theology&geometry

Dear Squirmy Worms:

YOU HAVE A TOOOOOOOTH!

Scratch that. You have TWOOOO TOOOOOOTHS!

You have been drooling and gumming on things for weeks now, and battling with some brief moments of out-of-character grumpiness, so we knew this was inevitable. We just didn’t know how quickly it would happen! We were in Nashville last weekend visiting friends and Kristin and I just happened to spot a little white nub on your bottom gum. And we saw a companion tooth ready to sprout up right beside it. You like to have the spot rubbed or to have nice cool things to chew on. I treated you to a little Orajel and you thought that was totally weird. Here it is a week later and both teeth have broken through the skin and you are being a pretty good sport about it most of the time, I have to say.

What a month we’ve had! You have gone from having thick dark hair at birth to being almost completely bald (except for your rat rattail) to now having a soft head of light brown hair (and, yes, a rattail). You finally went up to size 2 diapers (even if they are a little big on you) and are probably ready to have your cloth diapers adjusted to go up a size but your mother is putting that off until the last second because that shit is ANNOYING. You can still squeeze into some of your 3-month onesies but you are pretty much into your 6-month clothes now (especially when you have your bulky cloth diapers on). You’re eating more now and are often not satisfied — especially at bedtime — with a piddly 4 ounces. You’re much more happy with 5 to 6 ounces.

Nursing is still going well but you are now getting several bottles of formula during the week. There is just no way, it seems, for me to be able to pump the 15-20 ounces you eat while I am at work. And that’s OK. I do the best I can and you don’t seem to have a food preference as long as you’re getting fed. You still switch easily from bottle to boob and that is such a relief.

Speaking of getting fed, we tried peas this month! You were not too keen on them. Your grandpa thinks that’s because I fed them to you at 7 in the morning but I figure you don’t know that peas aren’t a breakfast food. I got it on video, look!

You also ate plenty more bananas this month, but I think you still aren’t sure if you like them or not. You’re still not quite sure what to do with food that gets into your mouth. You mostly act like you wish it would get out of your mouth and not by way of your throat. You spend a lot of time tonguing your little tooth nubs so perhaps learning to do the chewing and swallowing motions isn’t really at the forefront of your mind at this time. It seems like you prefer gnawing on whatever you can get your hands on. You like your Sophie giraffe that Aunt Vicki gave you and you like shoving stuffed animals into your mouth.

We’ve been doing sit-ups to work on strengthening your core. Mama should be doing these too to work on her “waist” since it’s hidden beneath a generous layer of blubber, but who has the time? You’re rolling over halfway now and are much more amiable during tummy time, and you can sit up with some assistance and for extremely brief periods by yourself, but then you just sort of fold in half and it’s kind of funny and then I feel bad for laughing. You like standing in my lap and looking all around the room and then checking back in with me and smiling big. You get a kick out of the kitties when they pass by and every now and then one of them comes close enough for you to grab, and I tell you all about how soft their fur is. You pretty much think your daddy is the best thing in the world and he returns the sentiment.

You’re a real talker these days. Your language is getting more complex and you’re speaking using multiple syllables and raspberries. I swear the other day at Kristin’s — the day after we found your toofs — you mimicked something Amber said to you. She kept saying “take it” to you so you’d grab a toy out of her hand and you mouthed something that sounded so close to that. And then you did it again! This is not like those people who think their dogs are saying “I love you.” This is really you learning how to talk! You are a real-life Furby! (I will pause for you to Google “Furby”. I am assuming “Google” is familiar to you despite our age difference.)

We’ve learned that you are ticklish!

Earlier in the month, the family came and helped us set up a booth at a local art walk. I was a little worried you’d get tired of the whole scene, but you were so fantastic and you loved being outside all day! You just chilled and sat in laps and watched the trees and the people. You only fussed a couple of times and that’s because you were hungry. So I fed you, you dozed for a bit, and then woke up curious about what you’d missed. Everyone was amazed at how laid-back you were. I kept wondering aloud what planet you were from because you are not of this earth. Seriously, you’re like this cute little observer alien who is just here to learn our ways. Which, yeah, I guess you sort of are.

You went to your first wedding this month! You should have gone to TWO weddings this month but we had a spell of the grumps shortly before Jen and Brian’s wedding, so we stayed at home so you wouldn’t be loud and grumpy through the whole thing. You were in much better spirits before Zach and Laurel’s wedding so you got to go to the zoo for the first time and see a polar bear swimming and eating fish. You seemed to think that was pretty cool (and mama did too). The whole thing at the zoo after dark felt pretty ritzy and mama would have gone to town at the cheese table but you were a little cranky there at the end and it was your bedtime, so we skedadaddled a little early.

We made our second trip to Nashville, as I’ve already mentioned, and you got to meet some more honorary aunts and uncles. You conked out and mama stayed outside to catch up with old friends, like old times. Except this time there was a baby monitor on the porch. We went to the Nashville farmers market and you just took it all in from your vantage point in the stroller. A couple of ladies at one stall just went crazy over you and you laughed it up for them. It was a whirlwind trip (they all are) but we will be back in the next few months to meet and see even more friends.

On May 2, your cousin Levi was born! He is a real cutie pie and you two are going to be good friends. You haven’t met him yet but you will once your aunt and uncle are settled at home and have had some time to rest and recuperate. You’ll probably recognize some of your clothes on him over the years because we are having SO MUCH FUN cleaning out the closet periodically and having someone to give all that stuff to! I hope some day you and Levi are good friends and spend lots of time on the farm together.

Yesterday we had a big day for your half-year birthday, and you went to your first museum ever: The Ornamental Metal Museum. We checked out all the neat metal pieces and the sculpture garden, and then sat there by the river for a little bit. It was pretty; I had never been before but had always really wanted to go. One of these days we’ll take you to watch the blacksmiths doing their work, probably when you’re in the thick of your banging-on-everything phase so you’ll be sure to appreciate it. Then later in the evening we went and had dinner at Amanda and Brandon’s and you got to hang out with your friend Eliza. We ate pork tacos at dusk under strands of white lights and I let you have a little bit of avocado. Lo and behold, you seemed to like it.

Looks like mama dropped the ball this month and took mostly cellphone photos. Oops! Oh well.

My brother and his fiancée are so funny and cute together. They had me shoot some photos of them while I was in town last month. I have finally gotten around to uploading them! Here are some favorites.

I just got word that my nephew has been born! Welcome to our crazy family, Levi Brantley Turner. Can’t wait to meet you!

There are two Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee commercials on fairly heavy rotation around these parts. These commercials are horrible. They have always rubbed me the wrong way and I have spent more time than is probably wise trying to figure out why.

I can’t seem to find clips of either ad, so I’ll attempt to describe them.

Commercial one
Mousy-looking blondish lady in glasses and pantsuit does voice-over about how when people come to her with questions, she needs answers, and doesn’t have time to go asking around at multiple companies. Then there’s a couple of scenes of her on the phone. One time, she says, “No you can’t expense your haircut!” and the other she says, “You’re not keeping the rental car, so who cares if it’s blue?!” Each time she uses a really bitchy voice. It’s the kind of voice that I might tolerate from a friend but I sure as hell would not want to hear from my company’s human resources rep. In fact, if an HR rep used that tone with me, I would file a complaint. With HR? Hmmm. Anyway, near the end of the ad, you see the lady walking with a smug grin past a young man who is looking at her like he is trying to flirt something fierce and she is deflecting those advances. It’s gross. “I need a company that can do it all. Kinda like me,” her voice says as she smirks. Even though all she’s done is throw out some mad bitchface over the phone.

My complaints about this commercial: The commercial presents itself as a serious take on issues that matter to insurance holders, yet you’ve go this extremely unpleasant woman sniping at people over the phone about completely ridiculous issues. Expensing a haircut? Is that supposed to be a freaking joke? Is this commercial about insurance — which is monstrously expensive and sometimes completely worthless — joking? I mean, I have BCBS of TN and I have gone round and round with them over the coverage of Holden’s birth. They finally rejected my third appeal in January — six months after I submitted it and three months after Holden was born — so that I finally have to accept that I must pay for my prenatal care and birth completely out of pocket since they refuse to cover my midwife in network (despite having covered her for someone else in Memphis with the exact coverage as I have). I mean, that would be a serious question an HR person might have to battle with BCBS about. But the color of rental cars? That is completely tone deaf. And I’ve already mentioned the lady’s tone and attitude. The commercial needs to decide if it’s trying to be funny or trying to be reassuring. Because right now it’s just being really annoying.

Commercial two
Long-faced brunette lady looks one bad day away from tying herself to the railroad tracks. Type on the screen tells us we’re at the home of a freelancer in Germantown. The lady tells us via voice-over that she has a full-time job and then she goes to work. We see footage of her feeding her three children. She says, “When I’m not thinking about presentations, I’m thinking about check-ups, glasses, and a health plan that gives me choices.” We cut to her driving her children around in a mini-van, and pleading with her son, “Please stop picking at that.” Ew. And then we cut to her saying into the camera, “If you don’t watch it, you could drown in a car pool.” The lady’s kids express their displeasure at something and she sighs heavily. I fully expect her to put a gun in her mouth at any moment.

My complaints about this commercial: Jesus, the first one was annoying but this one is just brutally depressing. This woman seems extremely stressed out, which is to be expected of a working (single?) mom with three kids. But she just seems completely devoid of all joy, like a smile has never cracked the veneer of her face. That’s bad enough but where I get really confused is when she asks her kid to stop picking at his arm. Is that some weird foreshadowing about how they are going to need to go to the ER with an infected arm? That’s not even the worst part. “If you don’t watch it, you could drown in a carpool.” WHAT?! That is fucking dark. The way she says it, you kind of get the feeling that she thinks a lot about Susan Smithing those kids. But here’s what I don’t get: She’s a freelancer. Do freelancers do a lot of carpooling? Or does she consider carting her kids around in her minivan a form of carpooling? Can you do that? Anyway, what does that meeeean?! Even if it means, “you can get bogged down,” it is a deliriously morose way to put it. But then again, this lady seems like a real fucking drag.

Take the two ads together (I never see any other BCBS ads around here so I have no additional context; can anyone in other markets add to this?) and you sort of get the impression that BCBS’ world is populated with really annoying working women — the smug type and the very sad type.

Am I the only one who completely loathes these ads? I think they strike a weird tone and transmit a message I’m uncomfortable with, even if I can’t even really tell you what it is. I was prepared to crown them both Failures of Advertising, but I’ve gone and written a blog post about them, so who gets the last laugh, really?

Ol’ Yeller:

My sincere apologies on the extreme lateness of this post. We have been incredibly busy and there’s just not been a lot of time to write. But that’s because we have been having so much fun!

This month you found your voice. I mean, really found it. You learned that you like to shriek and holler, and you are no stranger to very loud grunting when you’ve got, uh, business to take care of. Business that you only take care of once or twice a week. But it’s BIG business, if you catch my drift. In fact, just the other day you did your business in the bath tub. I was just sitting there, watching you grunt-splash, doing mental math on how long it had been since I had changed a poopy diaper. It’s like you read my mind, Buds! I didn’t know what to do so I hollered for your daddy to come clean up the mess, and I took you in the nursery and let you finish your important business on the changing table. You didn’t seem to feel inconvenienced in the slightest.

This month you were a smiling machine. You are such a happy baby! You only really complain when you’re having a shirt pulled over your head or when mama is taking too long to whip the ol’ boobs out. You have this funny little staccato cough-whine that you have had since very early on that clearly means “Stop fiddling with your shirt and let’s do this! I’m HONGRY.”

I have had a rough time being away from you so much this month, Holden. I started back at the office full time and I have your picture at my desk, and while I am glad your daddy is taking care of you so that you don’t have to go to daycare just yet, it is still bittersweet to be the one bringing home the bacon instead of the one changing your diaper and trying to coax naps out of you all evening. I would much rather hang out with you all day, even when you’re grumpy and I’m exhausted. My wacky hours means I miss your bathtime and bedtime all week, so I just get a precious few hours with you in the morning and early afternoon (unless I am scheduled for earlier than 1, which happens occasionally) and then you are in bed by the time I get home at night. It’s weird coming home to a house and having to be Very Quiet so as to not wake the baby, but that’s how you live with a baby in a tiny house. You’re pretty much sleeping through the night every night now, from around 9:30 until 5 or 6 a.m. This is wonderful, of course, but a little bit of a challenge for me when I work until midnightish, which is at least twice a week. Getting home, getting to bed, and then getting up with you all within the span of five or six hours is tough, but pretty much manageable when we get to take a morning nap. I just can’t sacrifice our morning time together by letting your dad take the morning shift, Buds. Sleeping in ain’t worth missing out on your wakeup smiles, which are so wide and so genuine, and always accompanied by vigorous kicks and stomps of the mattress.

There are plenty of times when you wake up in the middle of the night and you either jabber or stomp yourself back to sleep. I have seen you stomp in your sleep, even, which is bizarre and funny. Sometimes you will jabber until you start to sound annoyed, and then I come in to see what the problem is. It has been a learning process for me trying to navigate when you need me and when you don’t. You so rarely wake up crying, which is the obvious time for me to come in and scoop you up. I have had to learn to just back off and let you chit chat with yourself for a while. You don’t need me to hover all the time and when you do, you let me know. That means you often talk to yourself for half an hour or 45 minutes before deciding you’d like some company. It’s pretty adorable but I am biologically wired to not be able to sleep when you are awake, so I basically just lie there and listen to you carry on via the monitor at 3 a.m. I wonder what you’re talking about in there.

This month we had our first-ever away from home overnighter! We traveled to Shiloh to watch Paw and Grammy renew their vows, and you were such a trooper. You snoozed on Aunt Cathie’s shoulder much of the time, even through a storm and the sounds of gunshots and the orchestra. That night you and I slept in the guest bed and you were so pooped you barely moved, except for your invisible inching toward me so that I eventually had to scoop you up and move you back toward your side, or else I was going to fall off the bed. How’s THAT for a co-sleeping switcheroo? I don’t think you would have woken up at all if not for that, honestly. I took care to keep your bedtime routine pretty much as intact as possible, including bathing you in your whale tub. But you fell asleep before I could read you a book.

You spend your days with daddy taking walks to the park or going to the library. Sometimes daddy texts me pictures of you and what you’re doing. You two have a good time and you think he is pretty much the funniest person on the planet. I caught you yukking it up at him the other day:

You love watching him pretend to get hit, punched, or kicked. I am fascinated by how you would know that these things are funny. You still have the new baby smell; how do you understand slapstick humor?!

Weekends are really special for us now. It’s pretty much just you and me from Saturday afternoon until Sunday night, since daddy works a lot of hours on the weekends. You and I run lots of errands together and when I am feeling particularly brave (and desperate for groceries) I haul you to Walmart for a shopping spree. You are usually a good sport about that these days. You used to get fussy when the cart would stop, so checking out was terrifying. But more and more you’re able to see what’s around you and you are so into watching everything. Everywhere we go, people are just so smitten by those blue eyes and that sweet smile.

That definitely seems to be your thing: Observing. You are pretty much content to just lie on your back and look at stuff rather than struggle to move around too much. You love to kick but you aren’t too interested in trying to roll over and scoot right now.

What else? Oh yes. We gave you your first taste of solids — bananas — and you were pretty okay with it. We’ve not done much other experimentation but that will probably be the big story of month six, which I’ll be writing pretty soon (and hopefully with a bit more timeliness than this entry).

The weather has warmed up (we had SUCH a warm March) so we’ll be getting outside more and more (as soon as mama re-orders her stash of Skin So Soft). I’m looking forward to taking you to the Shell and letting you sit in the grass and listen to music ith all your new friends we’ve met these past few months. And we’re going to go to the zoo and all kinds of stuff. Get ready, Mr. B!

They’re from the late ’80s, when my brother and sister and I would leave our boombox on record for hours on end, until the tapes would run out. They are packed with preciousness and hilarity. I have fuzzy memories of making some of these recordings in our old house, perched on a bunk bed with the bedside lamp on, a blanket hanging from the top for some privacy.

My mom let me hear some snippets when she was in town this weekend because she has a tape player in her Explorer. I have got to find a tape player so I can get them all recorded digitally before the tapes themselves melt or worse.

Here’s a bit I caught on my phone of my mom and me listening to a tape (meta!) where I am singing a Bon Jovi song and then, later, trying to get my 2-year-old brother to talk.

Evan and Lindsey on tape in the late ’80s

Hope you enjoy my drawl, y’all.

ETA: ARGH WHY WON’T THIS PLAYYYYYYYY

Acccck! Where is the time going? I am so behind on posting! I meant to post about this a while back and never have really had the chance.

Sunday is the third-annual East Buntyn ArtWalk. I will be there with a tent and some tables and a baby and some family members (the specific composition of family yet to be determined) and lots of photos and artwork and crafty stuff for sale. Come say hello, come buy stuff, come make my baby laugh, come drink the free wine that will be available at some of the booths.

Here’s a listing of some of the things I will have available at the booth. I’ve been working for more than a month and a half now getting stuff together. It has been intense, working full time, taking care of the baby, and doing this on top of all that. But it’s been fun, too.

Hope to see you there!

Check out East Buntyn ArtWalk on Facebook.

Edited to add: Um, derp. I could tell you where I’ll be, couldn’t I? I will be stationed near the southeast corner of Reese and Midland, just a couple of houses down from Midland. Event organizers encourage everyone to start their walk at the St. James Church at 461 South Prescott, where there will be a silent auction as well as a map of the festivities and printed ads (like the one above) so you’ll know what goods are available where. So do stop by there. But then come visit me! I’m super close to the church. Follow me on Twitter for updates!

Okay, not really. But he does eat some! And he seems to dig ‘em:

… but if there is one thing I have learned about photography (or at least how I like to do it) that is different from writing, it’s shoot sober, edit drunk.

Friday night. Taking a break at work while I wait on my pages to get the go-ahead. Coffee to prop up droopy eyelids, even though that’s ill-advised at 10:30 when I know I’ll be trying to sleep in two hours. I spent my entire morning and afternoon chasing naps after Holden decided 4 a.m. was as good a time as any to get up. That boy has put us through the ringer this week in the sleep department. We got spoiled to his sleeping 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. thing, even if 6 is painfully early for me to rise after getting home so late. But this week something’s up: At least two nights he woke up every 2-3 hours, and not because he was hungry. Just because he wanted to party. Buds McKenzie, you know better than that!

I am trying to get psyched up for the weekend. We’re hitting the road tomorrow morning and heading to Shiloh, where my dad will be taking part in the huge 150th anniversary to-do. Of course he wants me to photograph the battles and encampments at the crack of dawn, but there is no way that’s feasible for me and I’ve tried to explain that to him so he won’t be disappointed. I remind him often that back in November, remember that time I had a baby? Yeah, he is still here, the baby, and he is in charge, and he does not want to go hang out in a grassy, hot-ass field all day while the dulcet tones of gunfire and cannon shots echo around us. My one clear objective for the day is to photograph Mom and Dad’s vow renewal ceremony, which is taking place after the battles end and before the big ball begins. It’s where all the men in their dressy wool with brass buttons and the ladies in their giant hoop skirts and lace will join hands and dance a respectable distance from one another. My parents are going to do this thing in full period regalia, a fact I have repeated to people around me a dozen times and the novelty never seems to wear off. They’ve been planning it since their 25th anniversary but time got away from them. This year’s the year, though!

Then we are going to attempt our first overnighter away from home because I am 100 percent positive I am going to be exhausted and have a major headache by the evening. The prospect of an overnighter away from home is sort of terrifying but a little less so thanks to our week of broken, weird sleep patterns that have spooked me out of my hard-won comfort zone. If ever there’s a time to break routine, I guess this is it. Our bedtime routine is pretty sacred so I wonder to what degree Holden being away from his bed and his creature comforts will result in his not understanding that it’s time to sleep for a long time. On the other hand, the bedtime routine could be total superstition on our part, but I’ve been too paranoid to break it or else risk a completely sleepless night.

My parents are giddy at the prospect of getting to spend more than just a few hours with him, which is sweet. They speak often of longing for the days when he can spend weeks in the summer on the farm. That’s all well and good but he is NOT ALLOWED to ride four-wheelers until he’s 30. Okay? Okay. AND KEEP HIS TINY BABY HANDS AWAY FROM THOSE HORSES’ MOUTHS!

It would be really great if Sunday could be extra laid back and leisurely, with me catching up on five months’ worth of lost sleep while the family passes the baby around while sipping tall sweating glasses of sweet tea out on the veranda beneath the whirring fans, but I am not delusional enough to think that’s a possibility at this age. Also we don’t have a veranda with a fan; this isn’t The Help. I am sort of diplomatically letting go of the notion of ever being able to truly relax again. At least not until he’s grown.

I love the part at 1:26 where he’s like, “O RLY?!”