I used to watch the Classical Arts Showcase (I’m not sure if they have that in your area. It was on channel 80-something and was 24 hours a day of classical arts programming. Operas, ballets, that kind of thing) and look forward to the ballets.  I still enjoy dance movies like Save the Last Dance and Center Stage.  I just like watching people dance, and as long as the storyline’s not too hideous I guess I’m not too picky.

Anyway, that was 100+ words all to lead up to my new thing, which is called The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers.  It’s only on Hulu (which, if you don’t know what Hulu is, it’s only TV on the Internet, which is to say it’s awesome), and it’s essentially a story broken into short episodes.  I’ve watched a few episodes, and from what I can glean, there are bad guys and good guys.

The story’s not the important part, though.  What’s important is the dancing.  The dancing is incredible!  I’ve seen three episodes, and each episode features dancers who can do extraordinary things (hence the name I guess).  They have a guy who can do The Robot in such a way that he barely even looks human, and breakdancers who do things I had no idea a human body could do without benefit of wires and pulleys.

Definitely check it out if you want a short break and find yourself on the computer with some spare time.  If you hate it, you never have to take a recommendation from me again.

Inspired by all that dancing, I rented a few workout DVD’s and tried one of them out yesterday.  It was, and I quote, a “Fat Blasting Dance Workout” and I’m fairly certain the only thing that got blasted was my self esteem.  They just go so freaking fast through the instructions, how is a barely coordinated, long-limbed, rarely mobile person like myself supposed to keep up?

There was one move I mastered, however, which involved throwing both my hands in the air.  You better believe I mastered that one.

It looked a lot like this, only I was bigger.

All this to say, you won’t be seeing me on featured among The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers any time soon.  I’m good at a lot of things, but my rug cutting abilities are only extraordinary in that they are exceptionally clumsy and funny-looking.

Then, parenthood happened.  Or, rather, the universal truism that when you make a plan, your child laughs.

For a few weeks now, Wes and I have given Aidan slices of fruits to gnaw on to appease his insatiable gums.  It feels like he’s been teething for about a year now, and he’s much happier when he has something to crush with his pitbull jaws.  He’d prefer to pulverize our fingers, but will just as happily take ice cubes, slices of apple, mango cores, that sort of thing (with, of course, rigid, militant supervision).

On Saturday, Wes shared a little of his fresh farmer’s market nectarine with Aidan and Aidan just looked so happy gumming it that we thought we’d steam and puree some more and then see how it went.

We steamed, we pureed, we sat Aidan down in his bouncy chair, and grabbed the wee baby spoon.  Aidan looked on with interest while I settled myself in front of him with the food and Wes took up a position off to the side for optimal photo-taking.

I loaded up a tiny bit of food on the spoon, brought it close to Aidan’s mouth and…He opened his mouth and ate it.  Just slurped it right off the spoon.  No funny faces, no pushing it out with his tongue.

He opened his mouth, swallowed what was on the spoon, and then opened his mouth again.  Easy peasy.

In retrospect, the writing’s been on the wall for awhile that Aidan was ready for solid foods.  He’s pointedly interested in whatever we put in our mouths, he will grab whatever he can reach and cram it into his mouth, and he’s getting increasingly squirmy and disinterested while breastfeeding.

I told Wes this weekend that I think this will be my last month of breastfeeding.  Aidan’s just so busy, and interested in the world around him, that breastfeeding him is less a time of bonding and more a time of child wrangling and milk dripping all over the both of us.  I think I’ll give him the benefit of a solid six months of exclusive breastfeeding, and then we’ll go to bottles, defrosting the supply from the freezer until it’s all gone.

I’m considering continuing to pump, and just giving Aidan bottles of the pumped milk, but I have my doubts about how long I’ll do that.  We’ll see.  The only thing I know for certain is that my little baby is growing up faster every day, and I am completely ill-equipped to deal with it.  I feel like I wake up every day and wonder who the little boy is who’s squealing with delight at me from my wee baby’s crib.

We ate brunch outside at the Cheesecake Factory and we spent a whole solid hour and a half doing so.  We languished.  We luxuriated.  We ate with both hands.

After that, we strolled around in the sunshine.  We stumbled across a local arts festival, and spent an hour perusing the booths.  Some people are seriously talented, you guys.  One of our favorite artists combined different kinds of wood in alternating patterns to make large multi-hued sculptures that made it look like the two trees had chosen to twine together to form shapes like 16th notes, treble clefs, and others.

We also found an artist who painted brilliantly-colored abstract paintings accessorized by tiny little stick figures dashed off in black.  The effect was enchanting, and I found myself wishing I had a few extra thousand dollars lying around with which to purchase armloads of his paintings.

I would’ve taken pictures to share, but they all had pretty stringent NO PICTURES ALLOWED policies and I was loathe to get on the wrong side of a well-aimed painter’s pallet.

After the arts festival, we took in a showing of Inception.  We’d heard from numerous friends that the movie was mind-blowing, and thought it sounded like fun.  After all, it kind of seems like Leonardo DiCaprio can do no wrong lately.

I wasn’t disappointed.  I tried not to go into the theatre expecting sheer brilliance, because that’s a one-way ticket to failure, but I was expecting something pretty good.  And it was.

I thought the acting was deft, the visual effects mesmerizing, and the pacing suitable.  My only quibble with the movie is with the storyline, because I feel like the storyline is almost too insignificant to carry the heft of the intellectual implications and spectacular visuals.  But really, that’s a very small quibble indeed, because it never got in the way of my ability to enjoy the movie.

So there you have it.  I’m refreshed, relaxed, and as ready as I’m going to be for this week, which culminates in a gigantic party I’m throwing for Wes’ 30th birthday.  There will be fresh mini donuts (I found a local vendor who’s going to come out and make fresh mini donuts), a pinata (which Wes will hit with a samurai sword), and tons of BBQ food.

If posting is a bit light this week, that’s why.  Rest assured, though, I’ll be back next week with pictures!

She recently published a book (this is not her first book by a long shot, but the other ones are out of print or else technical manuals most people wouldn’t want to read {no offense mom, but technical manuals are not for public consumption}) and I just thought I’d share the book with all y’all.

It’s called The Protected and you can read more about it here.  I finished the book a couple weeks ago and it’s a lot of fun.  It cracked the top ten bestsellers at her publisher’s last month, which is a big deal.  I think book 2 is also due to come out soon, so keep an eye out for that!

Tasty feet and toys make Aidan's face look like this.

Aidan really and truly discovered his feet last night.  The previous week held the discovery of the presence of vaguely hand-like apparatuses at the ends of his legs, but he broke the wrapper off those tootsies last night and started trying in earnest to get them into his mouth.

He also started work on mastering the art of bringing toys to his mouth last week.  He’s still more likely to end up with a toy in his eye or conked against the side of his head, but maybe 2/5 attempts ends with a vigorously bitten and drooled on toy in his mouth.

In other words, my baby is ever-faster learning the mechanics of being a big kid and leaving more and more of his babyhood in the dust.  I keep looking at him pulling himself up to a sitting position, avidly watching me eat, and taking stompy little baby steps when I hold him up on his feet, and I wonder exactly how long I have before he’s moving around the house on his own, feeding himself and saying ‘No thank you’ to breastmilk the minute he discovers beef.

It was in the midst of all this discovery (on Aidan’s part) and wonder (on my part) that Wes proposed a vacation.  We’re pretty close to Victoria B.C., and we’ve visited before, and the local ship that takes people there was offering a 50% discount so long as you booked before September 26, 2010.

Wes asked me if I wanted to take a weekend vacation with him, maybe having Aidan stay with his parents while we escaped and took wine tours and ate leisurely meals.  On the one hand, I practically started salivating at the prospect of all that relaxation and time with my husband.  The more I started thinking about it, though, the more anxious I got.

The prospect of me leaving him for days makes Aidan's face look like this.

Not only would I have to bring a breast pump with me on vacation (which sounds exactly as fun as having a troupe of kittens kick litter right in my face), I’d be leaving my baby for days.  Days.  For all I know, he’d have learned how to walk and solve quadratic equations by the time we got back.

The more I thought about that, the more anxious I got, and I realized that spending money to go on a vacation where in all likelihood I would spend the majority of my time uncomfortable and anxious was probably a pretty dumb idea.  I’m just plain not ready, I guess.

I have no doubt that there will come a day when I will be ready.  This will likely be when Aidan’s weaned and I won’t have to bring my breast pump on vacations with me.  I guess all the change just freaked me out a bit.  Aidan’s figuring stuff out and growing so quickly, and now we’re discussing vacations, my poor brain just slammed on the brakes and put the kibosh on any more nonsense for a bit.

I did promise Wes that we would take another vacation to Victoria B.C. next summer, and that it would probably be the last vacation we took before starting to try to get pregnant with baby numero dos.  He agreed, and now we have something fun to look forward to!  But still, all these changes, they’ll likely be the end of me.

Wes and I make the most of these by taking a walk after dinner every evening that we can.  We strap Aidan into his Baby Bjorn (which he loves) and perambulating we go, three Mitchells taking in a summer evening.  I’m absolutely certain that these walks in no way atone for the amount of cheese we gleefully consume in our household, but it gets us some much-needed Vitamin D.  Surely the Vitamin D cancels out the cholesterol, no?

Anyway.  We walk in the evenings, and during the course of these walks we meet a good many people from around our neighborhood.  We passed a mother of two elementary school-aged kids, and she stopped to coo over Aidan, exclaiming, “I remember the Bjorn stage!”

She then asked us what his name was, and when we replied that his name is Aidan, she laughed and pointed to her son, telling us that his name was Aidan too.  We all laughed over the shared name, and she said that she has a neighbor whose child is named Aidan, and that she was pretty sure there was another Aidan in the neighborhood too.

As we walked away, I chided Wes, saying, “This is why you don’t name your child with the #1 most popular boy name in America!”  He shrugged and said he didn’t really care, while I equivocated that at least this meant our son wouldn’t get mocked by schoolmates for having a strange name.

The thing with Aidan’s name is that, when we picked it, it wasn’t the most popular name in America.  Aidan’s name has been picked out since 2002, when Wes and I first started dating.  We were on the phone late one night, talking about whether either of us wanted to have kids.

I told Wes I couldn’t see myself having kids, as I had no experience with little ones and was pretty certain I’d be a shoddy mother.  He said he fully intended to have kids someday, and that he’d want them to have cool Irish names (Wes is part Irish, and loves his Irish heritage).

I asked him if he had any names in mind, and he said the only one he was certain of was the name of his first son, whom he wanted to name Aidan.  When I asked if he had a middle name picked out, he said he’d probably want to name his first son after his father and use his father’s first name as Aidan’s middle name.

And so it was.  Aidan’s name, spelled out and well-loved well before his parents got their act together enough to get hitched.  Of course, we have other names picked out and ready to go.  Whether the next baby is a boy or girl, his or her name is ready to go, with a name from my side of the family ready to serve as a middle name.

While we waited to have babies, the rest of the country fell in love with the name Aidan and now there are Aidans everywhere.  The nice thing is, at least we won’t have to worry about no one knowing how to spell our son’s name…

The first thing I keep mulling over in my mind is how many kids I want to have.  Wes is content to have two and then see how we feel.  I can already tell how I’m going to feel: Right after baby two is born, I’ll be certain we’re done.  When baby two is a few months old, however, I’ll panic at the prospect of not having any more babies to snuggle and want more.

Trying to figure out how many kids to have is a huge responsibility!  We’re essentially deciding how many people we want to bring into the world, how many tiny humans we want to watch take their first breaths and then raise in a loving, stable home.

I’ve always seen myself as the kind of person who has a lot of love to give, and therefore would be at ease with three kids.  A hectic but happy household.  Now that I have a little baby, though, I see how much work it is!  The thought of doing this not once but twice more makes me want to take a 20 year nap.

Then there are the mechanics of having more than two kids.  From what I hear, having two kids is do-able, but when the kids start outnumbering the parents things turn into a bit of a circus.  But I like circuses!

The second issue I’ve been chewing on like the proverbial old bone is when to start Aidan on solid foods.  He’s been exclusively breastfed, and I don’t know why but I’ve always had it in my head that he’d be weaned by the time he was six months and on solid foods then.

After researching the issue, however, I’ve learned that almost everyone in the world recommends exclusive breastmilk/formula for the first six months, and then introducing solid foods but still providing the bulk of nutrition with breastmilk/formula until one year.  Then there are all these studies showing correlations (which, thanks to my psych degree, I know means nothing much until more research is done) between introducing solid foods prior to six months of age and diabetes/childhood obesity.

I was all gung-ho to start mashing up food and smearing it all over Aidan’s face.  I bought a Beaba, bought some wee baby spoons, and plotted his first meal.  Now, however, I’m getting cold feet.

After discussing the issue with Wes last night, I decided we’re just going to wait until Aidan’s six months old to introduce solid foods.  It will just make me feel better, and sometimes your mother’s intuition is all you have to go on.

Now, to merge the two hamsters…A spin-off question then becomes: If we do have three kids, will I fret over when to introduce solid foods to the third kid as much as I am for Aidan?  Almost assuredly not, for by the third kid I shall be wise and competent…Or else so subsumed by laundry as to no longer have the capacity to care so much.  Either or.

Such is my love/hate relationship with Dan Brown.  The author of The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and a few others.

I’ve been reading Dan Brown’s novels since I was in high school.  I own three of his books, actually.  His earlier work had a fun way of interspersing interesting facts with the story, so I always felt like I walked away from the book having learned something (I also felt this way when I was on my Tom Clancy kick awhile back).

I finished his new book, The Lost Symbol, this weekend and I have to say…I’m disappointed.  The story was a ton of fun, and I learned a lot about Washington D.C. and the Freemasons, but he should have stopped writing that book about 30 pages before he did.

The story wraps up, and then he goes on for another 30 pages with his personal religious views and how the established religious authorities have got it all wrong.  He quotes the Bible numerous times, but only ridiculously out of context, and the whole thing ends up just being really obnoxious.

I know a lot of Christians rose up in outrage over the things Dan Brown wrote about in The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.  To be honest, I was never one of them because I didn’t really know enough at the time to know whether or not I should be outraged.  I just enjoyed the stories.

Either I know more now, or he’s getting increasingly ham-handed with his attempts to stir controversy, but the ending of The Lost Symbol just annoyed me.  It’s fine if he doesn’t agree with Christianity, or want to be a Christian.  I’m not about to brow-beat anyone for disagreeing with me.

But, he takes it too far when he quotes the Bible out of context so egregiously that I wonder if he even understands what he’s doing.  For him to try to put Jesus on a par with Buddha or Mohammad is laughable because Jesus left no room for Himself to be anything other than the Son of God.  He’s either the Messiah or He’s a lunatic, but there’s no way He was just some wise dude who left us a good example like so many other wise dudes.

Dan Brown is just so silly when he says the religious establishment has gotten the teachings of the Bible all wrong by asserting that their way is the only way to get to Heaven.  When Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the father except through me” He isn’t being coy.  He’s laying it out on the table, and there’s really no way to misunderstand that.

So this may be the end of the line for me.  If Dan Brown wants to write stories, I will read them.  If he’s going to keep getting up on increasingly larger soap boxes in an attempt to convince me that we are all gods, well, no thank you very much.  This mere human isn’t buying what he’s selling.

I’ll be honest, I never really understood Birthing from Within.  I’d seen it recommended a million times over as the number-one-must-read-book-on-natural-childbirth, so it was actually the first one I checked out after I got my positive pregnancy test.

Then I opened it up and…I didn’t get it.  It was very focused on visualization of the birth.  My hopes for the birth, my vision of what it would feel like emotionally, that kind of thing.  It had activities in each chapter that required me to draw pictures of what I felt about birth and that is so not me it’s not even funny.

I was that kid in daycare who, during arts and crafts time, did the bare minimum creative output required so I could go back to reading books or pretending to be a horse running through the field (don’t laugh, it was actually a lot of fun, and since I didn’t have a real horse it was the best I could do).  I don’t really do drawing, my stick figures are so grotesque my four year old niece once remarked that she was proud of my good effort but that my drawing looked nothing like a human being.

For this book to expect me to express myself through drawing was laughable to begin with.  But then it took it a step further by asking me to sit and spend time contemplating what my hopes for the birth were, and imagine how I might feel.  How I visualized birth.

I’d never had a baby before, so for me to try to sit down and figure out how it might make me feel was completely unrealistic.  I have a fantastic imagination, but this was pushing it.  There’s no way I could have ever imagined reaching a point in my labor where time ceased to exist, where the gap between contractions would stretch for years, where I would cease to exist completely while the contraction hit me like a lightning strike.  I had no way of conceptualizing the incredible feeling of pushing Aidan’s head out, when it felt like I was literally giving birth to a planet.

As a childbirth newb, I was looking for boots-on-the-ground information about what labor would be like, what to expect, how to prepare.  This book was asking me to get in touch with the emotions surrounding birth, but I didn’t have any yet so I didn’t find it particularly helpful.

I discussed the book with one of my midwives once, and she nodded and said the book seemed most helpful to moms who had already had babies and were maybe recovering from a traumatic first birth experience.  This makes sense to me.  If my first birth had been traumatic, I could easily see wanting to sift through those emotions before embarking on my next labor adventure.