October 2004 Archives

We were determined to continue our annual Halloween Pumpkin Carving tradition. We had expected to have plenty of time to get ready for it after the birth. As it turned out, Magda was born only three weeks ago, so some of the more ambitious plans (and the mailing out of an early invitation) didn't quite happen.

The party turned out well. We're getting seasoned pros at this and Magda was cooperating by letting Jennifer have enough time to make the house ready. I spent Friday night cooking the traditional potato mushroom soup (Custco has got dirt cheap dried Shiitake mushrooms, BTW) and then most of Saturday making Grissini (bread sticks) and my Ghost bread rolls using the flour I brought back from Switzerland. And we wisely made cookies last week and bought the veggies pre-cut.

With the late annoucements and holding the party on Halloween Eve (yeah, I know that's All Hallows' Eve Eve) we had a smaller turnout, but still lots of fun. It's remarkable how the kids change from year to year and it's fun watching them play more with each other as they grow older. I was too busy to take enough pictures of everyone earlier in the evening -- if anyone has got good photos, please send them to me.

I did manage to carve my pumpkin and to photograph all of them. I'm still working on getting the right lighting for the shots (most are too dark). In this photo, the exposure was 8 seconds and I shone my flashlight on my pumpkin for a second or so. Next year I'll try more long exposures and "paint" the pumpkins with a (more diffused) flashlight. BTW, this double exposure (courtesy of Henry bumping my tripod) is pretty neat, too. It makes my pumpkin have six eyes.

There are all sorts of useful voting related sites out there.

• MyPollingPlace.com lets you find your polling place based on a street address and ZIP code
• TimeToVote.net has state-by-state information about laws giving employees the right to take time off from work to vote
• VerifiedVoting.org has county-by-county (e.g. Travis) information on which voting system they use and instructions on how to use the electronic voting devices employed

Halloween is in a couple of days. I've ordered a cute costume from Magda online a couple of days ago and I hope it's going to make it by Saturday.

If you're still looking for that perfect getup for the holiday, you should check out this adorable do-it-yourself list of 2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes. The costumes should be easy to scale up to adult size and most can be made in under an hour.

I don't watch M-TV or listen to pop music on a regular basis. But I do find the slowly growing resurgence of political protest music interesting. I think it's healthy and good to rock the boat a little and to make the music consumers think about the important issues that are happening.

Eminem's Mosh and the accompanying video is stark, unapologetic and outspoken. And at the same time subtle and despite its anger hopeful.

It's definitely not "Blowing in the Wind"...

Errol Morris, who did the Apple Switcher Ads has a large collection of Kerry Switcher Ads he did for MoveOn.org. Too bad we won't get to see any of them in our non-swing state.

The ads are interesting to watch -- although I'm not sure how many Bush-2000 voters will be able to overcome their cognitive dissonance and make that switch in 2004. Considering the recent poll about perceptions of pro-Bush voters, they seem to be overcoming it in the classic way of avoiding or rejecting facts that contradict their perception.

If you're teetering, watch those ads -- maybe you'll find someone with whose reasons to switch you can identify.

I got off my butt and implemented a "Recent Photos" feature for my blog. It shows a random picture from my three most recent albums. It helped that I had a bunch of photographs to upload and I couldn't been upstaged by Rita's weekly photo.

And while I was at it, I changed the default size in my iPhoto export script to be 600 pixels, as opposed to 480. Let's face it, low-resolution monitors are a thing of the past and everyone seems to be getting broadband these days.

Speaking of which, what's up with my Roadrunner connection this weekend? It seems to go down every couple of minutes. Must be all that money they're spending on their "We're better than DSL" commercials...

We're slowly preparing for our annual Pumpking Carving Party. We were hoping to have a little more time, but the girl was tardy.

This year I decided to make gingerbread skeletons. I love my gingerbread recipe and they cookies keep incredibly long and get better as time passes. So last week we baked a gross or so cookies and decorated them yesterday. The glaze was running a bit thin, so many of my skeletons look more like deformed Roswell aliens. It worked for Jfer's ghosts, though.

The pictures are a bit dark, I really need to get an Omni-Bounce for my flash...

We got Magda's Social Security card in the mail yesterday. It's strange seing her name (without the hachek, of course) on that little green card. It's not like she's going to be getting much out of it by the time she's retiring, but it does remind me that we better start saving for college (I have only memorized my SSN because UT used it as my student ID -- ah, the sweet, innocent days before the age of identity theft).

So now that my little tax deduction -- er, I mean "daughter" -- has her own Social Security Number, I think I'm starting to understand those sleepless nights. Or is it coincidence that the last three digits of her SSN are 666?

When Magdalena was born, the doctor beat me to the announcement that she was a girl, but I did manage to stop them from clamping her cord until it stopped pulsating. I then got to cut the cord. It was weird. In all the baby videos you see this thick, ropy thing and that's what I expected. Actually, by the time they hold it to you for cutting, the clamped cord section is empty of blood (I assume they do that to minimize the mess and parental freak-outs) and looks like some sort of semi-transparent, off-white latex hose. Cutting it felt that way, too and it took me a couple of tries to cut through (and brought back memories of a jelly-fish salad I once prepared for a Korean dinner).

The (empty) umbilical is totally alien. It's most striking where it attaches to the baby's belly button. It's like at the beginning in the Matrix (the first movie -- the one that didn't suck), where people are hooked up to all those hoses. The transition from the inanimate, plastic looking cord to the baby's soft, live skin looks very artificial.

Once they trim the cord, they apply some sort of purple drying agent to help it fall off more quickly and without getting infected. Over the next week or so the umbilical stump has to be cleaned regularly and kept dry while it shrivels down, and eventually falls off.

We did a good job of regularly swabbing it with alcohol and thus didn't get any bad smells -- at least not from that area. It's been hanging by a thread for the last couple of days and we successfully resisted any temptation to pick it.

Well, last night, Magdalena dropped her umbilical stump. I'm glad Jennifer warned me about it, otherwise I might have mistaken it for a roach or something while changing her in the middle of the night. This will make diapers changing easier and she'll get to have a proper bath in a couple of days when everything is nicely healed.

I don't think we'll be saving it (it's pretty grody) and Jennifer won't let me give it Homer to play with. So I guess it's going in the trash...

What's better than being friends with a massage therapist? It's being friends with someone who's training to become a massage therapist. Because they are excited about their new and improving skills and because they don't already have a fully booked schedule and because you can volunteer to be their homework.

I got a really nice massage from Meredith O on Sunday in preparation for one of her tests. Since she's in her first semester, they only do Swedish -- as opposed to the deeper kind I've experienced before -- so this was a new experience. The fact that Sammy (Meredith's dog) frenched my ear after I laid down on the table was quite unique, too.

I definitely give Meredith thumbs up on her work. I'm looking forward to her learning and needing to practice new stuff. I also need to remember to lend her my copy of Grunt, it would make for very good massage music.

Magda manages to transform herself from a sweet little thing into a monster when it comes to night time.

Newborns are supposed to do basically three things: feed, poop and sleep. Magda does just fine with the first two, but is still working on the "sleep" one -- especially at night. I change her diapers, Jennifer feeds her (cringin with anticipation before Magda latches on) and during her feeding Magda falls asleep. Then I have to burp her, at which point she should fade away into a blissful slumber. Not so! During burping she wakes up and, even though I assume she's full, she wants to nurse again. And if she does fall asleep, she'll wake up while being swaddled or put in her crib, or shortly after that.

Saturday night was an especially bad. I hate seeing Jennifer all exhausted from being up and nursing pretty much continuously (or so it seemed). Last night was actually much better, so the hope is that we figure out what it takes to keep Magda asleep.

I'm jealous of Homer, because he blissfully sleeps by the bed while mom and dad are fussing with the baby throughout the night.

Scary Fact: According to the Mayo Clinic book, newborns spend about three hours a day crying. Ours tries to do this at night... We're still working on figuring out why she does it when the usual causes (hunger, wet diapers, gas) are not present. Apparently sometimes they just cry for no reason.

We haven't sent out annoucements yet (we're still working on the perfect picture) but congratulations have been pouring in. We even got a pre-birth card a while ago (thanks Cecily!).

My favorite wellwishes came via an email from my siter and her family. They always come up with the most creative family photos, and this one is no exception. They took it after Magda was born but before we had settled on a name and so they included their suggestions.

Naming our future baby had been a task that we (or rather I) have been putting off forever. Jennifer actually compiled a list of names she liked, along with all sorts of information, such the origin, meaning, Saint's Day (Czech children receive gifts on their name's day), and popularity rank from the Social Security Administration site.

My parameters were to have something that'll work well in both Czech and English. I also wanted to have a traditional Czech (middle) name, one that would preferably be pronouncable by (most) English speakers. So a name like Přemysl would be obviously out of question.

In the end, we pretty much went with Jfer's choices -- she definitely had the bargaining advantage after having gone through 30+ hours of labor.

Magdalena is a good, cross-lingual name (true for many biblical names) which has a Spanish background, so this ties well into Jfer's Hispanic ancestry. Last year, Magdalena was 915th most poplar name, according to the SSA, and it was the 87th most popular in the CR (and Magdaléna was 114th).

Anežka is a traditional Czech name. It's pronounced AH-nezh-kah (the 'ž' should sound like 's' in the word 'pleasure' and the first syllable is stressed, just like any other Czech name -- despite of what you might hear on TV). The name is based on Sv. Anežka Česká (St. Agnes of Bohemia) who's the patron saint of Bohemia. Last year, Anežka didn't even rank on the SSA's popularity list (no big surprise) and it was 1535th in the CR (pretty obscure).

We figure that since the first name is that of a New Testament ho (although she probably just got a bad rep), it's good to ballance it with one known for its chasity :-)

BTW, since the birth certificate people don't do Unicode, her "official" name here is Magdalena Anezka.

I've been hounded by friends and relatives about these, so while mom and baby took a nap today, I managed to upload some of the pictures we took over the last few days.

In Friday's pictures you can see what Jennifer looks like during labor -- all nice and relaxed.

From Saturday you get to see some of Magdalena's first photos. She was alert quite a bit of the time and already focusing on faces.

On Sunday we got to go home from the hospital. We enjoyed the support and advice we got there, but there's no place like home...

And today we took Magda on her first walk in the park to enjoy the beautiful weather and to give Homer a chance to run around.

We're back home from the hospital with a beautiful baby girl. Magdalena Anežka was born on Saturday October 9, at 7:01 AM. She weighed in at 6lbs 12oz (3 kg) and is 20.75" (53 cm) long. She's got a full head of long black hair and her mom's beautiful skin and big feet. We're hoping that she doesn't have my nose.

The birth was an amazing experience, most definitely for the mother, but for me as well. Hopefully I'll find the time to write about it and what it felt like when we finally got our girl.

We're very proud of our beautiful child and welcome our friends and family to drop by and say hello to her.

It's almost down to the wire. Jennifer has tried pretty much everything in getting into labor -- including, but not limited to: herbs, acupuncture, massage, chiropractor, spicy food of various ethnicities -- and still no go.

Today we had our "last" doctor's appointment. The next time we see her it'll be for giving birth, one way or another. Jennifer would have liked to postponed the inevitable, but there was no way the Dr. would go for that, so we decided not to press the issue.

I feel that there is a lack of trust between the doctor and us -- she has recently had bad experience with hypnobirthing parents and probably expects us to go all wacko on her. Apparently our hypnobirthing instructors are now on her shit list and she's on theirs -- and none of that has anything to do with us. We feel that she's sticking too rigidly to her protocol (like not going beyond 42 weeks) and that's going to taint our perception of her medical decisions. The sucky part is that both her and us are probably making a mountain out of a mole hill.

We've been married for two years, and how the time has flown. I told Jfer that we have only five years left until the seven year "twitch" (yes -- I misspoke). Somehow I can't remember not ever being married.

For obvious reasons, we hadn't planned anything fancy for today. We went to Satay for a very nice dinner. Jfer had her very first Thai Iced Tea and we really enjoyed to chocolate tofu pie we had for desert. Unfortunately, Jfer's spicy main dish hasn't had the hoped for effect.

So I didn't get the anniversary gift I was hoping for and Jfer doesn't have to share the date with a birthday. Oh well, any day now...

So Jfer's now about a week post term (she prefers this to "overdue") -- although, strictly speaking, she's at term for first-time moms who on average deliver 8 days past the (arbitrary?) 40 weeks. We're starting to get a bit antsy about having Junior make his or her move, since the Dr. doesn't want us to go more than 42 weeks. So we're exploring way to speed things up and we'll see how it goes.

Actually, we do not want Junior to show up today or tomorrow, since our Doula has another client who's water just broke. I assume Seasha will be available to us after the weekend, so a Monday or Tuesday arrival would be perfect. I'm kind of hoping for Tuesday for a couple of reasons. For one, October 5 is our wedding anniversary so this would leave one less date for me to remember and I'd have a present for Jennifer (or rather, vice versa). The other thing is that I picked October 5 in our book group birth-date pool, so I stand to make a $10 profit if Jfer holds out till then.

Now that lawn people did their thing and our front yard no longer looks like a weed jungle, I figured it's a good time to put up some election propaganda. I've never done a campaign yard sign before -- I really didn't think they do all that much good. But when I had an anti-war sign in my front yard last year (has it really been this long already?), I actually got positive feedback. Someone bothered to pull into my drive way and thank me for making that statement -- and I know that I feel heartened when I see signs in other people's yards.

So today over lunch, I decided to visit the headquarters of Lorenzo Sadun, leave a check and pick up some yard signs. Lorenzo Sadun is the Democratic write-in candidate for House District 10, Lloyd Doggett's current district that got gerrymandered into a solidly Republican amoeba running from west-central Austin all the way to the edge of Houston.

Getting to the Sadun headquarters was a nightmare due to the construction on Cameron Rd. at 183 and the idiotic traffic detours clearly thought up by a deranged and sadistic traffic engineer. I do not recommend anyone making that trip -- but if you do, take Rutherford east from I-35 and then cut through the parking lot right at the Cameron intersection. For some reason you can't directly turn right onto Cameron from Rutherford.

Anyhow, I eventually found the place. It's a low budget, non-descript office located in an office park that has seen better days. They have a few stacks of yard signs outside the front door even after hours. I went in because I wanted to drop off my check, and was greeted by Lorenzo Sadun himself. He's a professor of Mathematics at UT, and in person comes across as the math geek you'd expect from his campaign pictures. He seems considerate, involved and appreciative for the support he gets. He said that he's thrilled about his Best Fearless Underdog award from the Austin Chronicle.

A long shot? That's for sure. But I applaud his determination and really like his campaign platform. So if you're in District 10 and make it to the polls, I encourage you to write in Lorenzo Sadun as District 10 representative. If a miracle happens, we could have a great representative -- and at the very least you'll be sending a message to Tom "Ethics Commission" DeLay.