My young daughter is eating solid food. She has two lower teeth, which she uses to great effect, scraping away like a reverse-squirrel. This is an exciting time for my husband and I, since we get to share some of our favorite foods with her. We also get to see these favorite foods converted into sneeze-splatter and spread across the front of our work shirts. Know this: Bibs are not just for infants.
After a few weeks of experimenting with toddler-cuisine, I’ve changed the way I shop for groceries. Instead of perusing the shelves of my local organic butcher, thinking “hmm would this hanger steak would be good pan-seared with truffle salt?”, I now think things like: “I wonder what other tube-shaped food this Safeway carries?” and, “Oh wow, you could really get a grip on those cheese sticks.”
As a freshly-minted Bay Area foodie, Elizabeth is more pencil sharpener than connoisseur.
As a freshly-minted Bay Area foodie, Elizabeth is more pencil sharpener than connoisseur. We hand her a Morningstar Farms veggie sausage when she wakes up, and listen for the high pitched buzzing sound as she fragments it into a light rain of sausage-shavings which patter to the floor. We then lift our soy-sawdust covered child out of the highchair, shake her up and down, and deposit her back in the living room where she carries out her daily experiments.
Bagels are her favorite. Despite its mammoth size, a cinnamon-raisin bagel is easy to grip in both hands and wave around. After a few minutes eating the proportional equivalent of a telephone pole, she holds the bagel over her head and shrieks in delight, praising her sky-gods for the gift of carbohydrates.
she holds the bagel over her head and shrieks in delight, praising her sky-gods
At the end of a long day’s eating, it has been my distinct pleasure to discover bagel parts at the bottom of my bra, where they have been covertly deposited by Elizabeth during one of her periods of arm-waving and violent twisting. I believe she has come to view my cleavage as some sort of pantry for the deposit and withdrawal of delicious food items. Rather than admitting defeat and covering my lingerie with contact paper, I’ve decided to try and interest her in vegetables, which I hope will be gentler and more refreshing in the knockers-region.
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Breastpumping
My commute to work
Taking a shower
The three block walk to return my library books
Sleeping
Leaning on my similarly exhausted husband and staring vacantly at something on a screen
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In case anyone is interested in the relative effects of a New Baby, I ran a few numbers this morning.
| -65% |
Cussing |
| -50% |
Cups of Coffee Consumed |
| -98% |
Cups of Coffee Consumed While Still Warm |
| -98% |
Alcohol Consumed Before Childbirth |
| +98% |
Alcohol Consumed After Childbirth |
| +50% |
Loads of Laundry/Week |
| +100% |
Loads of Laundry Involving Poo |
| +350% |
Smiles from Strangers |
| +60% |
Visitors |
| +300% |
Visits to Library |
| +10% |
Upper Body Strength (12 pound weight) |
| +75% |
Breast Size |
| +30% |
Body Size |
| -5% |
Brain Size |
| -50% |
Sleep |
| -100% |
Uninterrupted Sleep |
| +200% |
Jokes About Sleep |
| +200% |
Jokes About Poo |
| +50% |
Actual Poo |
| +10% |
Unsolicited Advice |
| -10% |
Need For Unsolicited Advice per Weekly Age of Infant |
| +3000% |
Life/Injury Insurance |
| +25% |
Ominous Feeling That Adulthood Has Arrived |
| +100% |
Heart-stopping Baby Smiles |
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’m sitting at a cafe with my infant daughter. I feel like a monster of productivity, having successfully left the house twice in one day, eaten actual meals, and avoided being covered in poo (for the time being).
Elizabeth is the daughter, three months old. She sleeps in the stroller I thought I would never use. As a non-parent, I had overlooked its function as a laptop/sweater/blanket/grocery/diaperbag-carrier, and had no understanding of the speed at which it knocks out a fussy baby.
The last three months have been a time of great change. I am clocking in at about one life lesson every three hours.
Recently I’ve learned:
- To type fast and not muck about with formatting while the baby’s napping. Editing is not for parents.
- If you can afford it, fresh fruit is always a worthwhile purchase.
- That you can’t go for a walk in my neighborhood without tripping over a stroller or a border collie.
- Sweden makes awesome baby equipment (Jané: the 4×4 truck of strollers)
- If you join a clan and are online regularly at 3am, you can make lots of friends in Finland, and Norway.
- Other Scandinavians mock Swedes out of some obscure national rivalry. The punchline of every joke is inevitably “Svensk”. If you understand this, please let me know.
Right, that’s it for now. Elizabear is waking up and we’ve got some major walking to do.
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