March Hair

More shots of TUA and her amazing head of hair.



This is the beginning of Tua's month four.
54 degrees allows for an afternoon in the new buggy. Tua nods off immediatly after being harnessed in.

Maps and How to Pay for Them

This blog now has a ClusterMap feature. For no cost, we are able to see where on the world map some of the hits on this site are coming from. I confess, it appeals to the voyer in me to have this random bit of information (regardless of how accurate it might be) accessible. There seems to be no hangups with this system so far. Spam levels haven't spiked and our credit cards seem to be in order. ClusterMap, however, must have some means of putting bread on the table. If you click on the map on the bottom left of this page, you will be redirected to the designated site upon which our map is layed out in larger scale. Above the map you will note a series of advertisments by various internet groups. If you glance through these, you will find that the subject matter of the most recent blogs is the variable from which is drawn the theme of the days advertisments. Thursday of last week was the day we added the map's html to the layout. Thursday was the day that I had written briefly of the incident with the stream running through our basement. By 9:30 the next morning, ClusterMap had posted five ads on our map page. Every advert heralded the best solution to a wet basement. The ads change each day, and each day I am amazed what the marketeers who read these pages come up with that might pique my interest enough to want to hit their site. Yesterday, I saw one of the more amusing ads that ClusterMaps has generated. We have some friends who recently posted on their blog pictures they had taken while at the zoo. The post also included a short story of a monkey snatching a biscuit away from their daughter. The first day their ClusterMap came online, the ads were centered on the animal kingdom including ads for animal ringtones. One ad read---MONKEY- BID FOR MONKEYS ON EBAY.....Now there's an auction I'd like to witness.

Thumbs

Tua has found her thumb....
Dichotomous forms of distraction...
Here is my dad holding the near bed-time Tua. In this shot is modeling a woolen coverlette made by Disana of Germany. Before you jump to any conclusions about my apparent diaper fashion savvy, I will have you know that I know next to nothing about the labels or the designers behind this niche. When I sit down to write these scripts, I'm constantly calling on Bug for clarification as to what Tua is wearing in a certain photo, where it was made, who designed it, and most importantly, why we just had to have it. I do know this much about the above modeled piece. These woolen coverlettes will not leak. They are designed as another line of defense and are the preferred garmet between the hours of 11pm and 4:30 am. Should anything pass through the cloth diaper, the wool save the day (or the night, in this case). I still prefer BUMgenius. It is the easiest diaper to put on when you are half asleep.

Lake Effect

Beginning May 1st, anyone crossing from the U.S into Canada will be required to have a passport. This will undoubtedly increase the time it takes to get to Montreal by a significant amount. We live a little over two hours from the border and have had, on several occasions, the opportunity to venture into Quebec. From the cuisine to the architecture, to the staunch refusal of the natives to speak anything but Quebecois, you would think the body of water you crossed was the Atlantic and not the St. Laurence. In February and March, Quebec also happens to be the destination of thousands of Vermonters who prefer the vast lakes and backcountry areas for snowmobiling. One can evidently go for days and not see another soul. And if that weren't reason enough, there are also vast stretches of lakes and fields upon which riders can reach speeds that they would be prohibited from reaching in the States. One such party of hopefuls made the excursion two weeks ago. After trailering their sleds across the border, they parked their vehicles, loaded their provisions onto the machines, and headed north for a five day adventure. Days one, two, and three, went by with no outstanding activity. They were blessed with good sunlight and increasing snow depth as they ventured north. The morning of the fourth day they were treated to a sunrise over a lake with no name and, from their camp, no apparent terminus. After breakfast, they determined that they would try to cross the frozen expanse at the fastest speeds their sleds could take them. Two miles out, their spedometers were reading well over 150 mph. It was at that point when one of the riders realized that the surface of the lake had changed. Instead of the ice they had started on, there appeared before them a broad expanse of water, still with no end in sight. The rider who noticed radioed to his companions, and all three no doubt began to mull thoughts of eternity.
The story ends well enough. It seems that momentum and speed override mass and weight and in Canada, where you are allowed to move faster, you are allowed to use these physics to live a bit longer. Fifteen minutes later, with shaking hands upon the throttles, the adventurers finally reached the other side of the lake. Upon their return to civilization, where they were able to retrace their route with the aide of map and distance tools, they were astounded to learn that they had 'skimmed' across five miles of open water. Quite a feat when you consider the combined weight of sled and rider to be greater than 900 pounds.
By the way, this story, regardless of its truthfulness, has about 10 different morals to it. At this point in the evening, I'm too tired to explain any of them.

Frosted Takes

Tua in her new diaper coverlette. In its former life, this garmet was a sweater worn by someone from somewhere else. A company called Righteous Recycles remakes woolen sweaters into warm, leak-proof covers. The rest of these shots are from this morning. We awoke to a land that had been dusted by a few inches of snow. Everything was frosted over nicely and despite the flat lighting, the pictures do the work.

The Good South Wind

Today is the third day of Spring and I am pleased to say that warmer temperatures have crept their way into Vermont, at least for the immediate present. It was warm enough to take Tua out into the world for a walk in the woods without first bundling her beyond recognition. Because her head was free from blankets and woolen scarves, she was able to see. She kept her eyes open throughout the entirety of our amble through the woods. At a stream crossing, her ears caught the sound of rushing water and her eyes tracked the sound to its source. We paused just to watch her gaze at the stream below us. It made me wish that I had the retentive capacity to recall the first time I saw water moving over rock. For the rest of the short hike, she was gurgling loudly as her eyes darted from object to object along our path.

World Water Day

Today is World Water Day. The theme this year was "Coping with Water Scarcity." Events were held around the world, though primarily in the global South, to commemmorate this. I've posted a BBC sponsored site below. It contains entries from dozens of souls from all over speaking of the impact that water (or the lack of water, more accuratly) has had upon their lives. Here in Bridgewater, Vermont USA, we celebrated World Water Day by having another small river flowing through our basement. It's not nearly as bad as the flood last week, and right now it seems pretty much contained. Ironic though, having water that I don;t want on a day highlighting the immediacy of water scarcity. America has more resources than we know what to do with, including good, clean water. If we could only give more of these resources freely without considering our own needs as much as we do, I'd say we might be onto something. I will retire this evening thankful for water. Hopefully, the basement will be dry by dawn.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6480887.stm

Whittakers End

Often when I'm rocking Tua to sleep, I catch up on headlines that I've missed over the last year or two. Tonight, a story out of the Washington Post archives caught my attention. It concerns a man named Whittaker and his journey from mediocrity to fame and finally to disillusion. You might remember the name Jack Whittaker if you jog your mind back to Christmas of 2002. He and his wife were the Hurricane, West Virginia couple that won the record powerball jackpot of 314 million. For all his winnings on that day, he had every reason to wear the broad smile. But happiness it seems, is never found in securities even when you opt for the net payout instead of the annuitized disbursments. I'll include myself in the assessment that most of us are reaching for that which will bring us immediate and abundant comfort. Money is a big player on that front. It always seems to fill the need. At least, we think it does. Jack Whittaker's story is fascinating in that it is a classic parable of the depravity of man, and of the hollow promises offered up in the name of cash. But the most fascinating part about it all is that it really happened. You can find the story here-- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36338-2005Jan25.html.

....and by the time I finished reading this, she was sound asleep.

I'll Have What He's Having

There's nothing like a salad to take your mind off of March. With the light hanging around until the early evening, we pretended tonight that it was late August and the lettuce was just coming in. We garnished this with tomatoes and cucumbers and ate on the couch with Tua between us.

Miller Time

Tua's lazy afternoons.....measured out with coffee spoons...




Tua's smiles have developed significantly over the last week or so. She's holding them long enough now so that we can actually get a good exposure. These smiles tend to have a calm, warming effect upon the observer. They can turn your afternoon from partly cloudy to mostly sunny. Such was the case this evening. Upon arriving home, I immediately took the dogs for their daily hike up into the fields and forests above the house. We live on a road that dwindles into a class five goatpath just beyond our house and it is here that most afternoons between 5 and seven are spent hiking the mile or so up this path to the abandoned farms in the hills above.
This afternoon, as we were returning home in the cooling air, a non-descript pickup made its way up the path about 200 feet below us. The dogs began to bark loudly and I rushed to leash them. A truck in this neck of the woods is not too uncommon...Vermont is rife with folk who partake of the certain form of recreation that it is to drive out into the middle of nowhere for the sake of isolated inebriation. Whoever it was in this particular vehicle was alarmed enough by my presence to beat a hasty retreat. As they clumsily manuvered the truck back down the path, a dozen or so empty beer cans flew from its cab. Aside from flagging the obvious flippant regard for the drunk driving laws in this state, there's not a whole lot you can do whan that happens. Or is there?.... As I picked up the trash, I was thinking of ways to curb the problem of errant trash disposal in general and of wayward emptied aluminum cans in particular. Life must be good if your truck and a couple of beers are enough to bring happiness into your life. So this is what I came up with..... I shall purchase a rusted-out domestic pick-up that still has all its glass intact. I will weld six metal drums in the back of the bed and shall tow it out into the middle of the woods above our house and park it. This shall be the requisite 'responsible drunk lounge on wheels' complete with a bottle and can collection facility in the bed. Anyone interested in drinking beer alone or with one or two other souls in the shelter of the cab of a pickup surrounded by the great outdoors can hike themselves and their provisions to this spot, drink themselves into the state they were hoping for, throw their cans into any one of the metal containers in the back and then leave........
By the time I reached the house, I was well over this madcapped idea and well into mulling through the legalities of the liquor laws in Vermont. I entered the house and Bug was holding Tua on the couch. They were both smiling brightly. My minds mulling process immediatly stopped. Tua's smile flashed brightly in my direction and I felt the bitter memories of the previous hour flee my mind like wind from a tunnel. Or like a drunk from the limelight.

Jumping at the Doxology

Who knew that Thomas Ken's 17th century hymn would have such great impact on such a small child. At church this morning, this piece roused Tua from the best of morning meals in what we thought would be an uncontrollable meltdown. We are blessed with a masterful organist who knows how to rally the troops with the lowest of notes. The reverberation of his preludes are sometimes enough to wake the dead. Tua was well into her ten oclock bottle when the congregation was roused to its feet for the doxology. I was planning to sit this one out and had opened the perfunctory hymnal just in case Tua wanted to peruse the lyrics as she sipped away at second breakfast. As the organs bass notes began to shake, her eyes immediatly grew to the size of the offering plates that had just been passed. The bottle came out of the mouth, the hands went up and the crying commenced. But only briefly. Bug is getting very good at damage control and by 'praise Him above ye Heavenly Hosts', Tua had resumed her meal. Such is life for the delectable Tua. As for us, we learned that if you are going to scare your baby with sound during any feeding, it's best to do it surrounded by a couple hundred other people and preferably with good music. She seemed to be quite her normal self for the rest of the service.

The last day or so have trickled by with the all the cadence and thrill of lime jello. Tua slept through the night on Wednesday and Thursday, giving us all hope that she might have a handle on a schedule. Last night was a resounding dismissal of that expectation. We are being treated now to a day of convalesence. The 14 inches of new snow received last night made the roads bad enough to relieve us of any commitments. All this to take advantage of spending time with the delightful Tua who, by the way, is beginning to show increasing interest in conversational exercise. This morning, we asked a series rhetorical questions not expecting any response, and after each one, she would gurgle slightly, yell sharply, and then wait for our next question. Pretty impressive for 11 weeks, or maybe I'm reading much more into this than I should be.

Water Down Below

If mud up to the axles wasn't enough for you, how about three inches of water in a basement that I was convinced was bombproof. Perimeter drains do nothing if they have 8 feet of ice impeding the flow of water at their terminus. Fortunately, we were smart and built shelves on which to store the more sensitive of our belongings. Unfortunately, all of the boxes did not make it into their designated spaces. The contents of these now useless pieces of cardboard are now drying on the floor here next to me. The drains are now flowing properly and the basement is drying with remarkable speed. Of all of the boxes that were in the basement, I was most concerned with two small BASF boxes which I knew were filled with Bug's koala collection.
Bug, for the better part of her childhood, spent a great amount of her time and energies devoted to the Koala. I'm sure I collected something when I was growing up, but I can't remember what it was and I certainly can't remember being as avid with whatever it might have been as Bug must have been with her Koala's. What remains of her collection now is smaller that the 1988 edition, yet no less sentimental. My heart was in my throat as I decended into the basement tonight. To lose 40 or so stuffed marsupials to a wet basement would really have put the icing on my day. Fortunatly for me (and the Koala's) the boxes housing the collection were safe and I can sleep with a clean conscience tonight. For what it's worth, we took out one of the most handsome Koala's, renamed it Harvey (Bug had forgotten the original name), and placed it on Tua's nightstand. With any luck, she'll continue the tradition.

The Mud Season

We have a season in New England named after wet ground. This particular year is one of the worst I have seen. Our hill usually is barely passable because the surface gets too soft to stay on top. Yesterday, I sunk in to the axles and, were it not for the fact that I had an ounce of momentum left, the car would have probably stayed there until June. Mud season is not all thorns, though. These warm March days also make for good maple sugar and the finest snow conditions of the year.

Home as Castle

The subprime lending market is headed down the road. I was discussing this with a friend of mine today who said that there's millions to be made here, provided the right buyer comes along and knows how to dance this one. This is the same friend who is applying for the empty chair at Berkshire Hathaway. As an economics professor once told me "The greater the risk, the greater the reward". We've just finished all of the paperwork that goes into the finance of our home. Now that this whole restoration is complete, we have to start paying for it. Somewhere out in America, some guy is sitting at a windowless office drinking bad coffee and poring over my credit report. He'll make a decision on this point or that and pass it on to another desk where someone else will earmark my mortgage application for the final judgement. With any luck, we'll beat the current interest rates by a few points and maybe even get in under 6%. But in regards to the news today of companies like New Century, there are a couple of items worth noting. What we learn from the current upset of the lending markets is circular at best. More people are jumping onto the American Dream (whether they can afford it or not). Of these people who are jumping, the ones who can't afford it have been told that they most certainly can. Oddly enough, these house-hopefuls are now defaulting on their loans that at one point looked so manageable yet were offered to them by lenders who are now defaulting on their own payments and might subsequently be floundering by lunch tomorrow. A man's (or woman's) home should be their castle. In this moment now unfortunatly, the home appears to be a millstone tied around the necks of the many who have been lured the deep waters of real estate by lenders who failed to measure the risks properly. The other half of the equation from that economics class is "the greater the risk, the greater the loss".

Tua news. Slow steady growth expected this week. She finally has her cold beat, as do I. Bug is still going strong on 5 hours of sleep per night.

Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite

Here is another timeless tip for sending a newborn off to sleep: Power-rocking. This will only work for infants that are motion addicts (love to move and the world might as well have ended if they stop). Tua is a motion addict. So after she is swaddled as tightly as can be, I take her in my arms and, holding her about six inches away from me, swing her up into the air and then back down again, almost like I'm painting a floor to ceiling canvas with one single brush-stroke. This makes her very happy and content for some reason and after about two minutes or so, she is out for the night. She won't even stir when I put her into the crib.

Movie recommendation of the day: DON"T watch Scorsece's The Aviator. Artistic portraits of actual characters are best kept as scripted biography.

Better Late than Never

Tua's reacts to my impression of Tony Blair.
A contemplative Tua, moments before falling asleep...
Tua and Pascal tonight at my parents.
Jim, Lauren and a dozy T.
Tickling the Ivories---Pascal and Justin

What a day....Bug and I just returned from a visit with family at my parents house. Lots of activity and Tua shared in most of it. Everyone's asleep now and I shant be too much longer.
This afternoon was spent unpacking the last of our boxes that have been sitting in the second floor unopened since we moved in. The usable square footage area of floor has increased tenfold.

Speaking of tenfold, Tua's decible pitch has increased roughly this much as well this week. Her cries are louder than I ever imagined they would be. We thought about putting a pair of earplugs next to the changing table earlier this evening, but then figured it wouldn;t be good for her self esteem to see mom and dad ignoring her.

Housekeeping

A Few Items of Note::::

-We put out the first prayer request on the House of Shaw on Monday. The plight of this baby girl has been on our hearts the past few weeks. Ramona Mae is the niece of dear friends of ours. Amidst the shadows of this very dark time, her mom and dad keep up the posts on the page that has become a favorite destination of many who have joined themselves in prayer for her recovery.


-You have 38 days before your taxes are due. I am usually the one to wait until the 13th of April to get these done. As of five minutes ago, the taxes for this household are complete.


-Tua's prospects for a career in Major League Soccer are looking brighter. Last night during a routine bottle feed, she sent her foot into my side with enough force to wake me up. No bruise marks, but a kick like that from a 9 week old can really turn your thoughts to soccer camp.

-Ames Penn is alive and well. He emailed his site to me this morning. It's evidently got a few poems that he's working on. www.amespenn.blogspot.com

Awry and Demand

The weekend here did not go nearly as close to what we had planned on. Saturday evening, the symptoms of whatever minor cold Tua had began to manifest themselves in me as something greater and by Sunday morning, I felt like browsing for coffins. It is now Monday evening and I have the energy to eat which in itself is a step in the right direction. For me, the most difficult part of any illness is the apparent inability to contribute anything to the threads and patterns that make up the course of a day. Never did that aprehension have less merit than today. I was still under the weather but I managed to muster enough strength to bring Tua through her routines of morning, noon, and early evening, as Bug was out to town. I must have looked like a proper bandit to her as I was wearing a bandana to keep my germs off her face. She didn't seem to mind. I had no voice, but she seemed to love my hoarse, tune-less rendition of Amazing Grace. I almost coaxed a laugh out of her when "bright shining as the sun" took off for another key in a higher octave all together. Today was also the day when I learned how much Bug does for Tua. The list of tasks and assignments on Bug's schedule is long; that I knew. What I didn't realize was that amidst the tasks that make up the care and nurture of an infant, there is a clear pattern which makes the day much more fluid. Bug has this scheduling thing down to clockwork. I hope to never take for granted this skill she weilds. Tua will grow all the stronger for it, and I shall endeavor to do my best to sustain it.

The Best Medicine

Bundled for departure...

Waiting.....

The doctor is seeing you now

First Shots

Tua and her latest opinion of sharp objects......

Today was another blizzard in New England. In our small corner of the state, it is still snowing and we've accumulated just over a foot of snow and sleet. Amidst all this, Tua had her 8 week checkup. Despite her sniffles and her cough (which by the way sounds very close to Gollom's cough), she smiled and gurgled all the way into town. The roads weren't too bad for bad. We arrived just on time and waited the obligatory twenty minutes in the waiting room before the green light into the office. Tua was weighed (11 lbs) and measured for length (22 in) and checked over by the pediatrician who pronounced her "sound as buttermilk". We had a few minutes of q & a with him where we asked him such questions as:

"What kind of oil can we use to remedy her dry scalp?"

"Olive oil works okay, as long as you leave it on for a healthy spell. You can use any oil you want, even crank-case oil if you don't have anything else. It all does the same thing."

After the doctor left the room, a nurse came in with a tray of needles. Tua looked at the nurse and smiled. The happy times were short lived.....needles and newborns don't mix and Tua's cries were heard five towns away.

We're home now. She's asleep and we're on tiptoes. Evidently, the pain from a shot peaks seven hours from application.