Aileen Jeffries

Babies Birthed: One

When 2008 arrived, I was busy growing a baby. She went easy on me, both for the nine months I hosted her and the one exciting day in late May when she came into this world. Three hours of I’ve-had-Pilates-hangovers-that-felt-worse pre-epidural contractions, half an hour of actual pushing. Like I was made to have babies or something. Seven pounds, 15oz, with a head circumference and length both in the 95th percentile. Now at seven months, Kea is refining her crawling skills, eating anything she can get her chubby mitts on and, in my entirely biased opinion, cuter than a baby red panda hugging an otter pup. Traffic accident causing cute. Ovary-ripening cute. High school boys comment on how cute she is.

Change in Number of Cats: Zero

Nordstrom, like James Dean, died too young. Just in his second summer, he fell victim to a marauding cabal of coyotes. He is survived by his brother, Saks. Not long after the Departing, we discovered a litter of kittens in a neighbor’s back yard. One of them came to the live with us. He is clearly related to Saks; either his half-brother or nephew or possibly both (the strays in our neighborhood aren’t choosy about their bedfellows). A fluffier, smaller, less symmetrical Saks. We have named him Nieman.

Number of black BMWs in our driveway: soon to be Three

This seems like a bit of a ridiculous number, doesn’t it? So far, Kes has managed to remain faithful and true to me in our three-year marriage. The same could not be said for his cars. There is always a shinier, newer, more powerful model out there. Big Love, Bavarian style. It’s the Hoffmeister kinks. Who could resist? Not Kes, apparently. We went to Munich in October for European delivery on a 135i. At this moment, it’s on its way to Portland from the port in L.A. Assuming the delivery truck can make it through snowy Grants Pass, Third Wife will be here by Christmas.

Significant construction projects: 1.7

You know what’s more fun than being nine months pregnant in a heat wave? Living in a construction site. All worth it though – our backward (literally) and exceedingly drafty little 1890’s farm house was transformed into a larger, well insulated, 4 bedroom home. Favorite parts: the dining room with the mango wood table that’s big enough to seat ten. The new gas stove. The architecturally incongruous Moorish arch that picks up a detail in the hearth tile. The moonlight that spills through Kea’s windows into her crib. No longer having to wear down parkas indoors or seeing my breath as I cook breakfast.

So, where does the .7 come from? It is a long story, but my mom is building a cabin on Mt. Hood on land inherited from her brother. We’re calling it Hank’s Ranch. Winter set it hard last week, effectively ending the construction season before they could finish it up.

Holidays hosted: 3

Thanksgiving for 34, Christmas morning just for 8, New Years Eve for anyone who has nothing better to do and subscribes to the theory that New Years is for amateurs and that it is best to lower expectations as much as possible and avoid public gatherings. Also, must have a fondness for cheap champagne.

Maximum body weight: 178 lbs.

Toward the end of my pregnancy, a morbid desire crept into my mind to see how big I could get. Turns out, about the heft of a large Great Dane. I think this is impressive for someone who used to eat pints of Ben and Jerrys in the winter in an attempt to gain enough weight to avoid hypothermia.

I have a great ambivalence toward all things craft. On the one hand, Martha Stewart is personal idol of mine and one of my life goals is to become the family matriarch. I genuinely enjoy the “feminine arts” of cooking, sewing, decorating and gardening. A wave of pleasure washes over me when I get something “just so” – like when I found the perfect brocade duvet cover for the antique iron bedframe we have in the guest bedroom.

On the other hand, the craft store Michaels gives me the creeps. The overwhelming potpourri smell, the aisles of fake flowers, the bedazzling and scrap booking paraphernalia. The 20 minutes spent waiting in line at the framing counter behind an overly tanned, Juicy Couture sweatpants wearing, fake nails sporting trophy wife framing poster-sized portraits of her pudgy and sullen future-criminal children. The fear that perhaps I am one of them; that any moment now I’ll don a “kittens with balls of yarn” holiday sweater and get out my glue gun and just give up.

Tangentially, there’s a whole field of popular art that seems to accompany the dark side of crafting. Thomas Kinkade and Anne Geddes come to mind here. Once, I had a dream about photographing in the style of Anne Geddes except instead of babies with cabbage leaves on their heads, my subject matter was baby animals nestled in piles of foods made from the same animal. Fluffy little chicks in a nest of scrambled eggs. Piglets positioned in bacon bouquets.

Part of my crafting trepidation comes from my naturally snobbish nature. I am a designer. I have a degree in Design. I’m really good at differentiating colors. So when I craft, it’s art, right?

Except Sunday’s project involved the cheesy crafting trifecta: felt, a kitten motif and a trip to loathsome JoAnn’s Fabrics, emporium of disaffected employees, ADA violations and unreasonably long lines. I fully embraced my inner kindergarten teacher and I emerged satisfied with the result. Kea now has a Christmas stocking, featuring our kitten, Neiman. It matches Kes’ squirrel stocking and my chick-a-dee.

Now, where did I put that glue gun?

I live in a neighborhood of Portland called Hillsdale, often confused with Hillsboro, the suburban hinterland. No, no Hillsdale,  I correct, slightly too quickly and insistently. Not that living here is anything to be especially boastful about. Hillsdale is hardly trendy like Nob Hill, or swank like the Pearl, or saturated with hipsters like Mississippi Ave. Hillsdale is quiet and dependable, populated with good Oregonians who like to garden, drink beer, buy organic, vote Democratic and take advantage of Portland’s famed public transportation system. As I begin my long, slow slide into middle age and motherhood, I find my neighborhood’s charms are growing on me.

Our immediate neighbors are all incredibly, almost suspiciously, nice. Not one of them has been anything but cheerful throughout our unsightly and disruptive Endless Remodel, required police intervention in a domestic dispute, or stolen my identity for the purposes of supporting a meth habit.  We live within a block of a fire station, a library and a nice little park with a playground. The best bakery in Portland, Baker and Spice, is an easy walk from my front door. As is a passably good Mexican restaurant, decent Thai, and a liquor store that is never open when I need liquor. We have the requisite McMenamins, if you like the element of surprise in your dining experience. Delicious Captain Neon burger with no onions and a Ruby, served quickly with a smile? Or will I be waiting 30 minutes to get my drink order in before finally giving up and walking out? Who knows! It’s McMenamins! Wilson High School and the Sunday farmer’s market are just a couple of blocks away too. This may all sound quite quaint and village-y, but I assure you, it isn’t. Hillsdale’s center is a sad little strip mall facing a busy highway, crisscrossed with overhead power lines.

This is about to change, slowly but for the better. The planners are wisely shifting the focus away from Hwy 10 (a dreary but necessary artery through SW Portland) and toward underutilized blocks to the north. The focus of Phase 1 is the intersection of DeWitt St and Sunset Blvd, just a block from our house. The park will be extended all the way to Sunset, and DeWitt will be extended on the other side of Sunset. This, apparently, is actually going to happen. If later phases come to fruition, we’ll get a mixed retail/residential/public space town center in what is currently a parking lot.

I’m tentatively thrilled. What foresight we had to buy our house two years ago (like we had any clue)!

For six innocent months, our baby, Kea, was unaware of her feline housemates. Saks would curl up next to her on the sofa and Kea would treat him like any other furry warm blanket.

Unfortunately for our cats, Kea is starting to take more notice of her surroundings, just as she has begun her quest for mobility. She explores her world largely through her mouth – if she can grab it, it goes in the mouth. Whole catalogs are reduced to paper mush in mere minutes.

The greatest prize would be a cat – to grab, to ride, to fit as much as possible into her gaping maw. Our cats are not social creatures. They do not bear gladly the clumsy and the loud. When Kea smacks her fists against the floor, shrieks her primal cat-hunting call and lunges for one of them, they take off. This only spurs her desire to dominate them further.

Until this morning, I assumed the cats realized they had the upper hand, with their competency at walking and jumping to high, protected places. This was before we discovered what Nieman had done to Kea’s favorite pacifier. Evidently, he has some suppressed feelings about being stalked daily by our baby.