Backyard Safari

I spent a lot of time outside as a kid. Sure, I had video games from the time I was 7; I watched a lot of cartoons, or as much as could be achieved through a roof-mounted antenna; and I had (and still do have) pretty bad pollen allergies. But all of these things didn't prevent me from enjoying the outdoors, even if it just meant playing in my backyard. With my next-door neighbor Tina, I climbed trees, played in the sandbox, jumped off the swing set, hid in the shed, and generally took advantage of the green space immediately available to me.

If my previous post didn't make it clear, nowadays I still spend a lot of time outdoors, although mostly in the service of making my backyard more hospitable. Of the many reasons I do this, one has increasingly been on my mind. I hope my kid likes being outside as much as I do, and I want our current backyard to be as inviting as the one I enjoyed during the first nine years of my life. (Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy the backyard of the house we moved to in 1989. It was much, much bigger. My current backyard is just more in keeping with the yard I first enjoyed.)

Right now, Hollie is re-reading Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. The gist of his argument is that kids aren't spending enough time exploring and engaging with nature, with the end result that they're more hyperactive, prone to behavioral disorders, and generally disconnected from the living environment around them.

Now, you won't catch me banning video games or TV from our house, but I hope to expose my kid to the wonder of the outdoors, even, and especially, the outdoors in her own backyard. As soon as she can crawl, she'll crawl through the shade that covers our property. As soon as she's able to stand, she'll be standing barefoot in the grass. As soon as she can toddle, she'll likely be doing so right through the flowers planted in my landscaped beds.

And I want to show her the things I find fascinating, like these crazy mushrooms we found in the mulch last fall.
It's scientific name is Phallus rubicundus, although we can save that particular piece of etymology until she's a little older.

Or we can revel in this crazy weed that grew in one of last year's hanging baskets. It started growing last year in a basket that we used to plant a few bulbs. When it was small, it looked an awful lot like some of the things we actually put in there on purpose. It got about a foot tall last year, never flowered, then wilted when the frost came last winter. (Yeah, I'll admit it. I was lazy and didn't take care of it last year.) Then in the spring, SURPRISE! It came back and kept growing and growing.
I don't know if you can appreciate this without a human reference point, but that sucker is about 6 feet-4 inches tall. When I started fixing up the backyard last week, I decided that this would be the very last weed I took care of. And when I pulled it out of the pot, it took all the dirt with it, because the root had curled round and round the basket.
The root was about 3 feet long and wrapped around the basket almost three times. I guess that explains why the heavy winds we had earlier this year never uprooted it. I don't know if these sorts of things will amaze my daughter as much as me, but I hope she gets a little of my curiosity.

And while I may get arguments from Hollie if I try to take a little kid up a 10-foot ladder, I feel like I have to share an image like this next one. I know it shows off a little bit more of my laziness, but in my defense, I did clean out the back gutters a couple of times this season.
I recognize the danger in letting the gutters fill up, and I'm usually much better about it, but this picture is almost worth it. And it was even more impressive when you were actually looking at it. Had to be at least a hundred tiny maple trees growing in the piles of whirligigs.

I'm not saying that sharing all this with my daughter will somehow make her a better person or a more well-behaved child, but it certainly couldn't hurt, right?

Unless we fall off the ladder...

Mega-post: Backyard Nesting

As promised, MEGA-POST, with lots of pictures and explanation. Among other things, I've been busy fixing up the backyard over the past two weeks. (I've also been making jewelry for a craft show in Collingswood over Memorial Day weekend, but that's a story for another day.)

I've been reading a lot lately about the concept of nesting during a pregnancy. I don't know that I'm nesting yet. As I previously mentioned, I painted the kid's room last August, and aside from cleaning the junk out of the room, most of what we need to do at this point is get some baby furniture. A little de-clutterification, and we should be all set. (It's at this point that Hollie may disagree, but I'll leave that to her in the comments.)

But if I am nesting anywhere, it's in the backyard. Every year since we moved in, I've attempted some degree of landscaping. A few rose trellises here, a rounded corner with a birdbath there--all in the attempt to make the backyard a prettier place, less habitable to weeds. And every spring, it feels like I have to start all over again. This year, however, I have an incentive to really get things straightened out. Because in May of 2011, I'll have an 8-month old daughter, and I'd really prefer not to waste my weekends replanting and replanting and replanting. Thus I give you: Operation Less Work in 2011

Last weekend, this is just a small taste of the challenge that faced me in the backyard.
You can click on the picture to blow it up, although you do so at your own peril. That blotchy sunlight is a killer. And it's just about the only sunlight I get back there, so the only things that manage to come back every year are dandelions and at least three different kinds of wild onions (no, I haven't eaten any. Hollie won't let me.)

In the interest of setting reasonable expectations, the only thing I wanted to finish last weekend was this corner. And since our soil is so bad, Hollie and I decided to put a raised flower bed right here. The picture above makes it look more triangular, but the corner bed we carved out last year is rounded. In keeping with my geek status, I figured out the size of the raised bed by measuring the radius of the outer edge's arc, then treated that as the bisecting diagonal of a perfect square--essentially the hypotenuse of two equilateral triangles. As it happened, the sides of my square worked out to be a nearly perfect 60 inches, or 5 feet.

Next step: Once I cleared the area of weeds, I dug two 5-foot trenches, meeting at a right angle. I lined the trenches with cloth weed barrier, then covered the weed barrier with loose stone as a base for my wall, which I built using landscape timbers.
I used rocks to form a level surface. I'm not a perfectionist by nature, but I knew I'd kill myself trying to scrape a perfect level surface directly in the dirt.

Unfortunately, the timbers each had to be measured and cut separately as I built the wall, because: A). Each side, while theoretically 60 inches, changed slightly as the wall grew, because of the differing depth of my fence versus my neighbors fence; and B). Only one side at a time could be 60 inches--the other would have to be 60 inches minus the width of the timbers, generally about 4 inches, but the timbers weren't manufactured very precisely, so the width varied.

That sounds more complicated than it was, because cutting and building the wall only took about an hour. I spent more time just clearing the weeds out of the way.
That's not the completed wall, but it's nearly all the wood. Once the wall was built--and perfectly level and square, due to the stones and my earlier math--I drilled five holes through the timbers: one in the corner and two on each side. I had to drill through one layer, hit the one below it, then remove each layer, and repeat the process. My goal was to hammer five 2-foot-long rebar spikes through the walls to keep them upright once I filled it with dirt.

And once the spikes were in, I double checked my levels, just to be sure. Pay close attention to that center bubble. It's a thing of beauty.

After that, I mitered a 10-foot board, which worked perfectly given the sides 5-foot length, and screwed it to the top. Then it was just a matter of filling the box with dirt and planting the appropriate greenery. We chose a hydrangea bush and several periwinkle. We won't get any flowers on the periwinkle this year, since they bloom in early spring, but the hydrangea should look pretty good in a couple of weeks. One more thing that I hopes ensure success: I'm fertilizing using the worm poop/compost we harvested from last year's crop of red wigglers.

Tada!
Please excuse the lack of mulch to the right. I fixed it a week later, and I'll post pictures of the completed project soon.

This project has been Lola approved.

Don't Forget Your Towel

First and foremost, I hope never to go this long without posting at least a little something to the blog. In tomorrow's post (henceforth known as mega-post) I'll delve a bit into what's been keeping me so busy in the last week and a half.

But today, I wanted to bring to your attention something very special. Today, May 25, is Geek Pride Day. CNN and Wikipedia agree, so it must be real.

I'm celebrating by taking the day off. Not really. I scheduled today off before I realized what day it was. And I'm not exactly taking it easy, but I'll get into that in megapost.

And in what's known in the news trade as burying your lead, I'd like to wish hoopy froods everywhere a very Happy Towel Day! Do yourself a favor and read some Douglas Adams today. You'll be glad you did.

Now there's a frood who really knows where his towel is.

Tell you a story, Happened long time ago

Those who know me have endured over the past few years some version of what you're about to read. For those of you who have, I apologize. For those who haven't, Welcome!

To put it plainly, I am way too worried about my kid's musical tastes, and she hasn't even arrived yet. Putting aside classical repertoire for the time being, there's about 100 years worth of recorded popular music out there, and I really want my kid to experience as much of it as possible.

But where to start? I could follow my own path, which, distilled to its most basic is: kids' music compilations, such as Wee Sing > oldies radio > country radio > pop radio > standard college discoveries of whatever I could grab via FTP or Napster, i.e. the most popular stuff owned by the most people > post-college denial of everything that I'd listened to up to that point > current mix of modern mainstream and indie pop/rock and oldies and standards and R&B, etc. etc.

Thing is, I don't want to create a carbon copy of myself. I want her to be an individual with her own peculiar tastes (who hopefully recognizes that the NKOTBs, Hannah Montanas, and Justin Biebers of the world have their place, but are a pale shadow of really great music that's happening elsewhere).

So what goes on that first playlist? The Beatles? The Rat Pack? Belle & Sebastian? ELO? Motown? Polyphonic Spree? They Might Be Giants? (sidebar: TMBG has some great kids albums that will find themselves in regular rotation in my house, no question.) Regina Spektor? Rilo Kiley? Buddy Holly? Truth be told, I'm sure all of those artists will end up piped into the nursery at one time or another.

But let's put aside the first playlist for the moment to contemplate something more pressing. What's the first song my daughter will hear? Since I sing to myself 80% of the time, I'm assuming the first song she'll hear will be something I sing, so what should it be? Last night, I came up with the first contender in what will likely be a pretty competitive list, at least in my head.



The version above was recorded by Thurston Harris and released in 1957. It also appeared on the American Graffiti soundtrack, as if the video didn't give that away. To my mind, it's the epitome of a disposable pop hit, but it's proven strangely lasting, with new cover versions appearing every couple of years.

It also sums up in 37 words and 2 1/2 minutes the joy of being a father to a little girl. And although she won't understand any of those words on her first day, I think the feeling will come across.

(And, Daughter, if you turn out to be a Son, I'll pick another song, I promise.)

When Real is Real

I've said before in this space that my impending fatherhood already seems real. I can't put my finger on why, and I'm certainly not saying that I'm ready for it, but right now, in this moment, I really know I'm going to be taking care of a crying, gurgling, pooping infant in about 4 months.

But there are levels of reality. And I ran headfirst into one on Friday night. It was the day after the ultrasound, and Hollie and I were both working after hours at the museum for a Safari Overnight. (For the uninitiated, the Safari Overnights are an opportunity for Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, or families to spend the night at the museum and participate in classes and badge programs.) And this past Friday, the museum hosted a Girl Scout overnight.

And I should point out here that I've worked with kids in various capacities for a while. I ran elementary school programs in high school; I babysat my neighbors kids for years growing up; I was a junior assistant scoutmaster for two years; I've taught at the museum in various capacities for four years; and I've got two 10-year-old nieces. Kids are not new to me.

But one day after finding out I was having a daughter, I was especially vulnerable to the 6-to-14-year-old girls running, screaming and laughing all over the museum. Short girls, tall girls, quiet girls, loud girls, very loud girls, tomboys who couldn't wait to pet the guinea pig AND the ball python, and girls who were scared to death of the notion even looking at the snake. I can't tell you why, but spending time around these kids nearly wrecked me. There was a happiness to it, but I was on the verge on breaking down throughout the night.

Every girl was somebody's daughter, and every girl was a potential future vision of my daughter. Some of these girls incessantly asked questions, some avoided eye contact. Some ran from place to place holding their best friend's hand, some moved silently, alone, from exhibit to exhibit. Some girls were happy, some were clearly sad.

In 6-to-14 years, my little girl will be like one of these girls, or all of these girls. Will she be terrified of snakes or think they're awesome? Will she spend 30 minutes digging for shark teeth in a sand pit just because she's fascinated by it? Will she ask me to identify the teeth, or will she use the chart on the wall to figure it out by herself? Will she look at a beehive or a tank full of cockroaches and want to know more about them? Will she look at a bobcat pelt and get freaked out because it has a face?

I don't yet know the answers to any of these questions, but after Friday night, I really want to find out.

Holy Altered DNA, Batman! or ULTRAsounds!

Every dad thinks his kid is special. I am not an exception to this rule. Quite the opposite, in fact. I have long suspected that the next step in human development is just around the bend. Further, I suspected that my family tree just might support the next branch in human evolution. Before our first ultrasound I suspected that my child could be that next step, and now that I have the ultrasound in hand, I now I have the proof to back me up.

Here, in no particular order, are five possible mutations--with corroborating evidence--illustrating just how special my kid is.

Exhibit A.
I realize that this is not the sexiest of all possible mutations. But hey, progress is progress. I mean, I hope she doesn't turn out to be a supervillain because she's ashamed of her abilities, but it could be worse. I'm not a strong swimmer, and it's going to be tough to teach her how to swim. This could certainly help. Also, I'm not sure that a blowhole is necessarily tied to super-strength, but one can hope.

Exhibit B

Likewise, gills could prove invaluable to the inexperienced swimmer. More so than a blowhole, even, since she wouldn't actually need to come up for air at all. I should point out that though they aren't visible in the above photo, we clearly saw the lungs during the ultrasound, so if she did have gills, they would work in concert with her lungs, allowing her to breath both air and water. Gills have an additional advantage in that they wouldn't necessarily be visible, and she could more easily mingle with her less evolved friends and acquaintances. And if she can talk to fish, so much the better.

Exhibit C

Unless my ancestry has an as-yet-unidentified Kryptonian branch, it's unlikely that any spawn of mine will be able to fly without the aid of wings. (Unless she's a super-genius who invents a jetpack or other personal flight apparatus.) These wings appear to be folded at the present time, which one would expect, pre-birth. But based on the wings size right now, it's altogether possible she could be up and flying around before she walks. We may have to rethink the ceiling fan in her nursery.

Exhibit D

I'm going to break with my established pattern here, and start with some anecdotal evidence before I present the physical proof. For the last few weeks, Hollie has periodically developed really bad heartburn. Although the doctor said this is normal, and told her to take TUMS or something similar, nothing has truly quenched the heartburn. Typically, you'd just accept this as one of the side effects of pregnancy. I have a different theory. Until this point, I've shown the same ultrasound, and simply highlighted different parts. Shortly after snapping that picture, however, something happened, which we we fortunate enough to catch on the monitor.

I believe that in the presence of evil our baby turns into Ghost Rider. All the signs are there. Hollie pointed out the prominence of the skull, which you clearly can make out in all of the ultrasounds. And in the prolonged presence of our ultrasound tech, (whom I've already described as mostly evil--or just stupid) our daughter briefly completed her transformation. And why has Hollie been experiencing heartburn throughout the day? I blame the evil perpetrated by folks in our neighborhood who let their dogs poop in my yard.

Exhibit E
Which brings me to the final and, to my mind, most likely superpower held by my progeny. The supernatural ability to rock. Seriously, 20 weeks old and she's already throwin' the goat. I can't speak for Hollie, but I haven't been listening to that much Ozzy since we first found out she was pregnant. Granted, we have been playing a lot of Guitar Hero and Rock Band over the last year or so. It's probably seeped into our DNA at this point. And lest you think the ability to rock isn't a mutation, I beg to differ. Clearly, Kidz Bop isn't going to cut it with this kid, and I couldn't be happier.

In conclusion, I'm pretty sure my kid is going to kick all kinds of evildoer tail, and I look forward to nurturing her natural abilities, whatever they may be.

Hat tip to the Sreholsers for this post, btw. They deserve most of the credit.

It's a Girl! (We think)

There she is! That's my daughter! (Probably.)

Strike that. Let's go back. Day started out normally enough. When we set up the appointment, Hollie was given instructions on how the ultrasound visit was going to go down. She'd go in first, then someone would come out to get me and we'd find out the sex of the baby together.

So far, so good. We get to the radiology office about 9:45, or 15 minutes before our appointment. Fill out some paperwork, then it's time to wait, which we did. Around 10:10, Hollie's called into the exam room.

I'm pretty excited by this point. I'm figuring that in about 10 minutes or so, I'm going to find out whether the baby is a boy or girl. So I wait. And 10 minutes passes. "No biggie," I think to myself. "Whatever they needed to do, I'm sure everything is fine."

10 more minutes. "Man, this is a long wait. What are they doing in there?"

10 more minutes. And at this point, I start getting nervous. I don't know much about ultrasound, and I know less about what happens on your first ultrasound visit. But I do know that on our first doctor's visit together, the OB/GYN did an impromptu ultrasound that took no more than 3 minutes.

(Brief aside. I don't do well with not knowing what's going on. It's a personality quirk or flaw that I recognize within myself, but I do a lousy job dealing with it. Some of my angriest/most frightened/most frustrated moments have been when I'm faced with some situation where information is being withheld from me. You don't want to see me in a traffic jam with no discernible cause. It's not a pretty sight.)

10 more minutes. I'm at the 40-minute mark. My allergies have been giving me problems all day, so I'm sneezing, my eyes are itchy, and I have no idea where my wife is, or why all of this is taking so long. Is something wrong? Would someone tell me? Hollie would certainly want me back there, right?

10 more minutes. An hour and 15 minutes since we arrived at the office. I haven't seen Hollie in nearly an hour. No news doesn't feel like good news, and I'm starting to freak out (silently of course). I realize logically there's no reason to be worried, but I've also learned that reason flies out the window when it comes to your first kid. I start to get up to ask someone how long this is supposed to take when someone finally comes down the hall and asks if Matt would like to come back. Sigh of relief, and I follow the ultrasound tech back to the exam room.

Hollie is laying on an exam table next to the ultrasound machine. She doesn't look terribly comfortable, but she seems happy to see me. The tech tells me where to stand so we can both see the monitor. Then she starts prodding away with the ultrasound wand.

First thing I see is the head. Big, giant head. Turns out, everything on the screen is blown up. Baby is, in fact, not the size of a watermelon. Everything is blurry, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that we're looking at a brain. This likely marks the only time I will ever see the inside of my kid's head.

The technician moves across Hollie's abdomen, because apparently the baby is in the transverse position (and had moved since the earlier part of the exam that I was left out of.) Next we zoom in on the heart. I know nothing about pre-natal heart function, but this looked pretty good. Valves opening and closing in a rhythmic fashion; seems about right.

I see the spine, and we're moving down to the feet. I should mention that up to this point, the tech has said very little, and is quite brusque. At one point she even implies that a C-section will absolutely be necessary, because of how the baby is positioned. Scuse me, but the baby has shifted positions in the hour we've been here. I think sometime in the next 20 weeks, it'll move again.

Then she stops. "Is there anything else you'd like to see?" she asks. Is this a serious question? Umm. Yes. Could I get a closeup of the lungs? Come on! How bout the thing everyone wants to know? Boy or girl, please!

It's at this point that I start to think that the tech is stalling, ill-trained, or just plain dumb. I say the obvious: We want to know the sex. She hems and haws a bit more, and finally says that she hasn't been able to get a good angle, which is likely why she hasn't brought it up yet. Admittedly, the baby isn't exactly cooperating, but we're certainly not the only people who've ever dealt with that.

So she squirms around a bit, finds an angle where we can see the baby's butt and feet, but the kid has one leg outstretched and the other pulled up close to the groin. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was preparing a crane kick. I don't blame the kid. If someone had been poking at me for the better part of an hour, I'd be busting out the big guns, too.

So to make a long story short, we don't see a penis, but we do see the tell-tale three lines, albeit faintly. The ultrasound tech, in her infinite wisdom, says, "I want to say it's a girl, but I won't say 100% sure."

So there you have it, folks. We're having a girl. Probably.

Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls

In less than three days time, I will find out whether we're going to have a girl or a boy. I realize that by writing these words, I'm invoking Murphy's Law, and our child will inevitably turn his/her back to the ultrasound wand, and we'll have to wait even longer to found out.

When I try to put into words exactly why it is I'm so excited to find out the sex of our child, I find I'm at a loss. It's something of a cliché to say that knowing this one piece of information will somehow make it all seem more real. I look at my wife's pregnant belly, more pronounced every day, and I gotta be honest, it feels pretty real right now. When folks ask, "Don't you want to be surprised at the birth?" my general response is, "I'm pretty sure I'm going to find a lot about birth surprising; I don't need any more surprise."

More than a few people have asked me whether we want a boy or a girl. And ever since we started planning this, we've sort of been hoping/assuming we'd have a boy. I think it's largely because we have two nieces, and we figure the odds are in favor of a boy for us. A boy would just be something different. A grandSON and nephew instead of another granddaughter or niece. But if you had asked me when I was a kid whether I hoped to have a son or a daughter, I'd have answered daughter in a heartbeat. I grew up with two brothers. Been there, done that, and tired of it.

But here we are. A few days from knowing, one way or the other, and what I find really interesting is that there is no wrong answer here. All the daydreaming about a son I've done over the last few months -- what comics I'm going to read to him, when the appropriate age is for the introduction of Star Wars, whether he'll like Legos or Lincoln Logs -- and if the ultrasound reveals a baby girl in there, I won't feel even a twinge of disappointment. Part of it that is because I've realized that there's no reason my daughter won't love comics and Star Wars and building blocks just as much as any son. Part of it is that we've come up with some awesome girl names that I'm really excited about. And part of it is that in the end, it doesn't matter. That baby doesn't know it yet, but I love it.

Also, I painted the nursery a kickin' shade of green. Completely gender neutral, but sweeeeeeet! And it's called Alien Green. The color was practically made with my kid in mind.