Nearly 3-Year Old Maeve on Girl’s Roles

First page of Oliver Button Is A Sissy – photo via Where the Bear Rugs Are Still Growling

This morning I was reading Tomie diPaola’s book Oliver Button Is A Sissy with my nearly 3-year old daughter Maeve. It’s a sweet poignant 1979 kids book that takes on some gender roles. We’ve read it dozens of times. The opening page states that “Oliver… didn’t like to things that boys are supposed to do.”

I asked Maeve what thought little girls are supposed to do. She thought about it a bit, then responded that little girls are supposed to “sit up straight” especially “when watching Madagascar” (one of her preferred videos these days.)

So it would seem that she’s not all that consciously aware of gender roles. She knows that she and mommy are girls, and that daddy and Silvio, next door, are boys. But, mercifully, she’s not so clear on outdated ideas of what girls are supposed to do.

The neighborhood posse: Silvio, Maeve and Juliana playing cardboard swords earlier this month

(I haven’t posted many daddy blogs lately – apologies. I was trying to think about doing big updates like 2015 in review, but then I don’t get around to it. So I think it’s going to be easier to post short stuff like this, hopefully more frequently… we’ll see.)

My Miscarriage Story

I am posting my story about miscarrying because I knew so little about miscarriage before I had one. There are some eloquent stories people have posted online but too few. It seems that it is only after you have one that you learn that many of your friends have also had one or more.

Now that its happened to me I cannot believe that I did not know more about it and want to do what I can to shed light on it. Please be aware that parts of my story are graphic. It is a profoundly complex and difficult (physically and emotionally) experience.  It is common (20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage) and yet no one talks about it. I am writing as a woman who had a baby before having a miscarriage, which I can only imagine is way easier than miscarrying before completing a healthy pregnancy.

I wrote much of this soon after the miscarriage but it has taken me months to complete it. I have been surprised at how hard it has been to get over this loss. I thought I wasn’t attached to this baby. I was. Family and friends soon forgot about the loss and I have felt very sad and alone and isolated. My husband’s response has been different that mine and it has been hard on our relationship. Talking with other women who have miscarried has been helpful.

At 14 weeks my husband and I learned that our pregnancy was “not healthy”. We were surprise because at that point because we had made it to the 2nd trimester and I had been feeling so nauseous and tired we thought we were in the clear. We went for a routine ultrasound Friday morning and there was no baby visible. The doctor said I could get a D&C or go home and wait to miscarry naturally. She said if I “bled like a hose for more than an hour” I should go to the ER.

Somehow I thought that most miscarriages were like heavy periods (some are) that the body quasi-dissolved all the tissue and you just bled a lot. I started spotting later that day. Saturday night I began reading online about miscarriage and was surprised to find many stories of miscarriages around 14 weeks that talked about it as birth.  Sunday morning around 5am I started having waves of intense cramps which were contractions.

My thoughts and feelings were all over the place shock and numbness. What was I doing when my fetus was passing out of its short life? How could I have been so detached from my fetus? When I was pregnant I was very worried about how I was going to manage caring for two young ones. The challenge and vulnerability of having two children seemed so much larger that having one. I felt guilty about having felt that way.  I didn’t feel relieved at all. I dearly wished I was still pregnant. Wished I knew even one detail about who this person might have been. In the last weeks I had started imagining this baby more and being very pregnant in the summer and thinking about names and bought some maternity clothes. I thought about how given our advanced ages this may have been our last chance. 

19-Month-Old Maeve Is A Climber

Maeve climbing at Shatto Park

I’ve been meaning to post some recent images of our daughter… but between work and parenting and doing a little art and writing about comics on the side, I don’t post often enough. Maeve is 20 months old, and, of course, growing and changing daily. Over the past couple months it seems like she’s been more active, more coordinated and more fearless about climbing up things, especially at the park. 

Photoshoot by the L.A. River, September 2014

Our family at the Los Angeles River, September 2014, photo by Matt Grashaw

I never got around to posting these excellent photos we took last year – September 30, 2014. Carrie used them for our holiday cars last December. The photographer is Matt Grashaw, who we met on a Glendale bakery walk hosted by Walk Bike Glendale. He is great, and highly recommended. (We just did another shoot with him, and I’ll post some more photos soon.)

September 2014

September 2014

More pictures after the jump. 

Maeve’s First 10 Words, Recent Photos

Maeve riding on my back on our hike in the Santa Monica Mountains about a month ago. Photo by Carrie

Our daughter Maeve is 15 months old now. Going to post a fairly quick sort-of scrapbook post here to get down what she’s up to at this age.

She’s talking… I think she speaks about 10 words which she started using in roughly this order:

• mama/mom,
• dada/daddy,
• dog [which is kind of “dah”],
• bye,
• no,
• yah,
• ball [which is kind of “bah”],
• baby [which is kind of “bay”],
• yum [which she says num-num-num which means generally postitive comment on eating/food]
• chick [my wife Carrie heard this, I didn’t – and it’s in the baby chicken sense – from the book Barnyard Dance, one of her favorites]

So maybe it’s a few less than ten? She also uses gestures – pointing  a lot, more-or-less clapping her hands (at least making that motion.) She raises both arms toward us to ask “pick me up.” She understands a lot more: shoes, nose, chin, kiss, diaper, bath, potty, etc.

She was pushing around this toy, really, then stopped to pose for the photo.

She’s definitely mobile

A Letter to My Daughter Maeve on Her First Birthday

You and me today – just a couple weeks after you turned one

July 30, 2014

Precious awesome little person! My daughter Maeve,

I love you and I love being with you. So much I can feel it in every cell. As I look back at pictures I am struck with how much you have grown and learned in one year. So much more than you will ever grow in one year again. It seems to have gone so fast and its an interesting experience to love someone who is changing so much – its hard to not want it to go slower. You have been so continuously occupied with becoming you I feel like I have been able to perceive only a part of it.

Just a few weeks after you were born

Your birth went very well. You, your dad and I were at home surrounded by great people and there was lots of family near by eagerly waiting to meet you. Once labor started it ramped up quickly and the process was purely intuitive. We did great. And when you came out it was a truly amazing moment. There YOU were and we were so happy.

I want to write to you at your birthday every year about the proceeding year and some of the things you or we did and hope that you enjoy reading these letters in the future.

Maeve’s First Birthday, Three Generations of First Birthday Photos

Three generations of first birthdays: left to right: Susan Palmer, Carrie Lincourt, and Maeve Linton Lincourt. Larger versions of these photos below.

Our daughter Maeve turned one this week. Carrie and I were pretty skeptical about one-year-old’s birthday parties. We’ve seen more than one child have a crying melt-down when there are a dozen-plus older kids running around and lots of noise and attention and confusion. So we opted for a low-key celebration at Maeve’s grandfather’s home in Orange County. Just a handful of family members. Here’s a video of the occasion. We’re sure that there will be bigger birthday celebrations in Maeve’s future.

Maeve turned one on July 30th. She’s doing well. Very healthy. She walks 2-5 steps here and there, but mostly she’s crawling, and frequently cruising holding onto tables, chairs, our legs, and other stuff. She’s saying mama, maaaaaaah!, and dada, too.

Joe’s Very Own Birth Announcement

“STORK HEIR-LINES announce” Front cover for Joseph Russell Linton’s birth announcement

In preparation for moving back to Los Angeles (soon, but no definite date yet), we’ve been going through my boxes, piles, files, racks, shelves, drawers of stuff, stuff and stuff. Sorting some things, tossing some, giving some things away. I came across my very own birth announcement. I’ve posted pictures of the front (above) and the inside (below.)

Baby Maeve at Ten Weeks: First Hike

Carrie, Maeve and Joe on the Bearfort Ridge Trail yesterday

Another brief late entry… mostly to get some photographs posted to share with friends and family.

Baby Maeve passed the ten-week mark on Tuesday, a couple days ago. She’s doing well. Sleeping a lot, nursing, pooping, crying, smiling, potato-chip-ping on her tummy, and more.

We’ve been going into NYC a few times, including a trip to the Whitney Museum last Friday, but the big new activity was Maeve’s first hike. We’re car-sitting for Maeve’s uncle Bob, so we took a drive (Maeve’s second time ever in a car) out to Bearfort Mountain, located in Abram S. Hewitt State Forest – in northern New Jersey, near the New York State border.

Baby Maeve at Nine Weeks: Two-Month Check-Up, Photos

My sweet wife Carrie and my great 2-month-old daughter Maeve yesterday

I’ve been a bit under the weather this week – nothing serious – but getting The Weekly Maeve out a whole day late. I am working on a longer entry about a lot of things that we’re not doing… but that’s not ready, so I am just going to post the results of Maeve’s latest visit to the pediatrician… and, of course, photos!