Innocents abroad

Hattie joined us for the longest road trip of her life when we drove to Santa Barbara to attend the wedding of our friends Peter Michealsen and Xanthy Chu. Unsure as to how our five-week-old would handle the drive, we steeled ourselves for as many pit stops as necessary and began our journey a couple of hours earlier than necessary.

Much to our surprise (and delight), Hattie took the whole trip in stride. In fact, she seems to enjoy outings. She stays calm (usually) when buckled into her car seat, stares with wide-eyed wonder at new places, and curls comfortably into strangers' arms. Strangers to her, that is. They're our friends.

To be honest, Sarah and I were a tad apprehensive about the event. I knew Peter and Xanthy through Intervarsity at Cal Poly, and alumni weddings tend to double as reunions that stretch far into the night. While I reconnected with plenty of friends I hadn't seen in a while at the Michealsen-Chu affair, the ceremony and reception together clocked in at a neat five-and-a-half hours. It was the perfect length for a baby-toting couple.

We had tentatively planned to stay the night with some friends of Peter's family, but the success of the trip down inspired us to brave a drive back. Despite one minor crying episode, the return was as uneventful as the departure.

The wedding itself was a mix of East and West. While the ceremony stuck to fairly standard U.S fare (white dress, men in suits, etc.), the reception reflected Xanthy's Hong Kong roots, with the new bride in red and the groom in a custom-made black outfit to match. He's a Swede and fairly tall, so I think the style was adapted a bit for his frame. Still, the effect was impressive, especially when they danced to Paul Simon's "Something So Right."

The visitor

On Wednesday night, as I was wrapping up hanging out with my friend Bret, we found a large, striped beetle crawling in the driveway in front of his house. It slugglishly trundled along, then split its back open to reveal wings and rise dramatically into the air ... and then straight into a wall. It repeated this several times. Not wanting to see it bash itself senseless, we corraled it into a Ziploc container and I drove it home to photodocument it and release it into the wilds of my backyard.

Upon closer examination, I discovered that it had given itself a sort of insect equivalent of a bloody nose. I also found that it had swiveling horns and a fuzzy underside. My wife decided it was a cross between a gremlin and an animal she can't remember now. Possibly a lemur. It did seem to be a mix of several different bugs, but I seriously doubt it had any true mogwai ancestry. To play everything totally safe, we made sure it didn't get wet.

After the photo shoot, I released the beetle onto one of several lawns behind our house. I watched it crawl slowly in a random direction and bid it farewell. A few minutes later, it reappeared at our kitchen window, climbing the screen in an attempt to rejoin our family. As touching a gesture as that was, I decided to recapture it and release it on the side of the house, where tempting fluorescent lights wouldn't it lure it back with false promises of whatever it is beetles long for inside human habitations.

I haven't seen it since.

Picture this

After several dozen photo shoots under my decidedly rookie eye (have you checked out the link to my photos over on the right?) Hattie participated in her first-ever professional photo shoot on June 22. Lisa Maksoudian (an award-winning photographer who, among other commendations, took best of show in the 2006 New Times photo contest) came to our house for a multi-hour session, and posted a sneak peak at some of the results on her image blog. See them at lisamaksoudian.bigfolioblog.com. Hattie is the baby modeling under the pseudonym of "h" if you don't recognize her.

Here's a larger shot of the two blankies.

Everything old is new again

My dad announced that he had a surprise waiting for our new baby, so when Hattie was born, he gave us a "Happy Birthday" bag with his handiwork inside: A crocheted yellow blanket with a silk border. To the untrained eye, such a gift may seem like a typical baby present, but this particular item was unique for two reasons. The first: My dad crocheted the blanket himself, and my mom added the silk edge. The second: The blanket is a replica of Yellow Blankie, the essential bit of cloth that I clung to, Linus like, all through childhood. And junior high. And high school. And maybe a little in college. After almost three decades of constant wear and tear, Yellow Blankie was looking a bit worse for the wear. But now, there's a new blankie to carry the next generation of the Miller clan through her formative years. And maybe into her time as an undergrad. Thanks, Dad. (And Mom!)

Early elitism

Never being one to start small (except, perhaps, in physical mass), Hattie's first encounter with the world of literature was Pablo Neruda's Las Odas, from a bilingual edition, Odes to Common Things, which was a wedding present from our friends Brian Leonard and Angela Barley. I would have thought she'd ease into reading with something lighter, like, say the collected works of Dr. Seuss, or something by Shel Silverstein, or maybe even Edward Lear's Complete Nonsense (a wedding gift from our friend Joel Short). But no. A scant 24 hours after she was born, she was listening to the Nobel laureate's "Ode to the Table." Here's an excerpt:

"The world

is a table

engulfed in honey and smoke,

smothered by apples and blood.

The table is already set,

and we know the truth

as soon as we are called:

whether we're called to war or dinner

we will have to choose sides,

have to know

how we'll dress

to sit

at the long table,

whether we'll wear the pants of hate

or the shirt of love, freshly laundered.

It's time to decide,

they're calling:

boys and girls,

let's eat!"

She obviously took this poem to heart: There was both honey and blood at her birth, and some apples in the background. I didn't see any smoke, though. She has since worn the shirt of love--many shirts of love, in fact, freshly laundered after each spit up. And she has heeded the call to the table with great gusto, sometimes eating for two hours at a stretch. Needless to say, Sarah has been tired from all of the late-night nursing sessions, but I'm happy to know that Hattie has been nourished in mind as well as body.

Hattie is here

Harriet Rose Miller was born at 11:07 a.m. on June 14. She was 7 pounds, 1 ounce. She's four days old here, and we have no idea how much she weighs, though it's probably not too much more.