Answer: I, the Jury

Question: What was Mickey Spillane's first novel?
(Mickey Spillane wrote Mike Hammer.)

So I had jury duty today.

I'm actually really fascinated by the idea of being on a jury. I'd love to be on one, I think. Too many Law and Order reruns. But right now, with a baby and I'm the prime caregiver... it wasn't going to be a good think if I got stuck on a week-long trial. If nothing else, I was going to need long and frequent breaks to pump my breast milk. Never mind paying for a babysitter. (Cause C. took today off, but he couldn't take much more than that.)

Happily, as happened last time, I sat around for all morning, read a book, and was sent home. I'm good for another three years. (C., incidentally, has NEVER been called.)

I think I would have gotten to go home even ealier but some weisenheimer kept making "funny" comments to the court officer and the judge felt the need to have us all file into the courtroom and sit and listen to her talk aobut the importance of serving as a juror before she said, "We have no cases for you today." Smart alek.

Let's see, other news? Mom and Dad N. visited yesterday, which was fun.

C and I have discovered that the Tufts Educational Center isn't the preschool we're interested in. It has a 9-hour day, 5-days a week. And a $15K/year tuition. Clearly
not the two mornings a week we were looking for.

That's about all. Now, for what you've all been waiting for: photos of Miss M.



Curious baby.


Bored baby.


Fierce baby.


Tired baby.


Guacamole baby.


Posing baby.


Running and screaming baby.

more pics of May

Barb and Skip and Betty and the boys visited this weekend. Christoper and I got to see a movie, thanks to their babysitting! It was almost like a real Valentine's Day. We saw "Music and Lyrics" which was very funny.

Anyway, Barb took many many photos. I'm stealing a few to post here, but click here to see them all. As ever, you needn't sign in, just click "View Slide show."

We found the camera!

Okay, we lost the camera for a while. You've all made it pretty clear that you don't care about my boring text, you want the baby pictures. So, when we found the camera this afternoon, we snapped a bunch of pictures and are posting them now.

More, better pictures to come.

Adventures in Urban Motherhood

The storm on Wednesday dumped a pile of variously frozen precipitation across the state. It also locked moms and babies -- especially those of us who have colds -- in our tiny apartments. Yesterday and today have provided urban moms with a miserable choice.

A. Stay inside.
B. Go outside.

It sounds pretty simple. Inside is warm and dry. Outside is... not. Outside is a dangerous topography of water in all its myriad forms: slush frozen into ankle-snapping corsucations, unexpected slicks of clear ice in the shade of trees, skims of water over gray packed snow, sloggy lakes made of a viscous semi-freddo of glacially cold ice melt, rainbow-colored car effluvia, and ice crystals. The sidewalks are trecherous for those of us carrying babies in a sling or bjorn, but impassible for those of us with strollers.

Of course, all moms were outside.

There's only so much time you can spend inside a small apartment, playing with books and blocks. You go stir crazy. The baby goes stir crazy. On day three or so, you abandon all your tightly held ideals and try to get the kid to watch TV -- it's called the electronic babysitter, after all -- but no, she's not interested in Good Eats or Simply Quilts. (The only things I had on TiVo that seemed even remotely appropriate for a baby. CSI and Gilmore Girls being out of the question, thanks to the terrible writing. Plus, House but... well, 25-foot tapeworm.)

On the positive side: Bostonians may have a reputation as cold and unfriendly, but lots would stop and help me lift the stroller over a particularly narsty snow berm. (In the bjorn/stroller debte, I decided that if I was going to slip and fall, I'd rather not land on May.)

On the negative side, Bostonians DON'T SHOVEL properly, if at all. One-shovel-width paths with lumpy ice on either side is not the way to make your sidewalk passable. And those nice little slopes down and up from the street -- yeah, those are where the plows dump their morraines of sand, slat, gravel, and icey snow. They are nigh impassible most of the time.

There's some profound thought, I'm sure, to be said that a mother locked alone with a baby is willing to brave such awfulness just to get out. But I can't think of anything. So I say good night.

Snot monsters attack

May has caught the narsty cold that I've got. Christopher is borderline -- tired, achy, but not snotty or coughing. In this house, that makes him a paragon of health.

I've installed our first baby gate -- a kick model in the door between the hallway and the kitchen. Baby jail, writ large.

That's all until we're not snotty.

May's got a new word

It's a sign. She knows the sign for "falls down!"

She uses it a lot when we're building with blocks. I'm having flashbacks to kindergarten, when Richard Samarco would knock down my blocks.

Christopher builds better block towers than I do, though.

Cough.

Still looking for the camera so that I can post pics of May.

Poop on a pop tart

I am sick. Coughing up icky stuff sick.

May is teething. Screaming with her hands on her mouth teething.

It's frigging 10 degrees outside.

Life stinks.