What Wondrous Love Is This

For all the reasons this pregnancy is different from the first, we are thankful. Though we wish our concentrated efforts to document the pregnancy were more fruitful, we still try to get pictures of Baby BG while he's still in the belly. Here is the most recent.
As Natalie learns more and more words it seems that some days she wakes up and simply experiments with her own thoughts and dreams. The juxtaposition of little baby and little girl brings so much joy to us. This video was from breakfast the other day.




Dad has been on my mind a lot lately. The song, Wondrous Love, reminds me so much of him because of the a cappella, bluegrass style, but also for the lines, "And when from death I'm free I'll sing on...and through eternity I'll sing on." And we have no doubt that he is.

Pregnancy, Pressure and Parking

Pardon the alliteration. It's my attempt at being clever and witty. You see, I have pregnancy brain and it has rendered out my creativity to a thin myelin on my general humor. Mommy medulla, if you will. I'm 26 weeks along and look 35 weeks. The nose dive in attention given to consecutive pregnancies has not been lost on our family. Journals, pictures, sound diet, and general contemplation are all fond memories of a time and place called Pregnancyland. Though my brain seems to have gone there on holiday, I'm living in Toddleropolis and it's quite a disparate existence. Our little guy is healthy in all the ways we can tell from prenatal tests (thanks, state of Cali) and general mommy well-being. We call him Baby BG and, when the few moments of contemplation come, we wonder wonder wonder about him.
Nate is well into his third quarter of school in the Latin American Studies department. His prospectus to an all-Grad symposium was accepted, so he'll be giving a talk this Thursday that will connect an area of his research on a community from the area of Bolivia we lived to the symposium's key focus topic, memory. Nate is also waiting for word, more like an official verification, of a research grant he applied for to study in Bolivia. He is working again at 50% time, still as a graduate student researcher, and as the primary translator for a book written in Spanish, authored by a visiting scholar from Peru. Prioritizing all of that with being a dad and husband has required a herculean effort, not without its drawbacks. The pressure is tremendous.
Speaking of. We have used a pressure cooker on a weekly basis for almost a decade, but two weeks ago as I was just about to turn down the heat after the cooker reached full steam the overpressure plug completely blew out. Our wall is now stained a pale blue and I just paid $2 s/h for a $3 replacement part. It was also very loud.
I think parking is going to be an issue for me, here in California. Not for lack of it, but for the tiny, parallel spaces provided. In most parking situations, I can't open Natalie's door all the way so, while trying not to scratch the neighbor car, squeeze one arm inside to unbuckle (or buckle) and pull her out. A one-armed pull is much easier than the replacement scenario. There are more than a few reasons for moms not leaving the house with the kiddos.

13-Month Party

I used to be one of those people that rolled her eyes every time a parent, when asked how old their child was, would give the child's age in months. If it wasn't divisible by 2, I had no idea how old the kid really was, but honestly didn't care. It was a question for the sake of conversation. Now, I find myself as one of the Ones Whom I Scorned. I rationalize it by saying, "Well, 13 months is very different from 12 and 14, don't you see?" And, for the most part, it's true. On Natalie's first birthday she took her first step. Since then, her mobility, verbalization, continual grasp of cause and effect, dexterity and nighttime sleep habits have changed exponentially. Now she's 13 months (just over 1 year) and we're wondering how much more 'little girl' she'll become before next month's birthday.
We had a little party (a bit late) on the 20th (her 13th month was January 17th). Ethan came up and made us a stellar batch of blueberry scones, and accompanied by eggs and coffee we had a great mid-week celebration.
Oh, the new president's inauguration just happened to be on the same day and at the same time we were celebrating with Natalie.

Winterness

I've been musing about winter lately. Understandable, as San Diego's seems the antithesis of Minnesota's, something for which I'm told daily I should thank my lucky snowshoes. Sure, I'm a Minnesotan who has grown tired of the long winters, it seems, the older I get. It was less about snow days and holidays and more about slipping on ice, gaining weight and long-night burnout. And the cold got to me, made me a little grouchier at the Target clerk or the driver ahead of me. But, these should not be the things of native-deep sentiment, right?
I found some parallels in these musings, strangely enough (strange as in the way thoughts come to you just before going to sleep or waking up), in some syntactical characteristics of the Quechua language. (Bear with me, it will be beautiful.) Quechua is one of three official indigenous languages spoken in Bolivia, in addition to Spanish, and is spoken throughout the Andean region of South America. Nate took a keen interest in the study of Quechua, something he's still pursuing in his graduate studies, from its influence on the Spanish we learned while living in Bolivia. In Quechua, when a word appears singularly, its definition, as I assume it is in most languages, is simply that of its own meaning: nina = fire, for example. If the word appears twice, it doesn't mean its plural but almost the quintessence of the singular definition; the essence of the thing. Again: nina nina = fiery. Or firey. Very fire, if we could.
So it was a deep nostalgia that a poem by Cristina Rosetti stirred up in me, written as a Christmas poem. It is also the basis for one of my favorite books of Natalie's, one from which I will momentarily borrow. The poem is called In the Bleak Midwinter. My favorite passage follows:

"In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago."

For San Diegans this would conjure up images of a gulag labor camp. But for me, Minnesotan as winter wheat, and with a shred of knowledge of a language spoken in a different celestial hemisphere that yields a moment of poetic license, it made me miss winterness. Not so much the snow, but the snow on snow, snow on snow. What big flakes, shovelling and weather reports all mean together. The essence of winter, cultivated from a lifetime of seeking comfort from the bleakness and the stone-hard winter blues. What winter tires, rosy cheeks and wearing boots to church mean. The heaviness of the clothes on clothes, blankets on blankets. I miss the collective, cultural descent from the high heat of the summer with its mad rush to get a year's worth of outsideness done in three months, through the gradual slowing of time and changing of leaves, to the viscous pace of the winter. It was rhythmic and dependable. It was living the paradox of being rooted yet in perpetual expectation, because it never lasted forever.
For now, I'm happy to do without the street-side parking chaos for plowing, bluer office lights and atmospheric treachery lurking in the darkness. I won't be quick, though, to mindlessly forget it simply because I live in sunny California. They were the things of winter that made me more glad to always be going home home.

Rellies

When Mom and Dad moved east some 35 years ago they probably didn't see how difficult. getting family to traverse that same distance would be. Whether it was climate, cost or time it was simply a tough journey to make, either direction. Nate and I have had the experience of being close to the family in Minnesota, but not the extended France family or immediate Olson/Batstone family in Cali. So it is with new geographic privilege that we are a phone call away from drop-in visitors. At the increasingly pleasant prospect of seeing extended family on collective vacation days or simply during a visit while attending a function we also face the challenge of being stretched thin. Not a terrible conundrum to be in, but challenging in its resolution.
Natalie and I have had the chance to visit with my cousins at the zoo and wild animal park, stay a couple of nights with her cousins in Compton, get visits from parents/grandparents and feel a closer presence to all the rest.
It brings a measure of repose to have that as we draw closer to the holidays, the first without Dad. I don't think any of us relish any of the newness that his absence will mean in these coming days, regardless of where we will find ourselves. Change and comfort are rarely great bedfellows but I think the effort to insert newness, such as, for us, California during Christmas, is a dramatic but relevant occasion that may help to assist us through these especially difficult times. Dad wouldn't have sacrificed the Holiday season in Minnesota for one in California just to tip the scale of familial duty but would have traveled to the ends of the earth if it meant being with family. It seems strange,though, that the place he so dearly loved, the home, the snow, the fireplace and everything that meant contentment to him will sit empty this Christmas while the rest of us scratch our heads at how to deal.
I guess like the visits with extended family that bring the newness of the interim since the previous visit, our immediate family will bring new holiday experiences to our next gathering. Dad will stay in our memories of holidays old, but no doubt anxious to hear the new stories. He always loved a good story.

Not to be confused with a grisly scene from at least two movies Ethan was happy to compare, this was Natalie Saturday night after dinner. Beets, they are. Since she's started solid food we've prepared it all at home. It's the cheapest monetarily but a very time-consuming venture. It requires baking/steaming and then pureeing, then freezing said puree in the ice cube trays. Natalie is slowly learning to eat more textured foods and enjoys eating several things on her own but she's definitely got an issue with some textures. I thought, egregiously, that this night I would try and curb some time and effort by simply putting the beets through the food mill instead of the blender. Well, haste makes waste. Her unwillingness to 'chew' certain food is strangely absent of defiance. She simply spits it out, looks at it, then promptly rubs her eyes. Ethan was visiting and thought it an outstanding opportunity (check his Facebook page). I think we're on our way to one-meal preparation for the three of us as we see Natalie point to our plates, or climb on us as we eat our breakfast while sitting on the floor, a habit we want to change (not eating at the table, that is).

Officially official

I thought for awhile about a blog that would delve into the costly consequences of having to depend on the services of someone who does not like their job. Maybe they like it, but are indifferent to their work which, I believe, is more insidious. Then I thought that could lead into another blog about how that's made me work even harder to earn institutional services that we have found available, thus negating the stereotype of public service recipients being lazy, tax-sucking slobs. As much as I love to preach and fly in the face of convention, I got tired just having that whole conversation in my head.
Suffice it to say, I finally received my Cal driver's license. I applied for it the first week of September. Make no mistake, though. My gripe, well, bafflement is better said, is not with the DMV. I followed their exact instructions, honored their request for more information regarding my seizure history (a delay I expected), and found the clerk I spoke to very professional and courteous. What happened was that the DMV sent it to my p.o. box and it wasn't delivered but sent back to the DMV. Why would the post office do this? Because some min-wage high-school lackey looked at our change of address form, filled out in Lanesboro (so we're talking mid-August), and decided one of our last names would be sufficient instead of both. As a result, we were getting mom's mail and some of ours. She was still getting some of our mail back in Lanesboro. I called the post office and they told me to fill out new change of address forms, but one for each member of the household and that mom should do the same, including one for Dad. (Insert rhetorical question here.) We did. The license must have been caught in that transition, therefore not delivered to "Weaver". I didn't understand this until my temporary license was a week from expiring. I called the DMV and they told me simply that it was returned. I asked if I could go pick it up, just to be safe, and I was told No, the local DMV doesn't distribute the hard copies and that I'll have to have my name put on a list for the hard copy to be re-sent. Then she said, "We'll send you a temporary one in the mean time." (Insert rhetorical question here.) I thought she was joking. She wasn't. Having not received anything after a week I called again and a different clerk said she didn't see any record that the license was sent, not even a temporary one and I should go to the DMV, wait in line to get a number, and apply for another temporary one. Well, there's a happy ending to all of this: on Wednesday I received a handwritten, temporary license good for 60 days, which was a relief since my present temporary license was to expire yesterday. Lo and behold, the hard copy arrived yesterday, just in time. But I love the irony: I suddenly was licensed in triplicate, if only for one day.