The Big Roll

You can do it!

Never thought I'd say it, but sometimes I feel like Bela Karolyi, the famously mustachioed Romanian-turned-American women's gymnastics head coach.  As Milo hangs out on his little mat thingy with the dangling animals, lurching his way towards turning over from his back to his stomach -- a more difficult move by far than the belly-to-back roll that he's already mastered -- I find myself clapping and saying wildly encouraging things that he probably can't understand but seems to respond to with happy little groans of effort.

Actually, Milo's attempts to gain momentum for The Big Roll also remind me a bit of The Metamorphosis, with its notoriously grotesque and heartbreaking first line: "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."  If you've ever watched a beetle try its darndest to get its torque on, there is a sort of tortured futility to it.  Milo, however, seems to know he can do it, and hasn't been particularly frustrated by his epic failure.  No, just kidding.  I still kind of assume he's ahead of the game if turning over is, as our doctor explained when Milo turned over for the first time at his two-month check-up, a four-month landmark.  The kid is obviously going to be a world-renowned athlete of some sort.  But no pressure.  As long as he doesn't, one day, inexplicably turn into a cockroach, I think we'll be plenty pleased.

If My Kid Were Any Cuter...

...I would actually have to consume and digest him.  Is that weird?

The Shortest Day of the Year? Really?

This was the longest shortest day of the year. 

Very early in every school year, I teach my students what the word "ambivalent" means, because it's a reaction that pops up all the time in the works we read (or in most literary works, I guess); so little in life is ever black or white, and we so often feel multiple ways about the same thing at once.

So, on this first day of winter, or the day when, as the eminently reliable Wikipedia says, we begin "the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days," I thought I'd share what I'm thinking about caring for a baby in winter.  It's hard.  With that said, I certainly recognize that I have it very easy.  Like, I lead a totally charmed life.  I'm crazy-lucky to be able to take this school year off to hang out with Milo.  He has, generally speaking, a wonderful disposition; my home is comfortable and warm; I have an incredible help-mate in Ben, and family members and friends who take such an interest in our daily adventures.  But these short, cold, grey days challenge me to find things to do that are fun, stimulating to the senses and active.  We can't necessarily take all the walks I would want to.  Going to Target does not count as a particularly enriching experience (although Milo is actively engaged in the sensations he feels when going through the automatic doors or listening to the guy banging the shopping carts he's rounded up from the parking lot).

Oh, and I don't really know other ladies with new babies.

Here's where the ambivalence really comes into play.  I love spending time with Milo.  He's a happy little boy, and smiles at everything.  He can be pissy, as everyone can, when tired, hungry or bored, but he's easily soothed and can re-engage in an instant.  So it's fun to be home with him, but...we really ought to be out doing stuff with other new moms and babies.  But: I'm so not a joiner.  I'm wary of people I don't know.  Stranger, danger, right?  Right?  And engaging with strangers in baby yoga seems particularly awful and ridiculous, but I guess people need a pretext to be out and about with their kids instead of trapped in the house all day.

Perhaps I should start my own group for new moms.  Cynics Anonymous?  M.W.S.A.D. (Moms With Social Anxiety Disorder)?  The I'm-Going-To-Lie-And-Say-He's-Sleeping-Through-The-Night Club?  Erghhh.

A Quick Question About John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt

How on earth could his name be your name, too?

Telling Secrets

Shh, don't let on, but our family is weird...

Milo met his grandparents' new kitten, Ginger, this weekend, and was talking some nasty trash about Ginger's new peeps.  Nah, not only wasn't he sharing any hot dish, but he wasn't even interested in the kitten, unlike his mom, who was, yeah, I'll say it: smitten.  This picture makes it look like the kid is completely into her, but I don't even think he understood her as a living thing.  In fact, the only animal around our house that he connects with at all is Olivia, our dog, because she's big and barks loudly at the mailman and moves in a way that registers on his radar.  Our two cats are basically just hairy throw pillows to him; he could care less.

And now for something completely different.  Please take note of the huge patches of missing hair on Milo's temple(s); this expansive forehead is why Ben and I independently came to the conclusion that our son looks like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein, a comparison my mother simply loathes.  I don't know why.  It's funny to us.  We're sort of over it by now, but when we realized that we both thought that Boyle was the celebrity Milo most resembles, we had a lot of fun propping him up on our laps and singing Putting on the Ritz.  Gotta hand it to him, though, he's been a good sport about it. 

Harvard or Yale?

Go Team!

So, it's obviously not a choice like which college to attend, who to marry, where to purchase a home, but somehow, choosing a day care seems like an epic decision.  I think back to the scene in Baby Boom (hells yeah, I just threw down a reference to Diane Keaton's fantastic 1987 turn as a Manhattan yuppie go-getter who -- and here's where the movie sort of breaks down -- randomly inherits a baby from some dead distant relative) where she has to get her adopted daughter into a snooty nursery school by having the kid correctly identify the people (like Gandhi and Einstein) and things (like sushi) on a bunch of flashcards.  Sam Shepard as the hot country vet?  Anyone?

Now, we haven't run into any competition as such while looking at day cares for Milo.  In fact, we just visited two places yesterday, and when I asked one of the directors whether she anticipated a "registration crush," she was like, no, if we get a couple more kids in that class for next September, we'll just add another adult as needed.  And the director at the other place seemed kind of desperate for us to enroll him.

In any case, I don't expect that any of the places that we're thinking about sending him next year will A) have him on the fast track to one of the Ivies or B) send him home to us on any given day with a five o'clock shadow and smelling of whiskey and cigarettes.  However, there's a lot of middle ground in terms of Milo's engagement, the engagement of his caretakers, the general atmosphere (is it quiet and organized?  loud and chaotic?  does it smell like orange-scented Lysol?  exactly how egregious is the visible booger situation or V.B.S.?), and this is where visiting each place and going with one's gut, rather than a predetermined matrix of price/distance/comfort/expertise, seems like a good move.

There's a big decision in the offing.  Stay tuned...

What Do You Do When...

I hasten to add, this is not actually my child

Mothering Question Number 56: What do you do on days when you have plans (miraculously) and the weather is fine and you finally have an opportunity to get out of the emming-effing house, but these plans, benign as they are -- lunch and travel time, 2+ hours max -- get in the way of your child's nap and then he becomes an insane, maniacal beast in the manner of Grendel's mother for hours after the fact?

What do you do when feeding him, walking around and holding him close while murmuring reassurances, "winding him down," as it were, don't work, and instead, he is doing that cry in which his mouth forms a rictus of frustration and rage, his tongue quivers like a manic eel, he's screaming right in your ear and he looks like he wants you to suffer as he does?  For hours?

There are pauses, of course.  And this is what brings on the madness.  During his second bottle in forty-five minutes, he will smile at you, causing him to stop drinking entirely for a minute and charming you into a false sense of security.  Sometimes he will actually appear to begin a successful nap, and this charade will last for fourteen minutes, long enough for you to invest in the middle of Kenneth Branagh's awful 1993 adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, which actually has Keanu Reeves in it, and you feel like, OK, things are going to be OK.

But. No. No. They. Are. Most. Decidedly. Not.

Rabbit, RUN!! (Update)

The Uber-Rabbit, Herman

This post isn't about Milo doing anything awesome or me coming to some incredible realization about motherhood or human relationships or the beneficence of the universe.  It's about this big fucking rabbit, which happens to be real.  This thing is not photoshopped.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about because the picture you see is a creepy green frowny face (and you care enough), check out this link: http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/giantrabbit.asp.  Just in case you don't believe me, shall we consult snopes.com?

The "photograph and accompanying information were taken from a 3 February 2006 New York Post article.  The critter pictured is Herman, a German Giant hare belonging to German breeder Hans Wagner.  The extraordinarily large hare weighs 17 lbs., measures 17 inches high on all fours, and stands over three feet tall on his hind legs."

Let's hope that standing on his hind legs is not a prelude to Herman committing some sort of horrific Godzilla-type reign of destruction, causing tornadoes with every twitch of his mighty nose, raining down enormous turds on the fleeing, shrieking masses.  Also, why is Hans Wagner wearing a Cosby sweater?  Well, maybe it's angora...

The Dungeon

Shout out, German speakers!

So, my big outing today with Milo was going to buy special low-fat dog food for Olivia at the vet and renewing my driver's license.  Woo hoo!  Because this entailed a trip out to the Main Line, I was glad to be able to catch up on my favorite NPR show, the inimitable Terri Gross' Fresh Air (closely beating out This American Life).  One thing I miss about commuting: NPR.  I know, I know, I'm a huge nerd.

None of that is really the point of the story, "story" being a generous word for what is about to transpire.  So, I'm in the car and listening to a podcast of Fresh Air in which Terri is interviewing a woman named Melissa Febos, whose memoir, Whip Smart, is out in paperback, a podcast that I wouldn't be able to listen to if Milo were much older/able to speak, because then I'd have to deal with the question: "Mommy, what's a dominatrix?" 

Febos, currently an Assistant Professor of Writing at Utica College, wrote a memoir about working her way through college (Sarah Lawrence, weirdly, or perhaps eminently appropriately? Those chicks are a bit out there, I've heard) by working in a midtown Manhattan "dungeon" as a dominatrix.  She was concurrently a heroin addict, although the interview didn't really focus on that aspect of her experience.  She graduated from college, earned an MFA and is now a professor, so she's obviously a very bright woman, and the interview was kind of interesting in that she took a more cerebral approach than one might have expected to writing about her experiences -- essentially the slant seemed more linked to identity politics than pure shock schlock.

But: the whole thing got me thinking, and then feeling a little bit inadequate, and then not at all inadequate.  Wait, no, not inadequate because I've never done heroin or worked in the sex trade; inadequate because if someone ever optioned the movie rights to my nonexistent memoir, that guy who does the voice-overs for film trailers would have to say dramatically: "She's a high school teacher on maternity leave...she blows raspberries on her baby's stomach...she knows the names of characters on Sesame Street...[even lower pitch] and she likes it."  My life consists of the sort of domestic stuff that people don't really write books about, unless somehow the story turns towards a hot-blooded affair or homicide or a meteor headed for the house.  Or, better yet, all three. 

And yet, I figure, this is nothing to feel lame about.  Day in and day out, I get to experience all of the outstanding pleasures of life -- Milo's engagement in his surroundings and his sweet, joy-making smiles; laughter and tenderness with my kick-ass husband; excellent relationships with family and friends; the best dog and cats on Planet Earth.  And yes, these pleasures are tempered by the ear-splitting sound of Milo crying when he's hungry, rainy days, and periods of alternating monotony and frustration, but would I trade in this blessed life for one that a movie studio would be more interested in?  Never.

Disco Inferno

What happened to my neck?

Milo is changing by the day, especially in terms of his likes and dislikes.  Some new likes: Elmo videos on Youtube, spitting up for no apparent reason, and the bear chair you see at left.  He used to have it bad for his swinging chair, and the movement could often calm him or at least let him enjoy a nice lull if he was already calm.  Now, it seems to just piss him off.  So for kicks (i.e. I had to go brush my teeth and the bear chair was in the corner of his room looking sad, abandoned, frankly: betrayed), I put him in this chair, a great hand-me-down from friends of ours that I had tried unsuccessfully when Milo was just a tiny baby and he didn't even fit in it safely.  I come back, toothbrush in mouth, and he's basically dancing in the chair, having the time of his life.  It's like Studio 54 in that chair, but without the cocaine and trannies.  Now, it doesn't swing, but it does have a pretty awesome massaging low-key jiggle.  It also has lights and a music option, which can be activated if the baby moves, which Milo does a lot, ensuring that he will get his fill of Pop Goes the Weasel and Three Blind Mice.  I will leave for another day a discussion of frank violence against animals in children's songs.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

Would you look at this?  It's like my son is some sort of Romanian gymnast or Martha Graham enthusiast.  Ben lifted Milo up several times in a row yesterday, and almost every time, Milo made himself completely horizontal, with toes pointed.  And every time, I must admit to thinking about the scene in Dirty Dancing where Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze (may he rest in peace) are practicing the jump in the lake.  Sometimes it makes me sad that Ben doesn't have the same Dirty Dancing frame of reference that I have for basically everything, although I guess that's just proof that he's a heterosexual male.  But seriously, is it wrong that virtually everything that happens in real life has some sort of DD counterpart?  I suspect that it's just my demographic, because whenever something awkward happens and I say, "I carried a watermelon?" and slap my forehead, my peers seem to get my drift.

Yeah, I Rolled Over. Ain't No Thang.

Ok, so somebody rolled over for the first time today, and it wasn't me.  Yes, it's true, Milo rolled over at nine weeks and one day and it's a four-month landmark, so obviously all of my suspicions about his precocity have come to fruition.  The weird thing about it was that he did it at the doctor's office.  It was as if I had brought my car to the mechanic for an oil change or something and then it started rattling and shaking as soon as I pulled in.  But in a good way.  

The pediatrician had placed him on his stomach on the examining table to see how well he could raise his neck, and she said that it looked almost as if he wanted to roll over, so she suggested we give him a minute.  He kept pushing with his right arm, once, twice, thrice, four times (maybe more; I don't actually remember how many tries it took him), and then, just like a beetle who gets himself off of his back, he rolled himself over -- except he started on his tummy and landed on his back.  I almost cried, and our pediatrician was visibly thrilled, and commented on how methodical he was about it.  I joked that Milo was planning on taking the SATs next week, but jokes notwithstanding, it's a pretty incredible feeling to watch him making these developmental leaps.

I see it with him in other ways, too.  He's much more engaged these days, and in addition to smiling, he now stops crying -- or at least quiets down -- when Ben or I enter his room to give him a bottle in the middle of the night; he anticipates being soothed, which is soothing in and of itself.  Curious phenomenon.  I'm also trying to pay attention to the ways in which he is beginning to make more sounds.  It's not just crying these days; there's the "bwah" noise that he makes when he's pouting but not really crying.  There's a "guh" noise that he makes when he's interested and alert.  There's a noise that sounds like a proto-laugh that I enjoy very much.  He also clearly has a command of some consonants -- M, B, W, and G, for example -- and I suppose that they are linguistically and anatomically easier than, say, sibilants or plosives, and it's fascinating to watch how a little human acquires sounds, if not yet language.

Ben and I were talking about it the other night: how strange and wonderful it is that everyone who has a child gets to conduct this sort of anthropological experiment in his own home, watching this little being move from basically being a helpless little marsupial to a full-fledged person with likes and dislikes, with personality traits and prerogatives.  I'm so looking forward to whatever the next step is.

Ready For My Close Up

Say Cheese

So, this picture is not the best demonstration of it, but Milo has begun smiling, and when he does so for real (as he did both before and after I took this shot), it is a joy to behold.  There's nothing like this kid's toothless grin to make me laugh out loud, and luckily, it's a not-so-vicious circle, because when I laugh and tickle him more and make some sort of goofy rhyming song or waggle his arms and legs around, it makes him smile more.  Which is a relief.  Because it sort of seemed to me as of a couple of weeks ago that he might just be a fussy, sleepless kid who farted a lot, and I would've hated for that to be his personality -- for him to be, like, that kid in his first grade class.  The fussy, farting kid.  We all had one of those, didn't we?  Mine was a kid named Andrew Weiss who used to bring live cicadas to school in a shoebox and the librarian would have to roll her eyes and tell him that was not kosher and who I once had to pair up with in a square-dancing unit in gym class.  Not good.  Not one bit good.  As it turns out, I am pretty sure Milo's not going to be that kid.  Whew.

On Sleep

I will swaddle you, swaddle you wherever you may go...

The first question that strangers or acquaintances ask upon meeting Milo is inevitably, "How's he sleeping?"  It's a fair question, as most new parents struggle to get long stretches of sleep with an infant around.  It's a generic question, too, and meant in the spirit of somewhat jolly but detached interest; it's less invasive than "How are his bowel movements?" or "How is his penis healing after you genitally mutilated him in the name of tradition?" but it's actually kind of fraught if the answer is "Crappy," or "Only intermittently."

As you can see from the picture, Milo will take a catnap almost anywhere, including on his grandparents' couch.  He is also starting to take pretty solid naps in his crib and will sleep two to three and a half hour stretches in the night in his nursery.  But at seven weeks and counting, most people seem to want to hear that he's sleeping through the night, and grimace awkwardly when they hear his personal best, which was close to four hours...once.  I'm pretty sure he'll be fine; his circadian rhythms will kick in for realz, and he'll start pumping his own melatonin soon, and we'll be good to go.  Until then, it would be nice if people would just comment on his pretty eyelashes or his solid head of hair or his rose petal mouth (don't worry, Milo's a sensitive new-age guy, you can compliment him on that, he doesn't mind).  Until then, we'll just continue putting little deposits in the sleep bank, and keep on truckin'.

Serious Business

Milo and Olivia Have a Snuggle

I like to imagine, sometimes, living and raising a child in, say, Chauvet, France 30,000 years ago.  They didn't have cars, so they couldn't have had any incredibly heavy infant car seats that a five foot three woman would look ridiculous carrying into a CVS (at least the cave paintings don't bear that out).  They wouldn't have had pharmacies where the formula is kept behind lock and key.  They wouldn't have had formula because that's what boobs were for.  And babies wouldn't have had milk protein allergies (or peanut allergies or what have you) because: survival of the fittest, bitches!

I am by no means suggesting that all of the enormous strides that have been made in medicine, technology, and food science aren't valuable.  They are.  Helping kids and families is good work, and I'm grateful for the people who do it, however, the ubiquity of items and services that are available is often confusing, redundant or useless and, in the end, just plain overboard.  It's hard enough for a new parent to maintain her sanity on very little sleep without trying to navigate the world of problems and the products that exist to 'solve' them.  Just sayin'.

Maxin' and Relaxin'

Everyone likes to take a load off in different ways.  Olivia and Hermes, in a rare moment of solidarity, enjoy watching backyard t.v.  Squirrel is currently the top-rated show on the network.  Milo, on the other hand, totally digs napping in the crook of Ben's arm.  Not gonna lie: so do I.  

In other news, which is really not news at all, but I got out of the house, so it feels like news to me, is that Milo and I spent a lovely afternoon with his GG (Great Grandpa Morris) dining at Frenchtown's marvelous "Lovin' Oven" and hanging out at Casa Wachtel.  There's virtually nothing I like better in the world than watching a 6-week old spend time with a 4992-week old, and I'm not being at all facetious.  Morris is quite smitten with Milo, and is as gentle and loving as you could possibly imagine, and it intrigues me to think about how Milo (who is just beginning to follow an object like a rattle with his eyes) will someday, God willing, have an accumulation of knowledge, memories and images like Morris does.  Someday, hopefully, Milo will be talking to (or near, anyway) his own great-grandson, and musing on what life was like before we all had pentium chips implanted in our crania and ate homemade food rather than FutureShakes.  

Also, I love hanging out with Morris, because I like hearing about the number of worlds he's inhabited, getting his perspective on family and parenting and being the recipient of his compassionate advice.  And to get a little bit sentimental, being with him allows me to feel like I can still enter a portal to see my own grandmother.  Boy, she would've gotten a kick out of Milo (and of meeting Ben, of course) and would've had her share of belly laughs watching me try to mother someone!  Really, there probably isn't too much out there more wonderful and bizarre than having kids, watching your kids have kids, and then watching those kids have kids.        !לדור ודור

The Mantra of Tiny Elvis

My Lovin' Teddy Bear

There is an old SNL skit that Ben alludes to fairly often, The Adventures of Tiny Elvis, in which Nicolas Cage plays the eponymous leather-bedecked character who is so small he can fit in someone's palm.  The premise is simple: he's Elvis, but tiny.  The dialogue, which is not nearly as amusing as that of some other vintage sketches, looks something like this:

Tiny Elvis: Hey, man...look at that salt shaker, man. That is huge! Man, I'll never be able to use all that salt, man. That is way too much!


Red: Yeah, that's a big salt shaker, Elvis!


Tiny Elvis: Sure is huge, man.


Sonny: That's hilarious, Elvis!


Red: Score another one for the Tiny E!


Sonny: Man, we can't keep up with you!


Tiny Elvis: Well, I'm just saying it's a big salt shaker, that's all.

On the surface, nothing special, right?  Barely even funny, although Ben and I have always enjoyed using it in reference to really odd things, like disproportionately big road signs that tell you there's a curve ahead or the enormous American flags outside of car dealerships.

I have, however, found a new role for Tiny Elvis in my life.  He is my new guru, and "It's just big, that's all," is my new Jesus Prayer, a la Franny and Zooey, when things seem too overwhelming.  When Milo is screaming, and the dog is outside on the porch whining and the phone is ringing and I'm late for something or other, I plan on using the Tiny E mantra to get me through.  At the absolute minimum, Nicolas Cage can be a force for good in the world for the first time in a very long time.

Deep Thoughts

Since Milo's birth, I've been having not flashbacks, exactly, but very vivid images of places or experiences from various stages of my growing up: sitting under the cherry trees at lunch in springtime on the front lawn of my high school and closing my eyes so that the cars zooming by on East West Highway sounded like waves; the basement room in which I reluctantly took part in the Brownies; annual yearly photographs with my brother at Sears; bag lunches that my mother packed, always with a note in them.  And the varying significance of these memories or senses of things notwithstanding, it seems to me as though my brain is having some sort of reaction to having a child of my own, that my neurons are responding to having become a mom and are showing me this flipbook of my own childhood as if to say, "Guess what?  You're going to do it again, but from another point of view."  This is both frightening and intriguing.  People always have that fantasy of re-living their lives with all of the knowledge they possess at their wisest moments, but doing so is, of course, impossible.  Impossible, as well, I suspect, to impart whatever it is I perceive as the wisdom I've gained over the course of thirty-four years -- of screwing up, accidentally succeeding, making truly wonderful decisions and flopping head-first into moments of grace -- to Milo.  He's got to do it for himself, and every day now he is creating his own montage of images and understanding, and how grateful I am to be able to help him, and ultimately just watch him, make the trip.

Let Sleeping Babies Squeak

What do these two guys have in common, you might ask?  Well, something that we've noticed, after living with Milo for almost five weeks now, is that he has an entire repertoire of cute and bizarre noises.  Some of them we've named, like the "screeching brake" effect and the ominous "door creaking" noise.  There is the adorable "nom nom" of the hungrily swallowing Milo and a sound that I noted sounded like something important happening on the deck of a battleship.  After the kid made a new one the other night, I don't remember which, I said to Ben how creepy it would be if we peeked over the side of his bassinet and up looked Michael Winslow, from Police Academy fame.  And no, not because he's black.

A Few Thoughts on the Breast Pump

Count Rugen from The Princess Bride said it best: "As you know, the concept of the suction pump is centuries old. Really that's all this is, except that instead of sucking water, I'm sucking life. I've just sucked one year of your life away. I might one day go as high as five, but I really don't know what that would do to you. So, let's just start with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity so be honest. How do you feel?" [Wesley cries and moans in pain].

That's obviously a hyperbolic choice of quotes, but there's something to it on a couple of levels. First of all, the act of pumping is not particularly comfortable (especially at four o'clock in the morning), and the hospital-grade pump that I've rented, while a lovely, buttery shade of yellow, has a knob on it that is deceptively cheerful.  The knob controls the level of suction, which is represented on the digital screen as a row of peppy little droplets, to suggest that the higher you turn the knob, the more delicious, life-sustaining milk you will produce.  This is sort of true, but not necessarily, because there's no baseline for the knob.  It's just at the level that the user left it on the last time, and so it might be set high, but then you turn it on, gasp in surprise, and you're only looking at two or three digital drops, and then you feel like a pansy.   I'm certainly not as big of a bad-ass as Wesley, which I totally recognize.

But secondly, the pump takes time.  Lots of time.  Maybe not years-off-my-life time, but definitely hours-out-of-my day time.  I like to surround myself with magazines or the computer.  If I did Sodoku or the New York Times crossword puzzle, this would also be a pretty good time for it.  And I suppose if I were creating gushing rivers of milk, I'd feel like an earth goddess and mistress of frugality, but it's a pretty measly turn-out, frankly.  But, as my grandmother used to say, them's the breaks. 

What Baby Sleeps During Cosmetic Surgery? Wait, What Baby Gets Cosmetic Surgery?

Don't worry, we didn't claim that Milo had a deviated septum and then get him the Jennifer Grey treatment (or the Joel Grey treatment, for that matter).  He was born with two skin tags, little lumps of epithelial cells, one on his ear and one on his cheek; the one on his cheek, in particular, was the sort of thing that made children ask, "What is that thing?" and made adults want to ask but refrain from asking.  Ben and I named them Cheech and Chong.  We had our appointment with the pediatric plastic surgeon today, who wore "Mad Men" style 1960's glasses into which he awesomely inserted microscopic goggles during the procedure.  First, the doctor had me hold Milo still while he stuck a sort of obscenely long needle into the skin around both tags to numb them.  This was the worst part of the whole thing, and the kid cried for about a minute.  Then, he was swaddled and they shone a bright light on him.  The nurse held his head to the side, and Ben held his torso still like he was some sort of insane meth addict instead of a four-plus week old, and the doctor did his cutty-snippy-stitchy thing, during which Milo promptly fell asleep, feeling cozy and warm as though he were on some sort of weird baby tanning bed.  After putting a couple of dissolvable stitches in each spot, the doctor put superglue on our baby's face.  That's right.  The glue ostensibly not only holds the bandages in place, but helps the skin heal over more smoothly.  It makes me think of the Krazy Glue commercial from 1980's, and I imagine a construction worker attaching his hard hat to Milo's face. God forbid.  Anyhow, now Milo's shana punim is silky smooth, and I think we're done cutting things off of the poor kid for now, IYKWIMAITYD.

P.S. Two sights of interest this week, and you judge whether or not they're related: 1) a young, blind albino woman with a cane walking confidently in a rainstorm and 2) a sighted teenage girl, walking while texting, who tripped and pitched straight into a telephone pole.

The Future Robert Christgau?

Milo has been enjoying the Afro-pop sounds of Vampire Weekend's first album this morning, and appeared to give a smile to the poppy grooves and concurrent jiggling he was experiencing that seemed unrelated to gas. He expressed some concern that the group's sensibility was too derivative of singers like Paul Simon or groups like The Talking Heads that embraced a world music sound in the late 70's and 80's, but he thought most of the buzz surrounding them was pretty well-deserved.

Although unrelated, I thought it was worth mentioning a comment that Ben made with no apparent irony the other evening while reading an article in The Week:  "I was just thinking about Emilio Estevez."  His acting in Men at Work was truly underrated.

And for my next trick...

This is the pose I like to call Jesus Christ, Superbaby, which is a fun one. It usually ends with him having some sort of involuntary muscle spaz and then crying before falling back to sleep.  WWMD, right?

Also of note, Ben and I took Milo to the Doylestown Pumpkin Festival on Sunday afternoon, a beautiful day, and the little ingrate slept right through it.  Actually, it's a dumb idea to take a newborn to a Pumpkin Festival, because, really, what's he going to do there?  Vote on whether he prefers the enormous gourd carved into a tableau of Edgar Allen Poe and the Raven or the meta-pumpkin carved all over with pumpkins?  Plus, it cost twenty-five cents to vote, and Milo didn't bring any money.  Whatever, we're not going to coddle him. Ben and I certainly enjoyed the funnel cake, and Milo didn't seem to mind that I sprinkled his infant carrier and him all over with confectioner's sugar.

Finally worth sharing today, Milo makes the most excellent little noise when he gets burped, and I was thrilled to see that it was much like Troy without a larynx in the most recent episode of Community.  Feel free to watch this clip to see what I mean: http://shirtoid.com/50698/evil-troy-and-evil-abed/ 

OK, thanks for tuning in...more posts to follow...