Somehow I've managed to resist running from the house screaming for a full year.

I turned 35 this month, but I still feel like a ninteteen-year-old English major. I really do.

Just, you know... more tired.

Thought I'd update you today on what a 35-year-old does to entertain herself. First of all, after discovering some knitting time in my daily routine, I basically went crackers and started like 20 different projects. (Not exaggerating. Are you and I friends on Ravelry, Dear Reader? If so, go click on my name and have a good laugh! How many Norwegian Baby Caps have I started this month? That's right, six.)

I've also turned into Crazy Birthday Party Mommy and am throwing a little shindig next weekend to celebrate Bee's birthday. So we have to clean up the wreckage that is our house, and I'll be baking practice cake #2 later tonight BECAUSE I'M A FREAK. The first one, a cake-sized version of the Golden Vanilla cupcake from VCTOTW, came out with a strong baking soda taste. (Cake, Y U NO TASTE GOOD?!) The second cake will be the same recipe, but I'll bust open a brand-new box of baking soda, and probably use potato starch instead of guar gum (GG being what I used in place of corn starch, due to Bee's probably-gone-but-we're-not-sure-and-we-don't-want-her-to-be-writhing-in-pain-on-her-birthday allergy to corn). Confused and a little bored? So are we!

In other news, our almost-one-year-old still doesn't sleep in her crib, and I'm considering just using the damned thing as a big basket to hold all my yarn. (Joking, sort of.) Oh, and Bee still only naps in my lap (which, on the bright side, is how I turn out all those Norwegian Baby Caps). Can't believe we've been living like this for nearly a year, but whatever. Also, all three of us have an evil cold that Bee probably contracted at the local library, during the chaos that was last week's free puppet show.

One more thing. In 2012, I totally want to make an advent calendar. It's going to be based on this one, with design elements from this one (I love the white frame against the black base!) and this one. Wouldn't a combination of boxes and clothespins be cute? And wouldn't it be great if I wouldn't get craft-manic and start all these crazy projects? Yes.

P.S. Ben also had a birthday recently, and I made him a really crappy cake. Honestly, I should have taken a picture. Because gluten is banned from my diet, I haven't baked much in the last year and kinda forgot how.

These Are Days

I hate to say goodbye to this summer. Although a Minnesota September can include a couple of warm, not completely un-summery weeks at its start, we all know the summer truly ends when the pool closes. Which, sadly, is three days from now.*

There were warning signs: most notably, the occasional red or brown oak leaf spied floating in the swimming pool (and Bee’s attempts to pluck those leaves out of the water and cram them, crumbling, into her mouth). And in the waning days of the outdoor swimming season, there are other signs: the exuberant kids in swim-goggles seem a smidge less well-behaved, as if possessed by some unholy instinct to raise as much hell as possible before school resumes. Plus, the lifeguards (who, as my father-in-law aptly noted, are mere children themselves!) seem, generally speaking, to give slightly less of a shit. In the midst of this maelstrom, Bee and I have soaked up the next-to-last rays of sunshine in our suits and sunhats. Many times, I’ve wrapped Bee in a big, soft beach towel and nursed her quietly in the sunshine. It has been so very sweet.

Now I’m contemplating, only slightly prematurely and neurotically, the cold weather that will eventually come. Last winter having sucked so unreservedly, I’m feeling kind of gloomy about the onset of cooler weather followed by REALLY, REALLY FREAKING COLD WEATHER. And snow – oh, God, I don’t even want to think about the snow. Worse yet: although Ben and I find repellent the idea of owning a second car, I’m starting to think it’s the only realistic way for me to avoid being trapped in the house with a one-year-old from November through April, because in our town many sidewalks, and especially the corners near intersections, are virtually impassable when there’s ice and snow on the ground – which is to say, at least five months a year. Some folks don't or can't shovel their walks, and the town's snowplows can't really help but leave giant ice-mounds at intersections. So walking anywhere with a baby in one’s arms is actually kind of dangerous, and I probably needn’t point out that use of a stroller in snowy, icy, unshovelled conditions is not viable. So… I guess we either stay inside all winter, or else we find a used Civic on Craigslist.

Speaking of reluctantly blowing a bunch of cash in order to survive the winter, I’ve decided that the time has come for me to invest in some serious fleece pants and microfiber underthings. You know, like these and these and, ooh, this right here. What’s funny is, the last time I invested in winter warmies of this kind was 2001 or so, and it was in preparation for an Outward Bound trip, if you can even believe that. Me! Mountaineering! Pathfinding! Rappelling down the sheer face of a cliff! Oh, Young Me, I tip my hat to you.

Anyway, those warm clothes, purchased for a crazy adventure in my plucky twenties, did right by me for over a decade. I still have them and I still wear them. Now, though, they’re covered in paint and ink from countless late nights in my studio, and I kind of think I shouldn’t wear them outside of the house anymore (bright side: studio pants!). So I’m trying to screw up the courage to shell out $150 on thermal underwear and such. I have to make provisions now that summer is nearly over, you see (audible sigh). And this time the reason I’m buying outback-grade clothing is not because I'm going to be participating in another wilderness expedition any time soon ever again, but simply because I live in a ridiculous climate. Who would have predicted this back when Ben and I were happily trotting around temperate Seattle wearing band t-shirts and slurping Americanos on Fifteenth? Shit, I didn’t even own a winter coat back then -- at least, not a real one. I definitely did have some sassy vintage things trimmed in faux-fur, but these were coats that would have pretty much led to my death if I'd tried to wear them in Minnesota in winter. And here I am now, a matronly Midwesterner looking for a good deal on fleece pants.

Next time, Dear Reader: more bitching about the climate, and further regrets about the closing of the swimming pool. You won’t want to miss it! Okay, but, no, seriously, I might have some knitting photos next time.

* But you’ll surely be relieved to know that we have exactly enough swim diapers left to go swimming every day this week. High five!

This post is totally not annoying at all.

The vicious beatdown that is new motherhood continues this week with this really fun thing called an allergy elimination diet. Here's how it goes! It's totally fun! First you find out that your poor four-month-old baby is allergic to something you're eating, and that it's causing her an unknowable amount of gastric pain. Delightful! That doesn't make you feel ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE or anything! Then you discover that the doctor has essentially no clue what the allergen might be, and that's just, you know, really encouraging. So you stop eating soy, because, according to the doctor, that's as good a place to start as any. And this is all super-great because you already don't eat eggs, dairy, meat, wheat, or gluten -- so, what's one more ingredient to avoi--OH WAIT SOY IS IN EVERYTHING.

Buuuut, two totally awesome soy-free weeks later, nothing has changed and your poor little baby who never did anything to anyone is still clearly in pain and crying piteously around the clock. Do you feel like kind of a failure as this baby's keeper and protector? Only COMPLETELY. (I told you this was fun!) So, then you eliminate all major allergens from your diet, because that's just a really good time. Why not? Goodbye, tomatoes, citrus, nuts, chocolate, salt, and corn. (Still no eggs, dairy, meat, wheat, or gluten.) Soy is back in the game, but now CORN is the ubiquitous villain appearing in everything that isn't, you know, an organic banana.

And then you compose a cynical, mocking blog post in which you totally feel sorry for yourself, alienating all four of your regular readers and getting on even your own nerves.

Well. Something nicer tomorrow, dears.

Other Babies

It's hard not to notice what Other Babies do. I know that comparisons are odious, but Ben and I are just trying to make sense of things over here. You see, we are given to understand that Other Babies of Bee's age sleep on their own some of the time. They may wake up a few times during the night (or they might just sleep all night), but they don't require being held by a parent in order to sleep -- every nap, and all night long. Every day. Always. While we slurp down cold dinners. (Did I mention we've been doing this for four months??) Other Babies, while enjoying being held, will, we've observed, succumb to occasional non-holding activities, such as chilling in a swing or hanging out lookin' at a mobile or something. Not ours. (Oh, and she hates being carried in the Balboa baby sling, the BabyBjörn, or our Moby wrap* -- nope, nothing but good, old-fashioned, prop-free, forearm-shattering cuddling for our girl.)

And evidently Other Babies can sometimes be shuttled about on errands and visits! Did you know this?! Today Ben was at the Mall of America on a work errand, and he observed several Other Babies being toted about while their mothers shopped or ate French fries. Oh my god. These infants slept serenely in strollers or watched the world with a contentedness foreign to my baffled husband. Other Babies are positively astonishing.

So, we love our Bee beyond all dearness, but she has extremely intense demands, even for a baby. In addition to only sleeping when being held in our arms, Bee has, at four months old, never once fallen asleep on her own. If we "put her to bed" (HA) after she finally falls asleep in one of our laps, those big, startled eyes fly open as soon as her pajamaed little rear touches the crib mattress. And the poor thing suffers digestive pain and is colicky, so she cries a lot -- often inconsolably for five hours a day. When I say inconsolably, I'm dead serious -- today she screamed in my arms for hours, actually making herself hoarse. (Does this sound like a baby who would simply soothe herself to sleep if left to cry it out alone in her crib? Be serious, people.)

Friends and family have ceased promising us that "it gets better," a phrase Ben and I heard almost daily in Bee's first month or two of life -- from friends, from relatives, from sympathetic neighbors, from random Internet strangers, and from the pediatrician. But it hasn't gotten better. In fact, if the it in "it gets better" represents our unbearable sleeplessness (we are so unimaginably tired!), it has gotten far worse. Ben and I have to take turns sleeping, which means we each get 3-5 hours a night. Any "extra" sleep one of us gets is subtracted directly from the other's. After four months of this, Dear Reader, Ben and I are a little surprised to find ourselves still alive. (Also, you should see the condition of our home. Disgusting! We're afraid to let anyone come over, for fear they will return with a camera crew.)

I can be quite a self-pitying creature when I want to be. (I know, you cannot believe it.) Although friends continue to congratulate me on maintaining my sense of humor, I'm pretty sure any levity you perceive while reading recent entries to this blog can be chalked up to what has been described as my perky writing style, for I assure you, I am quite humorless nowadays. Most days, either Ben or I wonders aloud how much longer we can go on like this, the other generally replying with naught but a dismal shaking of the head.

We don't want any of those Other Babies, though, and surely it's unnecessary for me to qualify today's complaints with assurances that Ben and I adore our spirited, sensitive, and clever little girl. But I feel compelled anyway, lest you become convinced, friends, that we are not grateful for Bee's generally good health and for what we believe to be quite a merry and charming personality (though frequently eclipsed by her physical discomforts and, um, constant shrieking). Being quite an eager and curious girl, Bee resists sleep -- there is so much in this world, you understand, by which to be fascinated. And curiosity and eagerness may someday serve Bee well. But right now -- I will confess it -- we occasionally envy the parents of dull, sleepy babies.

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* Yes, we have three different babywearing options and they have all been rejected outright. Our optimism and buying power begin to wane.

Tired. Crappy.

If you have a baby, do you ever find yourself slipping the words "why won't you ever let me sleep?" sweetly into the silly and otherwise nonsensical songs you make up during endless sessions of bouncing and rocking your kid to (if you are very lucky) sleep? I do. I just really, really want to get more than three hours of sleep in a row. I want it bad.

Thankfully Bee brings tremendous, indescribable joy to our lives, which compensates for the serious and debilitating sleep deprivation and inability to care for ourselves (I just want 3 minutes to put on some lotion and clean my ears!). Outside of the happiness she brings, though, this winter has been fairly disagreeable. I've had one infection after another, along with inexplicable stomach pain, since the day Bee was born. I can't eat wheat without feeling like I just took a cannonball to the tummy. I never leave the house. And speaking of the house, ours is a complete mess, because when I get 45 seconds of hands-free time, I usually use it to brush my teeth, not clean the kitchen counters.*

And, oh yeah, our dog died. It happened so fast, with Ben driving the poor creature to the emergency vet 45 minutes away in the middle of the night yesterday. I wish we'd had a chance to buy her a couple of pork chops and reminisce first, or at least give her a few days of not letting the screen door hit her on the ass every time we let her outside. That dog and I loved antagonizing each other every day, and I'm sad that she's gone. Ben, of course, is more than a bit heartbroken about having to put the dog to sleep; he was the dog's especial favorite, her rock in the stormy sea after agreeing to "watch" her for two homeless kids until they could come back for her (that was twelve years ago). Bella was rightly devoted to Ben, and he, being a gentle man with a gift for caring for creatures great and small, took exemplary care of her. Despite my near-constant bellyaching about the dog's habits and smelliness, she was a good dog.

We are really looking forward to spring.

Left: Pup.
Goodbye, friend.

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* It is no better, and probably slightly worse, for Ben, who also takes care of Bee and gets almost no sleep (sometimes even less than I get), plus has to drive nearly an hour to work and back each day, where he is expected to function like a productive member of society. He does get to drink hot coffee each morning and converse with grownups each day, but those are minor points. I prize my 20-second commute in flannel pajamas at least as much as the talking-to-other-grownups thing.

Take my dog, please

Our dog is the sweetest, best dog in the world. Everyone who meets her loves her. She is loving, gentle, and friendly.

But ever since I became pregnant six months ago, I can't stand the dog! Her obsessive, repetitive paw-licking drives me totally freaking bonkers, for example. She's been neurotically licking this one spot on her paw for the last four and a half years, and nothing we've tried can deter her from her task -- but now that I'm pregnant, I lose my mind when I hear her licking that goddamned paw.

And she probably doesn't smell any worse than she did before I was pregnant, but now her terrible odor, including her offensive breath (which you can smell as soon as she ambles into a room), has actually brought me close to puking. And speaking of puking, I seriously cannot deal with cleaning up the vomit that results from the dog eating any sort of crap/carcass she finds in the yard or (this is her fabulous new stunt) in the trash can. (The trash can even has a lid that she has figured out how to remove, a maneuver that might have impressed and entertained me six months ago, but now seems like an act of deliberate malice designed to afflict me in particular.) If we're lucky, she eats something that's actually sort of a food, like moldy rye bread from the trash can, but more often it's something indigestible like a dirty sponge (I know, you've been hearing an awful lot about this sponge). I don't know if you've ever cleaned up dog puke after your animal companion has eaten a Pinesol-soaked scrubby sponge, but it won't make you feel any closer to your dog.

Now that she is fourteen years old, the dog can't control her bladder. The fact that she pisses all over everything is one that used to annoy me, but I shrugged and thought, "well, she can't help it. We'll all get old one day." Now, when she pisses on my floor, I think, "I hate you, dog."

I can't help it. I don't know why everything she does infuriates me now that I'm pregnant -- the desperate licking of her empty food bowl for ten minutes after she has scarfed down its contents, the ubiquitous string of drool* that hangs from her mouth (it's like a quarter inch in diameter, I swear to god), all the times she whines to go outside at 4 AM and then just stands in the driveway staring a you, the single "let me in the house" bark she issues after being in the yard for like 20 seconds.

Becoming pregnant and then hating your dog(s) seems to be a very common phenomenon. I don't feel good about suddenly hating the dog, and my guilt impelled me to do a Google search ("I'm pregnant and I hate my dog") that revealed HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of stories from pregnant women who used to love their canine "babies" and now can't stand the sight/smell/sound of them! Many of them are really, really funny. One woman said, "I take a shower three times a day just to get away from the dog." SO FUNNY!

This blog post in particular made me shake with laughter, tears streaming down my face. Laughing about it, and realizing that what I'm experiencing is an actual thing,** made me feel better -- although I am still livid over the giant puddle of piss I found on our bath mat this afternoon (why was the dog even IN the bathroom? I swear to Christ she deliberately peed on that rug!).

There are a few Internet theories about why so many pregnant women start detesting their pets out of the blue. For example:

#1 Our heightened sense of smell might make us extra-sensitive to how f-ing foul dogs smell.
#2 Hormones are making us all-around more irritable.
#3 The dog senses an impending change and is acting out (i.e. behaving like a real a-hole).

For me personally, I don't believe it's #2. Honestly, I don't think I'm irritable with anyone or anything else, just the dog. There might be something to #1 and #3, I don't even know any more. I'm inclined to think there are biological and evolutionary factors. Regardless, I can think of a couple of things that seem true -- first, the idea of my newborn baby having to breath air that smells like dog urine into her tiny, new lungs makes me freaking flip out. The dog has already peed and vomited on the carpet in our baby's future nursery, a fact that seriously makes my head explode. And if this dog is still alive when our baby becomes mobile, our floors cannot be coated in drool, scented with urine, or dotted with eight-inch balls of shedded fur. Would you want your baby crawling around in that germy muck? Like I'm really going to have time to clean and disinfect every inch of my house every day! Which brings me to number two: I won't have the time or energy to deal with dog-related stressors, or this dog's ultra-neediness, when the baby arrives. This week alone I've cleaned up vast puddles of dog piss at least once a day, almost every day -- a task I am certain to resent even more monumentally with a new baby. Oh, and as a freelance illustrator, I work from home (which is awesome and a privilege), which means that I never -- will never -- get a break from the dog, until the sad day she leaves this world and I'm left feeling guilty as all hell for having felt constantly and intensely annoyed with her.

Some women say that they start liking their dog again after the baby arrives, but most seem to believe that, if anything, the resentment deepens once the baby is outside of the womb. I really, really hope that I come back around to liking the dog, because... well, because it doesn't feel good to experience feelings of hostility toward a creature who loves you so devotedly. I know I love the dog -- I vividly remember loving the dog -- but for the last six months I've wanted a vacation from her smelliness, whininess, and general grossness.

Although her mere presence exasperates me, I promise, I'm never, ever mean to the dog and she lives really well. She eats and drinks like a happy hog, sleeps on a fifty-dollar bed, gets at least two walks a day, enjoys the run of a big plot of land, eats lots of treats (in addition to what she snorfs out of the garbage), occasionally works up the vigor required to chase a squirrel, and is lovingly petted (albeit not by me). Despite the current friction, she does have a loving home.***

P.S. I can't believe I forgot to mention the farting! Oh my god, the farting!

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* for some reason that rope of drool makes me mental, oh my god.
** documented by a bazillion anecdotes, which isn't nothing.
*** even though the majority of that love is currently provided by Ben.