the thing about time

Gray is in high school, so, not surprisingly, we have almost none of his baby things left. In fact, I thought we had nothing at all, until this week, when, while scouring the cellar for supplies to use in various minor redecorating and renovation projects, I found a plastic bin of tiny clothes.

Most of the clothes brought back no memories, but there was one red outfit that I remembered vividly. Although Gray was born at full term, he did a short stint in the NICU, and was not quite five pounds when we brought him home. I remember clumsily putting him into the red suit, then bursting into tears because, even rolled up, the sleeves hung down so far that I couldn't find his hands.

My mother, who was staying with us, made an immediate and expensive taxi trip all the way to the suburbs and came back with a bag of clothes, doll-sized, made specially for preemies.

Today, I washed the red outfit and brought it up to the nursery. My fingers fumbled in the same, suddenly familiar way with the snaps, which fasten in the opposite direction of every other piece of baby clothing I've ever seen, but I finally got Cole into it.

He had outgrown it already.

gratuitous cuteness

And a serious question. Wiser bloggers than I have written wiser posts than I possibly can about when writing about other people or putting up pictures of them violates their privacy or becomes a form of benign exploitation. I've never really worried about the issue, because I've put so many topics involving other people off-limits or fictionalized them.

But with Cole, I find myself running into boundary issues. Like, most immediately, is it fair to post full frontal facial shots of him (however adorable I might find them) when I would have serious qualms about doing the same with anyone else?*

What's your view?




*With some obvious exceptions. Say, if the person gave me permission.

because magpie asked

I suppose my eyes are actually green, but because I'm only happy when it's complicated, I like to think of them as chatoyant -- a bluish-green or (more usually) greenish-blue changeable depending on the light, but always with a parenthesis of gold around the pupil.

And I do have eyelashes. I swear I do. I just blurred the rest of the picture to focus on the color of the iris.

Maybe this could be a meme. I'd love to see the actual color of your eyes -- because words like blue and brown and green and grey don't even begin to describe the variations. And it's generally not considered exactly socially acceptable to go up to strangers -- or even friends -- and stare deeply, deeply into their eyes, trying to gauge and compare their exact hue.

If you post a photo on your own blog, please leave a link in the comments. Or, if you don't want to (or can't) post a photo of your eyes, take a look at this chart of eye colors (click to enlarge) and let us know (in the comments or with a link to your own blog entry) which one most closely approximates your own and, most importantly, (this being blogging and all), how this makes you feel.



Just to make it a little easier, if you don't want to go through all the comments, here's where to see the eyes of luna; katie; eden; thordora; my reality; flutter; slouching mom; angela; intricately complex; mrs. lilypond ; liz; the nanny; basilbean; marin; anna; k@lakly; g$; jana; allie ; charmed girl; magpie (!); missing one; ahuva batya; motel manager; kari; rachel; anna; jana's family; doc grumbles; amanda; monica h; eden (do over); mommy at heart; de; mad; brenda; k; fertilized; another dreamer; kristin; julie; caro; your blog next....

And thanks, Anta, for the link to that amazing series of eyescapes. That's definitely one of those ideas that I really wish I'd thought of first.

blue, continued

As you can see from the photo, at six weeks, Cole's eyes are more or less the same indeterminate grey-blue he was born with. In theory, they could stay this color, but I'd guess they're more likely to end up green, hazel or brown.

What color are your eyes and/or your children's eyes? At what age did they reach their permanent color?

Oh, and here's a cool calculator where you plug in the eye colors of your partner, parents and siblings and it gives you your own genotype as well as the odds on your theoretical baby's eye color.


eta: and while we're on the subject of blue jeans (I crack myself up), please stop by Antigone's place and give her a recommendation on what kind to buy so she doesn't end up with the universally-mocked "mom jeans" (though I've never been exactly sure what they are anyway...)

cached

I can't help thinking that there should be another one. The white crib rails stencil a reverse silhouette against a blue apparently called in Japanese.* Some of the books have been corralled into blue wooden boxes. The others, taller and thinner, won't stand straight on the shelves. The nursery is tiny -- the smallest room in the house. But, there in the corner, there would be just enough space for a second crib. I could fill in the spaces between the leaning books, crowd a few more stuffed animals into the blue plastic basket.

Of course, I'm lucky and, of course, I'm grateful for what I have. There are so many facing a failed cycle, or the shattering of a loss or of another loss, or the realization there may never be another baby or a baby at all. In fact, I sometimes feel so absurdly, undeservingly fortunate, that I hesitate to say anything about it at all. But, in a way that's a little harder to express, I also feel lucky and grateful for what I don't have.

It's like -- well, it's like a story, sentimental, improbable and surely apocryphal that I read somewhere a long time ago and am no doubt utterly garbling in the retelling. There's a man, a miner, blind from birth. He's especially valuable to the other miners because he can work in the parts of the mine where the smallest spark could set off an explosion.

Suddenly, one day, a miracle: I can see! he calls out.

The other miners are dubious. What are you talking about? It's pitch black down here. Even if you weren't blind, there's nothing to see.

You don't understand, says the man, I can see darkness.






*ETA: Or maybe, not that it really matters, more like somewhere between the following two shades. And why am I so entranced with finding a site that shows and catalogues the traditional Japanese colors?


Sora-iro [sky blue]
The color of the brightening sky.


Shinbashi-iro [Shinbashi color]
The color which was liked by Geisya (geisha?) at Tokyo-Shinbashi.

department of i should have seen this coming

When I woke up this morning, in the way that these things so often do, an idea emerged fully-grown from my brain. Athena from the head of Zeus, if you will. Minus the armor and the shield.

The concept was simple in its brilliance, brilliant in its simplicity: brownies slathered in vanilla frosting. A subtle melding of opposites. Complementarity in action. Yin and yang. Darkness and light. Rich chocolaty goodness mingled with creamy partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

How was it possible that no one had ever thought of this before? I wasted no time in making -- and eating -- oh, say a dozen. Someone once said that there's no such thing as failure -- only feedback. But, sadly, as I sit here on the couch, my tummy is telling a somewhat different story.

What's the worst food combination you've ever created?

misinterpretations

Yesterday, I was over at the local thrift store, looking for outfits to make (if such a thing were possible) the baby look even more adorable when I noticed some employees busily removing armfuls of clothing from the racks and tossing them into baskets. Large armfuls. Enormous baskets. In fact, as I watched, the children's clothing section was completely emptied out and, when I politely asked what was going on, a very nice woman told me that a new federal law made it illegal to sell used kids clothes.

When I went home, of course, I immediately looked it up on the internets and, though I have absolutely no expertise in the area, it looks like an overzealous interpretation of a recently enacted law.

Undeterred, I stopped by the book section (apparently it's still legal to sell used kids' books) and grabbed a bunch of stuff to help fill the (almost-finished) nursery shelves. And then I came across the book pictured above -- which, if you're so inclined, you can buy here.

It was about a little girl who finds a picture in her house of a baby and asks her mother where the baby went. Her mother gives her a long, drawn-out series of clues, eventually revealing that (surprise!) the baby has grown up and turned into the little girl herself.

But, just for a second, I thought -- well, you know what I thought.

life is unfair, rinse and repeat

As most of you know, Kym and Chance are doing a surrogacy cycle. At 11dp3dt the beta is 13. If those numbers and abbreviations don't really mean anything to you, trust me, it's not exactly what anyone was hoping for.

Chance and Kym are two of my favorite people in the world and I'm so incredibly sad they're going through this.

Could you stop by and send them a few good wishes? Please?

baby stuff

Someone (I'm not sure if she wants to remain anonymous, hence the indefinite pronoun) sent me a chic and oh-so-stylish handmade baby sling-carrier-thing. I haven't quite gotten the knack of distributing the rather hefty baby weight evenly across my back, but Cole absolutely adores it. Now, for all sorts of reasons, the person who makes them may not be keen to advertise, but, I am completely sold and (if she agrees) will be more than happy to provide all the particulars.

In other news, I've started painting a couple (as in two) of walls of the nursery. I can't find an exact replica anywhere on the internets, but try to imagine a cross between the color of the bottom of a swimming pool and a Tiffany blue. I'm still looking for a contrasting color for the day bed and ideas for coordinating rugs, so I'd welcome any suggestions with open arms.

Note: Superstition aside, I can definitely see why these days -- when most people are pretty sure of the baby's gender pre-birth (and in this context, I think I really do mean gender and not sex) -- you'd want to get the nursery-decorating out of the way before hand. However.

And in the final tidbit of news (none-too shocking to those who follow my blog and hang on my every utterance) I'm well on my way towards planning the next surrogacy, Yes, I'm crazy. And yes, I'm going to be broke (well, broker), but I have this urge to at least try to have another one. And we have a few more left over frozen embryos, so it really is just a matter of forking over the money. Go ahead, tell me I'm insane. But, irrational as it seems, I'd really like just one more. I know it wouldn't really be the twins coming back. But it's about the closest that I can imagine....


ETA: A photo. Just for Kym. I desaturated the colors way, way down, so it's not quite black and white, but (to me, anyway), looks almost colorized. Which is (in case you were wondering) the look I was trying for.