Drex and I started a book club for two. We take turns organizing dates inspired by what we’re reading. Drex picked our first selection, Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. He described it as a “literary Hindenburg.” You can read his entire book review here.

Now it’s my turn to pick our selection. I’ve been wanting to read the Game of Thrones fantasy series by George R.R. Martin for awhile now, especially since the fourth book just came out! The first book, A Song of Ice and Fire, is a daunting 720 pages long. Drex and I are two hundred pages deep into the intrigue, and we’re gripped! It’s fun to discuss the characters and plot twists together. I can’t wait to watch the HBO miniseries.

Here I am sitting on the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Click here to own the throne yourself!

I have my mind… and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.

— spoken by Tyrion Lannister

It’s important to stay sharp. Appearances can be deceiving, and the balance of power can easily shift. In the House of Ruths, we know who really rules supreme.

One of the greatest pleasures of parenthood is passing on my love of reading. Sonya will bring a book for me to read aloud while I’m nursing Leena on the living room sofa. Now that Sonya is a sophisticated two-year-old, we’ve graduated from baby board books (those are for Leena now!) and moved onto picture books with real foldable, crease-able, rip-pable paper pages. Yesterday, Sonya brought me a new selection. One we’ve never read before.

I vaguely remembered Ferdinand the Bull from my childhood.  He liked to sit peacefully under a tree and smell flowers, so as you might imagine, he wasn’t a vicious bull in the bullfighting arena.

But I had no idea that his biography started like this:

“MICKEY MOUSE HOUSE! MICKEY MOUSE HOUSE!” Sonya shrieked when she saw the castle on the first page. All castles are now mistaken for Cinderella’s Castle in the Magic Kingdom.

“That’s a castle,” I said, “with tall, tall turrets just like the castle at Mickey Mouse House. But this castle is in Spain where Daddy is.”

Sonya looked at me and nodded her head.  ”Daddy workin. Pain. Fly plane.”

Since I’m fluent in Sonya-ese, I can tell you, she said, “Daddy’s working.  In Spain.  He flew there on a plane.”

Just to be sure, I checked with her. She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Cows. One… Two. Four. Seven.”

What’s interesting: she skipped three, five, and six, but got the right number of cows in the picture. I’m not sure if it was just coincidence, luck, or genius. As her mother, I’m inclined to go with genius.

Then came a part of the book I didn’t remember:

“AAAAAH! BEEEEE!!! GOTCHOOBEE!” Sonya screamed, pointing frantically at the illustration. Then we spent a few minutes discussing Sonya’s unfortunate encounter with a bumblebee— two and four days ago. “Bee. Grass. Sticker. Toe. Gotchoobee. Hurtin. Toe. Ay-gain. I kick it.”

Sonya got stung by a bee twice in one week! The first time, she got stung on her big toe when she was walking barefoot in the grass with Drex. The stinger of the bee (which she calls “sticker”) had to be tweezed out by Daddy. Her toe turned red, but she was “ah-kay.”

The second time, I saw it happen. I was carrying Leena across the field to the playground.  Prancing in her flip-flops, Sonya saw the bee near a patch of flowers, buzzing around, pollinating things, minding its own business. But then Sonya freaked out and decided to kick the bee.

“AAAAAH! GOTCHOOBEE! I KICK IT!!!” she declared. And then got stung in the left shin.

At least now I know Sonya isn’t allergic to bee stings. “Oh, gotchoobee hurt!” she moaned. “I kick it. Hurt. Leg. Sticker. Oh, gotchoobee.”

She’s been telling everyone this story.

Yeah, Ferdinand the Bull, the bee gotchoo, too. Sonya gave this page in the book a kiss. And she kept giving Ferdinand kisses each time we reread the book (maybe thirty? forty? a million times?) since yesterday.

Tonight before going to sleep Sonya said, “Daddy Fernidad?”

“Yes, Daddy and Ferdinand are in Spain.”

“Bullfightin?”

“No, Daddy isn’t bullfighting.”

“Smellin fowers?”

“Daddy and Ferdinand are smelling flowers,” I suggested.

“No, Daddy workin,” Sonya corrected. Such a faithful Daddy’s girl. “Daddy workin pooter.”

“That’s right, Sonya. Daddy’s working on his computer right now.”

“Miss you, Daddy. Back soon?”

Then Sonya closed her eyes and pretended to go to sleep, her head on the pillow, her arm wrapped around Big Mickey. Less than fifteen seconds later, her eyes snapped open, her head lifted up, and she said, “AAAHH! GOTCHOOBEE!”

I spent a significant amount of my childhood at No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane in London. First, watching the movie starring Julie Andrews, and then later, reading the books by P.L. Travers. I imagined that someday, Mary Poppins would arrive at my house with a talking parrot umbrella and bottomless carpetbag and we’d go on supercalifragilisticexpialidocious adventures together.

My favorite scene from the movie comes near the end. Mr. Banks, who has two children, gets fired from his job. Trying to be a responsible father, he had been absorbed working long hours, earning money, and worrying about the future. At the end of each long day, he felt too exhausted to connect with his family. Unfortunately, he didn’t even feel fulfilled by his work.

After being fired, rather than feeling upset or anxious, Mr. Banks actually seems strangely happy, unworried, and carefree. He even brings home a mended kite to fly with his children in the park.

Well, no mysterious British nanny ever arrived with the east wind, but another magical person entered my life.

Sonya made me realize that I ran the risk of turning into an unhappy, unpleasant, and unfulfilled Mr. Banks. I don’t want to finish residency. At least, not right now. Maybe after Drex gets tenure, our children start school, and I’ve really given my writing career a chance.

I didn’t need more than a week to figure that out. In the end, even heaping spoonfuls of sugar couldn’t help the medicine go down.

This morning, I woke up feeling giddy (up in the atmosphere, up where the air is clear). I was up before the sun, up before Drex and Sonya, at my computer happily typing away. And I felt content, despite not having produced “a breathtaking work of staggering genius”— well, not yet, anyway. But it’s taken a year to get myself writing without scrutinizing every sentence right away.

Thank you for the overwhelming support. This is a really crazy thing that I’m doing. I felt especially touched by Lisa’s comment, which included a quote:

Zen moment: When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take a step into the darkness, you must believe that one of two things will happen. Either there will be something solid to stand on. Or you will be taught to fly.

— Patrick Overton

Well, I don’t think there’s any reason to hope for sturdy terrain ahead, since I haven’t had much training or practice with writing, but I’m prepared to trust my wings.

And so I realized what I’d been fearing all along— failing as a writer. Maybe if I just stuck to medicine, I could look back and say I left my mark in this world by taking care of children and their families. Then I certainly couldn’t have become a failure. But— I wouldn’t have had a chance at true success, either. Right now, I’m the most frightened of my own potential (whether it’s real or imagined) and not living up to it.

What if I don’t live up to it?

Anyway, I’ve got to do it. For myself. For my daughters.

I want to make sure they learn three things. One— no matter what direction your life is headed, you have the power (with determination and hard work) to change it.

Two— you’ve got to do what makes you happy, even if it seems crazy and irresponsible. (Few people are lucky enough or brave enough to have the freedom and opportunity to pursue their true passion in life).

Three— go fly a kite. If it gets torn, mend it, if it falls, then keep running until you get it off the ground again.

My friend and former apartment neighbor Adit and I had a conversation two years ago, when he noticed how miserable I was towards the end of my first pregnancy, having to take overnight calls at the hospital.

Trying to keep upbeat, I complained about the relatively trivial difficulties of finding a proper place to clip my pager or figure out where I was supposed to tie my scrubs (above or below the belly).

He asked me what I planned to do after the baby was born.

I told him that I’d probably continue doing what I was doing. I wanted to show my daughter how to be a modern woman. You know, someone who doesn’t have to sacrifice her ambitions for the sake of her family. I said that I wanted her to see that her mom could be a successful doctor.

And Adit said something that I didn’t fully appreciate until now, although I’ve thought about it from time to time: “You know, she could see her mom be a successful writer, too.”

About once a week, Sonya and I go to the Grande Bibliothèque, which is literally French for the Big Library. And in this Big Library, there is a fabulous place for young kids: books within reach of persons under three feet, toddler-friendly seating, and an implicit understanding that the whisper-in-the-library rule need not apply in this particular area.

Sonya even has her own library card. Deciding what to get each week takes at least an hour. Sonya wanders around, looks at books, brings some to me, and we maintain a pile next to the stroller until I basically think it’s gotten too tall or we need to move on to snack-time. Sonya is the Gatherer, and for now, until she expresses any preferences, I get to be the Chooser. I usually try to pick mostly French books so that we can both build our vocabularies.

We came across this book last Thursday. It’s basically a reprint of an early nineteenth-century picture book for French children.

Before going to bed tonight, Sonya and I sat down to look at the pages.

The book looks so quaint. It started with the letters of the alphabet. So we sang the song in English (Ay to Zee) and then in French (Ah to Zed).

What fabulous pictures! Initial impression: these pages could be turned into framed wall art in a vintage-inspired nursery.

Oh, a collection of musical instruments! That makes sense. And I learned a few new words on this page, too.

But then— the picture groupings started getting increasingly bizarre. Some didn’t make any sense to me. Why is there a window, a bow and arrow, and an hourglass on the same page? Any theories?

The illustrations also started getting scarier.  We’ve got a skeleton with a scythe here, Grim Reaper-style. What is going on? Is this intended for toddlers?

And then the pictures got a little out of control. It was interesting, from the perspective of medical nostalgia, to see a drawing of an ancient syringe (wouldn’t want to receive any injections with that thing in my arm). But WHAT is going on in the lower right-hand corner of this page? Yikes!

The education of babies was certainly different a few centuries ago! Do we sugarcoat things too much now? This book certainly startled me into reflection.

My sister-in-law Ivy gave me a book when she came to visit. It contains one mother’s list of 500 lessons and observations for her daughter.

I’m sure that I’ll look for the distinctive blue book jacket on my shelf for years to come, and read it with my daughters when they’re older.

Some of my favorite bits of prudent advice, which I’ll pass on to Sonya and her sister when they get old enough to understand:

#32     Forgive your mother. I know I am likely to screw you up in some deep, painful way. But I am going to try hard not to.

This is a tough job. Mistakes will be made. But hopefully the things that I get right, and the effort, and the good intentions, and the love that I have for my children, will be the touchstones of their memories. And my own mom, who will eventually read this, I understand you better now that I’m a mom myself.

#86    Some sentiments shouldn’t be taken literally. These banalities are actually manifestations of tender hopes that I have for you: “The world is your oyster,” “When you wish upon a star your dreams will come true,” “If you believe in yourself anything is possible.” It is true that you are tiny and unblemished, and there is an avalanche of possibility teetering under your munchkin feet. But it’s going to take more than wishing on a star. I just want you to know that.

I’ve been guilty of daydreams and wishful thinking myself. Only recently, in my late twenties, which actually isn’t all that old, but still, I finally came to the realization: if I wanted to be a writer, I would actually, well, have to start writing.

I hope our children will see how hard their parents work towards their goals, and mirror that in how they pursue their own dreams.

#133      There are times when you need to listen to the same song over and over. It just means the song is helping to access something inside of you that you couldn’t get to any other way.

At different times in my life, I’ve needed different songs. When we first moved to Canada, as melancholy as it sounds, I listened to “I Dreamed A Dream” over and over again on my iPod when I was nursing Sonya. First in English, then in the original French, “J’avais rêvé d’une autre vie” (which literally translates: I had dreamed of another life) which I find even more beautiful and haunting.

For me, I think the song actually accessed a feeling of hope inside, that my life was just beginning, brimming with possibilities.

Has there been a song you’ve listened to over and over? Did it help you deal with any emotions or get through something?

#338     Raw and ragged are the sensations of inspiration. When you are worn, when you are battered, when you feel worse for wear, find a way to look beyond these temporary illusions to the grand vision of your life. These feelings are what feed you; they are the motivation underlying your future greatness, exposed for you to examine.

I’m still learning the truth behind that poignant observation. Being a mom has made me dig deep to find the buried strength inside of me.

50 days until Christmas. This book would make a great gift for a new mom. Thanks, Ivy (and Troy).

Sonya’s Uncle Troy & Aunt Ivy came to visit for Halloween weekend. We were all so happy to have them here, and in just a few days, we managed to fit in making a lot of fun memories.

Of course, we had to show them our fabulous city. We walked all around Montreal. This is the five of us on the way to the port. Unfortunately, I couldn’t capture the Chinatown gate on St. Laurent Boulevard behind us, and Sonya is sleeping in the stroller. But, it’s still a nice group shot.

Perhaps Drex and I weren’t the most informative tour guides. We didn’t really know much about the history or even the names of most of the buildings. Here we are in front of what I think is a courthouse in Old Montreal.

Troy and Ivy got to be here for the year’s first snow! Halloween morning, we woke up to the park with a thin covering of white. Just enough to crunch on when we walked on the grass.

Sonya got dressed in her pink snowbeast outfit with her new pink panda mittens and pink snow boots. She did a fantastic job stomping along the uneven terrain and getting used to her lobster claw hands trying to pick up imaginary stuff off the ground.

We also got to see Drex play hockey in McConnell Arena with his intramural team. He looked great on the ice and almost helped score a goal in his #11 jersey (geek humor: it’s binary for lucky number 3). The hockey game ended in a tie.

In the evening, we went to our friend Ron and Chantal’s house for some afternoon snacks, and then went around their neighborhood trick-or-treating. Sonya started to figure out the concept of collecting loot from door-to-door. She waved to the people after receiving her candy.

We filled up that beautiful yellow purse after a few blocks, and because the weather was freeeeeeeezing, called it a night once we could no longer cinch the drawstrings.

Good thing we had a back-up costume! Whew! The Belle dress would not fit over Sonya’s snow suit. We didn’t anticipate the sudden overnight switch from fall to winter weather!

This morning, after a quick breakfast together at our favorite corner bakery, Troy and Ivy headed off in a taxi for their flight back to Texas. The living room looks empty without the big air mattress in it. Just a few more weeks before Dida and Lily arrive, though!

My mom recommended a book called How Full is Your Bucket?

I thought it was going to be cheesy self-help mumbo jumbo, but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s engaging, well-written, and actually compelling. The authors are a grandfather-grandson team, Donald Clifton and Tom Rath. I read the book in just a few hours.

Until now, science has mostly focused on the study of mental illness rather than mental wellness, but psychologist Don Clifton and his colleagues decided to research the impact of positive emotions on health, longevity, happiness, and social networks. Clifton used a metaphor to illustrate his findings:

Each of us has an invisible bucket. It is constantly emptied or filled, depending on what others say or do to us. When our bucket is full, we feel great. When it’s empty, we feel awful.

Each of us also has an invisible dipper. When we use that dipper to fill other people’s buckets—by saying or doing things to increase their positive emotions— we also fill our own bucket.

The book offers five strategies for filling your bucket. They’re simple and yet, they’re things that I should keep in mind more often on a daily basis.

According to Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, we experience approximately 20,000 individual moments in a waking day. Each moment lasts a few seconds.

Here are a few moments* that filled my bucket two weekends ago in Sugar Land with the Ruthsteam.

*Photo credits, I believe, go to Uncle Justin.

In the April 2010 issue of Real Simple, page 216, father and professor Dean Bakopoulos writes about an experience with his two-year-old daughter Lydia:

It was just spring and the concept of a stroller— which I employed to make every walk a speedy “workout”— became, to her, fascist. So I let her out; I let her set the pace.  And we went really, really slow. Toddlers do not speed-walk; they meander. They stop to look at rocks, bugs, and bottle caps. They talk to tied-up dogs and neighbors out gardening. They sing. And they notice everything.

I burned fewer calories that summer, by autumn I knew half the town: the hardware store staff, the cops, the artists drinking coffee outside their studios.

Although Sonya hasn’t started walking yet, I’ve found that she definitely sets the pace of life. I think it’s taken me a while to adjust from the hectic, fast-paced, running-down-the-corridor rhythm of hospital life as a pediatric resident.

Although, I admit feeling an initial letdown period from the adrenaline rush of being someone’s doctor, it’s been replaced with the endorphin rush of being Sonya’s mother.

And I feel more happy and more like myself than I’ve felt in years!

Blessed Lord, what it is to be young:
To be of, to be for, be among—
Be enchanted, enthralled,
Be the caller, the called,
The singer, the song, and the sung.

Blessed Lord, what it is to be old:
Be the teller, and not the told,
Be serene in the wake,
Of a triumph, mistake,
Of life’s rainbows with no pots of gold.

I discovered that the library allows me to check out magazines.  Every week, I get a new stash of issues to leaf through (in English and also in French, so I get practice).  I recently came across a beautifully written article by Meg Giles in the October 2009 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.  She begins:

My daughter is, among other things, a crab-stuffed squash blossom from one of New York’s best restaurants, Chanterelle. I ate there the day after I learned I was pregnant.

A few paragraphs later, she describes a realization:

In wine it is called terroir: the peculiarities of the soil, the water, the very angle of the sun, the land that makes a wine distinctly itself. I am now terroir, it suddenly occurred to me, I am someone’s terroir.

Sonya is seven months old, and although she has started gumming a variety of pureed foods, she still gets most of her nutrition from breast milk, so I am still, to a large extent, her terroir.

I wanted my child to be healthy, and more: I also wanted to eat with a mind toward who I wanted her to be. If I was, indeed, creating another being, what should be on the ingredient list? Which foods? What qualities?

This went beyond the typical food diary:

I thought of the people I wanted her to emulate and decided to eat things that reminded me of them.

What a nice concept, no?  Meg kept a list of her daughter’s ingredients: everything she ate, with whom, and why. Although I didn’t keep a chronicle of all the things I ate, these are some of the things Sonya is made of:

• A great deal of high quality dark chocolate.
• Mission Burrito on West Alabama. Chicken, black beans, white rice, cilantro, corn, and probably a gallon of spicy cilantro mayo a.k.a. “that green sauce.”
• Buffalo Wild Wings – especially Mango Habanero and Caribbean Jerk flavors. On my call nights at Texas Children’s Hospital, Drex would come around shift change (between six and seven in the evenings) with about a dozen wings, potato wedges, celery sticks, and blue ranch dressing.
• Sushi. Yes, sushi. Especially spicy salmon rolls and the Crazy Irishman from Azuma on Kirby.  For the first trimester, I did make an effort to eat only cooked rolls, but then had to indulge.
• Creamy j and chicka chicka boom boom sauce at Chuy’s during happy hour. Food was just a garnish.
• During the last trimester, when I was still putting in my eighty-hour work weeks, my post-call morning breakfast of champions were: two hash browns with ketchup and a custom McFlurry.  The fine people who work at the hospital McDonald’s knew what I needed when I waddled to the counter with my tired eyes and swollen feet and my free-meal physician coupons. Here is how I had my McFlurry: that delicious vanilla soft serve blended with Oreos and M&Ms with hot fudge drizzled all around it. Mmmm mmmm mmmm. I’m lovin’ it just thinkin’ about it.
• Every once in a while, I managed to get a home-cooked meal, especially from the two women who gave Sonya her middle names.