Hello, babies.

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.
-Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Monahans are, by nature, pale, impractical, too nice, and cripplingly tardy. It's kind of our thing. And I was sure this baby would inherit my wide, dragging feet, eschewing a December 15th birth to finish drying her hair, to reread an old coupon booklet, to rewatch the season premier of Kourtney and Kim Take New York. Plus my doctor more or less implied that I'd end up spending Christmas Eve on a steady drip of yuletide pitocin.

But I guess I should've realized that it was just as likely she'd take after Matt- the prompt foil to my stunted sense of timeliness. This baby wasn't just on time. She was a day early. Dad genes 1, Mom jeans genes 0.

On labor...
After six hospital-given childbirth classes, one thorough reading of Jenny McCarthy's overly honest ode to childbirth, and one viewing of "The Business of Being Born," I was left with a confused understanding of what labor would entail. Maybe it meant soft-focus 80s videos of women in overalls moaning on the arms of bewildered and mustacheod husbands. Maybe there would be screaming or laughter or complete peace or Ricki Lake. For someone who'd consumed copious amounts of information over the past nine months, I was pretty clueless... and maybe that was the best way to be.

I picked my mom up from the airport that Tuesday night, confident we'd spend the next week staring at bowls of broccoli cheddar soup, waiting for something to happen. But, as it happens, the actual wait only lasted another six hour or so. I woke up at 1:30 a.m. with dull cramps that picked up in intensity and regularity as a I sat alone in the dark downstairs, watching bits and pieces of bad movies (had I known I was in the midst of something relatively momentous, I would've splurged on a new release). That morning, I scrambled to hand off my remaining work projects via email while my mom wrapped Christmas presents. We left for my regular doctor's appointment at 1:00 but never made it that far. By the time we reached 72nd and Dodge, my contractions were four minutes apart, so I pulled into a Burger King parking lot (no, I shouldn't have been driving, but hindsight is not in labor) and called my OB while my mom ordered chicken tenders. Within five minutes, we were checked into Bergan. Matt stopped at home to shave his pregnancy beard and met us there, camera in hand.

On birth...
I had resolved to make the whole epidural issue a game-time decision. I wasn't about to decide whether or not I could handle the pain until I knew what the pain was like. I ultimately went for the good stuff, and I'm glad I did. Maybe next time I won't. Who knows. But it sure was nice to be able to watch Modern Family and joke around before, as Matt later put it, shit got real.

Around 9 p.m., I was ready to push. The downside of the epidural is that I had to be told I was ready to do everything. In the movies, the woman tells you she's ready by throwing a bed pan at the TV or breathing fire or whatever. From there, everything moved quickly. And when the baby's heart rate became cause for concern, things moved really quickly- forceps quickly. Emilia Clare Kraemer was born at 9:17, wide eyed, angry and beautiful.

Matt took some amazing pictures of those first few minutes, one of which I submitted to Babble, along with my own inadequate description of what it's like to hold your brand new person for the very first time.

After Emilia had been cleaned up, evaluated and issued the standard hospital hat, and my placenta whisked away to the place where placentas go, our families were able to join us. Matt's mom and step dad had hopped in the car as I was choking down my last chicken tender, and made it to Omaha from Minneapolis mere minutes before Emilia was born. Looking back on that night, everything was so incredibly strange in the best way possible. Upstairs in our recovery room, Matt and I split my "You Just Gave Birth, Now Eat Something" box of food and stared at our progeny, careful not to get sandwich crumbs on her perfect baby eyebrows.

On Emilia...
Perhaps I'm biased, but I'm pretty sure she's completely wonderful. Her hair is wonderful. Her pout is wonderful. Her long monkey arms. Her crooked smile. The way her eyes light up when she sees Matt. The hilarious things she's so desperate to say. The ever-deepening appreciation I have for the guy I married who is now almost as into babies as he's into books. All of it. And I never, ever want to forget how lucky we are.

I've created puppets ever since I was 10 years old, but there's nothing like creating a human being. That's amazing.
-Kevin Clash, Being Elmo

Nearly 12 weeks after the Burger King contractions, as I prepare to leave our warm nest where showers are optional and the Today Show is compulsory, I'm glad to be past the first few nearly sleepless weeks, I'm mourning the loss of so much unadulterated quality time together, and I'm looking forward to things to come. We'll have a routine. We'll have warm walks through Memorial Park and our first family road trip. And then after that, we'll have a lot of other stuff I guess. I can't wait.

January Hymn

This is funny, at least until it devolves into paper eating nonsense.


The past two weekends have been shiny spots of warmth in an otherwise snow-crusted January. We saw Country Strong three times in a row, pausing in between viewings to split granola bars and nap on the floor of the theater lobby. We dug tunnels in the snow and filled them with old throw pillows and Little Golden Books. We fed Pringles to slow-moving sparrows.*

Actually, last weekend brought us to St. Louis, where Matt and I met up with Nerinx friends on Saturday afternoon, family that evening, and I've-known-you-my-entire-life friends late Saturday night. Mimosas, trivia, yearbooks, delicious pasta, wine and a lot of babbling, which came back in glimmers and fragments the next day. There was talk of Andy Garcia, I think. The rest of the weekend was more subdued. I spent Sunday afternoon helping my mom take down the brittle but beautiful Christmas tree, while MC, Paul and I debated what we'd do to the house we grew up in, if money was no object and only the sky (or the asbestos in our basement floor) was the limit. My vote was for a panic room; something simple, sturdy and windowless in the middle of the house.

Joe didn't get to join us in St. Louis, so he made a last-minute visit to Omaha this weekend instead. We spent the evening at the Dell on Friday night, and again on Saturday night, and in between I made him accompany me on my regular weekend trip to Target, where I wander aimlessly, spilling coffee on sale items and reading the backs of shampoo bottles. We also exchanged Christmas presents. Joe gave Matt "Road House" on Blu-ray and a fifth of whiskey. We gave Joe this poster:

...with the requirement that it be displayed in his classroom. He agreed.

On Sunday, we said our goodbyes, and I settled back into my normal Sunday routine of pretending to put things away. It's only almost February, but I'm already dreaming of dinners on the patio, open windows and sunshine on my kneecaps and the curly top part of my pasty ears.

One last thing, completely unrelated, but last week I bought the new Decemberists CD, The King is Dead. I'd kind of gotten tired of the mariners, the man-eating whales and 10-minute-long songs, but this is totally different. I wholeheartedly recommend it.


You can listen to the whole album here.

*Lies

Triple-Meat Reflections

Over the past two weeks, we've found ourselves edging into the Christmas spirit along with everyone else. After all, 104.5 only plays "Do They Know It's Christmas?" 20,000 times between Thanksgiving and New Year's, and the tree is slowly dying and in need of some pre-Christmas appreciation, and there are presents to be wrapped (and more importantly, purchased), and now there is snow on the ground.

I am a Dundee locavore in that I eat pizza from our local Pizza Hut and drink wine from our local gas station. In keeping with our convictions and the spirit of the season, we ordered Cheesy Bites pizza on Friday night, paired it with some chardonnay from A.B.'s 66 and hunkered down to watch "It's a Wonderful Life." The pizza was acceptably greasy, the wine tasted only mildly of ethanol, and the movie was good, of course. Jimmy Stewart is even more endearing in HD.

On Saturday, we braved the wind and snow to see "A Christmas Carol" at the community playhouse, a tradition that had been shelved for the past few years. New Scrooge is very funny, but new Nephew Fred did a better job carrying the Christmas goose than he did an English accent, and new Tiny Tim wasn't nearly fragile enough. Two thumbs up on the fake snow that fell on the audience at the end, but a resounding humbug to the chorus, as not a single member made eye contact with me - not even once.

And finally, I would be remiss not to provide an update on the turducken.

In a word, it was gray... ish pink.

I swear I followed the cooking instructions word for word, making sure to fill the bottom of the pan with water and leave the netting intact, allowing it to serve as a cage for the animals during cooking. It was hard to tell if the delicious smells wafting from the oven were the turducken or the regular old turkey, so I assumed it was the turducken. Naturally.

But what slunk from the oven door, relaxing in a pool of polka-dotted grease, pocked with little blobs of fat, did not look appetizing. Not at all.




And what was inside amounted to a pinwheel of gray meats, swirling around a pinkish center. There was no telling where one bird ended and the next began, so it was kind of like a hotdog in that way. Serving it intact was next to impossible, as the layers collapsed at the touch of a fork. It tasted like a failed experiment. I opted for my mom's turkey. And while my brothers ate a good amount of turducken (which isn't saying much at all - they've been known to eat dandelions and birthday candles), we finally threw the last of it away a few days later, when it became clear that it was permanently unwanted - a Thanksgiving novelty now taking up space in the back of the fridge.

But Thanksgiving itself? It was good - really good. Matt got off work early every day, and I got to spend some much-needed QT with my family. Plus, the other food made up for any residual turducken disappointment. Next year we're thinking a deep-fried turkey. Or a Cheesy Bites pizza, just to keep things local.

Thanksducken

I recently came to the realization that I am a work hoarder, a desk collector of memories trapped in a fortress of trash. Piling my keyboard on top of my phone on top of my notebook on top of a bunch of no-longer-needed papers is more or less akin to piling a cat on top of a cat on top of a cat on top of a cat.

Segue…
There is one Italy memory in particular I want to write about, mostly because Matt has taken care of the rest of our stories/experiences in his brilliant Facebook photo album captions. But I’ll save that for next time.

Because it’s almost Thanksgiving.

This year, since work obligations are keeping us in Omaha, we’re hosting Thanksgiving at our place, and my mom, sister and brothers are driving up from St. Louis to join us. I’ve spent the past few days collecting a hodgepodge of ingredients – the side table in our dining room is littered with onions, boxes of orange jell-o, Tupperware containers of cubed, dried bread, and a pecan pie. Thank God my mom will be here or else I’d probably just combine all of those ingredients into one casserole, burn it, and feed everyone cold hotdogs instead.



Turduckling
In the process of trying to console ourselves over our less-than-desirable Thanksgiving arrangement (we’ve both come to associate Thanksgiving with going home, not staying home), we decided to invest in what had long been a holiday joke – a funny idea that never comes to pass. We bought a Turducken. Or so we thought.

Imagine my amazement when, after seeing mail-order Turduckens advertised for anywhere from $50 to $100, the Hy-Vee meat department told me they could order me one for $20. And it would be boneless – a pile of animals, each wearing the skin suit of the other. And therefore, it would be easy to cook and serve and sure, Thanksgiving wouldn’t be traditional, but it would definitely be magical.

Cut to Sunday evening, when I burst through the doors of Hy-Vee, wheeling a cart toward the meat counter, praying that it would be sturdy enough to accommodate such a large entrée. A duck is heavy on its own, but put it inside a chicken, and then stuff it inside a turkey, and then freeze it, and we’re talking pounds and pounds of pure feast. I walked up the counter and whispered, “I’m here to pick up a Turducken,” a knowing grin spreading across my face. I was about to be a spectacle of the best kind.

The butcher shuffled back behind swinging doors and emerged with a small package, about the size of a shoebox. “This must be the box of beaks that comes on the side,” I thought. Not so – this was the Turducken, or rather the Turducken roast. The picture on the front looked like a Swiss Cake Roll made of fowl. I tried to be grateful as I tossed it into my empty cart. I tried to sell it to Matt when we got home. “Doesn’t it look delicious?? And remember, my mom is bringing a backup turkey.” The mutual disappointment was palpable.

Tortilla chip added for scale (also, I'm eating tortilla chips).

But it’s almost Thanksgiving.

And so we will learn from our Turducken mistakes and eat the Swiss Cake Roll with a side of whatever my mom decides to cook using the ingredients I’ve purchased. I’m just looking forward to seeing my family, and to the times when Matt isn’t at work. Staying in Omaha for Thanksgiving may not seem natural, but neither does a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey. That doesn’t mean it can’t be good.

A blessing and a curse.

I actually heard the latter half of this story on Thanksgiving, but at the time I think I'd just written my 600th family-centric post, deciding instead to stick it in my back pocket with the other gum wrappers and save it for later.

Ever since I was old enough to reminisce, I knew I'd been blessed by Mother Teresa. My mom had the opportunity to meet her when I was in utero, and as legend has it, she touched her growing stomach and made some wise crack about my future as a Missionary of Charity (a detail I usually leave out when telling this story because it leaves me no room to question my vocation or overall purpose in life - if Mother Teresa provides you with one, you're kind of obligated to follow up. Ah well...). So, since I probably had gills and no finger nails at the time of our meeting, I obviously do not remember this. That being said, it's a nice thought to carry around and pull out every time a bad day rolls around. You got the last seat on the bus? I've been blessed by Mother Teresa. Sub-zero temperatures? Eat poo, Mother Nature. I've been blessed by Mother Teresa. Anyway, for the past 26 years or so, I've had that to fall back on when everything else seems quietly out of line.

Fast forward to this past Thanksgiving. Sitting at the end of a long table with my aunt, uncle, mom and brother. Conversation makes its usual turn to talk of McDonald's franchises in somewhat unsavory areas of St. Louis. Standard banter. And then suddenly, I'm blindsided with a story I've never heard before. During that same bout of gestation, my mom and dad were grabbing dinner at a McDonald's near their apartment in the city when they were approached by a mentally unstable and possibly homeless woman. She could've asked for money or a French fry, but instead she chose to curse my mom's stomach. To curse me, an unassuming, downy quasi-human who had, so far, done nothing to harm anyone else. Apparently she made my mom cry and blah blah blah, the point being I had just nine months to make it through unscathed. To grow vital organs and eat through my stomach. But in those nine months, I managed to acquire a blessing from one of the most revered humanitarians in history and a curse from some lady who probably collects Bartles & Jaymes bottles filled with eyelashes.

As a result, so I've surmised, I'm destined to be mediocre. It's the ying and the yang of good deeds and value meals, and I am the result. Hovering gently in the middle. If I'd never heard the second part of my fetal journey, I would've continued to believe that I'm some sort of female Emperor of the Sun, called upon to shoulder the burden of holy greatness. It's probably better this way, as I can now reconcile my newly realistic obligations as a human being, my unnatural love of sweet & sour sauce packets, and the faint memory of a wrinkled Nobel Peace Prize-winning hand seen through small, developing eyes.