Facebook Files

Someone who allegedly graduated from high school with me added me on Facebook, but I didn't recognize his name or picture so I didn't accept. I finally remembered to look him up in my yearbooks, but he was in neither our senior or freshman year books. Strange. I saw that a half dozen people I do remember from high school did become friends with him, but that doesn't necessarily mean they remember him either. Anyway, when I was looking for him in the yearbooks, I looked at the yearbooks. There were tons of people I'd forgotten about in my class of 379 students (though I immediately remembered them when I saw their names and pictures, unlike this guy). Then that night, I dreamed about all of them in a convoluted class reunion dream.

Isn't Waa home yet?

Single Mother's Day

Traveling with baby is a lot different from staying home with baby while help meet travels. Seriously, if something happened to take Waa away from me permanently, I might go insane. This existence is considerably less enjoyable than my usual one. Final answer: I miss my husband, and I want him to come home. But, we're not even to the halfway point, so I need to persevere. Plus a grant due on Friday? Sure, why not.

Sugoidesuyo

Since Waa went to NYC for his showcase, and since I turned 30 today, we had a little early celebration on Tuesday. Wes gave me gifts to open, most of them actually for me, and then we went to see Mitsuko Uchida play at Memorial Hall on UNC campus. She played Schubert, some modern Hungarian pieces interspersed with Bach, and a dozen Schumann etudes. It was great. It was packed. As we clapped at the end I thought, 'I wish she had played some Mozart.' He's my favorite, sue me.

And then she sat down for her well-deserved and much-requested encore and played the andante from Mozart's 16th piano sonata in C, the one you've heard a hundred times, only this was unlike I'd ever heard it before. It was soft and slow, like it was covered in kudzu. It was unforgettable and made me want to play piano again. And maybe I will!

Oh man I'm tired. And a little scared from tonight's episode of LOST. Even Praise Baby isn't doing the trick.

11 months

I'm tired, but here's 11 months. She says "uh oh" and likes to be tickled. More about her next month, okay?

Push Chair

We need a stroller. Bean is finally, at nearly 11 months, getting just a wee bit heavy in a bjorn. She's still alright in a wrap, but Waa won't wear a wrap. And we have a jogging stroller, but you can hardly push that through a museum or take it on a plane.

(Speaking of the jogger though, I ran a 5K last weekend. This was the 2nd race of my life, and even though a 71 year old beat me by 10 minutes and a 4 year old was right on my tail, I ran it without stopping. Our jogger has been getting good mileage lately.)

I don't know why I can't just pick a stroller and be done with it, but I can't. It's frequent searching on Consumer Reports and Craigslist and BabyCenter. There's the stroller that I like folded up (here) and the stroller I've heard from 2 city dwellers is the most dependable (here) and the stroller my nanny will need if we move to Manhattan (here).

I don't know what to do! Who cares? I know. Who cares. But pretty soon the summer traveling is going to start, and if I don't want that Bean strapped to ME the entire time, I've got to get us a stroller. Bleargh.

YYZ (why yyz?)

We are going to T-dot for summer vacation! A grand for airline tickets here, a grand for accommodations there. Thank goodness for frequent flier miles and (the promise of) economic stimulus packages. (Bush said it's okay to spend it in Canada, you know, with NAFTA and all.) What will be most fun, visiting the Toronto Oratory? The Japanese paper store? The shoe museum? And how will the baby cousins like each other?

We are all excited for Canada in July.

Little girl

Bean is 10 months old. She's crawling fast. She's walking with assistance from the couch, the coffee table, door frames, whatever. Four new top teeth are at various stages of appearing. She continues to flirt with anyone who will look at her. My favorite recent development is her joining in adult conversations by laughing when others laugh. She seems more and more like a little girl instead of a baby.

Surge

Oscar won the Pulitzer.

And Baybean has to have surgery. We hope it will be plastic surgery and not neurosurgery, but a CT scan will have to determine this. I asked if we could just proceed with a life that includes the little bump on her face, but Dr. Chief Pediatric Neurosurgeon said the little bump can grow and affect the bone of the skull. From my own recent facial bump removal surgery, I know that waiting 6 months can lead to having a scar twice the size that it could have been.

A first for me: returning to someone who did not cut my hair to my liking. Previously, I figured if I didn't like the hair cut the first time around, it would be better to just find someone else. This time, however, the problem is only that she simply did not cut enough off, despite me asking her to. I went home with it, but as it continues to feel like I still need a hair cut, I'm going back.

Oh, hey, so Bean and I went to Chicago. And we had a really good time but hardly took a single picture except this one, of Bean all Hotel Sax-ed out:



That place was swanky.

I also took a picture of some kind of foot race, but it's hardly worth the effort to post it, so I won't bother.