Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Hollie hates being belted into her bouncer, because she prefers to lounge rather than sit in it.

Like her dad, when she's feeling particularly lazy she would rather accomplish tasks using her feet instead of her hands. (David is superb at grabbing remote controls and changing the volume of the music/film with his toes on lazy weekends.)

This is what happens when there is nothing to do until 1:30 p.m. church.

Like Father Like Daughter

 I'm sorry, my poor little baby. It is in your genes to have a lifetime of crazy-haired sleepy photos. I think you are both cute as buttons, though.

Four Months!, cont.

This just in: evidence that Hollie really does love the Duck Tales theme song. What you don't see is the five minutes after this was taken, when she promptly spit up all over herself and David.

Four Months!

Little Baboo is four months old! She is 25 inches long and weighs 14 lbs 13 oz. Dave and I aren't sure when she went from looking like a baby to looking like a little person, but it seems to have happened overnight. Since David and I are both in school, life around here is a pretty complicated juggle. We're glad that we can shuffle home, school, and church life without needing daycare or a sitter--one of us is always home with Hollie. There are days, however, when we have to switch shifts at school, so Hollie has also taken lots of walks to campus and back as a result. She is very careful not to scream when we walk past classes in session, thankfully. (And everyone at school LOVES her...she better not get an attention complex.)

Hollie loves:

• her bare feet rubbed on Dad's beard
• the DuckTales theme song, especially when Dad sings it (she laughs at the "Woo-ooh!"s)
• reading her 123 Texas book from Aunt Liz
• watching Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert with Mom & Dad (I think it must be the garish red and blue sets)
• when Dad plays guitar and Mom sings
• splashing in the bath
• playing with her blocks, her Grover doll, and her giraffe
• acting out the part of Jacob Marley by rattling her plastic chains and moaning
• grabbing her feet
• grabbing at toys that dangle from her bounce-chair (though, in general, she hates her bounce-chair)
• jabbering (she's become quite the chatterbox, just in these last two weeks)
• being in what David refers to as her "hot air balloon"—when we walk her around the perimeter of the house and let her casually look around and see the sights

Hollie hates:

• having a runny nose (her first one ever was this week)
• going to sleep
• waking up
• getting dressed
• her carseat
• anything that confines her from kicking and stretching out her legs

We are excited to try feeding her rice cereal, but we might wait until we get back from Georgia to try it. Dave and Hollie are coming with me to a professional conference next week, and we are excited and nervous. Hollie in a hotel room for four days will be an adventure indeed (not to mention the plane rides and train rides). We're hoping she likes the swimming pool! (I think I am more excited/anxious about that than about actually presenting my paper.)

Here is a short clip of Hollie's laughs. This has been hard to document because she is usually the most giggly at nighttime when we are too tired to get the camera out.

 

On Owning Things, Losing Things, and Keeping Things

When Dave, Hollie, and I went to my parents' house in Utah for Christmas, we made out like bandits. Spoiled! We had to pack all of our presents (as well as a bunch of things we had brought with us, and a bunch of nostalgia from my childhood that Hollie was to inherit) into four huge boxes that cost us $70 to mail to our house in Texas. Of course, we got home before the boxes did, and we promptly went from airplane to car for a nine-hour drive to Houston and another week away from home. When we finally made it back to Lubbock, we were worn out, pleased with ourselves and our little baby for surviving the road trip, and we were more than eager to put all of our new possessions away and play with our new toys.

In the coming days, David and I opened boxes of books for school, patiently awaiting the REAL packages of everything we sent from Utah.

...Yeah, they never came. We started to wonder after a couple of weeks, then wonder turned to worry, worry to frustration, frustration to regret, and regret to acceptance.

While we were in Houston, we forgot to turn off the mail, but it was okay because we had a friend staying at our place while we were gone (he was there to check out the university). There was only one day between when our friend left and we came home that all of our presents must have come, sat on our doorstep, and been stolen sometime in the middle of the night.

But who would steal boxes of baby clothes and toys, or old children's books with inscriptions like: "To my dearest Emily, from her Great-Grandmother Melba"? I told David and my mom that if I had stolen some boxes and found that they were filled with memorabilia and baby things, I would put them back during the middle of the night the next night. My mom said that's why I'm not a criminal. Dave reminded me that the cardinal rules of thieves is to never return to the scene of the crime.

What bothered us more than losing the things, though (things are things, after all), was that these things were gifts, chosen specifically for us by people who love us and know us, things that were thoughtfully considered, purchased, carefully wrapped, and brought to Utah to watch them be opened by us. My mom who lives in Utah and my sister who lives in Alaska can't be near Hollie more than a few times a year, but they can at least feel close knowing that Hollie is wearing their clothes.

It's made me want to at least memorialize what was lost by making an inventory of the things here. I must add, though, some embarrassment about doing so. We really are so ridiculously, wildly blessed and spoiled, that I feel shy telling everyone just how much we received in the first place. (And this is not even to mention the loot we brought home with us from Houston, including tons of great hand-me-down clothing like the polka-dot dress Hollie is wearing above.)

What Was Lost:
From Mom/Grandma:
* a lavender Bumbo
* several outfits for Hollie (including a special Valentines Day jumper)
* teething rings and toys
* new cute pacifiers
* David's first power-tool, a circular saw
* a fancy Vera Bradley briefcase for women
* an immersion blender

From Sister/Aunt Amanda and Brother-in-law/Uncle Tyler:
* a Baby Bullet (for making baby food)
* a baby food cookbook
* more clothes for Hollie (including bibs that said "from my favorite auntie" on them)
* a pretty stylish shaving kit with lotions and creams for men
* a rad tie rack
(fortunately Amanda's present for me I got to wear home: a necklace with a huge octopus pendant, and a locket with a watch inside!)

From David and Me to Hollie and each other:
* Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso
* 2 Harry Nilsson LPs
* more cute clothes for Hollie (including her first pair of Osh B'Gosh overalls that I bought back in November, I was so excited!)
* Hollie's first purchase with her own money: Four special board books from The King's English including Grover's There is a Monster At the End of This Book, Pride & Prejudice for babies, and Dinosaur vs. Bedtime

Stuff we already owned that we were shipping back:
* a hip baby t-shirt that I wore in 1982, in good condition
* all my special hardback books from when I was a kid, including one I had won in a contest and scrawled an explanation of how I won it in my seven-year-old handwriting
* a black Mobi-wrap that Mom gave me before Hollie was born
* our Wii (the worst part of this is that we had bought the new Zelda game the day it came out because we were so excited, and now we can't play it. I had played just enough to see how super awesome it was. Oh, Zelda! When I get my PhD, I am going to buy another Wii and play you to my heart's content!)
* Dave's SuperNintendo!! This one is extra tragic, because it was in excellent working condition.
* Incredibly rare SuperNintendo game cartridges, including: SuperMetroid, Secret of Mana, ChronoTrigger, Tetris/Dr. Mario, Megaman X, and the original Mariocart (possibly others...we've been too downtrodden about it to check what we still have here)
* a special stuffed rabbit from one of my professors to Hollie (fortunately, she also gave us a blanket that we still have here)

Gone, gone, gone.

The ridiculous thing is that we still brought home so much loot despite these losses. Furthermore, our dear friends in town brought us over some of their baby stuff just days after we got home, including a mint-colored Bumbo and other fun toys. Spoiled we are. Spoiled rotten. And David bought me a really ridiculously nice camera that I demanded we take on the plane with us in case I wanted to play with it. Blessed and spoiled and blessed.

It has taken a while for us to stop saying things like, "Hey, where did we put that one thing....? Oh yeah, it was in The Boxes." And sometimes right after waking up in the morning I would suddenly remember something else that was lost that I had forgotten we'd packed in The Boxes. It felt like days of losing things. I was upset, and then I was scared. If people felt good about stealing special Christmas presents, couldn't they also feel good about breaking-and-entering or creepily stalking us, etc., etc.? But David assures me that, no, it is entirely different to steal from one's porch than it is to steal from one's bedroom.

I find it hard not to create backstories for the people who took our things. I want to narrate, to have an account of it. I picture them coming to our doorstep and expecting the boxes to be filled with watches, stereo equipment, video games and jewelry (the boxes were very heavy, after all). I see them put the boxes in their van and bolt, sweating, wondering if neighbors were watching. I watch their faces melt into disgust and disappointment when they pull out the gym clothes my Mom was letting me borrow, and they realize the weight was all in baby books and electronics from the 1980s. I see them dumping all our treasures into dumpsters, hawking the power-tool and the Wii for quick cash. I see them justifying their actions because in their eyes, we have too much already. I can see them writing a story for our family as they go through our private things. I can hear them say we didn't need these things, that we should feel lucky to have a family, a house, jobs, and zero need to ever steal from anyone.

And they'd be right.

We will always remember this Christmas as the one where all our presents were lost, and I will always remember it as the Christmas I realized a little more concretely that the reason we get together with family isn't for the gifts at all. The treasures I will always have from this Christmas are the pictures we took and the memories we made, so precious now that we live so far away from each other. The things I really want to keep aren't things at all: I'm so glad that I live at a time and in a place and in a situation where I get to live with my husband and my daughter without a fear of getting split up or taken from one another. I've thought a lot these last couple of months about all the families in the world today who must fear this loss daily. How grateful we are for so much. There's no way to take a proper inventory of the people I get to keep, my sweet family that I have faith will be with me forever. I'm so grateful that David and Hollie are mine to keep.

Hollie in another, different Valentines Day dress that Grandma sent to replace what was lost:

The green Bumbo from the Franklins and a giraffe from Utah Grandma's stocking that we took with us on the plane--the one baby toy that made it.

Happy Three Months!

Miss Hollie turned three months old today. Here are a few quick facts about the little bean so far:

On January 10th, she weighed 12 lbs 12 oz. We figure she is just over 13 lbs by now.

She likes to stroke David's beard (his big, beautiful, glorious beard) when she is falling asleep.

She talks a lot but only when David and I put our faces very, very, VERY close (Eskimo kiss close) to hers. It also helps if we howl in her face. She responds very well to howling.

David can make her laugh sometimes by pumping her legs or blowing raspberries in her face. She looks more concerned when I try these things with her.

She loves holding her two hands together, and she just recently learned to grab toys and lick their faces (yes, not bite, but lick).

She is starting to get baby dread locks (well, one baby dread lock) on the back of her head. Don't ask me how to comb out a snarl in hair as fine as hers.

She will sleep in her swing (turned off) in our room from midnight to nine (with feedings about every three or four hours still). In the daytime, she still refuses to sleep anywhere but on us.

During tummy time today, Hollie grabbed a toy that was just in her reach, and she got up on one knee, but then she got mad. She tolerates about five minutes of tummy time a day.

A sure-fire way to get Hollie to go down for a nap is to be wrapped up in a Mobi with Mom while she (Mom, not baby) reads Paradise Lost out loud.

On the long drive home from Houston over the holidays, the only thing that would make Hollie stop crying was if we played the She & Him Christmas album over and over again. We tried the Beatles, Billy Joel, Fleet Foxes, and Coldplay, but only Zooey Deschanel succeeded in soothing her.

Hollie loves hearing the hymns at church but hates pretty much all of the rest of it.

Hollie is a busy little mover, and she inspires us with her endless baby crunches, step aerobics (with our help of course), and admirable hair-pulling exercises. She NEVER sits still. Ever.

We love our little girl and can't believe how much she is learning and growing everyday. Happy Three Months, Spooky Hollie!

Week 3 vs. Month 3

Mommy's Finest Hour

Before I tell the following story, let me first post this evidence that I can at least look like a mom that has it all together. We were already late for church when I made David take this picture, but I told him we had to take it because there is no telling when the baby and I will both be fully dressed at the same time again.

And without further ado, I give you my finest hour as a mother thus far:

David works as a tutor at the campus Writing Center for about fifteen hours a week as one of his many part-time jobs. He was gone last Friday from 8:00 to 3:00, the longest stretch of the week. Baby Hollie and I were getting on fine, and she let me put her down for her first nap of the day (though really, who can distinguish between her naps and her nighttime sleeping? It's all the same.), letting me get some more shut-eye, briefly.

When she woke again, it wasn't quite time to eat yet, so she was content to fall back asleep as I held her in the living room. I hadn't eaten yet myself, so I carefully and stealthily picked ourselves up and went into the kitchen to scavenge. It really takes two hands to hold this little girl the right way, so I couldn't prepare anything for myself that took actual cutting, spreading, or complicated-package-opening. I knew we had some leftover Stauffer's lasagna in the fridge, so I tucked Hollie's head under my chin and went for it.

I did not drop the baby. This is not a story about dropping babies.

I managed somehow to transfer the (let's face it) three-to-four serving size portions of lasagna onto a plate and into the microwave. Upon opening the utensils drawer, I realized that all that we had left were spoons. I briefly considered washing a fork, but this sounded like a two-handed task, and one that would potentially leave my hand/s cold unless I stood there for a full minute or two waiting for the water to warm up. A spoon seemed like a perfectly reasonable tool for eating lasagna.

I put the spoon in my mouth and somehow precariously held the piping hot plate of piping hot lasagna in front of where I was also holding Hollie's cute little poking-out bum with one hand, and her cute little fuzzy head with the other. Successfully making it to the couch, I placed the plate on the secure foundation of my closed laptop on the cushion next to me, and chose to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Netflix rather than read any 18th-century literature like I ought to have done (kudos to my good friend Kaitlin for suggesting Buffy as the new mommy series of choice for midnight feedings--though Buffy has now infiltrated my daytime watching, too...).

We had settled into a good episode of third-season Buffy, with Hollie perched on my chest leaving one of my hands free for volume control and the other for spoonfuls-of-lasagna control. I had it all: good food, good entertainment, good sleeping baby. I could not have asked for more (and considering how much lasagna was on that plate, I really shouldn't have).

Life was so good, I rewarded myself with one of those "because-you're-worth-it"-sized spoonfuls of lasagna--a real heaping load. But as I raised the spoon over my baby's head, my sleep-deprived nervous system somehow managed to disconnect my brain from my hands.....and I missed my mouth. I watched in helpless shock as the single-serving-sized portion of lasagna fell from its awkward positioning on the small spoon and landed on my baby's back, rolling down her white onesie with the yellow elephants and onto my sweatpants, where I stared at it grudgingly, as if to say, "This is all YOUR fault."

Disgusted with myself and my food, I picked the dropped piece up with my fingers and stuck it in my mouth, where it could harm no one else except, eventually, my waistline and maybe my thighs. I paused Buffy. I looked in despair at the trail of tomato sauce and small bits of ground beef that ran down my peacefully sleeping baby's back. Thank goodness it missed her hair and her neck. Thank goodness for that. But I was still creeped out. There is something about Baby Hollie not being able to eat solid foods that makes me nervous for her to come into any contact with big-people food at all. There is a deep-down part of me that feared the lasagna trail would somehow go through her onesie onto her skin and get sucked in osmosis-style into her body where it would still manage to wreak havoc on her tiny developing digestive system.

I dabbed my fingers repeatedly against her back, licking off as much lasagna as I could. After finishing the rest of my lasagna and the Buffy episode (like I said, "my finest hour"), I scooped up sleeping-baby and changed her clothes.

As for my lasagna-covered sweatpants (read: David's old sweatpants that I have since commandeered), I didn't change out of those for another two days. Sunday morning David looked at my pants and said, "Is that blood?"

"No," I said, "it's lasagna."

He replied, "From two days ago? Oh."

And the best part of this story is that having blood or having lasagna residue on my clothes was equally unalarming to my adorable husband. The second best part is that this dialogue was immediately followed up with David saying, "Have you lost even MORE weight this week? Your body looks incredible!"

So......why was it again that I was so nervous about flyaway hairs and chapped lips before we got married?

One Month: Happy Thanksgiving!

Baby Hollie turned one month old the day before Thanksgiving. She is much more like a little person now (instead of just a little eating/sleeping machine), and we really enjoy her chirps, grunts, baby dinosaur noises, and the way she smiles big and giggles in her sleep (but no WAY is she going to smile or laugh when she is awake. She is all grunts and grumbles when she is awake).


We really wanted to go to Houston to see family for Thanksgiving, but we had to make the difficult decision the morning of to stay home. Hollie cried through the night on Tuesday, and there was no way we could make the nine-hour drive with three or four hour-long feeding breaks somewhere in the middle. We were second-guessing our decision until Hollie had two poopy blow-outs before noon--we decided then that it was probably best we weren't cleaning poop out of a carseat somewhere in the middle of Texas. It was still sad not to be able to come, though.

We did get to take Hollie to some friends' house, however, and she was pretty well-behaved. She wore her cute romper handmade by our cousin Jane. I must say, she looked pretty adorable.


P.S. I know this isn't my most eloquent post ever, but what can I say? Sleep-deprivation has given me, among other things, minor aphasia and a delirious sense if reality. We're putting the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard, if you know what I mean.

Two Weeks

Uncle Will holding Hollie next the pumpkins he and David carved.

Everyone said that the first two weeks are the hardest. Well, we made it! And it's true: the Baby Blues have dissipated just enough that I don't have weep for no reason as soon as the sun sets, and I'm only half as anxious as I used to be about Baby Hollie surviving the night without my watching her every breath. I owe a lot of thanks to David and my mom for encouraging me to stop reading so many baby books and looking up scary baby problems on the internet. Sometimes it's best just to look your scrappy little baby in her big blue eyes and say, "You really are one tough little peanut."

I don't try to count how many minutes I sleep each day. I've decided that will do me no good. The adrenaline keeps me alert even when I do drift off, so I am usually tired without being drowsy, which really isn't so bad at all.

Today I went back to school and left David with a bottle of breast milk for Hollie. It was tough, but it felt good to be back in class (read: It felt good to not feel one MORE week behind) and it ended up that Hollie ate well and was good for her Daddy for the three hours I was gone.

I think what has made these past two weeks the most fun, though, is our three a.m. family home midnights. Hollie loves to have her quiet alert time in the middle of the night, and it is nearly impossible for me to get her back to sleep after the three a.m. feeding. Sometimes she'll fuss a little bit and wake David up, or sometimes we'll accidentally wake David up when we're walking the perimeter of the house and stepping on all our creaky wooden floorboards. David usually has to get up early to tutor in the Writing Center so I try to let him sleep as much as he can, even though he swears he'd rather be up with us.

Anyway, we've been getting progressively more tired, which makes us significantly more goofy at these three a.m. rendezvous. The other night I was singing gibberish to wide awake baby when Davie got out of bed and started doing a dance for us in the doorway of Baby Hollie's room. There was a lot of booty-shaking going on, and David swears now that he doesn't remember any of it.

The next night I woke up to feed Hollie and found a plate of cookies and rolls on the table by the glider. I'm not kidding: my husband is the best. I can't wait until Hollie learns to giggle at how funny her Dad is. He needs to know how much his girls love him, especially at three a.m. when we need him the most.


P.S. A super-big thanks to all our family that was able to come for Lil' Hollie's baby blessing on Sunday. David gave her a beautiful father's blessing, and he said that Hollie was wide-eyed the entire time, quietly listening and looking at all of the men as they held her during the blessing. We are so in love with our little family, and we feel so blessed to have each other.

Cute. Cute. Little Baby.

IT'S A GIRL!

Announcing the arrival of Miss Hollie Margaret "Spooky" Grover, born October 23 at 6:57 p.m., weighing in at 8 lbs 4 oz, measuring 20 inches long. She's got feet the size of a small rabbit's, and her fingernails are already far longer than her nail-biting Mom's and Dad's.

Here's the quick stats:

Duration of labor: 18 hours
Epidural: Yes (did you read the above stat? The nurses told me to brag that I lasted 12 hours without one.)
Number of stitches Mom got after labor: They're afraid to tell me.
Number of nurses who stayed late on their shift in order to see Baby Grover born: 2
Number of nurses who showed up just as things suddenly got exciting: 2
Number of ice cups and popsicles the doula brought me since hospitals are crazy and don't let laboring women eat anything: 4
Number of naps David and I took after the epidural set in: a billion
How much sleep David and I had before going into labor Saturday night: 0 hours
What time David and I had woken up Saturday morning: 6:00 a.m.
How much sleep David and I have had since then: Does sleep even count if it's only for forty-five minutes at a time and you spend your dreams thinking about the baby?
Number of times I've had to call the lactation consultant 24-hour hotline since coming home: Just once. It's a miracle.
Number of bags of groceries Grandma has bought since coming to Texas last night: somewhere between 25 and 30, including several pink things for Baby Hollie and her room
Number of hours of schoolwork I've done since Baby Hollie arrived: 0 hours

Okay, here are more pictures:

Peanut Spooky



Mom and Little Spooky Hollie (It ends up brushing your hair becomes quite the impossible dream when you have a 2-day-old. Ditto for brushing teeth.)


Baby Hollie meets Grandma Hollie

The Final Countdown and, also, Pictures of the Apocalyptic Dust Cloud That We Survived

No but seriously: we have considered putting "The Final Countdown" on our song list that we will play when it comes time for Spooky to come out. Somehow, though, I'm thinking the song will be a little too upbeat for me as I strive to find my "focal point."

[A note on focal points: I want to try to have this baby with all the feelings that come with it, but I also don't want to panic and stiffen up from the pain that is supposed to be greater than anyone can imagine until it's all over everywhere around them. So apparently breathing, relaxing, and having a "focal point" helps. My problem is that I can't ever decide on a focal point, so they get all jumbled. My doctor said her focal point was being on a tractor, riding off into an endless sunset surrounded by the fruit tree groves she grew up on. Ina May Gaskin, a totally hip and scholarly midwife whose book I read, said she just imagined she was a mountain lion. When David and I practice breathing together (so adorable, I know, and pretty necessary for this periodically hyperventilating crazy wife) I imagine he and I are at an Asian bath in a cabin in the woods only it's also a Miyazaki film (because some of our song tracks are "relaxing piano" versions of Miyazaki film theme songs) and also sometimes it's snowing and sometimes there is a campfire and sometimes it is night, sometimes evening, sometimes morning, sometimes we're snuggled up in warm clothes, sometimes we are in swimsuits, and sometimes I'm suddenly in the baths in my ski trip outfit and it's too hot for sweaters anyway and David is tapping me on the shoulder and telling me I need to relax. Maybe I should just go with "I am a mountain lion. I am a mountain lion. I am a mountain lion..."]

Here's a picture of David jumping behind our house. I'd show the front of our house, too, but I'm too lazy right now to photoshop the house number off the picture. And the last thing we need is some weird internet stalker.

But here's Davie on our front porch:


Anyway, I have no time to write this blog post considering that I'm basically a ticking time bomb and could go at any time, but I wanted to tell everyone that this Grover fam is still alive and well, and also, some of you might want to see the apocalyptic pictures of the Lubbock dust storm from yesterday. It was awesome. David and I stayed inside and sang Beatles songs while leaves, garbage, grackles, pumpkins, and small cows slammed against our sliding glass doors.


P.S. These pictures were taken at the same time of day as the other pictures in this post. And, as I have mentioned earlier, I have no time for photoshopping. This was the color of our world. And quit making fun of the duct tape on our car.

The Evolution of Spooky

*Warning: Ultrasound pictures will be used in this post. I swore I would never put pictures of the inside of my uterus on the internet, but I just can't help myself.*

Today, the Grover family had their third ultrasound, because Spooky didn't show enough spine to the camera last month. Unfortunately, the spine was about all that Spooky was willing to show today. Despite the efforts the ultrasound technician made in jiggling and banging on my belly, Spooky refused to drop the boxer's stance, and both fists remained directly over his/her face.

We still got enough of a sneak peek that we were able to see Spooky's mouth make sucking motions, and we were able to watch him/her make some good kicks, despite sitting cross-legged (when you think about it, that's quite an acrobatic skill).

So humor me, or skip this post, by taking a look at just how far Spooky has come in 27 weeks:

April 1 (Week 9): Spooky was little more than a dancing gummy bear, with lots of space for performing incredible water aerobics.


June 7 (Week 20): Spooky weighed 11 ounces, and looked an awful lot like Casper the Friendly Ghost.


July 27 (Week 27): Spooky is looking more and more like a little kid in there, crunched up and sitting Indian-style. S/he now weighs 2 pounds and 4 ounces. I can't believe how much belly I have for so little baby!


The technician wanted to get a 3-D picture of Spooky's face, but all we got was this:


To be honest, I was a little relieved. Those 3-D ultrasounds are creepy, and I don't blame Spooky for wanting to keep his/her face a secret until it gets done developing and shaping! David commented in the elevator that Spooky really only has three more months of real alone time...we should let the little guy/gal have some space.

Although, quid pro quo, Spooky,--get off my bladder! The last two ultrasounds have shown that Spooky is breech, which means that my ribs have never been kicked, but my bladder is always getting stepped on. Lady friends, should I be concerned about this? Are there really tricks for getting babies to flip upside-down during the third trimester? It's adorable that Spooky wants to sit up straight like Mom and Dad, but I'd prefer greeting Spooky head-first rather than feet-first in October. Is it too early to sweat about this?

Country Lovers, I Need Your Help

Today David and I went to the dentist for the first time in a full year. I had a minor traumatic experience when I was trying to explain I didn't want to have any x-rays taken, but they were going to take some anyway (it seems to be a new part of any Grover family medical examination to have the nurse/hygienist/secretary go off and retrieve my husband to help calm me down from something that made me burst into tears--don't ask me about the last time I had to get my blood drawn), but after the dentist came in and told me he wouldn't get x-rays if he were pregnant, either, I felt somewhat validated. But the point is, despite bursting into tears and having to have David come and hold my hand while they took the x-ray vest off of me and assured me I wouldn't have any extra radiation today, the dentist office experience as a whole was very peaceful and relaxing.

I came back this afternoon for a cleaning (the first visit was just a consultation...I know, David and I were sort of confused by that as well), and I decided that part of what made me feel so safe in the hands of a masked woman with several freaky-looking metal instruments bleeding up my gums was because of the soft country music playing in the background, and the way my dental hygienist softly hummed along to the tunes. It also helped that the waiting room had been playing The Food Network's Barefoot Contessa which is basically my grown-up version of watching Mr. Rogers (instead of the Speedy Delivery Guy, the Barefoot Contessa has a man in a pink sweater that comes sometimes to make flower arrangements for her garden parties). The way she cracks eggs and softly whisks them together is as comfortingly fastidious as the way Mr. Rogers replaced his outside shoes for inside ones.

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot today about country music and my own past abhorrence of it. When I was a teenager and somebody asked me what kind of music I listened to, I would reply, "Anything but country!" Which of course wasn't true. I also hate heavy metal and goth rock and whatever else is out there. And most pop songs. Actually, I am quite picky when it comes to music.

But my tastes are changing. Maybe it's the pregnancy, but I think it's happened since I've been married. I don't like watching scary movies anymore (sort of a big deal for me not to like them...a good fourth of my video collection is off-limits to me now), and I find myself really appreciating anything that makes me feel soft, safe, and at home. Maybe I'm nesting? In any case, I liked what I heard in the dentist office today, but I don't know about how to seek out the kind of country music I like, because there is a lot I still really don't have a taste for.

I know that a lot of my friends out there listen to country music, and it is to you that I am coming for help. I need some good country song recommendations. A lot of my old music seems really depressing/selfish/angsty to me now, and what I really want to listen to in my home is stuff that makes me want to water flowers, make peach pies, and walk around in the grass barefoot (of course, David Bowie also makes me want to water flowers, make peach pies, and walk around in the grass barefoot, but that's besides the point). I need more bright music, more music that makes me excited to get up out of bed and dust things. I need more songs like Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" to make me feel like I'm really living. But I don't know who or what to listen to! So give me some song lists, somebody, so I can get my feet wet in the genre of music that I have previously avoided with passion!

To help you narrow down the long lists of country music songs over the ages, here are some nit-picky tips about what I am and am not looking for:

I want country songs that...

...make me feel like I'm in the country. Maybe they mention trees or animals or wooden fences or fly fishing or backwoods cabins or sunsets. I don't like urban country (except maybe Dolly Parton's "9 to 5"). I want country music to make me feel like I'm lying on a blanket wearing a sundress at a picnic by the river, with my hair all wildflowered and my hands/arms/face/toes all dirty from taking care of the horses all day.

...talk about how much husbands love their wives or wives love their husbands or parents love their children or children love their grandparents, etc. I know there are some super heartwarming (bordering on sentimental) songs out there about how grandma and grandpa met and stuff like that, the kind of stuff that I am noticing is in basically zero pop songs or rock songs (Paul McCartney aside). I want to know the best country songs that talk about how awesome families are and home is.

...are bright and wholesome and hopeful about the future. So, nothing that is going to depress me or make me think about how crummy life can be. I want the opposite. I want songs that make me want to get up and dance or get up and clean the house or get up and go swimming. Songs that make me want to get up.

I do NOT want country songs that...

...mention sippy cups. I know that song exists, and I know I don't like it, even if it does talk about how great families are. Sippy cups are never appropriate as song lyrics.

...are sexy songs. If it's one kind of country that I really hate, it is country that defines sexiness, especially in terms of women's boobalicious appearances or how tractor-like the men are. I'm not interested in sexy country songs. Just endearing love songs about husbands being grateful for their wives or wives being grateful for their husbands.

...are about cheating. I don't know of these songs off the top of my head, but I know that country gets a bad rap for being all about cheating boyfriends or cheating girlfriends--that just sounds super lame and boring to me.

...are line-dancing songs. I want songs that make me want to get up and dance, but not songs that make me want to get up and line-dance. I do like slow-dancing country better than slow-dancing pop rock. If that makes sense.

...are sung by Shania Twain. Even if it is awesome and fulfills all my previous requests, I won't like it because I hate Shania Twain.

No offense to any of you that love any of the songs I just described as things I hate. Now give me some recommendations! Thank you in advance for all your help and good taste!

Feeling for Two, Part II

I'm officially into my second trimester now, and while the nausea has somewhat drifted quietly away, my emotions are still at an all-time ripeness.

David and I were having a conversation about old Disney films (I had remembered Big Red as being the sequel to Old Yeller, but it isn't. It is Savage Sam. Now I need to see all three in a row again, to remember the different plot lines. And David needs a new copy of Big Red in paperback, just like when he was a kid). Anyway, one thing led to another and I was tracing the early career of Kevin Corcoran who plays Arliss in Old Yeller and Savage Sam and Francis in Swiss Family Robinson (and who I thought for some weird reason was a child Kurt Russell...), and when I mentioned that he also played cute little Jimmy Bean in Pollyanna, David replied that he had NEVER. SEEN. POLLYANNA.


He didn't even know Pollyanna is played by Hayley Mills! His response to my exclamation of that fact was, "Really? I thought Pollyanna had dark brown hair."

***SHOCK!!***

Well, this would not do. So as we were driving to a friends' house Sunday evening to play games, I proceeded to tell David the synopsis to Pollyanna, to explain to him just how good of a film it is (everywhere in Lubbock is a standard 15 minutes away, which is a pretty good amount of time to summarize books, films, or why a certain Led Zeppelin song is better than all the rest. We take turns tutoring each other on all the important things in life via our drives together).

I told David all about how Pollyanna is basically an L.M. Montgomery character: backwoods orphaned girl goes to live in huge old mansion filled with very traditional old ladies and an aunt dangerously on her way to replace said crotchety old lady; orphan's charming personality and gumption melts everyone's hearts, and everything good that happens happens in nature, surrounded by trees and wildflowers and Sunday picnics. It's basically the kind of story that makes me hope that Spooky is a girl so that I can relive all the magic of Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon with her, when she gets to the age when the moon is magical, and fairies probably do sleep in daffodils.

Anyway, I described all the great characters and Pollyanna's Glad Game, and--oh dear, I'm tearing up again just writing this post out again....David, I hope you are laughing with me wherever you are reading this--when I got to the end of the film, and I tried to explain to David about what happened after Pollyanna snuck out of her top-floor room to go to the charity picnic carnival party, I choked up...I couldn't finish my sentence. My lip was quivering, and I just kept repeating, "When she went to the climb the tree and climb back through her window, she...... she.... she....." and then I full out started to cry.

It was so unexpected and so RIDICULOUS that David and I both started laughing. I laughed and wiped my tears and sighed a bit, but when I went back to tell him about poor Pollyanna, I started to cry AGAIN.

So David started trying to guess:
"she....got caught?"
shaking my head, crying
"she....decided not to climb back up?"
more head-shaking, crying getting louder
"she....fell out of the tree?"
nodding and bawling
"she fell of the tree, and....she broke something. An arm? No? A leg?"
fierce nodding, fierce sniffing

I tried to explain to him that the real tragedy was how it broke Pollyanna's heart, because she was going to be paralyzed, and she couldn't even play the Glad Game, and she didn't even want to leave her room. But then, oh, then everyone showed up, and carried Pollyanna down the stairs.......oh, how can any of you remember this film and not start crying over the beauty of it?

Anyway, this was an all-time emotional breakthrough for me: crying over a 15-minute film summary. I've gotta make David watch this movie with me. I'd suggest we buy a box of Kleenexes, but I think I'll just take a towel out of the closet and use that.

Pregnancy Bird Dreams

Even though David and I had lots of conversations about how we really didn't need to do Easter baskets this year (I mean, we're getting old, and the fake pink grass gets everywhere, and it's always a disappointment to find out once more that chocolate Easter bunnies are hollow and don't even really taste good), but when we woke up Easter morning I realized that Mr. Sneakity-Sneak David-Face had put together an Easter basket behind my back!

It contained:
a new hair-brush (mine is about a decade old and is missing a good portion of its bristles)
new hair bands (I manage to lose all mine, despite the lengths David takes to collect them around the house and place them on my dresser)
Cadbury mini-eggs
a jar of nuts (for David, David said)
AND
a bird feeder!

We live on a busy street, away from any trees, and we're on a second-floor apartment. So basically, not a lot of birds are going to make their way to our little balcony for seeds. But David bought some special birdseed that grackles apparently hate (which is good, because although I have come to love grackles, they are too noisy to have on our balcony), so we set up our bird feeder and sat back to watch.

We got nothing. No birds. We scattered some seed on our balcony for good measure, but Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday passed with no feathered friends.

When I was at school on Wednesday, David sent me an email that said: "There's a bird on the balcony!" The little guy apparently ate some seeds and then chirped really loudly after every bite, sending out the word.

This morning we had a good handful of little sparrows strutting around our balcony, dunking their heads into the feeder, dropping seeds all OVER the place, and then jumping down to peck like chickens at what fell. They fluff out their feathers and cock their heads and hop on both feet--they do everything that is cute. They are just your run-of-the-mill sparrows....they look like this:

and this:

They are little House Sparrows primarily, but as soon as school gets out we're going to pull out our Sibley and see if any other types of sparrows are stopping by.

But what I'm really writing this post for is to talk about the incredibly vivid dreams these birds have been giving me. Birds wake early, and they chirp like wild on our balcony in the morning. I tend to have my craziest dreams in those last couple of hours of sleep in the morning, and the past two days in a row I have dreamed of incredibly beautiful, colorful birds. I see them in detail, and I get to hold a bird in my hands in each dream.

Two mornings ago, I dreamed that our bird feeder was filled with the tiniest white swallows with beaks like avocets. One flew onto my hand through an open window, and stuck it's long, thin beak in between my knuckles. They were beautiful.

My dream bird looked like a white swallow:

With the beak of an avocet (which we see in our backyard sometimes...such funny-looking, beautiful birds...):

And it was the size of a bee hummingbird (so cute!):


This morning, I dreamed of our old Idaho friend, the Western Tanager, only instead of black wings, they were as orange as his head. He could talk, and he could make the sticks get up and move like animals.

He let me hold him, and I could see all of his separate feathers as I ran my thumb down his back.

I love these dreams, and, once again, I think I owe them to Little Spooky. We got to hear his heartbeat today.

I just hope that once I can start feeling Spooky move around inside me at nighttime, he won't make me start to have nightmares about this: