Cerin Amroth

“139″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella139.jpg — Ella’s wearing the hat that she received from Marmar on Suanna’s birthday. Mind-numblingly cute, if I do say so myself.
“140″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella140.jpg — For some reason this picture reminds me of the story of the little Dutch boy who has to stick his finger in the dike to keep the town from flooding. Not sure why. That’s Bill on the floor.
“141″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella141.jpg & “142″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella142.jpg — Ella with Nana and Papa, respectively, on their recent visit.
“143″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella143.jpg — This is the picture I “mentioned elsewhere”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000457.html of Suanna, Ella and I with some veterans just outside the World War II Memorial. Naturally, the thing that interests her most about the scene is the former crew chief’s sunglasses.
“144″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella144.jpg — Here we have Ella visiting Suanna’s work and sitting with Abhi – the son of one of Suanna’s co-workers. The two of them are lifetime friends, though only recently have they stopped ignoring each other and started grabbing each other’s noses. Please note the calm, balanced way in which Ella holds her plastic toys, each of which, in the right circumstances, can become a deadly weapon. Abhi has no idea what’s in store.
“145″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella145.jpg — Abhi’s attention wanders away from Ella: a fatal mistake. In the next instant . . .
“146″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella146.jpg — . . . the Ninja Baby strikes!
“147″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella147.jpg — See? She does cry sometimes.
“148″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella148.jpg — Happy at the pool, with a sunblock-supported mohawk.
“149″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella149.jpg — The Nose Gulp is one of Ella’s favorite signs of affection. It’s very touching, if you don’t mind inhaling slobber.

Using last Friday’s “Morning Edition piece”:http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgDate=18-Jun-2004&prgId=3 on stay-at-home-dads as a starting point, I spent a little while on Father’s Day exploring the online world of my fellow “SAHDs.”

Friends, it ain’t pretty. There are a fair number of resources out there, including a respectable passel of blogs, but levels of defensiveness, self-pity, and self-indulgent rambling all run high. I find it disturbing that things have come this far without anyone giving the acronym “SAHD” a quick and well-deserved death. Here follow some -highlights- warning signs . . .

“Slowlane.com”:http://www.slowlane.com/ was mentioned on NPR and even linked from their website; it’s also the googleking of the searchphrase “stay at home dad.” After getting past a couple obvious negatives — disturbing color palette and ten uses of “SAHD” on the front page — it looked to be a pretty good site, with lots of crunchy content. I went right away to the Articles section . . . and discovered that it hadn’t been updated since 2001. Same with the News section. Not exactly the hallmarks of a go-to resource worthy of national attention.

NPR loses points for that bit of sloppy linking, but gains them back for mentioning the fine site “Rebel Dad”:http://www.rebeldad.com/. They lose them right back again, though, for _not_ noting that said site is a blog. And a pretty good one, too, written by a guy who’s shouldering the whole links-with-commentary burden of this particular subculture, and not falling behind. But even Rebel Dad’s “Dad Links” section only includes links to the aforementioned Slowlane, a nonexistent site called “Proud Dads,” another one called “Father’s World”:http://www.fathersworld.com/features.html (check it out — sometimes you _can_ judge a book by its cover), and a site about mothers. Slim pickins.

Then there’s the “Full Time Father.com manifesto”:http://www.fulltimefather.com/:

If you are a “stay at home” parent because you can’t hold a job, this site is not for you. If you are a reluctant “at home” parent who simply does it because your spouse can make more money than you, this site is not for you.

But if you have put your children ahead of your career because you think it will benefit your children, and if you have actually come to ENJOY it, then you have found a home on the web . . .

Identifying those who _aren’t_ welcome to your site isn’t the most approachable way to kick things off, but at least the manifesto is excluding some real nasties: total bums and embittered grouches who resent their spouse and kids. But while there’s probably guys like that out there, there are many more who find themselves staying at home because they have trouble holding jobs or make less than their spouses, but nevertheless love their kids more than anything and are stupendous parents. I guess they’re out of luck, though.

It is time for “stay at home” fathers (and mothers) to go on offense. And it starts by renaming ourselves.

Say it with me: “I am a full time father.”

Say it with me: we are not under attack, and as we are not recovering addicts we do not need to engage in AA-style gestures of self affirmation. Furthermore our self-esteem is just fine, thank you, and if you keep bandying that term around somebody’s going write a cheesy self-help book about us, which would be disastrous.

As someone who maintains a weblog about his own daughter, I must be very careful when throwing around accusations of self-indulgence. In my defense, while Cerin Amroth is available for anyone to see, its intended audience is “those people with an interest in Ella’s life,” and if you don’t fall into that category you can certainly entertain yourself elsewhere. All the same, even the most Ella-obsessed folks, such as her grandparents, can reach a point beyond which they do not require additional information. For example, I can’t imagine that they, or anyone else in the entire known universe, would give a flying fig about exactly how long it’s been since her diaper last leaked, or what her exact sleep schedule is, hour by hour, day by day. “Surely,” you might say, “No one would maintain a site with information like _that_.” “But you would be wrong”:http://www.trixieupdate.com/.

In the face of all of this, where oh where is the well-designed, witty, irreverent, self-effacing web resource for -stay-at-home dads- -SAHDs- -full time fathers- guys like me? Seriously: I’m asking. If it isn’t out there, then somebody please create it. I’ll help.

_(cross-posted to “Polytropos”:http://www.polytropos.org)_

“134″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella134.jpg — The whole sitting-up-unaided thing is one of my favorite milestones so far, because it makes her twice as able to keep herself entertained. We suspect she’ll be a late crawler, though.
“135″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella135.jpg — Obsession with alcoholic beverages (or at least their containers): check. “Friend” who is more than willing to encourage her habit (Bryan): check. This does not bode well for the future.
“136″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella136.jpg — Ella realizes that she’s been given some sort of wussy cider and that Bryan has the _real_ beer.
“137″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella137.jpg — Slipping . . . into . . . stupor . . . must . . . keep hold . . . on . . . bottle . . .
“138″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella138.jpg — Ella helps Suanna open her birthday present. She has no problem with the whole grabbing-and-tearing concept, though with a bit more foresight I would have used edible wrapping paper.

The syllables have arrived. “Da” and “ba” are popular, as well as “ar” and the ever-reliable “gich.” Once we got back from New Orleans, it was like somebody had flipped a switch and Ella started trying out sounds at every opportunity. Between that and the fact that she’s sitting up unaided with ease, it feels like we have a totally different baby than the one we had a couple weeks ago.

Regarding that “da” syllable — she has certainly uttered two of them in succession on a number of occasions, but I’m not convinced they have ever been made in reference to _me_. I don’t want to be the guy who crows “she said Dada!” only to see her use that very word in reference to a cupcake the next day. So for now, they’re just syllables.

Today, inexplicably, she has also decided that naps are for losers. Usually by this time she’s had two, sometimes three, but today there haven’t been any, and she shows no signs of being tired. Freaky.

Some of the local theaters have thoughtfully organized a “Reel Moms” program, whereby they reserve a theater (11:00 on Tuesdays) for a baby-friendly audience. The volume is turned down a little, the lights aren’t quite so low (though still low enough), and, most importantly, if your baby cries you won’t have an usher encouraging you to leave. I’ve been waiting eagerly for a chance to catch such a showing with Ella, but what’s held me back week after week is that the movies they pick have _sucked_. About half of them have objectively sucked, while the other half were clearly selected to appeal to the core demographic: young mothers. My taste in movies doesn’t have a lot of overlap with your average young mother, it seems. But this week, to my pleasant surprise, the Reel Moms Film of the Week was _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_.

And so it was that Ella and I found ourselves surrounded and hemmed in by that most curious of species, the Georgetown Mother. Your average G.M. is thirty-three years old and is equipped with the following:

* An impeccable haircut.
* A physique bearing little if any indication of recent pregnancy, as well as expensive clothing designed to highlight this fact.
* An incredibly gi-normous stroller/car seat/space shuttle combination device, larger and heavier than many European automobiles. These are wheeled to the front of the theater, whereupon the cockpit module is ejected to be carried up to the seats. I believe the cockpit modules tended to be Graco, not Prada. But the purses were definitely Prada.
* (inferred) An SUV in the parking garage with sufficient space to carry the previous item, i.e. Andromeda-class or larger.
* Oh yeah. The baby.

The Georgetown Mothers tended to arrive alone but quickly located and joined their cliques, of which there were several. It wasn’t immediate clear how they were organized — perhaps by which side of Wisconsin Ave they live on? While generally peaceful, the cliques did clash over the most valuable seats in the theater: the single row immediately in front of the stadium seating. These seats were valuable because there was room next to them to fit all but the very largest stroller/car seat/shuttle combos, thus saving the mother the trouble of maneuvering hers down to the front. One particular mother was saving several such seats for the other members of her clique, who had not yet arrived. This struck a couple other cliques as clearly unfair — not so much so as to necessitate violence, but clearly within the threshold for making Catty Remarks as they walked by.

While the Georgetown Mothers were the clear majority in the theater, there were a number of ordinary mothers as well, plus a handful of couples who had the shellshocked look of those still on maternity/paternity leave. I was the only solo dad in the house, and was clearly something of a curiosity. For mothers, Georgetown and otherwise, social norms dictate that you converse with other mothers in the theater within speaking distance and exchange vital statistics about your respective infants, ending the conversation with an exclamation appreciative of the “cuteness” or “adorability” of the other mother’s child. But it is not at all clear whether the same mores extend to _fathers_. Consequently I didn’t talk to very many people, which was just as well because Ella was insisting on standing on my lap and constantly rotating to try to see where all the crying sounds around her were coming from. She found the whole situation very intriguing, right up until when the movie started — that’s when she fell asleep. She woke a couple times to watch for a bit, slouching carelessly in my lap and staring at the screen with sharp attention paradoxically combined with callous disregard. (She’ll make a great film critic someday, if she chooses.)

And the movie? We finally have a _Potter_ film that does the books justice. It is, in turns, beautiful, scary, and wonderful, whereas the first two movies never got beyond “lackluster” and “vaguely suggestive of beauty, terror, or wonder.” It has its weaknesses, but I want to see it again (minus the soundtrack of crying babies, hopefully) before I do any quibbling. Cuaron, like Jackson, has proven that he can make the jump from indy greatness to big-budget greatness while keeping his directing chops in the process. He’ll be one to watch. I’m seriously bummed that he “won’t be directing _Goblet of Fire_”:http://www.comingsoon.net/news/harrypotter4news.php?id=951.

Purely for the sake of anthropological interest, I think I’ll make my next Tuesday visit to the Reel Moms-friendly theater in Tyson’s Corner — a medium drive instead of a long walk. How will the Northern Virginia Suburbia Moms differ from the G.M.s? I’m guessing less Prada but even bigger vehicles, if that’s even possible.

_(cross-posted to “Polytropos”:http://www.polytropos.org)_

Two days after her seranading by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, we went to dinner at the Gumbo Shop. Ella was fine at first, but quickly decided that she was hungry. She started crying loudly, so I walked her away from the table into the courtyard to quiet her down. On the way back to the table, I saw two women who were sitting infront of us at Preservation Hall. I walked over to their table, and they were all smiles. One commented that as soon as she heard Ella cry she thought, “I wonder if that’s Baby Ella.” They were both very excited to see Ella again and tried their darndest to get her to smile. It made New Orleans feel like a small town. I suspect we would not have said hello again if it weren’t for these women’s eagerness to see Ella. Sometimes walking around with Ella feels like you’re with a movie star that everyone is dying to catch a glimpse of. Or – more importantly – touch.

And not only is she good looking, she’s also very well behaved. We took her out for dinner each night that we were in New Orleans. With 7:00 dinner times and the one-hour time difference, she was out every night well beyond her bed time, but her behavior didn’t reflect it. She did get fussy occasionally, but it was usually because she wanted to eat. After I fed her, she was eager to interact with everyone again.

A change for her on this trip, she has become more talkative in public. On Friday, I walked through the convention center with her. We stopped to talk to a number of my coworkers, and she was chatting non-stop. It may have been because she was tired, but it happened on more than one occasion. She is also clearly trying to communicate with Nate and me at home. This morning, rather than crying to inform me that she was done with the Exersaucer, she started making annoyed tttt or dddd sounds. It’s a nice alternative.

It’s hard to believe that, at six months, Ella will remember none of what happens to her these days, and for many months to come. Maybe what she sees and hears does stick with her, though, lurking somewhere in her deep unconscious. I hope so, because that means that some part of her will remember tonight: up way past her bedtime, sitting on the floor in front of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, in a crowded, sweaty room that’s indistinguishable from how it appeared eighty years ago.

She was somewhere beyond tired, enjoying a second wind, and watched the band with wide blue eyes. As is the often the case with Ella, the band noticed her, the people next to us noticed her, as did the people in front of us and behind us. Pretty soon the band was fighting to regain the attention of everyone who was busy watching Ella listen to the music.

After their opening number, the frontman said “I know what we gotta play now,” and they launched into “Babyface.” He sang right to Ella, and then the guy on clarinet stepped up and played his solo to her too. She obliged them by remaining transfixed, and everyone who could see her — including the people in line out front, peering in through the grimy windows — was smiling.

Maybe it’s better if she _doesn’t_ remember that part, for the sake of her ego. But we’ll never forget it.

_(cross-posted to “Polytropos”:http://www.polytropos.org)_

She doesn’t seem all that much bigger than last month, but these things have a way of creeping up on you. She rolls over front-to-back quite easily now, and is on the cusp of mastering back-to-front, if only she can figure out what to do with that pesky arm.

We’re pretty sure that she’s teething. Up until a couple of hours ago I would have said that this didn’t involve any fussiness yet, but she just entered a period of vague complaint accompanied by vigorous gnawing that suggests otherwise. She’s also been reaching up to touch her ear, something that our pediatrician told us could be a sign that she’s teething or of an ear infection. (Real helpful, that.)

She’s been grabby for a while, but it’s been taken to new levels lately. Her cute little pair of sunglasses, which we’ve used to keep the sun out of her eyes in the car, are now useless — she now yanks them off her face right away in order to investigate them more closely. Similarly, in order to burp her at the halfway point of a bottle feeding, I have to stand up and take her out of sight of the bottle, otherwise she squirms desperately in order to try to grab it. While she can sometimes be distracted by a plastic cup, most of the time she’ll want to grab the very thing you _don’t_ want her to grab, because you’re using it. Common targets: laptop screen, desktop keyboard, backgammon dice, coffee cup, glasses.

She imbibes 4-5 bottles a day, plus evening feedings with Mama, plus a bowl of solid-ish food around lunchtime. (It’s been oatmeal for a couple weeks but we’re switching to barley tomorrow. Poor kid.) Normal sleep is still 9:30-7:30, but travel definitely throws it off, so we haven’t seen ‘normal’ for a while and won’t be seeing it for another week at least.

She loves to grab her feet. If she’s in her Bouncy Chair, she’ll shimmy her butt back and forth until she’s slouched down enough to be able to grab them. At this moment she is alternating holding onto her feet with wildly flailing her arms around, giggling all the while at — the ceiling, apparently. So she’s still a fan of ceilings.

I mentioned last month all the attention she gets from strangers. Her 6-9 months clothing features a few more skirts and frills, so there’s less mistaking her for a boy, but more attention overall. She’s getting a very skewed perspective on the world, where everyone stops to look at her as she goes by, and she can spark a smile on the stoniest of visages. Heck, even the people in Babies R Us go ga-ga over her, and they see babies all the freakin’ time.

It’s hard to believe that a few months ago I was walking around _wanting_ people to notice Ella. Now, I have to say, I honestly wish more folks would just ignore her — not for her sake, but for mine. It gets awkward when yet another group of little old ladies surround you at a street corner and elbow each other aside in their attempts to get the baby to smile. All the while you’re standing there, and they’re not paying any attention to _you_, to the point where you might as well be “Blaster”:http://teacherweb.ftl.pinecrest.edu/crawfor/apcg/MadMax/mmbartertown.htm or something.

But no, I’m lying. I don’t mind the attention — even though it has nothing to do with me, I’m flattered by association. And Ella certainly seems to enjoy it, though it’s a toss-up as to whether she’ll reward someone’s attention with a smile or a curious, piercing stare.

Anyway . . . I’ll let Suanna add some notes on whatever I may have missed. The upshot is: we’re gonna keep her.