Fatherhood the sequel

Isn't this sweet? Frank gives his first bottle to Daisy.

Basil plants

I finished putting the rest of the 2 dozen or so plants RC gave me into the ground today. I hope they thrive. I will update you with pictures when I get back from my trip to Alaska next week.

Just produce them and they will grow

I've been feeling a lot of guilt about how I should be spending more time at home or mother differently. And that maybe I should have waited for more spacing between my children so that I can give better individual attention to each. Today, someone at work provided some words of comfort and hopefully wisdom to me. She has teenage kids and said that if you take a group of kids, look at them, interview them, look at their grades/activities, it's not like you can separate them into two distinct groups: Oh-those-kids-moms-worked-full-time-jobs and these-kids-came-from-households-with-stay-at-home-moms.

It's a relief to know that they'll all thrive and that it's hard to screw up big time. A lot of it seems hard-wired and beyond your control?

I have a great wife!

I can not believe how sweet my friend RC is...after reading my blog which lamented how I won't have any Thai basil in the garden, she took the bull by the horns and bought me 16 lively plants! Contrast this to my husband, who ordered the seeds at least a month too late from a sketchy purveyor in eBay (he only paid $1 but the seeds never arrived). The plants are so nice, I'm sure she got them by doing that normal people do - going into a nice store and getting some help from knowledgeable sales people which ended with the reward of going home with some nice looking plants. If I were to get a divorce from my friend, she's going to have to pay a lot in alimony. I'm going to argue to the judge that she got me accustomed to a certain style of living. I'm sure she'll retort that my husband's lifestyle should be the marker but I'll argue that he just was an affair based on looks while she was the person I depended on for plants, food, conversation, etc.!

Effective diet?

Here we are, catching her in the act at various stages. Dazee pretty much stuffs as much food as she can in her mouth. She stops when her gag reflex kicks in and then she throws up. Yesterday, I pulled out a grape tomato, and two large strawberries. It was like seeing a magic trick (the one where he pulls out a very long string of hankerchiefs from something unlikely, like a parrot's throat). As I pulled each morsel out of her mouth, I was in complete amazement over how she got that much volume of food inside her mouth.

4 girls!

It was like running a high quality day care today; we had 4 children in our backyard. High quality because the ratio of adult to children was 1 to 1. Although some of us weren't paying that much attention...

Blondes have more fun

I like to think my 2nd daughter is blond. Her hair is lighter than everyone else in the family. But when we put her next to an Aryan baby, it's pretty clear, she's a brunette, and a chunky one to boot.

Give me some of what they're smokin'

A friend of Josh's from college, (names have been changed to protect their privacy), Smoke, his wife and one year old daughter came to stay one night with us. It was a lot of fun having them and for me, it was interesting to see how another couple behaves towards each other and towards their child. Mostly it made me feel like J and I are so type A. They are so relax-o. Smoke even fell asleep on the living room floor, when he woke, I offered some fruit medley, he declined ever so contentedly, "No thanks, I don't think I could be happier than I am right now." But we only had a half hour to get them out the door to the airport! Josh and I started shitting bricks for them. We tried to rush them, but Smoke gave me a nice talk at a very leisurely pace on how he's missed flights before and concluded that it's really OK to miss them. One of the most egregious examples he gave was missing a flight to a work retreat. He had a to buy another ticket on the spot on his own dime! To which Josh offered his iron-clad philosophy, "We don't miss flights in this family. That's not an option." I felt a little nostalgic for my old life, where I didn't stress about missing flights. I guess I could go either way, Type Anal or zzz. Being with J has made me a little more uptight about flights.

Mike Tyson bee

Whenever there's a bee nearby, I always thought Josh went nuts. He would go into this panicky, fearful, over-protective mode - "Stay away!" he would bark, while commanding me to run as fast as possible. If I didn't go berserk like him and make a show of flight-or-fight, he would take matters into his own hands and try to push or throw me away from the bee. In fact, I always thought he was over-reacting and treated his reaction as Tarzan-like chest thumping but in a funny way because a big man was afraid of a little bee.
Well I got my come-uppance last week when I got stung by a bee. It's been ridiculously painful. Because it's only the second bee sting in my lifetime, I didn't really have a good idea of how much it can hurt.
Then I recalled that in Thai, a bee sting is called a bee punch. That's a much more accurate statemtent of what happened to me. I got punched by a bee.

Mutiny

Why are companies such flexible job haters? Who came up with this 9-5 (or longer), five days a week bullshit? Many people I know would love to have a flexible job - I know I would love it and be just as productive if not more, if I could get Wednesdays off or work from home 2 days a week or work part time and job-share with someone.

Literally bringing home the bacon

Adding to my idea of mandating food scrap recycling, I'm ready to impose that everyone with a suitable plot of land grow something edible or raise sheep, pigs, chickens or cows. Wouldn't it be great if we could exchange produce/meat/livestock products with neighbors? I offered this idea to Josh on the train but he poo-pooed it, thinking that we can't abandon technology and go back to our ancestral model of acquiring food. Ironically, I thought growing your own stuff is more ethical and sustainable...Last night I was reading a few things about Monsanto, how much chemical processing and fossil fuels it takes to get food to the table and how evil and scary certain industrial practices are. I really feel bad for how animals are treated and scared about all the antibiotics and hormones used in meat/dairy/egg processing.

Don't call Social Services on us

Wow! The new camera is so good at capturing images that it's exposing all of our parental weaknesses. Note to self: wipe boogers off child.

If I were mayor

Why doesn't every municipality mandate food scrap recycling? An added benefit is that we will have compost available for the entire town. Instead, every town I've ever lived in has recycling only for glass, metal and paper. It takes a lot of energy to recycle these things and who knows if it's worth it in the end? Whereas composting food scrap is easy, fast and really works.

Hurray!

My very cheap husband finally caved in after years of whining (from me, in case anyone is wondering) and got us a digital SLR. Since it's late right now, the only pictures we can take are of our kids sleeping. I'm amazed at the quality because the room was pitch black when these pictures were taken (which also explains why they're at an awkard angle). I've instructed my mom to dress them in their Sunday's best when I come home from work tomorrow so I can take pictures of them.

Nice picture

Here's a nice picture of my two girls.

JS - a different kind of terrorist

So my hubby "hijacks" an email I receive from a friend asking about backpacks to carry babies in on hiking trips. He preaches to her about his moral values- "Cheap Cheap here (we use "husband" and "cheap" interchangeably.) We have the "backcountry" by kelty kids. You can have it (or borrow) if you like. It's decent for the kid carrying (well padded and comfortable), but doesn't have any extra storage. I think we've used two times ... maybe three. Not enough for each family to own one ... I think one per every 4 families is probably enough .. maybe 1 per 5 or 6 families. So feel free to use - also to come visit again. I have a push lawnmower (no gas or electricity) ... you can try that out too if you want. ;)"

Wicked witch or sensible?

Many moms give their 2-3 yr old ice cream at play dates. I feel like I can't refuse it for Sadie because it would create such an awkward situation. I don't give my children ice cream - ever. Yesterday at the pre-school picnic, even the school arranged for an ice cream truck. Both children and adults were lining up for treats, but Josh and I poo-pooed it and even told the school director we thought it was a mistake.

Good thing that my deprived daughter doesn't even like ice cream, maybe because she's never been exposed to it. The few times she's been tainted by getting it, she took a bite or two and turned up her nose. Yay Sadie!!!

Josh's bevy of babes

I wonder, while growing up, if it ever occurred to my whitey white Jewy husband that he'd be living with an East Asian harem.

Random pics

Here are the fabled monogrammed towels -- I pulled together three of them.

Whoa! The grass really grew at my mother's old house.

Lost and found: my sanity

Whenever I lose anything important that I use on a daily basis, like a wallet, I always feel shame, despair, regret and helplessness. Recently I lost my cell phone. Predictably, psychological trauma unfolded. For the first 4-5 days, I pretended I knew where it was. Oh I left it in the office or in my coat pocket, I repeated to myself. My husband ignored my self-delusion, sprang to action by activating a new phone for me. Even though I had a new phone, I still had a sinking feeling and felt pangs for the old one. I had a degree of certainty that I lost it either at the NY public library or at Naniwa, a Japanese restaurant. For a few more days, I did nothing to recover my cell phone except fret about it a few times daily. Then by day 10, I started writing down recover cell phone on my to-do list. I still did nothing about it.
Today, day 15, I got the courage to call the library. I got disconnected or hung up on, about six times by their lost and found department. When I finally I got through, I was asked to describe my cell phone. I was at a loss for words. How the fuck do you describe a cell phone? I blathered something unintelligible. Verizon, I shouted (as this is the service provider). Then I helpfully blurted, Motorola. He put me on hold, came back and said, I didn't find anything and then hung up on me. I was at the peak of frustration because I wondered if he didn't find anything based on my very descriptive description or he really went into the lost and found box, encountered a black hole and dutifully reported back the truth to me.
After this unsavory experience, I met Josh and a friend for lunch at Naniwa. As soon as the waitress came by, I relayed to her how I lost a cell phone. I could see Josh rolling his eyes. He pretty much wrote it off and considered it gone. She told me that I should go check with the hostess because they did find a cell phone and do it now before it gets too busy. Excited by this shred of hope, I ran up to the front and told the waitress at the bar that I lost a cell phone. She nodded and told me to go to the coat check guy. I told him about my situation and that I lost it about two weeks ago. He made me feel as if he did have it. After a few minutes of wait time, he came back with a shoe box full of random possessions, like an umbrella and other stuff, each item carefully wrapped up with white printer paper, secured by a rubber band, with a date and Japanese lettering written on them. Cell phone, cell phone, he recited as he rummaged through this box and then he handed me something that looked like a pickle jar. He laughed and I laughed. Then he gave me my cell phone! I was so happy, I wanted to hug and kiss him. And I could tell he was really happy for me too.
I giddily ran back to our table and relayed this wonderful story to my lunch companions. I felt like the people at Naniwa really know how to run a lost and found. Every person at Naniwa that I talked to knew about the cell phone. It was like they have a Town Hall meeting at every opening or closing to talk about all that was found, so that they can provide a reassuring experience to frazzled customers like me. A well run lost and found is a real competitive advantage. I think they should go into a highly lucrative consulting business of how to run a tip top shape lost and found.