The Many Looks of Eames

I'll admit it: I really really wanted a girl. Not only are boys dirty and prone to breaking things--usually a part of their body--but, honestly, well...boys stuff kind of sucks. The toys are pretty much limited to dinosaurs and trucks. The clothes are pretty much limited to dinosaurs and trucks. In fact, with the exception of the occasional motorcycle or astronaut, you'd think that little boys had no interest outside of these two things. On top of that, they told me I was having a girl so I collected all kinds of cute graphic a-line tops with matching undies, flowered tanks, and striped dresses. Two baby showers later, I was pretty much set for girls clothes. I was ready.

But, that's all old news. The reason I bring it up now is that the huge biannual Lafaeytte kids consignment sale is this weekend. Six months ago we came home with two bags full of girls stuff for 70 bucks. This time around I decided I was going to consign most of the girl's stuff I've collected. In order to do so, I had to go through all the stuff that I shoved into an extra closet and sort through Eames's outgrown stuff as well. Despite the limitations on little boys fashion, I've managed to collect some pretty cute outfits for my boy. He and I enjoy the fashion game as much as a little girl might. And, to honor our love of all things fashion, I thought I'd put together a fashion show, "Eames's Greatest Fashion Hits."

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the many looks of Eames!!!:

Classic Eames Onesie (Courtesy of Suzanne)
Kartoons Kataloons Outfit
Zutano Jumper
Baby Susu Cat Shirt

Baby Gap Jumper (Courtesy of Haeja)
Bicycle Onesie (Courtesy of Patty) with Neon Band-aids
Arms Are for Hugging Tee (Courtesy of Nanny)
Question Authority Onesie
Old Navy Striped Tee
Baby Nay Jumper (Courtesy of Haeja)
Wait...What the...?!?!?
Ok, girls do have cuter clothes...

The Early Bird Catches a Crapload of Worms

The writing has been plugging along. Slowly. I'm just starting to find a rhythm and have been able to write at least an hour a day. Unfortunately, an hour of writing doesn't quite produce what it used to. I suspect that producing children actually dries up your writing supply and makes you overuse the word 'however' and think that maybe this whole doctorate thing is overrated.

However, today, I got up at 6:00, met a friend for coffee (to workshop her conference presentation and part of my chapter), wrote some at home, made a tofu scramble, baked an experimental batch of carrot cookies, washed the bed linens, made a leek and zucchini fritatta, cooked and froze batches of chickpeas, made a doctor's appointment for Eames, washed the diapers, gave Eames a shower, wrote a blog, watched 24 with Josh and The Bachelorette after he left, and listened to Josh read There's a Wocket in my Pocket to Eames as he leaned against my legs and smiled adoringly at his dad. All in all, it was a productive day, which I guess is what happens when you get up at the ass crack of dawn and Josh offers to wrangle Eames for the day.

What did those boys do you ask?:
Notice those books at the top of the picture? Those are mine. Because I was tucked into the very corner of the bed behind my pile of books and a computer screen desperately trying to think of something smart to say while those boys sprawled out across the sheetless bed dreaming of large-breasted women. While I was tempted to join them in their synchronized napping, I persisted and eventually found an intelligent word or two, which surprised Eames, to say the least:
As far as he's concerned, I'm the funny one in the family:
I needed a day like today. There are always more things to do and more words to write...But, with the semester fast approaching, it's nice to know I can get a few things done and not miss moments like this.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Sadly, I've always had very fine, very thin hair. My ponytails were often mocked (usually by my mother) for their slim profile (I use the rubberbands meant for bracelets to pull my hair back) and my hair never does much more than stick to my head and hang straight as straight can possibly be without a lot of intervention. The optimist in me has to note that full luxurious hair would make my already large head too big to adequately make it through doorways, but I've always wished to have just a little bend at the very least. The last time I tried to make my hair conform to my wishes, however, I ended up with a very expensive perm that lasted a few weeks then fell out to the very ends so it looked like I had pompoms stuck to the ends of my hair.

The good news is that pregnancy makes me love my hair--if only for a little while. It doesn't make it curl or even give it the slightest bend, but it does feel like I have about twice as much of it. So I've spent the last 10 months or so caressing my own head lovingly, enjoying every damn second of it. Until the last week or two. Now, when I hands through my hair, I come away with strands of it intertwined through my fingers. I'm once again constantly pulling dozens of hairs off my shirt, out of Eames's fingers and his mouth, brushing it off my face, and trying vainly to get that one that's stuck to my back and tickling the back of my arm.

And I'm not the only one. Eames was born with a full head of hair. It was even curly:
And much to our general amazement, it was also bright orange. I'll admit I was jealous of his curls, but I was also desperately hoping that--should he keep this notable hair--he'd more closely resemble Eric Stoltz than Carrot Top.

Now, however, Eames is 12 weeks old...and he has male pattern baldness:
That's right. Where once he had gloriously orange, flaming curls, he now has blond fuzz. And until those blond locks decide to make their appearance, he looks like a 83 year old man.

I'm just hoping he gets Josh's golden curls instead of my flat flaxen strands...

Tom Sawyer Paints a Fence Day

Our First Date...

I had planned on having a small get together to celebrate Independence Day/Tom Sawyer Paints a Fence Day/Our 2nd Anniversary, but, instead, Josh planned a punk show at Community Cycles that he, as the planner, needed to attend and I, as the mom of a 2 month old, could not (sensitive baby ears and all that). So, Josh went to the show while I stayed home and watched Law & Order reruns with Eames.

One Year...

Sometime around 10:00, when we were tucking ourselves into bed, Josh called. I could barely hear him through the background noise, but he asked me to listen. I pictured him holding out his phone and vaguely familiar music floated haltingly through the receiver, clearly too loud for our cheap phones. I told him it sounded familiar but I couldn't place it. It's Waves of Mutilation, he said. Awesome. Later that night, he told me he gave us a shout-out:

"Two years ago today, I watched a movie with a girl with that song in it. Today we have a 9 week old."

Two Years...

And that, in short, is our story. Part of me wished I had been there to hear it myself, that acknowledgment of our history, our life, our love...But, knowing he was thinking about us and about that first night we met when we bonded over a love of television and he agreed to watch Pump Up the Volume (which I own) with me because he too loves it, made me almost as happy as being there. And lying in bed playing with Eames while I listened to those garbled notes on my cell phone made me glad I wasn't. This is a good life.

And 9 Weeks.

Trekking to the Movies

While my future is obviously full of "baby's first ______," and I will undoubtedly forget to record most of them, I did want to take note of two that happened in the past month: Eames's first movie and his first smile.

The weekend before last, we decided to go see the new Star Trek. We thought ourselves quite clever; it was the third weekend the movie had been out and we went to a 2:00 show and expected that we'd have the theatre mostly to ourselves in case our wonderfully good-natured child decided to suddenly become the sleepless beast that everyone expects an infant to be. Despite our careful planning, we ended up craning our necks and scanning the width of the screen trying to take in the details of the movie from about 8 feet away. In other words, the place was packed. We hadn't counted on the fact that it was a holiday weekend and one of the rare rainy days Boulder gets during the year. But, Eames did fabulous; he slept through the first half of the movie, woke up hungry, ate, and fell back asleep for the rest of it. In fact, the bigger problem was that I forgot to turn off my cellphone. So, not only did I walk in the theatre with a newborn, I was the asshole whose phone rang about 30 minutes in and couldn't find it in the dark.

In addition to indoctrinating the poor lad into Star Trek culture, we went to the Denver Botanical Gardens on Sunday, followed by a wonderful veggie brunch at Watercourse. It was at Watercourse that Eames flashed me his first smile. Josh and I spent the next two days cooing and clapping and talking and making faces and generally making asses of ourselves in front of our little lump o' baby before Eames finally gave into our pathetic demands and repeated his performance. Now my goal is to catch that elusive gummy grin on film...er, pixel. Don't expect to see it for yourself any time soon.

Posing in front of the Aspens and wishing our Aspen was here.

Well, That's a Surprise.

Doctor: There's the head, she's head down, and her hand...
Josh: Is that her spine?
Doctor: Yes...and there's a leg. Everything looks good. Did you say they told you this is a girl?
Dalyn: Yes. WHY?
Doctor: Then what's that?
Dalyn: ...
Doctor: That looked like a penis and those look like testicles. Let's take another look. It could just be swollen labia...
Josh: Um, I've seen bathroom drawings less graphic than that.
Doctor: Well, I have 3 boys and I'm 99% sure that's a boy....I was really sad when my third wasn't a girl...But, well, what does that look like to you?
Dalyn: Really big balls.

Baby Crap: A Registry in Progress

UPDATE: Because this is an unconventional registry, tracking what gets bought is slightly problematic. Therefore, I've assigned a mediator. If you purchase something on the registry, please email Jo (see sidebar) to let her know and she will strike it off the list. Thanks. We're trying to maintain some kind of mystery around here...

So, for several months, I've been attempting to start registries at a couple different stores. Unsurprisingly, I have been overwhelmed and dismayed at the sheer amount of crap (in the sense of abundance and lack of quality) that seems to be part and parcel of this experience. Needless to say, that after one visit to BabiesRHell to look at a crib, I knew I couldn't register there. Target seemed like the next most viable and affordable option and I did manage to find some stuff, which you can see here. Yes, I picked out nearly every organic thing they carry, along with a couple of other necessities. But, after hours spent pouring over their website, I couldn't bring myself to add more stuff that I didn't really want and wouldn't use. Next, I even tried the local hipster baby store, Real Baby, whose stuff is cute but ludicrously expensive--no dice.

But, since loyalty has never been my strongest character trait anyway and--as we all know--I'm a picky bastard, I decided to largely forgo the store registry and come up with my own in the form of a blog. One of the advantages of working on a dissertation is that I have spent countless hours researching baby products, looking for the best deals, and drooling over products that are ridiculously cool and laughably wasteful. What I've compiled here is a list of those efforts (I'm not promising I've found the best prices on the internet and sales end, but it should be damn close).

While we've begun collecting things from thrift stores, craigslist, and sales, we still have relatively little as far as the basic baby props go. I've tried, whenever possible and reasonable, to pick out organic products or ones made from sustainable materials. While I'm well aware that we were all exposed to dangerous chemicals and a lack of seatbelts in our youth, Josh and I have managed to make out lives more and more sustainable despite my consumerist leanings and inherent dismay over used products (I don't even want to discuss the thoughts that go through my head when I think about composting and cloth diapering--I just put head down and do it...well, with the diapering I'm going to give it the old college try anyway). I'd like to continue such efforts even in the face of cuter-than-I-can-stand baby products.

So, without further ado, here is the (un)official Luedtke/Brown registry:

MEALTIME: We love food 'round these parts, so mealtime is first on the list.
1. I'm going to need all the help I can get in this department, so we'll see how helpful My Best Friend really is.
2. Somehow, it just ended up that Josh and I eat dinner together every night--at the table. So, we got a high chair that would allow us to continue the tradition together. But, since I'm worried the little bugger will ruin my table, I think we need the Skip Hop Mate.
3. A Modern Sippy Cup
4. God knows, I have enough kitchen equipment to make my own baby food, but I'm still smitten with this little all-in-one: Beaba Babycook.
5. Because you can never have too many snack choices: Snack Storage.

CRAP: The literal manifestation.
6. Faced with the choice of cloth or disposable, I was unpleased with both. Luckily, gdiapers are the one of the coolest new baby-related inventions and the covers work with cloth diapers too: Small 'little g' Pants, Medium 'little g' Pants, and Refills.
7. Infant 12 pack Unbleached DSQ Prefolded Diapers
8. Baby 12 pack Unbleached DSQ Prefolded Diapers
9. All in ones
10. Is it too early to be thinking about potty training? I think not.

FUN STUFF: Because girls just want to have fun.
11. You gotta love anything called a Blabla
12. The Boon Ladybug Pod
13. Night Lights
14. A giraffe to chew on.
15. A Piggy Bank
16. Because I wish this stuff came in my size.
17. The colors, the cut, the fun. If these dresses came in pregnant-size, I might buy one myself.
18. Baby leg warmers!

NECESSITIES
19. Aspen loved it. We'll see how it goes this time: A Plug!
20. A sooped-up umbrella stroller. We never used a stroller with Aspen, but I wasn't committed to public transportation in those days...
21. They may be forced to release inmates in California, but we have no such problems in Colorado: Baby Prison.
22. While fire retardant will never be organic, I still think the big hunk o' latex this kid is going to be (hopefully) sleeping her early months away on should be an Organic Crib Mattress.
23. Organic cotton sheets.
24. Awesome art in awesome colors.
25. A simple quilt for a little girl.

THE BIG ONE: For those who'd like to avoid baby shopping altogether...
We've purchased all the typical big ticket items like a crib and bookcases and what not, but the one thing we are still working on is a bike trailer. Since our bikes serve as our primary means of transportation (besides public transit), we're not pulling any punches here. Nothing but the best for our bikes (not surprising for a Luedtke, I know)! We've already got a line on one, but if you'd like to contribute to our quest for this beauty, we'd greatly appreciate it. Otherwise, this is our back-up plan:
Stay tuned for more baby buying (you know, baby stuff, not actual baby buying) extravaganza updates...