I miss miami.

“It’s been cold this week, speaking of sorrows.  It got really really cold– what we call ass-burning cold.  Your butt gets so cold it’s hard to resist the temptation to sit down on a fire and people do and then your pants catch on fire and then you have to make that choice between modesty and survival.”

–Garrison Keillor, this week’s News.

photo stolen from the selby.  go there and check it out if you haven’t.

snow emergencies and other drama

happy belated christmas to everyone.  we had a lovely day that started with a sleepy baby in bed, and me thinking about next year… she’ll be walking and probably trying to eat the wrapping paper, but it will be so different from this year.

henry and I got each other snow shoes for christmas, and cora got baby capilene long-johns… a bit of a splurge, but adorable.

we got an obscene amount of snow this week… the most since 1928 or something crazy like that.  it was lovely and beautiful and magical until the following things happened:

1. we used up all the firewood.

2. the temperature stayed in the low twenties and continued to necesitate the use of chains to get anywhere.

3. the transformer outside our window blew up at 4:30 monday morning and left us in the cold… with the aforementioned no-firewood situation and a bag full of dirty cloth diapers.

4. and only 3 disposable diapers.

5. and with only cereal in the house to eat without cooking.

6. and a dead battery in the trailblazer.

7. and a broken chain on the other car.

it was a slow process of panicking… too cold for the baby, nothing to eat, no way to get warm, and no way to get to my parents’ house out in the country.  my dad eventually came and rescued us, brought us a new battery for the truck, and the best sight of the day was the five PGE guys marching up the hill through the snow, stripping off their jackets and shimmying up the electrical pole to get our power back on like it was No Big Deal.  I wanted to kiss them.

the rest of the week was much better… and I am delightedly looking forward to a new year.  I spent so much time this year thinking about having a New Baby and how to cope with it, and now we are more or less over the worst of the hump… and I find that I am juggling the mom and wife and nurse roles and trying to figure out what I want all of it to look like.

snow days

On sunday morning, we woke up to our first snow of the season… it doesn’t actually snow very often in Portland and when it does it feels like it did when I was seven years old and woke up to hear that school had been called off due to the half-inch of snow on the texas roads.  The wind is howling around the house, and it isn’t supposed to get above freezing for at least a week.  I’m feeling grateful for the responsible people that live across the cul-de-sac from us who finally salted the hill on our street… we nearly ended up in the ditch on our way back from a christmas party on sunday night.  (as a side note, it’s interesting the way the adrenalin in your system doubles when your car is fishtailing with an infant in the back-seat.)

the snow-laden camelia bush outside cora’s windows.

she’s trying so hard to suck her thumb… the pacifier has not been the hit we were hoping for.

we finally got the christmas tree decorated…

ben and carrie traipsed through the snow on monday afternoon for a big lunch of steak and potatoes and beer, which feels like such a luxury in the middle of a school day with snow on the ground.  reality is, we could probably do this any monday we feel like it, our work schedules being what they are.

…and this is how we spent most of today: passed out on the furry rug in front of the fire, and admiring the sixty three shades of purple and pink mount hood went through as the sun came up and then went down.  we have the million dollar view from our living room windows.

we are moving to france. immediately.

more about “Once upon a time… on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

she’s awake! and smiling!

… which we have been waiting for.  I remember (vaguely) a small uproar when Angelina Jolie referred to one of her newborns as “just kind of a blob,” and I can identify with how she felt.  It is so nice to finally get some feedback.  A good laugh now and then (although I’m not sure she knows that’s what she’s doing) and some nice interactive smiles… it makes it all worthwhile.  (and, as Henry put it, keeps us from drop-kicking her at 2 in the morning.)

That said, the sleep deprivation is killing me.  Us.  This very lovely child is porking up and wants to eat every 2-3 hours, and I am constantly feeling slightly unravelled psychologically as a result.  (thus the scanty posting on the blog).  The above picture was unfortunately taken at about 6:30 this morning, obligingly tinkered with by the veeery cool PhotoBag iPhone ap while I watched the sun come up over the valley and waited for the wee one to fall back asleep.  After a grand total of 3 hours of sleep for me for the night.  Sad but true, but look how pretty the sunrise was:

and, yeah, that’s the view from our living room.  Pretty incredible, and worth at least half of what we’re paying in rent.  (on nice clear days, anyway.)

In other news, I have started creeping back to work here and there, mostly just four hours at a time when Henry is at home… he is doing a great job holding down the fort with bottled breastmilk, etc., and Cora seems to have “attached” very nicely to him.  It occurred to me the other day when I traipsed off to the ER for the afternoon and left the two of them to eat, get cleaned up and out the door to bible study that I didn’t even feel like I  needed to leave much instruction other than “milk’s in the fridge.”  Which is such a profoundly nice (and rare?) way for a new mom to feel going off to work and leaving the baby.  And it is soooo awesome to be back at work.  Contrary to many other nurses, I actually really like my particular job and love the folks I work with.  It is a busy, upbeat, and constantly changing scene, and it feels good to go in there and be good at what I do, to laugh at all the absurd stuff that rolls in the door, and to make some gravy money before the holidays.  I wasn’t sure when I’d be ready, but find that it really helps to have the aforementioned able/willing/supportive/competent spouse holding up the other end of the line to make it happen.