Scary

I'm a little afraid of cooking right now. Wednesday I was preparing to make one of those boxed potato things with the butter and the cheese packet, just add milk and boiling water. But when I added the boiling water? My Pyrex baking disk exploded. Literally. I was shellshocked. I've poured boiling water into a Pyrex measuring cup. I've poured boiling water into a Pyrex mixing bowl. I swear I've poured boiling water into that particular Pyrex baking dish before. And I know it hasn't exploded before. So. Mr. b was, of course, in the middle of putting together our new TV stand (that matches our new leather furniture) on the kitchen floor. Thankfully Kirk was in his highchair. We were sent away so that Mr. b could finish the project and clean up.

I did a bit of online research to find out if that's a common Pyrex reaction. I found one mention in an Amazon product comment and that's it. Most of the pages dealing with Pyrex and boiling water were instead about heating your glass dildo. Interesting.

So I've been a bit gun shy about cooking. Starting small. Last night's mac n cheese and kielbasa was without incident. Kirk ate it up yum. You can't give him meat first thing if you want him to eat anything else. He was happy with his cheesy noodles and peas until he saw the pieces of sausage that Daddy was cutting up for him. Then that's all he wanted. My sister was complaining of the very same behavior today. He's like his father; meat is dessert.

But at least I'm feeling safe alone in the house again. Two weekends ago I kept hearing unidentifiable noises when I'd be trying to fall back to sleep after giving Kirk a bottle in the middle of the night. Floor boards creaking, rattles, that kind of thing. Not the normal noises my house makes. And then the house on the corner got busted for drugs. Not surprising in the least. But the troubling part is that they had a guy staying with them. An unregistered level 3 sex offender. Lovely. So my brain went *there* and I immediately associated the sounds with rapists. Not condusive for sleeping at night. Especially when Mr. b was scheduled to be gone all last weekend, gigging and recording.

So now we have thick dowels in all the sliding windows. Yeah, it's not going to prevent, but it'll deter. And I've got a cordless phone on my bedside table. Previously, I felt cut off from the phone in the kitchen. I know if something did happen I'd probably go into mother bear mode and the fangs and claws would come out. I'm not a scaredy cat by nature. But I felt comfortable by myself last night when Mr. b slept at the cafe after his gig. So I guess that's all that really matters.

Problematic

There's a new factor in the ongoing trial of getting Kirk to go to bed. He stands up in his crib when he's crying. Which is both heartbreakingly adorable and annoying. Because now there's really no way he's going to calm down and "cry himself to sleep". I need to work on being a hardass. Last night I would let him cry for 5 minutes, hold him for 5 minutes, let him cry for 5 minutes. He eventually fell asleep in my arms about 10:30pm. But he really doesn't know how to fall asleep by himself. I just imagine this is going to be a bigger problem as he gets older and bigger and not in a crib anymore.

He's already pretty much too big for me to burp on my shoulder after a bottle. But I keep doing it anyway out of habit.

And he was sick of his walker to we gave that to my brother this weekend along with Kirk's exer-saucer. Oh and his unused boxes of "Gerber's cereal for baby". Maybe as long as two months ago Kirk stopped eating cereal. Any kind be it rice or oatmeal or mixed grain or whatever. Even when I made it with juice. He refused. So now he eats a handful of Cheerios for breakfast or maybe half a banana or something. Yeah, he likes real bananas. I don't get it. He's weird.

Boring Fang

I have to read White Fang for book club this Saturday. And I can't get through it. I just know that I've read it before, but I can't really remember the plot or action. So as I'm rereading, I keep instead remembering how I didn't really care for it. (Which is much different than the sense of deja vu I got when rereading Robinson Crusoe, not having remembered reading it in the first place.) I don't like the dialect that the humans are using. Jack London, you are no Mark Twain. And just because Data told you to go to Alaska, and Sam Clemens told you to write what you know, doesn't mean I have to like it. I guess I'll have to skim it so I can at least keep up with the conversation. Hopefully I'll be able to pay attention while skimming. I skimmed The Invisible Man for a book club gathering earlier this year because I ran out of time to reread it in its entirety. But I kept actually reading passages because I honestly liked that book! It's too bad though. I really enjoyed London's South Sea Tales. Maybe because I just prefer that subject matter? I really am a sucker for seafaring adventure and shipwrecks in any form or sub-genre.

Puzzling

Now that Kirk is big enough, I'm noticing that most of his shorts and pants have real, functioning pockets and real, functioning, zipper fly and snap or button. Why? He's a baby. He doesn't need a place for his wallet. Or even the leftover french fries from McDonalds that Mr. b apparently always had with him as a little kid. He's a baby. He wears a diaper. The actual usage of the fly is not necessary. I mean, it's all cute as hell! But I don't get it.

Speaking of clothes, I find myself missing some of my 'ternity wear. Not missing being pregnant! Just certain of the shirts and one skirt in particular I really quite liked. And I'm a little sad that they're no longer part of my wardrobe.

Walk the plank

Kirk’s upper left tooth is cutting through. We noticed the gum skin looking all jagged yesterday so hopefully it’ll hurry up and give the poor boy a break. Although now he’s going to look totally goofy since the right bottom tooth still hasn’t come in and the upper right is next.

We’ve come to the time of bathing-when-necessary. The instruction manuals all said babies don’t need more than one or two a week during their first year of life. Well, Kirk gets dirty now and twice a week just doesn’t cut it anymore. We’ve tried to switch off the Tuesday & Saturday schedule. I proposed Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday and Mr. b was more into Sunday-Wednesday-Friday. But it doesn’t matter because the boy was filthy on Saturday after crawling around in our friend’s backyard all afternoon. And I swear his knees are permanently dirty now.

It was so much fun watching Kirk playing on Saturday though. Our friend’s son turned 2 and there were lots of other kids just a bit older than Kirk that were there. Hilariously, all the boys kept congregating around the Playskool car with Flintstone’s style open floor. I guess they were talkin’ shop. We need to get Kirk a car!

Kirk wasn’t a bully to the other kids this time. Must be because they were all older than him (except for the not-quite-3-month-old, who mostly just laid on his blanket). And they were all walkers! Even the girl that was only 2 and a half months older. I keep wondering if that’s going to spur Kirk on. He noticeably improved his crawling abilities after my birthday party when the other babies had mastered that mobility technique. And now Kirk is constantly standing. He really isn’t happy just sitting and playing; he wants to be upright.

And he figured out how to open drawers.

Boys Will Be Boys

I'm finding the whole nature versus nurture thing fascinating anew as it unfolds before my very eyes. Kirk is such a boy. It's truly astounding. I mean, he's still got mainly unisex toys. But he gravitates towards the things with wheels/tires and that make lots of noise. His favorite way to play with his toys is to bang items together as loudly as possible. He frickin' loves rolling a ball on the ground. Oh and he is really into girls. Already. And I should say "women" because he adores college girls. He will check out our waitress anywhere we go to the point of ignoring his food. Particularly if she's blonde. Although I suspect that last detail is partly due to the fact that all his aunties are blondes.

Kirk has this steering wheel/dashboard toy that lights up and makes lots of noise. The horn beeps, the radio has different "stations", there's a noise for the shifter and for the turn signal. But it also has a little man in a race car on the top that shakes rapidly after a certain amount of activity. And it terrifies Kirk. Hilariously! But Mr. b, being a good Daddy, "fixed" it. He unscrewed the back and used his bomb disarming skillz to cut the wire to the shaking mechanism. So now it's totally Kirk's favorite toy. It didn't take him long to realize that the scary man on top was rendered immobile.

I think walking is just around the corner. Kirk is starting to free-stand balance for microseconds. He can pull himself up on literally anything. And he no longer likes his walker, despite his awesome wheelie abilities; it's too encumbering. He prefers his push-behind thing.

Dedicated Follower of Fashion

I don’t seem to be taking as many outfit-specific photos of Kirk anymore. I’m not sure what the change is. Maybe it’s because he gets stuff dirty sooner? Or because he’s not growing quite as fast so I see him in things for longer periods of time? Or since most of the gift items are done, the hand-me-downs aren’t that exciting? Whatever the reason, the last pic for fashion purposes was to showcase his Vans, given by Diablo and Jon. I even took a close up!



An anonymous commenter asked several weeks ago where we got all Kirk’s groovy duds. If said kind person is still reading, I can certainly answer that. First of all, there’s a lot of DIY gifts. The Enterprise sweater was knitted by a fellow TWoPper. An employee of Mr. b’s added cool iron-ons, like the Ghostbusters and Yoda, to plain white onesies. Another friend ironed on letters spelling out "Captain" and "Hobbit". Then there’s the standard gift store for rockin' babies, Hot Topic. But I highly suggest not paying for those rad designs yourself as they get spendy. For regular clothes I make a habit of checking Target’s clearance racks each and every time I set foot in the store. Just last night I picked up a plain green t-shirt for under 3 bucks. And don’t forget the internets! There are tons of kick-ass sites these days. I got the For Sale by Owner for Kirk (that’s a big hit). A friend got his son the Nixon shirt available here. I recently met a lady brazen enough to have gotten one of these for a friend. So, I hope that helps you in your quest to outfit your impending baby in cool threads. Congratulations and good luck!

"Kuch dar nahin hai"

I just finished reading The Peshawar Lancers, by S.M. Stirling. I really, really liked it. I mean, it wasn't quite as good as the very best Alt History I've ever read (The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson) and it wasn't quite as awesome as my very favorite Alt History of ever (Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle). But those are pretty lofty marks to reach and Peshawar came damn close on both accounts. I seriously loved it. The premise is that in the 1870s, during PM Disraeli's term in office, there was a series of comet/asteroid strikes in the northern hemisphere, causing tsunamis and nuclear winters. And all the collateral damage of rioting and chaos and starvation and cannibalism and destruction that would go along with such an event. Disraeli was foresighted enough to evacuate a large percentage of the British populace, most to India, some to South Africa and Australia. Queen Victoria went to India and so the captial of the British Empire became Delhi. The book then takes place in the early 21st century. Clearly there was a massively different political structure at play in the world, as well as science and technology. But that's the fun of alternate histories. You get to really see how things would come to be with just a small change here or there. And the plot centered around palace intrigue and political conspiracies, so it was just an all around great adventure. Taking place in India, with lots of Hindi tossed in, so of course I adored that.

I came to realize during the course of the book that Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel was kind of like the perfect reference material for writers of alt histories. Christie had loaned me that a couple of years ago and I never dreamed that it would come up so much. Heck, I overheard a couple of guys at work discussing it this week. But Diamond's precise research into just how much impact science and technology has on not just the country of origin is key to planning your future in an alternate timeline. It has to be believable. It has to be real. It has to be logical. You have to learn just as much as you would reading a proper [well-researched] historical novel. And I really appreciate that thoroughness when reading. Otherwise it's just a fantasy novel. Not that I don't love those, too! Especially the ones that come with maps. And appendices.

Some Firsts

For the very first time, Mr. b and I were home alone, without the boy, on Friday afternoon. My sister brought him up to our parent’s house earlier on Friday and we met them all up there for the rehearsal for her wedding on Saturday. It was both weird and familiar to be in the house without him. It was nice to have spontaneous sex again, but it was definitely a bit odd to see all his stuff and not have him crawling about.

Kirk had his first shared bath while at my parent’s house that night. My brother and his son were there and we decided that it would be fun to have the cousins bathe together. Kirk is very active in the bath these days, splashing and kicking and trying to climb out, so it was a pretty funny contrast with 5-months-younger Lukas just calmly sitting there.


Kirk finally cut his first tooth, lower front left, sometime on Monday. My MIL had said that it would look like a bit of cottage cheese was stuck on his gum and sure enough, that’s totally what it looked like. A bit smaller of a bit than what I was expecting but still. It’s really hard to get Kirk to open his mouth in such a way that it can be seen. So far no sign of its mate.

Tuesday night Kirk had his very first sleep over. My parents are staying at my sister’s apartment with A1 and A2 while she’s on her honeymoon so daycare is over there like normal. Mr. b had a big 666 gig and so we just left Kirk there for the night. Well, we stopped over after work and had dinner with everyone and fretted a bit about leaving Kirk and wondered how he would ever survive with “only” his Nana and Papa for a night, but we left him there. Ultimately, it was nice to come home exhausted after dancing and not have to tip toe, and to be able to sleep in a couple of hours in the morning. But I sure missed my little man.

Sleepless

Kirk won't go to bed! It's been a week now I guess. He just won't go to bed. He crabs and complains and even if he's showing all signs of tiredness, he will not go to bed. If we put him down, he'll scream and cry or sit up and play but not sleep. I have to hold him and rock him to sleep every night now. Mr. b took me out for my Golden Birthday on Wednesday (dinner and a movie--and pearls!) and Kirk was totally still up when we got home. As we knew he would be. I just don't know how he's going to be tonight up at Nana and Papa's house and dealing with the chaos of Auntie's wedding tomorrow and everything.