dental touches

Dear Zelda,

Tonight while nursing you, before you signaled that you were ready to sleep by unlatching and looking for Papa (who slings you to dreamland as he does the dishes), I was finger-combing your hair. It's getting longer. Long enough to "do." This makes me very happy. Anyway, I was finger-combing your hair while you nursed, and when I stopped, and rested my hand on your little belly, you reached down. You grabbed my hand and brought it back to your head, making me pet you with your fat fingers tight around mine, puppeteering. Looking at me, satisfied, you stopped nursing to say, with a sleepy smile, "den-tal." Gentle. Yes.

Love,
mama

zelda's first

There is a post rattling around in this tapped head somewhere about the past year, about having two children, about one of them being a daughter who is different than my son, about the passage of time or exponential growth of love or how you forget that babies are just so fucking cool and then you have another one and you're like how did I ever forget this? But instead, for now, here's our yearlong documentation of one Zelda Marigold LeJeunesse, cat lover, daredevil, yogurt fiend. When she was first born, I kept saying, "someday we'll have a three year old and a one year old," like that's when we'd be legit. Legitimacy is pretty rad.

Happy birthday, Goldie. 

an early birthday

I am no good at giving presents. Well, I'd like to think that I'm good at some aspects of gift-giving. I put thought into it, and often a lot of time. But when it comes to waiting or surprising I'm pretty much the worst. It usually works out, since as a procrastinator I don't frequently have long to wait between finalization of gift and handing it over, but every once in awhile I plan ahead and find myself with weeks of lag time. This simply will not do, and do it did not in the case of Zelda and the armless baby.

Zelda's beloved Gob, a naked thriftstore baby George picked out a long time ago and had since abandoned -- her akimbo limbs and creepy, uneven, dead-eyed blink citable as potential turn-offs -- recently lost an arm. It's no shame for her; she's dragged around by her arms more than anyone can be expected to survive, limbs intact. This hasn't affected Zelda's love much, but it was a good opportunity for me to make her a new doll. With her birthday coming up, I had the occasion in addition to the reasoning. 

Waldorf doll making has always intimidated me. The particular supplies, the expense and the precise techniques were hurdles I hadn't overcome though I've long admired the style. Meg McElwee's book Growing Up Sew Liberated: Making Handmade Clothes and Projects for Your Creative Child includes a pattern for a Waldorf doll, and it's been in the back of my mind since George was smaller. Alas, he's never really taken to dolls. Zelda is a different story, though, my children being so unbelievably gender stereotypical as to make me think someone is playing a joke.

 I love Meg's book (and blog) and the directions seemed clear enough to allow for some finagling according to my budget and crafting style which is a little more by-the-seat-of-my-pants than Waldorf dolls generally call for.

I regret that the face isn't shaped, and if I ever make another I'll put more time into the facial features. The body is out of some soft bamboo velour I thought was perfect for a one year-old to snuggle, and the clothes are made from fabric scraps (Heather Ross' beautiful and now out of print mermaids) and leftover yarn. Choosing the hair yarn was tough, and I wish that I'd found something more colorful to make a real rainbow mop but that, too, is something for the next attempt.

This doll is most definitely a quick and dirty version of a Waldorf doll, but the Sew Liberated pattern and instructions gave me a great starting point and I gained some knowledge about how to attach arms and heads in ways that don't result in droopy shoulders and floppy necks. Because it's tough to have a tea party with someone who can't stay awake.

She's real cute, and, true to form, I couldn't wait until Zelda's birthday to see the reaction, even though every gift I've ever handmade for my kids has been met with the same vague interest. When will I learn? Never! It doesn't really matter -- most of the fun is in the making, anyway. 

At their introduction, Zelda dubbed her "Dunna!" which we took to mean Donna, a perfectly suitable sister for an armless baby named Gob. 

They were fast friends, though Donna's gonna have to do something to prove her unconditional devotion á la allowing herself to be drawn and quartered. 

The entire project took me three evenings of off and on work, the most time-consuming being the altogether pleasant handwork of the face, hair, and foot shaping.

 

I think Zelda's actual birthday may see the opening of a matching outfit or two, because I am that person I would never have expected myself to turn into, who loves matching outfits on pretty much anyone and anything. When I was little, my mom made me a life size Raggedy Ann with a dress and pinafore for each of us, and if photos are to be believed it was a monumental hit.

I think a more androgynous doll may be next on the agenda. Overalls, shorter hair, and some actual facial features.

Happy early birthday to you, Goldie. Here's to a (doll's)life-long friendship.

naming zelda

When I was pregnant with George, sometime prior to the 20 week ultrasound that revealed him to be a boy, I started having dreams starring Thomas Pynchon. Not being a huge fan of his, I had no idea what he looked like, so he mainly took the form of other people I knew or his likeness from the Simpsons: a guy with a paper bag over his head. Thomas Pynchon told me, quite insistently, to name my daughter Prairie. "Name your daughter Prairie!" he repeated to me, with no explanation, a few nights a week for a couple of months.

I could go on to tell you why I found this especially magical, why I was so inclined to do as he said, why it was such an uncanny thing to happen, recurring dream-style. But I'll spare you. George was a boy, and I irritatedly wrote dream-Pynchon off, seeing as how he was wrong about my baby's sex.

When I learned that I was (allegedly; I didn't believe it until I saw a real-life vulva) pregnant with a girl, I had a revelation: this was Prairie. Thomas Pynchon hadn't specified which baby I was to call Prairie. I'd been so silly, pissed at that dream-Pynchon for being wrong when he was actually so prescient. We made name lists and eventually narrowed the field to three or four choices. George had a favorite; Nathan had a favorite, and neither's favorite was Prairie. A short list came with us to the birth center, but in my heart of hearts, this baby was always Prairie. Until we saw her. And she just... wasn't a Prairie.

I know lots of people choose their child's name months in advance of his or her birth, and that seems to work out for them just fine. I don't know if they have regrets, or if they waffle upon seeing their baby and think, "wait; maybe this isn't Jayden/Michaela/Prudence." Even though I'd felt that this girl was my Prairie, I hadn't said as much out loud, we'd never announced her name, and I'd really only shared our frontrunners with my close friends. Seeing her changed my mind, and I was glad to be the name-after-birth sort of person rather than a vinyl-name-decal-on-the-nursery-wall-at-6-months-pregnant sort.

George was never on board with any name but Zelda, and when I read my horoscope in early December, seeing the Yiddish name Selig -- the feminization of which is Zelda -- felt providential in a way similar to paper bag-headed Thomas Pynchon informing my name choice. Zelda was in the top three on our list (I have an abiding love for Zelda Fitzgerald, to whom history -- and life, actually -- has not been kind. Nevertheless, she was an amazing talent and complicated woman: both traits I hope my daughter to have) but, more importantly, it was what George had been calling his sister all along. That was sweet, I thought. His first buy-in as a brother. We couldn't very well cast that aside, could we? So we tried it out. We talked about which name suited her best, and choosing any other name felt like usurping astrology and George at once. Plus, it fit. Zelda was it.

Marigold was always strictly a first name option. One Nathan had grown partial to in the final weeks of my pregnancy, when we forced ourselves to nail down three whole possible combinations. Zelda Marigold wasn't one of them, but something happened that hadn't occurred to me as a potentiality: she was both a Zelda and a Marigold.

Marigolds, signifiers of celebration. On the day of the dead, their blooms draw loved ones' souls back to their families. They drape the necks of brides and grooms, form wedding garlands. They treat illness. Their scent drives pests from the garden. They are protective and cheerful, adaptable. Pretty, but not ostentatious. Peppery. It helps, too, that our children's hair is golden. Not blonde, not really brown, but shiny halfway-between. I thought I'd have two dark-haired babes, but one, then two came with the same spun gold fuzz.

I don't know yet if she'll be a Zelda or a Goldie -- if the latter will be akin to honey, or chicken or buster as I call her brother, or if one will eventually feel truer. Either way, though, just as George is the George I knew he'd be the minute we settled on his name, I know we picked right for our girl. I hope she agrees. And maybe there's still a Prairie waiting in the wings.