Buddy, she passed the test
Here’s a quote from the CBC:
One problem with the evidence was a psychiatric test performed on Homolka, said Brunton. He says the physician incorrectly used the test and wrongly concluded that Homolka has a psychopathic personality.
Mr. Justice… the woman helped murderher own sister and two others in a very premeditated way, in some cases participating in their torture on videotape. She passed the test for psychopathic behaviour!!
Notes from a visit
[Backdated entries added after this one so far: Harry Potter]
Likely there will be a plethora of posts in the next 24-48 hrs as we all recover from this state visit from Carl’s dad.
I’d forgotten what it’s like to have a specifically untrusted person in our home, and 4 days - with no work or other regular breaks, although he did go out with people other than us twice - was a long time. The bolded “un” is Carl’s dad’s fault, but the territoriality is all us. It is tiring for me to run interference against the system in the name of hospitality, although both Lyr and JJ did some interfering as well. But Magdalynn gave several looks of death and nearly had an argument or three (see below for one). The system kids were whiny and consumed some leftover Hallowe’en chocolate, smuggling it into our bedroom so as not to share with someone they didn’t like. Etc. etc.
We are sometimes very odd, I must say, at least inside our collective head.
Carl’s dad (CD) is a bit of a bully. I don’t think he means to be, really, but he’s the classic kid with a chip on his shoulder grown up. Bullying is the default setting. Sample conversations, which pretty much summarize most conversations, were like this:
CD: Well I guess this house isn’t bad for what it is.
Me: … [there just is no response to that]
Carl: I like Tage Frid’s [woodworking] books. Some of those joints are just art.
CD: Oh well, Tage Frid’s all right but you know who I think really has the right of it…
Me: (ground beef in hand) How does a spaghetti with a ragu sauce sound?
CD: You know what makes a really good sauce? Italian sausage…
CD: I noticed you had a book of runes downstairs [He really did poke through our books, which are quite the eclectic mixture including a fair amount of multiple, gay & lesbian, psychological, and left-wing texts]. Do you read runes?
Me: No.
Lyria: But I do have a tarot [faery oracle] deck.
CD: Oh really? You know B. (CD’s live-in gf and former Other Woman) has a tarot deck and is really gifted with it, now I’m sure you like to mess around with yours, but she takes it very seriously…
Noah: (grunting on baby monitor after an almost 2 hr nap)
Me: Oh, time to get Noah.
CD: I don’t think he’s really awake.
Me: He’s definitely awake; those are his awake sounds.
CD: How do you know he really wants to be awake?
Magdalynn, rising on the defensive edge: That is how he lets us know.
CD: What would happen if you left him?
Magdalynn: He would get louder, and then start to cry.
CD: Don’t you think you should let him do that?
Magdalynn: Why?
CD: To see where his limits are.
Magdalynn: He is three months old. It is not very difficult to find his limits -
Here she took a breath, which let us all remove the about to be bitchy cult queen from the area. (Besides, Noah was indeed grunting.) We retrieved Noah, she went in the bathroom with him to hiss and spit more-or-less metaphorically, and then we retreated to our Rachmaninoff and rocking-chair laden nursery haven. However this was not the end of the parenting advice!
He just has to have a one-up on everything. Everything. And because he’s an extrovert you hear quite a lot about it in four days of relentless chat. That being said, he surprised me with a few of his observations and remarks this trip, when he was just talking and not one-upping me or someone else, and they were insightful and pleasant. He also read some, which I didn’t expect - in previous visits he hasn’t been able to entertain himself at all. So it wasn’t all awful.
And although he insisted on his gay-hating, Harper-conservative political commentary, when I continually pushed mildly back or teased him a bit about promoting stereotypes of Albertan rednecks, he actually took it in relative good humour (or at least matched my determined good humour). In fact I was going to give him a pass and not even bitch about him here for posterity until this morning.
So here is the morning.
I was up quite a lot last night dealing with nursing stuff because I developed a clogged milk duct yesterday (apparently stress, and rushing feedings, can do that, both of which were going on a bit this week until I learned to shut the nursery door and turn Rachmaninoff up so as not to hear CD ask if I was finished nursing yet over and over). So this morning it did grate on my nerves a little that CD was coughing outside the nursery door - you know, the ‘yoo hoo’ cough - because there was no one around yet to make him coffee. To be fair he did not know Carl ended up working 11 pm - 4 am on a problem at work, but it still bugged me.
(The coffee pot is on the counter, and when guests are here I leave the coffee and filters beside it. You know, in case someone is up at 7:30 am on Sunday and wants coffee and I’m not up yet. I also invited him to help himself to anything in the fridge or cupboards but I knew he was unlikely to do that.)
Anyways then it grated on my nerves a little more that after I juggled baby and sore boob to make the coffee, Carl, who was sinking deeper and deeper into the passive-aggressive behaviour that it takes for him to survive his family, made himself breakfast without offering any to his father (or me).
But I still offered to make french toast after Noah was settled because, you know, hospitality is that you make a nice breakfast for people right? And CD said no, he’d rather have what Carl was having because he could have it now (toasted ciabatta bun). So, since Noah was fussy, I said to Carl directly “can you help your dad with his toast.” (note the lack of question mark!) and he did. So then I was joshing Carl about getting himself breakfast & not us. It’s hard to get across in text but it really was with an undercurrent of good, if dark, humour, because Carl knew he’d been a little ridiculous and I knew I was being a little ridiculous to be harping on it and we were both by now beaten down to being about 15 yrs old and united against the common enemy.
But CD said, seriously and helpfully “I’m sure Carl would be willing to eat some more toast.”
Because he thought I, a woman, was grumbling that I did not get to make my husband’s toast!
I’m sorry, but on the feminist scale that gives me the latitude to bitch on the Internet. :)
And now we have our life and home back, although we now have what I think is a pretty-much-unclogged but still-worrisome milk duct and a milk blister which was hurting like fuck-all nursing but seems to be improving a bit, and because there actually is a serious risk of mastitis, now we not only get to, but must, spend the next couple of days taking it easy and applying heat to the boob before frequent nursing and basically nest in our nest.
Yay nest.
I probably will backdate entries but list them here. Gradually. I do have a date with some bedrest. :)
A very quick
Happy Thanksgiving to you Yanks who celebrate it on the wrong day. :)
Harry Potter! (plot spoilers after the dashed line)
Yes, we actually made it to a Movie for Mommies. And it was glorious. Here’s how it happened.
I believe the system mentioned 657453 times that Goblet of Fire (henceforth GoF) was playing on Wednesday at 1 pm at Yonge & Eglinton. And that it would be so cool to go. But Carl had a meeting up at his work that day and so needed the car and it did not seem likely that we would be going. Until he showed up just in time for us to bundle Noah into his car seat and take off.
In the elevator we met several other mommies with babies and even a dad, and outside the theatre there were several other dads also, and parents of both genders blowing the afternoon off as Carl was, talking into their cell phones: “I’m just going into a meeting but I’ll call you back at 4….” This reminds me of how sexist the “Movies for Mommies” name is.
But with 5 change stations set up outside the theatre and a stroller parking area and a friendly attitude towards crying babies, how can I really be grumpy with the organizers? I felt the love. I was in love with the ushers, and in love with all the mommies and babies that filled - and I do mean relatively filled; there were at least 50 babies there - the theatre, all jonesing for Harry-Potter-with-option-to-breastfeed. I was just in love. I think it was the giddiness of getting to go to some arts-related event. Or it may just have been the Harry Potter Effect. But whatever it was, I was high the whole time and for some hours afterwards. Right until Carl left to get his dad from the train station, I’d say.
The sound was not as low as I would have liked, but it was lower than usual. When the lights went out Noah became fascinated and after a while I realized he hasn’t been in the utter dark much - we keep a nightlight on in our bedroom so I can watch him breathe any time, and we nurse with a small lamp on too. He would watch my face and breath faster when it was dark and then when the screen lit up my face he would suddenly beam at me, the way he does when I pick him up after a nap. I guess to him I was disappearing and appearing. He adjusted pretty fast - by the end of the previews. Of course there were a huge number of previews!
Getting mouth to tit in the dark was interesting too.
Noah was a trooper: he did fuss a little bit, mostly when dragons were screeching. For some reason, probably some mamalian backbrain that’s concerned about predators, most of the babies cried when the dragons were screeching. I also stood at the side and rocked him back and forth a bit after nursing, and he fell asleep. That plus one diaper change and that was all. He seemed to enjoy being held and to see some of the screen, although I kept turning him back towards me because it seems a bit brutal for a young baby, all that flashing and motion and lights.
We enjoyed the movie a lot. I do think this is probably the best adaptation although I liked the romantic flourishes of Alfonso Cuarón’s Azkaban quite a lot.
But this material was denser and there really was a right way to cut the book and a wrong way, and I think this nailed the right way since one had to do it. Mike Newell’s grey grey grey palette initially made me feel a bit grumpy but after about 20 minutes - and the flourishes of the camp and so on - it really did start to feel like, well, England. (Based on the whole 4 weeks total I have spent there at least, but one of those weeks was in March!) I think Newell understood what the story really was - the end of childhood - but managed not to beat everyone over the head with it.
But it was the actors who really floored me. There were almost no sour notes and Emma Watson in particular just, I thought, nailed it. I was amazed that I could even handle the overdone simpering on the part of the Beauxbatons witches because they somehow made it believable, at least after their initial entrance.
Plot spoiler ahead, although I do hope you’ve read it.
———————————————-
It was also a unique way to watch this particular HP film. I think Newell handled Cedric’s death, and Harry’s return to the stadium, and Cedric’s father’s reaction, brilliantly and in an emotionally true way. And coming from me that says quite a lot. It would have been moving badly done; well done it was very moving; but what made it a completely overwhelming moment was to be watching it with an audience of almost all new parents. The shock and fear and darkness of it seemed to spill out from the screen and make everyone hold their babies a little closer.
I am really glad to have had that experience.
Busy bees & tummy time
Life has made us a little busy this week but I have posts in draft coming soon to this blog for you! Actually for us, but to share with you all.
Thank you Rain & Polly - I blushed.
And so as to provide some actual content here’s the latest on Noah: he is starting to like tummy time, as long as it doesn’t exceed 10 minutes. He can hold his head up at 90 degrees and he’s starting to work on moving forward, although he has no idea what to do with his arms and his feet slip out from any kind of grip on the playmat. So mostly it’s longing and grunting bobbing in a forwards direction, even with my hand behind his fett. He can lift his hip up to start a roll but those darn! arms! foil him often.
Sitting, weekends
I convinced Carl to take a shot of us, but he had his revenge by capturing us both in goofy expressions and cutting off the top of my funky winter hat I bought yesterday in honor of the first fluffy snow of the season. It was just barely an inch or two but boy, that seemed abrupt, somehow.
Noah went back to sleep at 7 am Saturday, but I didn’t in order to do some writing. I am seeing the dream of a complete manuscript by Dec 8 vanish into the reality that making Noah laugh is more compelling right now and that my brain is hard to start and I sort of want to cry, and yet I’m still plugging away because who cares about Dec 8 as long as I finish it? (Although I do care.) So I’m trying a sleep experiment: a little less sleep, but a more regular writing time (morning). Of course this morning Noah had no interest in going back down at 6:45 am, so there that went! We’ll see how we do next week, at least during the first half.
But next week we also have the houseguest from - somewhere purgatorial, at least: my father-in-law. He is a very well intentioned man I’m sure, but the last time he came - when we wined and dined him in a haze of Upper Canadian excess, taking him to Stratford and dinner at 360 degrees and all that - he spent the one or was it two nights at our place pointing out all the home reno projects we had yet to do in a way that didn’t make one want to share in the joy of crafstmanship yet to come, you know?
And this time he’s here without companion, for 4 entire days. Likely I’m underestimating him. But I still am braced for a difficult time. And we spent a fair amount on groceries to show off.
If I’m going to have an alcoholic drink while nursing, it’ll be this week - after 9, when Noah does his 5-hour thing.
It is nice to have the house running reasonably smoothly so that he can just arrive - yay FlyLady, or at least our version of the same. Oh I’m sure that by Tuesday I’ll come up with some part of the house to worry at, but basically everything’s tidy & clean, except Carl’s spaces and I’m just not going into that; it’s his decision to keep his office and workshop like that and at least in this house they’re not in my bedroom.
~~
Lately we’ve been wrestling with some multiple stuff. Lyria’s still never recovered from losing Emily - I mean none of us has, but Lyria lost something really fundamental to her that has made her thin and vulnerable and disconnected. I really thought that by now, three months into Noah’s life, she would have reconnected better. She is glad for Noah and does parent - she’s posted too - but it’s still not anywhere close to the way it was when our hope-filled fae earthy woman was around as herself. We’d like that to change, I think.
2:30 am
I should backdate this to last night but I was only thinking it then; this is the writing of it. Ah it’s nice when Noah naps long enough to get the daily chores done and mess about in my blog. (Writing? Shhh. Another post.)
Dearest boy,
Your night time schedule has been going nicely set for over two weeks now and I’m getting cocky. The evening is all over the place, but sometime between 8:30 and 9:30 pm you have a final and lengthy nurse and then you pass out into pretty deep sleep, sometimes with some singing and walking or rocking first. Then you and I both go to bed, unless I’m being stupid.
And sometime around 2:30 you wake up hungry and wet. I have tried to follow the parenting book suggestions that we not change you (After All, they say, when you sleep through longer we won’t wake you up to change you), but that produced a rash once. So it goes like this.
I wake up, usually now a few minutes before you or just as you’re grunting. I admit that I wait to see what happens because, after all, one day you may decide to sleep right through. But you keep going and stretch and then your eyes open and you give a louder grunt. I get out of bed and slip on my glasses and then quite often you give me a big smile. When I pick you up, you curl all up against me like newborn, a pose you rarely strike any more during the day, and I usually cuddle you and walk slowly over to the nursery, just feeling you.
The love for you pierces during that short trip down the hallway.
Then, because of the rash, I spread out a receiving blanket on your change table and set you down. Even with the fleece you hate it and sometimes you cry; more often you just make your frowsy faces and grunt. I hate disturbing you that way, but I hate the rash more. I unsnap one of your several sleepers and try to slip the diaper out gently, although I’m often uncoordinated at it. And I warm up the wipe in my hand and clean your baby skin and then do my best with the fresh diaper, although sometimes it seems awfully complicated at that time. By then you’re usually rooting fairly desperately and if I put my hand by your face you curl into it.
Unlike other times of the day you rarely look right at me for this change. So I pick you up quietly and sit in the rocker and get the boppy, so that you can curl up around me, and settle you onto the breast. You’re so good at latching on now that I just direct. And then you settle in for a no-fuss nurse.
About half the nights you fall asleep on the breast and I roll you gently over into the crook of my elbow and wipe your face and nominally burp you and then I look at you and look and look. Someday you will have left your baby face behind, but I will have all these faces burned into my synapses I think; I can remember you the first time we did this and last night almost the same.
The other half of the nights you wake up more. You smile at me while still on the boob and I know I’m supposed to ignore you but I smile back and whisper to you. You then usually finish off and look all around the nursery, especially if I burp you. And then you tend to go into paroxyms of glee: you smile and beam and wriggle. I think I smile a goofy lovestruck smile back and between the two of us, it’s a complete love-in, eyes to eyes, skin to skin.
Unlike the day you don’t get fussy about being held prone like a little baby or for lack of entertainment. As we rock you usually nestle closer, and sometimes smack your lips to go back for more milk. One way or another you drop off to sleep again.
Then when I know you’re really in the deep sleep I walk quietly back and put you down and usually go the bathroom and then I check that you’re breathing and slip back into the bed and snuggle in. And then, because I’m me, I stick my hand out and feel you breathe a little more before I go back to sleep.
Sometime between 5:45 and 6:30 we do it all again, but you are wrigglier and louder and sometimes you don’t go back down. And I tend to feel less reverent - either my brain is lurching ahead to the day, or has the brakes on back in my dream-worlds. We are just as together, but the world around us is a bit bigger by then.
No, it’s 2:30 that’s all ours, Noah-B. And although a little more sleep is always appreciated, I think when you do give up this feed, I’ll miss it quite a lot.
Was I complaining?
I had people over for coffee yesterday; spent an hour on the phone with an old friend (yay! Must do this more!); dates online. Today we went to the doctor (Noah’s tracking fine for weight and length, right on the 50th percentile for both), hung out with my mum & went shopping, and are going out tonight to babysit, Noah in tow.
Yeesh.
Now I need to conquer downtown!
Java quiz
When people are coming over for coffee and you fail to put the pot into the maker right and it overflows and you get burned coffee smell do you:
a) leave the smell and pretend it’s gourmet
b) keep everyone on the porch in 3 degree weather (that’s Celsius)
c) light scented candles to at least look like you made the effort to cover it up
d) just be glad it’s not baby poo
I leave my answer to the imagination. Okay, it was e) open a window, light one candle, and come write a blog entry. Whee.
Toy buying = love
Noah is in love with the bouncy chair. The toys that dangle on its bar are just the right distance for looking and reaching, and when he kicks, things move and jingle. Not bad for a freecycle find. Right now he’s next to me telling them some baby story, lots of coohs and gahs and ahs. [Or was, when I started.Since then he's had a feed, slept on my lap for 20 min, had tummy time, had dance time, had another feed, and gone down for what should be a longer nap.] He seems to need this kind of time right now, not in my arms and interacting with the physical universe on his own time. At least until he gets tired out or bored.
So my days involve holding, cuddling, dancing, walking, feeding - and quite a bit of moving Noah from playpen to playmat to bouncy chair to swing to crib. I feel a strange sadness because - he has lots of fun there, not in my arms. And yet, that’s what should be happening. For 15 min at a time anyway. :) It’s made him a lot easier to entertain in his carseat too, and that’s a good, especially if we are going to breach the coffee shop barrier this weekend.
(By the way, I did read the coffee shop article, after reading this response with which I mostly agree, especially the idea that kids in coffee shops are not news.
Here’s my take: I wouldn’t stay in a coffee shop with a screaming baby, or an obnoxious toddler. I would take them out. However I would like to raise a child who knows how to behave in all kinds of places, and that involves taking them there.
This may mean that now and then we experience a gap between “the planning (toys, etc.) we put into taking our kid somewhere which failed” and “the moment at which we knew we had to leave.” But it will hopefully be a short gap. That gap is the price people pay for me to raise my kids so they become decent human beings, citizens, and yes, workers and consumers of the future, who will be paying taxes for their old age income to come out of.
Deal with it. After all, people on their cell phones can be just as obnoxious.
My parents didn’t have a lot of money but when they did have a little extra they did take my sister and I places - restaurants, the symphony and ballet at really very young ages (carefully selected, i.e. Nutcracker), museums and galleries, and now and then their workplaces. We were generally well behaved because we learned if we weren’t, we had to sit in the car instead and that was boring. This is one of the things I think my parents did really right.
And yes, it’s still intimidating me to think of starting to actually -do- this because of course I don’t want to upset other people and be embarassed and, god forbid, have a blanket slip off my tit at the wrong moment. :))
Back from that tangent: the emergence of reaching and laughing has spawned a strange consumeristic urge in me that goes like: must get the right toys!
So far I have resisted and improvised with what we have (& have been given/handed down), but I suspect a trip to Crayons or some equally developmental-toy-laden store is in my future. (This is because of the absence of wooden spools from my life, I’m sure. Otherwise I would string up a bunch.) Noah’s favourites so far are some dangly soft animals that jingle and crinkle - he can actually grab and hold the little ears & tails. (They’re Lamaze, handed down from E.) He also likes the teething links to look at, and my finger, kleenex, and any fabric to grab. I’m finding a lot of toys are just too big for him right now - he’s nowhere near coordinating two hands.
Have I mentioned my loathing of toys where the baby hits something and electronic music &/or lights go off? I really am a fan of *real* music for babys and toys that react, but not those kinds. One of the few toys we have that I actually bought is the vintage Fisher Price crib gym with the spinning bits and the bell precisely because it wasn’t the Ocean Wonders flashy thingamabob (plus it was at Value Village for $4-something). I am really hoping to strike a balance between a good assortment of high quality toys and enough mental space for Noah to use them in his own way. Like… blocks. Puzzles. Drawing stuff. Cars and dolls. Playhouses. Capes and funny hats. You know the kind of thing.
But at this stage I am kind of at a loss and I do find myself being drawn to brands by name alone like… Manhattan Toys, whose imagination stuff I adore. Which is kind of sad. Maybe I’m talking myself out of this shopping trip after all.
I would just like for him to have the best in life, without drowning in crap or excess.
Carl said the other day that he’s starting to believe Noah will be with us for a long time. I knew what he meant: we sort of call it moving beyond the Emily effect. My version lately has been to start to believe that he might be healthy. Really I have been waiting to hear that his brain is all liquid or he has no kidneys or something like that. But we have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow and I’m thinking it might just be a check up. That’s kind of new.
It might be safe to buy toys. Of course that doesn’t mean I have to. But I may go through that phase anyway.