Recovering Christmas

For the past few years, Christmas had been losing its sparkle. The hassles and conflicts of battling traffic and airport crowds, sleeping in close quarters on furniture not designed for sleeping or on inflatable beds that don't alway hold their flate, eating enormous meals at off-hours, and corralling insolent dogs had turned Christmas into a chore.

Since the realities of my parents' divorce sent me reeling out of a Brunswick church in a near panic-attack state on Christmas Eve 2000, halfway through the third verse of "O Come All Ye Faithful", Christmas was no longer Christmas. Instead of the pile of generosity under the tree I saw the gluttony of American excess. Instead of the opportunity to reconnect with seldom seen relatives came the rediscovery of pet peeves and minor irritations.

Two years ago, this all came to a head. We were approaching the end of a period of relative homelessness, having bivouacked from Rhode Island to Venice, California so Anna could pursue her writing while we waited for my D.C. fellowship to kick in. After, a month in a sublet beach shack, and a month of house-sitting that became another month of house-guesting, we packed up and headed East, into a situation guaranteed to end with an overstayed welcome at the peak of the holidays.

Of course, we did better. We passed a nasty head cold around with the egg nog. Finn stole a pie, attacked our host's dog, and kept the cats holed up in the basement. He became known in family circles as "The Finn Who Stole Christmas." While partially hidden beneath a veneer of politeness, human interactions devolved to approximately the same point. And the capper came Christmas morning, when someone (who shall remain nameless) backed the car into a wall, extending our stay even further while we waited for the repair shop to open. We repaid the eternal patience of our host in the only way our dwindling bank account would allow--with a new toaster.

In 2006, though relatively stabilized in our own lives, we remained desperate to avoid any semblance of such debacles. While last year's host made stacks of toast and breathed a sigh of relief for the fate of her pies, we gave New England and the vast majority of our still-reeling relations a miss and jaunted off to Paris with our mothers. We had no concept, of course, that also along on that European vacation, was the one person who would start the process of restoring Christmas to its previous glory.

In fairness, Sam wasn't the only factor. As a family unit, we're simply in a much better place. We own a house, and I have an actual job that I love (most of the time) which pays an honest-to-God salary. Anna has continued to work steadily, and a fortuitously-timed writers' strike has given her a built-in maternity leave. And Finn has calmed to the point that he's passed his mantle of Grinch on to the next puppy in line (who also shall remain nameless).

It's no secret that kids make Christmas better. This year, Sam didn't yet have the manic excitement of the pre-schooler waiting on Santa, but the inevitability of Christmas Future was enough. The trees and wreaths smelled better. The colorful packages were generous, not gluttonous. And our family actually enjoyed each other's presence--as far as I could tell.


So now I'm sitting here in Bath, Maine, scene of the Christmas debacle of 2005, watching the snow start to fall over the Kennebec River. Sam's lying beside me with a full belly and, for the moment at least, a contented half-smile, one Christmas in the books, many more to come.

Bambino? Yes. Curse? No.

One of the perks of working on the Hill is that people bring cool things there for us to ogle. Like the 2007 Red Sox World Series Championship trophy. Last time we saw it, it was being showered by Big Papi and the rest of the Sox.


Last night, though, it was in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's hearing room, hosted by the Massachusetts delegation.


Sam was somewhat impressed by the trophy (note: bigger than he is)...


...but even moreso by the bling brought by the trophy's security detail.


Unfortunately, he hasnt' figured out how to close his fingers around things yet, or else we would now be the proud possessors of one 2004 World Series ring.

Still, it's nice to know that my boy is growing up in a world where the Red Sox are winners and the Yankees... well, no need to kick 'em when they're down. I mean, isn't that what we all want? For our kids to grow up with more advantages than we had?

Sam, you're well on your way.

Halloween 2007 - a study in tubular food

Just pix today as I can only type so much with my one, non-Sam-holding hand.

Sam met Olympia in this outfit. My job is now secure for the foreseeable future.


Finn did not meet Olympia in this outfit, further solidifying my employment.


And, of course, Anna with her banana. Cabana not pictured.

A boy and his dog

Yikes... two weeks since our last update. Sorry, kids, but things have been typically N-V-T-S-NUTS around here lately. Those of you with kids can relate. Those without simply can't. Sorry. We used to think we knew what it meant when people said "your life is about to change." We nodded and acquiesced, but we didn't KNOW. I didn't know for sure until I found myself secretly hoping, when the Red Sox were down 3-1 to Cleveland in the ALCS, that they would lose so I wouldn't have to stay up and watch any more games. Petty? Mabye. Emblematic? You bet your ass.

Meanwhile, Sam continues his climb up his own personal ladder of realization. These pictures are actually from about two weeks ago and document his first legitimate awareness of his older, hairier, 4-legged brother. (More recent pix will come this weekend for sure, something I can promise because for the first time since we got home from the hospital, we have no houseguests!)

Anyway, the evidence, starting with "The Sniff":


"The Lick":


"The Reaction":


"The Reconciliation":


and finally, "The Latch":



Yes, Sam did actually attempt to feed off Finn's nose, something that was much more amusing before Finn was diagnosed with giardia. But so far everyone seems to be holding up fine, so maybe you pretend I didn't share that tidbit and no one calls the Dept. of Child and Family Services on us, OK? OK.

I think we now have one of everything

People love buying things for babies. We are delighted that our friends and family have proven themselves no exception to this universal truth. As you can see from the above photo, gifts we've received have ranged from the sublime (not pictured) to the ridiculous (pictured); the utilitarian (not pictured) to the frivolous (you think?); the traditional (um, no) to the bizarre (oh, yeah).

So first of all, THANK YOU. We thank you, Sam thanks you, and even Finn thanks you because there is now so much more to investigate. He particularly enjoys the stuffed animals. You are all amazingly wonderful people, we love you, and we love that you love Sam.

Now stop it.

In purchasing our first home, we opted for location over size. This means that Anna (and now Sam) has a neighborhood to explore and absorb while I'm off at work. It also means we are now completely bereft of storage space.

Sam has clothing to last until he's four, toys to occupy BOTH of his daily waking hours, a library of books, and all the tools of the baby-raising trade. But dammit, one more onesie and his closet is simply going to explode.

This is a happy problem. We are blessed, and we appreciate the avalanche of joy. We really do. He's a lucky boy, but I just think we're full up.

Until Christmas.

In the details

The tiny bits.





These are actually from two weeks ago, so he's less tiny now, but it's been tough to find the time to post. 4 weeks today. Can't quite believe it. You people weren't kidding when you said it goes by fast...

(P.S. Go SOX!)

Two-week-iversary

Hard to believe it's been two weeks since Puck/Sam made his debut. As other parents know, it feels alternately like two minutes and two decades. Either way, we toasted our boy at 2:40 this afternoon.


Sam feigned sleep for a while, but he was eyeing that Veuve the whole time.



We only left him alone for a minute, but I guess it doesn't take much champagne to put an eight-and-a-half-pounder down for the count.



We'll have to work on that tolerance before he gets to college.

While the family sleeps

Proud dad, grabbing a few precious minutes to post a couple of quick pics of our boy. These are all from Sam's first 24 hours--first 3 at hour 1, and the last (with mom) from his first new morning on the planet. Updates will be sporadic until we work out this whole feeding thing, but keep checking back. There's much more Progress to be made...

SAMUEL THOMAS CONATHAN

Quick post to let everyone know that we have a son!!! (And no, despite what "it's about time" said in the comment section, his name is not Connie. We're slightly more creative than that. Sheril.)

Samuel Thomas was born at 2:40 on Saturday. 8 lbs 2 oz, 21 inches. mom and baby doing great.

Yeah, yeah. bland, I know. But I'm effing tired, and have to go pick up the perscriptions at CVS and then take a nap.

More fun later, I promise. And PICTURES!

Stay tuned.

Quick update

Nothing to see here. Revised due date September 5th has come and gone with no fanfare. Maybe the original date, September 7th, will prove more accurate. Stay tuned...

Labor Day?

Indeed, there is labor on Labor Day. But it's not Anna's. It's my cousin Jenny's. Lucky mother... becomer. She started the process last night, and we've had no further updates, so it looks like Jenny's cashing in on her two-week head start over our Puck.

Meanwhile, we're doing a lot of sitting and waiting. Seeing many movies. Superbad = super awesome. The Simpsons = meh.

There was a call from some (notably the grandmothers-in-waiting) for pix of the nursery, and since "down the hall" seemed like a reasonable distance for Anna to travel, here you go:


See? Finn's impressed.


One feature worth noting is this:


No, not the diaper changing table. The collection of photos. It's the Great Wall of Child. We had a big space to fill and I found these 67-cent frames at Ikea. So I bought a shitload, and now we need to put kids in them. Send us your best ONE (OK, maybe TWO if you must) baby/kid picture, and the fruit of your loins can amuse the fruit of our loins while we loin-swaddle. We can handle jpegs, but if you've got a nice 4x6 print and can pop it in the mail, you'll get a better spot...

Finally, just for the record, this T-shirt is entirely inaccurate.

Week 38/39 - Dome Sweet Dome

This is really getting ridiculous. My favorite part of the last week or so has been just walking places with Anna and watching the reactions she gets from passers-by. Ogling is the term that comes to mind. Frequently with a gasp of horror added on for good measure, and the ubiquitous question: "when are you due?" and an unconscious step back as though her water's about to burst on their shoes. (Or the equally ubiquitous, though less polite excalmation, "you look like you're about to pop!" This second one is always from guys. Usually from winos.)

Now, with the due date just around the corner--the docs moved us up to September 5th at Anna's last visit--it's been harder to convince Anna to leave the house, much less be photographed. But there was one place I'd always envisioned as the final stop on this city-wide photographic tour.

And honestly, I think it's best to just let the belly do the talking.




That's pretty much it for the big DC tour. A grand finale of neo-classical proportions. I have officially received word that this game is now over (though I'm guessing someone could be coaxed out for an encore).

And keep an eye on this space, because if Puck doesn't take the bait, I may be able to convince Anna to start playing "citizenship roulette" by crashing embassies one at a time. If we can get this kid born on foreign soil, dual citizenship's a lock. Here's hoping the big wheel doesn't stop on North Korea!

Week 37: Things that are bigger than Anna

What's that, you say? There are things bigger than Anna's belly? I know it's hard to believe, but there are, in fact, numerous things right here in Washington DC. And I'm not even talking about the obvious ones like the Washington Monument or the Capitol Dome. We found plenty of 'em just by going to the south side of the Mall in response to a call for "something iconic." (Thanks, Anna S!)

We kicked off at the Air and Space Museum, home to a gazillion tourists, and also several important aircraft. But before I get to the pictures, I have a bone to pick with this place:

[BEGIN RANT]

How come we have an entire museum at the Smithsonian--one of just 6 on The Mall--and another satellite facility out by Dulles airport devoted to airplanes and spaceships, which have been around for less than a hundred years. Whereas if you ask them about ships, i.e. the whole reason we stumbled upon this continent in the first place, and the means by which more than 95% of goods enter our country to this very day, they just look at you blankly and say that there might be some fish at the National Aquarium in Baltimore?

This irks me. It also clearly relates to the unrelenting annoyance I get from watching endless news updates about 6 miners killed in a cave-in when fishing vessels go down without so much as a mention on a CNN crawl at the bottom of the screen. Or, on a broader scale, the fact that we have better maps of the surface of the moon and MARS than we do of the ocean floor RIGHT HERE ON EARTH!

[END RANT]

OK. Enough of that. Needless to say, there were plenty of things at the Air and Space Museum that are more massive than Anna's belly.

The Spirit of St. Louis (far left), the Chuck Yeager mobile (orange one in the back), and the large speedy looking blackish jet thing are clearly mas grande.


Also giganticer? These missiles. They're so damn violent and destructive, you can barely make out my family three stories below.


This astronaut's pretty gargantuan, too.


Having basked in enough avian glory, we decided to move outside where there were yet other items from the art world that made Anna's gut appear to belong to a tiny titmouse. Like this colossal... thing... outside the Hirshhorn:


Anna has always likened it to a cosmic-sized forkful of spaghetti, but I think Lichtenstein had something slightly less pasta-ish in mind.

The Hirshhorn also hosts a fantastic sculpture garden. We were especially hoping to see Picasso's "Pregnant Woman (First State)" but much to our chagrin, she was in storage. Anna offered to stand in her place for a small fee, but the guard wasn't biting. So much for college tuition money. Picasso's knocked-up chickie would have been smaller than Anna's belly anyway, and thus would have completely ruined the whole theme of this entry. Fortunately, there were several other huger objets d'art.

This dude is ripped, and clearly far enormouser than Puck's homestead:


If only he had legs and wasn't so far away from this Amazonian, bodacious babe, they'd be perfect for each other:


But of course our tour wouldn't be complete without photographic evidence of the single most astoundingly titanic thing in all of our great not-really-a-state: George W. Bush's ego, in evidence here, at the Department of Education. Who else would have the gall to christen a project "No Child Left Behind" and then completely fail to provide it with adequate funding. Maybe if we hadn't spent half the program's budget on these spiffy, evocative old-timey entrancways for DoE headquarters there would be three or four more children actually not getting left behind.

Week 36: there is NOOOOO... Week 36

Week 36 was officially designated "work on the nursery and don't take any photos" week, but fear not, intrepid blog-perusers, Week 37 pix are fully pixellated and will be posted tonight (or tomorrow at the latest). In the meantime, we were at our first location on Saturday and figured we should shoot a follow-up to give a true picture of Puck's decidedly impressive development.

C'mon, hop in the way-back machine with us and go all the way back to April (week 22) at Roosevelt Island when this whole charade started and we thought Anna was getting big:


Boy were we wrong... The reprise from Saturday:


Even Finn's gotten bigger (can you tell?). The vet told us last week that he's gained about 5 lbs. Sympathy weight.

Skip this post if you're only here for the baby action

Many of you know that I wrote my thesis on development of offshore wind energy in the U.S. Of course, you can't talk about that without talking about everyone's favorite project, Cape Wind. As it turns out, I could have just given the whole thing a miss and let the Daily Show handle it. The video is here.

But while you're watching the shots outside the gatehouse at the Oyster Harbors Club, know that the Daily Show somehow failed to incorporate perhaps the greatest of all ironies: the symbol of this esteemed organization, based on the signature structure located about 100 yards due east of the guardhouse itself, and displayed on everything from security stickers on their cars to the gin-and-tonic glasses in the clubhouse is...

... wait for it...

a windmill.

Interlude: skinny bitch

Last night we went to the Orioles-Sox game at Fenway south (AKA Camden Yards) courtesy of Karen's family's season tickets. The game itself was a somewhat painful experience, so we'll leave that bit out. The interesting bit came in the second inning when another pregnant woman and her husband took the seats next to us. To me, she seemed just past the "I'm not 100% sure she's pregnant, so I better not ask" phase. First guess, maybe 6 months along. Turns out the skinny bitch was due on September 6th, one day BEFORE Anna.

Clearly Puck could kick her baby's ass.


And no, that's not the S.B. in the photo. That's freshly vindicated O's fan, Karen, who already has her own four kids, thanks.


Finn has made it clear to us that one baby is plenty for starters. More just makes him nervous.