I have a gardening question. Take a look at this guy’s setup for his seedlings. What’s wrong (if anything) with just starting seeds in those larger (”deep”) cell trays? What is the advantage of starting them in smal trays and then moving them?

I’m asking because I just transplanted a bunch of small seedlings to a bigger tray. The seedlings now look like I ripped their roots up. They look quite sickly, and that is just from a couple hours ago!

So, as I’m getting ready to make a homemade greenhouse out of plastic soda bottles, I’m wondering how to avoid destroying seedlings. When are they ready to move? And what’s the best method for moving them?  BTW, these are beet and tomato seeds I’m talking about here.

Vered’s birthday is on May 15th. It has been one year since she’s come into our lives. The emotions are so overwhelming and so joyful that I can hardly put them into a blog entry. This girl is the best that ever happened to me. She is a gift. Truly.

But rather than reflect on my year, I thought I could celebrate by telling you what I’ve learned about Vered in the past twelve months. Based on our time together, here is a little bit about V:

• She’s generous. Anyone who has been around the girl for more than 10 minutes will know what I’m talking about. She likes to hand you things: toys, paper, socks, strings, phones, whatever. In fact, she sort of insists that you take things. She won’t take no for an answer. I hope this character trait continues. It’s sweet.
• She’s pretty laid back. She has a calm disposition. On airplanes she sleeps and waves to people. In restaurants, she likes to just look at people (and wave). She smiles all the time. In a word, she’s un-grumpy. (But I swear that she really does have Rice DNA.)
• She is loving. She wants you to hold her, cuddle her, read to her. She wants you to hang out with her. She wants you to smile back.
• She doesn’t like sleeping or eating. Not a lot, anyway. She prefers sleeping with us, rather than on her own. And I guess I can’t really blame her.
• She is funny. You’ve all seen the scooching video. When she pulls this stunt in public, she knows people are watching and laughing. I swear I’ve seen her ham it up a couple of times. . .
• She likes cats. She really likes cats.
• She gets frustrated easily, but she won’t keep up the frustrating activity. Unlike me, she will drop the frustrating thing and move on to something else. “Less stress is best,” as my brother used to chant. I keep at the frustrating thing until a.) something breaks, b.) I am dragged away screaming, or c.) I break something. Vered, on the other hand, just throws it across the room and moves along.
• She’s smart.
• She looks like her dad. And sometimes she looks like my mom. And sometimes I think she has a lot of her namesake’s personality (Rose) running through her.
• She adores me and she knows I adore her. Every kid adores his/her mom. But this kid looks at me with such love that I’m just overwhelmed with it. Suddenly I understand that whole thing about a “mother’s love.”

Happy birthday, V. Daddy is making cake and ice cream, I’m getting balloons, and we will force the cat to wear a party hat.

SCOOCH!

This brings tears to my eyes, as I sit here writing at a coffeeshop. You most likely never met Dillon. But he was sweet and gentle. He sat at John’s feet during seminars and meetings. Now they are both gone.

Today I am writing my RSA presentation. This causes me to remember all the great presentations I’ve seen over the years. The ones that stick with me are the performative pieces: the ones that take on a voice, a persona, an energy that acts out the paper as much as anything else.

I continue to think about those presentations. And I want to be performative in this particular presentation.  (I’m actually doing two things at RSA. One of them has no choice but to be performative. But that’s a whole ‘nother issue.) Anyway, this panel on “the new pathos” needs performativity. It calls for it. No? But I am surprised to find that I may lack the balls for such a move.

No, not ball-lacking. Maybe it’s more like a weak performativity muscle fighting the possibility of something new. So why not exercise that muscle now? Let me keep writing with this in mind, and I’ll fill you in. I must, I must, increase my bust. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)

Goodbye, Jen, one of my favorite chefs from Top Chef. I feel as if you were robbed. That damn kiwi (the spoon licker) should have gone home in your place.

BTW, this blog will be returning to non-Top Chef topics at some point.

It’s time for me to post about my “stories.” These would be the cooking shows that occupy my Tuesday and Wednesday nights: Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen. I hope the producers are regular readers of my blog. Most likely, they are.

First of all, my very significant other pretty much said what I want to say about Hell’s Kitchen. It’s awful. Would it have been possible to find a group that has less talent, less personality, less appeal than this group? Every single “chef” (and I use that term in scare quotes) barely qualifies as a cook at all. They’re trashy, ignorant, and truly one-dimensional. It seems less like they love cooking than they all love the idea of being on reality TV. So the food is simply a plot point for the real action: being on television. This makes me mad, because I actually love watching people cook.

Is Gordon Ramsey a sellout? That was Jeff’s analysis. Mine is slightly different. Though I can’t prove anything, I am positive that Gordon is being blackmailed by someone at FOX. That’s the only explanation for this disaster train of shows that he’s now associated with. Someone has dirty pictures, or maybe knows about some tawdry affair, etc. In exchange for keeping quiet, he’s agreed to keep doing Hell’s Kitchen. But I choose to believe that when he’s alone at night, he cries.

Top Chef is another story. The chefs (no scare quotes) get better and better. This season is good. I’ve already got people I’m rooting against. But I’m rooting agaist them because of their food, cooking styles, and (yes) also their personality. Last night, for example, I found myself surprised to feel upset by Ryan’s cut. I think he’s such a dimwit–a mimbo, if you will–but there’s no way that Hat Girl (Ms. Not Enough Peppers) beat him. She didn’t cook anything! She bought sausage and grilled it! Everyone does that. And she has ruined almost everything she’s cooked. Why is she still there?

Anyway, long live the women of Top Chef. I’m pulling for Stephanie and Jennifer.

I was reading something the other day that suggested we read theory as narrative. That is, theories themselves can be read as their own “stories.” (It wasn’t Lyotard, btw.) I know you don’t know exactly what I was reading (or do you?), but I would so appreciate some possibilities to aleviate my supreme brain fart.

S.O.S.

29%

Warning: Please don’t send me anything in response to this post about how great your own kid was/is about sleeping. If you do, I will hurt you.

My V doesn’t like to sleep at night, but she does enjoy eating at night. That would work out perfectly, except for the fact that her dad and I feel the exact opposite. Bad news for us. So I must wean the night feedings and try to get this kid to eat during the day. The hope is that this little plan eventually turns into an eight-hour night sleep for the Rice household. Oh, to dream the impossible dream. 

What’s my plan? It comes from my favorite online parent discussion boards, the Berkeley Network. My plan is lifted from someone who sounds sort of like me. I’ll include it here:

The first night just get a baseline: how soon after you put her down does the baby wake to nurse? How many minutes does she nurse (or how much does she take from the bottle)? Let’s say that the answer is 2 hours later she wakes and nurses for 10 min.

The second night, increase the interval by 1/2 hour and decrease the nursing by one minute. So if you put her down at 10 and she wakes at midnight, don’t nurse until 12:30. You don’t have to leave her to cry alone for that half hour but should pick her up, comfort her, give her pacifier, whatever might soothe your baby. (If nursing, it really helps if Daddy does this, and only gives the baby to mom when it is time to nurse.) Then at 12:30 nurse her, but only for 9 min. Hopefully she will go back to sleep, but if not do whatever you can besides nursing to get her back. (Here is where Ferber recommends keeping up the same interval stuff all night, but I found that really difficult to keep track of and instead I would just feed on demand after 1:30 or so.) The 3rd night, increase by another 1/2 hour and decrease by another minute. So assuming same bedtime of 10, hold off nursing til 1 (we called it ‘’stretching” as in ”we need to stretch her til 1”), only nurse for 8 minutes. You can see where this is going: After a week your baby will be sleeping til 4 am and only nursing for a minute. At that point it should be relatively easy to go ”cold turkey”. You can also keep the nursing at 3 minutes or so and then just keep increasing the time to 6am or 7 or whatever works for you. The main point is that gradually increasing the time between feedings and gradually decreasing the amount will be easier than going cold turkey.

Will this work? Stay tuned. Tonight is the “baseline” night.