes

Today I’m struggling with destiny. Tomorrow probably something else, but you deal with these things as they come. Whilst burning away a snowy morning watching old episodes of Northern Exposure (along with Twin Peaks and the Sopranos, some of the best TV ever made), came across a theory that hadn’t occurred to me before.

At this point our daughter’s genetic make up is already set in stone. It’s already been determined if she likes strawberries, if she will be tall or short, if she’ll be blonde or brunette. Beyond that, it’s likely already determined if she’ll have a chemical imbalance that causes her to be shy at school dances, or the loud one at office parties. Then there’s the health issues, heart or blood pressure to name the obvious touch stones, but then there’s the subtler issues as well: will she have allergies? Fear of heights? Nobody knows but it could already be decided.

The only way to try to wrap our heads around this is to look back at our own families and try to suss out trends. Is there a kleptomaniac uncle out there somewhere? A history of royal inbreeding perhaps? A thin strand of musical genius perhaps? This isn’t even to mention the infinite combinations that could come from all of Corrie’s history and all of mine. Just because the possibilities are so varied doesn’t change the fact that one result of this genetic lottery has already been picked. The gun has been fired; we’re just waiting to see where it hits the target.

But even considering all that, what really keeps me in a state of abject wonder is the idea, the possibility that there is something more here than the simple synthesis of two known personalities. This gets into the whole realm of creative arts, but to summarize it one way, is art simple the rearranging of a standard set of building blocks, or is it possible to create something entirely new in and of itself? (For more on this, read “the Glass Bead Game”, which states the questions much better than I ever could) Are we like cakes, all basically eggs flour and milk with different types of icing, or more like a mixed grill, different kinds of sausages all cooked together?

What makes this whole thing so fascinating though is the thought that one way or another, be it synthesis or thesis, our daughter already, by simple nature of her DNA already, is somebody that could never come about through any combination other than the two of us. Nothing you cook can’t also be cooked by somebody else. No song could be written that may not have already been hummed by somebody else. No combination of colors on a canvas will be mathematically certain to be unique. Take your thousand monkeys typing on a thousand keyboards and just wait until they produce the complete works of Shakespeare.
But this…. This Daughter of ours that we’re just waiting to meet... Nobody else can do this, and nobody else ever will.

Oh, the irony

I know you have come here for Ben's latest and greatest post, but alas...
his work has blocked the website.
Seems they have caught on to him.

He has been kind enough to send me a copy of what he had written before he found out he could not post, and I am happy to share it with you. Perhaps his being blocked is a sign that he won't have to go to work on Monday because we will have a baby? We do have a snowstorm coming, and a full moon on Sunday or Monday depending on which calendar you use, both of which have anecdotal evidence of bringing on labor. Keep checking here!

This is Ben's post (without photos; they did not come through):

Delayed Reactions

After two “near calls” so far, and still 13 days to go the common question I’ve been getting from people at work and other dog walkers follows along the lines of “you must be jumping out of your skin”. Nobody is more surprised than Corrie and I that so far, really not so much. She called the other day before a scheduled Dr. appointment to say, “I think I might be in Labor”. I finished another 15 minutes of work, got on the T and met her at the station. She drove to the Dr., he checked her out, said everything was dandy. So we grabbed a delicious burrito, had some pre-valentines’ day chocolate, I went back to work and she went to a café to study. Hardly the stereotypical frantic scene of panic and stress we all expected.

Back when I around the time I graduated from college a good friend and I decided we had to go skydiving. We drove out to the country, found a guy that sounded like he knew what he was doing and signed up on the spot. We were to be strapped to him as part of a tandem jump so if we freaked out, he would still have the presence of mind to pull the cord. This unfortunately meant we had to go one at a time. Flipped a coin, I lost and watched my buddy gear up.

At this point the realization of what he was about to do started showing itself. He began talking very quickly. Constantly needed to pee. Wanted to make sure we had his parents phone numbers, etc. Suited up and on the way to the plane he grills the pilot and jumpmaster on what was about to happen. As he tells it, as the plane rose his palms started sweating profusely, he couldn’t stop blinking, and there were some sphincter control concerns. So they finally reach the jump altitude, door fly open, a hearty high-pitched scream and out they go. Of course everything was fine, and he sprints back to the hanger just dripping with glee. Now it’s my turn.
And I am the Fonz at this point. Laughing in the face of a painful and embarresing death, just cool as can be. Strap on the suit, skip to the plane, couldn’t care less. We start climbing and I’m talking to the pilot about real estate, his gripe about local taxes, his daughters dating life, whatever wasn’t related to the 10,000 foot first step I was about to take. We hit altitude, I strap in, mumble something the Marlboro man might say before castrating a bull, “Let’s do this thing” and then that door opened…

And Fonzi become Ralph Malph

Thankfully somebody else up there had the presence of mind to record this moment in what has become I think my brother’s favorite picture. The jumpmaster is smiling giving the thumbs up, and my eyes are doing their cartoon bug-out, staring at a 10,000 foot drop. He said jump. I don’t remember anything really after that beyond tumbling through the air with every muscle in my body screaming at the stupidity of it all. We made it to the ground after which I was stuck in a Zen-like trance for the rest of the day.

All this to make the simple point that you don’t get to chose how you react to certain things, as much as we would like to. Right now the collar is turned up and our own personal jukebox is playing. Who knows what’ll happen when the moment comes though.

Remembering the moment

(Just hold that pose for another minute while the camera boots up)

The problem with being swept away in any particular emotion (rage, joy, take your pick), is the total inability to step back and analyze your feelings. If you have the presence of mind to think to yourself (wow, this is what raw, unadulterated sorrow looks like) chances are you aren’t really “swept away” in the fullest sense.

It all comes back to the “Uncertainty Principle” (always a useful go-to analogy). To butcher this somewhat complex theory of Physics, it speaks to the realization that all observations change the object being observed. Think of a subatomic particle proceeding on it’s merry way, when out of nowhere a photon of light knocks it off it’s course. That reflected light tells us what direction that particle is now traveling in, not the direction it was going before it was so rudely smacked in the face. Applied to social settings, it’s more simply stated that people act differently when they’re being watched.

(I’ve said it to just about everybody, but it could stand repetition, go see the play “Copenhagen” if you can. It will rock your world.)

But every now and then it’s us watching ourselves. Corrie and I don’t have many pictures of us having either great parties, or earth shaking dinners with friends. Not because we haven’t (that’s right, we’re all about the riotous fun), but because it would never occur to us to stop the good times, assemble our friends for a picture to preserve the moment. Just by doing that, the moment is lost and becomes something else. Now we’re looking at a bunch of people trying to represent what it means to have fun. Always seemed fake to me, so we just don’t do it.

Consider also the extreme sense of vulnerability of a half naked, laboring wife, and her potential reaction to her husband filming her misery. So many ways that can go badly for each of us.

(I thought I was getting your good side)

So we’ll probably take a few more pictures of how pregnant she is. Might take a picture or two of us leaving the house for the hospital, but there will be a bit of a blackout period during which the serious work gets done. You’ll just have to trust us when we tell stories of what actually happened.

2 to go

(so close we can taste the mashed bannanas)

First, you need to understand the expectation.

Whenever this baby decides to come, we know we'll have to drop everything and focus on that. There's also a strong chance that the process could take some time. Lastly, these things tend to start at the least opportune moments, and more often than not, in the middle of a deep, pleasant sleep.

Knowing that, there are two approaches I can think of to prepare for the inevitable. One may decide that it's deperately important to keep the house in as clean a condition as possible, and in a state of constant readiness at all times. One may decide to fill the basement with cans of dog food, toilet paper and a 50 gallon jug of laundry detergent just to reduce the number of times we have to leave the house. One may also decide to constantly be doing laundry, knowing that it can really pile up if you let it, and one may choose to proudly enter fatherhood with no laundry crying to be done as soon as we get back from the hospital. If one were of a certain maniacle disposition, one might furiously read as much as one can now, before losing control of one's free time. There are a million ways one can drive oneself (and one's wife) crazy, tearing around the house like the tasmanian devil with a mop. Hypotheticaly at least.

Or you could focus on the sleep aspect of it all. Make sure to go to bed early every night knowing that one of these days, you'll wish you hadn't stayed up late watching kung-fu movies. Nobody has sympathy for the guy that didn't grab 40 winks when they were available.

Have to say, I've been falling more in the first camp lately, but dreaming of the discipline to join the second.

Test Drive

While enjoying the freakishly good weather the other day, walking around the pond, we ran into a good friend with her 2-month-old boy. Had a beautiful walk, purging ourselves of all the Baby related talk we’re trying so hard to contain in mixed company, and ended up being invited over for some left over birthday cake. Now, she could have easily walked her son home from where we were, but we brow beat her into letting us try out our car seat. Couldn’t have asked for a better subject.

(We'll be taking this walk almost daily this spring)

Little Ian was made to be a test subject. He sits and smiles no matter what you’re doing, and cries about once a season from all we’ve seen. While babysitting him the other night, he giggled and drooled through most of “the 40-year old virgin” as we hoped he wouldn’t learn his first words that night.

So it took some arm bending, nudging and folding of baby to get him into the car seat, but in the end it worked out just fine. We got to his house, popped the seat off the base and he barely noticed. Now I’m sure he would have been just as content if we lashed him to the roof with some twine, he’s that kind of kid, but it still feels like a minor victory. Not often one gets to practice on a live test subject.

And if nothing else, we know we’re better parents than some people out there.

Working on the margins

Given the amount of laundry we’ll be doing, the lack of sleep, the changing of diapers, etc. we’re looking to shave a few minutes off any chore we can. Need a video? Netflix will bring it to us. Need groceries? Roche Brothers will deliver?

Need to shut the dog up? Why simply use the remote fetching machine.

Even comes with a remote control. That alone will save us 10 minutes a day.

(I'm having trouble focusing on anything not related to the baby today. Does it show?)

Taking Matters in hand

Knowing that this baby has her own schedule, and will come when she’s darn good and ready doesn’t mean we can’t influence her decision. We’ve heard a number of home remedies for pushing the process along (as I’m sure all of you out there have as well), but the one that I wasn’t aware of was the magic of the Eggplant.

Not sure what it is, but there’s apparently something in Eggplants that either scares babies out, or gets them so hopped up on tomato and cheese covered goodness they just have to see what we’re doing out here. We’re still early at this point, but perhaps sometime late next week, we begin operation Eggplant Parm.

Ingredients
· 3 medium sized eggplants
· 1 cup flour
· 6 eggs, beaten
· 4 cups fine Italian bread crumbs, seasoned
· Olive oil for sautéing
· 8 cups of marinara sauce (recipe below)
· 1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
· 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
· 1 1/2 pounds of mozzarella cheese, shredded
· 2 cups of ricotta cheese

Directions
1. After you wash the eggplant, slice them into 1/4-inch thick slices. You may choose to peel the eggplant before you slice it. However, you may want to leave the skin on since it contains a lot of vitamins.
2. Place the eggplant slices on a layer of paper towels and sprinkle with a little salt, then cover with another layer of paper towels and hold it down with something heavy to drain the excess moisture. Let them sit for about an hour.
3. Working with one slice of eggplant at a time, dust with flour, dip in beaten eggs, then coat well with breadcrumbs.
4. Sauté in preheated olive oil on both sides until golden brown.
5. In baking dish, alternate layers of marinara sauce, eggplant slices, ricotta, parmesan and Romano cheeses, until you fill the baking dish, about 1/8 inch from the top. Cover with shredded mozzarella cheese, and bake for 25 minutes in a 375 degree oven. Let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

Scalini's Marinara Sauce

Ingredients
· 2 Tablespoons of chopped garlic
· 3 Tablespoons of olive oil
· 8 cups chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned)
· 1 cup onions, chopped
· 1/2 cup of fresh chopped parsley
· 1 teaspoon oregano
· 1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper
· 1/8 cup of fresh chopped sweet basil
· Pinch of thyme
· Pinch of rosemary
· One teaspoon salt
· One teaspoon black pepper

Directions
1. Lightly sauté the onions in olive oil in large pot for a few minutes.
2. Add garlic and sauté another minute.
3. Add tomatoes and bring sauce to a boil, then turn heat low.
4. Add remaining ingredients, stir, cover and let simmer for one hour, stirring occasionally.

Recipe courtesy of John Bogino, Scalini's Italian Restaurant, Smyrna, Ga.www.scalinis.com

Quick Hit

For those that can't get enough Daddy-Blogging, The NY Times gave some great publicity to a guy whose humor and insight I can only aspire to.

5-yard penalty. Repeat 1st down

We packed the hospital bag on Saturday. Snacks, extra clothes, baby outfit, warm socks, extra toothbrush, etc, so perhaps it was that bag sitting at the foot of the bed that did it. Saturday night Corrie woke up around 2:15 with what felt and seemed like contractions. She woke me up and we lay in bed for another 15 minutes waiting for the next one to hit. I peeled Walter off the couch and lay his limp, somewhat indignant body next to my wife to spoon, but the next contraction never came. Took some time to get back to sleep, but for a moment there, we were sure it was “Go time”.

So what did we learn from this drill. First off, the body wakes up long before the mind. I was out of bed with 56 pounds of basset hound in my arm before I was awake in any real sense of the word. Secondly, we’re ready if it’s the real deal. Everything is put together in the nursery. We have all the relevant phone numbers at hand, and a system in place. Thirdly, it’s ok to have selfish reactions as long as they aren’t voiced.

“Really? 2:00? Couldn’t this wait a bit longer?”

Or even worse,

“…but we have dinner reservations next Monday night.”

We’re back to the holding pattern now, and the weather has been cooperating enough to take long walks around the pond. The general consensus seems to be that she’ll come early. We’ve got estimates on all dates from the 15th through the 20th, but not many people think she’ll last until the 23rd. Further updates as events warrant.

Sleep Deprivation

For 4 years of Architecture school I labored under a self hung motivational sign, “Sleep is for the weak”. There’s a certain raw pride in staying up 72 hours voluntarily, not to mention the very real, all-natural disorientation that served as the poor man’s version of being drunk. By far the best part of it all, besides the pride in knowing you just did something few people sitting next to you on the bus have just done, was the call of that bed, or in some cases hallway floor if I forgot my keys again (I was tired, don’t judge me).

The other night however, for no apparent reason, sleep just wouldn’t come. Wasn’t worried about anything in particular, hadn’t had too much coffee; Walter was comfortably curled up behind my knees under the blanket. Corrie wasn’t even snoring. Just couldn’t sleep.

With nothing to do at 2:00 am, I decided to make the best of an annoying situation by watching “A very Long Engagement”. If French subtitles don’t put me under, not much would. My luck, it just happened to be one of the better movies I’d seen in years, and was still awake at 4:30.

(If you liked "Amelie", or was one of the 10 people out there that saw “City of Lost Children”, this one blows them both away. But I digress.)

The price you pay for not sleeping only gets paid the next day. Thankfully it was the weekend, but even sleeping until 7:00 before Walter got me up wasn’t enough to break out of what was going to be a daylong funk. The whole routine started breaking down. Took a nap around 11:00, but still felt out of sorts the rest of the day. Couldn’t motivate very well to do anything but stumble downstairs to flip the laundry every now and then. Had to call the day a wash and just start over again tomorrow.

Except soon tomorrow will be another baby day. We’re staring into the face of something much more sinister than insomnia, much more pressing than a design deadline. There’s nothing voluntary about waking up at 3:00 to change a diaper. There’s no “next day” to look forward to for a chance to recover. What appeared to be a Buda like tranquility on new parents, attributed in my mind to a blessed grace children can bestow, now seems more like the hollowed out face of hopeless, endless weariness, tempered with joy to be sure, but the result of putting your body through a regimen it was not designed to take.

At least we aren’t having twins at the age of 60. (No need to reveal who that might be publicly)

Anticipation

The Atlantic Monthly wrote a great piece some time ago about the death penalty, arguing that it was in all cases cruel. The argument put forth was that the actual means of the execution don’t matter nearly as much as the torture of knowing for months what was going to happen to you, when it was going to happen, and that there is nothing the prisoner could do about it. Whether it’s a horribly painful firing squad or peaceful lethal injection, the cruelty lay in the anticipation leading up to the event.

Not that we’re looking at the death penalty here, far from it. For the most part we remain calm, lighthearted, and of sunny and pleasant disposition. There is something unique though in this tug of conflicting feelings, anticipation, impatience, wonder, hope, fear, curiosity and a hint of helplessness. There are few things though that I can think of that compare to being on a timeline of which we have no control, leading to something of such importance, and no small amount of discomfort on her part. Our train is on the tracks and will go where it will and get there when it will. We’re just along for the ride.

The latest Woody Allen movie makes the case that we rarely acknowledge how much of our lives is due to pure simple luck. To that I would add only that even more is simply out of our hands, illusions of control notwithstanding. Corrie’s birth-plan is for the most part unspecific recognizing that there are some choices we don’t get to make. It’s exciting, scary, and in some sense comforting that all this is out of our hands. Nothing we can do now other than prepare for the inevitable, enjoy our time now and trust that we are not the first people to do this, and in all likelihood, won’t be the last.

Bring it on

Phil is gearing up for another 6 weeks of winter. So far though this winter has been in the 40’s and sunny. I could stand another 6 weeks of that.

3 to go

(In all the hoopla about Lance, nobody seems to remember Greg. Sure he didn't have cancer, and had that frenchy last name, but he was still the first great American rider in the tour. Not to mention the best ever win over Lauren Fignon, coming from behind to win by only 8 seconds. Next week we'll go back to Lance, but this one's for you Greg)

We are now in the black. Officially, if the baby is born today, right now as I type this, she will not be considered premature. She's just getting bigger, which while that might mean more work for Corrie during labor, also means she'll sleep better the bigger she is. Putting me in the odd position of recognizing the more pain Corrie goes through the better I will sleep in the next few months. Doesn't seem fair.

We now have more clothes than she will ever wear, right up through the first year, regardless of how big or small she turns out to be. We're also in February, which puts her birthday safely past the Christmas Holiday season.

Cell phone is always charged and on my desk. Car will never be less than half full of gas. The only questions that remains is will she be an Aquarius (before the 18th) or a Pisces (after the 18th). Personally I couldn't care less, but couldn't resist injecting some suspense into the equation. Feel free to place side bets amongst yourselves.