So here we are in New Orleans; well, that’s a little belated, actually, as we’ve been here since Tuesday. All New Orleans is in a big tizzy of excitement because not only is Mardi Gras imminent so everyone is getting ready, the local football team, the Saints, just won something or other so now they get to go to the Superbowl which is in just about two weeks.
I never could get into sports. It just seems so abstract. Kind of like falling in love with a movie star, who you know you will never actually meet. It’s meaningless. I love playing sports, but as for watching them and getting all into a local team? Can’t do it.
New Orleans is really interesting. The rich & the poor seem completely mixed together rather than broken into distinct sparkling expensive neighborhoods and run-down poor neighborhoods. Even the most expensive houses have a kind of worn-down look to them — well, they are old! Very unlike, for example, LA. But in any case the houses are architecturally beautiful, charming. And it’s really nice weather after Zürich and Boston. I remember watching an episode of Sex & the City once and Carrie referred to some guy as “sexy ugly”. It was a compliment. That is, I think, my initial impression of New Orleans. Sexy ugly.
Having lived away from America for over 5 years now, I had forgotten how massively materialistically accessible everything here is. Anything you want, you can get right away, or at the very least, order within a couple days. Everything is open every day of the week, til late in the evening. There is such a glut of *things*. So many things, so many choices. I lived here for 26 years and never really noticed it. but now, coming back, I have this strange mixed sense of desire and repugnance. I feel kind of like I could go crazy seeing things, wanting things, buying things. it’s really appealing in one sense. but the other part of me is kind of disgusted, almost frightened by this possibility of instant gratification. Somehow it seems kind of wrong to me…
She is an insomniac. I’m not kidding. This baby DOES NOT SLEEP.
They say the pattern is supposed to be: feed, play, sleep. Rinse & repeat. Well with this baby you have feed (takes 45 min – 1 hour), awake & happy (about 15 minutes), and then solid crying interspersed with the rare 10 minute catnap (2 hours). Rinse & repeat.
Oh and did I mention, she won’t sleep lying down. It has to be sitting up in a car seat or some such. Which can’t be good for her back, right? But she won’t take it any other way.
She’s 7 weeks old today so the peak of crying is supposed to be past. The crying is supposed to be lessening from here on. But it is only getting worse.
Little Miss actually gave me a hickey by sucking on my arm when I wasn’t fast enough getting food into her.
I haven’t had a hickey in loooooooooooooooong time. I’m not sure how I feel about this kind ☺
Anyway, we’ve gotten quite a bit of reaction (including some grief) over Little Miss’s name, which is Calliope Jane. When we named her, as far as we were concerned, Calliope was a Greek muse (Homer’s muse, in fact: the muse of epic poetry) — meaning: beautiful voice. It was only after she was born and named we discovered that a Calliope is also a kind of musical instrument (unfortunately not a beautiful-voiced one at all), a hummingbird, and an asteroid.
But best of all? (Thanks to my work mates for digging this one up) There is a song called Calliope Jane! Who knew? Written by the great Hoagy Carmichael and performed by The Charioteers for the 1941 flick Road Show.
You’d never think, naming your kid something as random as Calliope Jane (so random, in fact, that people in 3 countries can’t pronounce it nor know what it means), that it would be a totally unique name. But…
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
I realize all of my posts have been about parenting lately (I think), but that is because I am not doing anything else. Feeding Calliope takes an hour, and as she needs to eat every three hours, and generally an hour is spent after feeding trying to get her to go to sleep, there isn’t a heck of a lot of time to do ANYTHING else.
I guess Calliope is what you would call a colicky baby. I realize that term has bad press nowadays, but whatever. Point is, she cries and fusses and has stomachaches (due to bad gas problems) all the time. She will wake out of a sound sleep howling — moreover, she seems to have inherited my lack-of-sleep habits and only sleeps about 12 hours per day, whereas normal people her age are supposed to sleep some 16-17.
Other annoying habits she has developed… when she’s eating, she suddenly shakes her head violently from side to side like a big cat tearing meat of a carcass. Or she’ll brace her feet against my stomach and suddenly kick off (and I think I’ve described the power behind her kicks before — she has sumo wrestler thighs) while clinging tight to my nipple with her mouth. Need I mention that both of the above hurt like all getout (to quote my grandmother)?? She’s more awake now, so doesn’t generally sleep during feedings (thank goodness!) but is ravenously hungry all the time. Sometimes when she spits up she can’t even bear to let go the nipple for a moment, so she spits up through her nose onto my shirt/lap. Charming.
But… she’s really cute, and sweet, when she isn’t crying or trying to rip my nipple off my body. She’s actually kind of cute when she is crying too. Makes a really funny face. It just kills me that she cries so much, and is in pain, and there’s nothing really I can do. Will I look back on this someday with fondness? I don’t know. So far parenting has been one big exhausting, painful and rather horrible experience. I REALLY REALLY hope it gets fun someday, preferably *before* I lose my mind.
Ugh. Screaming just began again after 15 blessed minutes of quiet.
So yesterday I went out for a kind of afternoon tea/early dinner with my mother and Calliope at The Dolder Grand hotel, a really swank, really beautiful, really underutilized hotel up on a hill next to Zürich.
It was really nice: the hotel, which was pretty recently renovated, was extremely beautiful, the staff were extremely helpful and friendly, the tea and coffee came in large cups, and the view was spectacular. I was saddened because the hotel was almost completely empty — I guess they took some 4 years to do their renovation and the hotel kind of fell off the map during that time — it is such a beautiful hotel but terribly lonely and empty. They really need to do something drastic, something radical to get people into it.
Anyway, I digress. So at some point during this nice tea I thought Calliope needed changing, as she was fussing and whining, so I went hunting for the bathroom. Found one down some stairs, through the bar (which was totally black, with two very nice, very bored bartenders in it), down a dark hallway. And here is where my problems began.
Firstly, I realized when I got there that I had to go to the bathroom too. Has anyone else ever tried to go to the toilet while holding a squirming, whining infant in one hand? I couldn’t put her down on the floor or the counter outside and it certainly made buttoning my pants very awkward. Second, has anyone ever tried to wash their hands (with soap) while holding a squirming, whining infant in one hand? Very difficult. I managed to do it one hand at a time. Calliope’s fussing had started ramping up by now. There were no baby changing facilities in there, and the counter tops were far too narrow, so I pulled out a little oval cushioned stool from under the vanity and shook out her travel changing mat and spread it on top (also difficult with one hand) and laid her on it. Problem was, the stool was very small/narrow and had a kind of curved cushioned top so I couldn’t let go of her at all or she would have rolled off onto the hard marble floor.
Anyway, I unbuttoned her tiny overalls and shirt and hiked them up and removed her diaper. By this point her restless whining had turned into full on shrieking. And this bathroom, being all marble and tile and emptiness, echoed like you wouldn’t believe. I had brought 1 diaper, 1 burpcloth and a pack of wipes with me, so I shook out the diaper and started putting it on her — and she immediately peed. And peed a LOT. Like, 3 pees in one. Of course, since the thing she was lying on had a rounded top, all the pee cascaded over the mat, off the edge, and onto the floor. Her fresh diaper was soaked (and I didn’t have another), her little shirt was soaked, my jeans were wet, my hands were dripping. How can a little bit of infant pee get *everywhere*?? I picked her up with one hand and hauled off her overalls — very difficult as she was not only screaming at the top of her lungs but struggling like someone was trying to kill her — and used the burpcloth to try to wipe up the floor. At this point someone opened the door behind me but thankfully didn’t come in. Maybe they had been summoned by the screaming. It was just not a happy picture. Her frantic shrieks reverberated off the black walls in the most ghastly manner.
I ran around the bathroom, the naked-bottomed shrieking baby in my hand, trying to find the paper towels. Found them, grabbed a bunch, ran back to my cushioned stool. Tried to wipe off the mat — it kept sliding around atop the stool — laid her back on it. Pinned down her kicking legs and forced the soggy diaper onto her. I could only manage to snap one of her 3 shirt snaps, she was kicking so violently, and I didn’t bother attempting the overalls at all. I tied up the dirty diaper & wipes with one hand and dropped it into the fastidiously clean, shining silver trash can (which had no liner! thus leaving me with a guilt complex gaaah) and then realized that I had inadvertently thrown away my only (albeit pee-soaked) burpcloth as well. No matter. There was no way I was going after it. I gathered up my belongings (have you ever tried folding up a slippery, pee-covered, plastic coated diaper mat while holding a squirming, whining infant in one hand?), tucked them under my arm, from where they immediately slid out and tried to descend to the floor, grasped my frantic infant in the other hand, and marched out. It was *dead silent* outside of the bathroom. I can only imagine what the echoing shrieks must have sounded like in the bar. I was drenched with sweat (and pee) and my hair was quite wild. Still, the well-trained bartenders only smiled kindly as me as I lurched by, Calliope’s wobbly head bobbling with each step.
It was a terrible experience (Calliope thought so too) but once recovered, I just had to laugh…
January 31st, 2010 15:41
thoughtful
depressed
cheerful
distressed