the chamber of secrets

Cal did two weeks of "Danger Camp" this summer (basically a summer day camp program based on this book) and came away with it not only with the requisite mosquito bites and tie-dye T-shirt, but also with an enduring passion for spying, ciphers, espionage, and general subterfuge. It's all highly contagious, and while Mack will deny this to his last breath he idolizes Cal beyond all measure so whatever interests Thing 1 has rapidly become the interests of Thing 2.

Separate and mostly unrelated: we currently live in a three bedroom house, which while by New York standards is an embarrassment of bedrooms (and square footage), means that under current occupancy patterns, we have neither a guest room nor a room for Nina to decamp.

THEREFORE (and this is where the two threads come together) we are working towards the goal of consolidating both boys into the same room. We already have a bunk bed in Cal's room so we're halfway there (it's even a twin over a full so that Mack will be, what, 50% less likely to end up on the floor?) but even so, it's a transition that is sure to be met with some resistance, at least initially. So we're selling the idea by billing these new shared quarters as the SUPER-DUPER BOYZ HANGOUT ROOM. Jazz hands! And one of the ways that we thought we could make the room cooler? By building a secret clubhouse inside of it.

Cal's room has three small closets, the middle closet of which has a lofted crawlspace, about two and a half feet wide, thirteen feet long, and maybe four feet high. We'd been using this space to keep a variety of larger items that we had nowhere else to store (as we have neither garage, basement nor attic space); things like our Christmas decorations, moving boxes, an old set of doors from the laundry room, what have you. We still have no place to store these things, and in fact, all these things are kind of sitting out in the family room now until we find a better place to put them. But lack of storage aside we figured screw it, let's just empty out the crawl space and turn it into a clubhouse. A SUPER SECRET RAD CLUBHOUSE FOR BOYS. No Homers allowed!

The first thing we had to do, after we emptied the closet out, was change the light fixture. Being a closet, all it had was a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling with a pull-chain cord, which was obviously hazardous, what with the risk of anyone walking into the burning bulb with their face. So we took out the light fixture, capped it off, and put in an outlet instead. (I say "we" but when I say "we" I really mean the electricians did it and I watched, encouraging them with the thumbs up sign and offering beverages for their troubles at annoyingly frequent intervals.) After the electrical work was done, we vacuumed and washed the floors (and I apologize for the lack of any really good "before" photos because you have to understand, it's basically a railroad car-shaped space, there's really no room to get a good shot) and got to work decorating.

One thing that Joe really wanted to put in there was a full-wall panel of dry-erase board. A dry erase board that size (about four feet by six feet) would easily cost more than a hundred bucks, but we did it on the cheap by going to Home Depot and getting a panel of fiberboard with one side of white shiny coating (not sure what the coating is but it is smooth and slick, like melamine) and getting it cut to 48 inches, which was the length of the wall on one side of the clubhouse door. The whole panel of fiberboard cost something like $12.99, and after getting it cut, we ended up with two fairly large pieces of whiteboard material--I still have to find a home for the second piece, because I guess I'm too much of a cheapskate to throw it away. The only drawback to this is that the dry-erase board isn't magnetic like some of the more expensive "real" whiteboard options, but in the big scheme of things and especially given the price differential, I don't think it's a big deal.

My big contribution was the lighting. Mainly the concern was safety. Joe had wanted to install one of those recessed can lights up in the ceiling, but I just kept having visions of the kids burning their heads or their hands on the bulbs, as the ceiling really is very low in there--Cal can't even stand up straight without his head grazing the ceiling. Another issue is that as a closet, the ventilation in the clubhouse space isn't very good. We already put a fan by the door to move some air in there and I have talked to the boys about leaving the outer closet door open, because as an anesthesiologist I am somewhat paranoid about CO2 rebreathing. (That scene from "Apollo 13" where the astronauts have to make that new CO2 filter out of, like, a sock and some duct tape? THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES.) Anyway, my point to the lights is that anything incandescent would heat up the space quickly. I originally thought about a string of low wattage Christmas lights, but then I found these:

Tape lights! (Not "tap lights". TAPE lights.) They're LED and energy efficient, bright, cool to the touch, and super-easy to affix, as they are literally backed with 3M tape so you can just stick them up wherever you want. And best of all?

They change color! They even have flashing and strobe effects, which is not my favorite setting (I kept waiting for someone to start seizing in there) but the kids certainly enjoyed pushing all the buttons. I mean, no kidding, right? THERE ARE BUTTONS? WE MUST PUSH THEM. Anyway, we got two sets of 16 feet each, which was enough to go around the entire clubhouse once with a few feet to spare. We actually like these lights so much we ordered another two sets to rim the bunkbed with, so the kids could use them as reading lights in bed. (See also: the awesome factor.)

We rounded out the room with a berber carpet remnant we had lying around from carpeting the bedrooms when we first moved in (coincidentally the one strip we had was almost exactly the dimensions of the clubhouse space--we just had to lop off a few inches in width to make it fit), two beanbags from Target, a few superhero posters, and a world map from National Geographic. Et voilà.

The name of the secret club, by the way, is SECRET CLUB MOM AND DAD NOT ALLOWED (S.C.M.D.N.A. for, uh, "short") and after surveying the finished product, Cal and Mack promptly kicked me out, which I consider a successful end-result.

Hope you're having a happy Labor Day weekend!

holly hobby

This is the first maternity leave where I haven't had a big heavy To Do list hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles.  And it feels fine, friends.

My first maternity leave with Cal, you'll remember, was three weeks into my Anesthesia residency.  So I spent much of that five weeks off from work trying to memorize Baby Miller, or at least, you know, sitting at a desk with Baby Miller open in front of me.  That was...fun.

With Mack, I had the second round edits due on my book--and this was a big edit, since the first round manuscript had the chapters arranged by theme instead of chronologically; it was basically akin to dismantling your entire house and then building it again but with the rooms all in different places, with, uh, new doors and hallways connecting them (that creaking sound is that of a metaphor becoming overly labored)--so that leave was also spent marinating in a stew of low-grade obligation and stress.

But this maternity leave, I think I pretty much cleared the deck.  I'm not even doing those speaking engagements anymore, so there's no more of that "I gotta do my slides, I gotta review my slides, I gotta practice running through my slides" that has catagorized most of last year up until the Spring when I quit traveling.

So I'm doing some sewing is what I'm saying.

Some functional stuff I made for the baby.  That blanket, based on the tutorial here, and that crib sheet, based on the tutorial here.  Both were actually really easy, so fellow novice sewers, have at it, you will be surprised and pleased.

Then I modified the measurements on the fitted mattress sheet tutorial to make a cover for the diaper changing pad here.  This was especially pleasing because I got this piece of red striped cotton fabric from the "scraps" bin at the fabric store for 99 cents.  It was just big enough for the project, which was a happy coincidence.  (Joe also thought it was a coincidence that the cover matched the alphabet print hanging over the changing table, but I disabused him of that notion quickly--THE COLOR COORDINATION WAS PLANNED, DAMMIT.)

Speaking of salvage, my new thing is sewing with knit fabrics from thrift store finds.  Woven fabrics are nice and of course come in gorgeous prints, but in making things for kids, knit fabrics (think T-shirts, stretchy pants, etcetera) are much softer and more comfortable, especially for a baby.  Even for older kids--Cal complained endlessly when he had to wear this button-down shirt for school picture day, but he will wear any T-shirt or polo shirt until it basically disintegrates.  So anyway, I found this soft cotton sweater at the thrift store--not my style, and also not my size, but appealing in its oatmeal and grey stripes.  As you will soon see, I love stripes.  So I hacked off the bottom part and hacked off the sleeves, and made these two new items, respectively.

The internet is full of variations on how to make a dress from a onesie, so I'll just point you to this one here and say that I just sawed off a tube of fabric from the bottom of an adult T-shirt just to make it that much easier.  For comfort I decided to place the skirt part up higher, like an empire waist, so that the inflexible part of the stitching wouldn't be over the baby's stomach, where her width is the widest.

The pants I made out of the sweater sleeves, which was great because I basically had only had to sew the crotch seam and the casing.  (Tutorial for that little project here--but again, the internet is full of similar tutorials and variations therein, just look around.)  The onesies I got from Rock Bottom T-shirts, who I've mentioned before and with whom I have no relationship, but boy do I love them.  (Another plug: I also ordered some polo shirts from them for Mack's school uniforms--they are of surprisingly good quality.)

Using the bottom part of a T-shirt to make a dress was so easy that I just went ahead and made a couple more for the fall.  MORE STRIPES, PLEASE.  (No pants out of the navy and grey striped T-shirt, unfortunately--I would have loved to make them, but unfortunately that T-shirt was short-sleeved.)

And just so you don't think I am totally anti-pink, this last one here, which I'm hoping will fit by around Thanksgiving.

Just an observation--your local Goodwill is where all Gap, Old Navy and Target-branded shirts (your Merona, your Cherokee, your Massimo for Target, what have you) go to die.  It's like the elephant graveyard of soft T-shirts.

Another thing that they have at thrift stores is old sweaters.  Many of them are hideous, but some of them are decent, or, barring that, made of very soft wools or cotton (sometimes even cashmere) that you can rescue and turn into something else.  I found this grey angora turtleneck sweater that I was able to turn into two things for the winter.  (I kind of wish I had taken I picture of the sweater before I started, but this was my first time doing some of this stuff so in the event that it turned out crappy you understand I wanted to hide the evidence.)  First, these pants:

Again, from the sleeves of the sweater.  The angora is really pretty soft, but wool always has the potential to be scratchy so I decided to line the inside of the pants with the remnants of another thrifted T-shirt.  I actually had used that T- shirt to make another pair of soft pants, but I screwed that pair up in that I wasn't playing close attention and ended up sewing half the seams on the outside, half on the inside.  However, all was not lost--I just slipped that whole pair of pants inside the sweater pants, sewed them together and folded up the cuffs, and behold.  Mistake rectified.

The rest of the sweater (meaning the body part) I used to make this little cardigan, and let me just tell you, I AM SO PROUD OF THIS CARDIGAN.  I'd never sewn sleeves before, you see (something about the three-dimensionality of it seemed overwhelming to me) and I'd never drafted my own pattern before (I used a 6 month-sized onesie to approximate the size and dimensions), and while keen observation would undoubtedly reveal the amateur nature of this project, it actually turned out pretty well, and, I hope, very wearable.  (I would have liked buttons ideally, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet, and I didn't want to screw up the sweater with my first attempts.)

I mentioned this was a turtleneck sweater, right?  Well, there wasn't quite enough fabric to make the sleeves long enough, so I used the ribbing from the turtleneck to extend the sleeve length and make cuffs.  YOU'RE GOD DAMN RIGHT I DID.

I also used some of the leftover ribbing from the turtleneck to bind off the collar.  My stitching has its lumpy bits, but it won't be spotted from a trotting horse.  (Remember how Ramona's dad said that about her lamb costume?  I still think about that sometimes.  That and how the older girls colored her nose with mascara.)

And this was what was left of the sweater after I was done.  Every part of the buffalo, baby.

Now you'll have to remember that I only started sewing stuff like, what, a few months ago?  So I'm fairly new at this game.  However, as hobbies go, it's pretty fun.  Someone in the last entry asked me what I thought people would need to get started, and I have a few things that I would suggest.

First: a sewing machine.  I use this one, the Brother CS6000i, because while I didn't want to get the most expensive sewing machine in the universe, I also didn't want to get one that didn't have a good range of functions.  This one is nice because it's computerized (meaning you can change the type of stiches by pushing a few buttons), has a lot of nice convenience features, is really easy to use, and most importantly comes loaded up with basically every accessory that you could possibly need.  So I would recommend it, but it's also the only one I've really ever tried--there are cheaper models out there too, but I can't attest to their user-friendliness.

I'm going to assume you have scissors in your house if you're, you know, a human being, but I would also recommend (because I use it all the time) getting a rotary cutter (basically like a pizza cutter but for fabric and paper) and a cutting mat, unless you want to be like me with gouges all over one end of the table.  Sure, you can use the scissors for cutting too, but for long, straight cuts, the rotary cutter is easier.

You can get thread basically anywhere, and if you're starting out, I wouldn't go nuts--just go to any kind of craft store and get the handful of colors that you need.  But if you're looking for more colors to match your projects, this company called Threadsrus (I keep reading that as "thesaurus" but I think it's supposed to be Threads R Us--whether the R is written backwards is unclear) offers good quality thread at a very reasonable deal.  I am not at the point yet where I am ordering 200 spools of thread, mind you, but I did order a smaller aliquot from them in an assortment of colors, and I've been pretty pleased.

Oh, one last thing.  If you are prone to jabbing yourself with pins while you work (and I don't know how I am so injury-prone when sewing but I am--if I had as many needle sticks at work as I've had at home I would live at employee health permanently) might I recommend these?  They are these little fabric clips that hold your cloth together in lieu of pins in most situations, and they work great.  Don't bother with the small pack, get the big pack of 50, you will definitely not regret it.  They are super useful, and, you know, not so pointy.

Of course there's a ton of other stuff that you can get if you're in the market and have money to burn, but for a start, that's what I would recommend.  Anyway, sewing is fun, cutting up old busted clothes to make new cute clothes is fun, so let's all do it and humiliate our children by forcing them to wear our lumpy, ill-shaped handiwork into school!  It'll be awesome!

Feel free to discuss other sewing recommendations--either for projects or tools--in the comments section, and we will all share in the goodness.  And just so we don't get too far off course into turning this into a total other species of blog, my next entry will be the oft-requested "Day in the Life" post about private practice anesthesiology, or at least my experiences in that realm.  It'll be a real humdinger!

Hope you had a good weekend.

make your own baby video monitor

Hey all.  Forgive me if this is too "uh...duh" for some of you, but I promised I would share the execution of this idea with someone at work who was having her first grandchild (hi Maree!) and am actually quite pleased at how well this is working.

Like most people, we had a baby monitor.  Actually, we only had one for Mack--when we lived in New York, I think we were actually able to hear Cal in the next room because that's apartment living for you--but it was just an audio monitor, really nothing but a glorified one-way walkie-talkie.  But it worked OK and Mack is still alive, so...monitoring success, I guess.  We still have the audio monitor, I just kind of stopped using it when I got sick of it basically being a broadcast of the kids arguing with each other in the basement of our old house.  Just share the damn toys guys, dag.

With a fresh baby though, everyone gets a little more vigilant (read: paranoid), and though I like to think of myself as laid back, it crossed my mind that a video monitor might be nice for peace of mind, to be able to see the things that don't make any noise that a monitor can pick up (blanket over face, malevolent stuffed animals come to life, what have you).  The only thing is, I can be kind of a skinflint about certain things, and it just seemed to me to be an awful lot of money to spend for something with somewhat limited lifespan and utility.  And then I had an idea.

(Again, forgive me if this is too obvious, but I was proud of thinking of it, especially since it used equipment that I had already.)


What you will need:

- A transmitter (I used an old iPhone that I saved--I was on AT&T originally but reception was crap at my hospital and I was continually paranoid about missing calls, since that's that primary way we communicate between ORs and such.  Anyway, my point being that when the new iPhone came out I upgraded and switched to Verizon--therefore I have a phone-plan-less iPhone kind of lying around that still works on our home WiFi.  But really you can use anything with a wireless connection and a camera.)

- A receiver (you can use your phone, a 2nd or 3rd generation iPad, your desktop or laptop computer, whatever.  I've been using my iPad because it's light and easy to carry from room to room, but again, it can be pretty much anything, it just has to have wireless connectivity and a camera.)

- Two Skype accounts (I just use mine and Joe's--the accounts are free to sign up for, and at bare bones, calls made over WiFi are free and unlimited so far as I can ascertain)

- Optional but helpful, depending on what you're using for your transmitter: a tripod, some creative velcro strapping, etcetera.

OK, so here's what you do.

STEP 1: Get a baby that you want to stare at.

STEP 2: Figure out where you want the monitor to be.  You're somewhat limited by the fact that streaming a video call over Skype used a lot of juice, so I would choose a place near an outlet, but more importantly, find a place where you can fixate your transmitter, be it over a crib rail or on a nightstand or what have you.  I apologize for the noise in these photos, but I was under low-light conditions for what I assume are obvious reasons.

(Here you see I have my old hobbled iPhone on a tripod and then Velcro-ed the tripod to the corner of the crib.  I don't think you absolutely need a tripod, but I had one from a lens kit that I got for iPhone photography that I rarely use and it's pretty handy in general--it also allows you to put the transmitter on a flat surface instead if that's your preference.  Just make modifications as you see fit--for example, if your baby is old enough to pull up and grab things, you probably don't want to have that phone just dangling there on the edge of the crib rail, but in that case, you know, put a table next to the crib out of reach or put the camera on a shelf, whatever.)

STEP 3: Make sure you have Skype downloaded on both transmitter and receiver devices.  There's a free Skype app for iPhone/iPad/iPod on iTunes (iKnow, this is starting to seem like I work for Apple but I swear I don't, it's just what iHave in my house.)  Log in with one account on the transmitter and the other account on the receiver.  (I use Joe's account as the receiver, and my account is the transmitter.)

STEP 4: Use one end to call the other end.  Doesn't matter which one initiates the call, just make sure you're placing a video call because that's the whole point.  Accept the call on the other end.

STEP 5: If you're using something like an iPhone for your transmitter that has two cameras, make sure that you change the preferences such that you're using the "back facing camera" or whatever they call it--that's the higher quality camera anyway, it'll probably give you a better image, and that way you're not shining that screen in the baby's face.  

STEP 6: And there's your call on the other end.  Now continue to silently and creepily spy on your offspring.