Category Archives: a day in the life of a 80

Tank Girl doula

I’m using Spotify to pump music into my ears as I work. Lots of music is at my fingertips, and I’ve been using free association to choose what to listen to next. I found myself realizing I NEEDED to listen to the Tank Girl soundtrack (as it is my favorite movie of all time, or maybe second to Beetlejuice).

And then I remembered the time I was in the natal ward of the hospital, having given birth the previous day. Our post-partum doula came to meet us and we were chatting. I mentioned my favorite movie was Tank Girl, and she said, “Oh, I have a song on that soundtrack.”

THAT’S RIGHT. My post-partum doula was Tanya Donelly. I was already high on mama hormones, but that was just an awesome feeling. My daughter is being ushered into the world with two awesome parents, and a member of Belly. Perfect.

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That’s Tanya modeling the mobi wrap, and me looking skeptical about the whole thing.

If you think Tanya’s music is great, you should see her be a doula. She rocks.

We make our own holidays

Three-day weekends make traveling with a baby a lot more feasible, because you have more time to enjoy your destination between travelings.

National holidays work against you, though, because everyone else is on the road, train or plane.

Thus, we stayed home for Labor Day weekend, and are using a precious vacation day to make our own three-day weekend now. We’ve scheduled our driving to coincide with 80’s nap (see fig. 1), which works really well for all of us.

We packed and had a leisurely breakfast this morning, hopped in the car, and 80 will wake up in two hours when we get to the ferry (which will take us to an island for maximum vacationing). 80 will be asleep for the boring car ride, then awake for the boat ride. Hopefully this works out as well as I have smugly planned.

Fig. 1

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Mini milestone: quirkiness

We’re a quirky family, humor-wise (not bodies-in-the-basement-wise). Jason and I have a flow of verbal and physical humor that is near-constant.

Stemming from a witnessed moment of this*, we’ve maintained that I stick my nose in Jason’s ear as a way to both
a) prove I’m me, an not a robot facsimile (though that particular jig is up, now that I’m writing this)
b) say that everything is all right

Today, while playing “This Little Piggie”, 80 stuck my toe in her ear. She truly is a Wadsgreen, through and through.

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Mini-milestone: less mouthing

We’ve been saying things like “not in your mouth” and “that’s not food” for so long, I was incredulous today when 80 held up a seed pod at the park and I said “that’s not for 80’s mouth”, and she put it down. Seriously, I’ve been waiting for a part in the clouds for months.

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New blog goal: mini milestones

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I asked 80 to smile for the picture. My aunt Sharon politely dubbed this her “chipmunk face”.

It seems there are these very consistent benchmarks for babies of the same age, and other milestones that can be very different (new teeth, walking). I make a lot of parenting decisions based on other’s experiences, taking the same/different factor into consideration. I’ve decided to try and blog more of these small observations. On a personal level, they’re really only fun for 80’s family, but this data could be interesting to other new parents.

An observation for today: while playing on the front steps of C+A’s house, 80 discovered hauling both herself and her water bottle up an down. She’d be on one step, and put the bottle on the step above or below. It’s a small thing, but it’s related to manipulating both herself and another object on a multi-level surface.