[Babies who sport Federico Garcia Lorca onesies don’t need no stinkin’ necks.]

We bought Ronin some toys: one set of stuffed dice with those Scientifically Proven Baby Brain Stimulating patterns and one supercool Buckminster Fuller-esque wooden ball thing. She has reached the awesome stage where we can confuse and distract her by waving things in her face when she begins frothing up for a meltdown. And the verdict on the toys: she appears to *love* them. I can hardly believe it really. The Buckminster Fuller-ball has these wooden beads that slide around as you turn the ball so it makes a nice chimey sound, plus it is brightly colored, and just a few shakes to get her attention and she will happily watch the ball for a long time. And the stuffed dice—we just got them in the mail and hung them over her bouncy chair and she is seriously entertained by them for, well, a half-hour at least at a time (but this is GOOD). She stares at them and makes cooing noises and kicks her feet and flails her arms (happy kicks and flails) and it’s insane. Sometimes she gets really worked up wiggling and panting with her eyes so wide open that it’s almost worrisome—as if her brain is about to explode. I guess those baby brain scientists weren’t kidding around.

[She likes to see what’s going on when we go on walks these days so we face her outward; have to keep an eye on that bobbley head though. DANGER WILL ROBINSON!]

[For those of you concerned that we didn’t ever dress her in pink.]

She also likes music—I guess most babies do but we hardly listened to any when I was pregnant; I suppose I thought she’d be indifferent. (After being on the boat with power always at a premium, we rarely “splurged” and listened to the radio; we simply got out of the habit of having it in the background.) As for singing to her, I really don’t know any lullabies as such so I end up singing whatever comes to mind when the need arises. Lately this has been “Who by Fire” by Leonard Cohen and “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus, and I totally screw up the lyrics. A bit macabre I suppose but it keeps her mellow when the diaper needs to be changed.

[Inspirational tile art. Kharkov, Ukraine 2005]

Even though I had no real intentions of getting a job, I’ve kept an eye on craigslist just in case something interesting appeared. Luckily most worthwhile listings have always been on the other side of the river in Beaverton, Hillsdale or even, GGACK, Wilsonville. However, I saw something last week that was nearly perfect: part time and nearby. I hemmed and hawed for a few days before sending in a resume because, well… sending out resumes inevitably leads to work. A thing I wasn’t totally committed to.

I agreed to an interview but kept reminding myself that I didn’t actually have to accept the job. In the end, it turned out to be fun and I decided to work with them. However, it’s really too soon and I feel a little guilty about leaving Cheyenne alone with Ronin. They’ll be fine, of course, but it can be hard to do something as simple as brush your teeth when you’re alone with an infant.

My new office (by office I mean folding table in a large room and by large room I really do mean large as in large enough for over a hundred people sitting on pews if there were still pews instead of five or six folding tables) is an old church. Think Alice’s Restaurant without all the garbage. The best part aside from the location and the hours is that everything I’ll be working on is open source software. Not very interesting open source software — unless you come from some parallel universe where insurance is somehow interesting and smalltalk consists of RDBMS queries — but at least a little bit cool. OK maybe not, but It makes up in convenience what it lacks in glamor.

You may be wondering what this means for my tax resister status. I had previously pledged not to pay any taxes until our current set of criminals were at least out of office if not in jail. The only legal way to accomplish this is through unemployment. However, I’m confident that by only working 2 days a week and by factoring in our new little tax deduction I can get away with zero tax liability again this year. In any case, even if I can’t keep it at zero I’m 1099 so won’t actually have to pay until mid 2009 (with penalties to be sure). I’ll just call it a little bonus for our new leader whoever they may be. Of course, I’ll still have to pay social security so all you boomers can breath a little easier.

Here’s a photo I managed to get of Ronin just about to smile.* Of course, she is all smiles with the accompanying gurgly-goo sounds she makes until I get the lens in front of her face; then she clams up and just stares into the lens. The shiny shiny lens.

*Lest one be fooled by this disarming almost-smile, it is important to note that Ronin is still capable of going from Smiley Happy Baby to “I Will Cut You” mind-numbingly fast.

A few months before Ronin was born, I got bit with the crafty bug. You probably saw the baby quilt I made but it didn’t end there. Using bits of left-over quilt fabric in addition to other pieces from various projects I have made over the years, I made some baby booties, a little hat, and then Joshua and I stenciled a slew of onesies.

I didn’t post them right away because the majority of them were gifts for friends who were expecting babies. And then I continued not to post them because I’m a lamer.

***

First off, Baby Booties! Unable to resist such cuteness, I searched out simple patterns online and found some good ones. Of course, the ones I wanted to make I couldn’t find a pattern for so I downloaded a similar pattern and adapted it.

These are made from an old cashmere sweater of Joshua’s that met with foul play (a washing machine incident that totally wasn’t my fault) and got used to make a whole bunch of different things. I had some scraps left still and made this little teeny hat and booties to match (the booties are made from the pattern above, mostly). I was going to make them as gifts but they turned out so wonky that I had to keep them for myself. And then the wonkiness grew on me and I embroidered (if you can call it that) a twee heart on the sole to make it that much more knock-you-down adorable. Ronin wore the hat (the booties were way big) home from the hospital.

Of course, I was still short a bunch of gifts for friends. Onward!

The following are adapted from the pattern linked above:

These are made from scraps of wool, silk, and cotton, with flannel lining on the inside.

Last but not least: the onesies!

“Lefnut” was for our friend Kurt, named after his skateboard in college. “Riot” is a graffiti we saw in Barcelona in 2003.

Both the dummy (pacifier) and the chair are from graffitis we liked in Barcelona. The dummy was one of the most prolific graffiti tags in the city; this guy painted these things everywhere, elaborate ones with multiple colors, plain ones just black and white, and we saw them in other towns: Valencia, Sitges, Tarragona, etc. The chair was a simple stencil that we found in a few places around town; it was one of my favorites for some reason.

This is just a design I made up. I had to go and make it all complicated with three different overlaid stencils (the branches, the flowers, and the flower centers), which of course required multiple paint applications (with dry time between). Whew. Turned out pretty awesome I think though, as modeled by Celine here. I had to go out and buy pink paint for this (alas, no other color would do for the cherry blossoms), which undermined my War on Pink for the most part. I further rebelled in irony by also painting the Dummy above pink.

Critics are saying,

“A ripsnorting frolicsome ride!”
“Enchanting!”
“An enthralling nexus of childlike enchantment and whimsical folly!”
“A stellar debut performance; Ronin really delivers.”
“Ronin is the Holden Caulfield of baby home videos!”