Yopping?

Our blog has a silly name. One hazard of coming late to blogger is that the sensible designations have already been taken... but we like being silly, so I can't disclaim too much.

Here's the backstory:

For those of you who don't know/remember, Dr. Seuss' "Horton Hears a Who!" is about Horton the Elephant saving a speck of dust from annihilation because he hears voices coming from it -- the Whos of Who-ville. None of the other animals can hear anything, so they decide Horton is insane and -- for the elephant's own good, of course -- plan to boil the dust speck in beezlenut oil. Warned of the danger, the Whos start shouting and playing instruments in an attempt to be heard... but it's only when one tiny boy calls out "Yop!" at the end that it works.

I thought that the Sprout might be the reason I was feeling odd one day, but I'd just gotten a negative result on a pregnancy test the week before. I made it clear (to thin air) on my drive home from work that anyone who wanted to be heard was going to have to yop. So. The next time I checked, s/he did.

A person's a person, no matter how small.

(Beezlenut! Rah rah!)

Photo session #2

Hey look, some more recent pictures of Beth! She didn't believe that there had been any change over the past few weeks until we looked at them side by side, but sure enough, I believe we have transitioned into Baby Belly. Go sprout! Way to co-opt your mother's abdomen!

Father-kid chats

Every time I talk to the sprout about computer science, Beth gets the giggles.


(posted from ze phone)

Why doesn't Jony Ive design baby products?

This post should surprise no one. When we found out about the sprout, the first way that I was able to feel connected to the process was to sort out the gadgetry. Cribs and strollers and diapers and bottles and slings and toys and what contains lethal undisclosed chemicals and which things murder puppies during their construction and bed linens and mobiles and so on. You know what I've learned?

The mainstream baby industry thinks we're all from 1950's central Pennsylvania.

For some reason, every item needs to have carved (or molded, if it's plastic) flourishy bits. Wood shall be painted white, any fabric shall have piping on the edges in a) pink or b) blue. Infant toys shall be plastic, and shall represent something only recognizable to adults (so, for example, a tree-themed mobile shall be made up of abstract line drawings of trees). Well, the result of this is that I very quickly went to the "baby underground," and it turns out that it's a lot like the musical or technological underground; that's where all the cool stuff is happening. I'm going to probably do these subtopics in more detail later, but here's another list of what I've discovered.

1) Etsy is the bomb. Seriously. Imagine the best craft show you've ever been to, combined with Amazon. It's glorious. The sprout will not be raised in a world designed by the executives at Graco and Toys 'R' Us (although, I have to say, I do love Toys 'R' Us), but rather by small-scale craftspeople who make things well. This is what the internets ought to be able to give us. Freedom from the big box stores.

2) Cribs are quite a racket. I defy the Buy Buy Baby salespeople to explain to me why their $1000 rectangular crib with the removable side is better than my (sturdier!) $130 rectangular crib with the removable side.

2a) Ikea is an exception to the big box store theory. Inexpensive, and hey, guess what? When the US started stricter safety and environmental regulations on baby stuff a couple of years ago, Ikea didn't have to change anything at all; their testing methods were already past the new regulations.

3) The sprout is going to have some hilarious onesies.

4) Honesty in materials is important. This is actually why the post is titled the way it is. When Jonathan Ive (Apple's head designer) was interviewed about their new laptop designs, what he said was that, in all of their products, they strive for honesty in materials. Don't paint plastic to look like metal; use metal. Essentially, use the characteristics that you need to determine what the thing should be made of. Along those lines, it is encouraging to see what the baby underground is doing with wooden toys. Taking advantage of the fact that wood is really pretty all by itself, is easily sculptable, and that it has greater heft than plastic, it turns out that you can make really satisfying baby toys out of it. I had no idea! And finally, the stroller. If we can manage the cost, our stroller/car seat thing is going to embody this philosophy. Bare metal frame, true one-handed opening and closing, and a giant circle in which to place the seat, rather than two tiny rails that have to be lined up in order to get the thing to fit. If BMW or Apple designed a stroller, this would be it -- although the one major difference is that there's almost no branding anywhere on the thing. W00t!

Power to the baby underground.

Peculiarities

Some things I have discovered so far about (this) pregnancy:

- Sometimes one will discover one's wife munching on rice cakes at the end of the bed around 4 am.
- Mood swings are not as advertised. It's not that they're more dramatic moods, they're just much much faster.
- The storylines of early episodes of Scrubs are, apparently, perfect metaphors for one's own life.
- It means I have to change the cat litter.
- Eating the soup directly out of the pan while it's heating on the stove is a great way to avoid unnecessary delays in feeding sprout.

(posted from ze phone)

Photo sessions #0 and #1

For all of you belly enthusiasts, here are some pictures of Beth at about 7 weeks, and about 11 weeks. It's pretty amazing that there's already a difference -- the sprout is already settling in. I think we should all agree that the last picture captures a dramatic look toward the future... which seems to be slightly upwards.

Posting!

So... here we go!

There’s not much to tell at this stage; I’m tired and I have no stamina, which tends to elicit chuckles from those veteran ladies who’ve gone through all this before. I’m also hungry. I submit that as a blanket statement. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and go on a feeding rampage.

We like our doctor. She’s cute and sassy and has an infectious belly laugh. We still haven’t made the final midwife-vs.-doctor determination, though (either way, we’d deliver at the same hospital, but we’d have to visit a different office to see the midwives. It’s far, and in a headache-inducing, high-traffic area. Still pondering). Our hospital has one of the highest rates of natural childbirth in the country, so in either case, it looks like we’ll have input/options.

I’ve been knitting delightfully small things. Matt’s been researching equipment (strollers, cribs, little bathing basins). He’s taken over mowing the lawn (!) and dealing with cat litter. I kinda miss mowing; not so much the litter. Other things I miss are coffee, wine, bleu cheese, taking a walk without having to nap afterwards, and my trademark enigmatic calm (ha). Things I’m enjoying are: video diaries, giggling over the silly things we could name the baby, sleeping in without guilt, new food discoveries, regressing to childhood with TNG marathons, and knowing what my Next Big Project is going to be.

(Hint: it will have feety pajamas.)