Holiday Ends
Today is (I think) the last day of Holidailies, which is a bit of a relief. I’m planning to take a short break here, a week while I’m in Oregon visiting my parents and another week to recover from flying all over the country. Then I’m hoping to be back here posting once a week, maybe more on occasion, but I don’t want to aim for more for fear I won’t do any.
I managed a post for every day of holidailies, even if it wasn’t posted every day (I think I missed one day, but started a day early, so it evened out) which totals 32 days (including this one) in a row of blog posts. I realize this isn’t an enormous accomplishment, but it’s what I set out to do, so I’m happy to have finished it. I’ve also managed to get some (thought by no means all) of the holiday things done that I needed to do, so it’s not as though everything dropped to the side so I could get the blogging done, something I’ve been known to fall into in the past. A few things dropped to the side, but I think nothing important. I got several batches of chex mix baked for gifts, two glitter bottles finished for Ender, the wave bottle finished (thought not sealed) and two drawings done for Matt. Again, none of these things are especially epic on their own, but they are all the sorts of things I often mean to do, and don’t get around to, so I’m happy, and optimistic about my goals for the year.
If you missed my 2011 wrapup here are my goals for 2012:
1. Find time to do something creative at least a few times a week.
2. Submit a short story to magazines.
3. Re-write chapter 1 of novel.
4. Create dummy for picture book, and 2 finished pages. Submit picture book to publishers.
5. Create one simple (even if entirely useless) iPad app.
There are several other cascading goals, and better defined goals, that come from the ones above, but those are a good target for me at the moment, and I’m feeling pretty good about them at the moment. I’m starting out by giving myself small (very small) daily goals such as getting a sketch done, or spending an hour doing some editing. Re-focusing my efforts in this (these) direction(s) should help get me back into doing what I want to be doing, and what I need to be doing. I think daily blogging has been a good step stone for that, and helped me get some of my thoughts organized.
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and enjoyed holidailies. Off we go.
Giveaway Winner
I did a shirt credit giveaway December 19. The winner is Sherck with the suggestion: “Stare at it until you can see the Magic Eye picture (I swear it’s there, and I can’t believe they would put that on a onesie).” Sherck, I’ll get in contact with the shirt blanks company when I get back from Oregon (in about a week) and figure out how to get you your $25 credit then. This is my first giveaway with an outside company, so forgive me if I fumble a bit.
Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dyeing
I realize plenty of nursing mothers get by just fine without ever buying a single piece of “nursing” clothing. Others, I know, find the look of nursing shirts awkward and embarrassing.
My god though, it’s SO much easier. Ok, so these days, nursing is pretty easy. Ender and I both more or less have the routine down, and if I wanted to, wearing “normal” clothing would absolutely be doable. But in the early days weeks months of nursing, it was just one more thing to deal with, and I fell in love with the easy openings of nursing tops. I got in the habit. Plus, if I need to nurse Ender while I’m out and about, it’s way easier with a nursing top to not flash every passerby a glimpse of my crepe paper belly, never mind my boobs.
Unfortunately, (affordable) nursing tops are pretty slim pickings. I have exactly four long sleeved tops I’m comfortable wearing. And as of this morning, one of them looked terrible on me.
I like brown, and some browns like me, but this pilgrim turkey brown was not one of them (I meant to take a photo of myself wearing it, but didn’t remember until it was too late). So I thought I didn’t have anything to lose by trying my first experiment with RIT dye. Well, first since a tie-dye activity in the 2nd grade.
I didn’t bother trying to get the original color out, mainly because I didn’t realize it was possible until recently. Plus adding one more step to a project just makes it a little less likely that I’ll get it finished. I thought a bright red would combine nicely with the original brown, and even if it stayed more brown than red, it would be warmer color, and hopefully look nicer with my skin.
Stirring, for over an HOUR was a pain, and it looked like evil Jello. It turned out beautifully though. The color was even nicer than I’d hoped for, I can’t think of the name of the red, but it’s a color that makes me feel nostalgic, it’s the color I imagine Little Red’s riding hood should be.
To be totally honest, my craft whims don’t usually turn out this well, so I’m pretty psyched to not just have one more shirt I can wear without feeling ugly, but to have completed a project in less than a day. I have plans to buy and dye two more shirts, and next time, I think I may play with masking using some wax resist. I can’t wait to see how they turn out.
Freedom of Thought
Ender is… well I won’t call it Crawling, but by the time you finish reading this post it might be. He’s got the legs mostly worked out, but his arms stick out stiff in front of him, effectively providing breaks to his forward momentum. Sometimes he topples forward and manages to scramble a few inches, sometimes he sort of hops, frog style, and his whole body slides forward a bit. Sometimes he tips to the side and ends up in a roll which takes him somewhere unless he gets distracted by looking at the ceiling.
Whatever I want to call it though, Ender is starting to be mobile. It might take him a while to get there, but he moves from point A to point B. Or at least to point A and 1/2. So far he rarely travels further than a few feet at a time, and by the time he makes it that far he’s probably ready for a nap, or at least a different point of view. Nonetheless, my baby is moving (or rather crawling) slowly into a significant new phase of independence.
I think the reason I’ve been so excited about crawling (despite many many suggestions from more experienced parents to enjoy the lack of mobility while I could) is because it is the first time a baby is able to inflict his will on the world. Up until this point, Ender has been subject to my choices and my whims. Obviously he still is, but before the only protest he could make was to cry or to hold on to the toy a bit tighter. Now he can run away. He can go places I’d rather he not.
Obviously it’s not just about baby vs. parent. Ender suddenly has the ability to make real choices.
I mean, sure, before, while he was playing under his baby gym, he could choose to bat at the owl, or yank on the blue bird, or kick the padded bar, but this is the illusion of choice we give to toddlers to appease them (would you like the blue socks or the red socks today?) not a real decision.
Soon, Ender will be able to survey the room and decide: do I want to go play with the ball, or do I want to hide under a blanket, or do I want to try to pull up on that chair? Or maybe shake the security gate or bang on the door?
We think of crawling as a big milestone, but we lump it in line with sitting up and rolling over, we see it as a halfway point to walking. It’s more than any of those, because it is such a significant shift in how the baby’s world operates.
I realize this will sound absurd, but it makes me think of the video game the Sims. Sims 2 to be specific. (And this isn’t even the first time I’ve talked about life mirroring the Sims.) In the Sims 2, when your sim has a baby, it functions as an object in the game for three days. You have to feed it and change it and bathe it, and you can play with it or sing to it, and you put it to bed. After three days, it morphs to a “toddler” a slightly larger crawling sim. Only then can you see the intent of the sim, the moods, the metered needs and wants and fears. Only then does the sim have selectable actions, and begin to learn skills. Only then does the sim become a playable character.
From the time Ender was born, he was learning of course. They do that. Up until now, he was not a participant in his learning, he was a passive receiver, truly the sponge we say babies are (a really CUTE sponge though). Now he is on the same continuum as a toddler or even a preschooler. Of course there is a world of difference between a crawling baby and a three year old, but it is only one of time and experience, not one of being.
Yesterday he was an object. Today he is a player.
Chyna
I wonder why they say “It’s for the best.”
Rather, I know why they say it. If you’re a vet, you probably see mostly sick animals, and when they’re really sick, death is a saving grace to the pain which is your vision of that animal’s normal. If someone’s cat was hit by a car, of course you wouldn’t say “It was for the best.” When your cat gets a sudden illness, or even a less sudden illness, it is one long car accident, culminating in death. When it’s over, and you’re stroking the fur of what used to be your cat, you are still reeling from coming home to find her wheezing and lethargic, barely able to move and not interested in tuna. When the vet says “It’s for the best,” you are still thinking of uneaten tuna.
“It’s for the best” is like a slap, but a slow slap, that you can see coming.
It brings up those secret worries about snowballing vet bills. Googling “hepatitis” and the dismay at complicated and expensive long term treatment on top of the twice a day insulin injections and hepatitis has a different special diet than diabetes and there will probably be more urine and vomit and blood and probably diarrhea to clean up now. In the end you conclude she’s worth it, but when the vet says, “It’s for the best,” that little part of you that was tallying up the logistics of animal illness slinks lower down inside you, hunched with guilt.
Chyna (pronounced Chee-nuh) was probably about 8.
Back when Matt was still living in his own apartment, I had a project using a little piece poster board. The rest of the poster board I folded in half, into a rough Teepee shape and wrote “cat house” on the side. To my delight, Chyna ran right over it and proceeded to camp out. She played in that paper Teepee for weeks as it lost it’s shape sliding wider and lower, and she had to crawl on her belly to get underneath.
A pair of freshly ironed pants once attacked her, and she was afraid of pants for the next several months.
She liked to attack dust, or towels or toes under doors.
If you made the mistake of scratching your leg beneath a blanket, Chyna was there to help you SCRATCH harder. Then when you jerked your hand out from under the blanket she perked up and said, “pet me?” with her eyes.
Her meow sounded surprisingly like the word “hello” and I’d always meant to record it, but never got around to it.
She liked to carry toys in her mouth and meow around them, and often meowed in the darker corners of the house, as though she was exploring. If we called out to her, she we glance at us, then continue her expedition. Hello? Hello?
A few years ago we adopted Tricky, and Chyna, though she was eventually happier for the company, started binge eating to keep the new cat from getting her food. She slowly gained weight and started slowing down, acting old. About a year and a half ago, we found out she had diabetes, and almost as soon as we started treatment, she started acting like a kitten again, and was more loving and social than ever. The new house was likewise good for her, with more spaces, more places to climb, more perches, and spaces to crouch beneath.
With some cats it seems like the only time they come near you is when they want to be fed or they want to be pet, but Chyna would follow you around to see what you were up to. If your lap was full, she would curl up by your leg, or if it was too hot, she’d curl up a few inches away, purring and clearly just happy to be near you. Her favorite place in the world was the bathroom, and the first time she tried to jump on Matt’s lap he was in the bathroom and he was, shall we say, unprepared for a lap cat.
When Ender came into the picture, Chyna was the first cat to sniff him (though she’s also been the smarter cat in terms of keeping out of reach as he starts to grab for furry things) and when he cried she would meow at us in evident concern that we weren’t taking care of him fast enough. One of our friends brought a toddler to the house, and when we weren’t watching closely enough, she picked up Chyna around the middle, and carried her into the room, arms and legs sticking awkwardly out in front. Chyna didn’t try to scratch or bite the little girl, she just looked at us and meowed pitifully as if to say, “can you do something about this please?” I really hoped we would get a few years of trying to stop Ender chasing her around before we would have to say goodbye.
Whenever we got home from a trip, or even a long day of errands, Chyna would be sitting at the french doors, looking out for us. As we got out of the car, she would stand up expectantly, and we could see her mouth opening to meow at us.
Hello?
Hello?
No Thank You Gymboree
Ender started in the Gymboree Play and Learn stage 2 at the beginning of December, when he turned 6 months old. He had just been starting to make crawling like attempts, and I thought maybe getting him at a place like Gymboree would help get him going.
His favorite place to experiment with movement is our bed. He has been wriggling and moving himself there for well over a month now, but when he gets on floors, carpet or hardwood, he tends to be a lot more cautious, which is probably pretty smart now that I think about it. Since Gymboree is just padded everywhere, I thought it might let him be more adventurous, without me having to drag him back from a bed edge every few minutes.
It didn’t work out quite as expected. First of all, Ender had almost no interest in trying anything at all at Gymboree. Maybe if I’d stuck around longer he would have gotten used to the newness and started to play more, but the bright colors seemed to bewilder him and something about the way the room was built made sounds echo unnervingly- it gave me a headache, and I suspect it is part of what kept Ender static. He DID love the colored wiffle balls, but you know, balls are easy to come by, and I’m not sure he loved them because of any particular quality of their own, or just because it was the only thing in the play area that was small enough for him to handle and shove in his mouth. By the end of the month, he was also pretty interested in the bubbles, which prompted me to buy some for him, since he’s never taken the slightest notice before.
It’s possible that Ender was just too young for something like Gymboree. Aside from thinking it might get him crawling a little sooner, I didn’t want or expect some miracle exercise routine. I don’t think it’s necessary or advisable to push that kind of thing on babies. Mainly, I think the purpose of baby activities such as Gymboree is to keep people like me sane, giving them something to do and a reason to get dressed and leave the house. I was disappointed all around though: Ender pretty much just sat there and watched everything until he got overwhelmed enough to cry (admittedly not often). And though he was the youngest baby in the class, the other babies didn’t seem much more engaged in the equipment or activities than he was. Left to their own devices, the babies played with the whiffle balls, and maybe occasionally grabbed the mini trampoline. Everything else was parent led, urging the babies to go down parallel slides together and watch each other to promote socialization (not kidding) or ride in the boat (the babies seemed pretty bored with it after the first 20 seconds) or roll a ball down the slope (they preferred to hang on to the balls actually, thank you very much). Not only is this overly parent-directed style pretty contrary to my ideas about parenting, it also made socialization a bit strained, because we were too busy trying to entertain babies who would have been content to chew on wiffle balls.
What it comes down to I think, is that I’m spoiled. When Ender was about 3 months old I discovered story time at the local library. Then I realized that there are seven different Cuyahoga County libraries within 20 minutes of my house, and they ALL have story time. I can go to story time every weekday- a story time geared towards 0-18 month olds. It’s short, about 15 minutes, which is about as long as the babies can go without getting restless, and it’s followed by an open play time with library baby toys. We do rhymes, songs, and usually one or two short picture books. And it’s FREE. During the free play after I can chat with other moms (and the occasional dad) while Ender gnaws on the library toy nearest him, and then when he decides he’s had enough, we can leave. If he’s cranky, or ready for a nap, or if something else comes up on any particular day, I can skip story time without feeling guilty, because 1) it’s (once again now) FREE and 2) I know I can try again the next day. Ender loves watching the other kids, (far more of which are crawling around at story time then Gymboree) and the only suggested “activity” is, you know, reading stories. I decided to give Gymboree a try in December, because the story time series took a break over December. It started back up today.
So Gymboree didn’t do much for us. I have to realize though that this is only because I already had something better.
*Gymboree image from flickr user sully213
Craft Night
Tonight was my first craft night.
While I was pregnant I came up with the idea of doing a girl’s craft night. I thought it would be a nice way to get me some grown up company and keep me sane.
Then of course Ender came and planning ANYTHING seemed pretty unlikely. As he’s gotten older though, he’s getting a bit easier, and more importantly, more predictable, so I started to think about it again a few months ago. I thought January, the new year, seemed like a good time to start up fresh.
I told everyone to come on the first Wednesday of every month. We planned on Matt being home and pretty much taking over baby-duty for the evening.
We did NOT really think about the fact that the first Wednesday in January was right in the middle of way too much travel. Planning an event, even a low key one, is sort of intimidating when you can’t think past planning out when you get to wash laundry between packing and unpacking the suitcase.
Craft night MEAGAN style is beyond low key though. I told everyone from the start, we will not be doing Martha Stewart type projects. Or at least, anyone is welcome to do Martha Stewart projects, but I will not be organizing them. I invited everyone to bring whatever they were working on, or if they weren’t working on anything, to have some tea or coffee.
I expected 5, but 2 canceled at the last minute and for 1, I think, I had the wrong email. Kim brought a whole craft store worth of craft supplies, and started a shell-chain necklace. Pam, a knitter, didn’t bring her knitting, but started a cute leather-bead bracelet that reminded me of a beading class I took half a lifetime ago.
I just worked on getting the last of the gunk off the glitter bottles, so now Ender can finally play with them.
It was a quiet evening of relaxed socializing, which is exactly what I wanted and needed, and I think the others had fun as well. And since Kim brought all the crafty stuff, there was zero clean-up beyond banishing the pizza box to the fridge- which is about all I’m up for in my current sleep deprived state. I’m looking forward to doing it next month, and maybe then I’ll even get to make something.
Naming Ender
Matt and I debated about giving Ender such a loaded nickname. Forget the fact that Ender Wiggin killed two children (in self defense) before he was 12, and forget that he unknowingly committed mass xenocide. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a summary of Ender’s Game should help.)
Ignoring all of the acts he was tricked or pushed into committing, there’s still the problem of (the character) Ender’s own experience: his childhood didn’t exist, and once “freed” from the training of killing buggers he spent the rest of his life trying to absolve himself of the guilt of that war. He is never at any kind of peace until he marries Novinha on Lusitania some… 3000(?) years later, and that is a half-peace, under shared guilt and the weight of disaster.
It’s not something anyone would wish on a child, and names are nothing if not wishes for our children. Look at the most common meanings of names: beautiful, lucky, joyous, strong.
Except the character of Ender is not just the sum of his actions and experiences. He’s the most compassionate bad-ass imaginable. Oh, and a genius besides. And everyone he comes in contact with can’t help but love him. These are far from bad things, even if they are the very traits that get him into Battle School, and more importantly, the traits that pushed him to the top of Battle School, and ultimately made him responsible for winning the Bugger war.
We played with other nicknames. When I talked to him while I was pregnant, I usually called him “Ollie.” It’s funny, it seemed automatic at the time, but now Ollie is a totally different being: Ollie was the fetus and I can’t imagine this baby being anyone but Ender. Of course he could decide he hates it when he gets older, but fortunately Olivander lends itself to all sorts of nicknames. These days I’ve given up on telling people Ender is “short for” Olivander, because generally it just confuses them.
Matt and I both loved the name Olivander, but we weren’t settled on it. I’d thought of the name Ender independently, but wanted to give our baby a name with some meaning aside from a literary character, and Ender, as far as I know, has no meaning beyond the literal “one who ends,” which is not the most auspicious of meanings for a baby. As a nickname though, it’s an entirely different matter.
We were listening to the audiobook of Ender’s Game, and all its sequels, on a series of long trips. Matt had read Ender’s Game before, but not recently enough to remember it. I’ve read it so often I have bits memorized (which isn’t actually unusual… that is true of many of my books). As we got to the end of one of the books, Matt said, “couldn’t we name him Ender?” He was half joking. I grinned at him and pointed out that if Ender could be a nickname for Andrew, surely it could be a nickname for Olivander. I think we were pretty much decided after that.
When you think about it, any interesting literary character probably didn’t have a wonderful time of it- otherwise they wouldn’t be interesting. Misery and conflict is what makes a story. If we have a wish for our children, it would be boredom, and if naming our children were granting wishes, we would never name them for literary characters. No one wants their children to have adventures.
Naming isn’t wishgranting though, it’s giving. And if we are giving Ender anything from the character Ender, I hope it’s a taste of future, of things that seem impossible, of everyday beauty and love. Maybe the knowledge that nothing is ever as simple as it seems, and a bit of healthy distrust for authority. Independence but not loneliness, responsibility but not guilt. And especially a sense of open possibility.
Mostly though, we named him Ender, because it’s awesome. We can only hope he thinks so too.
Bonus Gift
Matt’s had his color Nook for a while, and he likes it (It’s really just an Android Tablet) but it DOES give him eye strain. So he asked for a Kindle Touch for Christmas, and my parents gave him one.
We tried to keep it a secret, but the shape of the box is pretty obvious. At any rate, when I found out they were giving him a Kindle, I thought it would be cool to draw him a back for that as well as the nook. I was on a bit of a time crunch so I kept it pretty simple.
Click on image for larger version. Will actually look more like:
Since I wasn’t sure I’d finish one image, much less two, I also ordered him this ridiculous Guild poster from Think Geek. We’re trying to figure out where to hang it in the studio/office.
Clockwork Cthulhu
Matt asked me to do a drawing for the back of his color Nook, so I thought that would make a good Christmas gift. I didn’t tell him what I was drawing, mainly because I wasn’t entirely sure I’d have time to finish it in time for Christmas.
Click on image for larger version.
I’ve still got a bit of cleaning and playing to do before I’m calling it finished, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Of course the final will probably look more like this:
