Command me to be well

Would you believe that the young man singing is only 24? Irish artist Andrew Hozier-Byrne performs "Take Me to Church." Rather disturbing video about human rights, hate crimes, equality. He'll be in DC at 9:30 Club on November 4th...eight days after baby's due date. "Command me to be well..." Yeah, not a chance I'm getting to that show.

Since we're talking about music

Robb's making me a mix tape for Christmas, too, and this is the cover art. I turned the mix into a playlist on Youtube. Have a listen. Man, I really need a haircut.

Thank you Jenny Wilson...

...for a song catchy enough to dislodge The Fox from my brain. Like a Fading Rainbow is my jam.

Some homemade is better than others

My recent knitting binge is finally slowing down because of the mixed success of this little number I'm calling Clown Puke. Slowing is a good thing because I really need to get going on Christmas and Mo's birthday plans. But back to Clown Puke. I improvised the pattern combining some details from recently made kid sweaters with some ideas I had while making several stocking caps. And the results are, well,...colorful. It's cropped and swingy which is good. Mo selected this yarn herself and then hugged and petted the skeins like  bunny rabbits for hours after purchase. Alas, she is less enthusiastic about the final product. We did a test fit, and she said, rather forcefully, "No, Mommy, take clown puke off me!” The heart is fickle. The sweater is definitely big on her and will fit better next winter. Maybe by then she will change her tune.



Last year Mo gave her cousins and friends a mix cd of some of her favorite songs. It was very well received. So we're releasing a new edition this season. Robb downloaded everything yesterday, and I designed the album cover. We might need to add What Does the Fox Say to the playlist though. Too trendy? Will it get old? No indeed, the Fox has a timeless quality: Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding! Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow! Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho! Tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!



While we're on the topic of homemade, Robb made himself at least 3 kidney stones just in time for the holidays. One has passed, another will pass, but the behemoth pictured above is 10mm in diameter. That's 1cm. If you're rusty on your metric system, the stone is as wide as a dime (whoops, a dime is 18mm, so that was a wild exaggeration). Now before you start thinking that we have money coming out of our urethrae--that's the correct plural of urethra, I looked it up--let me just assure you that this bad boy ain't going anywhere on his own. I've named him Ebenezer because he's trying to ruin Christmas and also because Ebenezer means "stone." Okay, actually it means "stone of help," but this Ebenezer is only helping Robb to the hospital next week for some aggressive treatment called lithotripsy, which as I understand it feels akin to being beaten with a bag of oranges. Only much louder. Humbug, I tell you! Humbug!

[Robb will most certainly mention my naming of his kidney stone in his application for sainthood.]

Thunder from down under

Australian Sia Furler used to be the front-woman for Zero 7. This song "You've Changed" is quite a bit pop-ier than what I'm used to hearing from Sia, but the video is delightful.



Here's one of her older songs. I think it was in the soundtrack of Garden State. And Blue Crush--that surf movie I can't help but watch whenever it's on. I rank it right up there with Stick It and Drumline. I'm completely serious. I love all of them.

Down the rabbit hole of folly

Since I've confessed my crush on Royal Wood, I will also confess that I noticed that he's wearing a wedding ring, and I was curious to see the hussy who landed him. I began my investigation. Her name is Sarah Slean, she is also gorgeous, and...



...



...and now it is now possible I have a bigger crush on Sarah Slean than on Royal Wood. Wow. Talk about a power couple. They're the whole package and then some.

Earwigs

Some songs I'm keeping on repeat lately:



Take Me Back to the Islands by Idlewild popped up in my favorite Pandora mix. I love the lyric here: And the world will always seem so much younger than me when I take the boat out, a crowded world will always seem emptier to me when I take the boat out.



I can't decide which I like better: the lo-fi video or the retro sound of Forever by Haim. The family photos on the mantle, the BMX bikes, the black leather jacket--it kills me! This gets stuck in my head all the time.



Don't let the video for Vanessa by Grimes distract you from the awesomeness of the song. Not that the video sucks--it's a bunch of women at a teenage sleepover party, playing with makeup, gossiping, and choreographing dance routines--it just devolves into weirdness with a kaleidoscope and eyeballs at the end. That part gives me the heebie-jeebies. Focus on the song, which is good.



Oblivion by Grimes is also good with a slightly less disturbing video. Except the very beginning and very end which are like, ooo-whee VOYEURISM! The singer/songwriter's name is Claire Boucher. She's from Vancouver, and I wonder if I'm related to her by marriage. Maybe yes???



Maybe I'm on a Canadian bender here, but Royal Wood's song Off My Sleeve is perfection. I've gushed about him before. I'm doing it now. And I will do it again. I would LOVE to see Royal Wood perform live in a small setting like this, just the man and his piano and me with a million goosebumps. So smooth.



And if Royal Wood wasn't already the sexiest man alive (right after Robb, of course), then this performance of It's So Great To Get a Hug seals the deal. Incidentally, is he hugging a talking croissant? Ooohhh, I get it. She's a yam: Mamma Yamma.

Down low too slow

Robb dislocated a rib on Sunday. We didn't know what he had done to himself, only that his side was getting more painful as the week progressed. So he saw the doctor today. He'll start anti-inflammatory meds tonight and probably spend the next few nights sleeping in the recliner. In the meantime I thought I'd post a catchy little song about the injury. Since he hurt himself....(wait for it)....slapping someone five at a Ravens game. Too soon?

A little bit of awesome for your Wednesday

Have you seen this video yet? -- It's for OK Go's song "Skyscrapers." It's beautiful and sultry and artful. And the dancers make the very difficult Argentine tango look like child's play. Love it!



This video for Gotye's "Somebody that I Used to Know" has been making the rounds on the internets. But I kind of want to put the song on repeat all day. It's haunting and catchy.



And although Gotye is quite fetching, I could fall right in love with that Kimbra. "Settle Down," eh? Mama likes sass! (Would you hate me too much if I name a future child Nebraska Jones?)



Finally Little Joy's "Next Time Around" sounds just exactly like summer. 8mm is a refreshing sight to a Luddite like me.

Boob tube

The new season of Being Human began on SyFy last week. It's on Monday nights. Robb, I'm going to need some new BH mixtapes for my birthday because they are curating their soundtrack as well this season as last. (This video for "Juliet" makes me get a little teary.) One question: when will On Demand release season 4 of the BBC series?

Oh and speaking of things that make you cry, did you catch the end of the Ravens-Pats game tonight when Billy missed a 32 yard field goal? Unbelievable.

Finlandia

One of Julie's favorites, "This Is My Song" is the 1934 hymn written by Lloyd Stone using the Finlandia melody composed by Jean Sibelius. She played it on the piano at Dad's funeral.

This is my song, Oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation;
may peace abound where strife has raged so long;
that each may seek to love and build together,
a world united, righting every wrong;
a world united in its love for freedom,
proclaiming peace together in one song.

Rock out with your clock out

Last night was the first time Robb and I have gone out without the baby since she was born. Charlene came to babysit. We were about a mile from the house, and Robb asked how I was doing.

"I'm freaking out."

I knew Charlene would be fine with Mo. I was just secretly hoping that the violent thunder storms would not completely miss us, and the concert would be tragically called off. I'm glad it wasn't canceled.



We saw Joan Jett & The Blackhearts and ZZ Top at the Calvert Marine Museum. Neither of them are bands we would have ordinarily sought out or paid to see. But YAY, free tickets! CMM has a nice setup for concerts. Last summer we saw Pat Benatar and REO Speedwagon. My favorite Joan Jett song is I Hate Myself for Loving You--it's one of the two JJ songs I know. She was good and all, but then...



...after Robb and I were momentarily confused--"Wait, I thought there were supposed to be four guys with beards???..."--I realized I am secretly a ZZ Top fan.



It was a secret I had been keeping from myself. They were AWE. SOME. When I was born ZZ Top had already been together for a decade. But these old guys know how to rock.



Check out that crazy drum kit. And I think their jackets were decorated with bedazzled pot leaves.



We tried not to check what time it was on the cell phone too often during the show but couldn't help it. We stayed until the end and got home at 10:45pm. Mo was fine.

Huge sigh of relief.

Out and about

Us girls just got home from Storytime at our local library. They have a free program for the under 2 crowd called Cuddle Up & Read to Me. It's 20 minutes every Wednesday morning. Last week's theme was bugs, this week was animals by the pond, and next week is spring. The librarians read three stories that have to do with that week's theme, and then we sing songs. So far we've sung If You're Happy and You Know It, The Baby Hokey Pokey, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider. For some reason I start to get all teary eyed when I'm singing them to Mo. And then I pretend to yawn to cover up the waterworks.

Weird.



And we learned a new-to-me kids song (it's the first one in the medley above) called I Know a Chicken. The librarians pass out shaky eggs, and the older children shake them along with the music. I shake one on Mo's behalf. Good times.

A lady next to me asked how old is she and looked surprised/amazed/somethinged when I answered eleven weeks. I know that at this point Maureen isn't hanging on every word about the five little frogs sitting on the log, nor does she know how to clap yet. But she is looking very intently at the babies sitting nearest to us. And she is listening to the silly songs and the storyteller's voice. And she is being socialized and learning to observe and process chaos. Because there is a lot of chaos at Storytime. Or at least today there was.

Mo was the only baby-baby in attendance this week. The next youngest was sitting unsupported, and the rest were walking. While most of the grownups appear to be mommies, several were grandmothers. It seems like the grandmothers are more permissive about letting toddlers run around willy-nilly. I'm not going to be all judgey. No, scratch that. I AM going to be judgey. As difficult as it is to get a toddler to hold still for 20 minutes, practicing that skill is part of the point of Storytime. It's not like they are asked to hold perfectly still during a ninety minute economics lecture. No one segment is more than three minutes long, and between each book they get to dance and sing and shake eggs and whatnot.

I get that little ones are wiggly and easily distracted and have poor impulse control. But when the librarian was reading the third book today I couldn't hear the story. Maureen and I still don't know whether or not that duck got unstuck from the mud because the other children were running around and climbing the stage stairs and making grabs for the bag of shaky eggs and squealing and dragging their carpet squares behind them. And some of their grownups were trying to negotiate with them to be reasonable but in a halfassed sort of way, while the rest of their grownups just smiled stupidly after them, admiring the trail of auditory destruction in their wake.

(By writing that last bit I fear I have guaranteed that Mo and I will act out the exact same scene at Storytime next year.)

I tried to tune out the craziness and focus on Mo and the story. I think a skunk ultimately helped the duck--does that sound right? The grandmother on my right seemed like she wanted to chitchat, but I ignored her cues after our initial exchange. She plopped down on the floor next to me, exhausted before Storytime even began. Immediately the little boy made a beeline for the bag of eggs. Grandmother seated the girl on a carpet square and stuck a pacifier into the silent child's mouth saying, "Here, take this." (Don't get me started on my pacifier high horse.) So the little girl couldn't smile or squeal along with the music or anything. Then grandmother looked after her misbehaving grandson and told me how much she had been looking forward to him being this age, so she could do more fun things with him. "But then she came along," she gestured toward her granddaughter, "and it's just too much."

Classy.

Way to let your infant granddaughter know what a disappointing burden she is right from the beginning.

Haunting soundtrack

Robb and I have been following the new SciFi (no, I will not spell it SyFy--that's just weird) series Being Human. It sounds like a bad joke: a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost take on a lease together; but it's a horror series that wrestles with the fundamentals of the human experience. Conveniently season 1 and season 2 of the British series of the same name were available On Demand, so we lapped those up as well. Now it's fun to watch how the American plot is diverging from that of its progenitor. As an added bonus the soundtrack is fabulous. These songs are a taste.

Apropos of nothing

Do you remember Raffi? The Baby Beluga cd just arrived, and I'm so excited. Amy Cassidy had this record when we were little. I could sort of remember some of the words, and I tried to sing it for Robb. He thought I was nuts until we happened to be at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago when they had a newborn beluga whale. The song was playing everywhere. Love it.

Once more unto the breach

So far I have been joking and whining and exaggerating about my pregnancy experience. Truly it has been easy and free of actual complications, aside from slight anemia and thyroid monitoring. The only real problem is that the baby is still nestled comfortably in my rib cage. This is what the baby should be doing right now:

Heading toward the exit and kicking me in the ribs. Instead the baby is transverse:

(Medical images heisted from the WebMD website.) Which is kind of ironic because back when the baby was the size of a peanut, I never imagined him/her as a fluffy ball of cells, but rather like this:



As a hieroglyphic style adult standing across my abdomen. And now that I think of it, this is the exact position that Sukey wants to sleep in on our bed.



Like the crossbar on an "H" between us with her head in my ribs and her rump in Robb's.



The problem is that all transverse babies must be delivered by c-section. So I did some investigating, and there are exercises that I can do at home to encourage the baby to turn itself around. I will not entertain you with photos of me doing them, although I assure you Robb is getting more than a few laughs out of this. But here is an "artist's rendering" of a few. In the top sketch I would be holding my pelvis 9-12 inches off the floor for 5 minutes at a time. In the bottom one that's supposed to be kind of a chair-amplified downward dog yoga position. And if I had access to an indoor pool, I could do lots of handstands. (I bet I'm wickedly buoyant right now!) You get the idea: trick the baby into thinking that up is down and down is up.

Old wives suggest putting a bag of frozen peas at the top of my belly or a heating pad near the bottom, cold being repellent to fetuses and warm being attractive. Also Robb could sing or speak near my pelvis and perhaps shine a flashlight in that vicinity like a signal flare. We are taking the old wives suggestions with a grain of salt.

What we have decided to try on Monday, though, is external cephalic version or ECV. In short my obstetrician will use a sonogram and fetal monitor to make sure the procedure is safe to undertake, and then she will gently turn the baby with her hands into the correct position. (Here's a video.) There's no guarantee that baby won't simply turn back around afterward, but there is about a 60% success rate. I also realize that people have c-sections every day, and it shouldn't be a big deal. BUT. If there is anything I can try in order to avoid surgery, I'm going for it. So please wish us luck on Monday. Meanwhile I keep humming Disco Inferno but changing the chorus to, "I heard somebody say turn, baby, turn..."

At least that got me to stop singing the milkshake song while rubbing my belly.

Hee-haw

God help me, this is Robb's new favorite Christmas song, replacing "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." And I was just starting to like that one...