You may recall that when we brought the Burt Squirt home from the hospital, Miss Dorian Gray was none too pleased. Mr. Burt was hissed at any time he crossed her path, while I was ignored. As was Liam.

If the contents of my purse the other day are any indication, I am forgiven.

I am referring, of course, to the stuffed giraffe lying on top of my coupon organizer. I went to grab my cell phone to charge, and found him, too. He’s not a baby toy, he’s one of Dorrie’s toys–her oldest and favorite, in fact. Many a morning Mr. Burt and I’ve emerged from our bedroom to find it outside the door. Friends with cats inform me this is the equivalent of an outdoor cat presenting her master with her kill. Really, I’m very touched. And I wonder if this is Dorrie’s way of asking me to go out less often and pay more attention to her instead of the Chubby Loud One.

What Ms. Gray needs to realize is that the Chubby Loud One would love nothing better than to lavish her with all the attention and affection she desires. As is proven in the little buddy comedy that unfolded here yesterday. I shall not narrate, since sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words–and is quicker for a busy mom to post, too!

I think it’s going well, don’t you?

One of the more unexpectedly overwhelming parts of becoming a parent is the task of creating your baby registry. You walk into Babies R Us and are barraged by thousands of products for babies, all of them claiming to be must-haves. Even the lists of “essentials” are designed to sell more stuff.

Recently an expectant friend asked me what items I absolutely could not care for the Burt Squirt without. At the moment the question caught me off guard, but after mulling over it, I’ve come up with my top five must-haves.

Remember, these are my favorite things that work for my baby. Your baby might have entirely different tastes. And if there’s anything I’ve learned in my first six months of motherhood, it’s that babies are like Lolcats: they don’t hesitate to say, “DO NOT WANT!” and it’s impossible to force anything a baby DOES NOT WANT on him.

Which is why Babies R Us sells thousands of items, most of which parents will buy in the hope that at least one of them will make childcare a little easier.

Bag Balm

Developed by farmers to treat chapped cow udders, Bag Balm is not only more effective than Desitin at treating the mother of all diaper rashes, it’s also far more affordable than the more potent creams, such as Bourdeaux’s Butt Paste. I paid $12.99 for Bag Balm at a local pharmacy (though Google tells me you can get it for less) when the Burt Squirt was about three weeks old; five months later we still haven’t used it all–and that’s with a liberal smear up the butt crack every diaper change. (In our house, that’s 6-8 diaper changes a day, 31 days a month, for 5 months…I’ll let you do the math.)

I’ve been told that Bag Balm also works for mommies experiencing discomfort from breastfeeding. Though I don’t think I’d recommend treating lady parts from the same jar used on baby bottoms (however cute they may be)!

Also, if you do put it to your own use, you might want to forget it was developed by farmers to treat chapped cow udders…

bébéPOD

The Burt Squirt has nearly outgrown his bébéPOD–a source of much sorrow in our household, as the bébéPOD allows Mr. Burt and me to eat dinner without having to hold a baby who wants to be sitting up and a part of the action like a big boy. It may seem like one of those superfluous purchases–why not just pop him in a high chair, swing, or bouncy seat?–but the Burt Squirt won’t sit in any of those for the duration of a meal. I think it’s because they require him to be strapped in, while the bébéPOD allows him to sit up free of restraint.

There’s a similar product on the market called the Bumbo, and honestly I’m not sure one is superior to the other. We chose the bébéPOD over the Bumbo because the wider leg holes and all-around less restrictive design accommodate our chunky child; he would have outgrown a Bumbo before he was two months old.

A tip: Search children’s consignment shops or craigslist instead of buying new. The “plus” version with the tray retails for around $50, but we picked ours up sans tray for $15. Later we decided we wanted the tray and purchased one at Babies R Us for around $12. (Alas and alack, it didn’t come with one of the adorable kiwi placemats.) But you can find the ones with trays used, too.

Boppy

Of course you can breastfeed without a nursing pillow, or you can use any old pillow to give your baby the boost he or she needs to get to the goods. I never nurse without a pillow because, at not quite six months, the Burt Squirt weighs over 18 pounds and just about breaks my arms during nursing sessions that can last up to half an hour. And I don’t use any old pillow because I find it awkward.

A Boppy fits around my waist to provide a comfortable and stable prop for nursing. And did I mention it frees up your hands? You wouldn’t know it from the pictures of nursing mothers cuddling their babies (making me wonder why they’re bothering with a Boppy at all), but you really can do it hands-free! The Burt Squirt actually prefers I nurse him hands-free; he has a conniption if I touch his head while he’s eating, which eliminates a couple of nursing holds.

Breastfeeding eats up (heh) a ton of time, especially in the beginning when your baby is learning how to nurse. Why not reclaim some of that time for yourself? Thanks to my Boppy, I’ve been able to eat dinner while nursing (even at a table, with friends and family), read books, play board games, and use my computer. If I weren’t able to do these things, I’d have completely lost my mind somewhere around day one of motherhood. It’s nice to be able to stay sane–and retain a semblance of the woman I was BBS (Before Burt Squirt)–while still doing the best thing for my baby.

Exersaucer

God bless the person who invented the Exersaucer, without which we would never eat a home-cooked meal or have clean toilets. The Burt Squirt is too big for his britches and could stand up for hours, but he’s not yet able to do that without Mommy or Daddy holding on to him. We do, of course, but sometimes you’ve just got to let go of your kid for a few minutes so you can fix yourself a sandwich or get dressed.

There are lots of different Exersaucers that feature a variety of activities. When choosing, consider ones with fewer electronic components and more activities–things to grab, spin, chew on, pull, pick up, turn, flip, shake, rattle. Also, get an Exersaucer that fits your baby. We tried one Exersaucer when the Burt Squirt was around three months old, and his arms were too short to reach out for any of the toys on the tray portion–which was a bit of a problem because it was only a tray portion! We went with this model because of there were plenty of toys within arm’s reach (also, because expectant friends offered to let us borrow it till their twins are old enough to use it), and the rest he grew into over time.  The Exersaucer has actually been a fun way to track the Burt Squirt’s growth, and nothing makes you feel prouder as a parent than seeing how proud he is whenever he can finally reach that toy he’s been trying to get for a few weeks.

Except maybe when you manage to clean a kitchen and bathroom and dust your living room while your baby “Exersauces” for a solid 40 minutes.

Vtech Move and Crawl Ball

When we received this as a baby shower gift I was a little skeptical, but the Move and Crawl ball has turned out to be one of our favorite baby toys. In fact it was the first toy that really engaged the Burt Squirt, as, I’ll remind you, he thinks he’s a bigger boy than he is.  He was never a fan of lying on his back reaching for dangling toys in his baby gym, and, when he began to sit unassisted at a little before four months, the ball provided something easy to play with in an upright position. I think it actually helped develop his sense of balance and gave him some core strength.

The other thing I love about the Move and Crawl Ball is that, unlike a lot of other baby toys, the buttons respond readily to those uncoordinated, light baby finger touches. If a baby can’t make something work, he’ll quickly lose interest, but the Burt Squirt’s ability to interact with his ball keeps him entertained pretty much until the cat runs into his field of vision and distracts him. But even Mommy can’t compete with the cat…

Mommy (and Daddy) readers: what are your favorite baby things?

A friend told me that after she had her son, she didn’t get a chance to read till he was well over two years old. Taking inventory of all I’ve read since the Burt Squirt was born on March 1, I came up with ten books. (All novels; the parenting books have been relegated, unopened, to the bottom shelf of my bookcase, where they collect dust, probably forever, or until I donate them to the library or an expectant girlfriend.)

Two books a month is a fine average even if I weren’t a mom, but I’d never have managed to read one book in five months if Mr. Burt hadn’t given me a Sony Pocket Reader for our sixth wedding anniversary.  The only time I get to read is when I’m nursing, and it’s not easy to hold a book and turn pages while wrangling a squirming baby. An ebook reader, however, requires only one free hand.   I’ve grown so accustomed to reading this way that I don’t see myself ever going back to print books, with the exception of when I want to take a long soak in the bathtub with a book. But where my friend didn’t have a chance to read till her son was two, I don’t foresee myself getting a chance to take a bath till then.

Also, when I use my reader, I feel like I’m in Star Trek.

One intent for my revamped blog has been to post reviews for every book I read, but I’m beginning to get the feeling I won’t get that kind of time for a few years, either. Until then, a blurb and a five star rating system will have to do.

#1: Emma, by Jane Austen

The BBC’s latest adaptation stars Romola Garai, who, along with the rest of the cast, seemed all wrong to me. So I re-read the book and was reassured that yes, the cast of the Kate Beckinsale version feels more like the characters in the book. Which is what I’m supposed to be reviewing.

With its hilariously entangled romances and witty social commentary, Emma reads like a Shakespearean comedy. Its strength, of course, is the heroine Austen set out to write as one “whom no-one but myself will much like,” but it’s the supporting characters you love to hate and hate to love who really make the novel for me.

Rating: 5/5 stars

#2: Mr. Knightley’s Diary, by Amanda Grange

Normally I avoid published Austen fanfiction like the cliché I’m avoiding at the moment, but last Christmas I picked up Colonel Brandon’s Diary on a whim because, well, Colonel Brandon…and I loved it. I don’t feel as strongly about Mr. Knightley’s Diary, through no fault of Ms. Grange; Knightley’s (if I may sound like Mrs. Elton) backstory of managing his estate and dining with friends doesn’t make for the page-turner Brandon’s torrid past love affair, military stint, and duel to the death. It is, however, entertaining to get inside Knightley’s head as he stews over Emma’s fascination with Frank Churchill, and the moment he realizes he’s in love with her is sweetly romantic, if not earth-shattering. A light-hearted, well-written, satisfying love story, and if you like the citizens of Highbury, a nice opportunity to visit them again. (An unexpected but welcome touch is a happy ending for poor Miss Bates.) 

Rating: 4/5 stars

#3: Mr. Darcy’s Diary, by Amanda Grange

If I hadn’t read other Amanda Grange novels, I’d never have picked up published Pride and Prejudice fanfiction, which typically amounts to little more than soft core Darcy porn. Like Ms. Grange’s other books, Mr. Darcy’s Diary keeps true to the spirit of Austen’s work and, in this case, enriches a character who doesn’t do much for me in the original. That’s right ladies: I’ve never been a Darcy fangirl. (Have I mentioned it’s Colonel Brandon who holds my heart?) But Pride and Prejudice from Darcy’s point of view at times left me almost breathless. It also cemented my rather unorthodox opinion that Matthew Macfadyen makes a better Darcy than Colin Firth. *ducks from hurled objects*

Rating: 5/5 stars

#4: A Proper Pursuit, by Lynne Austin

I picked this one up because I was in the mood for something lighthearted and romantic; a young woman choosing between a number of suitors and on the hunt for a runaway mother amid the backdrop of the 1893 World’s Fair seemed to fit the bill: a bit like American Girl all grown up. It started off promisingly enough, with a heroine whose stream-of-conscious internal monologue made me chuckle a la Anne of Green Gables. However, the narrative voice quickly got old as the story failed to move forward—not a bit like Anne of Green Gables. The characters were painted with the broadest of brush strokes, the romantic plot was predictable while the mystery was clumsily constructed and revealed through hasty exposition, and the parts that were meant to be heart-wrenching were cloying and preachy; more than once I felt like the author was attempting, unsuccessfully, to reproduce Christy. (Are you starting to detect a theme of this book trying to be like other, best-selling books?) Still, I did read the whole thing, if only because I wanted to see if all my guesses about the plot were right in the end (which they were). That’s something, I guess?

Rating: 2/5 stars

#5: Persuasion, by Jane Austen

A second chance at love for an older couple who just couldn’t make it work the first time around may be Austen’s best storyline.  Unfortunately, it’s not a very good book. Much of the crucial action happens off-stage, reduced to summarizing narrative. While this stylistic choice highlights the reserve and compliance of the heroine, not actually seeing Anne’s first encounter with Captain Wentworth undercuts the emotional impact that should be present when a woman meets her former fiance, with whom she is still in love, eight years after breaking off their engagement.  It’s the equivalent of Austen recounting the Netherfield ball instead of showing Elizabeth and Darcy’s dance and their glorious UST.  I root for the idea of Anne and Wentworth, but my imagination isn’t captured by characters I feel I know. The character I feel I know best is Anne’s hypochondriac sister, Mary Musgrove, who seems to have more dialogue than all the other characters put together.  (Though I do tend to have a soft spot for Austen’s obnoxious characters.)

The novel does contain my favorite line out of all Austen’s novels, Captain Wentworth’s achingly romantic “you pierce my soul.”  Guh.

Rating: 3/5 stars

#6: Sarah’s Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay

It doesn’t sound quite right to say you enjoy Holocaust novels or are a fan of them, so I’ll instead say I read a lot of them. Sarah’s Key introduced me to the tragedy of the French expulsion of Jews, which was carried out not by the occupying Nazi soldiers, but by the French police force. The narrative alternates between Sarah and her parents’ horrifying arrest and deportation while a little brother is left behind, and Julia, a journalist who discovers Sarah’s story while researching an assignment on the 60th anniversary of the French Holocaust. Frankly, I could have lived without the Julia storyline, which detracts from Sarah’s story with that of a rather unsympathetic, navel-gazing character dealing with a crumbling marriage and surprise middle-age pregnancy. I did appreciate how the Holocaust played as a background for an anti-abortion tale, but the two stories simply lack the cohesion and thematic focus to bring them together in a satisfying conclusion.

Rating: 3/5 stars.

7: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford

This is the epic teen romance that should be sweeping the globe: a Chinese boy constantly bullied at his all-white school befriends a Japanese girl just as the US passes legislation to relocate citizens of Japanese descent to internment camps. Who needs sparkly vampires and werewolves to thwart love?

The writing does this beautiful story justice; vivid but not overly wordy description takes you back in time to Seattle, 1942, to the cluttered streets of Chinatown, Japantown, and the desolate internment camps. The characters are people—noble people, flawed people, strong people, weak people, people with motivations, people who act senselessly…Both place and character reminded me of the work of one of my favorite authors, Jhumpa Lahiri, whose stories focus on the differences between first and second generation Indian-Americans. I suppose I’m drawn to themes of cultural and racial identity and generational conflict, all of which charge Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

I learned a lot from this book, too, which is always a plus for a history lover. It goes to show how one-track our history studies in the US are that it had never occurred to me that there would be conflict between the Chinese and Japanese in America, particularly bitter hatred on the part of Chinese immigrants, many of whom left China precisely because of Japan’s relentless assault on China for decades prior to the US entering World War II. Not that racism and cultural discrimination are ever acceptable; but I think of a line from Harry Potter: “the world isn’t made up of good people and Death Eaters.” Life isn’t black and white, and insult, injury, and injustice have a way of leading otherwise good people to participate in evil. Another historical aspect that struck me as particularly poignant was the dignity of the Japanese characters even as their every right as American citizens was violated. I hadn’t realized how the Japanese volunteered to build their own prisons and serve in the US military to prove their loyalty. That same inner doggedness that turned out Kamakaze pilots fueled truly honorable US citizenship. I think all these things struck me because the same issues of race and politics of America in 1942 continue to be eerily relevant in 2010. (Why can’t we ever learn?)

Interestingly, like Sarah’s Key, this novel is also told in an alternating timeline. Only in this time, it works, as we follow the same character in two different decades as the events of the war years continue to haunt him forty years later.

The best book I’ve read in a long time, and one I’m sure to read again and again.

Rating: 5/5 stars

8: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

I think I’m supposed to say something about Alice being a timeless children’s classic, only I’m not sure what kids today think of it. There’s no plot, and a lot of the references to the English court system and poems Victorian schoolchildren would have learned go right over my head, and I have a degree in English lit. Or maybe there’s so much nonsense in it that kids love it, anyway. I guess I’ll just have to read it with the Burt Squirt and report back then.

I do have a soft spot for Alice because I watched the 1985 miniseries hundreds of times as a child. And I can still sing “Jam Tomorrow.”

This time, the Kate Beckinsale version is not the one to watch.

Rating: 5/5 stars

9: Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card

The Ender series is the first sci-fi I’ve ever read, and I’d definitely read more, if that’s any indication of how I like the Ender books. It takes a bit of adjusting to get into Speaker for the Dead, which picks up 3000 years after Ender’s Game and doesn’t answer a lot of questions about what happened after the first book. However, you’re immediately drawn into an intriguing mystery about some creepy aliens on the planet Lusitania, and the plot never loses momentum even when it comes careening to the end.

I do have several fairly major criticisms. The book suffers from a dearth of sympathetic characters. Understandable, when you’re dealing with a dysfunctional family, which is crucial to the plot and, indeed, part of the whole concept of Ender being “Speaker for the Dead”—one who speaks, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about people. Still, it’s a bit of a struggle for me to fully connect with so many characters who either continually make stupid choices (which, granted, facilitate the plot) or are downright unlikeable. Though supercomputer Jane is pretty awesome; not far into the book I decided that her fate, alone, would make or break the book for me. Another problem with the characterization, though, is that Card is guilty of the telling vs. showing crime. Maybe the genre necessitates a bit of foregoing character-driven scenes in favor of plot? Because I so thoroughly enjoy these books, I’m beginning to re-think that hard and fast stance somewhat. Also, when writing a series, a certain amount of summary of events in previous books is inevitable to keep readers up to speed, but Card isn’t an author who does this particularly well. At times the clunky writing pulls me out of the story.

Even with those flaws, I was unable to put down Speaker for the Dead for the two weeks I was reading it. And as soon as I finished, I immediately went on to the next one.

Rating: 4/5 stars

10. Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card

It’s actually a little difficult to review this one, because the fourth book in the Ender quartet, Children of the Mind, is less its own book than a continuation of Xenocide. Still have problems with the unlikeable characters in this one, though a new, fascinating, and sympathetic set is introduced so I have to conclude that Card intentionally wrote the Ribeira family that way and isn’t simply bad at characterization. This one gets awfully expositional as the sci-fi plot unfolds, but again, I think a certain amount of that has to be overlooked in sci-fi. At least it helped me understand what was going on even as my mind was being blown, and made me want to keep reading. And by the end I’d decided that Xenocide was my favorite of the series so far.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Did I mention that all these books-and more-fit on my Sony Pocket Reader?

What have you been reading?

While I’m on the subject of names…

My strengths as a writer do not include a particular talent for naming characters, let’s just establish that from the start. While I despair ever having the knack for it that—oh, anybody else—does, I do try to at least name my characters with significance.

For example, one of my characters in Songs for Piano and Voice is a nosy, tea-and-sympathy-doling, everybody’s mother figure, a la Molly Weasley from the Harry Potter series (who would also be likely to say, “NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU $%&@*!”) so I made her a red-head and named her Ginger.  Perhaps not the best example of creativity or originality, though I like to think of her as an homage.

I’m rather proud of how I named my leading lady, Laura Lovelace—though someone-who-shall-not-be-named tells me this name makes him think of Luna Lovegood and thus “Loony Laura Lovegood.” Any of you other Potterfans who’ve also read Songs think of that? (Also, I’m suddenly alarmingly aware of the number of Potter references I make…)

Back to the point…When I was conceptualizing this character, an Italian aria I sang during my brief stint as a voice major kept coming to mind. It contains the phrase “l’aura che tu respiri, alfin respiro,” which roughly translates to “the air you breathe, at last I breathe.” The name Laura was right there in the text, and it was pretty, feminine, and fit the mental image I had for the character.

There’s a story behind Laura’s last name, too.  Lovelace is a play on words: Laura is the romantic interest for a loveless man. Yeah, kinda lame, I know—but as I said, I don’t claim to be particularly good at this aspect of storytelling.

Which brings us to my male lead, John Marks, and an embarrassing confession: John is my placeholder name whenever I can’t think of a male name and want to move on with a project. In this case, I moved on with a whole novel, and by then had spent so much time with the character that I could never think of him as anything but John. He was supposed to be an ordinary thirtysomething pianist, so why not give him the most common male name in the English language?

John’s last name, Marks, was the product of a little free-writing to get the feel for how he and Laura interact. I wanted them to hit it off right from the start, when they meet at church, with a bit of banter/flirtation. Now I can’t remember the exactly thought process, but I wound up with a page of dialogue in which Laura teases John about sharing his name with John Mark, a nudist in the Bible. I kept the name, as well as the scene, because emotional nakedness had become a theme in the book.

So you see, while my characters may not be the best named in fiction, they are named with significance.

It turns out that John Marks is a more significant name than I imagined.

One night, while playing a game of Beyond Balderdash with friends, I learned that Johnny Marks was the composer behind all the songs in the old 1960s stop-motion Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, among other popular Christmas tunes.

I did not know this when I named my John, and though part of me is tempted to work this into the story somewhere; it would so be John to bemoan the fact that of all the composers, he would share a name of the one responsible for all his (and the author’s) least favorite Christmas songs. But doing that might undermine the wonderful, amusing coincidence of it all, which is one of the things I love most about being a writer.

In this profession, magic happens.  (And that’s not a Harry Potter reference.)

A funny thing happened the other night as Mr. Burt and I enjoyed a few minutes of alone time after the Burt Squirt went to bed.

We sat together on the sofa, and Mr. Burt gave me a back massage because I was hurting from hefting the 17.2 pound Burt Squirt (and, occasionally, his carseat carrier) all day.  As if that wasn’t relaxing enough, our cat, Dorian Gray, who hasn’t been extremely affectionate toward us since we surprised her by returning from four days’ absence with a loud, stinky new pet who gets all our attention, curled up next to me and began to purr.

Always keen to encourage sociable behavior in our kitty (who is, perhaps, too aptly named), Mr. Burt praised her:  “Oh, you’re coming to sit with Lisa! That’s so nice, Dorrie!”

My fingers, which had been stroking Dorrie’s silky black coat, stopped.

“You called me Lisa,” I said at the exact moment as Mr. Burt said, “I called you Lisa.”

For the past five months, when Mr. Burt has spoken about me, it’s mostly been to the Burt Squirt, so he refers to me as Mommy. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I heard him talk about me as Lisa. It was nice to hear (after I realized he was talking about me).  There’s probably something deep and psychological in there about motherhood and identity, but I haven’t had enough sleep for that and mostly I just think it’s funny that Mr. Burt and I realized at the same moment how little opportunity we have to refer to each other by our names instead of by our new roles.

For the record, Mr. Burt has never addressed me as Mommy, nor have I ever addressed him as Daddy.

But perhaps, in light of this incident, we’d better start addressing each other as Lisa and Jeff instead of Tater and Jeffer, or Baby and Honey, lest we forget our names altogether.

On the other hand, this way we’re not in any danger of wearing out our names.