b l o g o s

conferencing with baby (after)

RSA remains something of a blur--of handshaking, of elevator waiting, of waving, of hurrying, of attempts to extract myself from welcome greetings and to do so with some modicum of grace. With the possible exception of the nonhuman rhetorics panel, I feel like I was barely able to glide across the surface of the conference.

One of the authors in (I believe) Mama PhD--or maybe I read it on the  blog by the same name--mentions the enthusiastic reception of babies by senior men colleagues. At RSA I noticed this phenomenon too. It was fun to watch them get all googly-eyed. Really everyone was super nice about the bambino, but more than one generationally senior man pulled me aside to tell me that "this" [gesturing or referring to N] was "important work."

N also became the occasion to meet and chat with other conferencing mothers, many of whom left their children at home because they (the babies) are a little older. One such woman wanted to hold N because she left her baby at home for the first time. Others told me eye-popping stories about conferencing with babies when they were graduate students. I traded birth stories with my peer colleague KH and provided cell-phone pictures on request.

These were all new ways of relating for me and added a new dimension to my conference. The Bean pulled me away from usual conference habits, some good some bad. For example, since there isn't much to do in a hotel room with a sleeping baby, I slept really really well, and we ordered LOTS of room service, whereas I typically spend conferences sleep deprived and in large groups looking for food. More than once I had to excuse myself from conversations people struck up while I was making my way toward--or waiting for--an elevator to rush up and feed N (see previous post about what happened to the expressed milk). Relatedly, I had to check my phone for texts and messages more frequently than I would have liked, and I missed more than JM would have liked (sorry honey!). 

All of this kept me at the surface, and barely. Even so, to go from talking about dolphins and lions in ancient texts to N grinning in her little monkey t-shirt was awesome in its own not-so-surfacy way.

conferencing with baby (before)

N and JM will be coming with me to RSA in Minneapolis this weekend. (JM was an easy bribe--all it took was a pair of Twins tickets and a post-semester conference date.) Just today I got my two papers into near-final form, but for the tinkering after I practice delivering them. Getting the papers finished with a 3.5 month old was probably a good preview of what it will be like to conference with a 3.5 month old: it took lots of advance planning and work, and it is a bit more challenging. No more seat-of-pantsing it. I have to know exactly what sort of transportation we're going to take, where N will sleep, and we have to make sure we can carry our bags in addition to the kiddio. Jada, N and I test-rode N's new reclining umbrella stroller around the neighborhood today with minimal crying (she can put up quite a fuss in her sedan-sized baby jogger, so this was good).

By necessity, I've even started packing, an astonishing development. Pre-baby, that would wait until the day before or the day of my flight. I can't afford to do that now, so I have laid out some of the clothes I'm taking and have done exactly one shitload of laundry (am washing a couple of key blankets and toys for N right now). I bought a huge bag at TJ Maxx this past weekend that is so ugly it's almost cute, and it should fit said blankets and toys as well as my conference folders and shit. I'll probably leave the laptop behind (a first) and rely on my phone for email, facebook, and (less likely) blogging. I'm making extra (ahem) food this week so that N will have plenty on Saturday, my busy conference day, with back-to-back panels that afternoon. Having JM and The Bean (as we call her) in the conference hotel will be nice, though, because I'll be able to pop up and spell JM if need be. 

After traveling with N alone a couple weekends ago (back to Urbana for graduation), I feel a bit more confident than I would were this our first trip. Besides, there will be two of us, and I will be able to shower without worrying that Nora will suddenly learn how to roll over, and that she will roll over 10 times, over the edge of the King-sized bed and land on the floor. And of course I bought a book about traveling with babies that I have not managed to find time to read--maybe I'll bring it along to my hair appointment tomorrow.

Saturday will be devoted to the conference and meetings, and apart from the luncheon, I'm hoping to spend most of Sunday with JM and N. N likes to look at paintings, so we're thinking a museum might be a good idea, and I discovered in our stopoff in Columbus she also likes being carried on city sidewalks, so the baby carrier will get some action too. I look forward to introducing the Bean to a big Midwestern city and JM and I are excited to see more of downtown Minneapolis ourselves. That is if we can bring ourselves to breathe.

lady goo goo

I've got other, more private spaces where I'm posting pictures and videos of the new (now not so new!) baby, but sometimes there might well be baby-related spillage of the discursive variety onto blogos. And of course there is the whippet-baby combo in the upper left. Given that both JM and I are in the business of language, and that I have written about imitation as a means of learning, blogos seems the appropriate place to document what happened today.

What happened is this: the baby imitated us both when we said "goo goo" to her. Now, she is only nine weeks and some change, so we were both in turn rather startled when she did this. She did it with JM first while he was changing her diaper. Thinking it was a fluke, he repeated the experiment again and again. Then he brought her down to me and told me that I might think he was crazy, but that she just imitated him saying goo goo. So I tried it, and she did it with me too. We would of course go crazy praising her when she did it, which made her smile and giggle as if our words were tickling her. Beyond the praise, we went back and forth goo-gooing like eight or nine more times until she got tired and started to squeawk (that's my new word for one stripe of noises she makes). But pre-squeawk she was very definitely saying "goo goo."

Bananas.