Mama Bean's lenten deprivations have led to More Efficient Internets. Much rejoicing!

Seriously, RSS feeds are fricking genius! Why why why (ad infinitum) did it take me this long to figure it out? Computer programmers are very intelligent people, they know how to make our lives easier, we should listen to them. The blessed, blessed programmers created programs that will keep track of the sites you read, and tell you when they're updated, and provide a handy little viewing screen to preview whether said update is worth your precious (limited by Lent) internet resources. This is the invention of a Lifetime! (No, not the television channel.)

The programmers have not made an easy way to, say, import an existing set of Favourite'd sites and subscribe to them all at once. I had to manually enter each web jewel separately. But it was so worth it. Now, I just go to my reader (the Google one. I didn't research this choice, I used the one Papa Bean uses. Let me know if you have one you like better) and everything that's updated since I last looked is bolded. And it takes me to the permalinked page, instead of the homepage, so no more "clicking through" or "following the jump". I don't know why this feels like I'm saving enormous amounts of time, because I'm basically just saving clicks and tabs, but for some reason I feel like my entire World Wide Life has been streamlined.

And I'm gradually figuring out that I am not somehow missing things. I am learning to trust the reader. In fact, I can be less paranoid about it now than I was before, clicking past entries on haha.nu or Evil Beet that I vaguely remembered, just to find an anchor post I was sure I'd read previously. So, you know, less irrational surfing, it's all good. I used to hop online two or three times a day, open every site on my Daily Visits list (which was massive) and click through each one, closing those that hadn't changed, just to find the few with new content. And sometimes, when I was done, I'd do it again, just to see if one of the unread sites had magically updated in the ten minutes since I'd checked last. This is the kind of obsessive browsing that prompted my Internet fast in the first place.

Problem number one, I am now able to follow even more sites than before. I've resubscribed to webcomics and blogs set on backburner for months or years because I just didn't feel I had the time. Problem, or maybe just revelation number two, RSS readers allow the analytical (such as myself) to very visually and accurately quantify total web use. I'm averaging 80+ updates a day on my current list of subscriptions, and that list will only get longer. It's too much. I am a tad anal retentive. Certainly linear and methodical. With poor impulse control, what you might call compulsive. So when I see 67 new items, I have to start at the bottom and open each one in turn. If I don't have time to read it, I leave that tab open until some magical free time arrives. If I must leave my computer, because it's 6 pm, or Bean is going to bed, or I'm going to work, or my husband wants to, like, talk to me... and I return to 84 items, I can't just start in the middle. Or scan for something truly interesting, and leave the remaining unread items under a couple of the unbolded chosen few. I have to go to the bottom, and work my way upward. It's ridiculous. And I have a set of twenty tabs already, of long text-y articles and posts that I just know I will want to read just as soon as I haveaminuteorfivehundred.

Okay, but I can overcome my compulsions oh sure. The point is that I have discovered a wonderful tool and I needed to write 900 words about it. Also, I'm considering switching browsers to Chrome. I am intrigued by these assurances that Chrome never crashes. Firefox certainly crashes far far less than IExplore, but my last computer had a serial crashing issue with Firefox that is hinting at reappearing with this computer, so I want to escape. I feel a little entrenched though, the way my Favourites are organized. I know this shouldn't be a problem with things like Delicious and Xmarks, but it is for me. Seth Godin has a term for it that I can't remember, this strategy that technology marketers use to create complexity that ensnares users and makes leaving difficult. Cell phone plans and features are a good example. It's sort of like captive loyalty. I don't like it, but I'm still too lazy about it to actually go download Chrome. But I'm thinking about it. It only took me three years to discover RSS...

Mama Bean posts links on Friday - March 12, 2010

- Starting off with another haha.nu find! Sounds about right. This is a music video of a very apologetic man goofily winning back his love's good will. It is presented as something real that some guy did, but upon reflection, I think it was probably staged as a fairly low budget music video. But it's still pretty cute. I'd go back to him.

- This Sarah Schmelling spoof of the What to Expect Series, written for a 38-year-old is pretty cute. I found WTEWYE kind of the opposite-of-helpful when I was pregnant. It mostly seemed to say anything is normal when you're pregnant. Hair falling out? It happens! Hair super amazing? Also possible! Hair completely the same? Sure, why not?! It also seemed to say anything is worrisome. Do you feel constipated? Probably normal, but eat more fiber! Do you have diarrhea? Could be normal, but make sure you're drinking enough fluids. No change in regularity? That may seem normal, but it could be an indication of super rare infant monkeybuttfingeritis! In any case, make sure to annoy your doctor with inane questions that this book is supposed to answer so you don't waste their time!!! Hmmm, apparently I had a lot to say about this topic...

- Last week I posted a video of physiological machines. This week, haha.nu posted a subway map of human body systems. It is really well done. (Click on the picture to make it bigger.)

- One of the best examples of why hockey is Canada's game. During the gold medal game, water use in Edmonton (and presumably other major centres) plummeted during play, and drastically spiked during intermissions between periods. Basically, the whole country took a collective potty break. Awesome. I've been wondering if Americans would have reacted to winning the same way Canadians did, since hockey isn't as big down there. It's not, like, football, or baseball. I know Canadians would not have handled losing as coolly as Americans did, though. We would have been a nation of sack cloth and ashes, wailing and gnashing of teeth. It would have been bad, y'all.

- Mitchell and Webb is, I gather, a British sketch comedy show. In this video, they take on the incessant football (soccer, to the erstwhile colonized masses) coverage in their part of the world. Kind of like hockey or ohmigoodnessrslyneverending curling coverage here in the Prairie Valley. And yes, you love me because I used erstwhile in context.

- Is it ever okay to spank your kids? This article was written by one of my favourite bloggers EVER. On my facebook, two moms like'd it, and two guys who are not (yet) fathers commented. The article is not really even mostly about spanking, more about how we might choose, in the moment, parenting practices we never thought we'd use, or that parenting-pundits tell us are Fundamentally Wrong. She writes, "We all have good guesses and great intentions and well-laid plans, but the truth of the matter is that the work of raising children, by its very nature, defies all those things." There is an invitation, for all parents, to cut each other some slack. She emphasizes that mothers belong to a community, and communities work better when we're nice to each other. Most of the comments at the site are favourable, but some folks do tear into her.

- This is a cute reworking of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul's popular list of What Love Is. It starts off, "Love is patient when you’re dressing for the wedding and discover your husband forgot to pick up your dress from the cleaners."

- A timely post for "preachers and those who listen to them." To summarize: 1) Trust there is a cumulative effect to the preaching. It's impossible for a pastor to deliver the Killer Sermon each and every week. They should not expect it of themselves, and neither should congregants. 2) Define the win; devise a rubrik for evaluating the essential traits of a sermon. He proposes his own (text-based, Christ exalting, gospel centred, audience focused) but I imagine each pastor could come up with his or her own criteria. Since I'm not a pastor, I found this message to listeners most close-to-home: "Don't judge your pastor on whether he is funny or dynamic or captivating. If your pastor is preaching the bible, exalting Christ, keeping the Gospel central and applying it to your context, then you have a great pastor and you should thank God for him. Stop complaining about your pastor's delivery; pray for your receptivity. I hear people criticize their pastor's preaching but never scrutinize their own listening. Maybe the problem is not what you think it is."

-And we end off with yet another haha.nu link, and yet another subway map, this time of various rock bands on different coloured genre-lines, highlighting key intersections and overlaps. Music snobbery at its best!

Mama Bean took the crib bumpers out of Bean's crib

I spent a good part of a feeding yesterday pondering why they are called bumpers in the first place. I think of bumpers as those big rubber-type things on the fronts and backs of cars that ostensibly protect the car from damage in collisions, but are actually super expensive pieces of equipment that guarantee paying of huge deductibles and arm+leg type repairs with even the smallest of fenders benders. (Oh yeah! They're called fenders on cars, so why not crib fenders?) I guess they're called bumpers because they are shock absorbing, but around the inside of the crib instead of the outside, and they protect baby's head when he gets to the age of throwing himself around the cage, as it were. I suppose. I don't know why we don't just call them crib padding, or something. I also fail to understand why a crib needs a skirt. Nursery decorating in general, and crib bedding in particular, baffles me. Bean's nursery looks nothing like the magazines.

For something so seemingly innocuous and straightforward, crib bumpers inspire great volumes of baby-punditry. The primary argument pertains to safety - the padding is thick enough to suffocate a baby, especially if he gets his head somehow wedged between the pads and the crib bars or the mattress or somesuch. Suffocation risk also raises the alarm on having stuffed animals or extraneous blanketry in the crib. Apparently, there is also concern the padding may somehow trap a layer of carbon dioxide from baby's breathing, making the environment within the bumpers hypoxic and dangerous. Thus, there are netting type crib "bumpers" that have no padding at all, and I fail to see how they would offer any sort of protection or comfort in the event of cranial impact.

Despite the dire warnings, every catalog and nursery picture from here to eternity features cribs that are sheeted, blanketed, skirted, and bumpered within an inch of their proverbial lives. (Ah yes, the lives of furniture, so rich, so multi-faceted. Do you think the end tables begrudge the dresser's their drawers of secret wonder? Are the dressers, in turn, jealous of the bed's linens and 300-thread count finery?) So. We bought bumpers. We visited two Sears stores, during a baby related sale, and found some coordinating sheets, blanket and bumper at some significant percentage off. Much of our nursery furniture was gifted to us by a church family who had outgrown it, which was awesome. Buying the bedding was basically our only expense, and we got this uber deal, which tickles my husband's frugal little heart. Those were heady times, those pre-baby shopping days!

It was all for naught, however, as the bumpers have been unceremoniously removed. In order to get the sheets onto the crib mattress, one must lift the mattress completely out of the crib, and the circle of padding, with its fiddlely little ties and bows, just isn't conducive to accomplishing this task in an expedient fashion. Which is to say, I needed to put him down for a nap one day, and I couldn't get the mattress dressed in time to prevent imminent meltdown, so I just untied the bumpers as fast as I could so the poor, wailing Beast could be soothed by the Swaddle and the Sleep Machine as quickly as possible.

We could discuss why the stupid sheets must fit so blasted tightly in the first place. It's probably also due to some fear of looser bedding somehow rising up against the hapless babes and suffocating them like the bumpers will. Or maybe I shrunk them. That's more likely. To be honest, we didn't even need to buy the match-y blanket, we were given so many beautiful blankets and quilts. And we don't really need the four fitted sheets recommended by the Sears registry list, because, as with our own bed, we basically wash and dry the thing within the day and put the same one right back on the mattress, so the other sheets are left unused in the cupboard. Maybe that's the crux of it right there: I should hardly have expected myself to try harder with the upkeep and costuming of my baby's bed than I do my own.

So the bumpers are gone, and I am relieved. I only miss them for one thing, they kept the soother from falling out of the crib when Bean spits it out when he's sleeping. Their removal had nothing to do with increased safety, because his crib still has a corner of stuffed animals, and a small pile of supplementary blankets, and one of those foam wedges with the rolls that was supposed to help Bean with his breathing, and has a handy tool to remember which way his head was turned the previous night, so he doesn't get plagiocephaly, which we no longer use, but I can't bear to pack away, because we paid full price for it. Why aren't there concerns about this contraption's suffocative potential? It says to stop using when your baby starts rolling around. Couldn't the same be said of bumpers? Some baby-pundits say using blankets is dangerous, also, because babies can get tangled in them and suffocate, hence grow-bags or sleep-bags or whatever. We bought one of those, but it will be too small by the time Bean outgrows the Swaddle.

Up until now, Bean still sleeps cross-wise in his crib, because it is easier to swaddle him when he's turned that way. But soon he will be too tall for that. I guess time will tell how much of a sleep-traveler Bean becomes when he starts rolling around (so soon!) And before we know it, he'll be sitting up, and then pulling on the bars, and we'll have to lower the mattress. I suspect the blanket pile will be the first to go. But at least one stuffed animal must stay, to hold his soother in its lap, so we always know where to find it when we're putting him down to sleep. The soother holder is essential for preventing Frazzled Nerves and Domestic Hostilities. Unless you listen to the baby-pundits who think soothers are a choking hazard during sleep...ugh, it could go on forever. Thank goodness he just sleeps through it all.

Mama Bean spends too much time thinking about poo

I seem to have been raised with an unusual preoccupation with poo. I remember years of disgusting fiber supplements, and daily oat bran cereal, and avoiding bananas because they bung you up, all in an effort to attain the elusive beast called Regularity. This was a highly prized achievement indeed, and in my childhood home, it remains a topic of frequent conversation. Papa Bean can attest that few family meals go by without some discussion of the matter.

Given this frame of reference, it is perhaps not surprising that I charted Bean's poops for his first month of life. We changed his diaper at every feeding, for which I would record the time, amount and/or time spent eating, and the status of pee or poo in the diaper. I have pages and pages of entries like "black green milk flecks" (Oh, the lovely meconium! No matter your dedication to cloth diapers, do not waste their pristine absorbent surfaces to this shit. Use disposables and toss it far, far away from your life.) or "small yellow seedier." (Did I feel Bean's poo resembled a shabby, run-down hotel?) Often I simply noted its presence ("Yes") and its size ("small" worrisome when too many in a row, "big" written with great relief and pride, as though I were personally responsible for his autonomic functions.) On the evening of October 27th, we even had one designated "epic!" and another November 7th "EPIC ALL OVER MY HAND!" At one point, I attempted to quantify more specifically, marking ts and tb amounts, treating poo like a cooking ingredient. For awhile, I recorded yellow farts (or sharts) until I realized these are not important.

My accounting of his fecal activity knew no limits until November 12th. It just wasn't worth the paper anymore. (Though I did continue charting feeding times/durations/boob used, and later just times, until December, when we went to Calgary, and I finally felt comfortable enough to rely on my no longer addled or Delirious memory of how many times I fed him in a day.) Now, I am not as obsessed with frequency. All babies, but breastfed ones in particular (it seems) poop when they feel like it, and no amount of fretting or documentation on our part will change that.

I do still take an unnecessary interest in its appearance, however, much to Papa Bean's chagrin. The infant digestive system is incredibly efficient, which I guess is pretty easy when you're basically just eating one food over and over (and over) again. I spent a morning feeding's meditation trying to remember, from my Chiropractic education, which bile derivatives might be responsible for baby poo's unique neon mustard hue. The observations of "seediness" made me think of cottage cheese, and how the commercial product is made through a similar acidifying and digesting process. When the colour changes, or amount of seeds is up or down, I think about how long he's been eating at feedings, which would indicate how much early foremilk he's getting (more sugary, less seeds, greener colour) versus later hindmilk (more fatty, more seeds, yellower colour.) And when he was sick this weekend, we saw two diapers with kind of a brown mucusy output, which made us wonder just how much Snot and Dreck the poor kid was ingesting, since he hasn't quite figured out how to spit it out (though he spits out nearly everything else with zero coaching or encouragement.)

I might not get as detailed next time, but I found charting the early weeks of feedings and poops is super valuable. I love having that record to look back on. I wrote down other special happenings alongside the mundane, like when his eyelashes came in, and when his umbilical stump fell off. (I also wrote down status updates I meant to put on my facebook, only to reach the computer later that day, and realize the update was completely inappropriate. Hence, this blog.) In the midst of it, I was certain I would Never Forget these things, because I was still keyed up on endorphins, which made me think Everything Is Possible. But I was also chock full of oxytocin, which is the forgetting hormone, after all. Not to mention the crashing estrogen/progesterone levels, and general sleep deprivation. There were also times I thought I would never want to remember, the difficult moments when I reacted poorly. But in retrospect, I'm glad for that record, too, as it demonstrates what I was able to overcome. That makes me feel strong.

But next time, I won't record pees. Bean pees every ten seconds, or something. That column in the chart basically amounts to a string of "wet"s. Welp, that's two TMI weeks in a row about poo for your eternal edification. We will see how much weight he's gained on Wednesday, which may inspire more boobtastic musings for next week.

Mama Bean realizes (anew) that the Internet has business hours

The internet is not the TechnoUniverse that never sleeps. At least, not the way I use it. I have lamented (truly) sites that don't update on weekends, especially during periods of unemployment, which made me LOL (IRL, not just the figurative internet "out loud") at this toothpastefordinner strip. But even on weekdays, most sites update once a day. The good ones. Considering the bulk of my daily internetting is blogs, I'm looking at new content from half my sites every other day. Maybe. Even on haha.nu, which has a group of submitters, or gossip sites like Evil Beet, I'm easily able to read through a day's content in one sitting. I don't know why I check my sites compulsively multiple times a day. Only lemondrop and ONTD post in such a serial fashion that I can't keep up. They are true time wasters for idle time only. Which I don't really have anymore. (I might ask myself if I every really did, or just used sites like this to Avoid. But the answer would be so obvious to even the casual observer that I wouldn't bother after all.)

The bottom line is I surf more hours in the day than I should. The other thing is, I picked the worst (or best?) time of day to restrict my usage. It's like television, prime time is after 7 pm. Without that, I go online in the mornings, which should be Productivity time. Bean's newest schedule change is having his fifth eating, staying awake for an hour or so, and going to sleep until after 11 pm. Then he has his sixth feeding and goes down till morning. This leaves the evening open and free, so after Lent, this will be when I can computerate to my heart's content. But for now, I think about how my time is not my own, it is God's. He gives me my evenings, and my days. He gives me my son to sleep or not to sleep.

On the water-only front, all's well and good. Had a real craving yesterday when feeling super thirsty, and only wanted sugar water to quench it. Papa Bean and I have developed some bad dessert-eating habits, I fear in compensation for our deprivations. This is counterproductive, both to any potential weight loss from dropping calorie-laden drinks (for me) and meat (for him), and more importantly to any spiritual growth that Lenten sacrifice is meant to encourage. But then, he has become so good at cooking soup, good hearty filling meal-like soups. Necessity/mother/invention, etc.

I can't say these are terribly deep reflections of any great spiritual significance. I'm not trying, if I'm being honest, to get much beyond whining about how this-is-hard, and I-am-weak. There's still time before Easter, perhaps I need to set aside some time to really reflect, or something.

I am finding great satisfaction in this blog, and am constantly composing posts in my head. And by constantly I mean, while breastfeeding, which feels constant, because I'm practically doing it every hour and a half. (That's only a teeny exaggeration, and let's not dwell on how much I can never spell that word correctly.) I do get pretty meta about the whole blogging process, also, so without getting overly pretentious, I intend to write about writing, or something like that, soon. Creating stuff, whether it's making music, or building a scrapbook, or writing a post - feels spiritual to me, and I want to explore why and how. Creativity is something that simultaneously brings me deeper into myself (sometimes not for better, as in, towards self-centred sort of navel gazing) and further into community (or communities, of mothers and Christians and general netizens). As much as I gave up some stuff for Lent, I think the more important development has been starting this blog around the same time, and that may be where the true faith related growth occurs.

Mama Bean interrupts her internet fasting because Bean is sick

It started Friday morning, with a dribble from the right nose-ling, and a slightly watery right eye. I mentioned it to sleepy Papa Bean before leaving for work, but there were no issues during the rest of the morning. I only noticed a little more dribble later that afternoon. Is it weird that I remember these minutiae? I doubt it. All moms do this, right?

He's also been spitting up more than usual since Friday. After every feeding, just soaking his bib or clothes or Papa Bean's shirt with drool and partially digested milk. I thought maybe it's from all the extra feedings we're doing. Which, if so, is sort of counterproductive to the whole point of extra feedings. Then a bit on Friday, but mostly today, he started coughing. It seemed like just tickles from the spitting up at first, but today it started to sound more like an immune response kicking out extra mucus and buggies. Poor dear. He was cranky all day.

I just gave him his last feeding, and took his temperature just in case. It's fine. The First Cold is like a rite of passage. I feel bad, like I didn't bundle him enough in the car seat, or didn't wash my hands enough from office germs and shopping germs and life germs. I'm not really a germaphobe by nature, being blessed with a strong immune system, and being lazy, frankly. So it's weird to care about it now, and spend time thinking about where I or Bean might have picked something up.

Oh well, my breasticles will cook up some good antibodies for him, and it will all be okay. I have my provincial Chiropractors' association Annual General Meeting in the morning. I think I forgot my packet at the office, oops. I'm going for the free breakfast. Papa Bean is going to take Bean to church solo, and N is coming early to cuddle Bean while he rehearses with the worship team. She's practicing. Unless Bean is coughing more in the morning, then they'll stay home. And I'll sit in my meeting thinking I should be home, too.

Mama Bean is participating in a metanarrative called Parenthood. Come join her!

"How is motherhood? Everything it's cracked up to be!?! Be careful how you answer that; I am intending to have children one day."

This was in a facebook message from a friend I worked with at Starbucks in our Prairie Valley City. She's currently traveling in New Zealand, so I was touched she took the time to write a message. At first, I was ready to whip off a response: Motherhood is amazing! Bean is so cute and cuddly and fun! This was not at all what I expected, and so much more than I could have imagined!

And then I stopped to think about it. Is motherhood everything I thought it would be? Has being a parent been what I expected?

I appreciate her warning to be careful in my answer. Even the uninitiated realize this baby-raising, family-growing thing is not what sitcoms and romcoms and all other manner of -coms would have you believe. Though it is certainly comedic, at times.

The truth is, I don't think I had many expectations. I didn't know what being a mom would be like. I didn't spend much time around babies beforehand (though I sooo appreciate what I was able to glean from interactions with nieces and nephews and friends' kidlets.) During my pregnancy, I was completely focused on The Delivery. Maybe this is a consequence of choosing homebirth, I felt the need to really back up our decision, and sort of defend it to myself, because of all the unspoken (and spoken) concerns and judgment from others. And somehow, culturally or socially (or professionally) I had absorbed this message that giving birth was The Big Thing. I think it's akin to how The Wedding becomes this all-encompassing event, when really, it's a marriage you're getting into. Delivery just brings the baby out, but parenting... that's for life.

Everyone jokes that there are no manuals for babies. No one really knows what they're doing in the beginning, and we all just fuddle through it the same way. The babies survive, thank God, so clearly there are a multitude of ways to skin this proverbial kitten. It's trial by fire, isn't it?

Our good friends B and N are expecting this Fall. I am absolutely ecstatic for them! And for me. Excited for our friendship to grow in this dimension, too, just as we grew through university together, and getting married, and moving eastward, and now parenthood. Excited for Bean to have a little buddy. I have to restrain myself from overwhelming and oversharing and *gasp* overadvicing. Oh, yes, how quick we are to become baby-pundits ourselves!

I am just so pleased for them to experience the Joy and Wonder that I have felt since discovering Bean's existence that fateful Valentine's Day. For me, mama-hood brought me into a new community, and sharing stories and experience (and heartache and struggle) are integral to the mama-hood's function and participation therein. We've really noticed this with strangers when we're out in public; those who've had children (grandparents, especially) notice Bean through parents' eyes. They ask how old he is, they mentally compare his size and demeanor to their own children and grandchildren at that age, they comment accordingly. They want to know if we are participating as they did in this great big story called Parenthood. Those less invested in the parenthood drama notice Bean in passing, and demonstrate little curiosity. At least, that's what we've noticed.

I will tell my friend these things, that I had no expectations, that Bean surpasses them regardless. That every day is a surprise, which could mean surprise challenges and surprise struggles, but also means surprise smiles and surprise learning. And, as cliche as it is, I will tell her about the Love. How you cannot possibly imagine loving something or someone this much when you don't even know them, but it happens. And when I found that love, I wanted to tell everyone about it, and share it with other moms and parents, because I'm only pretty sure they totally understand.