This one is mostly about her new puppy. Dooce cracks me up.

http://www.dooce.com/2008/01/15/daydreaming-palm-trees 

And presently, Asher is attacking the computer with a toy hammer. It’s 3:35 p.m. and I need a drink.

Asher and I had our first Mommy & Baby class today.

It’s really called Parent Child class, but I suspect it will be all mommies. Only one other pair was there as the class is still forming, but Peggy and Willow seem nice. The teacher is called Teacher Marie. She is intense, warm, strong, experienced, and has a lovely singing voice. I think we are going to enjoy our Tuesday mornings in the class. The babies played. The mommies and teacher chatted. We had a snack. We sang songs. We walked to the farm and visited the sheep and the llama. On the way, we watched the 3rd and 4th graders playing on recess. Asher liked the new toys in the classroom—all wooden and beautiful, many handmade. He liked the rattles and the dollies and the wooden animals and gnomes. He really liked a surprising item: metal disks from the ends of frozen juice tubes. They made a fantastic sound when they crashed into each other. The teacher said, “Yeah. I know. Funny, eh? These are some of the most popular items in the whole classroom.” Which, I gotta tell ya, was full of thousands of dollars worth of heirloom-quality toys. Kids are weird, and yet, I understand completely why these metal disks were so interesting to him.

He really loved Willow, a six-month-old. He wanted to touch her face, especially her nose. Asher can be a bit rough because he doesn’t know better, so I spent a lot of time right next to him trying to keep him from bopping her in the head.  One of the things Asher loves to do at home is look at his books full of pictures of babies. And here was Willow—a real baby in the flesh!

One of the things that mommies do, especially when they get together, is to share tricks of the trade, and figure out where each one stands on the GREAT PARENTING SPECTRUM, which basically goes from Attachment Parenting/EC/Waldorf/Organic/Raw/No TV/Hippy/Drives-a-Horse-and-Buggy on the far left and Traditional/Authoritative/Pro-spanking/TV/Junk Food/Republican/Drives-a-Hummer on the far right. So conversation meanders gradually through all these areas of choice. “If you do organic or all organic …”; “Well, I stay home …”; “He has been using the potty since …”; “We have a family bed …”; “I try to carry my baby …”; “These cloth diapers are so nice because …”; ”I really have a problem with soy …”; “Back when I was raising my kids, I nursed ….”; “My poor husband was fed solids so early ….”; “This product is so good because …”; “I sew her clothing myself …”; “My mother made …”; “We avoid plastic …”; “Isn’t silk the most vibrant, warm fabric…”; “The infant and baby woolens are best…”; “Are you aware that you can get this here?” “It’s easy to make it yourself at home…” ”We grew spelt…” ect., etc. 

This exercise is tedious because it happens among all moms that I’ve ever met. In one sense, it’s a competition: Who is the Best Mommy? Who is the Best “Natural Parent”? Which is extreme bullshit. But in another sense, it’s a way of feeling each other out so that you don’t say the wrong thing to someone or hurt someone’s feelings and possibly undermine their confidence as a parent. It’s a way to learn about new things that you’ve never tried or never heard of before. It’s also a way of vetting potential friends. Weird.

If we hadn’t done this sort of thing this morning, I might not have learned that the teacher lived on The Farm in Tennessee (and a sister community in Kentucky) during the 1970s and worked as a nurse in the clinic—with Ina May Gaskin. Interesting times, indeed.

 ”We’re brothers together, friends forever!”

I remembered some more stuff I want to say about Asher and who he is right now.

The pottying thing (EC) has suffered a lot since Asher learned to crawl. It is MUCH harder to guage when he needs to pee now, and he is so busy exploring the house and everything in it he doesn’t really signal that he has to go. So we have had a lot more diapers to wash since about mid November than we had for the 5 months prior to that. That nifty thing he used to do—waking me up in the night to tell me he had to pee—doesn’t happen anymore. Now he wakes up once or twice a night to complain because he has peed and he’s uncomfortable. Still, we manage to get him to the potty in time sometimes, which makes me happy because I just want him to be used to going there. It may be time to consult the book again in search of more EC tips.

Self-feeding is pretty cool! Asher got really picky over the last few days, refusing to eat even the mushy foods that he has always enjoyed. It appears that he would like to do more self-feeding, so I’m trying to figure out little, soft foods that he can pick up and eat. He doesn’t have many teeth (no molars at all), so it has to be food that he can mash. The bananas aren’t recognized as food by him, although they’re great for squishing in his hands. Other no-gos include: tofu most of the time, corn kernels, and steamed apples. The cheese tortellini cut in half and covered in pesto sauce have been a hit, though (see today's other post). At Christmas dinner, he loved the mashed potatoes. 

Asher now claps his hands when he is happy, especially if we say “Yay!” and clap about something he has done, like signing appropriately. His little chubby face lights up when he claps. It’s gorgeous. It’s clear that he understands many words that we say. 

It’s completely adorable when Asher crawls into the bathroom while Lucas is in the tub. Asher pulls himself up against the side of the bathtub to peer in and watch Lucas. So far, they get along beautifully, except when Asher knocks down Lucas’s block cities. I have to remind Lucas not to yell at his little brother. Asher laughs and laughs at Lucas’s weird antics and funny voices. Lately, Lucas has been playing chipmunks. (My parents let Lucas watch a few Chip and Dale cartoons, and ever since, he’s been fascinated with the stories.) Anyway, Lucas is Chip and Asher is Dale. Lucas talks in a thoroughly obnoxious, high, squeaky voice and Asher eats it up.

When Asher gets really excited and he’s sitting on the ground, he starts bouncing. He can actually travel forward by bouncing on his bottom! I suppose this is the natural evolution of the arm flapping that he used to do when he was younger.

Tomorrow, Asher and I start attending a Mommy and Baby class that will be held one morning a week at Lucas’s Waldorf school. It’s not because Asher needs to go to school to learn how to be a baby. And I don’t need classes on how to be a mommy (maybe I could use classes on how to be a better mommy). But it sounds like it will be fun and we’ll get to socialize with others. The teacher asked me on the phone why I want to come to the class. I told her it was because I need to learn some new songs. I’m sick to death of the songs that I know and I’d like to learn new ones to sing to my kids. I don’t sight read music all that well: I have to hear it first. She thought that was funny.

We’re finishing eating lunch. 
Asher clearly has to poop. 
He is covered in pesto sauce: oily and dotted with bits of basil leaves.
I clean him up, but just barely.
I rush him to the potty.
We’re in time.
He does his thing.
From the backyard, we hear screams of agony.
It’s Lucas and he’s hurt himself.
I leave Asher on the potty and run outside to Lucas.
He is crying and limping.
He is dressed as a cowboy.
He tripped over a garden hose and fell and hurt his knee.
I pull up his pant leg to survey the damage.
No biggie: no blood.
I tell Lucas that we’ll get the booboo bag (ice-pack thingy).
I hear another scream and crying.
I rush back to Asher.
He has crawled off the potty toward the bed.
He is wedged between my bed and his co-sleeper. 
His bare bottom is hanging down and he's grasping onto the edge of the bed.
The potty is upturned.
I pick up the baby and place him on the changing table pad.
I look over at the co-sleeper.
It has Asher poops all over it.
I clean Asher’s bottom, dress him, and put him down on the floor.
He is fine now.
I clean the co-sleeper.
I clean the potty.
I clean my hands.
I clean up lunch.
I ask Lucas how his knee is now.
He says it is all healed.
I scrub the poop off Asher’s talking teddy bear.
I clean my hands again.
I sit down at the computer to write this.
Asher is chewing on the cord.
Cowboy Lucas is being eaten by a 5-foot-long boa constrictor.
It is a perfectly normal afternoon.
The End. 

Eating a steak and salad dinner
Drinking a glass of red wine for dessert
Reading to Lucas about dinosaurs before bed

He is so completely 5. It's beautiful. Sometimes I just want to freeze him because he is so completely perfect. I hope I can remember moments like this when I am old.

Asher is 11 months old! I know! It's just as amazing to me as it is to you!

He is into everything now, just as expected. He especially loves the wires under my desk, the Christmas tree ornaments and lights, and his brother's teensy-tiny stuff. The Holy Grail of household items is the cordless phone, which lights up with blue light when you press any button to activate it. This is the Be All and End All of Things Asher Shouldn't Play With. I worry that he'll call 911 or China or something. If you take the phone away from him, he screams at you. If he knows it's nearby, he's unstoppable like a Sherman tank: He slowly bowls over anything in the way to get at the coveted phone.

We are very happy to see that Asher is indeed signing now. It was kind of hard to tell at first whether his gestures were intentional or random, but we are now certain that he is signing “more,” “milk,” which for Asher doubles for “mama,” and “eat.” (These are typically the first signs to appear.) We think that he is also signing “all done” and maybe “water,” too. It's exciting to see this communication happening! There's so much we have to talk about. I've expanded my signing in our daily interactions to include many other signs, including (and here I'll dispense with those pesky quotation marks), play, help, please, boy, girl, baby, sleep, diaper change, mama, daddy, grandma, grandpa, apple, lion, bird, dog, and others that I'm forgetting to mention here. Asher's signing will come gradually for a few more months, then at around 14 months or so, it should ramp up to dozens and dozens of signs. Then we'll really be able to discuss the meaning of life!

Christmas was exciting and a little challenging for Asher, as his normal routine was knocked out of whack. However, having Ian home for a week and a half was wonderful. Asher really enjoys daddy's being around.  We have lots of new and groovy toys for him. Unfortunately, a number of them make music/noise. Those toys may find their way over to the grandmas' houses. I'm not cruel for taking toys away from my baby: I'm actually saving him from the part of my personality that goes batshit crazy listening to the same badly executed toy jingle. That mommy isn't the nice mommy. Better to keep her appeased.

Last week I worked three and a half days at the magazine. Due to Asher's proclivity to investigate his environment so thoroughly as to taste everything he comes across, I thought it best to leave him with babysitters instead of taking him with me. Sadly, those days halcyon take-baby-to-work days are done. Ian stayed home with him and Lucas one day (Ian's last vacation day), Grandma VoVo had the boys the next day, and the Bs watched them for a while on Friday. Then, on Monday, Grandma had them again for a half day. All reports indicate that Asher really doesn't give a damn about the breast milk that I conscientiously pump for him. All he does is chew on the bottle's nipple, grasping it in his incisors and pulling it out until it goes snap! (Fortunately, this is not something he does to my nipples.) Basically, the bottle is a novelty, a game—not an acceptable conveyance for yummy and nutritious mama milk. Nor is the cup any better. He just doesn't want it. He's eating plenty of other foods to make it through the day without the milk, but if I don't continue to pump when we're apart, then my milk supply will reduce, which isn't what I want yet because Asher still nurses before each nap and once or twice throughout the day and at least twice in the night. Anyway, the good news is that he reportedly does fine without me when I've gone to work, which is a relief to hear. He doesn't sleep too well, though.

Asher really likes music. He rocks back and forth any time he hears music of any type, for any duration. Today we had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. The music was peppy and fast, and Asher doubled-timed his rocking. We all laughed and he laughed too and kept right on boogying. 

He's up to five teeth now. A few days after Christmas he got his second top middle incisor, making four teeth. Last Saturday we noticed that the one beside it had popped through too. Yay, Baby! Only 15 more to go! He only rarely bites me while nursing now; he seems to have gotten the idea that doing so is verboten. The only time I have ever yelled at him was for biting my nipple. It seems to have done the trick. However, Asher will happily gnaw on another body part if I (or anyone else) sit still long enough. For a while, we heard him grinding the top and bottom teeth together, which was a creepy sound to say the least. He would grind and grind, and then look up at you and grin. 

Thanks in part to the teeth (even though they are all in the front), he is able to eat more foods. He occasionally eats small clumps of scrambled eggs. Last night he ate a whole green bean. Sometimes I get a bit of tofu down his throat. I've made him nutritious and yummy baby food that he absolutely cannot abide. The beautiful beet puree didn't go over well. Nor did the parsnip, tilapia, and chedder concoction. (That kinda bummed me out. I really thought it was tasty!) He resists many other foods still, and yet, I catch him crawling around on the floor picking up nuggets of who-knows-what and eating them. Babies are gross, did I mention that before? I just sigh, try to ensure that it's not glass or metal or choky beads or something equally dangerous, and then pray that it was some foodlike substance. 

People sometimes tease me, saying “Ah! It's the second kid. Anything goes now! You're not running around sanitizing everything!” Which is not exactly fair because I didn't sanitize much when Lucas was small either—not because I wasn't a nervous mommy. I certainly was a WRECK of a nervous mommy. But I am still and was then generally opposed to cleaning on principle. I used to clean off Lucas's dropped pacifiers by popping them in my own mouth. I don't do that for Asher. I know better now. Now I just dust it off on my jeans and pop it back in his mouth. (I can justify my behavior: My Uncle Dentist says that if you can keep your child's mouth from being inoculated with the germs that cause caries that are present in adult mouths, you might prevent tooth decay.)

I probably have more to say, but I can't think of it right now. I'm pooped and ready for bed—at 8:30 p.m.
     

Hello Darlings! 

We will be throwing a Fabulous First Birthday Party for the Littlest Wilson at 11 a.m. on Sunday, February 3. Friends and family are invited, so by all means, if you feel like watching a silly baby boy eat cake for the very first time, please come and share this special celebration with us! We will serve lunch and punch, and other stuff that doesn’t rhyme with lunch.

Who: All our beautiful peeps and family members who like our kiddos

What: First Birthday Party for Asher Donovan

Where: Villa Wilsonia, Fair Oaks, CA

When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Why: Because Asher is super cute, and because we had a big party when Baby Lucas turned 1 back in ’03

Wishes: We would be excited and grateful if guests would bring a poem, blessing, message, prophesy, or observation to/about Baby Asher to write in his special Blessing Book. No other gifts are needed. All we need is LOVE!

Please RSVP by January 30!:   Nine One Six, Nine Six Seven, Seven Zero Four Six, or email me via Sarabella at comcast dot net

K, Bye! XXOOXOXO
 

Hello Darlings!

We will be throwing a Fabulous First Birthday Party for the Littlest Wilson at 11 a.m. on Sunday, February 3. Friends and family are invited, so by all means, if you feel like watching a silly baby boy eat cake for the very first time, please come and share this special celebration with us! We will serve lunch and punch, and other stuff that doesn’t rhyme with lunch.

Who: All our beautiful peeps and family members who like our kiddos

What: First Birthday Party for Asher Donovan

Where: Villa Wilsonia

When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Why: Because Asher is super cute, and because we had a big party when Baby Lucas turned 1 back in ’03

Wishes: We would be excited and grateful if guests would bring a poem, blessing, message, prophesy, or observation to/about Baby Asher to write in his special Blessing Book. No other gifts are needed. All we need is LOVE!

Please RSVP by January 30!:   Nine One Six, Nine Six Seven, Seven Zero Four Six, or email me via Sarabella at comcast dot net

K, Bye! XXOOXOXO