Lazlo and I have a house! Hurrah! Now we have to figure out how we're going to pay for it. The CRAZY landlady, we'll call her SWAN, wants the first months rent and the deposit (more than the rent) today- in CASH. nonsequential unmarked fives and tens. Okay, not really- but cash. Come on. As Lazlo gets paid twice a month, this is going to be a stretch, but if we deny Wren diaper service for the next week or so, I think we can make it.

The house is pretty cool. It's small and ricketty but it has charm. And a yard. Those, and a washer and dryer, are what I look for in a house, and this place has W/D hookups, and an insane landlady, but you can't win 'em all. We'll no longer be living with the soccer moms and gentry in sleepy Pasadena. The new house has an actual Los Angeles address- Highland Park. And, as the former tenant said, "I like to think Highland Park keeps it real." He also said not to rent the house because the landlady was totally nuts, but hey, what does he know?

By "keeps it real" I have to assume he meant, "has frequent drive by shootings" because that's what the LAPD crime blotter seems to indicate- but we live at least 10 blocks away from that side of Highland Park, and really, the risk will pay off with curb-side access to taco trucks and fruit carts alone.

You're all invited to come over as soon as we're moved in. SWAN suggested that we screen in the deck and make it the baby's room (?), so I guess we'll have an extra bedroom for any visitors to stay in. Plus, you'll have to come over to see the baby- she smiles all the time now. Big, gummy, all out smiles, like she's the happiest baby in the universe. Sometimes I'll desperately try to get her to smile at me for 10 minutes before I give up, and then when I turn around she's smiling ecstatically at her stuffed giraffe. Stupid giraffe.

The poor baby got her first four shots on Wednesday, two in each chubby little thigh. It was so sad to see her start to calm down every time and then get surprised again with another shot. I don't think Lazlo could have handled it- he's not very good with needles. At least now she'll be safe on the Oregon Trail. Also- if you have whooping cough, tetanus, polio, hepatitus, pneumonia (or a member of the pnuemococcal conjugate) and that's why you haven't held the baby yet- now's your chance. Come on over.

Since the immunizations Wren has not been her usual sweet self. She's woken up on and off all night for the last two nights, so excuse the incoherence. She's also introduced projectile vomiting into her repertoire of bodily functions. It's either the junk in the shots, or the tylenol for her fever, but something's giving her a lot of new distance and speed. It must be as exciting for her as it is for us. There's obviously never any warning. She's not saying, "Mom, I'm feeling a little woozy, could you pull the car over?" There is a bright side- normal spit up just kind of oozes down your shoulder, and you don't even notice it until it soaks through your shirt. The new stuff goes right past your shoulder and splatters on the wall behind you. Exciting, right? And you don't have to change shirts!

We took Wren to see her first movie in the theatre- Episode III. She hadn't seen the first two, so she was a little confused by the plot, and she peed on Lazlo. We saved the ticket for her baby book. (actually it's more of a baby plastic bag- I haven't bought a book yet) Tonight, if she's feeling up for it, she's going to her first rock show - BDO and Bodies of Water. I haven't actually heard BDO's new stuff, but I think Wren will be into Bodies of Water for sure.

So that's what we've been up to. A fussy feverish baby and an interminable housing search. Oh, and I finally got my mother's day gift. IT ROCKS.

UPDATE:

Well, not really. Due to an unhappy confluence of timing and LA landlords' hatred for real dogs (over 50 lbs.), Baby and I are STILL looking for a place to live. Our current 'lords are -- fortunately -- benevolent and have allowed us to renege on our 30-day notice, but we have to be out by June 12th or so. In other words, the heat is on.

We've put in applications for four or five places, but have been turned down for one reason or another from each of them. We're not really sure what's going on, but it seems like landlords out here won't rent to folks with babies and dogs. Which is odd, because every Angeleno has either a baby or a dog. Maybe it's having both that's the problem.

Anyway, we looked at a place yesterday that meets our criteria, and we're putting in an application tomorrow. I have a good feeling about this one, despite our bad luck. It has central air, which is actually pretty rare around here. Also, it's a block from a light rail track, so Baby and I could easily take the metro into Chinatown or Hollywood on the weekends.

We're just still glad to be out of North Carolina.

UPDATE! Another reason we're glad to be out of Durham. My favorite quote:

"Burning a cross without the permission of the property owner is a misdemeanor in North Carolina."

I'm very happy with the name we gave our baby. I think it gives her a lot of options. If she doesn't want to be a Wren, she has all of Elizabeth (liz, lizzy, eliza, liza, beth, betty, and za) to fall back on. And if she's really hard core I suppose she could insist on being called Lawrence. For now she seems happy with Wren, but she hears it so infrequently that I can't really be sure. I remember reading The Diaper Bag's entry on the names they called their son, and thinking, "why not just call him Elias? It's a good name!" But today I'm taking a page from her book, and I'm going to give you an (abridged)list of the names I regularly call poor little Wren every day.

Wren
Baby
Wrenbaby (probably most common}
Wrennel
Wrennelina
Rinnet (the lining of a cow's stomach- used in cheese making)
Wrenny
Wrenbird
the bird
Bunny
Bunny rabbit
the baby
Babybird
Fussface
Pumpkin
Pumpkin Face/Head
Poopy
Pizza Face (infant acne, poor thing)
Goose
Gosling(you've got to give me credit for that)
Mess
and of course, little miss Goo-eye

When my mom came to visit she expressed worry that Wren would never actually learn her name. She would enter kindergarten thinking her name was Pizza Face. I'm going to change my ways. She's stricly Wren from here on out.

Cinco de Mayo has come and gone and you know what that means... summer is totally and officially here. To facilitate your summer fun, here's my new favorite website.

This is also a useful information source, but seems to place a little too much emphasis on skinny dipping and other forms of outdoor nude recreation. (volleyball, waterskiing, ice hockey...) For me, I'm afraid this will definitely be a one-piece summer. I'm not even going to risk the "tankini". There's a little postpartum depression for you.

The Incarnation was obviously pretty great, but I think the true miracle of Christmas was when Mary wrapped the baby in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger. I don't know what we would do if no one had told us about swaddling the baby. It's the ultimate weapon. When everything else has failed; feeding, burping, changing, rocking, yadda yadda- if we swaddle her, she gets quiet. She can be screaming in impotent rage, and then we swaddle her and seconds later she gets all dreamy-eyed and angel-babyish. I'm afraid to use the swaddle too often for fear it will lose its potency. Maybe it has something to do with circulation, but I'm not going to think about it too hard.

The pacifier, which Lazlo and I have decided to call "the shut up key", is also great. All this blather about so called "nipple confusion" was just another one of the billion things they tell new parents to mess with our heads. Like- "you always have to warm a bottle", and "never never never shake a baby." Wren shows no preference for any particular food delivery method. She's in it solely for the food; she could care less about the dining experience. If shut up keys didn't already exist I think Lazlo and I would craft them with slivers of wood and tree resin. Life would not be worth living without them.

One of the many infant care books Baby and I now own expresses the memorable sentiment that nothing is more satifying for parents of a newborn than when their baby lets out a huge, wet burp after eating. While I agree that such moments are nice, the really great moment -- for me, at least -- has been rocking a newly-changed and alert baby at 3:00 AM until I feel her head resting on my shoulder. It's then that I think, "the dog would never let me do this."

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Something that people without infants our sleeping disorders may not realize is that when you wake up in the middle of the night for more than a few minutes, you're incredibly hungry. Just now it feels like there are kittens trying to escape my stomach -- and they aren't interested in taking the normal route out. I'm attempting to distract them with TJ's ripoff Triscuits and cream cheese.

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The second house that Baby and I applied to rent (see below) was taken by a large family last night. It turns out they had already put down a deposit when we applied for the place. I won't begrudge them the house, since they seem to need it more than we do, but I am a little miffed that they rented the house across the street, too. Oh, well. I guess we weren't meant to live in Highland Park.

We're still in contact with the South Pasadena real estate guy, but he hasn't gotten word from the owner yet. I'm supposed to call him back on Wednesday, but he hasn't been encouraging at all. Leasing agents and landlords are the flakiest people I have ever dealt with.

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Well, the kittens are mollified, so I'm back to bed. Good night folks. Next time you see Baby, ask her how she's enjoying M*A*S*H. Just don't get her started on Alan Alda's increasing self-importance starting in season four.

Baby and I -- who had previously looked for quite a while without finding anything meeting our exacting home criteria -- are now faced with a housing choice. Some friends of ours pointed out a house for rent in their barrio (that's for NACHO BORRACHO, who is headed to Guatemala tonight). It's (allegedly) about 1200 square feet, which would make it the largest house Baby and I had lived in together -- and it's within our newly-expanded price range. There are about eight people living in the house right now, so the landlord nearly dookied a shooter when I told him that it would just be the three of us in the house if he rented it to us. He was totally enthused, in fact, until he found out that we couldn't move in for two weeks. I guess he's in a rush. Does nobody give 30-day notice in LA county?

We're supposed to find out tomorrow about both of these places. Knowing landlords and leasing agents, however, I would place the odds of that happening at about 500:1 against. We'll keep you posted, dear readers.