shiso mama

feeling verrrrrrrry rusty…

I just love Otis’s school. The teachers are so in tuned with his personality and his needs, and he has grown so much since he started in September. Heck, they even taught him how to pee standing up, which I personally thought could wait at least until his age hit the double digits. But I am most grateful for how well they prepared him for the arrival of Miss Bee. Our head teacher and her partner had a son a few months ago, and he was quickly integrated into the school curriculum. Often I arrived in time to witness the kids learning the difference between gentle touching and mauling. The teachers did a lot of family role playing with Otis, with him taking care of his baby (usually a kangaroo or a frog) and his playing repertoire has been much expanded as a result (although I’ve heard that occasionally while playing “family” with classmates, he prefers to be the family dog).

So I think that this baby experience is so far a little disappointing for Otis. By the time she arrived, he was more than ready to practice all he’d learned, but she’s asleep most of the time. So we’ve started to consult him on various issues. When she wakes up, we ask him if he thinks we should feed her. Does her diaper need to be changed? Would she like the pacifier? And now, I think I’ve found the perfect way to include Otis. Bee has been so sleepy that it’s usually difficult to keep her awake during feedings, and the perfect way to exploit Otis’s, er, talents seems to be for him to be the official waker-upper. He gets to be silly and loud and helpful, a perfect combination for Otis, and for once, I am encouraging it.

Thanks, friends, for all the well wishes. I have so looked forward to opening my inbox every day and reading your comments and emails, and it still amazes and surprises me that people that I’ve only met online would care about what happens to our little family, so thank you as well for being there when we had such good news to share.

Here we are, one fast and hazy week later:

I feel like she looks so different already. F claims that she already has an arsenal of disapproving looks.

I have been simply amazed by how this first postpartum week has been from the last time. Miss Bee, from all evidence so far (and I’m praying that I’m not cursing myself by committing this to writing) is a contented, sleepy baby. What a novel concept! In fact, while we were in the hospital, I kept hearing a baby, whom I could swear was down the hall, crying furiously and inconsolably, night and day, and it reminded me so much of how Otis was after he was born - it was like I was being haunted by the Ghost of Otis Past. I finally forced F to go investigate the case of the Crying Baby, and it turns out that they were in the room next door (so, right behind my head) and their door was always open so the crying just seemed louder. I was grateful, nonetheless, for the rest that Miss Bee granted us so that we felt rather human by the time we were discharged from the hospital.

Before Otis came to visit us at the hospital, F engaged in this ridiculous caper of Hide the Baby, since we were advised by our pediatrician and by a nurse at the hospital to not have Bee in the room with us when he came for his first visit. He’ll want to see Mom and Dad, they said, and he may not necessarily want to meet the baby, and in fact may feel excluded if he sees the three of you together. We thought it made sense, but because of busy nurse schedules and the complication of the nursery being on a different floor, F ended up running around with Bee in her bassinet, finally pretending that he was casually standing around alone in the hallway, when Otis arrived with my mom. And wouldn’t you know it? Without a second glance at either of us, he just kept demanding, “Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?” This all seems very Otis to me.

Otis has been really great: excited but gentle, full of hugs and kisses, and always wanting to be helpful. But suddenly everything about him seems to be amplified - although two weeks ago, I still thought of him as my baby, he now looks so large and mature; it also feels like someone came while I was in the hospital and turned his volume wayyyyyy up. I know that the fatigue and hormones are making me sensitive and short on patience, and I feel incredibly guilty that I’m finding it a little difficult to deal with his energy right now. F, my mom, and Fifth Aunt Grandma K have done a fantastic job of stepping in, but I think we definitely need to find a way to spend some quality time together, getting along and enjoying each other.

But all in all, a good week. I did wake up last Friday feeling like I had lost a bar brawl, but I feel like I’m getting some sleep and physically healing. We’ve been out and about, and F and I even celebrated our wedding anniversary Monday night with a nice dinner at the new hot spot in town, with Miss Bee in tow. Not much to complain about. Maybe this next week I’ll even convince myself to take more naps during the day.

before:

and after:

flora bee
may 21, 6:32pm
8 lbs, 9 oz
21 inches
we’ll call her bee.

We’re still a party of three here, waiting and waiting. I’ve been feeling contractions for days, but they just haven’t been getting any stronger, and I’m feeling rather dispirited. Would it be uncharacteristically dramatic for me to say that it’s starting to feel like there’s no joy or laughter left in this world? Oh well, there is nothing more to do but to be patient. F and I have been taking leisurely walks every evening, and I’ve generally been taking it easy, since I can’t really get myself to sew anymore, but boredom is starting to set in along with the anxiety.

Life continues, however, and we have started to enjoy the bounty of our garden. Otis has been really excited to play farmer and to harvest vegetables, and it’s fun to see him so enthusiastic about being able to eat things from our own backyard. Here he is, after pulling up some spinach:

It went into some pasta that F made for dinner the other night. We also threw some radicchio, red leaf lettuce and red scallions into a salad another night. Tell me, though, why I planted radicchio when I don’t even really like bitter foods. They’ve grown quite large, and short of eating lots of very bitter salads, I don’t have a lot of creative ideas for them. I’ve saw a recipe for braising them with balsamic vinegar and bacon and tossing them with pasta, which actually sounds like a tasty combination. Anyone else have any ideas?

Today is my due date, but we are still waiting. And waiting (I think the landscapers are finishing their work as I type, so it looks like they’ve won the race to the finish line). Our friends, who were originally due 2 1/2 weeks later, even had their baby this morning! In the meantime, I continue with the sewing. Oh, and the waiting.

We have a baby friend, Oliver, who celebrates the same birthday as Otis, and despite how easy it should’ve been to remember, we actually forgot. Naughty naughty. So I made him a small belated present - a food related present, since he has recently been magically cured of some trying eating difficulties.

I sewed him a bib from fabrics collected from Otis’s baby clothes . Does that seem unsanitary somehow? But I loved all of these clothes, and they bring up such great memories for me, and it seemed like a shame not to use them all up. I embroidered his name on the bib, and it’ll go into a package with some dishes and utensils from Boon, whose new feeding products I’m rather enjoying. Oh, and the new layette looks nice, too.

What actually started this bib project is the idea that I wanted to make Otis a quilt made of his old baby clothes. After we found out that we were having a girl, I went through all the boxes of clothes that I had been holding onto for the past three years, figuring out what to keep and what to give away. I used to love buying these little button-up shirts with great patterns on it for Otis (yes, uncomfortable and silly for a 2 month old, so sue me), and I just couldn’t quite bear to give them away. So it seemed to make sense to make him a keepsake with them, especially since he doesn’t have a large enough quilt to cover his bed now that he’s moved onto a twin-sized one. So I took all of the clothes that were made of woven fabric, took a very deep breath, and cut them all to shreds. After the first shirt, whose destruction made me quite sad, it was actually quite therapeutic. I’ve actually had to stop myself from eyeing clothes that have great patterns but that he still fits into. And the verdict?

Otis had a lot of blue clothes, which surprised me a little.

But now I’m finding that I’m a little stuck, because in case you can’t tell, I generally don’t mix a lot of colors and patterns, and every combination that I’ve tried to work out seems to be just so darned busy.

See?

And see?

Is it just me? Probably, since thinking about more than 3 colors at a time usually makes me feel slightly tipsy. I think I’ll just have to sort of give into the (perceived) busyness. I’m not used to this whole concept of mixing and matching, but since I feel quite committed to using all of these little squares that I’ve cut up, I think I’ll have to just go with it. I guess Oliver’s bib was a sort of try-out, and it doesn’t look too bad to me, so maybe I’ll feel differently about it once it’s all put together. I think I’m leaning towards two rows of pieces squares, followed by a solid band of white or off-white (rather than the small squares, like the bottom photo), repeating this, and then putting a white/off-white border around the whole thing? Anyone have any opinions about this?

And here’s another question - I’m debating the fate of a shirt of Otis’s, which is one of my absolute favorites. I’ve only just stopped stuffing him into it because it’s cutting off circulation at his wrists (it’s an 18m shirt). A friend recently said, “Hey, that shirt looks like a girl could wear it.” and I had to respond, “Um, that’s because it is a girl’s shirt.” So it’s really something that could be passed on to Otis-ina, an idea that F likes. But it’ll really be Otis’s shirt forever in my brain, and it feels like it should be part of his quilt. Should I cut the mother up, or should I save it?

Of course there’s been some making of the wearables for Otis-ina, although not really as much as one might think. I don’t any problems starting any of these projects, only finishing them, unfortunately.

I bought this yarn to knit a baby blanket for a friend when she was pregnant. I believe that child (the oldest of three) is now six. I’m not sure how many times I’ve tried to use this yarn, and I finally finished a project with it. I used this pattern here, a pretty easy one to follow. I thought that sewing in a zipper would be easier than buttons and button holes, but it’s pretty much a toss-up as long as you can find the right zipper. Here’s a tutorial on sewing in a zipper, in case you ever find yourself in need. The hood is ribbed and the body is boxy, so it looks like my baby will have a little pin-head when she wears it.

A little top for Otis-ina to wear while we’re in Taiwan this summer. It’s made of a really thin cotton that I’ve been holding onto for some time. As opposed as I am to pink, I find myself surprisingly drawn to lavender, it’s kissing cousin. And burgundy. And mauve. And for some other reason, these ruffles made me irrationally happy. Alarming news, all of this.

And a little knitted cap, using this pattern and Koigu yarn, which has a slight sheen and comes in the most gorgeous colors. It also feels just great and has these subtle color variations, even in some of the solid colors, that I just love. I found myself drawn to this dusty rose yarn, and considered pairing it with a pale green grey, but when I asked the salesperson if it was too depressing for a baby, she paused and then said, “uhh….. nooooo, i don’t so.” I should’ve known that that was the response I was actually looking for, since I then bought this dusty turquoise color instead, and although I like the color quite a bit, I should’ve realized that knitting the two next to each other would make the rose appear - gasp!- pink! Damn, I forgot basic color theory.

Hey, remember that design contest that I won at Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn? Looks like they’re finally offering them for sale. They have a limited number, perhaps because they’ve since changed their name. I received a bundle of them some time ago — the sharp lines of cut-paper collage didn’t really translate that well to silkscreening (good to know) and the colors aren’t really right, but it’s still lots of fun to see something that I made out there in the world. If you’re interested, shoot them an email.

The to-do list, she is getting shorter. Here are some of the home projects we’ve been working on in recent weeks.

We bought this chair off craigslist for $20. It was an unfinished project that had been sitting in some guy’s family room for ages. It appeared for some time that the chair would suffer the same fate in our house, since I had originally intended to upholster some cushions as a present for F’s present. Last September. Or was it our anniversary? Last May? Well, it is finally finished, although now we’ve moved it into the baby’s room, and the fabric doesn’t exactly scream BABY or NURSERY to me. Oh well. We still need to refinish the wood, but at least it’s usable now, and that gives us ages more procrastination time.

Why does a person need to sew a laundry hamper, exactly? Hmm, it may be one of the great mysteries of the universe. But I did, and here it is. It velcros onto a wheeeled frame from Ikea (the Antonius, in case you were wondering), which is handy, since it feels like I do laundry just about every other day - Otis is just so dirty and by the end of the day, there’s usually the clothes he went to school in, and then the set they changed him into as well.

Remember how I mentioned I was hauling rocks in the backyard a while ago? Did you think I was kidding? Heck no, I really was hauling rocks, making a second makeshift vegetable plot to go with the more permanent one that F built for me last year, since I had all that excess pregnancy energy to burn. And the vegetables have really taken off! The tender ones like the mache have had to struggle a little more (since they require that a person be vigilant, and, you know, water them like every day or two) but the broccoli is absolutely ginormous! We’ve also planted radicchio, tomatoes, peas, corn, spinach, scallions and squash. I know virtually nothing about vegetable gardening - I’ve probably planted things too close together and have moved things repeatedly, but it’s been really fun to watch the progress.

Even more exciting, after more than two years in the house, we finally bit the bullet and hired some guys to come and do some of the big work in the backyard. They’re doing pathways, a patio, irrigation, the whole nine yards. It’s why you can see the mess all around the vegetable plot. It’s supremely satisfying to walk to the backyard at the end of the day, see the progress and know that it was accomplished by somebody else. It’s now a race to see whether they finish the yard first or I go into labor.

Today Otis got to experience what it would be like to die and go to heaven. It was a birthday party which started with plastic guns that shoot bubbles everywhere, progressed to a clown who performed animal tricks and slapstick jokes (he laughed uproariously at every joke and yelled out the answer to every question - every clown’s dream shill. I swear he has such a boy sense of humor. Unfortunately for her, he was often the only one laughing and yelling), graduated to a pinata filled with plastic animals, all topped off with face painting and a balloon animal coup de grace. He’s wearing the shirt he likes to refer to as his cheetah shirt, so it only makes sense that his face would be painted to fit. It’s the kind of party we would throw for Otis if we wanted to include just about everything Otis loved in the world. Ahhh, it almost makes me wish that I wasn’t so darned lazy about throwing birthday parties that are actually geared towards children. Speaking of laziness, I actually stayed home and took my first nap in a long time, which was just about the most luxurious thing imaginable, so we both had pretty good days.

Only two more days until my mom arrives Stateside, and my doctor returns from vacation. Hoping to hold on at least until then…