ventral reservation

When tummy time goes bad.

smoke alarm: an unconventional love story

Where there's smoke, there's fire. And passion. And obsession. And squealing.

speaking of tongues

Well. It seems that Mister Smartycheeks has suddenly discovered his tongue. Oooh, and what a slippery organ of joy it is. This is the sort of out-of-control behavior that happens when your mother sticks out her tongue at you in a SHAMELESS DISPLAY OF SASSINESS. Mimicry, people. Copycatting. And that starts with C and that rhymes with T and that stands for tongue.

For more damning evidence, we present Exhibit B. The first half of the film is all fun and games. But, like in any good Godzilla flick, the monster makes a spectacular appearance before the end.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Finn wants everyone to be his Valentine (especially Grandpa Norm and Grandma Mary in Arizona). Here's his special v-day outfit, replete with spit-up stains:


Also yesterday his BabyLegs legwarmers arrived in the mail. Finn the flashdancer is grooving in his skull and crossbones pair:

gleeful in bearsuit, or dogsuit, or whatever eared creature it's supposed to be

that was then. this is now.

Growth

The boy is growing at a terrific rate. Every morning we wake to plumper, more kissable cheeks.

and the belly...it's getting impressive.

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.