Our asparagus bud

 Oh, asparagus season.  One of my favorite times of the year.  The delicate shoots pushing up fully formed from the ground.  They always make me think of Athena emerging from Zeus's head fully formed and ready to do battle.

We had Benjamin dedicated in church on Sunday.  I can't wait to show him the video some day of all the blessings he received from his church family on his dedication day.  I was reminded of one reason we decided to stay in Waco last year:  we wanted Benjamin to grow up (at least for a while) with people who already love him and support me and JB as we try to raise him.

A friend from Mexico (and father of three) came up to me after church with some additional words of encouragement that really spoke to me.  He has noticed that more than in Mexico, we seem to live, paradoxically, in a culture of scarcity:  a culture that reinforces the doubts that parents have about how they are raising children and leads to uncertainty and doubts that we don't always have the support structures to combat.  Some of you heard me criticize the pregnancy book What to Expect for preying on this kind of fear.  It fosters doubts about mothering by addressing itself to an audience it assumes has ONLY fears and trepidation about pregnancy instead of excitement, hope, and great joy.  And it communicates information by pretending to relieve fears that every mother has.

Anyway, my friend was trying to encourage me that we live lives of abundance, not scarcity, with God's help and surrounded by friends and family who really care for us.

How true.  And even so, even living as we do within a great support structure, we have to really TRY to allow ourselves to be dependent on each other. It's all too easy to be, superficially at least, independent.  When our pediatrician told us a few months ago that Benjamin needed supplemental formula to gain more weight, my instincts told me this was not the only way.  What did women do before formula was around if they weren't producing enough milk?  Other mothers nursed them.  I don't live in a place where this would be convenient enough to do (another mother to nurse Benjamin every two hours?), but it makes me long for the structures of dependence that would make that possible.  And I have been encouraged by a friend who produces plenty of milk who gave me some that she had frozen.

So for now Benjamin is drinking some supplemental formula, and I am just happy he is back at a healthy weight.  He'll start solids in a week or so, and I hope by then the asparagus is still in season.

Padre!!

If you are a Texan, then you know that the title of this post is a cry evoking spring break and a break from all of the intellectual and moral rigors associated with normal life.   South Padre Island, down near the border with Mexico, represents, for many a college student, beach, booze, and all manner of excess.

Guess where we went for spring break.  Padre!!

Well, North Padre Island.  And the closest we got to college students was waving to their retired grandparents camping in RVs as we drove the first few miles of wild, undisturbed national seashore on the unpaved but drivable (we only got stuck once) sandy beach.  We like retirees.  We stayed with some marvelous ones--relatives of JB's--in Rockport, TX and took day trips to Aranzas National Wildlife refuge and North Padre.  We had such a relaxing time full of good food and conversation, and (my favorite part) lots of extra hands to hold and play with Benjamin.

We saw lots of things.  Like the largest live oak tree in Texas.  JB and B are pictured at left climbing a large but not the largest live oak.  Being there reminded me of visiting the Angel Tree in South Carolina with friends in college--the largest live oak in the south maybe? Not sure.  But it was big and sprawling and beautiful.

And we saw lots of gators basking in the sun at ANW.  The one in the photo below is underwater and not visible from where the people are walking in the mid-ground.  We didn't see the gator until we were standing where we took the picture.  Yikes.  

At some point during the trip, I innocently asked if JB was planning on eating any raw oysters while we were at the coast.  He gave me a quizzical look and said, "That's the whole point of going on this trip."  He knows of course, that I don't like oysters, but Benjamin and I humored him while he indulged.  I did enjoy watching the oyster boats come in for the evening as I ate my cheeseburger.  As I watched the fishermen in their bright yellow overalls unload the heavy burlap bags of oysters off of the boats as the sun was setting on the ocean behind them, I was overcome by a strange desire to like oysters.  I'm not proud that I don't.       

Benjamin seemed to enjoy beach to some extent.  The crashing waves put him to sleep pretty quickly, but after a nap he seemed to enjoy the breeze and kicking on a towel in the sand.  He left with sand in every crevice of his body, and the wind made it too cold to even dip his toes in the water.

As I type this, bringing a four month old to the beach doesn't actually sound like a whole lot of fun.  But there's something about introducing him to new and interesting places that appeals to my imagination if not to the part of me that has to clean the sand out of his armpits (and his car seat) afterward.

A wee gnome

More to come very soon.  The gnome is recovering from a little vacation.  And we are enjoying not teaching this week by playing with him in bed this morning.  

The Great Snowstorm of 2011

Even two inches of snow in Waco means cancelled schools, treacherous roads, and a widespread spirit of child-like glee.  My class was cancelled last Friday morning, so JB and I spent the morning introducing our dependents to the wonders of snow.  

Brazos couldn't get enough of the snow and ran like a crazy dog through the yard all morning.  Benjamin was, unfortunately, indifferent to this wonder of nature. Ok, he was probably cold, but I figured babies survive all winter in the New York (and Russia! Canada! Alaska!), Benjamin can brave a few minutes bundled up to see the snow in Texas.   He was fine.  It's been a week and he hasn't gotten sick yet. In fact, he hasn't gotten sick at all yet.  Ah, the wonders of breast milk.  

In other news, Benjamin has recently found his lungs in a new and not entirely pleasant way.  The screams generally follow a trajectory from happy, smiley, look-at-how-loud-I-can-be ma screams that gradually descend into I-need-you-NOW screams over the course of a few minutes.  THAT'S taken some getting used to.  

JB and I have finally had to come to terms with the fact that we have a morning baby.  For the last two weeks he has been pushing his bed time back earlier and earlier (from 9 to a record 7pm last night) and waking up earlier, usually around 6, full of smiles and laughter and ready to face the day.  If it weren't for the smiles, I think I would be resentful.  But there is something about a baby's face in the morning that causes me to forgive everything.  ... And I probably just need to go to bed earlier.  

Bundling Benjamin in his moby for a walk in the snow: 

I love this last one.  Mother and child.  

The weather is cold, I can hear faucets are dripping all over the house to prevent the pipes from freezing, the dog has cabin fever, and the baby has a tummy ache.  What a day.  Here's a picture from happier times--just last weekend in fact, when it was 75 degrees outside.  JB got some work done on the drainage works outside and B was happy in the wheel barrow for almost an hour, staring up at the sky and laughing at the sunshine.  [Whenever I think of the issues with drainage JB is trying to solve, I think of Middlemarch by George Elliot and the drainage works that fill out one of the novel's many interweaving plot-lines. I know it sounds dull, but it's actually not at all.  Read it.]

JB had fun wheeling him around a bit too.   I remember dad wheeling us all around the neighborhood when we were kids--a BIT older than Benjamin is right now--running us down the hills and spinning in circles.

Birthday boys and other matters

On Jan. 14, the two men in my life reached important milestones, age-wise.  JB turned the corner toward old age with grace at 40, and wee Ben rolled over the hill of infancy at 3 months.  He celebrated by rolling over from back to front this week (Benjamin, not JB; ).  For the family who like to keep tabs on these things, he is also regularly grabbing at things and holding them in his hands.  Mom, remember the outfit you brought for him when he was 4 weeks that we looked at and said he would not be big enough for before it was too warm?  Well, here he is at 12 weeks and it fits perfectly.  

I haven't been posting very much these past few weeks because I've started teaching again and my attention is more divided than it was.  I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed going back to teaching.  I can tell you that I've been surprised by how much I enjoy it.  Teaching had become such a burden when I was trying to write my dissertation a few years ago that I thought I would never want to go back to it.  But as I got out of the car and started walking to class on the first day, I thought--perhaps for the first time ever--that I was really looking forward to it.  

And it has been great.  I've enjoyed interacting with students, revising lesson plans and essay assignments, and taking time to think about my class when I'm nursing later in the day.  When I was doing heavy intellectual work all day ever day in grad school, the extra intellectual work of teaching was just overwhelming, but now it's a nice change of pace from the decidedly non-intellectual (which is not to say it is not hard!) work of caring for wee Ben.  

Penguin Baby

A smiling baby picture to brighten your day.  Benjamin's good friends G and A brought this penguin hat for him from Uruguay, and it just happened to match his penguin shirt.  Happy new year!