Counting down the days to Christmas with a daily morning post containing a photograph of the White House Christmas decorations.  Have no clue why someone Jewish is doing this or how I got all these pictures — read the first post.

There are four floor-to-ceiling boxes in the front hall of the East Wing with this design (and the pattern repeats in decorations in different rooms).  All four boxes were constructed by volunteers.  The gold chunks are actually the pine cones from last year’s Christmas decorations.  They were broken into pieces, spray painted gold, and repurposed.  All 15,000 of them.  It took 40 volunteers two months to make the covered plywood boxes.

The top of the official White House Christmas Tree in the Blue Room

In the fine tradition of Jews helping you celebrate your holiday, from writing your songs (from “White Christmas” to “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer”) to making your Christmas movies, I too am going to help you celebrate Christmas this year.  Even though I’m not celebrating it myself.

I went to the White House on Friday, and before the meeting, we got a tour of the Christmas decorations including a brief chat with the White House pastry chef who told us how they constructed the edible White House this year.  Rather than dump all the pictures on you at once, I thought I’d post one a day, in the morning, as a countdown to Christmas (these daily posts would be in addition to my normal written posts).  A visual advent calendar of images from what Michelle Obama calls “the People’s House.”

All the posts are under the category “Jew with a View” because I got a great view of the White House, and in case you didn’t catch it in the last 6 years of blogging, I’m Jewish.  Plus, I wanted a general category because I often have awesome photos from events, and it would be fun to release them in themed daily-ish cycles.

So tune in every morning, perhaps over your breakfast cereal, for a photo (with or without fun facts) from the White House including Bo-Flakes (as well as the very real and fuzzy Bo who was hanging out by a Christmas Tree), ornaments, and many boughs of holly.  Tra la la la la la la la la.  My Christmas gift to you since I’m not getting y’all anything else.

Near the front hall of the East Wing

I have become incredibly wimpy about the cold this winter, and it’s only November.  I really don’t know what I’m going to do come January when it’s actually freezing outside.

I would much rather spend time outside when it is unbearably hot than when it is even mildly cold.  I’m not saying that I enjoy sitting outside in 105-degree heat, but I can handle that better than having to hang around outside when it’s in the low forties.

I don’t know when it changed.  I used to walk around Madison, Wisconsin all winter without a coat.  WITHOUT A COAT.  (Don’t tell my mother.) And now I shiver at the thought of having to get in the car later and drive for three or four minutes without the heat on at full blast until the car warms up.

Obviously, we’d all rather have moderate temperatures, but are you better with high or low temperatures outside?

*******

The ChickieNob rolled, sat up, crawled, and walked, all in the span of one week.  One week very late in her development, but one week nonetheless.  She went from nothing to everything exactly when she felt like doing it.

The Wolvog has been online since… birth… but the ChickieNob requested and received her own email account this week.  She is an excellent conversationalist online and sends lengthy emails, full of questions and answers.  Mostly spelled correctly.  The day after setting up her email account, she announced that she was now ready for her own blog.  Her brother has had his own url since kindergarten, and she would like her own space.  I happened to have an unused url that the Wolvog and I sometimes use as a practice space, so I told her that I’d turn it over to her.  A few hours after that, she told me that she now needs to learn how to create an image map in order to build the type of site she wants to create.

The girl does things in her own time.

I obviously fall way on one end of the spectrum on the “should you let your kids go online” debate.  They’re online with a safety net; they know that I receive a receipt of every email they send and receive.  I have a record of all their passwords and the right to enter their accounts at any time.  They are only allowed on sites we’ve approved and bookmarked.  The majority of their online time is either communicative (email) or creative (programming) vs. game playing.  We talk a lot about Internet safety and privacy.  I do this because I want them to be Internet savvy when they’re older and feel comfortable online.  Because we’re going to hit a day when it won’t be appropriate for me to receive a receipt of every email, and I want to know that I can trust them (within reason) to comport themselves with circumspect online and get help from an adult when they encounter something that they don’t think (or want) to handle on their own.  I hope that if we start now that we’ll set good habits in place.  I don’t know if the decisions we’ve made are the best decisions until we hit that sweet spot of retrospect.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Whingy Fertiles” (Look No Tubes)
• “The 10th of December” (Mrs. Spit)
• “Bidding Adieu to Old Friends” (Family Building with a Twist)
• “And Time Goes By So Slowly” (Mummy Play Buttons)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Something Out of Nothing has a poem about the ever-present needle and the various ways it moves the cycle along.  It’s an absolutely brilliant movement from the clench to the release; the tension to the hope.

Family Building with a Twist cracked me up with her Mayan Apocalypse Bucket List, mostly because I have December 21st circled on the calendar and it’s my #1 excuse for why we haven’t started the home renovations on the kitchen (new kitchen counters won’t be able to save me when the zombies come).  #15 is probably my favourite.

Lastly, Mrs. Spit raises a thought-provoking, emotional question in her post about the ways in which her life still looks the same.  She writes, “And at the end of my life, will I be happy? Will I look back at my life and be pleased?  They tell me that no one looks back and wishes they worked more, but what else is there for me, a woman with no children? What are my options?”  I think the answer lies in the comment section, the point that A makes about the difference we make in the world.  And Mrs. Spit has made a difference.

The roundup to the Roundup: I really don’t do well with the cold.  G-d help us, the ChickieNob is now online.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 23rd and November 30th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Do you know what it is totally cute to be?  Baby Crazy.  I mean, unless your uterus is an inhospitable environment to the low-quality embryos made out of your sub-par eggs.  Then it’s just sad.  And that — in the opinion of the average Internet commenter — is not actually Baby Craziness… it’s Baby Desperation.  I know, you think it’s just semantics but let me put it to you this way: Baby Crazy is Pinterest-worthy and full of squee.  Baby Desperate is kneeling in the frozen foods section and weeping bitterly by the Green Giant frozen peas because you got a call from your RE that your cycle failed.  Not that I ever did that.

I cried outside the food store, and I had purchased broccoli.

The Stir came up with a top ten list to let you know that after having two kids easily, how you know when you’re ready to pop out a third. (In case you were wondering how fertile people did this, it’s called sex.)  It looks very similar to a list an infertile woman might create called: A Day in My Life.  Items on the list include:

• Crying over all the baby announcements and updates on your Facebook feed.
• Daydreaming about things such as baby names or nursery colours.
• Buying baby items for friends, and then wishing that you could keep them for yourself.

Sound familiar?

So you would think that the world should be able to relate to the emotional landscape of the average infertile person.  So why is it baby desperation — a situation that sounds akin to sweaty upper lips and body odor — if you’re infertile. (Even if you have a child!  Those experiencing secondary infertility or primary infertility a second time are also called baby desperate.)  But it’s cutesy baby crazy if you can conceive without issues?

My apologies to the author of the article if this is a situation she is grappling with, truly crying over Facebook announcements and struggling to know the right path to take.  But if that is the case, it could do a lot of good in this world to discuss it in that manner rather than clogging the Internet with jokes such as “You actually contemplate picking up a stray baby in the store and asking the mom how bad she REALLY wants her.”

Really, we can handle hearing someone’s hopes and fears stated in a heartfelt manner.

* And here is where we come to the asterisk in the title.  It’s actually never okay to call someone “baby crazy” or “baby desperate” or “baby hungry,” and unless you are using it in a tongue-in-cheek manner to turn language that other people use on its head, it makes me sad to hear someone use these terms on themselves.  There is nothing unhealthy in wanting to build your family or feeling deep sadness over a diagnosis (and the subsequent treatment) of infertility.

We would never call someone wearing glasses as “sight crazy” or someone who’d go so far as to utilize LASIK to correct their vision as “sight desperate.”  We don’t call people who wear hearing aids as “hearing crazy” or those who utilize cochlear implants as “hearing desperate.”  Both non-life threatening but certainly lifestyle-threatening conditions.  Like infertility.

And let’s not belittle mental illness while we’re at it too.

Stepping off my soap box and going back to watching Harry Potter 7, Part I… I mean, working.

Welcome back to IComLeavWe. It stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation and comments should be honoured and encouraged. I like to say that comments are the new hug–a way of saying hello, giving comfort, leaving congratulations.

Here is the vital information, pure and simple (a more detailed set of rules follows below the list):

• The list opens the 1st of every month. It remains open until the 21st. You can add yourself at any point. The list is open to everyone in the blogosphere–blog writers and/or blog readers.
• Add yourself to the list by filling out this form: The December list is now closed.  The January list will open on the 28th.
  
• Click here to cut-and-paste this bit of code to add to your sidebar (if you have the old code from another month, remove it and replace it with this one). You need to add the icon or a link to the current list on your blog (see below) and will not be added until it’s up.
• Commenting kicks off every month on the 21st. Please mark it somewhere (calendar, post-it note taped to your computer…), though I will be sending out an email reminder on the 20th. Commenting week runs from the 21st to the 28th. Every day, leave 5 comments and return 1 comment for a total of 6 comments. You are highly encouraged to choose the blogs you comment on from the participants list below, but this is not required.
• I will send a second email on the 28th to remind you to remove the icon from your blog.
• Read below if you want to find out about Iron Commenters.
• The commenting ends on the 28th. We catch our breath and the whole thing starts again the next month on the 1st. Drop in and out according to what is happening in your life between the 21st and the 28th.

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. kate; uncensored (personal thoughts & musings)
3. Waiting For Baby (IUI, vasectomy reversal, PCOS)
4. Life in Little Hispaniola (faith, gluten-free, family)
5. Breathe Gently (1st-pregnancy, IVF, PCOS)
6. Dragondreamer’s Lair (parenting, secondary infertility, life)
7. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, family)
8. The 2 Week Wait (infertility motherhood humor)
9. Donating Hope (egg donor, SIF, divorce)
10. Strength, Hope, and Everything in Between (infertility, IUI, injections)
11. Dreaming of Dimples (inspiration, IVF, infertility)
12. It Is What It Is (Or Is It?) (pg w donated embryos, short cervix, pg @ 46)
13. Life of an Army Wife (army, infertility, crafting)
14. Non Sequitur Chica (IVF, infertility, home improvement, )
15. Antijenic Drift (life, thoughts, food)
16. Gypsy Mama’s Misconceptions (IVF#2, cancun, infertility)
17. Thought Provoking Moments (life lessons, IVF, loss)
18. I Won’t Give Up (IVF, infertility, craziness)
19. A Passage to Baby (infertility, surrogacy, rambling)
20. Bliss Filled Life (infertility, open adoption, acceptance)
21. Old Lady and No Baby (infertility, egg donor, injections)
22. Team Harries Beats Infertility (waiting, faith, prayer)
23. Tesseract (life, humour, philosophy)
24. Comatised (family, cancer, survival)
25. FrozenOJ’s Concentrated Life (ttc, infertility, loss)
26. IUI to Roux-en-Y (pregnancy, WLS, NCAH)
27. Believing in June (marriage, infertility, pregnant with #2)
28. Putter Pie (marriage, humor, baby)
29. Mommy Unwired (mom, kids, love)
30. Life is Simple, It’s Just Not Easy (preemies, twins, marriage)
31. Patience is Not My Virtue (ttc, infertility, iui)
32. Life is Hard (loss, trying, living children)
33. The Cool Mom (army, family, infertility)
34. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, adoptive parenting)
35. Project: Me, Only Better! (me, self-discovery, health)
36. Unexplained Rantings (infertility, rpl, life)
37. Secret Sanctuary (prepping, prayer, parenthood)
38. for all the things we hope for (endometriosis, 5yrs of infertility, doula-ing)
39. The Barren Librarian (infertility, humor, treatment)
40. Window Into Our World (parenting, pcos, infertility)
41. Love Is Multiplied (pregnancy, loss, life)
42. A Virtual Hobby Store and Coffee Haus (news, life, food)
43. Pitney’s Journey to Cameroon (wycliffe, prayer, life)
44. Overworked Ovaries (infertility, ivf, life)
45. Hidden Infertility (infertility, hope, life)
46. Inconceivable! (PG via DE, step-parenting, life)
47. Finding a Way Out of IF (ivf, ccrm, emotions)
48. A Daily Miracle (pregnant after infertility)
49. From IF to When (infertility, adoption, parenting)
50. Pollination Chronicles (FET for baby#2, IVF abroad)
51. Weathering Storms (parenting after adoption)
52. It Only Takes One (dor, ivf, life)
53. Holly’s Narrative Dream (infertility, writing, life)
54. Reese’s Rants and Raves (pregnancy, parenting, infant loss)
55. Carneyexploits (IVF, doubt, life)
56. Life As I Know It (twins, toddler, life)
57. Mine to Command (infertile, fertileBFF, miscarriage)
58. Wanted: Family of Three (male factor, donor sperm, inseminations)
59. Finding the peace to the puzzle (infertility, love, persistence)
60. The December list is now closed.  The January list will open on the 28th.

Q: What if I miss a day?

A: Catch up the next day by doubling your comments–12 comments instead of 6.

Q: What if I have two blogs? Can I sign up twice, listing both blogs?

A: Yes, but you also need to double your comments. If you have two blogs listed, you should be leaving 12 comments per day.

Q: What is an Iron Commenter?

A: Not for the faint-of-heart. People who wish to be an Iron Commenter and be entered on the Iron Commenter honour roll need to leave a comment on every blog on the participants list (exceptions are blogs that require you to have a special log-in, such as some LiveJournal accounts or other similar situations). You can spread out this commenting any way you wish over the whole week, but the final comment needs to be left by midnight on the 28th (EST). Reaching Iron Commenter status is done on an honour system. Please email me if you earn Iron Commenter status so I can add you to the wall of honour.

Q: Why do I have to add that bit of code to my sidebar?

A: The code is the latest icon (the icon changes colour every month so you know that you’re on the right list). This month, the icon is red, the next month it will be green, etc. The reason is two-fold: (1) it enables more people to find out about IComLeavWe and (2) it gives you easy access to the current list once the commenting week actually begins and better ensures that you’ll use it. Too many times, people sign up and forget to actually do IComLeavWe and this icon gives you a daily reminder (with the dates on it) every time you open your own blog. The icon is linked back to the current list. On the 28th, remove the icon from your blog. A new one will be created for the next month.

Q: It’s the 23rd and I just saw this for the first time on my friend’s blog! I want to join the list–why can’t I?

A: Because IComLeavWe happens every month, once the list is closed, it’s closed. If you’re finding out about this on the 23rd, you can’t join the current month. But leave yourself a note to check back in a week on the 1st and you can sign up for the next month.

Q: You said the list closes on the 21st. Well, it’s still the 21st where I am. Why aren’t you moving my information onto the list?

A: All dates and times are U.S. Eastern Standard Time (UTC/GMT -5 hours). The list closes around 11 p.m. EST on the 21st.

Q: What if no one comments on my blog and I have no comments to return?

A: Well, that really doesn’t happen for the most part, but in that case, simply choose another blog and add an additional comment. The goal is to hit 6 comments daily as a minimum. Going over that is fantastic and encouraged.

Q: Mel, my question wasn’t covered at all. What do I do?

A: Email me; I’m quite friendly. It helps to place “IComLeavWe” in the subject line. You could also check this post which contains the history of IComLeavWe and see if you can glean anything there.

Looking for the comment section? It has been closed on this post. Use the form in the directions to add yourself to the list.