why i'm voting republican this november

um, so it's tuesday

and that's about all i've got.  maternity leave is blissful.  and i've been holding off on posting because i feel like i can't post without new pictures, so i had planned to do a photo shoot with the little one this afternoon but she seems to be interested in other things.  like napping.  and Napping.  also, nappinG.

we had her 2.5 week checkup yesterday and she's doing beautifully.  after getting down to a low weight of 6lbs even, eleven days later she's up to 7lbs 9oz, which according to the pediatrician is about an ounce a day.  i'm not going to check his math.  the whole 12-oz-in-a-lb thing totally throws me off because my feeble mind can only think in tens.  at any rate, the pediatrician proclaimed that to be "terrific weight gain," and we don't have to go back again until she's two months old.

between now and then i've got to get down to business and figure out what kind of vaccination schedule i'm going to do.  i've pretty much decided i'm going to do the bare minimum and decline what i think are unnecessary or unnecessarily risky vaccines, so now i have to figure out which vaccines fall into which category.  vaccines are a great concept, but i've seen vaccine injuries first-hand and i'm not going to expose her to any risk that isn't very, very well warranted.  i mean, it's not like when i was a kid and you got your dip/tet and were done with it - they've got a vaccine for EVERYTHING now, and they're not all so well-researched IMHO.  so we'll only be vaccinating for serious illnesses and not everylittlething. 

oh, and the nurse at the pediatrician's office keeps mispronouncing her name.  write it on her chart!  it is extraordinarily annoying and also somewhat worrisome to me.  i think we chose a beautiful name for our daughter spelled in the traditional way, but i genuinely hope we haven't saddled her with a lifetime of American mispronunciation.

Kitten *is* beginning to settle into a pretty regular schedule of waking up to feed about every 2 hours, give or take thirty minutes.  i'm breastfeeding her on demand, so this gets a little exhausting, particularly between approximately midnight and six a.m.  i have never seen so many consecutive sunrises in my life.  in fact, i've probably never seen ANY consecutive sunrises in my life, because in my previous life if i was up THAT early, then the next day you could guarantee i'd be sleeping in.  so in order to maintain my sanity i have *not* been looking at the clock the last few days because i really don't want to know how much sleep i'm [not] getting.  it's not like there's anything i can do to remedy the situation, anyway.  thank god for naps.  naps are goooood.

i haven't started pumping yet, nor have i introduced her to a bottle, because i wanted to prolong both of those things for as long as possible.  but last night J pointed out that next thursday (her one-month birthday), we have tickets to see conor oberst and jenny lewis at the cain's.  we bought these tickets when i was 7 or 8 months pregnant and i was *so* excited about it at the time, thinking, oh, she'll be a month old by then and i'll be pumping, i can leave her for a couple of hours and get out of the house, it will be good.  but when J mentioned last night, we need to line up a sitter for next thursday for Princess... and Kitten, my heart about dropped out of my chest.  noooooooo!    

it's not that i don't have a cadre of sitters who i trust and who are clamoring at a chance to watch her (hi mom! hi sis! you guys work this out between yourselves!).  and it's not like i haven't stolen away here and there while she's been napping to run to the grocery store or do whatever errand.  but the idea of having to get her used to a bottle in the next week and then actually leave her with someone and she might wake up while i'm gone and be fussy and no one knows how to take care of her like i do she needs me!  it's all a total new-mom cliche, but that's not stopping it from putting a great big lump in my throat as i type this.

so that's what's going on in our little world.  i'll be transitioning back into work around the first of october, which is only two weeks away, which is crazy fast, but that's the bed i made for myself when i took maternity leave early before she was born.  i have done plenty of beating myself up about that (in fact, i was beating myself up about it as i was doing it), but the bottom line is that when i think about how i felt physically around that time, it was my only choice.  i had to do it for my health and sanity, so i will make do with the rest of my leave, be thankful that J has several weeks of leave to stay home with her once i go back, and the rest will work itself out.  especially since mom and my sister are both teachers, and the public school system has such beautifully liberal winter break schedules, so there will be quite a few days between now and the end of the year when we'll be able to keep her out of daycare.  and also i won't be full-time right away. 

so that's all for now.  chance of pictures later: 63%.

with mom this afternoon

big arm, little arm

she had bruises on her feet when she was born from sucking on them in the womb. they were up by her face in all the ultrasounds. when she was born she flipped her feet up by her face and freaked my mom out. she still likes to sleep that way.

the 65 mpg Ford the US can't have

Ford's Fiesta ECOnetic gets an astonishing 65 mpg, but the carmaker can't afford to sell it in the U.S.

life as three

well, i'm not as sleep deprived as i thought i would be.  the first week was hard, there were some tears, but it gets better every night.  Kitten is eating more each feeding, which means more time between feedings, which means more sleep!  she will even go for 4 hours if she's comfortable, after which point i have to wake her up to eat.  

she does not like her bassinet, however, and won't sleep in it for more than 45 minutes at a stretch, so she keeps ending up in bed with me.  and NO lectures about co-sleeping.  i've already heard it from my cares-for-infants-for-a-living sister, who has been my go-to person on all things baby care:

me: "is co-sleeping really that bad?"  

erin: [prolonged blank stare] "no."  [long pause]  "okay, now do you want to know what i really think?

we've even had some successful outings with Kitten.  mostly to lowe's for home improvement items because J and i are utterly insane and decided to put our house on the market to see if we get any bites.  we are quickly outgrowing this house.  we are in no rush to move, but if the right buyer comes along we'll be happy to oblige.  especially since there seems to be a number of homes on the market right now that fit what we're looking for, so i feel confident that the right one will be waiting for us when it's time.

but that also means that alllllll those home improvement projects we've been meaning to do for forever must be finished before the realtor comes to take pictures for the listing later this week.  ack!  

this house was a "flipper" when J bought it in 2002, and previously we had installed new:

• privacy fence
• (energy efficient) heating & air
• (low-flow) toilets
• countertops and plumbing fixtures in the kitchen
• (energy efficient) windows and doors
• (energy efficient) light fixtures in the hallway, dining room, and kitchen
• painted the siding outside (grey-beige with white trim)
• put in a vegetable garden, and
• tore down this awful uninsulated carpeted half-room in the garage and turned it back into, well, the garage.  

that sounds like a lot, but it was stretched out over three years.

in the last three days we:

• replaced the bathroom sinks, plumbing fixtures, and light fixtures
• laid new bathroom floors
• painted the bathrooms and the kitchen (ultrasellable khaki/taupe, for those who care)
• caulked and painted the new windows and doors, and
• had a new (insulated) automatic garage door installed

later this week we will be getting a new roof, courtesy of force majeure and the nice people at state farm insurance.  and we did it all with a two-week-old baby, who slept through the whole nightmarish mess in her well-ventilated swing.  i'm glad the weather's been nice.  and i'm glad Kitten's a happy baby.

Kitten's done great going out so far.  for her first outing we went to lowe's, and we tried out the infantino slingrider:

as my friend maria mentioned, this sling is sort of hot, but it is roomy and Kitten seemed to like it a lot.  she slept the whole time we walked around lowe's.  then we went to chili's to eat and she slept through dinner passed out in her carseat.  then we went to vintage stock.  still sleeping.  we got home and i woke her up to eat.  perfect baby!

our second outing (again to lowe's), we tried out a hotsling that maria loaned to me:

it fits more snugly and Kitten liked it, too.  except for the part where she spit up and it ran down the inside and soaked through all over my shirt before i could get to it with the burp cloth so we spent the rest of the outing sitting in the jeep waiting for J to finish up.  this is life with an infant.  

**confidential to maria: i promise i will wash it before i return it to you.

we also went to the ped's last week and aislinn got a good report.  after getting down to 6lbs .08oz from her birth weight of 6lbs 11oz, by the time she had her first peds appointment she was back up to 6lbs 7oz.  yay!  she had some monstrous diaper rash, though, which came on seemingly overnight and with a vengeance.  we followed her ped's advice to stop using the wet wipes and switch to kleenex soaked with a little baby oil and to use desitin or boudreaux's butt paste religiously, and it's almost gone.  poor little kiddo, though.  owwwww.

and if i were a better blogger, here is where new pictures of Kitten would go, but she's starting to fuss in her swing and i'm craving kool-aid, so you'll have to imagine it for now.

[picture of super adorable baby]

bristol's choice

republicans and the illusion of reproductive choice

by dahlia lithwick, slate.com

direct link

In announcing that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant this week, GOP vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin used this puzzling locution: "We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby." Pundits were quick to point out that Bristol's "decision" must have been at least somewhat constrained by her mom's position—as articulated in November 2006—that she would oppose an abortion for her daughters, even if they had been raped. Palin is an outspoken advocate of parental veto; she called the Alaska Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down that state's parental-consent statute "outrageous." So what exactly, one wonders, was young Bristol permitted to decide?

John McCain led us through this same hall of mirrors in 2000 when asked what he would do if his then-15-year-old daughter, Meghan, were pregnant. "The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel," he said at the time. Yet McCain also says that "Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned" and told Tim Russert he favors "a constitutional amendment to ban all abortions." The GOP ticket may want to preserve the illusion that their daughters get to do the deciding, but the GOP platform would bar these women from choosing to have an abortion, even if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. John McCain has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe.

There are legitimate reasons to differ over the morality of abortion. There is also a legitimate disagreement over the fitness of a 16- or 17-year-old to decide to terminate her pregnancy. So while the GOP position on abortion doesn't treat teenagers as grownups, it does show a growing inclination to treat grownup women as little girls. As important as the decision to end a pregnancy is, the matter of who gets to decide may be even more important. And that decision is increasingly being taken out of the hands of women and put into the hands of strangers.

In 1973, the Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade that the right of privacy "is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." It was an announcement that women—in consultation with their doctors and subject to limitations—should be free to make this difficult choice themselves. When the court reaffirmed that principle in 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, it again acted to protect the liberty and autonomy of the women doing the choosing.

Today there is renewed doubt over whether grown women are fit to decide to abort a pregnancy at all. That is why Sarah Palin would not allow abortion in the event of maternal rape or a threat to maternal health but only with a "doctor's determination that the mother's life would end if the pregnancy continued." That is not the mother doing the deciding; it's her doctor. Presumably if they differ on this question, the mother loses.

And as we drift further down the road from Roe, it's clear we don't trust doctors anymore, either. That's why the South Dakota legislature forces physicians to read from a script before performing an abortion. Among other questionable declarations, physicians must now deliver the warnings that abortion leads to an increased risk of "depression and related psychological distress" and "suicide ideation and suicide." As Emily Bazelon has reported, most doctors delivering this warning do not believe it, as it is supported by dubious data. Nonetheless, the law went into effect in July, suggesting that legislators, not doctors, know what's best for women.

Justice Anthony Kennedy gave huge currency to the argument that women cannot be trusted with the decision to abort in his majority opinion in a 2007 decision banning a type of late-term abortion. Relying on yet more equivocal data, Kennedy lavished concern on women who regret their abortions, whose "distress" may someday lead to "severe depression and loss of esteem." It's a long road indeed from Roe when a woman's private choices about her future and her body are subordinated to Justice Kennedy's 20/20 psychological hindsight.

Which brings us to disturbing new regulations proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services—rules that ostensibly seek to protect the "right of conscience" of pharmacists and other health workers who don't want to participate in abortions. As William Saletan has argued, the current draft regulations—while an improvement upon the original—draw no explicit distinction between medical workers who refuse to provide abortions and those who oppose dispensing contraception. In these ambiguous cases the decision-maker may well be the medical-service provider herself, depending on what her own conscience permits. If these regulations go into effect, not only can your pharmacist refuse to give you the morning-after pill, he might deny you the month-before pill as well. At which point it's not just the judges, state legislatures, Supreme Court justices from Sacramento, or doctors who know better than women what's best for women. It's the pharmacist behind the counter, too.

Every time someone else in the decision-making chain gets the power to insert himself or herself and conscience between a woman and her fetus, the range of women's choices contracts. But women need not defer to anyone's "better" judgment when they pull the lever at the voting booth.

John McCain and Sarah Palin must pretend their daughters can make an autonomous decision about abortion with a little wise counsel. Yet both have also made it clear that they dream of an America in which all women—including Bristol Palin and Meghan McCain—may have a decision to make about an unintended pregnancy, but only one choice.

in my completely objective and unbiased opinion

Kitten is the cutest baby in the history of the universe.

sleepy

foot

yawn