I have a few words of advice for all of you folk out there. It has to do with the neurosis of being a parent. Especially when you are on your first child.

I know that for me, I’m constantly worried about Leina. Is she doing ok, is she growing right, is she happy, is she healthy? This kid is the biggest responsibility I’ve ever been given and I stay up at night, biting my nails and wonder “am I doing this right?”

I think one of the hardest things to deal with are the “Yet” questions. I hate these. The worst thing you can do to a new parent is ask these dreaded questions.

“Is she turning over yet?”
“Is she teething yet?”
“Is he sleeping through the night yet?”
“Is he sitting up yet?” “First word, yet” “Walking, yet”

The truely horrible encounters are then followed up with a “Well so-and-so’s baby was already ______ (fill in action here) by two months you know.”

Please. The last thing I want to hear is that my child is slow. And, as a new parent, I have no way to deflect these “yet” questions. Instead, all I can do is smile, grit my teeth, and mutter, “no she hasn’t started turning over yet” and then listen with as much grace as I can muster to stories of what seem like every other kid in the universe doing what my child cannot.

So to all of you people out there, if you meet a mom with her first child, I beg of you to rephrase your question. Instead of asking, “is he walking yet?”, try the much for friendly approach of “my goodness, he’s really a mover. I bet he’ll be walking any day now!” If the child is walking, you’ll hear all about his first steps. If not, the very grateful parent will launch into a litinay of every almost-first-step experience the kid has gone through. And for Pete’s sake, do not, under any circumstance, launch into the story of your friend’s uncle’s newphew who was walking at 6 months. We don’t want to hear it. Trust us.

So what has launched this tyraid? Well, at Leina’s 4 month checkup, my doctor asked me a bunch of developmental questions. Is she babbling, grabing, putting things in her mouth. To each I could answer, yes.

And then she asked me… “is she turning over yet?”

“No, not yet.” I replied, with just the teensiest bit of concern. “Should she?” I ventured.

“Oh, most babies start rolling over around month 4,” the doctor replied, “but some do it a little later. So long as she’s rolling over by her 6 month visit, that’s fine. If not we’ll have to do some tests.” She went back to her chart but I was frozen in place. Test. That didn’t sound good.

So I left the office determined that Leina was going to roll over. We began the Roll Over Mission. This consisted of lots of tummy time and rolling practice. I’d put her on her side and help her over. I’d tip her, I’d push her, I’d do as little as possible to get her going. She seemed to like it but never showed any inititive. Month 4 rolled into month 5 and her 6 month doctor’s appointment was a mere 3 weeks away and still no rolling.

It was as if there was some big conspiracy because everywhere I went I was bombarded with the Yet Question. Each time I had to answer, “no, not rolling over yet” and listen with growing horror to the never ending stories about babies rolling over at two months, three months, four months. It was torturous. In desperation I pulled down my own baby book only to learn that I had rolled over at two months! Two months! Leina was already well into month 5! Was Leina ok? Were there going to be tests?

Determined, I kept on with the tummy time and the rolling practice. It seemed hopeless until this morning.

Yes, that’s right, my clearly advanced and dexterous baby girl rolled over this morning right in front of my disbelieving eyes. She was on her tummy, getting pretty mad, when she reached up to scratch her head. (She has her dad’s dry scalp so she scratches her head alot.) At just that moment, she gave a big arch and a push and voila! She turned over!

She didn’t seem too excited by this. Nowhere near as excited as I was. I swooped her up, kissed her chubba chubba cheeks and we did the My-Baby-Rolled-Over-Dance all around the living room.

So you’d think the fun would stop here, right? I mean, one big step at a time. But nooooooo, my baby girl is all over the map because after the big roll over event, I discovered yet another milestone.

Her first tooth!

Yes, that’s right, during our morning munch on mom’s finger session, I felt something sharp and hard. Sure enough, there’s a little white tooth trying to fight it’s way through. It’s the bottom left front tooth. Don’t know how I missed it before now but I did somehow.

I am completely blown away. In one mere morning, Leina has eliminated two of the dreaded “yet” questions from my life. Phew. I think I’m going to lie down for a while and try to absorb all this new stuff.

This whole mom thing, it’s overwhelming!

We finally got the Pooh page up and running. Here you can watch her grow before you very eyes. Enjoy!

The sad remains of our once noble elm.

It has one more night of freezing rain to go. It doesn’t look good.

Ok, so it’s cold, right? There’s snow, right? Well, in Portland, snow always turns to freezing rain and that’s when things get ugly.

Last night, the freezing rain started. It coated cars, houses, and trees. Added to the rain were huge wind gusts that shook our little house to it’s foundation. After putting the bambino to bed, Kevin & I headed upstairs. Now, our bedroom is a converted attic so the ceiling is really the roof. As we lay there, listening to the wind, we heard a new sound.

The sound of ice clad branching creaking in the wind.

Yes, that big old elm tree on the side of the house was making some very scary noised. This tree is huge. Probably 50 years old. We had it trimed earlier in the fall and the trimmers botched the job and just butchered the tree. What was once a huge, many limbed tree had been reduced to a few, totally exposed branches. And, of course, these weak branches were now covered in ice and being whipped by the wind. It didn’t take a arborist to know that they were coming down.

Neither Kevin nor I really wanted to be sleeping upstairs when the branches snapped and hit the roof so we packed up the bedding and headed into the living room. Kevin inflated the aerobed and there we curled up, listening for the inevitable.

Around 2am it started. First a loud pop follow by a crack and then a bang as the branch hit our roof and slid down. Finally, a huge crackle-bash when it toppled off the roof and hit the ground. We lost a branch every hour or so and are still losing them as I speak. I’d say, about 70% of our beautiful elm tree is gone. And what’s left ain’t looking so good.

The weathermen say we aren’t going to thaw out tonight and more freezing wind in on they way so I guess this means that Kevin and I will spend another night on the living room floor listening to our tree slowing destruct. My biggest fear is that one of these crashing branches won’t bounce off the roof but smash right through it.

Don’t worry, Leina’s room is far far away from the tree and there’s no risk to her. But our poor poor tree. Who knew that getting it trimmed would mean killing it?

How cold is it?

Well, we woke up this morning and when Kevin went to wash his hands, our faucet sputted and then…nothing. Over night, our pipes had frozen. Now, that’s cold!

And, in the case of any home emergency, I did what any rational person would do.

I called my dad.

Now, my dad is the ultimate repository of fix it knowledge. Cars, homes, electronic equipment, my dad has some idea of how to tinker with it. I think this is because of two personality traits.

First, my dad is an engineer. This profession requires an inquisitive mind and a love of tinkering. So if something breaks, Elmo isn’t at all shy about taking it apart and trying to figure out what is wrong.

Second, my dad is cheap. He’d rather spend 20 hours cursing and banging on something then actually pay someone who knows what they are doing to come in, charge him for an hour of work, and fix it. I have no memories from childhood of a plumber or electrition coming to our home. Our car was never “in the shop”. No, my memories consist of my dad yelling obscenities as he cut into the dry wall to get to a pipe that had frozen and busted, car parts strewn around the garage with the car itself up and a jack, or my dad sitting with his voltmeter trying to figure out which as the live wire.

So when something goes wrong in my house or with my car, I always call Elmo. Sure enough, he had a plan of action for my current quandry that involved boiling water in pots and pouring said water over the pipe coming into our house outside. After only one pot, we had running water again.

Of course, it has since re-frozen so Kevin has made a Home Depot trip and is in the process of trying to insulate the pipe.

C-O-L-D. All we need now is the snow. And a fire. Yeah, a nice roaring fire!