First - the new photo album.
Second - bonus participatory photo album. I'm trying to find pics of me pregnant, since I don't have any, and so far my friends have sent in a bunch, mostly with no indication that I'm pregnant beyond my swollen face and GINORMOUS boobs. Do you have a photo of Oliver in utero? Please please please send it along.
Third - the update. If you yourself are a parent, you may have figured out by now that Greg and I are Attachment Parenters. The photo of me working a cashier shift at the Park Slope Food Co-Op with Oliver strapped to my body in a wrap made by a co-op of Guatemalan women, was, in addition to being a cliche, a dead giveaway. Also, the constant discussion of intense sleep deprivation should have alerted you. For those of you not in the know, here's a brief rundown:
The mainstream Attachment Theory of child development centers on whether or not children are "securely attached" to their parents, and posits that those who are are all-round better people - emotionally healthier, smarter, happier, luckier in love, better looking, etc. The fringe-y theory of Attachment Parenting tries to encourage secure attachment using a bunch of methods that are completely untested scientifically but that make gut sense. The methods are based on what we would do if we lived in a jungle and gathered fruit from the trees - i.e. the environment in which human babies evolved. (I trust that no one is surprised that I believe in evolution.)
If Greg and Oliver and I were Gatherer/Hunters, then we would feed Oliver breastmilk instead of Baby's Only Organic Formula (DHA Enriched!), and given the composition of human breastmilk, Oliver would eat small meals very frequently, which would be easy since I would be carrying him all the time in some kind of sling/mei-tai/papoose (design depending on our tribe), and the baby would sleep in my arms, which would most likely not bother Greg much, since he would be off, like, screwing some other chick or something. I would breastfeed Oliver for many years, depending on the available food supply, which would effectively space out my pregnancies so that I wouldn't have more children than I could feed. Of course, in this idealized scenario, Oliver didn't starve to death due to my inability to breastfeed.
So, although we buy our food with money we get from working for The Man, we do co-sleep and we carry the baby a lot. Since we will *not* let him just "Cry It Out", he's not very good at resettling himself when he wakes up at night, so anywhere from 2 to 7 times a night, we find ourselves patting and shushing and feeding the baby, who is in our bed. It only takes a moment and I fall right back asleep afterwards. The bigger problem is that Oliver is a bed hog. And he thrashes. And he's strong.
Two days ago, I had sleep-deprivation-induced auditory hallucinations. No voices - just the faint echo of my cell phone ringing. It went away as soon as I got some sleep, but it was really annoying.
Oh, also, we're moving to Savannah on July 26. Greg will be teaching photography at SCAD. July 6 is my last day at the Community Board. They can take my job and shove it. If you want to see that eco-friendly carpeting job I pulled off as my last official act, we're having an office open house on June 26th (this Thursday, 3-5pm, 330 West 42nd Street, 26th Floor.) Also, you can meet my replacement there - Renee Schoonbeek, a shockingly over-qualified Dutch urban planner who has just relocated.
Here's the house we're buying in Savannah. It's costing us $100,000 less than the top bid on our 820 square foot apartment. Bwah ha ha ha ha ha.
As for Oliver - he seems pretty happy and well-rested. He crawls very fast, climbs up stairs, throws himself head-first down stairs, walks holding on to furniture (aka "cruises"), and has just started walking behind special toys called "walk-behinds" that go so so so terrifyingly fast. We bought him his first pair of shoes. He has an awesome sense of humor - yesterday he was laughing so hard at his new throw-the-item-on-the-floor game there were tears running down his face. He also thinks it's hysterical when I suck on his pacifier. Which he offers me all the time, because that's the kind of guy he is.
He will be one year old on July 25.
All our love,
Michelle and Greg
