Category Archives: Family Stuff

Confession: I always chuckle a bit when I come across a mommy blogger writing about how she’s sleep training her baby, and how mother and child are crying in different rooms because of it. Heck, I chuckle when my own baby cries because she bonked her head, or stubbed her toe, or poked herself with a toy. “Laugh it off, kiddo.” I scoop her up and try to convince her that it’s not worth crying about, using a potent combo of distraction, vocal tone, and faux-violent physical comedy.

But my attitude and empathy have changed quite a bit in the three days since Bumblebee caught her first cold. Not to be melodramatic, but I’ve never felt more protective and more helpless, or more filled with love. It’s very strange–it’s just a cold, right? Am I that sobbing mommy blogger now?

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Normally I’d post this rant to my effyoucat blog. But a few months ago, a couple similar, somewhat more vulgar blogs called F***YouPenguin and F***YouCat went big time, and kind of sapped my will to snark about cats on my own humble, decidedly non-big-time blog. (It was humble, but pioneering in it’s own way, laying the groundwork for the proliferation of foul-mouthed animal blogs that was to come).

Anyway, that’s why I don’t post to EffYouCat anymore. Instead, I’ll complain about my cat here for you all to read. Corinne’s out of town for a couple more weeks, leaving me as the sole caretaker of our devil kitty, Yoko. We’ve already spent a couple weeks alone together, earlier in December, and I’m ready to admit something about Yoko. Ready? Here goes…I wouldn’t mind having her around except that she has:

1. Claws
2. A voicebox
3. A social personality

If I could rip out her claws, her voicebox, and her trust in her human owners, I’d love that cat! Shoot, if I could do even one of those things, our icy relationship would thaw.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that there is a “perfect cat”–a Platonic ideal of what “cat” should be. And that perfect cat is mute, has no claws, doesn’t shed, and runs and hides under the bed whenever she sees me.

Someday I’ll find you and adopt you, perfect cat!

2009 died to the sound of baby laughter, and 2010 was born to the same soundtrack. I joined Corinne and Bumblebee for a week with Corinne’s  family at her parents’ home in St. Anthony, Idaho, followed by a few days with her grandparents in Salt Lake City. We also dropped by her sister’s place in beautiful Midway, Utah, Matt and Buffy’s ski lodge in Park City*, and my brother’s apartment in Provo. In each place, we spent most of our time sitting in a circle trying to get the baby to laugh. Not a bad way to pass the time, especially since she laughs so easily.

That’s not all we did, of course. We also ate like Ethiopians after Ramadan. Corinne’s family has a tradition of eating fondue on Christmas Eve, and her brother sent 15 pounds of king crab legs from Alaska as a spiny, edible Christmas present. Then of course there was the smoked turkey on Christmas day. Later in the week we drove an hour to Driggs, Idaho just to go to some hole-in-the-wall burger place and an Austrian bakery (both delicious). And that night, Corinne’s mom made traditional German ruladen (pickles, onion, bacon, and mustard rolled up in thinly sliced beef). Our first meal of 2010 was a delicious brunch with our good friends the Bowens. And we might have gone to Wingers. Twice.

Do we have pictures of all this amazing food and our friends? Well…no. See, we’re still getting used to the idea that we have a nice camera, so we don’t take pictures nearly as often as we should. I even got Corinne a camcorder for Christmas, and we barely used it at all. I spent half my vacation with a gorgeous view of the Tetons, and the other half in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, the whole time with a giggling 4-month-old on my lap, and I took nary a photo to document it. 2010 New Year’s resolution…  (luckily, Corinne’s sister took some good pictures and posted them on her [hilarious] blog)

Corinne and Bumblebee have been out here since early December, and they’ll come back to NYC on the 16th. It’s funny, we’ll be driving through Rexburg on our way to the bowling alley or the pizza buffet, and Corinne will say “I could NEVER live here!”  “Um, you kinda already do.”

Rexburg, Idaho IS kind of weird–a 16,000-student school and no football team?–but I always enjoy our visits. A sleepy college town in the middle of nowhere when the students are away on holiday; that’s about as far from New York as you can get.  

And there’s a lot to be said for the Salt Lake area, too. One of the benefits of the Mormon culture is that we have a “home base” here in the Salt Lake Valley. I only lived here for a few years when I was in college, and neither my parents nor my wife’s parents live here, but it’s a defacto meeting place for both our families. Not only that, but many of our friends who’ve moved away from New York come to the Salt Lake Valley for the holidays, and there’s almost always a couple Monsons and Sweets at BYU at any given time. It’s fun having a place to go during the holidays where you can catch up with lots of relatives and old friends. So thanks for settling in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young!

That’s all for now. Happy 2010 everyone!

* BTW, “Matt and Buffy’s ski lodge in Park City” is the whitest phrase I’ve ever written. Adding that to the list of 2010 milestones.

Bumblebee’s been mopey and grumpy all week. We read books to her, dance around to music videos, I play my mandolin, Corinne makes funny faces, but nothing keeps her interested and happy for more than a couple minutes. I’m pretty sure it’s because she’s already bored with her middle-class life. I guess you’re never to young for ennui!

Time to start saving up for her Super Sweet Sixteen party. If we don’t have elephants and Rihanna there, she’s going to disown her parents.

So, Bumblebee’s kind of standing on her own, holding her head up on her own, and she’s getting really good at kicking me in the stomach. Which means it’s time to come to grips with what’s really happening here: Our baby is clearly the first of a new race of mutant superhumans. We don’t know whether she gained her powers through a genetic anomaly, or maybe she was bitten by some kind of bionic insect in our apartment. Or perhaps Corinne produces milk with an abnormally high concentration of midi-chlorians.

Whatever the cause, it’s good that Corinne and I caught Bumblebee’s “special-ness” early, so we can be on the lookout for any unusual traits, like levitation or telekinesis (known in some circles as “mind bullets.”) We’ll be able to catch any trait early and assist her to fully develop it. Will she be a Jean Grey? Wonder Woman? Matilda?

But the real test for us as parents will be to make sure she grows up to be a hero instead of a villain. For instance, she’ll need to be smart, but not so smart that she can build a giant undersea laser gun to blow up the moon. We’ll need to teach her that with great power comes great responsibility, that she can only use her powers for the good of mankind, and that Anakin didn’t HAVE to become Darth Vader—it was a choice he made. And we’ll have to be ready to enforce a strict no-school-sports policy. (“If Clark Kent didn’t get to run track, YOU don’t get to run track.”)

Hopefully she gets a cool power like flight or imperviousness to injury. None of this X-ray vision nonsense. And pray with us that her skin doesn’t turn blue when her power starts to manifest itself.

Check out my buddy Josh Maready’s photography site—alongside pics of supermodels and Olympians, there are some super rad shots of little Bumblebee. Josh must’ve been shooting with a very fast lens to be able to capture her in between crying fits.

Josh, you’re a good photographer and a good friend for spending an afternoon with a crying baby and making her look so adorable! Readers, browse the rest of his pics, they’re great!

Just uploaded a bunch of pictures to our Flickr page. I think the best of the bunch is the one above, taken with Bumblebee and the blanket that my boss made for her. Thanks Vicki, you’re the best!

Also, Bumblebee’s mommy is beautiful.

So, the most momentous occasion of Bumblebee’s first week on earth, besides the whole getting-pushed-out-of-her-mother’s-womb thing, was her mention in an article on CNN.com yesterday.

Twitter’s CEO’s wife had a baby yesterday, and she tweeted during her labor, which became a kind of media event. Completely overblown, in my opinion, because if you read her feed, it’s not graphic or detailed by any stretch. She posts five tweets and then is silent, until she tweets a few hours later that her husband is changing his first diaper.

Anyway, the reporter used us as another example of the phenomenon of tweeting during labor. We didn’t really tweet that much–a code tweet that the labor had started, an announcement when the baby was here, and some back and forth with individual tweeters in between.

The commenters on CNN and on other blogs are appalled that we would be using our phones during labor. But, um, we were in the hospital for 11 hours before push time came, and most of that time was spent just sitting there waiting. Corinne had an epidural, so she wasn’t suffering while I was typing away on my phone; she was on her BlackBerry texting with friends! Chatting with people outside the hospital was like having our closest friends and family in the room with us.

That said, we weren’t brave enough to do it, but someone SHOULD tweet the whole labor process. We read books about the process, but nothing would’ve been more helpful than a blow-by-blow of what really goes down.