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Psocoptera's LiveJournal:
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| Saturday, July 11th, 2009 | | 9:17 pm |
| | Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 | | 8:31 pm |
onesie hacking
If Juniper at some point goes nuts for pink and wants to proclaim herself a princess, I'll try to be just as supportive of that as any other enthusiasm, but I'm not in a rush to put the label on her myself. A couple of gift onesies posed a challenge to that preference, but with some transfer crayons and a little work I feel like I've managed to put my own spin on the "little princess" thing:   (Yes, that's meant to be Agatha in the first one.) | | 11:31 am |
shake, rattle and roll
The shuttle does it twenty seconds after launch, but here at T plus 86 days, the little spacecraft has achieved roll, going over her left side from tummy to back. She's done it twice before starting propped up on a little pillow under her armpits but this was her first time on a flat quilt. She's also gotten way, way more in control of her hands, being able to bat repeatedly at a dangling or alongside target, explore the contours of objects in her lap, acquire a grasp on soft objects that will helpfully fold into her hand when it runs into them, and drag them to her mouth. (It's gotten harder for me to tell when she's hungry, now that her mouth is interested in the world around her... she sort of reminds me of two minutes into this clip sometimes.) She also, as per the title of this post, will sometimes hold onto and shake her rattle, when I put it in her hand and she's interested. And she has a new little choking-pigeon sound that we think just might be a laugh. | | Friday, June 12th, 2009 | | 12:41 pm |
you've got to be kidding me, baaaad laws division
MA State Rep Kathi-Anne Reinstein has introduced a bill that would amend the state child porn laws to include the elderly and people with disabilities. Because "obviously" people over 60 and people with disabilities are just like children! and couldn't possibly be consenting sexual beings! Note that, like child porn, this wouldn't apply just to professional porn, but also to images or movies made for personal use - so if your girlfriend uses wheels or your husband is 65 or whatever, forget about taking naked pictures of them. I was curious - Rep Reinstein herself appears to be young and did not choose to pose in a way that showed a disability - of course she could have a disability not shown here, but I suspect she, er, does not see this as legislation that might apply to her or people like her. Just to some other (Other) people who it is icky to think about sexually, la la! (If it was not clear: not that they need my approval for anything, but I am in favor of elderly and PWD having whatever sex lives satisfy them, on film or not, in exactly the same way I wish that for all adult people.) More links here and here and here. | | Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | | 4:09 pm |
I was going to make a happy post about alum weekend, but someone in my internet moms community lost her baby (stillbirth), and someone else is losing her baby (resuscitated but not going to recover), and one of the journalists in North Korea has a four-year-old daughter, and I just wish beyond words that a few extra hours in traffic with a fussy baby could be the worst thing to have happened to any parent this weekend anywhere. I'm so lucky: roundsinging was excellent and I got to do a little gaming and talk to some people and show off my beautiful baby, and even if none of that had worked out at all, she's healthy and here. I really, really hope they get those journalists out of North Korea. | | Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | | 8:57 pm |
doctors
Juniper did not particularly care for the experience of her two-month vaccinations, but there have been lots of snuggles and some baby tylenol and she's doing ok. Up to 12 lbs 3 oz, almost two pounds since last month! 87th/83rd percentile on length/weight, that's my big girl. The neurologist said what I had was called a "thunderclap headache" (I guess it can go with my lightning bolt stretch marks) and while headaches like that can be a sign of something bad, sometimes they also just happen and in this case it was mostly likely the latter, given the ok CT and spinal tap, but I'll be getting an MRI to be sure. The murder of Dr. Tiller has hit me in a way that not even most hate crimes manage to do. I keep retyping this paragraph and not managing to say anything coherent, but: he was a fucking hero, and I don't think most of us will ever do one-tenth of one percent as much good for people in the most terrible tragic circumstances, and I am so angry that a culture exists that let someone believe his murder could be justified. (And also, for some reason it really bothers me that he was killed *in his church*. I'm not sure why, I don't even go to church and he'd be just as dead if he was murdered in the supermarket or whatever, but, I don't know, that's just supposed to be a safe, peaceful place. I guess that's what terrorism does, emphasize that nowhere is safe.) | | Saturday, May 30th, 2009 | | 11:42 am |
two months
So yeah, by now the baby's been around so long that she's become a bit old hat and we've mostly gone back to our ordinary routines...  No, wait, that's not right. What I meant to say was that I'm sure a time will come when every new month is not the best month ever... teething, sleep regressions... junior high... but not yet. This has been a month of amazing head-holding-up, a month of edging ever closer to batting at things on purpose instead of flailing into them by accident, a month where I get to look at this happy little face every day.  Besides, she makes a terrible mousepad. Happy two months, Junebug! | | Monday, May 25th, 2009 | | 12:29 pm |
two outings
Last weekend (it takes ages to manage to post anything these days) I had two diametrically-opposed experiences in separation from the baby. The first was planned and awesome: last Sunday morning I left Josh with Juniper and a bottle of pumped milk in the fridge, got on a bus, and met Chaos in Davis to see Star Trek. The movie was a lot of fun as was the crazy freedom of just going out and getting on a bus and going somewhere. I even found a four-leaf clover while waiting at the bus stop. The second was unplanned and horrible: last Monday night I went to the ER with what turned out to be a sudden severe migraine, from which I have been slowly recovering all week (through a whole little parade of the greatest hits of migraine side effects, nausea and stiff neck and dizziness, whee). ( The longer story: ) | | Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 | | 5:42 pm |
| | 1:33 pm |
game theory
I spend a certain amount of time awake in the middle of the night these days, and one of the things I think about is ideas for RPGs. (I haven't talked about it here but I recently GM'd for the first time and it was awesome and I'm now mad with power and want to do it again. (I haven't talked about it here because later that night I went into labor and I haven't even managed to finish writing that up.)) Lately I have been pondering the issues involved in roleplaying within an established universe - what kind of features does the game need to have in order to capture what excites people about that universe? For instance, should all of the PCs in a Girl Genius RPG be Sparks? (The answer is clearly "no" because I'm pretty sure Josh for one would want to play a Jager...) In a Tines game (from Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon The Deep), would it be more fun for each player to be a separate composite individual, or would it be more fun to play the components of one individual (finally, a party that can't split up...)? I imagine part of the fun would be a certain amount of reshuffling and recombining of characters via the deliberate or inadvertent swapping of members, so I would lean towards the former... but that would be a *lot* of bodies to track in a combat situation... In a New Crobuzon game, should the players actually have a shot at achieving their goals? (Are both corruption and futility necessary to capturing the mood of a Mieville novel? Discuss.) I've been thinking about a New Crobuzon game for a long time but (unlike the rest of these universes) I've never been able to come up with a scenario I like, once the fun of deciding whether you're playing a beetle-headed lady or animate cactus or whatever is over. In an Avatar game, what would the Bending mechanic look like? Are different Bending moves more like spells/weapon proficiencies that need to be acquired individually, with various prereqs, or should one Bending skill let you try various moves with varying DCs? And how do you make sure non-Bending characters are just as fun to play as Benders? Also, given that the Avatar verse is based on Asian cultures, is any Avatar RPG played by white Americans necessarily engaged in cultural appropriation, and should a prospective GM worry about that? What about a scenario that introduced elements from Pacific cultures not already appropriated for the Avatarverse - is that somehow "worse" than using what's already in there? I once played in a game set on an alternate Earth that had all the races and classes of D&D3E. The original characters were mostly from European countries but when I joined the party was currently on a quest in Japan - my character was an Ainu wizard trying to become powerful enough to protect her people from Japanese oppression. I realize this was probably not cool from a racism perspective, taking a real culture's history and using bits of it to dress up a character, but in fact the reading I did was really interesting and the character was fun to invent, so, I don't actually feel sorry. Insofar as the Fire Nation is reminiscent of Japan, one could imagine them having some Ainu-like minorities on one of their islands, which could be interesting or useful for some bit of plot or other. But it feels "safer" to stick strictly to peoples shown on the show. Safer but maybe less fun. | | Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 | | 11:42 am |
random facts about the baby
- There was a period a week or two ago in which I thought she smelled like chicken noodle soup. This was very mysterious because logically, given what she gets coated in on a regular basis, she should smell like dried or soured milk. And there is no milk in chicken noodle soup. - I swear she said "goo" once quite clearly but most of her noises are animal or mechanical - squeaks, grunts, and a long whistling whine like a little teakettle or a radiator. Last Friday I was driving with her and a goose flew over the car, honking, and she honked back. - I know you are never never never supposed to sleep with your baby on the couch, but it turns out that this is a rule totally at odds with instinct and temptation - the baby is so soft and snuggly and warm and nice, and the monkey-brain in my brain is convinced that she must be safe if she's in my arms since we've got her right there getting constant feedback that she's ok. I am mostly good about this (and with my mom around for the past couple of weeks, I haven't been able to nap on the couch anyways, or nap at all, most days) but a certain rule-breaking nap was the *best nap ever*. - She smiles now. | | Monday, April 13th, 2009 | | 5:23 pm |
close encounter
Juniper was not sure she trusted the Other Meeple. Was it looking at her? Or not? The big orange meeple was made by my talented and awesome sister ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) cereph. (The little blue meeple was made by me ::grin::.) | | Saturday, April 11th, 2009 | | 10:47 pm |
| | Monday, April 6th, 2009 | | 5:02 pm |
one is infinitely times as many as zero: happy first week Juniper!
It's a little weird how incredibly much older Juniper is now than she was a week ago, and how many milestone Firsts she's accumulated - Baby's First Hug From A Grandma, Baby's First Bounce On The Yoga Ball, Baby's First Encounter With The Baby In The Mirror, Baby's First Tummy Time, Baby's First Milk Running Out Of Her Nose, Baby's First Milk Sprayed In Her Eye, Baby's First Breadcrumb Dropped In Her Ear... of particular note was Baby's First Outing, in which we ever-so-carefully dressed Juniper for the weather and adjusted the straps in her carseat bucket and tucked a quilt over her and drove to the pediatrician's office, where she promptly pooped and we realized that after all our fluttering over her and the carseat we had absolutely no other supplies with us - no diapers, no wipes, no change of clothes, nothing. Fortunately being a pediatrician's office they had diapers and she hadn't gotten any on her clothes, but there was this hilarious moment when we just sort of blinked at each other, like, now what? She's also changed in several noticeable ways since birth - she lies much more open and flat now, uncurled from the tight ball she preferred at first. She opens her big eyes much wider than her little brand-new squint. The backs of her hands were initially dimpled with odd little star-shaped dents and they seem smoother and plumper now. It's kind of amazing how we can already see her growing up from that first little minutes-old meeple. | | Saturday, April 4th, 2009 | | 5:22 pm |
Revelation 1:1 - 1:5
I have also learned some things: 1:1 If you put cabbage leaves in your bra, when you open up your bra again later to pull them out, it will smell like cabbage. 1:2 What with leaking milk, you're halfway to a coleslaw. 1:3 But adding carrots and mustard seed would not help anything. 1:4 Speaking of mustard, when they said baby poop was "mustardy", I was picturing something like brown mustard. No, they apparently mean bright yellow-orange fake ballpark mustard. Dang. 1:5 It's really hard to tell where the line is between being paranoid and properly concerned. For example, ( involves the breast part of breastfeeding ) | | Friday, April 3rd, 2009 | | 10:46 am |
meeple's first 100 hours in office
As I type this sentence Juniper has just turned 100 hours old. We are very impressed with her accomplishments so far, particularly in the departments of latching and sucking, pooping, sleeping, curling up into a ball, falling asleep on Dad, making that one face, making that other face, and general adorableness. I have wanted one forever but this one is even better than I guessed. Happy 100 Hours, Junebug. | | Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 | | 11:07 pm |
| | Monday, March 30th, 2009 | | 4:32 pm |
holy shit
We made a tiny, perfect person. Her name is Juniper Hazel, born this morning at 6:47 am, 8 lbs 1 oz, 21 inches long, likes filling diapers, dislikes having her diaper changed. Josh is posting a picture in his journal; I'll be posting gory labor details once I've gotten just a bit more sleep. | | Sunday, March 29th, 2009 | | 1:44 pm |
sadly, "contractions" does not scan to "caissons"
But they keep rolling along nonetheless. I've now been at this for 10 hours, since I woke up at 3:30, and I've had to breathe through every single contraction, not counting a couple of teeny ones. In theory I was "supposed to" try to ignore early labor and go back to sleep, but, um, even if I hadn't also woken up with the full-body shakes (banished by the power of the hot shower), even my impressive sleeping skills were not up to going from "owww" to "sleep" in six minutes or less (or five minutes, or four minutes, or three minutes...). So much for that. Things were not bad for awhile, but in the last 45 minutes or so, they've gotten notably more intense - I'm not being able to relax as much between them, I've gotten some "clusters" (or something) that just don't let up, the whole thing is becoming more challenging. I'm off to call the midwives for the third time, this time to say that I think I'm ready to come in and see if I can get admitted. I'm really starting to feel a need for someone professional to give me some sort of feedback about what kind of progress I'm making. | | 7:12 am |
well, this is interesting
I don't want to get too excited too early here but I think I'm revising my guess that the meeple is waiting for April. |
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