Dental Scare

It seems fitting that since I just made toothpaste that things in that arena would run afoul...

This afternoon while we were at the Khoreys' and I was giving Buggy her bottle of diluted juice* I caught a glimpse of the rarely-seen top backside of one of her front teeth, and on it I saw a small dark grayish speck. My heart stopped. Oh no. It's way too early for her teeth to be decaying, and we only just started giving her juice (two ounces to five ounces of water, so really very little juice, at that!), and she absolutely loves to have her teeth brushed. Perhaps it was all the banana she consumes; last Saturday she downed five of them, so that was all I could figure. I immediately wanted to call Rob for support; I felt sad and ashamed that I'd let such a thing happen to my child. I thought of one of my old students I first had as a kindergardener, most of whose teeth were edged in dark silver fillings, and a horrific vision of Buggy with the same metallic grin crept into my mind. I tried prying her mouth open so I could scratch at the spot, fearing that my fingernail might catch the ragged edge of rotting tooth and cause her extreme pain, but she wisely denied me entrance. So when we got home we swooped into the bathroom and set to work with the toothbrush (it makes my heart ache with pride and joy a little bit to see just how much pleasure she derives from practicing good oral hygiene). I laid her down across my lap and had another look: pearly white and blessedly devoid of any flaws - for now. My hope for her is that her teeth stay clean and free of holes until she's at least fourteen, the age I was when I got my first cavity, which sent me from the dentist's chair in tears.

*She is a new devotee of Trader Joe's Green Plant juice - the typical green elixer of fruit juice, spirulina, chlorella, barley grass, and powdered spinach and broccoli. Its murky mossy-sludge-mud hue looks vile indeed but tastes like heaven. When I'd told Noah that I was going through the stuff by the case while I was in labor and afterwards, he brought up the valid theory that she'd probably already gotten a taste for it which may explain why she'd taken to it so readily, more so than anything I've ever given her. Fine by me.

The Bureau of Gardening

In anticipation of planting our first garden I started our seedlings in trays that cover the surface of our bedroom dresser. I'm going to build some shelves for the walls closest to our light-drenched southward-facing window to accommodate more cells of seeds since we've run out of room. Our kitchen windowsill is lined with little cups to host red russian kale, one of which has already seen a head pop through the soil.

What a little dear he is!

Last month I scored us two spaces in the Allegheny Cemetery Community Garden, just a mile and a half up the road from us. Though one of the plots has a tree, which will compromise growing space, it does happen to be a mulberry tree which will hopefully produce some tasty fruit later in the summer. I hope to see pies in our future! Next week I plan to get out there, Goonie on my back, in the garden itself and start working the soil to prepare for the seeds and jump-started seedlings.

Buggy has been down with a cold for the past three days, soaking through the fronts of countless shirts a day with her perpetual stream of drool from her tongue (she can't breathe through her nose). Poor little girl. She's still as gleeful as ever (I, on the other hand, have a less than optimistic attitude about my own cold). She's been chugging watered-down cranberry juice and stealing sections of my oranges to keep her fluid levels normal and combat the sickness with vitamin C. It's her third cold and they're no fun at all, but it'll pass like everything else.

That big handsome thing is Precious Junior, a rubber tree plant we got from a neighbor, Gloria. When Rob went to pick it up she told him the plant's name and snapped a photograph of him with it, presumably for her scrapbook.

Wee babe chiogga beets - the ones that look like bull's eyes when you slice them in half. I can hardly wait to eat them!

A Coeur di Bue tomato. So sweet.

A Visit from Mimi and Pop Pop

This morning my parents dropped me off at work after a very quick but fun-filled overnight visit. They arrived in Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon and swung by the market to see where I work and meet a few of my cohorts. We then zipped up to the apartment to pick up Rob and Olive and headed across town to the Ryans' for a dinner of pizza, salad, and vegetables. Having all of the kids together is always a treat. Once Olive and Iris had had enough and needed to get to bed we left. Olive who didn't appear to remember her grandparents since last seeing them at Christmastime, was wary of the strangers who had burst into her house bearing suitcases and bedding, evidence of intent to stay, and clung fearfully to my neck and legs. She was more familiar with Tom and Sharon, Kellie's in-laws who've been visiting from Wisconsin and were present at Jack's birthday party. We put Goonie to bed then commenced game playing when we got home. Spades, Bananagrams, and Quiddler all made for an exceptionally fun night with my folks. Rob and I shared a bedroom with Olive for the first time in nearly two months, which was a success, since my parents were staying in our room.

I miss them already, but I'm planning a trip down to Maryland and Virginia in a few weeks' time so that makes it easier.

I don't know why there were no shots taken with my mother, but here's Buggy with her Pop Pop. What a guy!

Toofpaste

In keeping with our efforts to start doing more ourselves I gathered the ingredients to make toothpaste. This had been a plan of ours for many months now but we had a few tubes of commercial paste that needed to be finished before embarking on the project. The enterprise turned out to be wonderfully simple. I didn't follow any one recipe but collected ingredients from a number of recipes I found with common ingredients: baking soda and hydrogen peroxide and salt. Sweetening agents suggested were glycerine and xylitol. A tub of xylitol granules were my best bet at Whole Foods, and the stuff, naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables, helps prevent tooth decay and was an obvious choice to add to our toothpaste concoction. Flavorings are optional, and I chose to go the traditional route with peppermint oil. I was so excited that I whipped up an unintentionally large test batch as soon as I got home and, despite the unpleasant saltiness, was very pleased with the results. My teeth hadn't felt that clean in a long time. So tonight I'm going to dilute the mixture with more soda, xylitol, and peppermint oil and I think that may do the trick. I may go back for a bottle of glycerine, too, just to see if I like the way it sweetens. It's true that this is a product whose sole purpose is to clean our teeth, not to serve atop a slice of pie, but making it as palatable as possible would be an added bonus. My mother brought up fluoride, something none of the recipes I found included, which led me to do a little bit of research on the topic. I'm certainly not cool with having my families teeth rot away because of a mineral deficiency in my homemade toothpaste (having them rot because of the Mountain Dew I put in Olive's bottle is a much better excuse for me!), but when examining children's toothpastes in the aisles of the grocery store I got a very clear impression ("No Fluoride") that fluoride is an undesirable component. This site provided me with more information on why it'd be wise to avoid it.

Into the Teens

I now have a teenager. My sweet goon-gal turned 13 months old today and we have launched into a completely new and exciting stage. She's becoming a lot easier to handle - that's not to say that she was ever difficult, but she's more pleasant and low-maintenance than ever. Her mobility is have the opposite effect I thought it would; instead of having to run after her to keep her from getting into trouble, she's content to trip about happily. And when she gets into something she oughtn't, a simple, "No, Buggy," does the trick just fine.

Happy Birthday, Jackie Boy!

Today my dear nephew Jack turned four. Rob and Olive came to pick me up from work and we headed straight over to the Ryan's for a family celebration (Mike's parents, Tom and Sharon were there visiting from Wisconsin. I hadn't seen them since Kellie and Mike's wedding, nearly five years ago. Wow.) All of the adults sat round the table and played a few rounds of Taboowhile we waited for the young ones to wake from their afternoon naps, and Olive amused herself with her unfamiliar but exciting surroundings (and befriended a stuffed kangaroo and joey that Kellie gave her to play with). I hadn't seen the kids for about a month - not since Olive's birthday, and it was remarkable how much they'd all changed, particularly the girls. Iris is so much more animated and active, and because of her crawling and pulling up she's shed a lot of the facial pudge. I didn't get as many of the usual grins from her this time around, however; she's starting to regard me the way her siblings do: with uncertainty and skepticism, as one might a toothless man on a playground dealing out baggies of sweets. It's no wonder, though; I was told that Jack recently, when the subject of me was brought up, did the finger-rotating-round-the-temple motion for whacko. He's got a point. I can't seem to help myself from teasing him and leading him to believe that I reside in some alternate universe where dinosaurs look to me like Disney princesses. He rides a fine line between kindly patience and exasperation in his dealings with me, which is always fun for me to witness. His excitement when opening his gifts was infectious; he uttered loud cries when dinosaur-themed presents appeared from beneath the wrapping paper. Kellie applied temporary dinosaur tattoos to the guests (though my red pterodactyl didn't fare too well after my first shower. Rob sported a stegosaurus on his left hand that is almost certainly extinct - HAHA! - after his 60-some hand-washings at the aviary. I should've taken pictures). Felt T-Rexes dangled from the chandelier and the cake featured the same species, and Jack's protests at cake-cutting time were so frantic that Kellie had to do the job in the other room to spare him the sight of it.

Probably the funniest happening of the party, though? Gail called Rob "Zoe" the entire time. Kellie corrected her the first time, but we're cool to let her keep going with it. I guess they look more alike than even I realized.

Goonie, not too keen on avocados

Enjoy this video footage of Olive's parade around the Ryan's house

Heartbreaking

This doesn't include the complete transition from happy Goon to what you now see, but I wanted to show what happens when we tell her in a firm tone to not drop fistfuls of edamame onto the floor for kicks. It's really painful to watch and makes me feel a little guilty for not indulging her fancies. Sorry, Olive!

Reunited at Long Last!

I got an early-morning jingle from my good pal Gail at Nationwide Van Lines to tell me that we could expect a delivery between 6 and 6:30. Tonight?, I asked, as I'd been told on Friday that Tuesday or Wednesday would be the date. Yes, tonight. I could scarcely believe my ears! So I set to work readying the apartment for the arrival of load. Lord only knows where everything is going to go (and I'm half considering using the still-vacant former apartment as a holding space for the inevitable overflow). We've already decided that the piano will live in Buggy's bedroom since there's ample room in there, and boy, does she ever love to tinkle on the keys! What better way to allow her to build a relationship with this instrument than to have it as a bunkmate?

Our moving crew arrived right on time at 6:15. I never got their names - one was Russian, the other was from some Caribbean island nation - but were they ever hard workers. Efficient as you please. One thing that made me less than happy is Nationwide's policy to charge $100 if there's more than 75 feet between the truck and doorstep. We should've blocked off a section of the street to reserve a space for them because two cars were parked right out front (and wouldn't you know? As the guys were going for the final load, the offending Honda Element pulled away. Isn't that always the way?). They had to park 120 feet from the door, and luckily I had enough cash in my wallet because they don't accept checks and the office, for taking credit card orders, was closed).

Another beef is that the 100 year-old Lincoln rocker I got when I was pregnant in anticipation of rocking my nursing Goon, was badly damaged during the first move from the Maine storage unit (the stuff sat in a New Jersey warehouse during the interim). I'm hoping that a liberal application of Elmer's wood glue will do the trick until the next tax return comes and I can afford to pay a professional to put things right with the old gal. It is a pretty sweet piece of furniture. If it had been me, I would've offered to waive the cost of the 45 extra feet to compensate us for the loss. Unfortunately it wasn't me.

My Rob spent hours this morning slaving away in the kitchen (as every good husband should!) unpacking boxes, washing dishes, organizing cabinets, consolidating spices and labeling their jars, while I deftly hacked into my thumb with a bread knife while attempting to slice through a taped box (stitches were probably in order, but we made do with a tightly-wrapped Band-Aid), did a laundry and recycling center run, disposed of the mountainous wads of packing tape, and filled our dresser drawers. The space is beginning to come together and it won't be long till it's livable again. I'm just glad it came when it did; this will give us time to get the place ready for my parents when they come to visit the weekend after next. I'm very excited to have them here!

The Lincoln rocker. You can't see very well the mangled side of it, but it's just as well; it would break your heart.

Deux Ans!

The absurdity of it hits me only when I type it: Rob and I have been together for less than twice the amount of time Olive has been here. Crazy, right? In actuality, however, this seems completely normal, and exactly how I'd wanted it to be. Two years ago today I finally got my head straight and broke free of the many years-long rut of insisting on being listless and miserable and allowed myself to be truly happy with the one person who has proved each and every day to be the perfect fit for me. He makes me laugh, is considerate, fair, never judges, makes me want to be a better person, challenges me, impresses me with his thirst for knowledge from the relevant to the mundane (i.e. the Color Me Badd where-are-they-now research that had him absolutely riveted for the last two days), is so dedicated to his internship work, loves my cats (even when I'm ready to toss them into the street for being rotten, foul monsters. Well, Wendell, not Ché), supports me in all of my endeavors, and is so wonderfully pleasant to be around. Rob, you are the most terrific husband, father, and friend. I am so incredibly fortunate to have you in my life. Thanks for waiting for me, Cramer.

Les Livres en Français!

I've long had the plan to introduce the Goon to French at an early age, so I ordered a few children's books en français, two of which arrived in our mailbox this afternoon: On Ne Peut Pas!, by Jeanne Ashbé and La Nuit, by Stéphanie Ledu. They're both nice little books, the first telling a story about a little bébé being told not to do all sorts of things like fooling with his papa's eyeglasses and unrolling toilet paper, and the second talking about what happens at night and the science of the earth's passage around the sun. This one is also good for helping me remember a lot more of the language, as the vocabulary is a little more advanced. This summer Zoe will be spending a week at Language Camp learning French (she has the choice of that, German, or Spanish), and she's already learned numbers 1-10, how to greet and say her name, her age, and how to say she only knows a little French. Pretty cool. Her interest, she told me, stems from her desire to one day visit French-speaking countries such as England and Italy, having not considered France as a nation where French was certain to be employed. I had to explain to her that, while some folks do speak French in those countries, English and Italian are much more commonly spoken - a revelation! She seems a little concerned that by teaching Olive while she's also learning English she'll get the two tongues confused, but we reassured her that there was little danger of this happening.

Still Waiting

Opening a birthday gift from Grandma Cramer, which included her very own cell phone and lei from Hawaii where she's been.
This week we've been anxiously waiting for our belongings from Maine to show up at our doorstep. Our storage unit was successfully cleared out on Monday, and ended up costing us a shockingly hefty amount more because of extra "packing" required on their part. It's sickening the amount that companies charge for a single mattress cover (times four in our case), and when I told the mover I didn't care much about that, to go ahead and proceed sans cover, he explained that he had to. I understand it's his job and certain things have to be done according to company protocol, but still. We had not packed our unit in anticipation of a moving company having anything do do with it; had we known this we would've done things a little differently. At the end of the day, though, it will have been well worth it to not make that awful trip. Worth it, I should add, whenever our things finally arrive. I was first told by a company rep that we could expect the delivery on Tuesday. Tuesday came and went, and I gave a call to check the status. "Call back tomorrow or the next day," they told me. The next two days passed and I called as instructed, and wouldn't you know? They gave me the exact same spiel! I told them I'd already played that game once before, then they countered with an "It can take up to 14 business days" line. Typical. They're probably in cahoots with the yahoos at Aetna, my former insurance provider, experts at giving clients the runaround. It's not as if we're in dire need of the things we've been without for the past nine months but, having shelled out enough money to support a village in Cambodia for twelve years so one can see why we've got the itch to be reunited with our stuff sooner than later.

The bright side of this is that it's given me more time to paint our moderately (as opposed to overly) furnished apartment. The living room will still need a second coat of paint, but the kitchen is complete, our bedroom nearly so, and painting Olive's room will mean another trip to the Home Depot for a can of a blue hue. Speaking of Olive, we've got a real walker on our hands. She's becoming more and more sure of herself with each step, maneuvering about like an old pro and transitioning to a sitting position with grace and skill. She derives immense joy out of hissing; she'll sit and commence hissing then explode into a fit of contagious laughter at the funny sound she's produced. What a fun game.