Whew

The budget crisis has been averted! The Senate approved the bill, and all it needs is the governor's signature, which I can't imagine he wouldn't give. We will both remained employed for now.

I can't express how relieved we are, although I feel a bit at sea tonight. All of our thinking in the past few weeks hasn't gone beyond the beginning of October, so now I actually have to do things like figure out my work schedule for next month and contemplate scheduling volunteer hours at K's preschool. We had also been putting off proceeding on buying a new car. We certainly could have survived fine without doing it, but it would be nice to have something a bit bigger, and between the fact that there's a nice tax credit for people who buy cars this year and that my brother's car is falling apart and he would happily buy ours for considerably more than we could get in trade-in, it would actually be financially advantageous to do it now. I've been researching both the Mazda5 and Kia Rondo, which are very small mini-vans that are small enough to have good gas mileage, but have more cargo room than we have now and optional third rows of seating so we will have enough room for everyone to travel in one car if grandparents are visiting.

B is going to continue sending out resumes even if he still has his job for now. His job has been under threat for a year now, and after surviving two rounds of layoffs we're not counting on anything. There's also the small matter of the fact that his contract expired June 30 and negotiations are going about as amicably as two rabid badgers tied in a sack and poked with sticks.

But for the moment, yay!

****

K started Big Girl Preschool this week, which is what we've been calling the public school preschool program to distinguish it from the daycare she had been attending. We went in last week to meet her teacher and see her new classroom, and acquire approximately 35 forms to fill out that all wanted exactly the same information.

It still blows my mind to be dropping my baby off at the elementary school every morning, to a classroom filled with four-year-olds, complete with all of the trappings of elementary school like hot lunch and Scholastic book flyers. So far she seems to be having a good time, although when asked, she tends to give answers like "I took a nap," which doesn't exactly give me a... lively picture of her school day.

****

After hearing an interview with the creator on Fresh Air last week, we sat down and watched the first two episodes of Glee. Oh my, how fantastic.

I enjoy the music, of course and the demented depiction of high school society. I had expected it to be funny. But it surprises me a bit how much the tone and style remind me of the largely underrated movie Election. This is definitely on the dvr, and is providing some consolation for Leverage being gone until January.

Mixed trio

1. So the amended budget relief bill has passed the House, with most of the amendments the Senate added stripped out. Now it falls to the Senate to pass or punt it. They have four days before layoff notices go out and three weeks before the city shuts down. I hope they can pull their heads out of their asses and compromise before then.

Meanwhile, I've realized a problem with the move back to Michigan plan is that if we haul all of our stuff back to Michigan, then gets called the next week to get offered his job back, he'll get kicked off of unemployment if he turns it down. Yet at the same time, our lease is up at the end of November, and I certainly don't want to get to February or so and run out of money only to be stuck with another 9 months of lease. So it's going to be a weird timing act balancing the likelihood of the crisis being resolved versus needing to move. Assuming it's necessary.

Sigh. I don't do limbo well.

2. We went to a church picnic Sunday and had a lovely time. There were four babies in church today and we had a good time talking with two of the other sets of parents. One of the babies was a day older than Alec and K had a great time playing with his 2 1/2 year old brother, so I'm hoping we might be able to get together with them.

We've had the worst time trying to meet people since we moved here. It's been a combination of weird work schedules that prevent us from going to the places where we could meet people, having a small child and bad luck. We perhaps haven't been as proactive as we could have been in following up on continuing to get together with people after having an initial social contact, but, well, our phone receives calls too, so it's not like it should all be on us. This is the first time in a long time that I've had multiple good, long conversations with people I'm not related to or have known for 15 years. It makes me hopeful.

3. Alec and I had a productive thirty minute nursing session tonight. It wasn't enough to fill him up - I eventually ended it because he was getting frantic and handed him off to his father for a bottle top-up. But I had pumped less than two hours previously and got only two ounces when I pumped again after feeding him when I would have expected at least four, and he drank only two ounces out of the bottle when a typical feeding for him is 5 1/2, so he clearly got quite a bit of milk from me.

It took a while to get up the will to try again. First I had thrush, then he developed painful reflux. And as it turns out, I felt so defeated after his one months appointment where he was only half a pound over his birth weight despite bottle feeding on demand that it took a while to get up the courage to trust that he would get any real nourishment. But as it turns out, I really hate bottlefeeding in the middle of the night and would give quite a lot to be able to breastfeed him in bed, especially when I find myself dropping the bottle on his face as I accidentally drift off and lose my grip. I also have the pressing dealine of wanting to be able to breastfeed him on the plane when we fly to California next month. Even if we have to give him formula as well, I really don't want to have to figure out how to pump on the plane and there's no way I won't have to relieve the pressure somehow on a six-hour flight. I don't feel the need to work towards exclusive breastfeeding; I like being able to hand him off to B so he can do a late-night feeding or nudge him to get up with the baby in the morning. But the ability to breastfeed when it isn't convenient to pump would be the best of both worlds.

It seems like as I had hoped, getting older has increased his strength. I was reflecting today that it should have been a hint to me that when I was in the hospital, I was marvelling at the fact that my nipples weren't hurting at all despite all of the breastfeeding. I suppose they wouldn't if your infant isn't sucking on them with any real suction.

Workforce

I had my first day back at work on Saturday. It was a quiet day due to the holiday weekend. We actually often get a lot of people on nice days since people like to go into the park on nice days and will then wander in to check us out. But I think a lot of people had plans, or were getting their last trip to the shore in so I was spared having to do much work.

Leaving the baby wasn't too bad. It helped that I was only gone for 6 hours and he was home with B. I'm not sure it will be as easy when I have to start leaving him at daycare when I work on Fridays. Of course, part of my feelings about daycare are currently being colored by the fact that every time I go to pick K up, crowds of children, their upper lips glistening with snot, gather around Alec and reach out to touch him. It's all way too reminiscent of the first day I dropped K off at daycare as a baby, when I saw a two-year-old with a snotty nose and thought, "Here comes our first cold." And lo and behold, by Friday night we were all drowning in baby mucus. Colds aren't a huge problem. But this is Swine Flu season and Alec isn't old enough to get vaccinated. This doesn't exactly make me thrilled to place a small baby in a daycare surrounded by two dozen walking plague carriers, even only one day a week.

***

However, the daycare issue may be moot, because the entire city of Philadelphia is teetering on the precipice. And I am not exaggerating in the slightest.

Last March, we found out that the city budget woes that had us biting our fingernails over B's job had gotten much, much worse, to the point that every city department would have to undergo unbelievably deep cuts if we didn't find a new revenue stream. And after the usual political wrangling, the mayor did, in the form of a sales tax increase. Crisis averted, yes? Not quite, because the tax increase has to be approved by the state legislature, something you would think wouldn't take long at all. However, here we are six months later and the state of affairs is that the House, controlled by Democrats, passed a bill that simply approved the tax increase. Then last week, the Senate, controlled by Republicans passed a bill that approved the tax increase and contained some strongly anti-union measures cutting pensions and putting collective bargaining rights in jeopardy that affected every city in the state. The House can't possibly go along with this, since they're all up for re-election next year and most of them won't make it out of the primaries if they lose union support.

Here's where we stand: the House is supposed to vote on Thursday, and they are exceedingly unlikely to vote for the Senate version. If they send make amendments and send it back to the Senate, we will hopefully get something bearable. If they send their original version back, the Senate has indicated that they won't vote for that and we will be at an impasse. Bear in mind that this is the same legislature that as of September 8 has yet to finalize the budget that was supposed to take effect July 1, so that gives you a good sense of their ability to compromise.

As for us, if nothing passes before then, 3000 city workers will receive layoff notices September 18, and their last day of work will be October 2. All of the city libraries, rec centers and parks will shut down. Six fire engine companies will be shut down and over 900 positions in the police department will be laid off. Garbage collection will go to every other week and thousands of light bulbs will be taken out of street lights. The city will essentially cease to function in any meaningful way. It goes without saying that and I will both lose our jobs, but that almost pales in the face of the big picture.

We'll be okay. I've already talked to my mother and since she hasn't sold her house yet, if the worst happens we will move in. We have no savings thanks to the goddamn cat and her goddamn string swallowing, so we'll have to borrow money to make it through October, let alone move, but thankfully we have nice parents who have yet to not support us when we needed it. B will have unemployment for at least 9 months and I was told when I left my online job that I could have it back pretty much any time I wanted so I'll start that again and we'll be decently well off financially. Part of the stimulus package was covering 65 percent of the cost of COBRA, so our health insurance will even be relatively affordable. Honestly? There's a piece of me that gets really excited about the idea of moving home and living in my lovely large childhood home, ten minutes from my mother and less than three hours from 's parents. However, it's certainly not worth unemployment and the price the entire city would have to pay.

Family sick day

B and I took a sick day on Tuesday. I was getting a cold and he was tired enough to use that as an excuse to take a day off. I didn't think I was that sick, but after I went back to bed and woke up six hours later, it was apparent that the sick day was a darn good idea. I felt a bit guilty for sticking B with the baby so long until I discovered they had napped together for four hours. It's quite possible we were all a smidge tired.

In other health news, I finally made it to the doctor today to get something for the epic case of eczema I've been working on for the past month. I've had eczema on my hands plenty of times in the past - I had a case right before I got pregnant which I was able to beat down with judicious applications of K's prescription eczema cream. But this is the first time it's marched across my palms, climbed up all my fingers and then decided to annex my feet as well. Do you know how irritating it is to have eczema on the bottom of your feet? Since it tends to manifest as fluid-filled blisters, I've been feeling like I'm walking on little water balloons coated in poison ivy. The doctor looked properly appalled at my leprous state and gave me a prescription for a stronger cream. Since I'm coating so much of my hands and feet, I got some gauze pads and tape to cover the medicated areas. All of my hands and feet are now bandaged. I feel rather Christlike.

***

Alec is turning into 13 pounds of delectable ham. He sits and coos at me to get my attention, then grins and waggles his eyebrows at me. I was holding him on my lap this morning and he leaned forward and discovered his feet, to his great delight. The look of delighted intrigue on his face as he examined his toes was something to behold. Limbs! They're so endlessly fascinating!

He's developed a touch of painful reflux, poor lamb. He had the good timing to do it the weekend before his Monday morning two-month pediatrician visit, so we got him on Zantac with admirable speed. I think we need to up the dose though, since it seems to wear off about 2-3 hours before the next dose is due.

***

I would post about how K is slowly draining my will to go on, but there are only so many ways you can describe the horrors of a child who seems to suddenly delight in pressing all of your buttons like you're a vending machine and they have an endless supply of quarters. I prefer to focus on the fact that her new preschool program at the local elementary school starts on the 15th. Five days a week and FREE. But when did my baby get big enough to start going to elementary school?

Alec at two months

Has it really been two months already? At the doctor on Monday, he was 12 pounds, 14 ounces and 23 1/2 inches. That a gain of 3 1/2 pounds in the past month. Yes, I think it's safe to say he wasn't getting enough food his first month. He's now in the 75th percentile for height and weight, which seems about right based on his size when he was born.

Our sleepy baby is slowly but surely waking up. He gives big grins to: us, the giraffe above his changing table, his Winnie the Pooh mobile, the toys above his swing and bouncy seat, certain songs (like his sister, he finds "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" and "Mahna Mahna" hysterical). He coos like a particularly rotund and adorable little pigeon. We can put him down now as long as he's awake and cheerful, which usually happens in half hour blocks. The rest of the time, he's eating and sleeping, or violently protesting being in his car seat.

Physically, he's adept at holding his head up when upright, can lift it somewhat when on his stomach and has rolled over onto his stomach once, although it was while he was on the bed and therefore on a slight incline. He can hit his dangling toys and has started grabbing things.

Mostly, he specializes in being roly-poly and cute. And he's darn good at it:



More pictures in the usual place.

Triad

1. Since we're in the rare position this summer of nobody having to work on the weekend, we've been trying to get back in the habit of going to church. A large part of why we drifted away from our last church was the lack of childcare, since for some reason I find it difficult to develop my spiritual life with a bored toddler using me as a jungle gym. While K is now old enough for Sunday School, Alec is going to be starting up the pew wrestling matches soon enough so we decided to look farther afield. I found a nearby church that just recently declared itself Open and Affirming, offers a nursery and seems like a nice compromise of being large enough to offer good religious education and programs, yet not so large that you feel lost in the crowd, and we've successfully gone there three times in the past six weeks, which isn't bad given that we have two pint-size insomniacs who live to keep us up at night.

This Sunday was the first where we heard the minister preach, since she was on vacation the first two times we came. The sermon favorably impressed me in two ways. The first is that she was preaching on the armor of God, a topic heavily favored by Evangelical types* and nervously avoided by we hippy-dippy liberal progressive types because the literal interpretation of that particular scripture is that the armor is protection against Satan. However, this minister delivered a quite excellent interpretation for a progressive liberal Christian context. And she did it by referencing Star Wars, the Mirror Mirror episode of Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and specifically enough that it was clear that she was very personally acquainted with all of these things, not just drawing from popular culture.

A challenge we've had in finding churches is that while everyone is always very nice, we never seem to find anyone we have anything in common with. A church with a minister geeky enough to be able to preach in detail on the opening scenes of book 7 of Harry Potter seems very promising on that front. Another good sign is that even though it was August and therefore sparsely attended, there were two other families there with babies - not having young families is another issue we've encountered while church-shopping.

So I'm hopeful we'll be able to keep up with attending as we move into the fall and I start working again.

2. We went to see Ponyo this afternoon. Oh my, it was a cute movie. The animation was gorgeous, as usual. The plot didn't bear close examination, but it was enjoyable and didn't even hit us with the 2 x 4 of environmental awareness. It was K's first Miyazaki in the theatre ex utero, since we saw Howl's Moving Castle when I was a week overdue with her. She absolutely loved it, and while she said it was scary afterwards, she didn't need to leave the theatre, which we've had to do in the past. So if you're the parent of a very sensitive small child that you would like to take to the movies, while it's not completely free of scariness, it's pretty mild and a good movie for the young scaredy-cat.

3. After months of frustration trying to figure out how to take good pictures on my camera without using the flash, I discovered quite accidentally last month that my camera has a specific setting for that right there in a place that should be obvious for anyone to see. The combination of discovering that, the fact that Alec's changing table is one of the few places that gets natural light in the house and Alec starting to smile has meant that I now have a lot of portrait shots of him on his changing table. But it's hard not to keep taking pictures when you have a model like this:





* Here's the story of how I became acquainted with the theology of the armor of God: when I was a teenager, the church I grew up in decided to purchase a Sunday School curriculum that consisted of a scripted series of shows using puppets and humans in a combination of skits and singing to teach concepts. It was called Caraway Street, and any slight resemblance to certain shows on PBS is a COMPLETE coincidence. I always felt it was kind of outrageous how concerned the creator of Caraway Street was with protecting his copyright considering that he was stretching the concept of fair use until it was practically doughnut-shaped.

Anyway, the creator of Caraway Street was some sort of Evangelical Baptist-type, and my church was UCC, which made for some incompatible theology issues. This particular church was not at all liberal**, but we still didn't traffic much in Devil talk or go in for heavy evangelism. So when the creator came to train us and showed us the pamphlet we could give the children so they could convert all of their friends on the playground,*** we nodded politely and somehow never remembered to pass them out after he left. And initially the scripts seemed fine. The emphasis on memorizing the books of the Bible seemed a bit inane, but harmless.

But through a complicated series of events, I wound up in charge of the program****, which meant I was in charge of making up cue cards, and found myself progressively editing the lines more heavily every week as more fire and brimstone kept creeping into the skits. And this is when I first encountered the armor of God: the week I had to start completely eliminating skits because Satan was starting to take on a speaking role. And the damn thing kept coming up again and again. I suppose I can understand why, since it lends itself to easy slogan-y chanting (the breastplate of righteousness! The sword of demon slaying! The tinfoil hat of alien-mindray repelling!). But I started to hate it very quickly, as I kept having to make the singing portions longer and longer to cover the fact that the scripts were starting to get quite anemic after I was done editing for hellfire.

** In fact, I believe they later left the UCC. The fact that many people didn't have nearly as many issues with the scripts as I did is a good indicator of why my family left the church later that year.

*** This being a heavily religious area (my home town had literally a church per every square mile, and a common question was "What church do you go to?" not, "Do you attend church?"), I think they would have been forced to convert the local squirrels due to a general lack of young heathens among their classmates.

**** The fact that a 16-year-old was in charge of the church's Sunday School program for a good six months is an excellent indicator of why we left the church later that year.

A note to the general public

Dear polite inquirers,

No, our son is not named Alec like Alec Baldwin.

He is named Alec like Alec Guinness.

See? All the difference in the world.


Cordially,

Two geeks who didn't actually name their son after Alec Guinness, but will cop to the fact that seeing his name in a baby name book under a list of famous Alexanders is the first time we thought, "Alec? Hmm, I like that."

Near miss

I spent most of Saturday feeling really tired, the sort that leaves you utterly unmotivated to move, let alone leave the house or fulfill your parental responsibilities. You would expect any parent of a seven week old to feel this way, even one so lucky as to have a spouse who let them go back to bed and sleep until noon that day. My right breast was hurting as well, but I didn't think much about that since I've been fighting thrush, which can cause shooting pains. Despite that, I hauled us to the park and back, and once we were home, took Alec into the bedroom with me to share a nap. When I woke up, I felt even more tired and I realized I was shivering, despite being under the covers and having a small heat extruder on top of me. So I took my temperature - 102. And then I looked at the breast that had been hurting and discovered it had a large red and blotchy spot. This was starting to look an awful lot like mastitis.

Argh. I debated calling the doctor, given the high likelihood that it would result in having to spend Saturday evening cooling my heels on the Group W bench in an inner-city ER. With that in mind, I decided that waiting 12 hours for antibiotics wouldn't kill me, and spent the rest of the evening alternating warm compresses and pumping. I'm just as glad I did, because while I still felt lousy when I woke up the next day, my fever was gone and the red spot was much smaller. I spent the day pumping frequently again, and today the redness is pretty much gone.

So apparently it was a mild infection that my body fought off on its own. Whew. But now there's the issue of what brought it on. The most likely cause is that I'm not pumping enough, which I'm not sure what to do about. I'm pumping just about as much as I can during the day. Occasionally I'll go too long when I probably could have fit a session in, but mostly I'm doing the best I can carving out pumping time while caring for a baby that won't be put down and a preschooler. The only real time to add a session is in the middle of the night, which everything I read on exclusive pumping says I should be doing but I haven't on account of it would kill me dead.

I'm not a good sleeper. It takes me a long time to go sleep and I wake up easily, but it takes me a long time to really be awake. And once I've been woken up and had to move around and be functional for too long, it takes me a long time to go back to sleep. It wasn't much of a problem when K was a baby because she nursed at night, so I just pulled her into bed and while I couldn't sleep through it, at least I was able to lie down and not be too awake. With Alec, I've mostly been able to give him a bottle lying down in bed, and while I occasionally lose my grip, it usually works fine and we're both back asleep within 45 minutes. If I have to get up and pump, the odds that I'm going to really wake up and have trouble going back to sleep are going to go way up. But if I don't do it and getting mastitis turns into a persistent problem, it's either going to be that or giving up pumping.

For the moment, I'm going to try to militant about not letting too much time go by during the day and making sure that I get up promptly in the early morning - I think part of a factor in the infection was that I was lazy and stayed in bed a lot longer than I should have both Friday and Saturday. Hopefully that will do.

What's clear is that bottlefeeding is definitely the right choice for now. When I switched Alec to a faster flow nipple, he went from drinking 20 ounces a day to 35. He's backed down to 30 now, since apparently he had some catching up to do for a while. But in three weeks he's gone from skinny little arms and legs to chubby, meaty limbs with deep creases at his wrists and a pleasing double chin. Instead of going and off the bottle and taking two hours of fussing and dozing to get a feeding down, he dispatches them in 20 minutes. Clearly he wasn't getting enough, and if he couldn't get enough food from a slow-flow nipple, he certainly wasn't going to do it through exclusive breastfeeding. I'd still like to try and get him breastfeeding part-time, but I've been reluctant to try when I'm trying to get rid of thrush. If that means our opportunity to get him back on the breast has passed, that makes me a bit sad but we'll survive. I'd rather have a chubby, happy little boy.

Correlation and causation

I was listening to a program on Alzheimer's disease on the radio this afternoon. Aside from feeling incredibly irritated with the featured artist who works with Alzheimer's patients going on and on about how his work proved that people with Alzheimer's disease aren't just vegetables like everyone says but still have memories (gosh, really? Have you ever met anyone with Alzheimer's disease before now? Like most diseases, it has a progression. It's not like people just wake up one day a complete blank), I was struck with a new thought on the oft-repeated research that people who keep their minds active are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.

The particular research cited today was that people who work longer are less likely to develop Alzheimer's. As I listened, I started thinking, now wait a minute. My father didn't get Alzheimer's because he retired at 62, he retired at 62 because he had Alzheimer's disease. Research shows that people start showing subtle signs of Alzheimer's disease years and years before it gets bad enough to get diagnosed. Is it that working longer keeps the disease at bay, or is it that people who aren't going to develop Alzheimer's are better able to keep working, and people who do have Alzheimer's in their future may retire earlier because they're starting to experience subtle mental deficits?

Really, if you think about it, Alzheimer's is a physical disease of the brain. I'm sure doing crosswords helps maintain nerve connections and mental agility, but can it really prevent plaque formation? Almost certainly not. I suspect again that the research that shows that people who do crosswords are less likely to get Alzheimer's is because people who are developing Alzheimer's have trouble doing things like crosswords.

I'm not saying that doing activities that keep your brain sharp can't help your mental acuity if you do start developing Alzheimer's or dementia. My father's doctor said that the reason he stayed relatively high functioning as long as he did is that he was so intelligent, and therefore had a lot more function to lose before it really started to show. The better your brain works, the more resilient it will be in compensating if it starts to break down.

But this seems like yet another example of how studies that show correlations somehow get turned into the gospel of how you can control your health, that if you're just virtuous enough you'll be well-nigh immortal, and consequently how much you are to blame if you somehow get sick anyway.

His sidekicks would be Laundry Lass and the Wet Wipe Kid

Lately, Alec has been earning the nickname Incontinent Lad. I know, all babies deserve that name, but they're not all quite so... aggressive about it. Incontinence isn't supposed to be an extreme sport, but try telling that to our baby.

Ironically, K, with her horrible painful reflux, didn't produce a fraction of the spitup her brother favors us with every day. But given the choice between spitup with no pain and pain with no spitup, the former is the clear winner. Alec is a much happier baby than his sister was at this age.

Slowly but surely he's uncurling out of the larval stage from a sleepy tiny package into a roly poly baby who coos and smiles and looks with fascination at the world. We brought the swing out this weekend to great success, as he sits back and engages the dangling giraffe in deep conversations on the world economic situation and last night's episode of Monk. Meanwhile, as much as we love his cuddliness, we sat back and enjoyed being able to put him down for half an hour, something that has rarely happened since he was about a week old. He's generally quite a happy baby and a very good sleeper - as long as he's being held. He hates his carseat with a passion because he sees no reason to be in its cold sterile clutches when he could be next to a nice warm body instead.

The tiny baby days go so quickly, it makes it hard not to think about having two or three more. Unfortunately, babies eventually turn into children who need to be sent to college, so we'll have to enjoy these days sprinting by as much as we can.