Can anyone recommend a good, professional piano mover? December 31, 2007
They can be located in the greater Nashville area, the greater Knoxville area or somewhere between the two points.
car seat dumbness
You know, it’s been a long time since I had a baby in a car seat - almost 10 years. Since E was little, car seats have gotten a lot better and a lot more complicated. Lots more choices are available, too.
Since birth, C. has been unhappilly (she hates the carseat) ensconced in a Graco Snugride. Now, though, she weighs 17 pounds and is getting ready to sit up on her own. I am wondering if it’s time to move up to one of the convertible carseats that will then last her through toddlerhood. How do you know when it’s time?
And if I need to upgrade, which seat is best? We need one that’e easy to move among three different cars (mine, Jon’s and his mother’s). Or maybe we’re gonna have to pay gazillions of dollars for three separate carseats? (The Snugride is easy because you can just move it among bases that stay attached in each separate car.)
Arrrgghhhh!
All carseat enlightenment welcome.
baby farming?
Sharon Cobb points to a new trend in outsourcing to India: houses full of poor women being paid to serve as surrogate “wombs for rent” for infertile couples in the U.S., Britian and elsewhere.
A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere else but are common here. The young mothers of Anand, a place famous for its milk, are pregnant with the children of infertile couples from around the world.
The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile couples with local women, cares for the women during pregnancy and delivery, and counsels them afterward. Anand’s surrogate mothers, pioneers in the growing field of outsourced pregnancies, have given birth to roughly 40 babies.
More than 50 women in this city are now pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan, Britain and beyond. The women earn more than many would make in 15 years. But the program raises a host of uncomfortable questions that touch on morals and modern science, exploitation and globalization, and that most natural of desires: to have a family.
Dr. Nayna Patel, the woman behind Anand’s baby boom, defends her work as meaningful for everyone involved.
“There is this one woman who desperately needs a baby and cannot have her own child without the help of a surrogate. And at the other end there is this woman who badly wants to help her [own] family,” Patel said. “If this female wants to help the other one … why not allow that? … It’s not for any bad cause. They’re helping one another to have a new life in this world.”
Your thoughts?
I am always hesitant to cast judgment on other women’s reproductive choices. Also, as someone who has never faced the hell that is infertility, I can’t imagine what that’s like or what previously unimaginable options it might present.
But I think this story raises some big issues about exploitation. And how is it that prostitution is illegal but it’s legal for women to utilize their bodies in this way?
how do you entertain a 5 month old baby?
Jon wants to know.
It’s true that C. is suddenly more aware of the world around her, yet she’s still largely unable to make her body do what she would like it to do. She can’t yet roll over or sit up or even reliably connect hand-to-toy-to-mouth without assistance. But she’s sure she wants to do these things and frankly, it’s making her more than a little annoyed.
baby phat December 30, 2007
C. has turned into a rather deliciously fat baby. We think she now weighs just under 17 lbs, which puts her in the 90th percentile for weight. I’m not sure how long she is. She’s definitely grown a lot since her 16 week checkup last month, when she was in the 25th percentile for height, but I suspect that proportionally, she’s still short and fat with a giant, round head.
I’ve never had a chubby baby before, so I’m loving all the yummy rolls of baby fat. She has six chins and rolls of fat on her rolls of fat. It’s very cute. She still looks bald, although she actually has quite a lot of hair. It’s just so blond that you can’t see it unless you look closely. And she has big, gorgeous blue eyes.
Last night we ate supper at the house of some friends. Another couple was there with their baby boy, born the same week as C. He weighed 2 lbs more than she did at birth, but now C. looks like she could - and might - eat him for lunch. She looked like a giantess infant next to this teensy (adorable) little guy. Her head is twice the size of his.
It’s hard to believe that this baby:
has grown into this baby:
so quickly!
She is now eating some mashed up table food and a little baby food. Just little tastes here and there, but she’s loving the stuff and I can see her eating more “real” food in the next few weeks. My girl loves to eat. I suspect she’d take on a plate of home fries with gusto if given the chance.
how i met your father December 28, 2007
So someday, when C. asks how I met her father, I can point her to this, a post (like the one below) on my blog, dated 1/23/2006 in which I asked blog readers to tell me who they were. One of the comments in reply was this one:
knoxjon Says: January 23rd, 2006 at 10:03 pm e
Well, Katie, since you keep asking….
I’m knoxjon/jah/Jon/…. I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now as part of my campaign to spend every waking moment on the internet instead of doing the work I’m supposed to be doing. I’m just glad that there’s good stuff to waste my time on.
So now that we’ve formally met, we can share a beer sometime. I’ll be the one who is a Darby Conley cartoon character.
That was Jon.
And we went and had a beer. It was fun.
Who are you, dear blog readers?
Periodically, I ask folks who read the blog who they are, how often they visit and what brought them here. Here’s one discussion on the topic from last year.
I figured it was time to introduce ourselves again, so here goes. I’ll start, and then you can leave your own comments below, if you feel so inclined.
I’m Katie, mother of four children (ranging in age from 5 months to 16 years old), wife to Jon, opinionated blogger, writer, online producer, TV producer, and lazy homemaker. I’ve been blogging at this address for almost six years (!!!).
(And by the way, I will have a really neat new blog project launching soon at one of my very favorite online parenting sites. I’ll let you know details as soon as I am able, but it’s gonna be great. I’m so honored to have been asked.)
But anyway, who are you?
Discuss 
why thank you, ms. brittney gilbert December 27, 2007
Brittney knows of what she speaks, so I especially appreciate HER SUPPORT.
In which I lust after an iTouch
Yeah, yeah…kids shouldn’t have too much technology - blahblahblah (see my post below), but big hypocrite that I am, I now realize that I myself am in dire need of an iTouch. I had already played with my brother’s iPhone, but my sister got an iTouch for Christmas and I find myself seriously lusting after one. I do think it would be way better with a camera and an external speaker (stuff they will likely add in the next iTouch incarnation), but dang! They are so cool! I will definitely be treating myself to one when the time is right (which it is not at the moment).
Happy Birthday La Leche League!
LLLI turns 50 this year and here’s a great interview ith one of its founders, Marian Thompson.
LLLI is one of the most successful grassroots women’s health movements in modern history. It’s all about empowering women to help and support other women with information, hands-on support (for free) and research. And it all began with seven 1950s housewives who just wanted to breastfeed their own babies. LLLI has had a profound impact on American culture and has positively impacted the health of millions of babies and mothers.
I was lucky enough to get to eat lunch with Marian Thompson in 2005 and she’s a really funny, clever, warm person. Can you tell I’m a fan of the revolutionary work these women have done?
media and the death of childhood imagination
I’ve been meaning to link to this fabulous article on the way technology has changed imaginative play for children, written by my friend Jeannie Ouellette.
I did my best to keep the technology in my kids’ lives to a dull roar when they were younger. But for the past more-than-five years they’ve lived in two different housholds with quite different ideas about the role of technology and media for kids. And to some degree, I finally just gave in. Still, I think there is far less TV-watching and video-game-playing in our household than many others (for example, we have only had cable TV consistently for the past year and we don’t allow the TV on on school nights), but in all honesty, I want C. to have even less TV and computer in her life.
Don’t get me wrong: I think that computers in particular can really open the world up for older children and teenagers. Online community can encourage kids to write and interact - again, a good thing. And of course, being able to see wonderful movies together as a family at home is nice. But I still believe there is value in a child imagining for herself what the fairytale kingdom looks like instead of assuming it looks like the world of Shrek.
Speaking of Shrek, I hate that movie. Sure, it’s got some great dialogue, but I think the cynicism, vulgarity (lots of bathroom humor, anyone?) and adult snark that’s crept into “kids’ movies” in the past 15 years (I think Disney’s Aladdin was the first movie I saw that did a lot of this) isn’t a good thing.
Final rant tangentially related to what I started writing about in this post: I think the bar has been getting lower and lower for what’s considered appropriate for young kids to see in a movie. Last night Jon and I watched “Blades of Glory.” My 9 year old and 12 year old had already seen it (not on my watch) and although it’s an undeniably funny movie, it’s also chock full of very adult sexual humor. But all my kids’ friends have seen it too. It’s considered a kids’ movie, as are most PG-13 movies these days.
I’m not a prude. I talk to my kids regularly about human sexuality from a very early age. I am very open and honest about sex. But that’s how I want them hearing/learning about sex-from me - not from Will Ferrell playing a drunkard at a “Sex Addicts Anonymous” meeting (one of the plot lines in the movie, in case you haven’t seen it)
Again, I plan to limit C’s exposure to a lot of popular media for a lot of different reasons until she’s pretty well into childhood. And I’m still a big fan of wooden blocks, crayons and boxes as better tools for developing childhood imagination than TV, movies and computer games.
babies in antlers December 25, 2007
You just don’t get much more Christmas-ey than baby cousins in….antlers.
the christmas fauxhawk
One year, we all had Christmas photos taken in a fez that someone got as a gift (I have no idea why). This year, we all had to try on the rubbery fauxhawk:
