Mollyisms Part the Second, Back by Popular Demand

Ahh parenthood.
These are the things that we hear day in and day out.
Sometimes we laugh
sometimes we don't
but any way you slice it, Mollyisms are not a dumb one.

• Molly: Knock Knock us Who's There? Molly: Come in!
• It ok Jack
• Daddy Jack need a binky.
• Molly: Reeed Robin Us: Yum
• We going to get presents?
• Make the car talk, Mommy (Molly wanting Dr. Nightmare of our GPS to talk)
• I had a hard day.  I need to lay down.
• I want...choclate icecream with a cherry on top and the sprinklies
• I want  a Star one flavored bug juice (note: star flavored = cherry.  Obviously because cherry star kisses from Dairy Queen are red and Star flavored)
• This sucks
• I want to go back pack ride.  I want to take a kitty on it.
• Oops.
• It's a hard poop mommy (Like a true girl, Molly hates admitting that she too must poop)
• Peepee on the potty peepee on the potty (sings)
• I make the water turn green Mommy (we dump blue food coloring water in her potty to help make peeing more exciting; try it at home, spice up your potty time.)
• I dump it. I dump the peepee in the potty
• I flush it.
• Mommy I flush your potty?
• Yaay Mommy you go peepee on the potty too! Good job Mommy! (followed by a high five)
• Build me a castle with the pillows. and the blanket.
• I wanna ride a pony
• No. That's a dumb one.
• Hey Kid. Hey Kid you dropped your cellpone.
• I help you?
• You play with me kid?
• Thank you playing with me kid
• your welcome kid.
• I have a butt.
• Yetitiz (yes it is)
• Wanna play? (proceeded by Molly yanking you off the couch onto the floor)
• No eat my food Kon not for you.
• I want....appiejuits
• I tirsty
• I want... choclatemilks
• I want the cheeeez (cheetos)
• I need my Tee-B
• I need watch my show
• I want.... Adventure Times
• Ummm Powerpup girld (Power Puff Girls)
• No hamburder
• No hot dog dumb
• I want to eat yeaves (leaves = salad)
• I want trees (broccoli)
• I dip it?
• I wanna go to the plaaaayground
• Daddy, Watch out for the trees! 
• Oh no monter train!
• Daddy you gotta get a stick and yell at the monters and go yah yah
• grap the stick with you han and you yah yah
• don't hurt baby brodder (shortly after that statement, Molly got banned from coming to Jack's doctor's appointments for trying to slay the nurses for stabbing her brother with shots)
• Not your little man daddy, it's mommy little man
• It's ok Butterfly, Molly got you (said in the same cadence as Fawn says things to animals in the Tinkerbell Movies)
• I don't like it
• No funny dumb funny
• My Jammies... My glasses! (said in the same cadence as seen in the city of thieves episode of Adventure Time.  My daughter is a true nerd in the works.  I'm so proud)
• You be the monter daddy (I then chase her around the play ground until she stabs me repeatedly with the sharpest pointiest stick you can find)
• read me story
• you play my kitties?
• Need to get the babies for the mama kitty
• no like boom booms (thunderstorms)
• Mommy I want to watch animals A-N-I-M-L-S
• When counting Molly does good up till fourteen, then skips fifteen and sixteen jumping straight to seventeen.
• You need a bandaid daddy?
• Daddy don't pick your toe
• Mommy Daddy needs a bandaid (the above three were in conjunction to a hang nail I had on my toe, which Molly carefully observed daily until it was healed, informing Sue at every instance when it needed a bandaid.)
• I got a boo boo too. Need a bandaid (Molly's boo boos are invariably almost always so tiny you can hardly see the remnant of a scab that was a boo boo like three weeks ago.  But she's very insistent. And of course anytime someone else has a boo boo, hers are waaay worse and she always has to compare.)
• I kiss it better?
• Say your sorry to Daddy Mama.  Gib Daddy a hug. (Molly always takes my side in arguments; yet another reason why she rocks).
• That a dumb lady. (to the lady that almost hit them the other day because she ran a stop sign while on a cell phone)
• No hit the car. No hit the car.
• Put Jack down he sleepy.
• Carry me.
• Jack I play your toys?
• I not stinky.  I Molly.
• I not a baby. I a yittle girl (little girl)
• Jack smiling at me, Mommy.
• Aww it's cuute.
• Jack making noisies

Stay tuned for more fun later.

Mollyisms Part the First

Editor's Preface
Parenthood is an oft-celebrated cliche, in which a parent waxes poetic on how smart, funny, beautiful, and tantrum free his or her darling little human-child is.  Often, this is done in comparison to another child, wherein the second child is more oft compared to that which spawns in the mucky muck lurking beneath that condemned trailer over yonder by the railroad tracks (wrong side implied).  Yet in reality, parenthood is ridiculous work, perilous even (consider the evil plastic cheese wedge, your foot, the bottom of the steps and 3AM--Fucking Deadly) where dog-tired adults pray to any god who will listen that the children sleep [at some point, hopefully at the same time].  Where two year olds learn how to enact passive-aggressive regression tactics (let's un-learn how to use the potty!).  Where parents feel embarrassed when their toddler starts slapping the nurse for giving her baby sibling a shot; when deep down we're saying, "Rock on kid, for sticking up for your brother."  Yea, parenthood is a minefield...sometimes more literally than we'd like.   But,

There is one thing, that above all, pushes parenthood, for me, away from being  a brokedown misery of pleading, deal making, and flat out yelling: that being the amazing process of child-like language.  Herein lies the first of several installments of Mollyisms.

Mollyism -- (n.) 1. Something Molly said 2. A moment of phrasal hilarity 3. The fruits of parenting at its best.

Part 1: An annotated List of Terms and Definitions

• What are you doing here? -- A constant phrase can be used as an introduction, conversation starter, or general question
• Sprinkly one? -- usually used in conjunction with ice cream
• Do you like it? Do you lub it? -- often paired questions.  Consequentially, we lub lots a things these days.
• No. Birdy has a turkey leg. -- Molly's answer to the question, "Does a birdy have legs?"
• I want a poopcon. --One night outside of Sheetz, Sue and I were talking about coupons--I, stupidly thought that 1. gas stations didn't take coupons, and 2. that a coupon for a free coke was not a coupon and in fact a voucher.  I was later set straight by the cash register clerk. But in the mean time, Molly blurts out, "I want a Poopcon." And we lost it.  She then started talking about how Kon, our fat kitty, pooped and mommy had to clean up.  We're still not sure what she thinks poopcons are, considering that she's been given some, but either way they have something to do with making the fat kitty poop.
• Doctor Horsey. -- Molly has many roles for her My little ponies.  One of them is Doctor Horsey.  And Doctor Horsey can heal any animal by stomping its head.
• Hotchipot -- Molly's word for hospital. We had no idea what she was saying till Doctor Horsey showed up to help a sick kitty.
• I lub the Chu. He's my faborite.  -- Chu's our other kitty.  He tolerates Molly's insanity with the patience of the gods.  Someday, that cat's going to collect and demand tunafish for all meals till he dies (I think he's waiting for Kon to kick the bucket though, since Kon eats most of the food in the house anyay)
• One more -- One more does not mean one more.  Molly will One More something twenty or thirty times if she really likes it.
• Anotherone poop? -- One time Sue was changing Jack's diaper and Molly was watching.  She pointed at Jack's ballsack and said, "Anotherone poop, Mommy?"
• No Poop mommy, I farted.  -- We hate this phrase.  Molly won't tell us, or admit when she poops. Lately this has been leading to messy escapades, as the training diapers don't quite have the sheer containment space of traditional diapers.  Shit storm :'(
• Dammy. -- Sue's eternal pain.  Dammy is what you get when your two year old isn't paying attention to whom she's speaking, so Daddy/Mommy gets slammed together into Dammy. Occasionally she does the opposite, Maddy, but Dammy happens all the time, and it brings out Sue's Irish rage.  I feel her pain though--I used to be Dwerf (Drew/Derf [Derf's my step-dad]) for years.
• Chickennuggetfrecnchfry -- The only way Molly orders McDonalds
• Let's take the walk -- We like walking.  so does Molly.
• i wanna go to the wateraparrk -- Molly also likes the water park.  Currently she's banned till she learns to use the potty.
• I'm crying Mama -- This happens usually when Molly's fighting bedtime and she's turned on the pathetic cannon (her mouth).  Crocodile tears + this phrase = us having a difficult time not laughing as we try to order her to bed.
• Hi Little guy -- Anyone she doesn't know the name of becomes little guy.  This can be kids on the playground, action figures, or people on TV.
• Kids! Come back Kids! -- Molly lubs playing with other kids on the playground.  Unfortunately, very few unsupervised pre-teens have the patience to race around with a bossy two year old.  Also, Molly has a knack for showing up at playgrounds when everyone is leaving, hence this phrase.
• Mommy, you clean up? -- Said whenever there's a mess.  Messes are caused usually by cats in Molly's eyes.  She conveniently avoids pointing out many of her own messes.  Strange...
• I'm cold need a nice and warm -- a nice and warm is a blanket.  Sometimes she does say blanket, but nice and warm gets thrown in invariably.  She really huddles up and sells the being cold part too once she gets the blanket.
• No. I'm the Molly -- Ask Molly if she's pretty much anything , and this is how Molly will respond.  She gets real mad when people try to tell her that she's the big sister.  Sometimes she even goes as far as adding "I'm a little girl." when people do that.
• It's ok Jack -- Whenever Jack cries, Molly tries to soothe him. She's a bit crazy to be touching him up, but sometimes she'll even come over and kiss him.  
• Mr. Mommy! Mr. Mommy! -- Since we call Jack, Mr. Jack most of the time, just about everyone gets to be a Mr. these days.
• Want to take a bubble bath? -- Molly lubs bubble baths. Some days she wants to take like 9 of them, and probably would too if we let her.
• It's my Faborite. -- Molly has a lot of faborites.
• Moob. -- Molly's version of Move.  She tells us to moob a lot. 
• I help you? -- She loves to help.
• No take my car. -- The family car is hers; did you know that?  I get in big trouble when I drive to work (good thing I like to try to walk)
• I want a chocklate -- apple didn't fall far from the tree here; our little girl is a choco-holic
• Mnem an nems -M&Ms Molly style
• Open the door.-- Usually so she can escape
• Turn up the light -- This can also be used with the dark.  Turn up the dark or turn up the sun.  She doesn't like the night because that means she has to sleep.  Why oh why do little kids not like sleep?
• lemme out mommy -- we have to baby gate her into her room because she can open the door and won't stay in her room at bed time. 
• I got the key -- Molly lubs keys and opening doors with them.  To her, a key can be anything that fits in a keyhole.
• awww isn't it cuute -- She says this to Kon a lot.  Especially when she glomps on him when he's sleeping.  It's about the only time she can catch him.
• eew that digustin -- Molly's usually spot on when something is yucky, and she doesn't hesitate to tell us.
• that's dedicious -- Molly's real good at keeping this word for just the right moment; only really tasty stuff gets the dedicious label.
• I come too -- She'll follow us anywhere; even to the crapper
• that's dumb! -- sometimes this is cute, but when Molly is mad, tired, or both, everything, even things that are her faborite can become dumb.  And she gets pretty violent about hating dumb things; she'll slap em around pretty good.
• No Nigh night -- she fights bedtime pretty often anymore.  Before Jack, she was clockwork good about going to bed.  9PM zing up the stairs brush the teeth wash the hands kiss good night love you. 
• I wanna wash the han -- Washing hands and brushing teeth are two things she's pretty good at. And 
• Need a bandaid? -- Because she's a big help and because she lubs bandaids, she's there to help you with even the most insignificant abrasion.  Oh and Hello Kitty is what' she's packing these days, so I hope you like pink kitties and bunnies to heal your wounds.
• Wanna play my toys? -- Two year old games are crazy.  Sometimes they're real interesting with the rules that she thinks up, but two year olds have a cognitive limit on toys playing, I think.  After so many minutes, the game resets and she starts it all over fresh.  Sue can beat this repetition by adding crazy fox elements that rock Molly's world.
• Play in my room daddy? -- She lubs when we play in her room, but her room is a minefield of toys that scattered from an un-attributed pipe-bomb blast.
• oh no the monters.  Hide! -- Molly's not generally afraid of much, but she does like to pretend to be afraid of monsters.  There's all kinds of monsters to be afraid of.  And usually you're safe if you're under a blanket.  Personally, I like Monter Train (train whistles heard while outside at night); Molly gets proper freaked out by that.
• I'm scared daddy (fake shaking) -- when Molly is "scared," she fake shakes like she's cold.  It's real funny.
• dukadukadukaduka --  Because Molly doesn't know all the parts of a sentence, she often fills space where she knows words should be but doesn't know the word with rambly word-like syllables.
• wait waita minute -- we say this to her a lot; it's only natural that she turn it around on us.
• want to draw mommy -- Molly loves drawing and painting, especially 3D objects.  Michaels sells these little wooden animals for like 2 bucks.  She'll be blissful in painting heaving for like an hour. 
• I need it -- Molly needs lots of things, and she won't hesitate telling us.
• It's my map -- any piece of paper with stuff other than her painting or drawing on it is a Map.  
• I'm running -- She tells you when she runs.  It's good information.
• I got a poop pigeon -- How could I not buy this for her?  Littlest Pet Shop has a toy that's a pigeon and labeled as a "Messy" one.  It also comes with a park bench and a sticker sheet with stickers of bird poop.  When we asked Molly if she wanted a poop pigeon in Walmart tonight, she was like "Yeah! I want a poop pigeon."  And she kept talking about it all night.  I lub it.  It's freakin hilarious.
• Awesome -- She says awesome. How awesome is that?
• I want Edidabeth -- Elizabeth is Molly's best friend.  They're the same age and they lub playing together.  Molly talks about her constantly.

Good bye Spring '09, Hello Summer

As I type this, I'm finishing up the last of my grading deluge. I posted my composition class' grades the other day, and momentarily, Business Writing will be set to the books. It's an awful nice feeling to be 'done;' very much akin to the done-ness achieved at the end of a semester when you're a student. Funny how when you're a student you never consider how much work is involved on the prof's side of the house--really it's about the same as what the student faces.

Between Last Thursday and Sunday, I slammed through 71 five page essays. I just finished slugging through 5 business proposals weighing in at nearly 20 pages a piece (some more, some less), and sorting out grades on a multi-tiered system for them.

Here are some more stats:

Overall, I read over 3,050 pages of student writing this semester, and that doesn't include revisions; so I wouldn't be surprised if there was another 150-300 pages sneaking around that average that I didn't account for.

I went through 7 pens.

I averaged 10-15 student emails per day.

For my business writing class, we read two books: Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma, and D. Michael Abrashoff's It's Your Ship, as well as three 30 page articles from CQ Researcher, and a good chunk of The Business Writer's Handbook

In Composition, we read five essays: Gerald Graff's "Hidden Intellectualism," Christopher Lasch's "The Lost Art of Argument," Sven Birkerts' "The Owl Has Flown," Susan Bordo's "The Empire of Images in the World of our Bodies," and Arlie Russel Hochschild's "From the Frying Pan into the Fire." We also watched and discussed Steal this Film.

On the side, I managed to read Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism, Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts, and The Watchmen. Currently, I'm reading Robert Coover's The Public Burning, and Nation of Rebels by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.

Oh and I haven't written a word of fiction since...um...maybe November? So sad.

As far as students, I noticed a dramatic improvement in attentiveness, class participation, and overall quality of writing in comparison to the fall semester. Part of this is due to students moving into the comp class after having taken an introductory class (which is optional based on entrance tests), and/or repeating the class after having failed in the fall. In any event though, we generated a lot of good discussion, and I didn't have any 'dead' sections like I experienced in the fall. I also had a dramatic improvement in seeing students going to get writing tutor help; largely this was a good thing.

I did however learn that there are several topics that I never want to read about again. They include:

• The Drinking Age
• Gun Control
• Abortion
• Steroids
• Gambling
• The Smoking Ban
• Stem Cell Research
• The Death Penalty
• Alternate Fuels
• Global Warming
• Illegal Drugs

While I encountered exceptional papers throughout the above list (particularly there was a fantastic Pro-Life paper, and last semester brought me a stunning Legalizing Marijuana Paper), overall, these topics end up being dry, predictable, and very very similar. Fortunately, next semester, Behrend will be kicking into full-on LRS mode, which will involve required course "Themes," so as long as I'm crafty enough to select a theme that doesn't involve any of the above topics, I'll be safe so to speak. As far as themes go, I'm currently kicking around the following:

• Capitalism
• Piracy
• The Information Age
• Counterculture
  

Now that I have a couple semesters under my belt, I hope to start revising and deviating my lesson plans a bit for the future. I want to incorporate more focus on MLA citation in my Composition classes--this semester's addition of the Annotated Bibliography assignment revealed that many students are still clueless about proper citation. Also, in one of our departmental meetings, Craig presented a sort of handout relating to asking "Good Research Questions." It's something I hadn't considered before, and when I presented it a couple weeks ago, the students really seemed to like it; so that'll go in much earlier in the semester. Also, I think I'd like to develop Problem Statement Format introductions more clearly from the start-- the weaker writers in my classes always benefit from this, as it helps them form a clear direction to their papers. Currently, PSF comes in around week four; I think I'm going to move that up to hit before the first essay is due.

I altered the way I handled open revision this semester (in the fall I didn't put a timeline on revision and received a deluge of last-minute revision), and it worked really well, so I'll definitely keep that as an option.

I'm also working on creating a sort of revision checklist of common errors that I'd say 80% of my students make. Things like putting your punctuation inside your quotes, proper citation format, not opening or ending paragraphs with evidence, etc. Hopefully such a document will help them organize their workshop sessions more, and help them get away from focusing only on grammatical feedback.

So now that School is over for the moment, I've been working at gainful summer employment. At the moment RGIS is my only current holding. I had my paid training session today. The work is ridiculously easy; the hours are awful. Strange times are dealable--Verizon hardened me against weirdo shifts, but the pay is awful, and they only have me down for 17 hours in the next 2 weeks; nowhere near enough to pay the Man.

Fortunately, I managed to land an inteview tomorrow for a Marketing/web development gig at a place that's less than two miles from my house. From the sounds of it, it might solve all the summer monetary problems. So I'm looking forward to that with gusto.

Plus, since my next big project is to build the site for Ontologica, it'll be nice related practice. Speaking of Ontologica, I am finally going to be able to start drafting the essay that's been floating in my head since before Rod posed the notion of putting this journal together. Although I'm not traditionally an essay writer, I'm pretty psyched up to write this, so hopefully it'll pan out well.

Finally a note on the homefront: Sue's gone back to work, and though on many levels I feel like I'm somehow failing at bringing home enough money to cover bills, her work environment has changed drastically for the better, and she's really enjoying herself there; which is really good (and it's really helping with finances).

Molly's just coming out of a real bad stint of no sleep week (see my previous blog post). I guess most of the molars have cut through, because after nearly a week of no naps, and really poor sleeping at night, she's more or less back on her regular schedule (though the daytime nap is more floaty now--she used to crash immediatly after lunch, now it's hitting anywhere between 10:30 and 14:00). She and I have been hitting up the Zoo pretty regularly, and Molly likes that a whole lot. We'd like to hit some other zoos this summer, so hopefully that'll happen--kind of all dependent on work schedules and whatnot.

So now that I've written a blog post that, by all website usability rules is far too long, I'm going to end with a hopeful note about summer.

I hope summer rocks as much as I think it's going to rock.

O my child, why don't you love the sleep?

Day 2. Log. 8Am ish. I've been up since 2:30 ish (after going to bed around Midnight). Up with my daughter. For the second night in a row, she's on strike. The nightnight time management wanted to renegotiate her sleep agreement, and apparently she gave them a big mouthful of sass to the effect of, "No no no no NOO!" Either way, it means that for two days now she's blasted awake in the middle of the night with no apparent ailments needing attention, and also no interest in sleeping, unless said sleeping occurs on my shoulder while I stand and rock her.

Wednesday night, I stood and rocked her from around 4:45-6:15 before she finally relented and let me lay her back down.

Last night was far more complex. At first even the holding and rocking wasn't working. Sue and I ran the parent gamut--diaper check, food check, drink check, orajel check, no fever check, etc. She needed nothing. No gas, no nothing but a big pile of crab. To make it all worse, Sue is such a good mom, that she can't sleep if Molly's crying. Sue had to work in the morning.

So since it's day two of this and we decide to opt for the cry it out route. Tough love. Well although it's something that often works to help develop the ever lovely pattern of sleeping, last night it backfired; Molly jumped out of her crib for the first time. Not good. Thankfully aside from a scare, no damage taken. But there were still tears and lots of crabbing.

So I opted to take her downstairs in hopes that she'd fall asleep while we watched something. Fortunately The Heist was on HBO, and we caught it fairly early. We both enjoyed it. Which meant no sleeping for her. After that, there wasn't much good on, so I attempted to encourage sleep. Got her to lay on the couch with me...no real sucess there.

So it's 4:30 and I'm getting pretty crabby so we went upstairs and resumed the I'll-hold-you-and-you-sleep bit. It's a killer on the lower back, but she was sleeping at least. Anytime though I though she was enough asleep to lay her down, she snapped back up super fast.

Around 6 I was falling asleep standing. So I tried laying down on the floor with her on my chest. That bought us both an hour of sleep. Then she rolled and saw that the sun was up. So sleep time was over.

So far I'm feeling not too bad for 2 hours worth of sleep. We'll see how that pans out.

all I know is that Threequels suck. So tonight Molly, you better sleep like like a baby. But not like the baby you've been the last two nights.

State of the Estate

Life is busy, and by that extension, I'm guessing I can't complain. So here's a slice of the latest, freshest, bit o' life I can dish out. Straight from me to you. No lengthy emails, just straight bloggery at its logorrheic finest.

The Fam
We're all doing pretty ok. We're all busy as hell, but overall things are going as well as they can. Molly just turned 16 months, and she's not one, but three handfuls of cute. She can rattle off probably close to 10 different animal sounds, and has gotten very good at asking "what's that." She listens really well too (most of the time). She's very much in love with Nemo and Tinkerbell, though to her it's Memo and dinkdink (or something like that). Oh and don't think about eating ice cream unless you plan on giving her half.

Now that Molly's a little older and whatnot, Sue's been getting back into her art more. She's looking to expand and restock her holdings at a local art gallery, and/or start expanding onto etsy.com. Right now she's been buying up plain ole plates and painting them up with some really slick designs. She's also planning on doing some fabric art class with aunt Jeanie here soon.

Schoolin'
I'm teaching another full load this semester--100 kids this time, divided up 75/25 between composition and business writing. Now that it's nearly the end of the fourth week of school, I estimate that I've read and commented upon over 980 pages of student work so far, and that's taking only the minimum side of page requirements into account. That's a freakin' lot of damn grading. Fortunately, my kids this semester seem to be a good amount more attentive and serious than last semester, and that makes grading easier.

I also have several international students this semester, which is both humbling and really interesting. It amazes me that these kids not only can write well, but participate in class discussion just as fluently, if not more fluently than the rest of the students. While I'd love to think that someday I could subsist with my German or Japanese knowledge, I know I'll never approach the sort of fluency these kids have unless I'm living in one of those countries. Another cool thing about the international students is that they bring in a really diverse and worldly view on the types of issues we discuss; and these world views have done wonders for fostering our class conversation. While a lot of profs complain about having international students, I'm really enjoying mine, and looking forward to having more in the future.

Grant Musings
Since this is an ultra-random, catchall type post, NEA Grant applications are open now for Fiction/non-fiction. The deadline is 3/5/09. Here's the link: http://www.arts.endow.gov/grants/apply/Lit/index.html. I'm really hoping I can land something like this; it'd give me the time to write and finish Not an Autobiography without having to think about bills, and maybe a little on location travel research too.

Current Music
It's been a while since I've talked up my latest musical influences, so here's a list of things that have been consistently populating my Amarok Playlists:

• Blue Foundation--My wife's been spinning up the Twilight sountrack a lot lately, and I really dig the Blue Foundation Song on there....Now before I continue, y'all need to know that Sue's not one of the 800 million Twilight fangirls out there. Sue read Twilight long before it became harry potter rediculous popular; she even Emailed Stephanie Meyer back in the day some (and got responses). Anyway, Blue Foundation. Great band. Really nice ephemeral, trancy kind of stuff.
  
• The Ting Tings. I can't get "Shut up and Let Me go" or "Fruit machine" out of my head. Cha ching. Cha Ching.
  
• The Birthday Massacre--this band rocks. One of the best goth rock bands I've ever listened to. Excellent melodic female vocals backed by a great synthy dirty grind.
  
• Conjure One--another good ephemeral trancy kinda music. This kinda stuff is great to grade to.
  
• Fauxliage--see Conjure One's entry.
  
• Juli--She's German. I fell in love with their song on Rockband. Very good alternative rock sound.
  
• Oasis--loved em in the 90s. Still love em today
• "Love Spreads" by the Stone Roses--I forgot about this band and song, but Rockband again rescuscitated that memory for me. Back in high school art class, I borrowed this cd off of Mr. Humes. Great English band, and "Love Spreads" in particular rocks. Plus it's one of the few songs I can sing on Rockband without causing the paint to curl.
  

Writing
Ha! Not happening. Maybe Spring break. Maybe Summer. With 100 kids and a Molly, there just isn't time for much else.

Reading
I'm slowly chugging my way through Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Alan Moore's The Watchmen. For school I'm rereading D. Michael Abrashoff's It's Your Ship and Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma.

Watching
Right now we're cutting through several TV series on Netflix: Jekyll (very good), Witchblade, The Lost Room (very good), and Miracles (ok--Sue liked it a lot). Movie wise, we just saw Underworld 3 (very good), Wanted (very good), Rocknrolla (I liked it; Sue didn't), and Death Race (suprisingly good). Molly's been all about Tinkerbell, Finding Nemo, Monster's Inc, Baby Einstein, and to a lesser degree, It's a Big Big World. We're about to relive our college anime-nerdness by rewatching all of Rurouni Kenshin.

Speaking of anime, how I wish Netflix were around back when I was in college. I watched so much anime at such a terrible quality, because that's what we had--I saw all of Kenshin for example via TERRIBLE Real Player Rips. And I put up with it. Anime nerds today have it way too easy.

Well that's enough rambling. I have to finish grading persuasive memo revisions.

Morning Derail

I'm typing this with my laptop precariously balancing on one knee, while my daughter sleeps in my arms.

It's been a rough morning.
It's been a wonderful morning.

Let's start at about 2:36 AM. Molly starts crying--nightmare.
Sue gets up to rock her to sleep; no luck, brings her to bed with us, and Molly goes into "let me pick at your face and drill your nose with my razor finger, mama" mode. (Usually, I'd qualify all of that as a big long hyphenated word, but today, that sounds too complicated.)

So back to bed with her.

She cries.

We try to sleep despite the crying. All parents know that's a lie. In reality, the parents lay a room away from their crying child, eyes closed pretending to sleep and hoping the other will get up and care for the kid, or better yet, hoping the kid will just embrace the beautiful idea of sleep and, well, sleep through the night...maybe just once, but preferably every night.

So at 3:18, I get up, try to rock, and backrub Molly back into the land of sleeper crystals and whatever weird thing babies dream about.

Twice I make it to the door before tears.

At attempt 2, Sue offers Molly in bed with her part 2. By now it's 3:47, and since the alarm is going off in 13 minutes anyway, I relent, stay up, and head down to grade papers until my conscience clears me to maybe work on some fiction.

4:05 and Sue calls down; Molly drilled her nose good again (maybe I'm making that up for dramatic effect). Either way, Molly is standing in the bed when I fetch her.

So the routine begins. And this is the, my kid should be asleep, I want to be asleep, but the kid doesn't want to sleep, so let's do awake things routine.
1. diaper change. check.
2. food. She ate about 1/4 of a banana...so hunger wasn't the issue.
3. set up a sleeping nest in the living room--trick said child to sleep by having sleep be somewhere 'fun.' Check.
4. Let kid roam/play until the sleep demons take over....fail.

It's always the toughest when Molly continues crying when you've done everything you thought she needed. food, clean butt, not cold, has binky, George (her monkey, but not that Curious asshole--fuck him. I hate curious george. Molly's george is cute [for a monkey] and has a really weird outie belly button that's somewhat creepy and yet endearing.), place to sleep, and is eye-rubbing tired.

Change plans. We lay down together. This scares me. I'm still tired. I have the perpetual, sleep through everything important fear. I soldier through though. Stay awake, she doesn't. Score.

Wait...my reward is to grade bad revisions. Oh well, satisfying my concience. Grading begins at about 5ish.

During this time, Molly sleeps with a lot of restless in her. Butt in the air, creeping slowly off the nest until a face drag on the carpet is enough for me to try to intervene. But the best laid ideas are often dashed, right? My desire to help turns into a wakeup call, some more tears.

So we jump back to stage 4. Let her roam. She does this long enough for me to start grading again.

Then the cute starts. Her little tired self comes over to the couch and she lays her head on my keyboard, a feat that I'm still not sure how she pulled off, since I was sitting proper on the couch, meaning she had to kind of twist and stretch to get her head there. Either way, she ended up joining me on the couch in my arms, and I started to one-hand grade (I'm letting the kids submit essays electronically this semester, so I'm doing track changes).

As she nestles in, she grabs a shall laying over the couch and wraps it about her; I guess Sue's smell makes her more comfortable, and since she doesn't often sleep in my lap, I kind of stop grading.

This Molly sleeping in the lap thing is pretty common for Sue; they do it all the time, but I don't often get the honor of being a pillow, so I stop grading all together, and turn to her little body. Looking at her all curled into me, breathing smooth now, warm, wrapped in a shall, I have one of those great parenting moments. This is my daughter. She is tiny and beautiful and love and sleeping. Sleeping finally because I am her safe. I am her protection from whatever awful dream kept reoccuring tonight.

So my morning plans are somewhat derailed. I'm probably not going to check as many things off my checklist of overachievement. But instead I get something rare and wonderful. A small beauty, a moment worthy of reverie and experience.

So I'm going to stop writing now, and enjoy it for as long as I can.

Live from Louisville

Emilie Simon:



You know, you'd think that since I'm in IT I'd be much more net savvy, but I missed out on the rise of the internet. I don't own a cellphone, and hope not to, nor do I Myspace or really YouTube...but slowly, like an old man, I'm learning the new technology of the time, and as you can see above, I've found the point to YouTube: watching music videos I want to see, unlike my highschool days and MTV where I spent my precious 30 minutes before the schoolbus hoping that Garbage's "Only Happy when it rains," or Collective Soul's "Shine" would play, because if they didn't, if I had to be subjected to fucking "no diggity" or Destiny's Child, I knew I would have a shitty day. Needless to say, I had a lot of shitty days in high school. I think if YouTube existed then, and I had a computer then, I would have enjoyed high school, I would have bee popular, and I wouldn't be live in Louisville now, because Popular people are generally too happy to be introspective enough to feel driven to the forced isolation of the writerly life.

Oh and I miss my wife and daughter immensely right now. Right up to the point that I don't care about using that adverb in the preceding sentence. In my defense, how could I not miss pumpkin butt:

Home Sweet Home

Today, Sue, Molly and I just got home from another 4ish day hospital stay. This time, Jaundice was the culprit. I never really thought that We'd have to have Molly hospitalized for Jaundice (since it's such a common infant thing, but we did, and here's the story). Before I get started, though, don't worry. Everything's fine.

When we were originally released from the hospital, Molly's billirubin level was at 9. Billirubin is the stuff the causes Jaundice...and that stuff is actually broken down red blood cells and other junk that need to be shat forth with great force to be removed from the body.

A day after release, they sent a nurse to our house, who checked Molly's Billi scale, and found that it had gone up some more...to like 13 or so. From there, they prescribed Molly to be in a Wallaby. Wallabies, contrary to popular belief, are not miniature kangaroos. They are clunky heat spitting fiber optic light things for babies. The light stimulates the liver to process things and clean the billirubin out of the blood. Normally, a Wallaby is all you need.
And for 2 days, that's what we did. We put up with the loud, bright, wonky thing. It sucked for changing and feeding time because the Wallaby had to be wrapped around her chest, and it's cord wasn't all that long. The only cool thing about it was that it made Molly look like a glow worm.

Unfortunately, her Billi level kept going up, and on Saturday, we were sent to the hospital. To your left is Molly packed into her carseat. Isn't it darling?

Once we got to the hospital (St. V's instead of Hamot (our pediatrician is a St. V's doctor)), they admitted us to the pediatric ward where they put two big billi lights on Molly and drew a metric fuckton of blood before the doctor came in and started screaming at them for drawing far more blood than necessary. When we got to the hospital, Molly's billi level had already dropped a bit--down to 20 from 21 from the morning's check. The doctor had Molly admitted to the NICU, and Since Sue is breastfeeding, we got to keep the room in Pediatrics until things blew over. Sue also got to eat foods on the insurance company's bill because of the breastfeeding. I got to scrounge.

By Sunday, Molly's Billi level had dropped to 12.x and things were looking a lot better. The doctors and nurses also explained to us why things got so bad. Basically, all babies will have jaundice to some minor degree as their bodies expel the billirubin, but Molly's was a little worse than normal because of an AB blood type incompatibility between Sue's and Molly's blood. So when Molly was born, her body killed off all of Sue's blood in her system in addition to the other blood cells of her own, and a giant surplus built up in her system. Furthermore, babies don't start making new red blood cells until all the extra ones created in the womb are recycled. So once this stuff started building up in Molly's system, it made her very tired. The tiredness made it hard for Sue to get Molly to eat, which meant that Molly got dehydrated and then stopped peeing and pooping, and thus that's how we ended up in the hospital.

So they put Molly on an IV and had Sue continue feeding her as normal (though we did have to bottle feed the breastmilk at first), and slowly but surely the Billirubin level came down. On Sunday and Monday, Molly had a really ugly rash from the Billi, but that's pretty much gone now, as is most of that classic yellow skin coloring.

During our stint in the hospital, Sue and I were a nervous wreck, but we were very thankful that Molly only had Jaundice and not something more serious. Sue's mom ferried back and forth between the hospital and the house, taking care of us (making sure I was eating), and the cats, and helping with the phone calls and keeping everyone informed. She did a super job at keeping Sue and I sane during this rough time, and Molly's so lucky to have so many concerned and loving grandparents.

Notice the little sleepy eyes drawn onto Molly's "VR" goggles there in that last picture. One of the nurses did that. We thought it was awesome. In fact, all the nurses in the NICU were fantastic. Another one made a little Raggedy Anne namecard for Molly once things started getting a little more crowded on Monday. Everyone at the hospital did a wonderful job at taking care of our daughter, and because of that, we're home and happy again.

Project Dad

You heard it. On 10/1/2007 at 20:50 after 30 hours of labor involving way too many hours of relentless usage of Pitocin, my wife and I were rewarded with the most beautiful little creature love and marriage can buy: Our very own Molly Marie. Look at her, isn't she darling? I surely think so. Vitals: 7lbs 13oz, 20 1/4 inches. She's been happy, healthy, and an all around great baby in the house.

I'll be posting more soon, but good lord, she's darling.