Two for the Road

Yesterday, just after a feeding and before a nap (Madigan's, not mine, natch), I scrambled around the house to pack up for an outing...car seat, keys, hooter hider, baby...before she was on to me. Sometimes I think if I take too long to get ready, she's going to get all huffy and pop out that binky and yell, "Mah, THIS LIFETIME, yeah??? But typically, we can get out the door with little incident and yesterday we were in the 'burbs in no time. We were all about mall walking, and by that I mean that I was all about being somewhere unblustery to exercise with a stroller, not necessarily about actually being at the mall. This particular complex is made of platinum and Hermes bags, the floors are paved with Nelly's grilles and they pump Chanel No. 6 from the airshafts all day long. As if all that were not intimidating enough, throw in Super Mall Walker Mom who was literally walking circles around pokey old me. I mean burrrning rrrrubbahh up and down that mall concourse, or burning Nelly's grilles as the case may have been. All in all, though, we had a nice day. We generally have some pretty good days, the dumpling and I. You might assume that a one month-old would be an unresponsive little pivoting sprinkler of poop and spoiled milk, but I find this one quite charming. She is extremely alert, warm for the cuddling, and full of witty repartee. See below.

"Binky is the new black."

"Sometimes Vera Bradley is just a little too ubiquitous."

"Are we really going all organic?!?"

"Do not mistake me for a conjurer of cheap tricks...."

"Mama's my homegirl."

Taming the Baby Beast

As my personal priorities shift farther and farther from the ones I once held in a lifetime long long ONE MONTH AGO, it seems impossible that I once had the liberty and the capacity to listen to NPR podcasts whilst typing out reports for corporate end users and, yes, probably even whilst chewing gum and gchatting with Lovey Loverpants about NPR podcasts and reports and gum. And high fructose corn syrup. We talk so much about high fructose corn syrup, the Loverpants and I, you would think the corn producers of America paid us to do so. But it's all pro bono. You're welcome, farmers. My priorities today are not linear. They are all a subset of the chief priority of what I call Keeping the Pie Face Closed. This sounds sadistic, but when Baby Girl cries, sometimes all I can do is laugh because her little face becomes all taut and her mouth opens into this perfectly circular pie face hole and her head quivers on top of her little popsicle stick neck and the whole scene is just unbearable. She is so cute, people, even when she's doing her little barnyard bleeting.

We tried to go get take-out last week. She started her bleeting, as infants are wont to do, and it wasn't like she caused a scene and we got ejected from the susheria or anything, but I tried to quickly think of ways to appease her. But then she would stop. She's like her mother in this way. I am a very efficient crier. Big cathartic wail. Then. Done and done.

The one event that she really does not prefer, however, is the bath time. She's gotten so much better now that she's uncorked (trans: stumpy cord popped off) and we can use the baby bath tub, but I give you some scenes from the early days of the sponge bath. Oh little pie face. Someday you're going to hate me for all this. But for now, all I can do is keep my camera shuttering.

Countless Reasons

There are many good reasons to have children such as tax breaks and excuses to catch unnatural highs from Baby Magic lotion all day. There are also the valid reasons of wanting to spread one's seed, to succeed genetically, to see just exactly HOW recessive redheadedness and attached earlobes really are in your lineage. Then there's the opportunity to implicitly tell your parent(s) that you had sex and that life is going to be a whole lot different for a lot of people because of it. And let's not forget the big honking good reason of becoming the parent one swore she'd never become, the parent who parented her. Oh, and the coupons! Do not forget the coupons. Spawn a chile and your mailbox will be chock full o' Enfamil savings. Excellent reason to procreate. One reason to have children which we had not previously considered (prior to conception) was the chance that our neighbor/friend Shannimal might be more inclined to stop by on a weeknight and gift us with her jovial company, a Bob Marley "One Love" onesie AND a stuffed octopus for tormenting decorating our wee one.

Lest any of our conscientious readers be riding the fence as to whether or not the pros outweighed the cons in popping one out, we simply did not want any of you to omit this extremely important but highly overlooked "pro."

As well as that little postscript about having one's heart swell each time she beholds that little face, a face that angels must have painted on with their eyelashes, a face that seems to emote ten thousand fascinating things to her at once, which may take her entire parenting life to decode.