A Few Sweet Pictures to Pull Me Through Day Four with Sickie

Lucy is still sick.  She's feeling better, but is still clingy and fussy and generally a little pill.  I am trying to be sympathetic, but I am running on fumes here since the last three nights have been back to a newborn waking schedule.  Remind me never to complain that she still wakes up once at night.  The first night, she wanted to nurse every time she woke, which was totally fine - forcing fluid into a sick kid is a good idea.  This every-two-hour nursing schedule continued all day for two days.  My body started to accomodate the increased nursing.  Then, NURSING STRIKE!!  She refused the breast during the day, and then she wouldn't even nurse when she woke up, she just wanted Mama to snuggle and pet her.  Needless to say, my boobs are not happy.  Fortunately, last night she decided to get back on the boob, so to speak, and at least there was something comforting I could offer when she woke up 456 times. 

Oh, and now my husband is sick with Coxsackie virus (heh) too.  Go mama and her immune system of steel.  Now I have to do pass out, but I am posting these cute pictures to remind myself that she can be fun and a joy to be with. 

This is Lucy's favorite face to make.  So.Freaking.Cute. 

She does this funny little puff and blow thing to go with it.

Lucy vs. Angel Hair Pasta.  She was flummoxed by it.  Good times.

She just looks so dumbfounded.  I can't even think of a good caption!

     

      Baby and Mama!

Baby and Nana!

Lucy "reading" the Sunday paper.  She likes to sit in the middle of

all the paper and spin around in circles on her bottom:-)

So serious!

You'll have to forgive me for thinking I have the prettiest little girl on the planet.

Coxsackie Virus

Heh.  Coxsackie.  Poor Lucy has a case of Coxsackie Virus.  Also known as Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease, Coxsackie Virus is a common childhood virus spread via body fluids and (yum) feces.  Basically, as our pediatrician said, babies get it (a lot) from putting everything in their mouth.  Some babies have no symptoms at all.  Lucy is not one of them.

She has had a fever on and off for the last three days.  She has been fussy for no apparent reason, not sleeping well, not eating well (but nursing like a MANIAC) and generally been listless and glassy-eyes.  Tylenol has not helped make her feel better.  Motrin has not helped her feel better.  And it comes and goes.  Yesterday she was running a fever of 102, but was happy and playful.  Last night she had a fever of 99 and was screaming and listless.  Poor little peanut.  The doc took one look in the back of her throat today and actually recoiled as she said "Oh!  That's coxsackie".  Apparently, there are a lot of versions of Coxsackie, one of which is Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease.  This not terribly creatively names ailment is characterized by painful blisters in the (you guessed it) mouth, throat and lips, spots on the face, hands and, not surprisingly, feet.  The mysteriously painful diaper rash that Lucy has been sporting for the last 3 days is also a symptom.

Alas, there is nothing to be done.  It is a virus.  All I can do is keep her hydrated and give her Tylenol and Motrin until she has no fever for at least 24 hours.  She is so uncomfortable.  So very very sad.  She spent all morning clinging to me, nursing and whimpering.  It was like hugging a child-sized hot water bottle.  I am still sweating. 

At least it has a funny name.

The Capitol Steps - You Probably Had to Be There #4 "I Wish Fidel Castro Were Here" and Other Ill-Advised Ideas.

We travel a lot together.  Especially in the presidental election year.  This means nearly three months together, day after day, at airports before the crack of dawn, in rental cars across endless miles of Iowa or Kansas or (if you're lucky) the Pacific Northwest.  But usually Iowa. 

It starts to get to you.  The only time you have to yourself is when you are locked in yet another hotel room in yet another nameless town somewhere in (usually) middle America. 

We have enough people in the Capitol Steps to do four shows at the same time.  We usually mix and match cast members pretty much every show.  Tonight you play with these four people, that roadie and that piano player, tomorrow you play with those four people, this roadie and this piano player.  In theory, all the bits, the choreo, the lyrics, the staging is "standard".  When you are out travelling with the same cast for months on end, the "standard" for your cast shifts.  Sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically.  Someone says "Why don't we try this?"  It works, we keep it.  The "standard" changes just enough to make your show a slightly different show from all the other casts by the end of the travel season.  This is fine, while you remain an isolated unit.  It only presents problems if there is a cast change.  One woman is swapped out for another for some reason while you are between trips.  One of the guys joins a different cast after coming home from California with "them" and before heading out to Buffalo with "us".  Then it is all, "well my  cast does it this way", and "We  do it that way."  Sometimes fights and cold shoulders and "I hate this f*cking cast"s ensue.  It is irritating (and immature) when this happens, but somewhat inevitable.  You put 7 creative people together for a long time doing the same show, mostly cut off from the standardizing influence of the whole, and eventually they become...well...creative.  The show evolves, almost with a mind of its own.  You start to think of ways to make the show better.  Funnier.  The thing is, the show is already pretty damn funny most of the time.  The reason we tend to get jaded on it is simply a metter of proximity and repetition.  And usually any hilarious idea one has in the thick of a busy travel season is one that will only be funny to the people onstage and backstage.  Here are a few of my favorite ill-conceived "this will be SO FREAKING FUNNY" ideas.

"I Wish Fidel Castro Were Here"

At some point in 2004 there was a video of Fidel Castro at some public event, tripping awkwardly and falling over in full view of all the spectators.  I don't remember what happened, where he was, what he tripped on or what the significance of the fall was.  All I remember is that we latched onto it and thought it was the funniest thing in the world.  We HAD to add it into the show somehow. 

Our backstage tech was JS for this trip.  He is game for pretty much anything.  We decided that JS HAD to be Fidel somehow.  Somehow.  But HOW??  How do you work Fidel Castro into the show?  And not just Castro, but his FREAKING HILARIOUS fall??  AHA!  KC and MT put their brilliant minds together and come up with this:

The Bush and Cheney skit and song went as usual.  At the end of the song, Cheney's heart attack, which usually ends the bit, went as usual.  Suddenly, I hear my husband (who plays GW Bush) say "Oh no!  Dick Cheney had a heart attack!  I wish Fidel Castro were here!"  Then, dressed as Fidel Castro (one can find just about any combination of props and costumes in the bags the Capitol Steps drag around from place to place), cigar in hand, our roadie walks onstage, trips over Dick Cheney and falls face first on the stage. 

I can hear KC and MT laughing almost uncontrollably onstage.  JS is giggling madly as he lays face first onver MT.  We are all in tears backstage. 

The audience sits in a stunned and confused silence as MT and JS drag themselves offstage, making it look like they are being dragged off by an unseen body clean-up crew.

Ii guess it wasn't funny if you actually got enough sleep, weren't drunk on airplane fuel and bad hotel food and didn't eat, drink, sleep and breathe the Capitol Steps.  An error in judgment...that we make time and time again...

"The Fondler"

Arnold has been in the show many times over the last few years.  This particular time was when the Guvanator was accused of sexually harassing women on his staff.  The parody was to "The Wanderer" and it was, perhaps predicably, "The Fondler".  The format of the song (of which I cannot remember one single line) was an interview with Arnold and 2 female reporters.  At the end of the song, one of the reporters makes a derogatory comment about one of Arnold's movies.  It never really got a laugh, so of course, we thought we needed to "fix" it instead of just letting it go.  So we decided that Arnold would punch the reporter in the face after she insulted his movie.  The reporter (me, in this case) would drop like a sack of potatoes and remain there for the rest of the song, whereupon someone would drag me offstage.  Hilarious, right?  So the fateful moment rolls around, KC, in all his AHHHnuld glory throws a very realiztic stage punch at my chin.  I keel over, already in histerics.  The audience is dead silent.  They are shocked.  Appalled.  Perhaps this was another, er...poor choice.  For some reason, the audience didn't find it amusing that a huge, muscular man just walloped a considerably smaller woman in the face.  Huh.

"Don't Taze Me Bro!"

We currently have a song in the show called "State of Arizona" (a parody of "Hotel California") about the recent law passed in Arizona regarding immigration papers.  In the song, an apparent illegal immigrant is stopped by a border guard.  At the end of the song, the "illegal" tosses off his blanket to reveal that he is in fact a Navajo Indian. 

The last stanza of the song goes like this: tossing off his blanket to reveal full American Indian attire the "illegal" sings: "Welcome to my home land I was born here/Yes we've been here/5000 years./I'm Navajo, we own this land you're on here/We've fought illegals, too/since 1492". 

This usually results in the audience cheering and clapping (rough translation "WHOOHOO WHITE PEOPLE SUCK!".  Our audience is 90% old white people).  The end of this song borders on the preachy, which is slightly outside our job description. 

The change that has been proposed here is this:  The Indian sing the last lines in all his glory.  The audience cheers.  The border guard nods sagely.  The border guard produces a tazer, zaps the Indian and drags him off.  Scene.

Because we all think this is hilarious, it is pretty much a given that the audience will be horrified.  We haven't been delirious enough to try it yet.

I Scream, You Scream, Lucy screams ALL THE FREAKING TIME.

Lucy has taken to screaming.  She screams when she's happy.  She screams when she's sad.  She screams when she's angry.  She screams when she wants something.  She screams when she's tired.  Screaming all day and all night.  Screaming has become her go-to mode of communication.  Not just a little scream, either.  Her screams full throated, operatic, shred-your-ear-drums-and-shatter-glass-quality screams.  They are a terror to behold and the reason I have had a headache for three straight days.  Please witness a small sample here and let me know if you have any windows you want shattered: 

Baby Sea Monster

This picture cracks me up.  She looks like a little sea monster crawling from the abyss. 

Or a cute version of that creepy chick from The Ring.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

I am fairly sure that Oprah beat me to it, but this book is MARVELOUS.

The narrator of this book is a dog named Enzo.  Not like other dogs, he strives to be more like human beings, so he can be ready to be reincarnated as a man.  He saw a documentary on Discovery once that said dogs who are ready will be reborn as men.  And he is so ready.

Enzo is a perfect narrator.  If this book were narrated by a man, it wouldn't be nearly as funny or touching.  Part of the rich charm of this story is imagining the fully developed inner life that this extraordinary dog has developed from watching TV and learning from his master, Denny. 

The story itself is fairly devastating.  Centering on the slow death of Denny's wife, Eve, and the shocking aftermath that Eve's parents create, I often found myself weeping aloud at the thought of something like this happening to my family.  I won't say what happens - the slow, agonizing way the story unfolds is part of the utter beauty of it - but listening to Denny's side of the story is both funny and heart wrenching.  He tries to overcome his "dogness" to be ready for the next life, but is never above using the tools at his disposal to make his point clear.  These moments are among the book's most amusing.  It makes me look at dogs in an entirely different light.  Have you ever had a dog who looks at you like they truly understand everything you have said?  A dog who does something so eerily human that you wonder if they are being purposeful?  After reading this book, you will probably watch dogs much more closely for signs of a far more intelligent light behind their eyes that you previously imagined. 

Rest assured that the book, however sad and beartbreaking, has a very satisfying ending.  I listened to the audiobook, which was very well done, but I think I want to buy a hardcopy.  I so enjoyed the world the author (whose name escapes me) created that I want to visit again.

The Mom Switch

I just don't feel any different.  On a basic level, I mean.  I feel like the same old Jenny, but now with a baby. Of course, I generally still feel like the same person I was when I graduated college.  A lot more stable, yes, but basically the same.  I thought that being pregnant would make me a completely different person.  When that didn't happen, I thought something would "switch on" when my daughter was born and I would be a completely different person then.  So now I am still waiting.  When do you start feeling like a mom?  Or a grownup for that matter?

I thought when I got engaged I would feel like a grownup.  Nope.  Married?  Nope.  How about buying a house?  Nope.  Actually, this process made me feel even more childlike and inept than planning a wedding.  Okay, SURELY when I found out I was pregnant, I would feel like I was an adult?  Wrong again.  So why did I expect actually giving birth to be any different?  I mean 14 year olds do it every day and they certainly aren't grownups. 

I remember the first thing I felt when I held her was not some overpowering emotion.  It was exhaustion.  I was just exhausted.  It took weeks - if not months - for me to get over the feeling that I was doing a 24-hour-a-day babysitting gig for some mysterious set of parents who would eventually (please God, SOON) come and take away their tiny, extremely demanding baby.  I thought I would just automatically be different.  Lucy is 9 months old now.  I am still waiting for the Mom Switch to turn on.  I am a MOTHER, after all.  I created life.  Shouldn't that change a person? 

Even the whole process by which my baby came into the word is shrouded in that fuzzy post-birth-hormonal-cocktailed haze.  It could easily not have happened at all.  If not for the constantly changing, sweet, funny, beautiful little girl that is sleeping in the next room, I might think I had dreamed the whole thing.  If anyone actually remembered childbirth for the way it really is for many women, we would have died out as a species long ago.  And I had a pretty easy time of it (if you don't count how long it took).  Yes, giving birth is a right of passage...but it is rarely honored as such in our culture and people don't generally have a celebration for the birth of the mother that happens at the same time as the birth of the baby.

All that aside, I know I have changed.  When I see kids in danger on TV or in the movies, it hits home in a real, visceral way.  She is in my thoughts most of the time.  My husband and I can refer to "she" or "her" out of the blue, in no context at all, and we both know who we are talking about.  My heart has expanded an infinite amount.  It has expanded so much that I wonder how it could possibly expand any further to include any more children.  I yearn for her when we are apart.  I worry about her safety, her development, her health.  I imagine her future with a smile on my face.

I guess the Mom Switch is much more subtle than I thought it was.  I expected to have a complete personality overhaul or something.  An ex-boyfriend of mine once said, "I want to be a fly on the wall when the doctors take you away after having a baby.  I want to know what they do to a woman to make them into moms."  Implying, of course, that he would recognize me after I had turned into one myself.  I suppose I took that more to heart than I ever should have.  I suppose I am still me.  Just "Mama" me.  I sometimes wonder if my mom ever looks at us and thinks "Wow, I can't believe I have KIDS!" or if the wonder of it all wears off after 30 years or so. 

So maybe the Mom Switch is really just a reshuffling of priorities as opposed to the total system reset I was waiting for.  I think of Lucy first and myself and my husband second.  That covers it, in a nutshell.  I think it might also be the switch that grows your heart to 1000 times its original size.  But I suppose even the Mom Switch can't make a perennial kid feel like a grown up.

I have to admit, though, having a real dining room set made me feel a little grown up.