Struggling to feed a Teething babe

For those of you who aren't here to count, Cam has four teeth going on 6. She was a late teether to begin with - she didn't get her first tooth until 3 months ago. The bottom two were pretty simple but all four top teeth are coming in at once, with perhaps a few extras on each side. The teething is interrupting her eating and her sleeping. She has been waking up pretty regularly at 3 am now, and then again at around 4 or 4:30 simply sounding as if she's in pain. It has been taking her a little while to get back to sleep then, so we're lucky to grab a few more winks before the 6 am wake-up call. Still, it seems like she's doing pretty well with it all.

I had been feeling very discouraged as of late: every day that I show up to get Cam from the nanny-share, Zulda tells me how Cam didn't want to eat any of the food that I packed and instead only wanted to eat Zulda's lunch. It's hard not to feel guilty when your daughter prefers the nanny's home-cooked beans as opposed to the ones you cracked straight out of a can that morning. Or that she prefers the other girl's home-cooked soup to the sliced tofu that you packed for her lunch... again. I was feeling terribly about it all, but I talked with another mama today who said that when her daughter is teething, she barely eats at all. I am feeling less guilty. Cam will catch up later, when eating doesn't hurt so much.

I have made some gourmet hits this last week that will no doubt be popular later. I made her some polenta cakes after a brief polenta success at the Berkeley Bowl last weekend. I also made her a tomato basil pasta that went over well, kind of. Well, I ended up eating the majority of it for lunch the next day. The girl won't starve to death and I'm doing my best at making the options healthy and wholesome. I keep telling myself that she's at least better off than the babies I see on BART drinking Sprite and eating Hot Cheetos.

I am on a two-night jag of not seeing Cam in the evenings, so I am feeling especially lonesome for my girl. Perhaps that will make me more indulgent and understanding when she gets me up at 3am tomorrow. I supervised the Boys basketball game tonight. It was kind of fun. I had students playing that I hadn't seen play since they were Sophomores. And, one of our players will be at Marquette next year in Sconny, so I had to do some scouting. :) Tomorrow night I am going to a party for a friend and co-worker who is on Jeopardy! So that means two nights in a row without my girl. I'll have to make up for lost time this weekend.

This weekend holds two events for us: a one-year reunion of our birthing class and...the Superbowl. My students have been taunting me for weeks now. When they have to write vocabulary sentences, they invariably speak of the inevitable demise of the Packers. Funny...

Lastly, a classroom anecdote. I recently started a Romeo and Juliet unit with my Frosh. I do an activity each year with the prologue called TPR, Total Physical Response. The students must physically act out as many of the words as they can from the their assigned lines in the Prologue. This year, one group charged with the line "from ancient grudge break to new mutiny" simply pointed at me for the word "ancient." Funny... ha ha. They later pointed out that I was simply the oldest thing in the room and therefore was the closest approximation of "ancient." Alas, in their eyes, I am pretty old with my non-tweeting ways.

The pics for this post have no rhyme or reason; they are simply some of my recent faves. Lots of love from Berzerkeley!

BTW - Joel is at Dave Chappelle tonight. Not fair!