Update for the Grandparents

(Being an entry on information that very few people are going to care about except immediate family)

Ben went to the doctor today. He is 24.75 inches long. He weighs 14 pounds and 2 ounces. He received 2 evil evil shots into his legs. All is well!

First Halloween!

Here is the Bug dressed up as a pea pod. We took him to a Halloween parade on Sunday. Which -- as Steve and I compromised our own Mobster and Gun Moll costumes to carry a baby, all while oohing and aahing over all the cute kids and thinking up how we would celebrate Halloween NEXT year -- made me realize that I have made the transition to Mom with a capital "M."

Which is appropriate, I suppose, since Monday marked the two-year anniversary of when I met Steve. Who knew how much could change in two years?

Except that I did still show up at the High Heel Race
dressed as a drag queen as I did two years ago. I have never once succeeded in convincing anyone that I am really a man dressed as a woman, but I think I would have nailed it this year since, in addition to my sequined, black dress, I wore a wig to cover my hair, a boa to cover my "adam's apple", boots to cover my calves, and gloves to cover my hands. I'm sure it would have worked this year -- if it weren't for the Bug sitting in a bright-blue sling wrapped around my chest. . .

Adventures in Urban Parenting #3

Steve and I are trying to give ourselves a date a week sans the Bug and this week's trip was to the Kennedy Center to see the opera Don Giovanni. We were given an opera series as a wedding present, but this particular show snuck up on us -- we noticed it on our calendar only at the beginning of this week. So we hustled and got Elizabeth and Catherine to watch Ben for the night and we got dressed up to go. Steve and I arrived just as the curtain was going up, so the usher hurried us down the aisle with a flashlight to our row. There were two empty seats right on the end, so we sat there, rather than annoy everyone by making them stand up to get to our proper seats in the center.

It was a really good first half (though I kinda hate the character of Don Giovanni -- he's a jerk) and after intermission Steve and I went back to our actual seats. We scootched by the correct occupants who had claimed our former seats to get to the center of the row. . . where we found two people sitting. We went through the usual machinations: "Are you in seats 115 and 116? Are you sure you're in row T?" and then I looked at our tickets.

They were for November 16.

I had written the wrong day down on the calendar.

We left -- which was a blessing since we were pretty tired anyway -- and will go back for the second half in a few weeks. Which is actually kind of ideal. We get two dates out of one, and only need babysitters for a few hours at a time. Perfect!

Adventures in Urban Parenting #2

I have kindly refrained from giving you the sleep updates lately-- partially because any time I write something up here, everything backfires and the whole routine gets thrown off. Regardless, things have gotten back on track after the disruption of the travel to Iowa, and Ben is back to sleeping well at night. This week Steve and I were just getting a bit more sleep ourselves when we woke up at 1 AM due to the extremely loud car radio playing in front of our house. After 15 minutes, we realized this wasn't simply a person parking loudly, but someone who had camped in front of our house and was sitting in their car.

We walked down the stairs and peered out. We couldn't tell if it was a woman or a man in the car, and since the light was on and it was clear that the person wasn't planning on moving, we decided not to confront them but just to call the police. While on the phone with the police, our next-door-neighbor Sharee, wearing her nighttime sweats, walked out of her house and asked politely if the person would mind turning down the radio. Well, it turns out it was a woman in the car, and it turns out she did mind.

Which she made very clear, very loudly, with many colorful curse words which I will not repeat here. But the gist of her rant as she got out of the car to yell at us was this (and I'd type it all in caps to get across the sense of just how loud and obnoxious she was, but that would just be loud and obnoxious to read): "I can't get a parking spot in front of my house and I get a ticket every day and I've lived her all my life and my parents are both lawyers and my father is a professor at Howard and I've lived here all my life but I can't park in front of my own house, so you can all suffer. All you renters. I own my house. And I can't park in front of it and I get tickets all the time and so go ahead and call the police because I'm sitting here and you can all suffer and my parents are lawyers and my father is a professor at Howard and I get a ticket every day. . ." Repeat ad infinitum. . . or at least until the police came.

The police were there within two minutes, which was gratifying. We had five cars with their lights blinking parked in front of our house. I peered out between the blinds of our second floor window feeling like the neighborhood gossip and reported the action to Steve. He had gotten back into bed, but he didn't really need me to report since the woman was so loud he could hear everything. Which was all the same things she'd said to us with fewer "Suck my #$(*&%(*&" exclamations thrown in.

The police officers said things like: "Stop yelling" and "Have you been drinking?" and "No, I don't want to see all the tickets you've gotten" and "Can you hear how crazy you sound?" and "So your father is a cop and a lawyer and a professor at Howard? Pick one." and "Well, it's good that your mother is a lawyer so you won't have to pay for one."

That last comment was delivered after she failed to walk a straight line and they arrested her for DUI. All told it took 5 cop cars, 45 minutes, and an amazing amount of noise.

And, most importantly, I'm very happy to say that the Bug slept through it all.

The Bug is 12 Weeks Old

He's not quite three months old yet, but he's getting OLD. And big. Just a reminder of what he looked like 12 weeks ago -- here's a picture of a day-old Chalkley with his Grandpa Beeson.

Four Generations #2

At last, here is the second four-generation photo from our Iowa trip. In chronological order: Ednabelle Smith, Patricia Smith Melton, Karen Fox, Benjamin Beeson.

Cute Boy

I still have a bunch of pics to put up from Iowa from the visit to my grandmother's, but in the meantime here's a cute one from this Sunday. He's turned into a very alert kid -- which means he smiles more and laughs a lot . . . and that he cries more.

Emotions are good and all, but must the bad ones come with the good? What I need is some great Victorian era parenting book on how to teach children they are only ever allowed to show nice emotions in public. All hail suppression!

Things In Our Future, #2

Tales from the parenting trenches:

A professor friend of one of my friends has begun to rue his and his wife's outspoken liberal viewpoints as they see they daughter mimic them for her own agenda. At age 5, she wanted another bowl of ice cream, and her parents said she couldn't have anymore. She began to stomp her feet and yell: "My body, my choice! My body, my choice!"

Four Generations

In chronological order: Torges Halsne, Luana Beeson, Steve Beeson, and Benjamin Beeson (wearing a bee onesie -- get it?)

Ben Meets His Second Cousins

From the left: Regan (Steve's cousin Kent's daughter), Ava and Lauren (Steve's cousin Susan's daughters), and Ben.
It makes me feel very warm and fuzzy that Ben already has all this family.

First Airplane Ride!

Ben on his father's lap, with my Mom watching, on the Bug's first plane ride. We went to Iowa last weekend so he could meet his great-grandmother (my grandmother) and his great-grandfather (Steve's grandfather) who live 45 minutes away from each other in central Iowa. Ben was amazingly good on the plane both going out and coming back, which kind of made up for the fact that -- after having his sleep schedule totally disrupted by the trip -- he cried inconsolably for hours and hours the night before we left for home. But, I have to say, he's even cute when he screams. . .

Things In Our Future

I am, of course, obsessed with other people's parenting stories now. The ones I hear are always so cute and so funny. . . up until I remember that I too am going to be that parent struggling with that kid any day now. One of my favorite recent stories:

Aries's friend Amy is trying to give her 2-year-old daughter a lot of choices these days at a time when she mostly says "no" to anything. Amy makes it clear that whether her daughter eats dinner is not up for discussion, but she may choose what she wishes to eat. Frustrated after a round of questions -- "Do you want to eat chicken or grilled cheese? Broccoli or peas?" -- that had all gotten her nowhere, Amy finally sighed: "Fine! Do you want to eat worms for dinner or grubs?"

"No worms, Mommy! No worms!" her daughter yelled back. "Only grubs!"

Alright, then.

Amy made her some Kraft Macaroni and Grubs for dinner.

New Clothes

When he was born, I stuffed a lot of clothes that were too big for The Bug in the back of his closet. Now that he's weighing in at a whopping 12 lbs 6 oz and is almost 10 weeks old, I went through everything we had and have added the 3-month-old clothes to his layette. I also rediscovered the wonderful clothes he received as gifts and inherited as hand-me-downs -- and, wow, are there some cute ones. We have a jean jacket! We have a overalls! We have a kimono! We have a brown vest suit!

All of which is to say that -- contrary to appearances -- this is actually a photo of his incredibly sharp blue sailor suit, not the fact that his hair is now three inches long and still sticks straight up into the air.

Sleep Update

Do you want to hear about the various ways we're training his sleep habits? No, no I'm sure you don't. I'm sure you don't actually care about the different techniques and routines and attempts. But since it's all I think about these days (far more so than necessary, considering the fact that he sleeps more than many kids his age as far as I can tell) and since people do keep asking how he's sleeping. . . here is the update.

a) I have a new book I'm in love with:

Sleeping Through the Night, Revised Edition: How Infants, Toddlers, and Their Parents Can Get a Good Night's Sleep

It says all the things I've heard before but it says them better and more cohesively. And it also gives a real step by step plan of action that I like. (Also a fantastic chapter on discipline in general. . . that we certainly don't need yet, but that I am going to make every parent I know read.)

b) He is now going to bed at 8 PM (without being nursed first -- so he can learn to fall asleep on his own and replicate that skill when he wakes in the middle of the night -- so he cries for about 7 minutes, which is an improvement over the hour he cried the first time we tried it). We feed him again at 10:30, usually without his waking at all, he just eats with his eyes fastened shut for 15-20 minutes. He sleeps until 5:30 AM.

c) Next step: Get him totally comfy with falling asleep on his own with no crying. . .

Columbus Day Picnic

Auntie Jen shows Chalkley off at a picnic. . . (It's the most au courant accessory. Everybody's wearing one these days.)

Baby-Proofing

In the wide world of new experiences that Steve and I are having, we've discovered that we must have a screwdriver on hand at all times. This is because everything battery-operated for the baby has a screwed-down lid so, I suppose, the two-month old can't pry off the cover and . . . well, that's what we couldn't figure out. As Steve said, "It's not like you can really get electrocuted from a double A battery." We wondered aloud about the variety of things that seem overly baby-proofed and Steve added: "I mean it's only a 9-volt that can give you even a bit of a jolt if you hold it to your tongue."

He paused and began to reminisce: "We had a contest once to see who could hold a 9-volt to their tongue for the longest. I won. I did it for about a minute. The next day I couldn't move my tongue at all."

Remembering stories of how, as a child, he and his older brother used to play catch with firecracker-laden model airplanes in a very real version of "hot potato" I asked, "You did this with Brad?"

"Oh, no," he said. "This was just a couple years ago."

Note to Self: In addition to teaching kid to not talk to strangers, to look both ways before crossing the street, and that he may never ever become a journalist in Iraq, teach him not to suck on batteries.