Italian Plastic

It is truly amazing how much baby...junk, is out there. I love going to the baby section at Target to watch grossly pregnant woman and their glazed over husbands decide between the 30 different styles of pacifiers, door latches, developmental foot rattles, high-contrast crib mobiles, Baby Einstein videos of manic Bach and Mozart concerts.... What is truly entertaining is witnessing the dilema caused when the object of purchase is the front pack. The perfectly servicable $30 unit is always placed next to the $95 (!!!!) "Baby Bijorn" model. The prospective couple will pick up both boxes to read the decriptions. They will look at one another questioningly, "What is the difference?". Some of the more questioning types will take the carriers out of the box and put them on, quickly realizing that without a baby, the packs are just flacid bits of fabric hanging in front of you. At that point, the wife will try to shove her purse into the pack, presumably to simulate an actual infant. Next, although I suspect no one would admit to this, they start to look around to find a mirror to observe what they look like with a very expensive piece of fabric stuffed with a purse around their necks. My guess is they are picturing the purse as a baby. Having done this with both the $35 and $90 versions, next comes the discussion of which of their friends has which version. My guess is, the model purchased is most likely the one most seen in their social/economic circle.

The couples in question, occasionally move on to the "Baby Sling", purchase price $35-$80. Again the purse goes in, again there is the check in the mirrior. This makes me chuckle to myself. I frequently wonder if I should tell them that there is a place near my house where for $25 you can learn how to use the sling. It might be a selling point that the thing is too complicated for mere mortals to use. Or perhaps it can help with everyday tasks, like tax preparation, and I am just unaware of its benefits.

Maybe I should also let them know that this same establishment offers classes in "Hypno Birthing" (cost $250). My question is, do they also teach you how to saw the lady in the box in half?

Italian plastic - it may be no different than chinese plastic, but it is better packaged and hell, Gwen Steffani buys it. Must be better.

(Disclamer- my front pack was $5 in a second hand store that gets all of its stuff from the people who bought the $90 front packs in the first place. It is also Italian. This doesn't make me better, but it does leave me more money for stupid, expensive stuff for myself.)

Why So Irish?

Over the years many people have asked me why the kids all have Irish names. There is of course the short answer- They all have a chinese last name and we wanted the kids to have names that were reflective of the other half of their genetic makeup. Also, they don't all have Irish names. This is a very boring answer. So here is the longer version...

Cameron- A Gaelic name meaning "bent nose". We had decided to name our first child "Meridian" if it were to be a girl. Meridian is my favorite Alice Walker character and is not a name of the Brittish Isles. While standing at the corner of Grant and Washington in Chinatown, I commented to James that we really needed a boy's name and soon. At that moment, James turned around and saw a display of miniature California license plates with various names on them. The top most plate said "Cameron". As this sounded good, we agreed before the light turned green for us to cross the street. Cameron's middle name is "Dunkley". To set the record straight, it is an English name meaning "wet meadow". It is my mother's maden name and I thought it would make my grandparents happy to know that the family name wasn't completely lost.

Una- A Celtic name meaning "the unifier" or "together". While this is indeed an Irish name, Una was named after a Dorothy Dunnett character, "Oonagh O'Dwyer" from the "Lymond Chronicles" The character in the book is actually quite unsympathetic and meets a rather brutal and medieval end, but she was a strong presence in the story and did enough ass kicking to make her attractive. Our Una's middle name, Isobel, is my mother's name. It is a varient of "Elisabeth" and I have no idea where it comes from, but it's root is Latin (and therefor not Irish).

Declan- Indeed, this is an Irish (celtic) name. It dosen't seem to have much of a meaning but St. Declan was a contemporary of St. Patrick (our Declan's middle name). Now, this is the only time we have activly looked for an Irish name for any of the kids. Why? you ask. Well.....

James, being a nice chinese boy, was given the name of a nice Irish Catholic boy at birth- James Patrick Chan (or O'Chan, as he has come to be known). Why? God only knows. What is more of a mystery is why his older brother is named Patrick, and why his father owned a school, in Hong Kong, named St. Patrick's? For a quite traditional chinese family, this is, as the former King of Siam would say, "a puzzlement". But then again, if the Iranian guy up the street can wear a t-shirt that says "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" on St. Patrick's day, this isn't so strange. We decided to continue the tradition, and as "Aidan" is what every other boy in America is being named, we decided on "Declan". As we continue to call the poor boy "Cowboy", or "silly monkey head", or "squirt", or "Rodeo Bob", he's never going to know his actual name and it won't matter if his name is Irish or not.

Sooo... now you know. If we have any more kids, we will give them Swahilli names so I have something else to write about.

The Dad Show

Adrienne had joked that Declan must think that Pete Wilson is his dad, since that's the male voice that Declan heard the most while in utero. She usually listened to the Pete Wilson show on the radio while driving home in the afternoons.

Well I've been getting home pretty late since I've returned to work this week. Adrienne joked that I had better come home earlier while Declan's awake, least he begins to think of Pete Wilson as a father figure again.

So I retort with the idea of podcasting "The Dad Show", so she and Declan can listen to me in the car......

Be the Breast

After much debate, and many very sleepless nights (punctuated by a lot of baby screeching and a great deal of swearing on my part), I broke down and visited the dreaded "Lactation Consultant". For those who are squeemish, or who are uncomfortable with boobs as funtional objects, you might not wish to read on. Basically, Declan had managed to chew my right nipple to shreds and I was considering mastectomy as a viable option. I mean, who really needs 2 breasts? One would do just fine. Instead, I paid what amounted to a bit more than $1 a minute to have someone evaluate the team effort Declan and I were attempting.

Now in the old days, this position would have been filled by a mother or aunt or the lady with the 10 kids next door. In this modern day, we pay people with lots of letters after their name lots of money to tell us that we are doing something, that is essentially primal, all wrong.

In a turn that was quite surprising to me, I was instructed to "just be a breast". I've done a bit of acting in my life, I understand the concept of becoming the role, but this was a bit beyond me. I was picturing the giant bouncing boob in "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex..." and couldn't quite see how that was supposed to help. Turns out, I was supposed to sit there while this woman I had just met, proceeded to pinch my boob, grab a handfull of it and shove Declan's face into it ( the whole time I have my hands behind my chair so that I wouldn't be tempted to step outside my role as "the Breast"). Much to my chagrin, these very odd tactics worked, and Declan latched on well for the first time.

After years of trying to get men to look at something other than my chest, I now have to become nothing more than a breast to bring up my son. Of course, I could just feed him formula and feel that oddly strong sense of liberal, California-style guilt (most likely generated in Marin) that comes with not feeding my baby the "perfect food that nature intended".

Boob, guilt, boob, guilt. I'll go with boob as guilt makes me over eat.