toby of the day, 5.8.2008

the women's restroom where I work is just fine. it's reasonably clean, there are usually paper towels, there are even daily attempts by some insane prude to protect us all from any shameful peeping by covering up the 2mm of open space near the door hinges on one of the stalls. overall, I have no complaints. but for a long time, I have been perplexed by the plaque outside the restroom that touts it as a "nationally designated center for excellence". such a moniker would lead me to expect more out of the restroom. like golden toilet seats, or at least hands free faucets. something. fortunately, they recently added another plaque specifying that it is the breastfeeding room accessed from the bathroom proper that is the center for excellence. although, again, I'm not entirely sure what makes it a center for excellence. sure, it has its perks: the dilapidated vinyl furniture is not too uncomfortable, there is a blue checked cotton privacy curtain so you can separate yourself from the people who come in to nap on the vinyl furniture, there’s a dusty potted plastic flower and some wall decorations including "por favor, no fumes" scrawled in sharpie under the window that is too high for anyone to see out of, and of course there’s the hospital grade breast pump chained to the radiator. but I must admit that excellent isn't a word I associate with the room. drab but functional, yes. excellent, not so much.

Whether it was to increase the level of excellence, or just spruce things up, a couple weeks ago, someone brought in some old issues of parents magazine. it turns out that parents magazine is absolutely terrible. it's as though someone came up with a way to merge People magazine and the ubiquitous "what to expect" book series. in case you're unfamiliar with these books, I'll just say that I stopped reading "what to expect when you're expecting" when it told me that I should never eat tempura while pregnant, because it would make me fat, but instead I should get jon to order tempura and ask him for a taste. I proceeded to eat tempura and use "what to expect" to wipe off my greasy fingers. anyway, back to parents magazine. it's full of tips. from how to potty train your child, once you've determined which of their stereotypes your child fits into (is she the "hippie" or the "energizer") to how to have a DIY pedicure party with appletinis for your friends who have never had a martini (I believe there could not be a more sure sign that I am not parents magazine's target audience than an article implying I might spend my spare time with someone who has never tried a martini). some of the headlines on the cover include: "new burping techniques" and "when wipes are just too small". seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up. needless to say, I now read parents magazine every day while I pump. sometimes I even stay a little longer than necessary to finish thumbing through. it's like a daily visit to the dentist, without the sore gums. the video below is the result of this daily investigation. it turns out that one thing 10 month olds are able to do is brush their hair. well kind of anyway. I'm especially impressed because we often don't actually brush toby's hair, it’s pretty much just wash and go. Which makes me think that perhaps hair brushing isn’t learned, but like all those weird newborn reflexes, it’s, well, reflexive. in fact, I think this discovery could be an entirely untapped area of research: the central pattern generator that controls instinctual hair brushing in infants. This could be my big breakthrough, nobel prize here I come. and all thanks to parents magazine. and that center for excellence. boy, they're sure magic.

toby of the day, 5.5.2008

This weekend my mom is back for another visit. During her last visit, toby rolled over for the first time. This time, he took his first steps. She, jon and I just watched, open mouthed. I must admit, it means that I’m a little torn about her next visit. In some sense I can’t wait to see what exciting thing he’ll do next. But then again I don’t feel that we need to rush things, because one minute he’s all adorable smiles but then the next thing you know you’re fighting with a surly teenager about whether he can borrow the car, or worse, about why his crazy eco-maniachial parents don’t even own a car for him to borrow. Maybe I can convince him that it’s not necessary perform such grandiose tricks to impress his grandma, and then she can visit as often as she likes.

toby of the day, 4.28.2008

Toby has become quite a stander. He stands in the middle of the room just waving his little arms. How throwing all that weight around doesn’t make him keel over I don’t know. Then he’ll squat down, pick something up, and stand again. Often he likes to stand at the coffee table, then shuffle his way around trying to reach whatever objects we’ve inadvertently left within reach. I feel that really he is just helping us to center the objects on the coffee table by measuring their distance from all four sides. Admittedly, I could do without his new tendency to stand up in his crib at all hours of the night. Though that may be because middle of the night standing is accompanied by loud crying. If we could get him to just stand there quietly, twiddling his thumbs, it would perfect. Somehow I don't imagine that’s next on his milestone docket, but a girl can still dream.

toby of the day, 4.27.2008

we spent today in the park with isaac next to the dutch windmill. I specify that it was the dutch windmill as there are apparently two windmills in golden gate park and I wouldn't want you to conjure images in your head of us next to the wrong one. anyway, it was quite sunny, especially by san francisco standards, and so we coated toby in sunscreen, long sleeves, and a hat. Why that didn’t prompt jon or I to also slather on sunscreen I don’t know. I would describe jon as off-white while I’m sort of transluscent blue, both of which are colors of pale desperately in need of sun protection. Needless to say, our lack of sunscreen was a mistake. Compounding my feelings of stupidity, after we returned home, jon called me dumb when I didn't remember a bass line for a song we were working on a few years ago. To demonstrate my dumbness, he went to find the digital recorder where he had, moments before, been listening to the song. But the recorder was nowhere to be found. After thirty minutes of searching and some veiled accusations that I was hiding it, toby discovered it under a frisbee in the living room where jon had hidden it to keep it out of toby’s mouth. I think that makes the score toby 2, jon and sarah 0, at least as long as we don’t lose points for being dumb. If that’s the case then we’re both screwed.

toby of the day, 4.26.2008

today at swimming class toby tested out a kickboard. Toby doesn’t actually know how to kick, but he did find the kickboard to be extremely helpful at siphoning water into his mouth. And when I wouldn’t let him drink the water, he would just nibble on the board itself, sort of beer and tapas style. I’m working on a song about the deliciousness of swimming. It’s to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star. Or is it baa baa black sheep. Something like that.

toby of the day, 4.25.2008

Today while waiting for jon and toby to return from daycare, I was julienning some vegetables for hiyashi chuka. I very much enjoy julienning, rapidly turning food into tiny, evenly sized batons. And I thought about this as I made my way through a carrot. Then came the cucumber. There are many foods good for julienning (carrot, potato, apple, pear, daikon). And there are many foods that are not (brussel sprouts, kale, artichokes, mushrooms). As I went to work on the cucumber, I felt that it wasn’t trying hard enough. It could have been a great julienned fruit (it is a fruit, right? Because of the seeds?), but instead it seemed content to squander its potential and just be ok, better than all those other foods, that no matter how hard they tried, would never be any good, but not truly great. This filled me with a tremendous sense of disappointment, and I imagined if I got to grade foods on juliennability how I would reluctantly have to give cucumber a B overall, but I would placate myself by giving it a D for effort. It then occurred to me that here it was, Friday night, and I was not thinking about what bar to go to, or about the talk I have to give on Tuesday, or whether we would manage to finish up the rather uneven season 3 of battlestar galactica, or how to spin my job application to sound more cognitive to get a job in Queensland or Vienna, or how to decrease my water footprint, or how to get toby to sleep at night. I wasn’t listening to music or learning french. I was anthropomorphizing a fruit. And was sincerely disappointed that it wasn’t trying harder. This should teach all of you to never ask me what I’m thinking about, because frankly, it’s like peeking into your grandmothers attic; you’ll find a box of dusty doilies, random buttons, a picture of her with j. edgar hoover, a half eaten sandwich and a family of opossums. And then you’ll try to quietly back down the stairs but it will be too late. I don’t know how half the stuff gets up there, and its really best to just leave it alone. Fortunately, toby and jon returned home before I could get to lecturing the cucumber and then all was right in the world again. And the hiyashi chuka was delicious.

toby of the day, 4.22.2008

Today I’m teaching toby how to respond to unsolicited advice. Of course this plan will likely come back to haunt me when I suggest that he could work on picking up spares or that maybe he ought to be practicing his subjunctive conjugation or putting more topspin on his backhand, and his response will involve some grumbly complaints and obscene hand gestures, but we’ll worry about that when the time comes. Recently, my father, a minijumbo blog enthisiast, asked a friend of his for an opinion on the blog, and then forwarded that constructive criticism on to me. At minimum, you could say that this information was unwelcome. I have a job based on spending untold amounts of time wrangling over every word I write, every analysis I do, every figure I make, and responding politely to every ridiculous reviewers suggestion. I have no desire to replicate that experience at home. Fortunately, unlike the paper that I’m currently working on, which will likely result in me stabbing my eyes out with a stick in frustration before it goes to press, the only thing that stands between me and publishing this blog is my ability to find a reasonably cute or relevant photo and being able to maneuver the mouse to the little orange circle that I have to click on that says “publish post”. So rather than bore you with a point by point refutation of my blog reviewers suggestions, and certainly rather than improving the blog based on those suggestions, which might constitute work, I plan to just leave everything as is. If you don’t like it, you can always read one of the 1.1 million other baby blogs, including the ones capable of generating 40K in ad revenue (some of which must be good, right? actually, yes. yes they are) indeed, apparently everyone with a uterus that was once home to a kid is on the internet telling the same stories about their developing offspring. But, this is the only one that will tell you those stories about us and our offspring, and the only one that will reveal exciting secrets like what’s been on our netflix queue. So stay tuned.

toby of the day, 4.19.2008

After swimming today we headed out to hunter’s point to see a life size replica of the board game “mousetrap”. In the game you move plastic mice around a board while assembling a rube goldberg style mousetrap. I played this game frequently as a child. By played I actually mean I hung out by myself assembling and trying to get the mousetrap to work. The life size one had all the key parts, the rickety stairs, the suspended bathtub, the boot, the teeter-totter. Also like my childhood version, it looked as though after hours of meticulous assembly and testing, it had failed to work. While I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see it run, I was relieved that we weren’t there to watch it be stomped to pieces by a giant, frustrated girl in pigtails, which, again based on my own childhood experience with the game, is what I assume must have happened when it didn’t work.

toby of the day, 4.16.2008

We recently borrowed some books on teaching signs to your kids. “talk to your kids before they can talk!” it says and suggests 5 first words, one of which is flower (crinkle your nose, sniff the air). Flower? Really? That made the top 5? I feel this is like my learning to talk about my cat in Japanese rather than learning the words for bathroom or lost or hungry. Since the Japanese are not like trolls in fairy tales, “I will give you directions to roppongi, but first you must tell me about your cat while your son tells me about the cherry blossoms”, being able to tell them my cat’s name is wendy is not useful information. Until we learn more practical words I imagine toby and I forever trapped in the Tokyo subway, singing songs about lulington the nasubi neko and sniffing the air in search of flowers and our hotel. Maybe I’ll start him with something more practical, like the sign for pachinko instead.

toby of the day, 4.12.2008

Saturday toby had his first swimming lesson. The use of both the terms swimming and lesson are somewhat exaggerated, although I imagine they couldn’t charge $8 a class for something called supervised splashing. Since the lesson Jon and I have been trying to determine why we were so unnerved by all the singing in the class. Yes, the class description also failed to mention that instead of swimming you would be standing in a pool doing the hokey pokey, or more accurately, moving limbs of a buoyant 9 moths old to do the hokey pokey. And maybe that’s it, since toby and the rest of the kids don’t sing, it’s really just a bunch of parents floating around singing about the wheels on the bus while the kids drink chlorinated water. But toby sure likes it, songs and all. Which is good, since we have another 9 weeks to go.

toby of the day, 4.11.2008

today was a pretty big day, and surprisingly enough, toby was the smallest part of it. This morning we went in for toby’s 9 month check-up. After 6 months of near exponential growth, toby has gained only 1 pound since January. It makes me think that one day, the only crease in his arm will be at the elbow or that we might not fear losing toys, coins or small pets in the creases in his thighs, although that day isn’t quite upon us yet. But what made this a really big day was our trip out to the bay meadows racetrack to watch some horses race and rock out with perry stevens and the rest of “journey unauthorized” (visit, at your own risk, http://www.journeyunauthorized.com). Well, at least a bunch of people got to rock. Me and toby stayed trackside to watch his college fund lope its way across the finish line. toby's friend emma, shown in the video below as toby tries to lick her, won 100 smackers. That's probably why he's trying to get with her now (is that legal? maybe a little precocious... but they seem mutually consenting). Perhaps in a couple years when toby is emma's age he will be better at picking horses, but right now he's useless. I never should have listened to him. bababababababababababa he said. I told him I was dubious, that 4th horse sure looked like a long shot, but he insisted. gaaaaagamaaagaba he said. so we put down $10 and you know what it got me? nothing. I guess maybe he just needs some more practice, so we'll have to try again. and you know, why not, because there's nothing like a little gambling to bring families and friends together.