Scatter-brained Entries March 2004 Nothing seems to be happening and yet I've got no time left

	This is a collapsible baby gym who's twin caused my airport hassle

	Our bedroom with new drapes. I swear both the drapes and the bedsheets are navy blue, not black.

March 2
A distinctly summer weather has started. Grandmother is leaving. The Committee for the Departure of the Grandmother consists of yours truly and Tommy. Tom sleeps on our way to the airport. Tom even stays asleep when we queue up in a (wrong) line to Delta Airlines; he keeps sleeping in a second-try line to Lufthansa. He sleeps through my run-around with a present for the future baby of my favorite cousin. A lad at a baggage counter promises to accept this piece without a surcharge, though he recommends having it wrapped to fend off filth. During wrapping two men emerge from the airport recesses, who proclaim that they rule the baggage caves and that this collapsible gym would interfere with their conveyors and why did I not demand a box for it. I respond sarcastically that I would really appreciate having been told this before I had this unfortunate toy wrapped for five dollars. The baggage cave rulers shrug and vanish. My wrapping assistant refuses to accept those five dollars and wishes me a pleasant trip. Tom remains asleep. Farewell bidding with grandmother ensues -- Tom sleeps right through it. I reckon that as a member of the Committee for the Departure of the Grandmother, he did not prove useful at all. He shall, for the next week, "compensate" for his excessive airport sleeping. It's all my fault anyway: suddenly he must abide with his boring mother as his singular source of entertainment -- and so he screams and screams and screams.

March 3
We are to deal with a government office to apply for Tom's passport. Our choices are, post office, or town hall in The Cats. I refuse to commune with a postal establishment if possible; off we go to Los Gatos. Our selection proves eminently correct -- we appear to be the only customers at the time, and receive friendly attention. Tom seduces tender-hearted female clerks by his cute baby routine, everything goes chop-chop.

March 5
Advancing spring reveals an elementary problem with our bedroom. Since last fall we own a beautiful patio door leading to our back yard, which has replaced the original prison cell-like window, making the room light and airy. Alas, our bedroom faces east; never mind us, we can adapt, but Tommy insists on not sleeping when it's a bright day; entertainment for the child is in order then. We concoct a conspiracy and purchase navy blue drapes. I don't know how much they affect Tom, yet now I myself sleep very tight in the morning. Thus the drapes succeed.

	Sid and Tom at Point Reyes

	Landscape at Point Reyes reminds us somewhat of northern Europe; Carol recalls England, I think of Norway.

March 11
For two week it has been horribly hot. I take Tommy out on our regular late morning stroll, but I give up after ten minutes -- I am sweating, Tommy is sweating, and screaming, too. I visit with Petra and little Lucas, having not seen them for a long time and knowing that their place is colder and one can walk in shade around their house; primarily, though, I hope to coax Petra to lend me their baby car seat. Tommy's old seat has become desperately small, Luke's seat seemed larger and they can't fit in it either, hence they don't need it. Unfortunately, that seat is not really larger, it is merely upholstered in a different way, with fewer belts. Consequently, I abandon my former hope that we could take it into an airplane two months from now -- by then, Tommy will have outgrown them both.

March 13
My Hippo has been rumbling for several weeks something to the effect of hippos requiring to be outed. After complicated planning we depart for Point Reyes. This time we elect to hike far from the lighthouse, along Abbotts Lagoon to a beach. Tommy gathers public attention in his fashionable summer hat. Hippo carrying Tom wheezes. It feels colder at the ocean and I apply another layer on my baby. He falls asleep, tired by the strong coastal air. I have the impression that we spend most of the time during our trip, feeding our offspring, yet Tom demands another serving before we reach a traffic jam to Golden Gate bridge on our way back. We cave in and feed him again, still 60 miles from home.

	Coastal air must be very strong.

	Abbotts Lagoon present self in a very strange light.

March 20
Tommy's American passport has arrived. We can now buy tickets for our trip to Europe!!! My friend Paula with her husband Radek come to visit us tonight. We have hard time covering all events since we met last time; Paula also carries an unborn baby girl, due by early June, and our usual topics extend into babies. Tommy demonstrates his true nature and as is his habit, accompanies our dinner with much squealing. I am not really sure whether fear of more acoustic expressions by our son, is actually the main reason why our visitors leave on Sunday morning, without even having a breakfast.

March 21
It would seem that Hippo's outing was insufficient. On my birthday I receive a book Care and Proper Feeding of Husbands (and I thought that my virtual manual on how to care for Hippos, which says that a hippo must be fed and outed frequently, was completely hypothetical).

March 22
Tom performs a "meresyev" (named after a Soviet pilot shot down during WW2 who broke his legs and crawled for miles back to his troops) -- he drags his legs behind, but somehow he manages to inch about a foot forward. He achieves it mostly by kicking off some stable object -- from his gym struts or from his mom. He eventually forgets one of his hands under his belly and it all ends in an angry fit, and in salivating over the whole surrounding area.
It gets colder outside now, and a little more bearable. We can return to our daily walks.

	So I attempted to buy Tommy a BLUE nightgown. Radek exclaimed that Tom looks in it as if he just escaped from Alcatraz...

	Our baby can easily deal with the case of his mother being "out of order"...

March 27
I dress my offspring at noon and hand him over to Sid. Then I go to bed. At two thirty I am up and fully immersed in catastrophic scenarios regarding what could have happened during my hundred and fifty minutes of "loss of consciousness" to my poor baby (I am mostly alarmed that Tom would not have, by means of hungry screaming, forced Sid to retreat back home). Eventually I can't hold back anymore and call Hippo on the cell phone. He is surprised, of course, a few hundred yards from home, pumping gas. Tonight I drag Sid to Babies-R-Us to check out new child seats. Toms head touches the edge of his current seat, I definitely part from the idea that it could last him till our Euro trip. Naturally the one seat we like is out of stock. Just as some five more things we wanted. There's no point shopping during a weekend.

March 28
My social life expands! This time we entertain Ivana and Aaron. Sid barbecues marinated prawns. Thus prepared they taste so good that I endure the fact that they look like thick worms with tiny legs, and eat them. Tommy sits with us under our back yard sunshade, lounging in his rocking chair, and if he did not throw an angry fit in the last twenty minutes, I'd label him an exceptionally sociable baby. This way he may have contraceptive effect on other couples.

March 29
Tommy is starving. So much that he gnaws me literally bloody. This must taste rather bad, and he resolutely avoids breast feeding for two more days, while fixating his beloved milk bottles with enamorated looks. I fear that my nursing days are ultimately over. Our living food processor weighs well over fifteen pounds, which means he consumes about three pints of milk daily. It would seem that my facilities can't keep up anymore.

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