Potatoes in the Mist

So I went to the hairdresser today for the first time since I encountered the neck-injuring woman. It went well. I brought Z with me and she slept through most of it. She did raise a little Cain toward the end. The neck woman wasn't there today. She is only there on Friday mornings now. Apparently I am not the only person who felt her style was too...strong. There is a guy with hair implants that are "very sensitive." He felt they were in some danger. I just finished What Came First by Carol Snow. She went to my college, but ten years ahead of me. It was a really fun book. Not sure what I'll read next.

I always get sad when a good book ends. This one was The Vault by Ruth Rendell. So I have a new mystery series to delve into. British, low-key. How is it with two kids? you ask. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's a struggle. The new baby is more slender than E was, though her birth weight was higher. She's not gaining weight as fast as E did, but the doctor, when she saw her last week, said she wasn't worried. She nurses pretty frequently, but not as long as E did. Sometimes he would nurse for 2 hours, which made me wonder when the baby books cheerfully said, Your child might nurse up to 20 minutes! My friend at E's school baked us a batch of pumpkin muffins yesterday, accompanied by a welcome-to-the-world card for Z. They smelled and tasted delicious.

Ok...I am bored out of my gourd! Stuck in the hospital with no more books. I finished Intuition by Allegra Goodman (ok), and before that I read Kaaterskill Falls (preferred that despite slow pace), though Cookbook Collector is still my favorite by AG. Can't think of anything else to read, and I'm not sure my wi-fi-only Kindle will work here to buy a new book. Fortunately, Crossed (next book in the YA sci-fi trilogy) comes out Nov. 1. I'm not usually into sci fi, but that series is a lot of fun. I am digging the hospital food. D visited for a while today and the snack lady came by. She offered us coffee, tea or cookies. I got oatmeal raisin and they were absolutely delicious. I don't know why but the pain is not that bad this time (um, "down there"). I don't know if it's because labor was shorter or the episiotomy was smaller (it was). Whatever the cause, it's like a mildly irritating soreness instead of the gigantic pain I remember from last time...

So I gave birth this morning to little Z, or not so little...she is 8 lbs, 11 oz...at 5:01 am. Labor was really fast this time...I started having contractions around 3:30 am, then we started timing them, and the interval between contractions shrank from 10 minutes to 3 minutes very quickly. So we took a cab to the hospital after calling D's sister to stay with E. Once we got there, I was dismayed to find I was already 9 cm and it was too late for an epidural. But there was nothing to do but accept it. And I only pushed for 15 minutes. So, it was very painful...but FAST.

Right now, I am waiting. I'm not as dilated as I was with E at this stage. So we'll see what happens. The doctor said, "The baby's head is so nice and low - she's on deck, like in baseball." The doctor is predicting that I will have 20 minutes to an hour of pushing, not the three hours of torment like before. We'll see. She also told me she is "on" Thursday and Friday but doesn't know who will be on this weekend. I finished Matched, a YA dystopian futuristic novel (with hints of Orwell) about a young girl resisting the laws of society. Kind of a mix of brain candy and science fiction. The sequel comes out in November. Apparently there will be a trilogy.

Here are some mittens I just made. They are magically soft! I used Malabrigo merino worsted in Tigerlily. The pattern is here .

Went to the ob/gyn today...now I'm 3 centimeters. She's convinced labor will be easy for me this time. I am taking it all with a grain of salt. I would love for her to be right. But who knows? She says the pushing will probably take 20 minutes to an hour this time (instead of 3 hours). That would be nice. At the supermarket, the cashiers went beyond asking about twins (this is now to be expected) and started predicting the weight of the baby...I am not even kidding. They settled on 9 lbs, 7 oz. The doctor says 8 or 9 lbs. I guess the whole thing is teaching me patience. I have been dealing with these remarks since July. Right now I have nothing fantastic to read. I loved Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot . Better than Middlesex , if you ask me. Just so funny and real. I also liked Falling Together, Nightwoods and, although it was flawed, The Taste of Salt.

So I went to the doctor today. I had all these noble goals of not gaining as much weight in this pregnancy as I did with E, but I'm only 5 lbs behind my maximum weight with him. Oh well. The baby is moving around like a champ and I am 2 cm dilated, but the doctor said, "Your cervix is way the hell back" so she doesn't see me going into labor anytime soon. She said I could go slightly earlier than with E, because second babies are like that. My replacement Kindle arrived. It didn't cost much (it's not the fancy new Kindle Fire, I have no desire to watch TV on it anyway) and it's 30% lighter than the other one. I am grateful for my reading glasses, though, because electronics break down! A friend brought up the possibility that the need for reading glasses is related to my pregnancy. I forgot to ask the doctor. It will be interesting to see if I no longer need them after I give birth.

So today my Kindle bought the farm...it's an example of no good deed going unpunished. I was taking E to his playgroup via cab and he handed me the remains of his mushy apple bar. There was a little pocket in the door of the cab that would have been perfect for these remains, but it always irritates me when people leave food there, so I thought, no! I won't be barbaric. I'll put the apple bar in my pocketbook even though it will mess up the interior. When we got to the playgroup I found that my Kindle was a sticky mess. I dabbed some water on a paper towel and cleaned it. A couple of hours later, the top of the screen turned into stripes (kind of like that public broadcasting test they used to do on TV late at night) and was no longer readable. D had a laptop that met a similar fate, so I know that once those stripes appear, an electronic device is unfixable. So I ordered a new one, but realized I would go crazy without books in the meantime. I got a paper edition of the bo...

I made this hat for Z (the new baby, who has not yet arrived) today. You can find the pattern here . It took less than an hour to make. I'm reading Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks. I don't like it quite as much as The Year of Wonders, by the same author, but it's good enough. I'm looking forward to The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (coming out October 4).

I just started reading Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber. So far, I love it. It's set in Miami, where I haven't been since 2010, and it really evokes the beach, the whole community, for me. It was a relief to find this book, because I was trying to read another novel before that just wasn't working for me. You know how it feels when you're slogging through something? I also discovered some great cookies. They're made by Divvies and sold at Whole Foods. I bought 2 small bags, molasses ginger and oatmeal raisin. Usually oatmeal is my favorite, but I love the ginger. E still seems to be enjoying preschool. He was scared of gym class for a while; there was a "rolling activity" that scared him. Now he goes to gym without crying, and when he got home, he typed "gym" on my computer and smiled.

I'm so mad at this hair-washing woman right now. I went to the salon I usually go to today, but the regular hair-washing girl was gone. In her place was this woman who handles your head like she's scrubbing a cabinet. My whole head was shaken vigorously like it was in a spin cycle. To top it off, she says, "I like to get hair really clean, I'm just being gentle because of the baby." WTF???? Eventually I said something like, could you be gentler please, because you're making me nauseous. She calmed it down a bit. Finally, mercifully, it was over. I've never hated getting my hair washed before, it's usually my favorite part, but she managed to make it a miserable experience. When the washer was out of earshot, I told my hairdresser (whom I like, and have been seeing for 3 years) that the washer is a little, um, ROUGH. She said she would say something. I thought that was that, but the nausea stuck around all day. The appointment was 10:15 am and I'm s...

Now that the baby is almost here (well, a month and a half away), she seems more and more real to me. The comments are driving me crazy. I literally can't leave my apartment without this conversation happening: "When are you due?" "November 4." "Really? It looks like you're going to blow/pop/burst/go into labor right now." "Nope." "Are you having twins?" "Nope." Some people stop there; others say, "Cause you're really big!" It's a good thing I don't have a gun. On a more serious note, I wonder what it will be like to have two small children. I feel like I've hit my stride with E. I'm not saying it's easy. But I can handle it. Going back to breastfeeding, sleep deprivation, etc...will I be able to handle that? I guess I will "just do." I do have a fond, perhaps foolish hope that I will have one of those babies that sleep through the night at 6 weeks (or even shortly after comi...

Well, E seems to be making a smooth transition to preschool. Yesterday I got freaked out because he was so exhausted after school and he took a 3-hour nap. Today, we all woke up at 8:24 and hustled over to the school. He went off willingly enough to his classroom and when the day was over, he came bounding out to greet me with a big smile. The co-teacher said he had an "awesome day." They played with shaving cream on a table, and he kept talking about it and how they cleaned it up afterward. It turns out a woman who lives near me (in the same group of buildings) has a child at the school too, and we walk home together. I put E in the stroller in case he needed a nap today, but he didn't. He had fun being pushed by the woman and her child. It's kind of funny, she and I have a lot in common - both vegetarian, from small towns in Massachusetts, and a year apart in age.

E's first day of school went very well, at least the drop-off. We all slept till 8:14 so we had to rush to get everything together. I was running around with a Sharpie and making lunch. Finally we got out the door, only to be the first people to get to his class! The students were still arriving gradually when we left. We stayed half an hour, and E seemed to be doing fine and barely noticed our departure, though we said goodbye. He and the other children were having a grand old time making dinosaurs with Play-Doh. Just saw some photos of the flooding in Vermont and fires in Texas. It really does seem like the end of days sometimes. I hope this crazy weather passes, and my thoughts are with the people in those areas.

So E's first day of school is tomorrow. I'm a little stressed out about it. I'm about as prepared as I can be; I've made a list of what we need to bring tomorrow and I've marked his lunchbox, diaper/underwear bag and bumblebee backpack with his name. We're also supposed to write his name in his clothes, but I'm going to do it on an outfit-by-outfit basis. In other news, I can no longer read non-Kindle books. I tried buying some books 70% off at the nearly defunct Borders (I always liked Barnes & Noble better anyway), but the print was too small. I'm used to the larger font on the Kindle. So I gave in and purchased the book on the Kindle so I could continue reading it without straining my eyes. My mother visited this weekend and cut E's hair. In the past, she's been able to do it so he doesn't notice, but this time he said immediately, "This is a haircut." Pregnancy-wise, I'm about as big and uncomfortable as can be...and I h...

So, as you probably know, the east coast is supposed to get hit by this epic storm tomorrow and Sunday. I'm skeptical. The weather channel is famous for making much ado about nothing. But the MTA (subways, buses, Long Island railroad) is shutting down at noon today so none of the cashiers at the grocery stores will be able to make it to work (or get home if they took a subway before the shutdown). So I and a few million other New Yorkers were stocking up at the grocery store today. I personally feel we are just going to get some rain tomorrow and some wind on Sunday, but we'll see.

So I just saw Crazy, Stupid, Love ...much better than I expected! I am always cautious going into movies because a lot of them are bad. But this one was definitely good. I realized I almost always like Steve Carell movies...I didn't see Date Night , but I liked Dan in Real Life and Little Miss Sunshine. I think he is a more subtle and interesting actor on the big screen (not that I have anything against The Office , but he definitely has a broad, hammy role there. Oh, I guess he left. We don't have a TV, can you tell?) The other actors: Julianne Moore was good, although it was not always a sympathetic role for her. Her face looks a bit like Madonna's in some shots. Emma Stone reminds me a bit of Michael Jackson, her face. She is likable enough though. Ryan Gosling was very funny.

Just had the best grilled cheese sandwich ever (I made it!). Proof that good, simple ingredients can really make something special. 2 slices whole wheat bread 1 August tomato, bursting with juiciness 3 slices of Havarti 1/2 tablespoon sweet cream butter

Just a note to say...I love the bus! I never bothered to figure it out before, I always took the subway or walked. But now when I'm big and pregnant, the air conditioning/lack of stairs on the bus are welcome. The crosstown bus is slow as molasses, but the uptown/downtown one is fairly quick and endearingly social. A woman showed me a cowl she was knitting for her son-in-law with British-style increases. Speaking of the British, I'm reading the Agatha Raisin mystery series by M.C. Beaton. It's a lot of fun. Agatha is kind of a curmudgeon, but also very likable.