ice ice baby

There's no shoein' like snowshoein'.

crabby elf

Hark, the crabby elf bellows. If you listen carefully, you can hear one of his parents sadistically laughing---yes, LAUGHING---at his distress.

Elf in repose, after the blustering storm has passed.

we're still here. how are you?

For today's installment, we offer the following excerpt from my parents' 2007 holiday letter. A perfectly lovely piece of writing from one of my favorite authors. Enjoy. And how are you? How's the family?

An essay by the English author E.M. Forster in a book entitled I Believe expresses his abiding faith in friendship. To convey the feeling of kinship among the friends he admired most, he employed the metaphor of single lights scattered on a dark beach, "reassuring one another, signaling into the night, 'Well, at all events, I'm still here. How are you?'" Our messages back and forth to each other at Christmas are like those lights, blinking out the same message over the years: We're still here. How are you?

light is both particle and wave

thrushing hither and yon, or slouching toward the laundry room

Right now: nursing boy, awakened moments ago from yet another nap punctuated by random facial expressions and power-fists punched in the air. From the upstairs window, dark sky and flecks of snow scrolling by. Dog has punched the clock and is on duty in her usual spot at the foot of the bed.

The hilarious blueberry stain is already fading from Finn's mouth. What? Blueberry? A word of explanation is in order. After we lost faith in Western medicine at approximately 10:30am yesterday, gentian violet was called into action as an alternative anti-fungal thrush treatment. Which essentially means painting Mama's nipples purple. In a truly moving gesture of solidarity and support, everyone in the house, including Tula and the cats, volunteered to have their nipples painted purple, too. Tula, ever-napping, was easy pickings; we crept up and nailed her with the gentian squirt gun before she even had a chance to wake up. But the cats, those wily, suspicious creatures, had to be dragged down from the basement rafters to receive their doses. They now sullenly wear their stained belly-fur like purple badges of resentment.

Where were we? Oh, yes. Purple gums. After nursing for the first time in the Time of Violet, the boy looked like he lost a fight with a blueberry bush. Like he'd been chewing on a leaky ballpoint pen. Like Fred Flintstone with lavender five o'clock shadow.

Strangely, fact meets fiction here, precisely where Finn's adorable little purple gums come together. As with many things in life, we find a precedent in Catch-22. Doc Daneeka, the pathologically morbid and self-obsessed squadron flight surgeon, is assisted by a pair of functionaries, Gus and Wes, who have "succeeded in elevating medicine to an exact science.

All men reporting on sick call with temperatures above 102 were rushed to the hospital. All those except Yossarian reporting on sick call with temperatures below 102 had their gums and toes painted with gentian violet solution and were given a laxative to throw away into the bushes. All those reporting on sick call with temperatures of exactly 102 were asked to return in an hour to have their temperatures taken again. Yossarian, with his temperature of 101, could go to the hospital whenever he wanted to because he was not afraid of them."

Meanwhile, we continue to cycle everything through the laundry as part of our thrush abatement procedures, with any purple stains as gentle, gentian reminder.

casa loco

The dreaded twin banes of stay-at-home parenting have descended upon us, sinking their poxy, evil claws into our vulnerable psyches. What are these dual plagues that have been visited upon us? Cabin fever and thrush.

The case of thrush was diagnosed on Monday after a call to the lactation specialist and our pediatrician. Thrush is essentially a rampaging yeast infection passed along in breast milk. Death to yeast! The boy remains blessedly symptom-free for now, his nether regions unrashed, but Sweet Wife has been Sore Wife for a while now. Meds were prescribed and administered; Finn is on a suspension mixture of Nystatin squirted into his mouth four time a day, most of which is immediately spit back up. The only noticeable effect of this intervention so far is an upset stomach, or so we infer from his uncharacteristic fussiness.

Blame the cabin fever on a pernicious temperature inversion---everything is gray, sloppy, and faintly stinky. The city rebreathes its own stale exhalations. We slug through slimy humidity while somewhere up in the stratosphere, above the inversion ceiling, birds cavort in fresh, cold, crisp air. The sun disappeared hours and hours ago. Inside, the walls inch closer together. Time has no meaning. The boy, drunk on milk, sloshes charismatically around like a newborn Dean Martin promising a hell of a party after the show. Piles of laundry magically appear and vanish again like subatomic particles. Afternoon passes. Our planned walk down to the library goes unrealized and is never mentioned again. Walgreens is an exotic destination, Target an impossible dream. Cupboards are opened, then closed, then opened again in search of enlightenment, or peanut butter M&Ms. The dog idly surfs the internet, Googling sunny vacation get-aways and pawing through her email. I briefly consider learning Spanish to justify the recent rash of Espanol-themed blog posts, but then discard the idea. Hours are spent avoiding the fitted sheet, which, with its wavy scalloped edges and lack of defined corners, is an unfoldable, insoluble laundry paradox as elegant in its own way as that whole Cosmos-y business about the fabric of space-time; luckily, the situation is saved in the nick of (space-)time when it is determined that the clean fitted sheet can just go right on the bed. Hey. . . no need to fold that confounding sucker after all! Crisis averted. We sterilize everything, beating the bushes and pulling out every stop in our thrush abatement campaign. Household clutter magically renews itself, papers and dishes and stray socks multiplying like. . . yeast. We rejoice in small victories, moments of grace, like the crispness of the 4-inch hole cut through the back panel of our new TV cabinet, the culmination of our attempt to convert salvaged alley junk into a treasured piece of furniture using only willpower, ingenuity, and spray paint.

Luckily, tomorrow is a new day.

cinco

5 weeks
Originally uploaded by schwillig

Finn is five weeks old today. We're celebrating by adorning him with a cartoon crown and eating cartoon cake.

soothed by the bounce

When an unsettled tummy gets you down, nothing soothes like the high-def bounce of Wonderground Radio.

a smorgasbord of finn photos

d/m/rockumentary

double-header sunday

It's Schwillig Double-Header Sunday. While Kelly and Finn whip up mango chicken at home, I'm in a basement studio in St. Louis Park with Steve, Jeff, and Kevin recording a 3-song demo. Our engineer is a patient Swedish man named Patrik. To move the hours along, we're producing a behind-the-music rockumentary to be aired at a later date, or never.

in which the freezer reveals the historical record of a pregnancy

Exhibit A: Frozen peas (Birdseye), used as field icepack for sprained ankle after a Pregnancy Hormone Induced Tripping Incident in the Petco parking lot. Also valued for their nutritional properties and tastiness.

Exhibit B: Ice cream (coffee and mint chip). Used to tame nightly cravings, both by the pregnant one and the pregnant one's husband. Sometimes supplemented by shakes from Mickey D's.

Exhibit C: Frozen pizzas (assorted gourmet varieties). For those times when we just couldn't get off the couch. Those times came more often that we care to admit. Somewhere in Wolfgang Puck's sweatshop kitchens, a galley slave silently curses us for our loyal patronage.

Exhibit D: A package of garlic naan from Trader Joe's, purchased approximately one week before Finn's arrival. Kelly was in the throes of Braxton-Hicks contractions at the time and doesn't recall making the buy.

sure, the kid can sing. but does he have a fastball?

Images courtesy of G&G Photography.

so. it has come to this.

Overheard recently in the Schwillig household: "It's amazing what comes up when you do a Google search on 'poop.'"

True.

rhapsody in green

snowball

We wonder what goes on in his little head. More specifically, we wonder how it is that in the grand scheme of things, in the cosmic parent-child lottery, he ended up choosing us.

Imagine the Time Before You Were Born as a kind of preconceptual roller rink, a windowless cinderblock building stuck out in the suburbs of limbo, trying to make up with shouts of neon paint what it lacks in architectural distinction. A guy named Serge takes your five bucks through a plexiglass window, and you say goodbye to the bright, uniform light of a cold cloudy suburban day and enter a darker, louder world. Inside, all the usual amenities: skate rental and sales, snack counter selling popcorn in cardboard buckets and candy and hot dogs and pop, 50-cent lockers, unintelligible DJ running the show from a hidden box, every surface carpeted. Out on the rink, little souls zoom counter-clockwise to the disco beat, thanking their lucky stars that "Saturday Night Fever" gave the BeeGees their second wind. They're biding their time here until conception, getting jolted on fountain Coke and then sweating out the caffeine on the rink floor, working on spins, swoops, and limbo moves.

There's a time for flash and dazzle, for strobing lights and bass-thump, for putting on your best moves. And there's a time where you line up along the wall like hopeful sides of teen beef and pray to be chosen for the slow dance. Back in the day at the Coon Rapids Cheap Skate, said slow dance was called the Snowball. The idea was that boys were sent to the perimeter, giving up the main floor to the girls while the DJ cued up something slow and sappy; the girls would then lingeringly drift by, choose a partner, and skate together in a kind of blissful rolling micro-monogamy in effect only until the beginning of the next song. But oh so heavenly while it lasted.

Finn is a high-flying newborn superstar, what with his ten fingers and ten toes, his bright eyes, his sweet disposition, and sundry other perfections. He was clearly a hot skater before birth. Based on his current toolbox of gestures, his favorite skaterboy move involved throwing both hands in the air while arching his back. So if he was such a happening preconceptual skater, how did he end up with a couple of parents who can't even skate backwards?

finnian's visual dictionary

The editors of Finnian's Visual Dictionary of Real and Imaginary Words announce two new additions to the lexicon:

consternate (v.) consternated, consternating.

rousty (adj.) roustier, roustiest.

dressed to the canines

social security blanket

Finn's social security card arrived in today's mail. He is shown here wrapped in his social security blanket and pondering his future, especially the sobering implications of being vulnerable to identity theft and Big Bro. surveillance at such a tender age. Already jaded, he swears to be off the grid by age five.

21

Before we begin, let me say: this post is a shameless attempt to avoid writing thank you notes for baby swag. If I could legitimately cover the gratitudinal bases with a blog shout-out ("Hello, Cincinnati! How y'all doin tonight? Thank you so much for the pacifier!"), rest assured I would. Instead, we're camped at the dining room table with thank-you-note shrapnel scattered everywhere. I am demoralized, pathetic, and resorting to time-(dis)honored procrastination techniques. Enough with the unbridled generosity, people. Sheesh.

Finn is 21 days old today. In dog years, that's 3 days; in parent years, it's a lifetime. Before you know it we'll be referring to his age in units of MONTHS. He's managed to survive our parenting so far, with the only obvious ill effect a case of crusty eyes.

To celebrate the 3-week occasion, we hauled the boy to IKEA, which was strangely, almost preternaturally calm considering that we're in the thick of holiday madness and all. I wore his sleepy self strapped to my midsection hidden away in his sling, his little light bushelled for the protection of unsuspecting, innocent IKEA shoppers who would surely be stunned into melty helplessness by the merest glimpse of his fabulousness and rendered incapable of completing their purchases and promptly returning home to waiting families in Eagan, Fridley, or St. Bonifacius. Holiday disaster thus averted, harmonious family lives assured. We snacked in the restaurant, lingered among the dining sets, browsed picture frames---he slept though it all. We were in housewares; he was unawares. Back at home, we wrapped up anniversary festivities by baking a huge Boppy-shaped cupcake with lime-green frosting and tasty Finn topping.

Note the beautiful lacy blanket under which he's nestled---a gift from V's abuelita. That's software we won't be keeping under a bushel. The mechanics of such thready things elude me---can someone out there with sharp eyes and expertise in tatting vs. crocheting tell us which end is up? Between this blanket and some other works of art we've received, we're tempted to host the first annual Schwillig Tat-Off, a thread-to-thread knitting arts competition attracting the nimblest fingers and quickest needles in the land.

. . . and there goes any chance of a career in politics

This just in from ace tabloid reporter Kitty Hotspur.

According to sources, a cache of unspeakably salacious nudie pictures of a certain local celebrity were recently discovered. Other sources vehemently deny the allegations. Goodness my. How deliciously scandalous it all is.

In the spirit of journalistic integrity, we gleefully reprint the photos here in their unretouched, original form.

sonnet for suction

Some say the pump is mightier than the breast.
Like clockwork, a terrible efficiency---
or terrific. Depends on how it’s expressed
and your view, I suppose. It’s just past three-
thirty in the AM and I am grateful
for these moments made possible by ounces
pumped earlier and bottled, waiting,
white gold refrigerated. That sound, his
sweet sigh, means he’ll give up the waking ghost
and sleep soon enough. We rock, hum, dawdle
nightly; this tango, this diplomacy, mostly
because of the empowering bottle.
She’s getting some sleep now. Good. Here’s the crux:
Everything’s perfect when everything sucks.

finn air

Fly the fussy skies.

remedy for porky dog

It can happen to the best of us. Somehow, sometime, during the lazy, hazy days of dog biscuits and naptimes, Tula got herself loaded down with about ten extra pounds. The dog is pudgy. She's sporting love-handles. She's not quite into outright fat territory like those grotesquely tubby barrel-with-legs dogs. Best to nip it in the bud while we can. It crept up on us gradually in the daily routine of doling out scoops, the pounds sneaking on imperceptibly. Her extra padding makes her exceptionally well qualified as a napping partner and would help her survive if stranded in the frozen Arctic tundra, but it definitely slows her down on her daily walk.

Before she has a canine cardiac arrest, we rush to inaugurate and announce an exciting new fitness regimen: Tula's Alkway Across the USA. Don't be confused by the jargony usage---"alkway" is Dog Latin for "walk." Starting last week, Tula is taking a virtual walk across the United States and tracking her progress on Google Maps. Every mile she walks in the neighborhood counts as a virtual mile on her continental trek. Starting with her paws in the Pacific Ocean at Seaside, Oregon, she'll head east with the prevailing winds until she splashes into the Atlantic in New York or Boston or somewhere like that---we haven't figured that part out yet. If she makes it, she'll be approximately 45 years old. We have plenty of time to work out the details.

How can you help? Follow her progress on the "Tula's Alkway Across the USA" map widget in the sidebar. She's currently on the Sunset Highway between Seaside and Portland, just past Necanicum Junction. Looking strong, Tula! Keep it up! Stay paw-sitive!

Guaranteed: we'll get bored with this in a couple of weeks and leave the poor thing stranded at a BP station in Gresham.

snug

Like everyone else, we're socked in awaiting the brunt of the storm. Sweet Wife braved the icy roads and the beastly crowds at Rainbow to bring back yogurt and cereal for our well-stocked larder. All appointments have been cancelled. Netflix promises delivery of season 3 of Northern Exposure. Coffee and the radio are on.

NEWS FLASH: The boy's umbilical cord stump fell off yesterday. His tummy is smoooooooooth and no longer looks like a clearcut.

For all you adoring grandparents out there, here are some more photos.