Take a Number

Before Caleb was born, I heard a mother complaining about little boy clothes – “All the same” she lamented. Once I had my own little boy I thought she was crazy! The clothes were so cute! Little lizards, trucks, tractors, dinosaurs, and every sport imaginable, but suddenly I’ve noticed something strange about little boy clothes – they all have numbers on them!

One Sunday Caleb wore a cute little summer outfit to church with a big number 1 on the back. Our friend Lane commented, “Most people wouldn’t wear their age on their back!” I laughed, but then realized that almost everything he had was numbered. It seems silly – the shirt he’s wearing today has a 9 on it (and #9 shorts to match). He has a very nice long sleeved striped shirt with a random 78 in the corner. His dinosaur pajamas are number 12, race car PJs – 28. He even has a camo shirt #72 and a shark shirt #8. (To be fair, the iron-on Call FM onesies I made him say 91.7, but that’s blatant advertising.) And these aren’t counting the actual baby sized sports jerseys he has!

It’s a mystery to me why manufacturers feel the need to include numbers on baby boy clothes. They’re still cute.


Caleb's been practicing his basketball skills whenever the opportunity presents itself. I fish all sorts of things out of the toilet these days. Most of the time I don't run for the camera... You'll notice the empty toilet paper tube in the upper left corner, that's not my gross neglect of our personal needs, I gave up having the toilet paper at Caleb's level a few months ago. It sits on the back on the toilet now. I also usually keep the toilet seat down, but from time to time...well you know. By the way, the shirt he's wearing...number 12.

Over and Over and Over Again!

Our fridge has an icemaker…in theory. After many months of fighting with the icemaker’s quirky ways, I gave up and went “old school” filling up ice trays to get my ice cube fix. The only problem was sometimes I forgot to empty the trays, or somehow they would mysteriously end up in the freezer with only one or two cubes in them, which wasn’t too bad until we were having friends over and had to make an emergency run to Publix for a bag of ice. I know, I know bag ice is only a dollar, but I can make it at home! And a dollar is enough for TWO Peppermint Patties and I can’t make them at home! I digress.

I finally came to the realization that I have to empty and refill the ice trays every day if I want to have consistent ice. And I will only do this if I empty and refill them at the same time every day, in short, I must have a routine.

It’s pretty universally agreed that children work well with routine – the smaller the child, the more important it is to them. For an older baby who is just starting to grasp some inkling of the concept of time, it’s the only way they know what to expect of life. As you get older, you learn about minutes and hours and deviations from routine are not as shattering as they once were, but I am certain that the human need for routine never completely goes away.

When I was in college, one of the things I liked best about my roommate Autumn was how well she could deal with spontaneity. Want to go to Wal-mart at 9:30 at night? Why not? Spontaneity back then felt freeing – freeing from the confines of routine – but back then I had only myself to care for and once you add a husband, a furry black dog, and a little baby boy, spontaneity’s fleeting freedom makes me and everyone else cranky.

So I’m curious as to what was so unpleasant about routine that I ran from it in the first place, and what is so compelling about it now that I seek it in every corner? About 3 or 4 years ago a friend introduced me to the “Flylady” – a purple winged woman who was obsessed with routine. For a while I subscribed to her email reminders and tried to set my house to her clock. My house did get cleaner and more efficient, but her 35 daily emails got kind of annoying, so I slid back into my old ways, however, I did learn a lot from Flylady and I sometimes check back in at her website to get ideas. That said, here are some things I know to be true about routines:

a. Tasks done by routine are easier because you become more efficient in them.
b. Routine helps you sleep better because you go to bed on time.
c. Routine makes sure needs are met because you remember to buy toilet paper – and really there is no adequate substitute for that.

But at the same time, surprises are fun! At least some surprises! The surprise that you have no clean underwear is not fun. It’s not a fun surprise to realize you forgot to pay your power bill. There’s nothing fun about mistaking salt for sugar when making cookies, but "Surprise!". The best surprises are actually not surprises at all; the best surprises are carefully planned.

Of all the things I have learned in this first year of being a mother, the fact that I need a predictable routine as much as my baby does rings loudest. My day rolls in predictable patterns and I have choices to make all along the way. I can choose to live spontaneously or I can be judicious about how I spend my time. This doesn’t have to be dull; I am the CEO of kitchen and household affairs.

Ultimately, I like routine, because I like the results. I don’t relish emptying and filling ice trays, but I like having ice, so I will empty the trays and I will fill them over and over again.

Happy, Happy Birthday Baby!

Happy 1st Birthday Caleb! (The pictures are late, his birthday was the 16th, but blogger was being difficult about uploading pictures.)

Doesn't he remind you of "Little Jack Horner" in this picture?



The two cakes - the lowdown on the turtle cake is on my other blog.


I guess you could call these "Before" and "After"





Yea! Paper!

A Day in Put-In-Bay

Another part of our Ohio trip that I especially enjoyed was our day-trip to Put-in-Bay. Put-in-Bay a little town on a little island on Lake Erie called South Bass Island. Rob’s uncle has a house on the water. To get there you must ride a ferry.

You can take your car on the ferry, but most tourists leave their car on the mainland and rent bicycles or golf carts on the island. You can get a 2-seater, a 4-seater, a 6-seater, or an 8-seater! You can even get a golf cart with a car seat installed, but that takes up an extra seat, so we just held Caleb tight and he was fine.

This monument is the International Peace Monument, which commemorates both the American victory in the Battle of Lake Erie (part of the War of 1812) and the border between the US and Canada – the world’s longest undefended border between two countries. Other touristy spots include a winery and a geode, which is a large crystal that you can walk into like a cave. The remains of an old hotel are at one end of the island.

The lake freezes in winter and sometimes is hard enough to drive a car on. Rob tells me stories about his grandfather ice fishing and he wants to go up there someday to go ice fishing. When the lake freezes the locals have to fly back and forth to the mainland.

Rob and I visited the island in 2001, then we rode bicycles around the island, saw the crystal cave, walked around the remains of the old hotel and toured the monument. We spent a day there with his parents this trip and toured a museum about the peace monument and battle, visited with Rob’s aunt and uncle, and of course, took lots of pictures of Caleb! It is the closest I’ve ever been to Canada. Kind of reminds me of Key West, where you can be close to another “C” country…

Caleb was such a flexible traveler! Although he had times when he vocally expressed his distaste at being strapped into his car seat, he managed to take a very nice nap in Grandma’s arms while we were at Put-in-Bay.

Where were you?

My dad tells a lot of stories. Some of those stories he tells more often than others, but that's ok, I remember those better than the others. One remembrance he shared was the day President Kennedy died. He was in school, in a classroom and someone came from the office to tell the teacher that the president had been shot. He remembered the teacher and some of his classmates crying.

I remember thinking I didn't have a memory like that - one that you forever can remember where you were when it happened...until September 11, 2001.

A radio reporter this morning said that here in South Florida we are split 50/50 - half want to forget about September 11th and half want to keep it fresh in our minds. I am a little split too. I never want to forget what happened. I never want to forget that day or act like the fact that it did happen is a burden on my life - I didn't lose anyone I loved that day, I really don't even know anyone who lost someone in the attacks - and at the same time I want all the talk about it to stop, not the memorial sort of talk, but the blaming, the movies, the commissions. And then time erodes memories. They become fuzzy and distant. I don't want to see pictures of the towers falling, but it irks me that they might not be shown lest someone benefit politically. It's like pictures of the holocaust - they are horrifing, but you must see them, you must not act like it did not happen. But that is for the future generations, when you experience a day like 9/11, you can't really forget.

I remember that it was a beautiful morning - even here 1000 miles away from ground zero. I was working for Call FM at the time and I went to the post office to get the mail for the station. We were still working the kinks out and I did most of my work at home. On the way home I passed by a Borders Bookstore on US 1 and for some reason felt compelled to stop and go in and browse. The store was almost empty and very quiet - but that didn't seem odd, it was a bookstore. I didn't buy anything, just enjoyed looking at the books, went out, got in my car and drove home - not 5 mintues away. When I walked in our apartment Rob was sitting on the couch watching the TV. The first tower had already fallen, he filled me in on what had happened as best as he knew and we sat and watched television all the rest of the day. Inside I felt a fear I had never known. For several days, maybe weeks, it felt like it could all happen again any minute, anywhere. Even now I dare to think, maybe it could...

I ran errands and then was at home that unspeakable day. I am curious to know, where were you?

A Trip to the Zoo

It's hard to pick out a "favorite" of all our excursions while we were in Ohio, but one of the best was our trip to the zoo. Until our visit to the Cleveland Zoo, Caleb's experience with animals was limited to dogs and cats. Watching him stare at the elephant's long nose and try to play pat-a-cake with a monkey (through the glass) was just priceless. Due to the window-like schedule of a baby, we didn't get to see everything, but of what we did see I was most impressed with the Primates, Cat, & Aquatics house. They had a lot of different kinds of monkeys! Well, as they say, pictures say a thousand words, so here you go:

My apologies, Mr. Dickens

In an earlier blog, I lumped all Charles Dickens novels into a heap of endless pages that were entertaining, yet desperately in need of editing. That was before I read A Tale of Two Cities and that book has changed my tune altogether.

Have you read it? And if you did was it at the arm twisting of your high school English teacher? It was all new to me and hit me like a runaway train.

Unlike many other Dickens novels, the cast of main characters in A Tale of Two Cities is suprisingly short and carefully connected. You can tell that Dickens knew where he was going before he sat down to write. There is no comedy and no list of funny names. I can't decide who was the main character - was it Lucie Manette or Charles Darnay? was it Sydney Carton? was it Dr. Manette? was it Madame Defarge? I can see an argument for all of them. But in the end I think the cities themselves were the main characters - or rather Paris, with London in a supporting role.

The thing that was so heavy about A Tale of Two Cities for me was my complete ignorance about the French Revolution. In the beginning I felt compassion for the poor French people, but Dickens slowly makes them so animal-like that the horror of it all became evident. I thought this exchange between Lucie and Madame Defarge was illustrative of one of the main themes of the book - plain depravity:

"As a wife and mother," cried Lucie most earnestly, "I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!"

Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance:

"The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?"

"We have seen nothing else," returned The Vengeance.

"We have borne this a long time," said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie. "Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?" 1

In spite of this the ending of A Tale of Two Cities is inspiring and hopeful. Dickens elevates the character of Sydney Carton dramatically by his self sacrifice and love. I suppose in this sense, it might seem that Carton was the main character, but to me he seems to be hiding in the backdrop until the last few chapters. No, as much as I grew to hate her, I think Madame Defarge was the main human character. She was the enemy of so many of the other characters and her character was consistantly in the spotlight throughout the book.

I like to read books and usually fiction is light, but this fiction was hard to read because it was based on true events. I was stunned to see how it all happened that this low class of people rose up together Marx-like and beheaded their king and entire ruling class. It made me wonder if it could happen like that again - not necessarily with a guillotine - but could a group of oppressed people band together in such a unity that would remove their oppressors? I think as Americans it's hard to imagine what drove them to it, it was hunger - they were starving. I am reminded of Robinson Crusoe, who tamed a wild goat by trapping it and starving it into submission. I guess it is true that a way to a man's heart it though his stomach.

1 Book 3 Chapter 3

A Taste of Fall

Our flight back from Ohio arrived around noon today. Flying is such a mind boggling way to travel, especially after all the times we've driven that same route.

We had such a wonderful time in Ohio. I told my father-in-law that being there put me in a Christmas-y spirit. Mostly because I associate their house with Christmas! But it was also much cooler there (believe me, 65 feels cold when it's 90 in Miami). This is the time of year I really miss being in a place where leaves change colors, where people build fires, where hot chocolate makes you feel warm inside. I'm not a big football fan, but the start of football season always reminds me that somewhere else in America fall has come, and here it's still summer.

Even still, I'm starting to see signs that Christmas is coming in Miami. The series of tropical storms and hurricanes mean that the wet season is reaching its frenzied peak and soon it will be predictably dry. The sunlight changes ever so slightly and has a fall look - even though it's so hot.

Fall is such a nice fade into winter. One of these days I'd like to take a driving trip up through it's progessively colorful leaves. I'm so accustomed to Ohio being frozen and grey. This time it was green and filled with summer flowers. It's so normal to go from new spring, to blooming summer, to brown-red fall, to cold winter. I'm not saying it's all that bad to be able to wear sandals in January, it just doesn't seem right!

Here are a few pictures from our trip, I'll post more in the next day or so. Caleb learned a lot while we were away!

Don't let this picture fool you! Caleb was walking much faster all by himself by the time we left! I think it was a big encouragement for him to have grandparents around so much to cheer him on!
Rob's parents have this great play tent with plastic balls in it, as you can see, Caleb had a blast playing in it.
Caleb and Uncle Don

Rob and Caleb at the Ohio State University "Skull Session" - a before game practice session for the band - (*No one in Ohio knows why it's called a skull session, but evidentally it doesn't necessarily have to do with actual bones). The alumni band was also there for the game. It was pretty impressive - like a sea of trumpets.