Yesterday was the first real day of spring here in the great frozen north.  It reached the low 60s, with blue skies and a nice, gentle breeze.  I started the morning off right with eating homemade brownies, drinking coffee, and pre-ordering Spent:  Sex, Evolution, & Consumer Behavior, by the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.

 I have been waiting for this book to come out for the past two years.  I first became acquainted with Geoffrey Miller’s work when I taught Animal Behavior for the first time.  Miller takes Darwinian ideas to a whole new testable level, and in his latest book, applies them to consumer behavior.  He skillfully argues that economics are influenced by traits and characteristics that are indicators of fitness, and further proposes that economic choices are often driven by factors  (such as the potential to pass on our genes), of which we are generally unaware.  In one study I assigned to my Animal Behavior students, Miller demonstrated that ovulating lap dancers received more tip money than non-ovulating lap dancers.  If you imagine that this article has a most colorfully-written Methods section, you are correct.  It describes the strip club from which study participants were recruited in agonizingly straightforward detail.  At any rate, I think his academic papers and books are provocative and interesting, although they are merely recapitulating (albeit it in a more scientific way), ideas similar to those espoused by the likes of Nietzsche regarding art and other exhibitions of culture as fitness indicators.

I am digressing wildly here—the point is that my day was pretty much made at 8:30 AM when I discovered that Geoffrey Miller’s book is finally about to be released to the masses.  Once we got our ducks in a row, we loaded Holden into the car and drove to Shelburne Farms to visit the sugarhouse and sugarbushes.  We got to take Holden on a horse-drawn wagon ride through the sugarbushes to see the intravenous taps that drain the tree sap into large reservoirs that collect this “liquid gold” for further processing in the sugarhouse.  Here we are, enjoying our tour of the woods during our wagon ride:

The sap is considered liquid gold because it takes 30-40 gallons of sap to produce a single gallon of maple syrup.  This surely explains why maple syrup is so expensive!  Here is a precious drop of sap being collected in a bucket attached to the tree:

Shelburne Farms is believed to be the first sugaring operation in the United States.  While we were there, we sampled some sugar on snow, which is maple syrup heated to a high temperature, then poured onto snow so that it hardens and caramelizes quickly.  It was yummy!  We also had a little mini-picnic with Holden on top of a hill overlooking the landscape.  It was beautiful!  

After our trip to the sugarhouse was complete, we went to Bistro Sauce in Shelburne and enjoyed a really fabulous lunch.  I hope that yesterday is a good indication of how the rest of our spring and summer will unfold.

For the full set of sugaring season pictures, click here.

I gave Holden his first haircut earlier this week.  In reality, it was more of a trim than an actual haircut.  His hair was beginning to get long in the front and on the sides.  So I waited until he was up fresh from a nice, long nap (a rare occasion indeed), and I seated him in his booster seat, supplying him with a mountain of Cheerios to keep him busy.  I took a wet washcloth and dampened his hair, and I cut the long ends of his hair above both ears and along his forehead.  He was remarkably cooperative.  And here is the end result…quite a handsome young man, eh?

Holden had his 9-month appointment earlier this week.  His growth has slowed way down.  He’s 21 lbs. 14.5 oz (79th percentile for weight) and 29 inches long (67th percentile for height).  The fluid is almost gone from his ears after persisting for over a month following his ear infection.  No signs of infection this time, though, which is also great news.  He is healthy but we MUST do something about his sleep (or lack thereof).  He does not like to eat during the day for fear of missing something more interesting or more important, so he concentrates his feedings at night.  Additionally, Holden went from feeding every hour or so during the day to only feeding once every 4-5 hours during the day.  This change in his feeding habits happened almost overnight.  The result is that my body hasn’t had a chance to adjust its milk production and I have had two episodes of clogged ducts, while narrowly avoiding many other potential clogs.   Plus, he has been teething like crazy lately, so he is a total crankpot during the day and will often wake up screaming every 1-2 hours throughout the night.  This phase we are going through is WAY worse than when he was first born, which by comparison was a freaking cakewalk.  We’ve tried Motrin, Tylenol, homeopathic teething tablets, frozen/slushy fruit, wet washclothes, cold teething rings, you name it.  Nothing is making him feel better.  We’re still trying to decide how to deal with this latest problem—I’ve always been OK with letting him fuss it out to go to sleep.  But when he is screaming in obvious pain….that’s something that I just can’t ignore.  We need to make some decisions soon.  As for the milk supply, it’s probably time that I stop pumping for donation so that I can get my supply to dwindle.  I know it’s weird to talk about having too much milk, but man, it’s a real problem.  My body had to support an 8 lb. 10 oz newborn growing into a 19 lb. baby by 4 months—-and my body did this through constant, round-the-clock nursing in those early weeks.  And now that Holden is being more reasonable about his feedings, my poor body doesn’t quite know what to do with itself.  I discussed some of this with the lactation consultant when I was at the pediatrician’s office today.  To say that she was unhelpful and rude would be severely understating the case.  She actually said to me “I don’t really know what you expect to be helped with here….”  WTF?!  Lady, I am not sleeping, my boobs keep getting plugged, and I feel like crap…..I want help with THAT!!!  She really had nothing to suggest about the plugged ducts; as for the night wakenings, her only suggestions were to ignore the crying or maybe offer him water instead.  We tried ignoring the crying last night and offering water, but it did not go well.  Neither of us felt OK about it, so we won’t be doing it again.  You know how they say there is so much variability around developmental milestones—-so much variability, in fact, that you can expect certain behaviors to emerge during a temporal window that spans MONTHS?  Why should feeding be any different?  Maybe some babies are able to go long periods of time without eating from a young age and other babies just take a little longer to develop this skill—-I mean, metabolism happens to be a rather individualized process.  To say that ALL babies should be sleeping through the night at 6 months is about as ridiculous as saying that all babies should be crawling by 7 months or talking by 12.  We expect variance with other aspects of development, so why should feeding and sleeping be the exception?  

Stupid doctors.

As for the fun stuff that Holden is doing these days, he gives mini high-fives to us.  We raise our palm and ask for a high-five and Holden responds by steadying our hand with one of his hands and then repeatedly slapping our hand with his free hand.  It’s really cute, but he refuses to perform on video.  Every time we break out the camera to capture him in action, he stops giving high-fives and looks straight at the camera, in preparation to have his picture snapped.  One of these days we will catch him though!  Holden is also gaining some real fluidity with his movements….he goes seamlessly and effortlessly from sitting to crawling and crawling to sitting again.  He is pulling himself up to standing often.  He empties the contents of our bookcase routinely, tossing the likes of Sartre, Hesse, and Vonnegut casually over his shoulder.  He isn’t satisfied unless he is around lots of people, a situation that isn’t always possible for me to conjure up for him.  He eats everything we eat at the table and hasn’t shown any obvious signs of disliking any particular food.  

Yesterday Holden got to spend the day with the nanny and his new little friend, Mallory.  I am pretty sure Mallory “taught” Holden how to crawl.  Once he started socializing with Mallory, his gross motor skills seemed to really take off.  I don’t know if it’s just coincidence, but I would bet that having to keep up with another infant served as motivation for him to adopt a more efficient strategy for getting around.  He really enjoys his time with other babies and I do best to make sure he gets as much exposure as he seems to need.  

I have so much more to say but I am tired and need sleep.  I am still in job purgatory.  No word whatsoever.  So we are determined to enjoy our weekend to get our minds off of things.  We plan on going out for breakfast one morning and also going to one of the sugarhouses for Vermont Maple Open House Weekend.  This will be a welcome distraction.

I know there are some folks out there that would say "oh, lighten up" about something like this but I thought that this was in such incredibly poor taste. With the epidemic of childhood obesity occurring in the United States, these sorts of "cute jokes" are neither cute nor funny. The makers of this bib should be utterly ashamed of themselves. This is way worse than candy cigarettes.

Original on Flickr.