Simplicity

I've been cutting out eight-inch squares of purple, blue, and green fabric for a quilt for the last few weeks. Chloë has an Elmo book, you see, on one of the pages of which Elmo is jumping on his bed with his favorite teddy monster, and on his quilt is a simple, impossibly puffy quilt of blue and green squares. Chloë has repeatedly talked about the quilt, and I got the brilliant idea of making her one like it since she needs a bigger blanket for her bed anyway. This was foolish as I have no time, and also want to make a (also very simple) baby quilt for my brother's best friend's new baby before we leave for Seattle next week. But I've been cutting out squares here and there, and now I've got enough to start sewing.

I thought it would be nice to get done slowly over the next few weeks, a couple of seams at a time, or however long Chloë was willing to bring me squares and sit in my lap and keep her hands away from the sewing machine. Alas: she's scared of the noise. It's too loud, she says (or "tu howd"). Ah well. When I get this other quilt done...because I will, right?...II'll start sewing hers together, a few seams at a time, in the evening. I'd had a much more complicated and awesome one planned before Maia was born: bears in the woods on a moonlit evening. But it didn't happen before Maia was born, so it won't for a while; and now I don't think I'd do that design since she's much more into water at the moment. (She might appreciate the bears, but only if they looked enough like Care Bears, which wasn't my plan.)

I miss doing complicated hobby work, but there's also something charming about the simplicity of a few squares here, a few square there. I also miss the sourdough and artisan bread I used to make, but I like having Chloe help me pile in the ingredients for our standard wheat every week or two (Though I do plan on trying a variation of King Arthur's sandwich rye soon. Also a cinnamon/applesauce bread for French toast inspired by their banana yeast bread. I'll probably freeze it in individual slices so we can store it for just that purpose.) Eric asked me about the logistics that a job on Bainbridge Island would entail, and when he learned that the commute would be long and we couldn't afford to live close, decided it wasn't for him. "Come home at 6:30, then immediately dinner, bathtime, bedtime," he said. "Not a thrilling idea." I think I always knew I would be retooling my life to fit around children, and this is what it looks like. I'll make them complicated quilts when they're older and can appreciate it more anyway.

On not moving

I dreamed last night that I was making my way from here to Seattle, broke and on foot, like in a video game. Sometimes I had companions, sometimes not, and we got into all kinds of adventures and distractions, and if I made the wrong choices I'd just fade out and end up back at the beginning, not always knowing what I'd done wrong. I'd just about made it and was noticing that the mountains made me a little uneasy when I woke up.

I've stopped talking about moving with my family. We're still trying, or still trying to try; but the house isn't selling and job-hunting isn't easy in the current economic climate and particularly not when your two-month-old is crying whenever she isn't feeding at night and your two-year-old wants to be played with all the time and wakes up at six. I don't know if my family figures I've given up or is bored with the topic or is just trying to give me a break. I hate that we're not leaving. The house isn't right for us and neither is the climate, either geological or sociopolitical, and Eric doesn't want our daughters in the local school district and I miss my family more than Eric seems to think he'll miss his; but we can't go. I've already wasted my youth in the Midwest (why did I decide I wanted to experience the Midwest?) and it's so much harder to move with a husband and two kids.

Blah. I will try to get to the job-hunting as I can. I will continue with all the little things that are nice about our life. Maia is now stopping in the middle of nursing to smile up at me. It's inconvenient, but it's very endearing. Chloë can do complicated sentences and minor reasoning and her hair is long enough to put up into pigtails. It's ice cream and tomato season. And work is slow enough that I can write every day. These are good things.

It just takes the cake

Let's talk about cake. My aunt decorates cakes as a serious hobby--she made them for her daughters' weddings and would have for mine if she hadn't lived 2500 miles away. (Should have asked her anyway, though. My wedding cake was lousy. It tasted fine, and that was about all that could be said for it. Luckily we also served homemade ice cream.) My sister-in-law got interested in cake-decorating a couple of years ago and produced some awesome cakes for her daughter's birthday parties. Personally, I've never been that big into cake (ice cream and brownies are my preference), so I admired from a distance until it came time to make Chloë's first birthday cake. Because of course I had to make it from scratch and decorate it. That's what moms do, right? Or at least that's what moms who like to cook and bake and fancy themselves quick learners do.

So I made a lemon cake from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, with lemon curd filling and Italian buttercream frosting (I had to go online for that one--and was thrilled because I'm not fond of American frostings as a rule), and decorated it just before serving because there were issues and I couldn't get to it earlier, and it was nothing special looks-wise but it tasted good, and I was pleased. I decided I would get more interested in cakes--mainly the baking, since I didn't want to be seen as competing with my sister-in-law. Eric got me The Cake Bible for my birthday this year, and I made a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and ate about half of it myself. Then I got out the Wilton decorating books my aunt gave me for my wedding shower long ago, which I'd brought out for Chloë's cake but nothing since.

And now? Now I'm fantasizing about the truly awesome cakes I could make and frost. Chloë's birthday this year is water-themed, kiddie pools and a sprinkler and water balloons for the kids to play with. I was going to make an underwater cake, with cookie fish and seaweed and maybe some sea stars and piped shells and graham-cracker sand, but then I saw this cake and decided that I must make a backyard cake, complete with kiddie pool and sprinkler and hose.

Luckily, this idea is actually going to be less strenuous, piping-wise, than the fish one, which is good considering I have a two-month-old and a two-year-old and no time to sit down and actually practice piping. It will involve constructing a pool, probably out of pie crust, and cutting up some licorice and other candies, but that I think I can do.

So I don't think this will become a new hobby, but it's definitely a new interest. I have to go out sometime in the next two weeks and get a grass piping tip. And when will the next cake be? I don't know, because our nuclear family's next birthday is in April and anyone else would probably be covered by my sister-in-law. Maybe a fall cake is in order.

Being back

I realized yesterday that I've been working on Shoelace for ten years. This is absurd. I was single when I started it. Now I have a husband and two children. Admittedly those have been distractions, and also admittedly the story has gone through some drastic changes since I started. But seriously? Ten years? What idiocy. I'm finishing it this year (didn't before Maia came, obviously) and putting it away, for gods' sake.

So yes, I have two children now. I've realized I hate the newborn stage of life. I mean, not hate exactly...no, maybe that is what I mean. I resent walking the halls with a screaming baby every night. (Lack of colic would make the newborn phase easier, I admit.) I resent nursing every hour and a half--though that's gotten better recently. I do like her portability, and her smiles, and the way she snuggles up to me when we fall asleep together (though I don’t like the frequency with which we fall asleep together, though this is mainly because it hurts my back). And I know that things get much better from here. Chloë continues to get awesomer, though at the moment also more histrionic. Still, she's great fun. I'm having a slight rocky patch with Eric at the moment--totally one-sided, and totally due to the new baby and the adjustments (and maternity leave) that came with her. Life is crowded but good. I'm just now starting to get back to writing--and I want to really get back to it and put this away. This is ridiculous. Ten years!

Giving it a try

I posted at the baby blog about the frustration I've been feeling lately with housework and hobbies and free time in general. It only touched on the ambivalence on child #2 that I was having in the first trimester and that is coming back now that I'm actively counting weeks until my due date. I'm not sure whether I ought to be discussing that in front of my friends and family. (I guess I don't think here counts. Dunno if anyone reads it.) Also I don't want to give the impression I'm trawling for sympathy or something. A friend wrote to me and offered her services for housework or whatever, which was very sweet but which I don't think I could take her up on (however: if she were willing to entertain Chloë while I worked, that might be different), and Eric expressed concern and wanted to talk about what these projects were that I was stressing out about. (The fact that he had to ask sort of underscores my point, though, I think.)

However, we've been working on laundry and dishes the past few days, and I did some vacuuming tonight despite a very tantrum-y night (Chloë, not me), and having finished my nephew's quilt at last I'm feeling somewhat better about the state of things. Not great, but better. I'm working on the Shoelace rewrite at the moment--or anyway avoiding working on it. I'm at a scene that involves politics, and I haven't actually developed the politics of the region for this world beyond a vague sense of small countries with ever-changing alliances and very few certainties. I think this means I am not writing a good book, or at least that I'm not writing this book well. I've learned a lot these past couple of years about writing, I think, despite the fact that I haven't done much of it. It's been interesting, and useful, if disappointing at times.

In any case, I have some politics to work out, and a scene to write. I'm currently at 34,596 words in draft 2, most of it new. I'm not sure I can get this done before the new baby comes (April 26, or thereabouts), but I'm going to give it my best try.

In a good place

I am so tired. This is mainly because I set myself up to be so--I'm sitting in bed after taking my shower and having my now-usual bedtime snack. Today's was more necessary than usual because we visited the mothers for the evening and had no real dinner--or rather, I didn't. Chloe had dinner with her cousins, meat and noodles and carrots and grapes, and Eric had an enchilada and part of a frozen pizza. My niece Addie wanted to play, so I had her play chef and make me a fruit salad and a piece of toast, which seemed like things she could handle. (I cut up the apple and peeled the orange that went into the fruit salad. Eric helped her wash the blueberries. Michelle helped her operate the toaster.) She was pleased, and I was happy, but dinner is usually more substantial than that.

Anyway. I'm working on Shoelace. I'm doing very well on my self-imposed schedule. I want to have the rewrite done by March 31 so I can submit it to my novel crit group (and wash my hands of it a few weeks before the baby comes). This requires getting through about five scenes a week. I'm a little behind, but not as much as I feared. I'm working on it during lunches (which involves bringing my netbook to work, which in turn involves selling the netbook to everyone who notices me with it--a coworker walked up today and said "What's that?" and it was really hard not to say "Really? You don't know what it is? Exactly what do you work on all day here?") and completing scenes at night, and it's actually very pleasant to sit down with the netbook after Chloe goes to bed and write. Maybe I'll even get into the habit again by the time I'm done...in time to forget it again when the baby arrives, I know.

I've got a lot on my plate at the moment, almost all self-imposed. There's the Shoelace rewrite. There's Fiberscapes, the secret project Carol and Charlotte and I are working on--we're going to (we think) take a booth at the Ann Arbor Fiber Expo in October, and so are working on spinning yarn, dyeing fiber, making ornaments, writing patterns, and generally indulging in fibery productive goodness. I'm a bit more concerned about our pace and output than either of them seem to be, but that's just my style, and with luck my fears are completely ill-founded. Then there's Gabe's racetrack quilt, which I hope to have done by his birthday, which is in less than a month. (I spun tonight instead of working on the quilt, but I really need to devote the rest of the week to finishing the top. I need to applique a grandstand. How do you applique a grandstand?) And then there's the packing up of the craft room to make it into Chloe's room. Oh, and constructing my new dresser and doing taxes and putting up new curtain rods and so on.

So I'm busy, but delightfully so. It's really, really nice to feel I have a lot to do and I'm doing it. That I'm capable of this while having a child and supporting a family. I know everything's going to go off-kilter again when Maia is born, but I have faith that I'll get back to this place, eventually.

R.I.P.

Alas! My sourdough starter is dead!

I really am sorry; I've kept it going for two years now, and made some good breads with it. It survived my previous first trimester, but this one apparently defeated it. I was rooting through the fridge last night for something to eat (a quest that was much easier to fulfill before I got a parasite growing in me) and thought, "What's in this old jar?" What was in it was sourdough starter and black mold. It went into the trash.

I have some dried starter from a year or so ago that I should be able to use to start over. I'm thinking I'm not going to bother right now, though. I'm not finding the time or the stomach to either make or eat a lot of bread these days, certainly not anything experimental, which sourdough usually is for me. And I've got cookbooks full of recipes for yeast-based breads. But it makes me a little sad; this is the first true casualty of this pregnancy, other than maybe the garden (and my jeans). Though I fully intend to grow a few things in pots next year. Tomatoes, if nothing else. I went out last night to pick the last of the tomatoes because there was a frost warning, and took Chloe with me. I put thumbless mittens on her to keep her warm, but she got out of them anyway and chomped happily on the tomatoes I'd just picked, getting seeds all over her jacket and pants. She's going to be so sad this winter, and so happy next summer.

Matters of state

Well, hello again. I've just recently closed down another blog, the garden one, so maybe I'll be able to remember to turn to this one. So far it's mostly been the baby blog and my worknotes (e-mails to myself).

Let's see. Important news: I am pregnant again. Go ahead, ask me if it was planned. I'm due April 26, and have just given up job-hunting because I couldn't in good conscience accept a job and then go on maternity leave five or fewer months earlier. I hate this, but there it is. Eric is a stay-at-home dad, teaching a class at a local community college and doing online tutoring at night, and it's working out well except that I need a new computer (or at least a new OS, but the new computer would be really nice too) and we don't make enough disposable income that I'm comfortable getting one. It's going on the Christmas list. Chloë is doing very well; she can walk and say "up" and "Dada" and can point to various body parts, and gives marvelous hugs. I'm alternately excited and scared of having a second one. We're just growing into this nice family. Nevertheless.

I finished my most recent craft project, a quilt for my new niece (born last Sunday, I shipped it today, so that wasn't as bad as it could have been). Currently in progress:

-a baby sweater for Chloë, nearly finished
-a kitty hat for Chloë's cousin's Halloween costume, nearly started
-designs for Christmas stockings for all of us
-various attempts at making fleece hats and mittens for Chloë for the winter

Chloë's already outgrowing the baby blanket I made her, and she'll be moving to a toddler bed next summer anyway, so I'm contemplating a big-girl quilt for her. Also one for the new baby. No ideas yet on either.

And I've started the Shoelace revision. Rewrite, rather. I've been doing some research and some thinking and have, I hope, a much better background and outline. Currently I'm some 3500 words in, mostly new. I joined the Novel Club, a quarterly novel-critiquing group, on FMwriters, and I'd like to have this finished to submit by March. Ideally I'd say December, but I know that's not going to happen.

My current plan: finish the above craft projects, start on the quilts, do this quarter's crit early, and plod through Shoelace. I've been taking my lunch hour at work to either craft or write, since if I don't I just end up working through, and that's been helpful. It's also been nice that Chloë has become more independent, and importantly very regular in her sleeping habits, so I have a little time every day to work--not much, but some. So that's the plan. (Rule the world/you and me/Any day--I watched Dr. Horrible twice this weekend, and now I want to keep watching it so I can acquire the music and not just keep singing the same phrases to myself.)

Technology love and baby love

Well, that was fun. Friday I had my e-mail hacked into; Sunday I got a pair of viruses on my netbook and only just now got them fixed. Well, I hope it's fixed. And it was actually Eric who did it. But anyway. What I'm trying to say is, I love technology.

Work is insane, and has been ever since my coworker went on medical/maternity leave. I consider it an accomplishment that I'm down to one to-do list from the previous two ("To do" and "To do first"). I'm sorely tempted to take tomorrow off, but then I'd only be further behind when I got back. Blechh. I'm very glad that we're getting a child-free overnight date on Friday, though. It's not so much that I want to be away from the kid as that I just want not to be obliged to do things.

I went to a fleece fair in Chelsea with Carol on Saturday. We left the babies at home, ran into some friends, bought stuff for ourselves, went out for coffee and ice cream afterward...why did I have a baby again? I guess because when I left work today, I left at five exactly, even though I wanted to stay and try to catch up, and I was eager to go pick up my baby because I knew holding her would make me feel better after my rotten day. It did until she started screaming, but to be fair, that wasn't until I put her down to get her in her carseat.

Considering research

Chloë is in her crib, moaning, "Why did you wake me up just to put me in bed? Life is pain!" We just got back from a Tupperware party, where I considered getting her that red-and-blue put-the-yellow-blocks-into-the-holes thingy but decided I should leave for her grandmothers to get later on. Instead I got more containers for flour. I routinely have at least four different kinds of flour around the house now, and get nervous if there isn't an extra bag of AP at least in the freezer. (There isn't now. But we need to go to Kroger soon.)

We went to Confusion this weekend, and had a pretty good time. Not as good con-wise as previous years, but there was good Chloë-time; she loved the new scenery and the new faces and all the people who tried to make her smile, which isn't hard. I went to some panels and took the swing dancing tutorial and stayed in the hotel room at night, playing with my new netbook while Chloë slept. I'd meant to try working on some writing, but I played a game instead (it came pre-installed on the computer--luckily it's only a trial version).

I'm starting to think about how to revise Shoelace. Mainly, I'm thinking I need to do a lot of research to better build the world. I'm not all that keen on world-building, and it probably shows. I first started realizing how lacking I've been in the research department at the Penguicon writer's workshop last year. And I think a recent conversation of Eric's and mine solidified it:

"I miss college."

"The best time of my life. It's all been downhill from there."

"Unfortunately you can't get a job where you're paid to learn all the time."

"Writers do."

Resolute

Hello, New Year. Hello, blog. Hello, world. (return 0)

I think I'm ready to come out of hibernation. Or funk, or whatever it is that I've had. Postpartum lost-my-grip-on-my-lifedness. I still haven't finished Chloë's quilt, but I've worked on it, and I've made some things and gotten back to something like my old life, only slower. And full of a cute baby who now sits up, and babbles, and grins like a spreading dawn. And also likes to grab my lower lip while nursing and pull, but never mind that.

I have yet to write my Annual Review for 2009, but I'm hoping to very soon. I'd do it at work, only work has been insane. My coworker left for maternity leave early, and she and I job-share, sort of, so I'm now doing one-and-three-quarters jobs (I can farm out part of it). I think I'm going to be constantly on the brink of disaster until she comes back. But I'm handling the work, so far, and in a way it's nice to be so busy. I feel very useful, and mostly pretty competent (except when I've messed something up, but with this much work it's probably statistically inevitable that that would happen).

Current status: I'm still on writing break. Thinking about breaking it, but I feel like I need to warm up a little first. Also decide whether to go back to Shoelace, or start the something new I've been wanting to do for a few years now. Craft-wise, I need to finish Chloë's quilt (Baby's First Spaceship) and make one for Raegan, my new niece, and then another for a friend of ours due in July. I'd like to finish Chloë's by ConFusion, the weekend after next. We'll see. I also want to try more weaving--I got a little loom and made a project and liked it, but haven't had time to do a second one--and get back to spinning, which I haven't touched for months and want to. Work-wise, I'd like to be in a new job by the end of the year--not because I dislike the one I've got, but because this is the year we're going to do our darnedest to move out to the West Coast. Anyone want to buy a house? We're starting to talk about what needs to happen to the house to get it in selling condition by spring.

I can't promise I'm going to write here any more often than I have been, but I'll try. The more I write, the more I have to say, I've noticed, and I think I've been too quiet. So onward we go. (But now I have to go get the Medela out and then go to bed.)

Ready or not

So with Eric going back to work (well, new teacher orientation) and Chloe turning four weeks old this week, I was thinking that it was time to start working on my non-baby life. And someone had contacted me about doing freelance work for a new e-zine about Ohio high-tech businesses, which sounded good to me. But now he's sent me the information and two assignments that he wants back by the end of the week, and I'm realizing that (a) there's a bunch of information he hasn't included, like rates (he's given me general ranges, but the contract he sent has a blank where the fee should be), and (b) it's going to be iffy scheduling an interview, even a phone interview, while caring for a baby who may start crying at any moment. Admittedly Chloe has started taking more of an interest in her surroundings and is less likely to cry out of loneliness at least, but still. I'll see if I can schedule things for when Eric's going to be home. Also, (c) I'm not so sure I'm really ready to start working on things with deadlines yet. But I've already agreed to do this (although that was before he sprung the deadlines on me--he originally said this was starting up around Labor Day), so I guess I'm going to be doing it whether I'm ready or not.

I am a mother.

I've been trying to write about having a baby, and it isn't working. (Also, typing feels weird. I haven't been on my computer in days and days.) Relatively briefly, then: Chloe was born on Thursday, July 23, after 20.5 hours of labor (starting with my water breaking, which seemed to annoy the midwives inordinately--once that happens, they start worrying about infection) and a tech who asked to observe me at the hospital because she'd never seen anyone trying to do a no-drugs labor before. She was eight pounds, three ounces, supposedly 21 inches (but the pediatrician measured her at 19.75 at her four-day checkup). After the delivery, we got to see the placenta and amniotic sac, which was pretty cool, while I got stitched up; and then I was both ravenous and the sleepiest I've ever been; and then I got food and a nap, and so did Chloe.

We took her home, where we adored her and she was fussy and difficult at feeding times and developed jaundice. It and the fussiness got bad enough that we called the pediatrician, and on the next Friday they looked her over, got a bilirubin and weight check, and ended up sending us to the NICU for phototherapy for her jaundice and weight loss and dehydration. As far as we know it was caused by not feeding her enough, which was caused by a shallow latch and tongue thrust preventing her from feeding well. So I've been feeling horribly guilty. But I'm getting better, and it helps that the phototherapy cleared up the jaundice for the most part and we're now stuffing her full of food, so much so that she gained ten ounces in five days and is back to her birth weight at the two-week mark, right on schedule. The pediatrician says if this keeps up he'll have to have the obesity talk with us sooner than planned.

I enjoy her very much, but I'm still a bit ambivalent about being a mother. I hope this is normal. I'm definitely enjoying being at home, except that my parents are staying with us and my mom is getting on my nerves slightly, which hasn't happened before. (Also she's taken over my kitchen, but since this means I don't have to cook meals it's not so bad.) She's two weeks old today, and I'm starting to feel like it's time to get back to a somewhat normal schedule, rather than spending most of my time reading and napping between feedings. Being a mother definitely doesn't change my interest in my hobbies or my attitude towards housework; it just adds an extra responsibility that has to take precedence. It's weird. But I think I can make it work.