The Panoptiblog

Good lord, we’re ten days into 2010 and I haven’t posted yet. I suppose that means saying “Post more on Panoptiblog” was on my New Year’s Resolutions would ring hollow…

Well, we’ve been settling in with little Z, and of course there’s more to say about getting a new baby home than I’m going to write at the moment. The highlights:

• We were told at her first doctor’s appointment, when she was about four-and-a-half days old, that she was “advanced.” That’s right. She was already holding her head up, and actually had been for a couple of days. Also followed things with her eyes, and nailed her hearing test. Booyah. Already sent away for her Mensa form.
• Been taking some paternity leave from school, which is good, considering that day after day of driving to CR on this little sleep, in the weather we’ve had lately, might be dangerous.
• She’s eating well, and has already gained more weight than the doctor wanted. Jaundice? Not this baby.
• She’s wearing this harness, because she has hip dysplasia. Basically, when she was born her legs could be easily popped in and out of her hips. So she’s got to wear the harness for probably six weeks, during which time the sockets will grow around the ball joints. It keeps her in what Jen and I lovingly refer to as “the froggy position.” It’s not a big deal; 95+% of kids are fine later on. It does add a degree of difficulty to diaper changes, which does not matter, because we have mad diaper-changing skills.
• Not to undermine that last point, but we have already been pooped and peed on more than my last two children combined. I was going to keep some kind of unofficial tally between the two of us–see who was getting the worse end of things, so to speak–but we lost count too quickly. I chalk this up as Zelda’s excellent comic timing.
• Reaction to the name has been interesting, and has included more uninvited praise than we expected. There were several reasons we found it appealing: (1) Zelda Fitzgerald was a fascinating cultural, literary, and (later) feminist figure; (2) we both had fond memories of playing The Legend of Zelda back in the ’80s; (3) it’s old-world Jewish; and (4) it sounds cool. That said, we expected lame reactions, like “Wow, that’s really different,” or “That’s really… unique.” These being euphemisms for “fucking weird.” I have an extremely polite friend who uses the word “interesting” to mean, “completely fucked up,” and we expected to hear what an interesting selection Zelda Pearl was. And we’ve had some of that. But there have been far more people enthusiastically endorsing the choice than we’d anticipated, and from all the right people, if you know what I mean. So that’s nice. We’ve had no second thoughts.
• Coincidentally, what’s the new meme on Facebook? (No, not the one where women and girls post their bra color, thanks but no thanks.) Apparently it’s some survey about how original your name is, and therefore how much credit your parents deserve for naming you that. This only emboldens us.

Soon I’ll do a post about the other things that have escaped my notice in this space in the last couple of weeks. Maybe in a couple of hours, when I’m up again.