Wah-wah

The second play I was ever in was The Miracle Worker by William Gibson. It was a summer stock company in Cortland, New York, and I was ten. I played Martha. Who's Martha, you ask? She's Helen's "friend." Her slave friend. Yes, that's right. In a feat of casting that baffles me to this day, our friends at Cortland Rep cast the whitest people they could find to play the three slaves on the Keller farm - me, a blond boy a year older, and a blonde actress to play our mother. No, we weren't in blackface (thank god); just a lot of dirt.

Now, I'll concede that they probably tried to cast locals and Cortland probably wasn't the most integrated of towns, but you are telling me they couldn't find anyone from the city of Syracuse willing to make the trek down there to be in a play?

Let's move on.

It's the climax of the play (or the movie, for those of us not fortunate enough to be viewing Broadway plays in 1959 or weird all white productions from 1979). I'll let Wikipedia recap for us:
The "miracle" in The Miracle Worker occurs in this when Sullivan and Keller are at the water pump refilling a pitcher of water. It is in this moment that Helen Keller makes the intellectual connection between the word Sullivan spells into her hand and the concrete substance splashing from the pump. Keller demonstrates her epiphany by miraculously whispering the word "Wah-wah," the baby talk equivalent of "water."

Today's sign language class was...exactly nothing like that. We (and by we, I mean Mac and me. Eliza had much more important things to do like chew on Mac's sandal and clap her hands in bids for attention) learned signs for "milk," "more," "eat," and "cat" (also "dog," but as we don't have a dog, not so useful) and were then told we weren't allowed to use anymore until the babies demonstrated a comprehension of those few. Well, okay, I guess I can buy that, but did you really need 90 minutes for just that? So to fill the rest, the instructor, who was great, btw, and whom I don't wish to malign in the slightest, taught us a lot of those signs that we aren't supposed to use yet. It's worth pointing out here that everyone in the class is a new parent and I'm guessing they suffer from the same brain disintegration that I do. The odds any of us will remember those signs? I can't remember them now. Point made. We resisted the urge to buy a book or a dvd, agreeing that if we could commit to these few signs and Eliza got on board, THEN we would move on. And probably take another class. Because that's what we do.

We also learned the ASL alphabet, something I learned during said production of The Miracle Worker. My friend, Katie, and I had great fun trying to talk with each other, laboriously spelling out words. It was especially fun to do it into each other's hands, a la Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan.

The rest of the day was not as great. Mac is headed off to London tonight so we're on our own again for a few days. Something in Miss Eliza's solid food diet didn't agree with her today and she's rather constipated (come on - it's a baby blog. Did you think I wouldn't mention poop?). We bought her some prune baby food. She liked it. Hopefully it will do its job for her. Yeah, it's a glamorous life, but someone has to live it.

And so it begins

So, I'm jumping on the blog bandwagon and we'll see how it goes. Why a blog? Well...first and foremost, it's a good way for those not in Chicago to keep up on Eliza if they so choose (or they can just wait for our less and less frequent photo albums on Snapfish). Plus, it seems like an easy method for chronicling what she's up to and thus giving me things to refer back to when I'm updating her baby book. I don't really think our day to day existence is that interesting, but then I find myself utterly fascinated by other people's blogs, which makes me think, "why not?" What's the worst that can happen? No one reads it. Plus, I used to write a lot. A LOT. Now I don't write at all and, as is evidenced already, my writing skills are severely atrophying. So this is good practice for me to combat the new mommy brain, an affliction that renders me incapable of remembering what happened more than 30 seconds ago unless it has to do with Eliza in which case I can recount it in more detail than anyone should or will care to know.

Anyway...we bought a car today! A Honda CRV, which is apparently the car of choice for women in their early 30's with a child under the age of 2. Spot on besides the early 30's part. And so Mac and I continue our relentless march into yuppie parent stereotypes. I don't think we've done an original thing yet. Still, I'm excited as I've never owned a new car before. I think we're getting glacier blue, but am still holding out hope for a dark blue. It was an adventure in negotiating for Mac, most of which gives me a headache, so I'm glad he likes to do this stuff. The dealer completely insulted our current car and gave us a trade-in value that pretty much made Mac's head spin around. Poor Spaulding (our Mitsubishi Galant). Completely trashed for being a "city car" and will soon be sent to exile near Midway Airport. That's right, they won't even keep him on their lot. We pick up the new car on Friday. Many thanks to Spaulding for the excellent service, especially getting me to and from Lincolnshire during my year of horrible commuting.

And where was Miss Eliza while we were doing this? She spent the afternoon with her grandparents in River Forest and behaved admirably, even napping! Very exciting. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring the stroller, so she was deprived of a nice walk on one of our rare nice days in Chicago (global warming has arrived and apparently means non-stop cold weather for us). Next time.

Tomorrow is sign language class where we get to find out all the things she's been dying to tell us!

And now a photo, just to have one.