Twenty-Five by Thirty

Sara once wrote a clever little piece entitled 'Twenty-Five by Twenty-Five' or something along those lines. It presented the notion that one should compile a list of Twenty-Five Significant Things to Accomplish By the Time One is Twenty-Five , and documented Sara's attempts to produce such a list by the required deadline. I remember reading it, laughing over it, and determining to write my own list as a good mental exercise - one should set goals and all that, after all! But there was no rush. Twenty-Five (or 'Five-and-Twenty,' as my eighteen-year-old self liked to call it) was safely a long way off.

Now it suddenly dawned on me this weekend that I am actually Twenty-Five already, and I still have no list. How tempus fugits! However am I going to determine now if I've accomplished all the goals I (should have) set for myself all those years ago? How will I know if my life thus far has been wasted or well-spent?? At least, those are the questions my former self probably would have posed, casting up her hands in melodramatical despair. At this point in my life, my response is more along the lines of, 'Ooops.' And let's see if we can't come up with a list, really quick now:

Twenty-Five Significant Things to Accomplish By the Time I am Twenty-Five (In No Particular Order):

1) Buy a house
2) Get married
3) Have a baby
4) Quit my job
Ummm....
5) Learn how to spell 'Renaissance'
6) Wear contacts regularly
7) Develop a filing system for credit card bills and receipts
8) Burn candles
9) Look up and learn the words to 'On My Own' from Les Miz
10) Read The Importance of Being Earnest aloud to Michael
Oh boy...
11) Cut my hair
12) Schedule a dentist appointment
13) Paint my toenails
14) Fill my car with gas
15) Make the bed
16) Wash the dishes
17) Run the laundry
18) Change light bulb in office. How can I type in the dark??
19) Move pile of papers off desk. Grr. Need to clean office.
20) Clean office
21) Check email
22) Eat a muffin
23) Check email
24) Empty the trash
25) Contemplate Life

Whew, it looks like I'm ahead of the game and have successfully accomplished all the goals I set for myself earlier in life! What, it's cheating just because I knew when I wrote that list that I'd already completed it? Ah, but that's another trick about growing older: one loses one's ideals; one becomes cynical and pragmatic; one learns the devious shortcuts that make the world go 'round.

And to think it will soon be June!

But no more slogging through the mud or wishing for my old hobbit-hole for me!

Jane's been with us for less than a month and already I can't imagine life without her. She very much belongs, although I'm still not sure I actually feel like a mother or realise that she's our baby. She still almost feels like a cute, adorable baby who's come to live with us. I love this stage (she's starting to smile naturally now, meaning she actually smiles in response to my smile, not merely an unconscious twitch of the mouth in her sleep) and mourn the fact that they grow up so fast, even though I am eager to see the kind of personality she is going to develop. Michael is looking forward to the age when she begins to respond more, such as talking to us and catching the baseball when you toss it to her. 'At this point,' he observed, 'she's more like a really cute pet.'

Her first brush with grandparents is scheduled to occur in four days, when my parents are flying down for the weekend. I think we'll go out and have a picture package made. Thus far not a day has gone by that we haven't taken a picture of her, and we've been emailing updates faithfully to my family every day.

I finally checked out Eats, Shoots and Leaves from the library. Now that the fuss has died down, I can actually get my hands on it (last summer the waiting list exceeded 27 names). I've been reading it in bits and pieces during meal-times (Jane's) and enjoying it immensely, even though it is a bit of a jar to keep stumbling across the British convention of placing the commas outside the quotation marks. ('But aside from that', she acquiesced, 'it's a very jolly book indeed.')

Sleeping Beauty

Jane has happy dreams, judging from her expressions while sleeping. The closest she's come to smiling has happened in her sleep, and I'm always just too late with the camera to quite do the smile justice. But it's very heartening, betokening peaceful thoughts and idyllic childhood.

Babies do have the most reprehensible table manners, and Jane is, alas, no exception. I keep telling her that there's no need to rush and that she should take daintier swallows, but she persists in her desperate gulps and gasps and gags as if anticipating an impending food shortage. This invariably leads to a certain discomfort a few minutes later. So I sit her up and pat her back until she yields the appropriate sound effect. 'Good girl,' I tell her. 'That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Happy now?' She gives me such a surprised look that I have to explain my commendation. 'Yes, I know it's not the most ladylike thing, but there are exceptions to every etiquette rule. This is one of them.' Ah. Having had that cleared up to her satisfaction, she drifts off to sleep and starts smiling.

On top of the world

We're listening to the soundtrack from The Parent Trap, and it just occurred to me that the lines 'And the love that I've found Since you have been around' sound exactly like the the lines 'A smile, a smile, to make this life worthwhile' from the Smile Song. Coincidence? Cheap rip-off? One wonders. We listen to music nearly every day, and - since I don't mind hearing good music again and again - pretty much all day, alternating between classical pieces for the improvement of Jane's IQ and fun CDs for the advancement of her well-roundedness. (Michael insists that the song Bad to the Bone comes from Terminator, when anyone can see it's from The Parent Trap! I heard it on the movie - during the poker game scene - and it's on my Parent Trap CD!)

In bits and snatches I'm working on writing in Jane's baby book. Poring over my baby book was a favourite pastime of mine as a child, and I'm grateful to my mother for taking the time and effort to record so much of my early life. I wonder whether my early memories really are as strong as I think they are or if their original fuzziness was enhanced and bolstered by my access to all those pictures and stories. Anyway it was a great source of fond memories and fun times, and I want Jane to be able to page back through these early days, looking at pictures, seeing what Michael and I were doing and thinking about her, touching locks of her hair, and learning about herself. (Okay, maybe I won't go so far as to save her toothbrushes. Scrapbooking should go only so far.)
Some things I do not miss about pregnancy:

- Having to shift three pillows every time I want to roll over in the middle of the night. Now I can actually roll over in my sleep again.
- Spilling water all down my shirt. I never used to be a messy eater, so my theory is that with all those excess square inches in front, my odds of spilling things on me went way up. Now if I spill water, it actually hits the floor.
Some things I expect I will miss about pregnancy:

- The phenomenal fingernail and hair growth.
- Getting escorted to the front of the line at airports. (Okay, so this only happened once.)

Eau de Baby

Recently Michael handed Jane to me after a diaper change. I noticed that she smelled really, really nice...like baby powder, only we don't use baby powder on her. Obviously something else was at work here. I was on the brink of an amazing discovery. My thoughts ran rampant in giddy exultation. Why did I never notice that she smelled like this before?...My baby has her own distinctive, signature scent and I don't even discover it until she's two weeks old...Or maybe it's not distinctive - maybe it's generic Baby Scent, and all babies smell like this, and that's why they patterned the classic baby powder scent after this...Wow, I raised five younger brothers and I never noticed that they exuded classic Baby Scent!...Or maybe this is classic Baby Girl Scent, and the boys didn't exude it, which would account for my not having noticed it then....Finally I pointed it out to Michael. 'Did you notice that Jane has begun to develop her own signature scent?' I asked. 'She sure smells nice, doesn't she?' He gave me a funny look. 'That's the baby wipes smell, love.' Oh. Well, anyway, it was an interesting theory.

Overheard at the changing table

Michael: Now, Jane, this isn't going to hurt a bit. So don't even bother wrinkling up your face to cry.
Jane: WAAAHHH!
Michael: Yes, that was a bit cold, wasn't it? And you know why? Because your parents are too cheap to buy you a wipes warmer!

Mazel tov

Michael recently auditioned for the role of a bottle dancer in our church's summer theatre production of Fiddler on the Roof. The tryouts were two weeks ago Sunday, when I was (unbeknownst to everyone else) in early labour; the first read-through was a week ago Saturday, at which Michael received his copy of the script and found that he had indeed been cast as one of the four bottle dancers, whose role is to perform an intricate and complex Jewish folk dance while balancing a bottle on the head. (This being a church production, all references to alcohol have been cleverly eliminated; thus when the innkeeper - not bartender - offers his guests a drink, he doesn't add 'of vodka' in our script, nor does he lament having 100 unfinished barrels of the stuff to get rid of at the end of the play.) I've gone to both practises with him, partly to admire his performance and partly to show off Jane to the other cast members.

Initially he was not listed as being part of the ensemble, which would be a random townie who gets to sing in all the general songs. Somewhat disappointed, he talked to the director to ascertain what was lacking in his singing during the tryouts. 'It's all right,' he told me afterwards. 'They took me off the list because they thought they would make it easy on me, with the new baby and all. But when I told them I wanted to be part of the ensemble, they put me back on.' 'I should hope so!' I told him. 'My word! Catherine pitched you to me as someone who can sing and dance!' (Catherine certainly did her best to show us each to best advantage to each other the night we met. According to Ron, her matchmaking style consists of the following formula: 'You stand here; you stand here. Stay right there while I go get the vise.')

Jane's umbilical cord fell off this morning. She is embarking on her third week ex utero, so that seems about right. Meanwhile we still continue to live off the generosity of friends, who have provided us with meals so thoroughly that I still haven't cooked since coming home from the hospital. If you ever wondered whether it's worth the effort and thought to bring a meal to a new mom (or anyone under duress, for that matter), rest assured, it is. What a blessing this blissful time is! It's not that I can't cook, but that it is so wonderful to be able to relax and enjoy this time with my baby instead of having to dream up what's for dinner, shop for groceries, and stand at the sink peeling potatoes or whatever. I always thought that bringing people meals was a nice thing to do, and now I know from the inside that those feelings of righteousness and nobility from doing such a grand deed are completely justified. =)

I had a whole slew of funny stories from early in pregnancy, when the Scatterbrain Hormone was at its highest, which I didn't post because we were keeping things quiet until past the first trimester. However, I am gratified to note that new motherhood has its own brand of Quirky Hormone, involving such scenarios as removing the box from a picture frame with the fire poker, using a candle to burn the legs off a pair of nylons, and rooting through last week's garbage to find a return address that got inadvertently thrown away before the thank-you-note was written. As the Neverending Story most annoyingly said, that's another story and shall be told at another time.

These are the days of miracle and wonder

Jane Victoria is ten days old now, and it's hard to imagine life without her. Last Sunday Benjamin and Amanda came over to bring by some meals for us (it's been SO wonderful - I haven't cooked a meal yet since coming home from the hospital!) Benjamin told us later that he mentioned to Michael, 'So how is...um...the baby doing?' and thought afterwards, 'Wait a minute. Michael and Rose have known her just as long as I have. They don't remember her name any better than I do!' Her nickname to us is often Baby, because that's what we called her for so long. And not to be a tiresome doting Mama, but she is SUCH a model child! She is really and truly sleeping through the night now, weighed eight lbs. on her one-week check-up, hardly ever cries, smiles in her sleep, and loves her car seat.

Motherhood is such a fulfilling and satisfying role. I know that having children is supposed to polish us up by highlighting our areas of selfishness, but so far there's been so little suffering involved that I'm questioning the value of having children as a character reformation device. =) I expect that things will change as the novelty of having her around wears off and the reality of her sin nature asserts itself, but for the present she is absolutely lovable and I want to serve her and take care of her, and don't mind the sacrifice a bit.

We still get out of the house every day, and it's such a fun thing to gad about with her. She hasn't slowed us down a bit, which is exactly what I had hoped for, because I value my independence so much that I couldn't imagine being laid up for weeks according to the old-fashioned notion of a decent period of confinement. I often think of the A.A. Milne poem that begins, 'Wherever I go, there's always Pooh; there's always Pooh and me.' She's my little buddy, and even though our conversations are a bit one-sided at this point, it's delightful to have her as a daily companion.

Meanwhile this article (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44210) provides interesting food for thought. One thing I appreciate about Buchanan is that he is so not a pandering politician; he is not afraid to speak his mind and to speak out honestly. The disadvantage is that his forthrightness is often just too forthright. Sometimes he has valuable things to say, but he blunts his effectiveness by being so abrasive about it. Plus sometimes he's just plain wrong. This time he really misses the boat. For one thing, to say that Germany didn't invade France/Holland/Belgium until after Britain declared war on Germany is ludicrous, because he had every intention of doing so: he just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Here Buchanan invokes the logical absurdity post hoc ergo propter hoc. As if Hitler would have stopped at Poland had Churchill had the sense to leave him alone! For another thing, we didn't enter the war with the intention of swapping one cruel dictator for another. At the beginning of the war, Russia was still our enemy. The alliance with Stalin was a necessary evil to get the job done. Now, I'm not happy with the agreement at Yalta either, but to equate the results of that summit with the motivations for fighting the whole war is incredibly naive and simplistic. Buchanan needs to study up on his history a bit more.

Bringing up Baby

It didn't even have to be Mother's Day yesterday for me to realise how wonderful this life is. I'm reveling in the throes of motherhood with all my might. Jane is such a practically-perfect-in-every-way baby that it really seems almost too good to be true. She doesn't cry very much, is generally happy (meaning she's not crying; judging from her expressions of furrowed brows she's profoundly puzzled and slightly detached from this world) when awake, almost slept through the night the last two nights (meaning she lasted for 3- and 4-hour stretches at a time, and I was the one waking her up to feed, which at this age is as close to sleeping through the night as you can get), and is adorably cute to boot. Moreover we both (Michael and I) feel great despite having not caught up on sleep yet, and I'm gradually easing back into all but the most fitted of my pre-pregnancy clothes, and I haven't taken any of those painkillers they sent me home from the hospital with, and the weather is beautiful and the flowers are in bloom and the birds are singing. Things are so good that I'm half worried lest we break out in boils presently and our cattle and sheep all get slain by the Amalekites.

Yesterday we went to church, after much deliberation about germs and such. We decided to risk it since by leaving Jane in her car seat/stroller combo, we could open both canopies and shield her from the adoring public in a virtual incubator. Plus I was sure I would win the Mother's Day prize for youngest baby. And would you know it, they asked all mothers to stand and just gave everyone a book! I felt so ripped off. But later we were standing in the hallway talking with Joy, another young mother whose baby is nine months old. Joy was exclaiming over how disappointed she was that the only mothers they recognised were the youngest mother and the oldest mother present. 'And if only that 22-year-old hadn't been there, I so would have won!' she exclaimed to the associate pastor. 'Look at Rose. If you'd given the prize for youngest baby, she would have gotten that! Five days old and they bring her to church!' 'Wait here,' the pastor told me, and came back with a whole stack of Dr. Stanley books for us!

Today is my first day of parenting solo. Reality set in at last and Michael had to go back to work today. But I am relieved to report that after one hour of being alone with the Baby, post-partum depression has not set in, so I think at this point we are safely past that risk. We are going to have a splendid time together, and already have a fun week lined up. As soon as JC Penney opens this morning, we're going in to get Jane's portrait taken, courtesy of a really wonderful coupon I got from Parenting magazine, the one useful contribution that circular has made to my life. (Rachelle learned the hard way that you look at the fine print very hard to make sure there is no hidden sitting fee. This was going to be a family portrait until I noticed that only the first person is free.)

Random political thought of the day (proving that I can momentarily tear my mind away from Jane and notice the outside world): Hmmm, and I thought Chippendales was a furniture store.

Tuesday's child

We are pleased to announce the birth of Jane Victoria Focht, who graced us with her arrival yesterday morning around midnight. She weighed 7 lbs. 6 oz., measured 20.5 inches long, and looks, well, like a standard baby as far as we can tell. (Of course we think she's the most adorable one in the world, but it would look a bit partial for us to make that assertion.)

All went well. We came home from the hospital today, and are doing splendidly except for a colossal lack of sleep. Pictures to follow soon.

Stork watch

Meaning, as Michael pointed out, that none have been sighted yet, although conditions are ripe.