I'm so sorry I'm always late with the next chapter recently. My kids don't give me much time for writing, and even if I have, I feel too tired… Well, anyway, here's the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it!
The honest and meaningful conversation that Amy and Patricia had had the "day of the swallowed raisin" (they always called it like that in retrospect) had brought some things into light, that Amy had never heard of before. It gave her a better understanding for her mother's educational problems in the past and made her feel a little closer to her.
For example, her mother had told her that Amy had been born by emergency C-section, too, and that she'd always been ashamed of admitting it to others, because she had been so disappointed in herself of not having been able to give birth in the natural way. Patricia even had shown Amy the scar across her belly, from whose existence Amy, who never had seen her own mother naked, had never known. First, Amy had been quite angry at her mother for not telling her the circumstances of her own birth. Had she known that she herself had been born with a C-section because of her own big head that hadn't fit through her mother's beck bone, for sure she would have had her own beck bone and the head of her daughter get measured before giving birth, which would have spared her a lot of problems. After all, she once had read a scientific article about how C-section influences evolution in this regard… But she really didn't want to discuss about evolution with her mother and in the end, it didn't matter anymore, and she just wanted to stop thinking about the whole damn thing.
The only time in their long talk where Amy strongly contradicted Patricia was, when she tried to convince Amy of using an item for Rosalind, that she had kept from Amy's childhood. It was some weird leather safety-harness that reminded Amy very much of a dog leash. Unfortunately, Sheldon found the object, that Amy knew from old pictures and that she always had held for some kind of traditional suspenders, very useful and took it home with him.
The weeks went by and being parents become more and more self-evident for Sheldon and Amy. Getting the baby to sleep? No problem. Changing the diapers without gloves? Now even Sheldon could laugh about it.
But especially for Amy, who currently was doing her job in part-time and almost completely from home, which meant that she saw her beloved lab only sporadically, this new situation also had its downsides: she was bored. Sometimes she was bored to hell! It wasn't that there was nothing to do, on the contrary, she almost never was able to lay her hands into the lap, most of the time they were occupied with carrying or holding her daughter, with putting laundry into the washing machine (so much laundry, and she always had to go down all the stairs into the laundry room with Rosalind in the sling and the basket full of dirty clothes in her hands!), with changing diapers and sometimes even with something that she only did for herself like eating or brushing her teeth. But her mind felt empty. Everything she did happened automatically, there was nothing she had to think about. In the first weeks she had enjoyed that a lot, finally there was enough time for reading educational magazines, cheesy romance novels (only when Sheldon was not at home, of course) or scientific literature. But that soon became boring, too. Then (also only when Sheldon was not at home) she tried to continue writing her "Little House on the Prairie" fanfiction, but always, literally always, when she was about to get into the flow and have really great new ideas for her story, Rosalind started crying and Amy had to stop writing.
The only thing that let her grey cells work for a while was the Rubik's cube. Sheldon couldn't believe it when she told him, she never had tried solving it. So, she gave it a try and soon it became an obsession. When she was breastfeeding her child, in her head she turned the sides of the cube up and down, left and right, back and forth. When she changed the diapers, she quickly switched into her inner view and saw all that beautiful colors: blue and red, yellow and green, orange and white, instead of, well, what was really in front of her... Sometimes she was close to giving it up and have a look on the internet, but Sheldon always encouraged her to try it further. Then, one day, after weeks of trial and error, the cube suddenly lay in her hand just the way she had received it: every side was shining in its own, monochromatic magnificence. She had done it! Wow… She hadn't been that proud of herself for a long time.*
Then, short after, the disillusion set in. What could she do now? She was desperately searching for a new field of intellectual occupation, until she suddenly realized, that Rosalind would be half a year soon and that meant she was old enough for her first mush. Oh, she would cook the most delicious food for her little sweetie, that was for sure. And only the best ingredients would find their way into the mash, of course! After all, she wanted her child to have all the important nutrients and vitamins right from the start and she didn't want to spoil her with the taste of industrial made food. Immediately she took her phone and started searching for the best weekly markets for organic food in Los Angeles, while she was rocking Rosalind in the other arm…
Some days later, the gang was having a special "party" in Leonard's and Penny's apartment. Raj had suggested to celebrate Rosalind's first "real meal" with a self-cooked dinner for all of them.
"So, what are these…?" Penny asked with frowned brows when she had had her first look into the jute sack, in that Amy had brought home her purchases from the organic food market in Los Angeles.
"Looks like parsley roots!" Sheldon commented, after he had taken a quick view, too.
"Can't you see that's parsnips?" Amy asked with frowned brows, too. "Sheldon, didn't you read the article from the parental magazine which explains the suitable starter vegetables for baby mash? I marked it for you with a post-it. A yellow one, I know you don't like the other colors of them!"
Sheldon became a little white in the face. "Oh no, I totally forgot to read that. And you don't have my eidetic memory… I hope you remember everything correctly, Amy! We cannot afford any mistakes."
"I've brought the recipe with me, Sheldon, don't worry!"
"Oh, thank Goodness! Well, let's see… Peel the parsnips, cut them into cubes and throw them into boiling water. Ok, but which size shall the cubes have? Which lunatic wrote this recipe?"
"Don't worry, Sheldon, we cook them anyway until they're completely squashy and then we even will puree them, so it doesn't matter"
"Are you sure, Amy?"
"I am. For 95 %..."
Penny turned her eyes. "Ok you two, I guess I better won't tell you that my grandma feeded me with mashed banana right after birth because I was so thin. Well, I'm happy, she wasn't successful…"
"Oh my God, what did she do?" Bernadette exclaimed.
„But you just told us! And you distracted me from cutting the cubes. Now, one is smaller than the others." Sheldon complained simultaneously.
„We always knew Nebraska is a dangerous place!" Howard said with a shrug of his shoulders. "But I'm wondering why you didn't decide for a carrot mash? Isn't that the classic first mash for babies?"
„Since we will eat the same mash, only that for us, it will enter a small liaison with potato mash before (o làlà) carrot would have been too ordinary," Raj tried to explain the choice of the vegetable.
"But the far more important reason is that we don't want carrot spots on all the textiles around the room!" Amy added.
"Because carrot spots don't disappear by washing. And neither other spots including beta carotene." Sheldon said, while he threw the parsnip cubes into the boiling water.
"That's why I don't eat tomato sauce anymore, although I love it" Raj agreed and shrugged his shoulders in Sheldon's direction."
"Well, I don't know what your grandmas do the whole day, but my grandma uses to put every cloth with orange or red fruit spots on the grass into the sun. You just have to pay attention that the chickens don't have access to that place. And then, after some hours, the spots are gone!" Penny took a sip of whine and made a mocking face.
Sheldon patted his hand against his forehead. "Oh, of course, in the presence of light and oxygen the double bonds in the beta carotene molecules get attacked, so that the molecules changes their shape and absorb waves from different lengths than before."
"Ok, you think you're smart right? But my grandma apparently is much smarter than you!" Penny stuck out her tongue in Sheldon's direction.
"Are you serious?" Bernadette screamed „Why did nobody of you never tell me? I've got two kids who used to spit on everything! And why are you weeping, crybaby?" Angrily she looked at Raj.
"All the cashmere pullovers, all the silky shirts spoiled with yummy tomato sauce, I've thrown them all into the trash. And I looked so elegant in them! Even my favorite scarf with the violet paisley pattern. Photosensitivity of beta carotene, of course!"
Howard sighed and patted Raj's shoulder for comfort.
After a while, Leonard sniffed. "What's that smell?"
„Which smell?" Amy asked
„I don't know… It smells of… I can't grasp it."
"I can smell it, too! It smells like the rear wall of the shed in my parent's backyard in Texas, where my brother used to work on his motorbike. Oh, and it also smells like the underpasses at the train stations, oh and also like some narrow passages in the gloomy districts of Pasadena. Funny, that they all have the same smell, isn't it?"
"Eew, this is absolutely old piss!" Penny blew her nose. "Where the hell does that come from? Did some sewer break?"
"No, no, it comes from the pots!" Leonard had gone to the stove. "It's the parsnips… God, why did we have to cook that stuff in our apartment?"
"Sorry, but I absolutely don't know what you're talking about," Amy said with a helpless face. "I don't smell anything. What about you?" She looked at Raj, Bernie and Howard. They all were shaking their heads.
"Sheldon, get prepared for a fresh breeze of air at your spot, I'll open the windows now and I will close them when I think it's the right time, not when your sensitive ass feels cold," Penny announced.
Meanwhile Howard was playing on his phone. "Ok, a quick search on Google indicates, that there are a couple of threads in parenting online forums dealing with the question if cooking parsnips smells of urine or not. Good news: neither of us is crazy, apparently some people can smell it and some not."**
Suddenly Rosalind started crying. Automatically, Amy's hands went to her breasts to feel which one was supposed to be the starter. Luckily, only Sheldon noticed it. „What are you doing?" He hissed. „We're in public and furthermore, what about that mash for that we had to make so many sacrifices?"
Amy gulped. Did she really want her daughter to try that food? She went to the pot with the parsnips cubes and smelled again. Nothing bad, just a sweet scent. She took one of them out and tried it. Penny, Sheldon and Leonard were grimacing in disgust. She ignored them and concentrated on the sensation in her mouth. It tasted delicious!
Soon after, Amy had prepared a little bowl with parsnip mash and Sheldon had dressed the baby in a bib that had been a present from the gang and that Raj had get embroidered with a self created epigram: "more important than a silver spoon in the mouth is a golden heart in the chest." Obviously, he was pretty proud of himself.
Everyone was excited when Amy brought the first spoon full of mash to Rosalind's mouth. First, she looked irritated, then a broad smile appeared on her face and she wanted to have more. Quickly, she had eaten all the mash from the bowl and curled up satisfied in her Daddy's arms.
"Now she looks exactly like you on that one picture that your Mom has in her living room," Amy said smiling.
"For me she always will look like your great grandmother Rosalind" Sheldon responded, smiling, too. "By the way, some time ago I've read something very interesting in my Asperger's self-help online forum. There was a guy who wasn't able to recognize his own daughter. When he got to take her home from preschool, he always had to wait until she saw him and ran to him, he wouldn't have been able to distinguish her from all the other blond haired girls in pink shirts."
"Wow, that's really sad!" Howard said in an affected voice.
"It is," Sheldon agreed with him. "Some time ago I would have found that incredibly hilarious, now it only makes me feel sympathetic with that man. Because I think there's nothing more beautiful in the world than looking into a cute baby's face and knowing it's your's." He smiled and rubbed his nose in Rosy's hair.
"Oh God, Sheldon, I thought the "silver spoon, golden heart" thing was cheesy, but you really make me cry," Penny said while rubbing her eyes.
"Really, I make you cry with emotion? That's so funny!"
Penny boxed him into his shoulder. "There he is, old Sheldon again!"
*True story for myself, except for that my husband always told me to put that cube away and look for the solution on the internet, but I stayed strong and solved it on my own, LOL!
** At least that's my experience with the whole matter!