Adjusting

[mmcirvin]

We found a buyer for our house just the weekend before last, and yesterday we did the dickering on the house we want to buy and came to an agreement. It's all moving forward, and everyone has been extraordinarily helpful in working around Sam's labor and delivery and our early days with Marjorie.

The buyer's inspection of our place was this morning, so we had to get out for a little while, and we went for breakfast at Bickford's with the baby. Carrying a tiny six-day-old baby in pink footie pajamas at Bickford's makes you the instant center of attention. It almost makes you feel like it's all worth it.

We got home, fed the baby again (she's suddenly gotten much more skilled and enthusiastic about feeding), and Sam was about to hand the baby off to me and lie down for a well-deserved nap when the siding people started hammering on the house again, just like they did all through Sam's early labor. Oh, well, they probably helped sell the house just by being demonstrably in the process of doing their job, so I shouldn't complain too much.

I'm carrying the baby in her sling right now, and she's dozing, but with all the milk she tossed back this morning I expect the poopocalypse to come at any second.

Comments

[iayork.livejournal.com]

Carrying a tiny six-day-old baby in pink footie pajamas at Bickford's makes you the instant center of attention.

And how you got into her pink footie pyjamas ...

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Speaking of poopocalypse, you HAVE gotten a copy of Jeff Vogel's "The Poo Bomb", yes?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Eh... we've gotten enough jocular books about baby poo as gifts already. I'm more willing to read things that have nothing to do with babies at this point.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...As for the apparent inconsistency between this sentiment and my tendency to post endlessly about the baby, I can explain this perfectly sensibly by the principle of LA LA LA I AM NOT LISTENING.

(I occasionally take a look at the growth or shrinkage of my friend-of list, and I've noticed that baby posts are the one thing that tends to cause net defriending, though it is very slight and the hardcore readers seem to enjoy the baby posts. The posts that are most effective at causing people to friend me, and also post lots of comments, are mad-as-hell political rants, a fact that makes me slightly uncomfortable. The posts with pictures of Saturn in them, on the other hand, get few comments but are the ones most likely to get people in non-LiveJournal blogs to link to me.)

I enjoy the baby posts

[asienieizi.livejournal.com]

You waited a long time for this and it's been a long time since I've seen a newborn through a new parents eyes. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying it so much, I don't know. I just know that I for one welcome our new LJ High Priestess and find the humorous commentary of her parental unit highly entertaining.

[ex-askesis860.livejournal.com]

No, seriously - you need to read this. It's not about baby poo - it's about the experience of raising a baby from birth to year one. It's an honest, scathing, and hysterically funny book written by one of the old talk.bizarre luminaries.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

A good book in that vein that we have read is Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions--which is about a particularly hard situation, in that the baby was unplanned and Lamott was single and not particularly parentally inclined. The person who gave it to us said that it was the first time she'd read that it was normal and OK for a mother to have negative feelings about motherhood, and the book was immensely liberating in that regard.

[ex-askesis860.livejournal.com]

Jeff's book is very much in that vein; the inscription reads, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." You can get a sense of his style by reading a piece or two from the sequel in progress. (http://www.ironycentral.com/toddlermain.html)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've seen his web site.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I just noticed that he rags on The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin.

He just went up a notch in my estimation.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I was just IMing with Ranjit B. about stuff and had to tell him about that great word, poopocalypse.

Ranjit: eww!
sunburn: heh. It's just milk that's been through a baby!
Ranjit: babies don't improve milk.

Good point!