No "Mom of the Year" Award for me!

It all started several weeks ago on a Wednesday when I couldn't get Maria down for her afternoon nap until 1:30pm. It was a struggle to get her down and so she fell asleep later than usual. Normally it wouldn't be a problem, but I really needed (conversation with other adults is not merely a want, but a need some days!) to go to the bible study at the next door neighbor's home at 2pm. And I didn't want a cranky baby.

So at 1:55pm I grabbed my bible and the baby monitor (thankfully a long distance one!) and started slowly walking toward the neighbor's house. Though the static increased, the monitor didn't start making angry out-of-range beeps until I reached Kathy's front porch. I walked inside and the monitor sometimes had contact and sometimes didn't. I was absolutely determined to make this crazy idea of mine work and so eventually located a particular spot on the banister of the stairs in the living room where there was reception. With a little help from some tape, the monitor stayed in contact and I stayed at the study until 3:30 when I heard happy, wakeful noises coming from the monitor. I ran back home, changed Maria's diaper and we both came back for the tail end of the study!

So yes, I left my baby at home, ALONE for over an hour! Thankfully I'm not Brittany Spears because the paparazzi would be all over this, not to mention DCFS. When I told this story to a fellow mom and understanding friend, she said "you won't win any Mom of the Year awards for that one!" She explained that this was a compliment and that her husband used this phrase to describe sanity-saving but unorthodox methods of caring for one's child. I totally love the phrase and have decided to chronicle some of these non-Mom-of-the-Year moments!

To top that episode, this weekend Mark, Maria and I went to Chicago to spend the weekend with a dear friend from Seattle, Alicia. We had a great afternoon walking along the waterfront, enjoying the warm October day. As evening drew near, Maria became fussy so we headed back to the Westin on Michigan Avenue (thank you, Priceline!) to put Maria to sleep.

The plan was for Mark to stay with Maria while Alicia and I went out on the town. As you can imagine, staying in a hotel room with a sleeping baby is far from exciting. Maria needs darkness and silence to sleep and she goes to sleep around 7pm, nixing all hope of TV-watching, book reading and the like. While we were unpacking and getting Maria ready for bed, I noticed that the closet was a fairly good size. Upon closer inspection, I discovered our pack-n-play (Maria's travel bed) did indeed fit in the closet!

To make a long story short, I left my baby in a closet (a 4 star closet, mind you!) while I went out on the town for some serious shopping and a scrumptious dessert with a dear friend! Mark was in the hotel room so we didn't leave her alone, but she did sleep in the closet all night! I have to admit I'd do it again in a heartbeat! And yes, I do know how lucky I am to have such an awesome husband!

Maria's First Modeling Gig

But it might not be her last, given that she was still in the 99th percentile for height at her 6 month check up! She's now 29 inches tall, 16.5 pounds and as of today has three teeth! Stats aside, a dear friend of ours is starting a photography business and thus Maria has become a model. See if you can find all four pictures of her on Leyla's website!

Here are some amazing samples of her work that didn't make it to the website...

Sunroom Sundries

It's been an interesting few days in our sun room. Happily it has been getting cool enough that we've been able to go out there in the mornings and evenings. Last night I noticed a praying mantis on the sun room door.

This morning it had been joined by another praying mantis... I took a closer look and indeed they were doing what bugs do on the Nature Channel. I dimly remembered learning something quite horrible in high school biology class about praying mantises and I was scared.

I hoped against hope that my memory was wrong. But I couldn't be sure if it was or it wasn't. The uncertainty of it all drew me (against my better judgment!) to check back on the mantises throughout the day.

At first they were continuing to do what they had been doing. Then the moment came when all my fears were realized. I don't think I want to fully explain what happened, but it involved cannibalism... go ask your biology teacher for details. After my dreaded suspicion was confirmed I no longer checked back, but I did hum taps for the male praying mantis.

The wikipedia entry on praying mantids was quite interesting. Apparently one can keep them as pets and feed them crickets. (Mattox, are you reading this?) I started thinking that might be a fun sort of science project to do with Maria when she gets older - keep a praying mantis in a little terrarium and feed it crickets. There certainly is no shortage of crickets here among the corn and soybean fields! But now I'm wondering if this feeding of crickets would be too gross and would scar Maria for life. I figure as her mother I'm totally doomed... no matter what I do I'll scar her for life in somehow, but I'd like to keep the damage as minimal as possible!

PS. This picture was taken before anything too terrible happened. The odd part is that the female was missing one arm, but that didn't stop her from doing what she did. Such aggressive little critters!

Food, Glorious Food

Last week at covenant group Maria was intently watching everyone eat and at one point tried to swipe a bread stick out of my hand! That's when I decided to start giving her real food in addition to her usual diet of "happy juice" (breast milk). Since happy juice requires no preparation, no cleanup, almost no extra packing when traveling and is virtually free, I hadn't been looking forward to complicating our lives with real food. But raising a child definitely isn't all about what's convenient for me, so I grudgingly bought some brown rice cereal and attempted the first feeding on Thursday.

Yes, feeding solids is horribly messy, but to my surprise I found that it's also completely hilarious and loads of fun when in the right mood! Maria made crazy faces, tried to bite the spoon and promptly evicted all of the rice cereal from her mouth with her tongue after every attempt. Things went about the same on the second day, but I discovered that she loves to play with the bowl and spoon. I'm going to give rice cereal one more try and then conclude that she just doesn't like the stuff. I tried some out of curiosity and it's pretty nasty... rather like bland, gloppy glue. Maybe she'll like pureed veggies better.

Maria paints Chicago pink!

Last weekend Mark's mom was in Chicago for a women's conference for the Covenant church. We decided that a 2.5 hour drive to see one of his parents was much better than the usual 9.5 hour drive and so the plan was hatched.

We had to ask directions to the hotel when we were less than a block away(!), but other than that the drive went well. Maria was a big hit with the ladies from Mark's parent's church, though she burst into tears suddenly after too much attention! Boy was her grandma happy to see her!!

We ate at a restaurant called Italian Village and after an exceptionally loud crying spell in the women' s bathroom, Maria finally fell asleep in the restaurant. We decided to order dessert to take full advantage of her nap. Tiramisu is always a happy experience!

From the restaurant we walked past a mosaic by Marc Chagall on our way to Millenium Park.

It was neat to explore Millennium Park since it's relatively new and because the two face fountains were especially refreshing in the 90 degree plus heat. Mark especially enjoyed taking self-portraits and unique pictures in the giant reflective bean.

From there we walked through Grant's Park to Buckingham fountain. We collapsed in the shade of a crab apple tree and watched all the couples taking wedding and quince (sweet 16) photos. I didn't realize that quinceanera girls not only dress up in a formal gown that rivals many wedding dresses I've seen, but they also have a tuxedoed escort and a court of 2 or 3 matching couples to follow them around, not to mention professional photographers! The parallels to a wedding party are downright uncanny! There's even a magazine devoted entirely to quince parties! I'll try not to go on a tirade here about the excesses involved in modern weddings, but I have to say my feelings now extend to quincaneras as well. Frightening!

Anyway, we had a wonderful time exploring Chicago with momma Nina (pronounced "nine-uh") and it was neat seeing her and Maria together!

WNBA Player or Lion Tamer?

At her 2 month appointment Maria was in the 99th percentile for height... that means she's taller than 99 out of 100 girl babies her age! It's kind of neat to have a tall baby, but upon further consideration it's odd to be proud of something I really didn't have much to do with. I did contribute half her DNA, but I had no control over how tall I am, much less how tall she is! I'm a bit worried about the height thing since it's bad for women to be too tall (and for men to be too short)... it makes it really hard to find someone to date. Call me superficial, but I never could date someone shorter than me. Happily, Mark has solved all my problems in that area! ( :

I figure if Maria keeps growing at this rate she can have a career in the WNBA as long as she takes after her daddy in terms of coordination. Then a few days (well, really weeks... I'm super behind on blogging!) ago she started hitting her little stuffed lion on the play gym. She was totally going to town and hit that poor lion until she was tired out. Later that evening Maria was fussing while laying in her play gym. Mark noticed she was looking at the lion and when he moved her within striking range of the lion she stopped fussing!

All of this is to say that our daughter could turn out to be a lion tamer or a WNBA player or anything in between. After teaching for 4 years at a magnet high school for the gifted, I've witnessed a lot of highly-driven and successful parents get pretty pushy about their children's math grades. They are at the top of a math related field and can't accept that their son or daughter may not be as adept or interested as they were in mathematics. Sometimes it's just a maturity issue on the part of the student, but often kids simply have different interests from their parents. After seeing the agony the "I'm good at ____, so you must be equally good at ____" attitude causes, I'm determined to be open minded when it comes to Maria's future. Admittedly this is easier said than done, but I'm trying to prepare myself for her falling in love with art or sports or lion taming or even advertising (yuck!).

A man, a bottle and a baby

Yes, this slightly delirious looking man succeeded in giving this baby the bottle pictured below. Why is this a big deal? Well, the aforementioned baby is known to be quite persistent in her refusal of bottles of various shapes, sizes and makes. Her tactics are brutal... she cries, screams, fusses and carries on for what seems like hours. Yet this amazing man succeeded in giving the baby a bottle last Saturday morning (yes, I'm behind in my blogging) and with very little fussing the formerly stubborn baby drained the bottle dry! I need to nominate this man for some sort of bottle-giving medal. After that I plan to celebrate by purchasing some tickets to an outdoor Shakespeare play (Henry V) since I now can leave the baby for more than three hours. Yippee! I feel very, very free!