"some kind of feminist statement"

I had a major feminist fail last week on an airplane. I had dressed my daughter in a lovely blue and gray long-sleeved one-piece outfit by Babysoy. Unlike most of Miss Matty's clothes, which are hand-me-downs or gifts, this was something I picked out to buy back when I was a few months pregnant. It is one of the softest pieces of clothing she owns. Anyway, on the flight, Miss Matty was a huge hit with the flight attendants, one of whom came over to give her a commemorative airline wings pin. This kind lady then said, "What a cute baby boy!" and I (probably shouldn't have) corrected her, "she's a girl." Then flight attendant lady scolded, "But you've got her wearing blue!" And then, much to my dismay, I totally chickened out: I shrugged, said the outfit was a hand-me-down, and pointed out that she was wearing pink socks. Flight attendant said, in relieved tone, "Oh, I thought maybe you were making some kind of feminist statement." Ugh. I actually lied to a flight attendant, rather than moxie-up and make some kind of feminist statement!

Can I have a do-over?

While you mull over whether I deserve one, here's a post that I found fascinating on this topic. It makes me wonder, if I had a baby boy, would I dress him in pink? If my next baby is a boy, he certainly is going to have a lot of pink and purple hand-me-downs! And here is Miss Matty in all her boy-clothes glory...

Dickens Board Books?

Not yet, but here's a baby counting book based on Pride and Prejudice! WANT.

Almost 3 Months! or How Academics Rear Children Merely by Reading Books About It

Overnight, this girl has grown up. As I type this, she's *enjoying* tummy time. And this morning at 4:15am I found myself *waiting* for Miss Matty to wake up to nurse. The girl slept nearly 8 consecutive hours! She smiles all the time! She can eat her fists! How did we accomplish these milestones, you ask?

Lately, because I'm a first time parent, I've been reading baby care books. Because I'm an academic, I have to read many of them, and then I have to critique them. The critical exploration of multiple and conflicting perspectives on any particular subject is the hallmark of academic inquiry, right? Right. So here are some results of my current inquiry and some swift book reviews.

The Baby Book by the Dr. Searses: (attachment parenting) "Baby-carrying is a global norm. What? You don't wear your baby in a sling (that coordinates with your sarong) all day long? Bad mommy! Do you at least nurse on demand?" I found this book guilt-inducing and slightly dated ("Tips for Dad"!!). The ink illustrations of the babies, however, are adorable.

Becoming Babywise by some jerks: (a Biblically-based "baby management plan") "Mommy decides when baby sleeps, not baby; put her down and let her cry it out. Also, if you co-sleep with your baby, you are a murderer." I found this book offensive, and not only because it made me feel incompetent (Miss Matty was not sleeping 8 consecutive hours at 8 weeks old). The book begins with a chapter about marriage: apparently, if you don't have a stellar marriage, your children will never sleep through the night. On behalf of the single moms, unmarried het-partners, and same-sex partner parents out there, I call bullshit on this register my distaste for just think that's dumb and offensive. I also take umbrage with the sexist division of labor promoted in the book (not much worse, though more blatant, than the sexist division of labor promoted in the Sears book). Also worth noting: others have found the advice in this book to be downright dangerous.

The No-cry Sleep Solution by E. Pantley (whose name makes me giggle): by far the most reasonable book I've read. Pantley begins with a chapter on safety--general safety tips, and most relevant to us, safety for co-sleeping. Then she assures me that co-sleeping breastfed babies can learn to sleep through the night. Hurray! This book is full of good advice all motivated by Pantley's absolute rejection of the "cry-it-out" method. Also, she recommends keeping sleep logs for baby, and I admit that I've always loved logging things.

What to Expect the First Year by an army of baby specialists: encyclopedically helpful. Readable in small doses, like during pumping sessions. I wish I owned a copy of this book and did not have to keep re-checking it out of the public library.

Here's the rub: each of these books had something in it that I needed to learn.

What have we been doing differently, then?
For one thing, Miss Matty now takes regular naps; we are working on getting her to do the eat--wake and play--nap routine. It's true what they say--the more regularly she naps during the day, the better she sleeps at night. It's pretty clear when she needs a nap, too. First, Jacques the Peacock ceases to amuse her. She starts looking as if she's about to wish her psychadelic bee mobile out to the cornfield. Then the genuine stink-eye begins, accompanied by low-grade fussing. If I haven't already, I swaddle her and, if needed, pop in the sucky. At last, the eyes go half-mast. That's my sign to put her in her crib. I rub her nose like you do a horse, and say in my finest Stepford Wives voice, "You might like to go to sleep now."


We are working on teaching her she can sleep by herself, by putting her in her crib for naps, and by putting her in our bed at her bedtime and keeping our bedtime separate. We are also working on giving her good, sustainable sleep associations. And we are working on recognizing when to feed her at night vs. when she's just in one of those light, active sleep cycles where she's restless but not fully awake and hungry. Learning to differentiate between sleeping sounds and awake/hungry sounds has been a challenge, but it makes a huge difference in how often I'm waking to feed her overnight.

Apart from her crib, she loves to nap in her stroller.

She also likes to nap in her sling.

Of Poo and Paper Proposals

Look Mommy, I'm an angel!

Thursday nights have become my sacred "leave house and work in cafe" nights. Tonight is no exception, although leaving the house was more challenging than usual because Miss Matty decided to poop all over us during dinner. One minute I was holding her and shoveling lemon-paprika tilapia into my goot, and the next minute I'm staring down at the growing warm wetness pooling on my t-shirt and jeans and wondering how badly breast-milk poo will stain the carpet in our rental. This "Poo-nami" event required federal-level disaster aid interventions along the line of insta-bath in the kitchen sink for baby and hot-hot showering with all the shat-upon clothing for mama. Needless to say, I did not finish my dinner. Instead, I washed, pumped, and got the hell out of dodge. It took a whole hour and a half to leave the house, delimiting my work shift to a couple hours. Of course now that I'm finally at my favorite cafe, I find that I have absolutely nothing to say about Indulekha for my SALA conference paper proposal. I mean, really, how can the regulation of sambandhan possibly compare to a lake of molten poo in my lap?

Seriously, here is what I have so far:

This paper explores how the early Indian novel became a performative forum for social change. With fiction, novelists could intervene in the legal reform of marriage and contribute to forging regional colonial modernities. My analysis of O. Chandumenon’s novel Indulekha (1889) explores the relationship between the novel’s investment in the reform of marriage in the matrilineal Nair community and the novelist’s later involvement in the Malabar Marriage Commission. The Malabar Marriage Commission was organized in 1891 by the British colonial government and Indian social reformers to investigate the possibilities of regulating Nair marriage practices such as matrilineal inheritance, polyandry, and contractual (dissoluble) marital unions called sambandhan.

OK, does it make any sense?

Wearer of the Bib

My brain has been sucked out by the wearer of the bib, so no wordy posts about Victorian literature or culture are on the horizon. I am beginning to wonder what it is like to read a book.

More Baby Projects

After a four-hour tour of Babies-R-Us, followed by a quick stop at Target for diapers and a nursing tank, my brain is a bit fried. What's the rush, you ask? Baby is coming tomorrow! Hence, I have been sewing up a storm. Here are some results.
Bib-apalooza 2011 continues.





More pajamas: these ones with footie pants!
Boppy pillow cover.
Burp cloths.

Oh for shame!

A sweet and well-intending graduate student, another Victorianist four years behind me in the PhD program who aims to finish her degree sometime this year and go on the dismal market this fall, recently congratulated me on "staying current" in the field. I think she was trying to make me a compliment regarding my TT job hunt stamina, along the lines of "Your persistence inspires, impresses, and frightens the hell out of us." It's something I hear occasionally, particularly from those graduate students at my alma mater who desperately fear my fate, but still, amazingly, seek my advice about going on the market (as well as copies of my application and campus visit materials).

Then I read Novel Readings' blog post *headdesk* and felt nothing but deep shame (shame is getting to be a theme in this blog, eh?). I? Current in the field? It's about all I can do to (afford to) attend (meaning *fund*) one conference in my field per year. And I tend to cram recent journal articles only in the nights leading up to this one conference, so that I will appear up-to-date on the hottest trends in Victorian studies. And even then, I tend to skip over articles that address texts I have not read (see my "Shame List") or articles that address genres or topics in which I lack interest or articles that have the word "digital" in them. Shame on me! I am not even living up to the hopeful compliments of my junior colleagues in the field!

So following Novel Readings' suggestion, yesterday I downloaded (uploaded?) a dozen recent articles and reviews from journals in my field onto my Kindle. This is partly a new test of my Kindle's professional uses, and partly a test of my capability to live up to the ways some folks generously perceive me. I can't promise that I'll report on my reading in this forum, though. I've got too many cake pictures lined up for the next post.