Jesus didn't have Pampers

You don't really ponder much at 3am in the morning with a whimpering baby trying to communicate her needs to you, but as I changed her second diaper in 30 minutes...

(aside: she's really sneaky about doing her business right after you changed a diaper that was merely wet but you felt too guilty to leave on her, even though Pampers is so darn efficient at wicking moisture away from the skin you weren't sure she was urinating at all at first)

...and marveled groggily at diaper technology...

(in a stroke of brilliance, Pampers has a little stripe that turns green when wet, thus notifying you when you need to invest another $0.23 or so in their remarkable company. Al is quite the avid investor)

I realized that Jesus didn't have Pampers.

And Mary was taking care of a newborn in a stable without easy access to a washing machine or a host of eager relatives willing to help her in those early days (they didn't even have family housing, for heaven's sake!). So the Word who created all that there is humbled himself to the point of periodically sitting in his own waste and having to cry out to one of his own creatures for help and relief.

We burn through our wipees and cloths and disposables and desitin at an alarming rate with a little one who eats every couple of hours or so and digests what she eats in 90 minutes; these luxuries are in handy little dispensers next to anti-bacterial hand gel for mommy and daddy after the clean-up is through. We call this a stressful period of life with a newborn, but oh how easy it has been made! How often did Jesus have to chafe in a soiled diaper of some sort due to poverty, I wonder? How often did He whimper and cry for relief of His discomfort?

The nitty-gritty of the humility of the Son in the Incarnation strikes me more and more. How often I have agreed that for the Son of God to become a baby is to become so vulnerable, and yet the depth of that vulnerability is in the details, not in the easy generalization. Jesus required near-constant care and attention to the most basic of needs for living creatures, every day, for months on end. He who is life to us chose to need a young woman to sustain His body and to train His limbs, to teach His lips to smile and His mouth to laugh. As I care for our little one, changing yet another diaper and wiping up half-digested milk from her face, I remember Him and worship.

Such is the glory of our God!

Christmas and other babies

Christmas was low-key - we just hung out with baby while the rest of the family were elsewhere celebrating. They eventually brought us some of the dinner and cuddled Al while we ate it. I cried while listening to Sixpence None the Richer's "Last Christmas". I thought more about the vulnerability of the Son as a wee baby and the incomprehensible humility of that (diapers! spitup! can't hold his own head up!). I thought of the women of the past and around the world who may have lost their baby in the kind of labor I could have had sans drugs, and the blessing of the knowledge we have of the human body and how to help labor along.

I remembered Eve's "with the help of the Lord I have brought forth a manchild" - not a mere platitude of thanks. She had never seen a baby born before; no experienced mother was available to explain to her how to help her bear the pain and what the process would be like. More and more I wonder if "the help of the Lord" was quite direct and engaged in an embodied fashion of some sort--an incredible mercy in what appears to be the grip of the curse. In Paradise Lost, Eve contemplates killing herself so that she won't spread the curse to other humans born of her, but our God is bigger than mere damage control. Amazing. Still thinking about this - Eve and Mary and the seed of the woman.

You can call her Al

Vital stats:

• DOB: 23 December, 3:26am
  
• 6 lb. 13 oz.
• 19 1/4 in.
• 25 hours of labor beginning around 2am when Ladybug sprang a leak; took 18 hours to get to 4cm and then held there while contractions got stronger and stronger and I got tireder and tireder and Al went nowhere fast; last 6-7 hours were mercifully helped along by drugs with about 45 min. of pushing at the end (because the midwife was slow in getting ready to catch).
  
• copious quantities of light brown hair
• daddy's feet
• long fingers
• can do daddy's raised eyebrow trick
• perhaps right-handed (oh well)

Summer Gardening

I believe it is well known that, in contrast to those of you with green thumbs, I have a black thumb of death. I am very good at killing plants, whether through neglect or through over-watering or what have you. Pancho, however, thrives on yard work, and my mom loves growing things, so between the two of them we ended up with 4 tomato plants, 2 bell peppers, an assortment of lettuces and herbs, a dwarf lemon tree, and a frankenstein-like apple tree with 6 different varities plumbed in, all to nurture into fruitfulness.

The lettuces thrived faster than we could eat them, especially after I went off leafy veg early in the stages of my own nascent fruitfulness. You will notice in the picture that one is actually taller than my head. We have now learned not to plant too many lettuces, and that they love the spot right next to the apple tree, but aren't too keen on being on the back porch step. So I didn't manage to kill off these hardy little guys, but that's largely because the sprinkler system seemed to give them everything they could ever want.

Our other success was the tomatoes, which apparently thrive whether you neglect them or shower them with care. We were pretty chuffed when they just seemed to spring up without much help, and we glowed with excitement when we saw those first glimmers of ruby red.

Then, they started taking over the path and growing taller than me standing up. (You can't really see this, since the vines got so heavy they plunged back to the ground or looped around each other.) If you walked along the path, you inevitably were tinged with a slight shade of chartreuse and emerged faintly scented with tomato. I would have stripes of color on my arms and legs pretty much every time. I learned quickly not to walk back there with khaki pedal pushers on.

Given the bumper harvest, I'm thinking next year we'll stick with 1-2 plants, instead of 4. I'm running out of ideas for what to do with so many tomatoes! This morning, I took a boxful and am now slow-cooking and also oven-drying them all. Although people say that you can just individually freeze cherry tomatoes, I don't quite have the freezer space for that, so I thought taking some of the water out via drying would help. Apparently, I can put the results into a jar with olive oil and herbed vinegar or (for longer storage) in an airtight container and into the freezer. So that's why, on what promises to be a hot day, I am running my oven on the lowest possible temperature and why the slow cooker was banished to the dining room floor.

And I still have another box left...and more coming...

And lest you think that the black thumb of death has found new life, let me assure you that I have substantially weakened (if not killed) two expensive golf-ball plants, and the lemon tree is sick.

Mitigated Triumph, that is

Ah, the espresso battles are not yet over. Some sort of hidden variable was at play, and I cannot yet with consistency make myself an espresso of which I can be proud.

*sigh*

That said, I think I'm on to something. Our tap water is very cold, and I think that may be influencing the time that it takes for the water to come up to the right temperature for the espresso ooze to do its magic, Bialetti-style. Yesterday afternoon met with more success, as I pre-warmed the water chamber a bit before adding the water. Well, actually, I filled it with near boiling water and then nearly burnt my hand. Yes...aluminum definitely conducts heat very well. I then decided merely "warming" and not raising the pot to scalding temperatures, was sufficient.

Anyways here are the results. I was feeling very continental yesterday, and so added the rolled chocolate wafer and book to my espresso experience. This, my friends, is an espresso macchiato, an espresso "stained" or "marked" with foamed milk. Unlike the latte macchiato, there is little hot milk, so the charm of the drink lies in the concentrated blast of rich, dark espresso. And in the cute white and blue tablecloth...