news and updates

A few things that bear posting about...

1. Barak stopped nursing last week. He's well into his nineteenth month, and has been tapering off for a while. He's only been nursing in the morning since midsummer, and for less and less time. Last week, when he got up, I asked him if he wanted to nurse, and he said "No," and walked away to check out a toy. "You're sure? You really don't want to nurse?" I asked, and I picked him up and put him in my lap, just to check. He said no, slid off, and started playing with his toys. I asked again the next day, and the next, and he just wasn't interested.

So I guess he's done. I thought I'd be sad about this, and I am, a little, but not really. I enjoyed nursing, and the closeness, but really I'm just happy that he nursed this long and stopped of his own will. Especially since he had such a hard time getting started (with a stint in the NICU and a pacifier shoved in his mouth before he got a chance to try out what was supposed to go in there). When he was four days old, the nurse practitioner, a pox upon her, told me FOUR TIMES that my baby was "flunking Nursing 101." Well, he's now graduated with a doctorate in nursing, thank you very much. I pumped for him until he was one, and he nursed all he wanted besides that, and stopped when he was ready, so really I'm just pleased by the way it all turned out--maybe it's silly, but I feel like I got one part of mothering, at least, the way I wanted to.

2. Like I said a few months ago, I'm the speechwriter for, mostly, the president of a large NGO. We have a new president, so we've been getting used to each other, but it's been going well, I think. Anyway, here is the story of a Very Nice Man:

A month or so ago, I was asked to do a talk for him to give at a Very Important Place--not the White House, but along those lines. So I wrote it, and his secretary faxed it to him, and a day or two later she reported that he had no changes, which is usually the best news you can get--it means whoever you're writing for likes it. I shaded it in as done on my work log and forgot about it. A few days later, he called me on his cell from wherever he was to make some changes to another speech. I pulled it up on my computer, made the changes, and read them back to him before sending them off to the people in charge of getting the right things on the teleprompter.I checked that he had everything he needed, which he did, and then he told me that he'd really liked the Very Important Place speech I'd sent, thought it sounded just like him but better, and was just right for the occasion, etc. I was tickled, of course, because for speechwriters, usually no news is the best news--we don't generally get this kind of feedback. Anyway, nice, no?

But he wasn't done. This past week, I had a regular meeting with him--every six weeks or so, when he's in town, we sit down with his speaking schedule and figure out exactly what he needs for which events, and I make up the list of what to send him when, what needs to be translated and into which languages, what needs to go on a teleprompter, etc. This time, my manager decided to crash the meeting for a few minutes, since she had a quick question for him and he's hard to schedule time with. So we both walked into his office. He knows, of course, that she is my boss. What does he do? When we both sat down, he turned to me and told me, as though he had never said anything about it before, how much he'd liked the speech, how well it had gone over, how he'd been asked for copies, etc. Why? He isn't forgetful. I'm sure he knew he'd already told me all of this. It had to just be because he wanted to tell me while my boss was sitting there.

If you want a way to inspire undying devotion in the people who work for you, well, that's one good one.

3. Another piece of Barak news. He can now tell you the noises that various animals make. A sheep says baa, a cow says moo, a dog says ruff ruff, etc. However, any actual animal he sees, as well as any small living thing, is identified as "baby." And he hasn't quite managed that a cat says "meow." So when our cat strolled into the kitchen yesterday to check out any offerings that Barak might have from his high chair (as though he has ever once had anything she's been remotely interested in--hope springs eternal, I guess), he pointed at her and said, "Baby! Ruff ruff!" Because she is not, it appears, a cat, but rather a baby who says ruff. Ten years I've had her, and I never noticed.