Angry Young Mom

And he stayed seated for the whole movie

2012-02-01T00:06:00.000-05:00

Which was the most impressive part, to me. Kiddo can't even stay seated through dinner. Or breakfast. DH took him to his very first Yankee game a few months back, and they spent more time strolling around the stadium than actually watching the game. (Although the Yanks lost, so arguably that was the right move.)

This was part of the reason I waited so long to bring him to a movie theater. Because even the five people at a half-empty matinee showing are going to get annoyed if your kid starts bopping up and down the aisles. Hey, I'd be annoyed if I were one of those five people.

The other reason, of course, being that it needs to be the right movie. As in, not a total piece of unredeemed garbage. Like, say, a Chipmunks movie. (Sorry, Jason Lee.) Or a Smurfs movie. (Sorry, NPH.) Or a Yogi Bear movie. (Sorry, Tom Cavanagh. No, actually I'm not.) Because I have to sit through it too, and I swore years ago that I wouldn't waste movie-theater money on bad movies. This is because I saw "Godzilla" in the theater and I still want Matthew Broderick to give me my money back.

"Beauty and the Beast 3D" seemed workable. Not so much the 3D, but because it's a classic, and the animation is well done, and oh all right, I love the movie. I know people freak about the whole Disney princess thing but 1. I don't see why that would apply to boys and 2. I love the movie. Belle is a brunette who is smart and loves books. In other words ... she's me! Well, me if I really, really liked yellow.

So we went to the movie. He didn't quite get the purpose of the previews. (Considering what some of them were, neither did I.) Nor did he get the point of the special glasses, and refused to wear them. We had this whispered conversation about five times during the movie:

"Sweetie, you have to wear the glasses or you'll miss stuff!"

"No, I don't want to wear the glasses!"

And eventually I gave up. (To his credit, he really was whispering, so at least he listened when I warned him early on to talk quietly.) Though they didn't add too much 3D to the movie -- layered backgrounds, mostly -- so it was possible to watch minus the glasses.

And the movie is still great, like a lovely Broadway musical. Kiddo seemed to get into it. Near the end, he whispered, "Is the Beast dead?" And then a little girl in the audience asked her mommy the same thing, sounding near tears. Poor dear.

Kiddo reported afterward that he liked Beauty, and Mrs. Potts, and Chip, and also the part where Beauty throws a snowball and it hits the Beast on the head and she laughs at him. Figures the snowball fight would catch his eye.

So I'm going to declare our first moviegoing expedition a success, and look forward to the next one. Which will not be "Phantom Menace" in 3D. Jar Jar in 2D is bad enough.

Mommy monsters and other conversational oddities

2012-01-26T00:18:00.000-05:00

So kiddo wakes up one morning and immediately -- before he can possibly get dressed, even -- starts to tell me about the big boat. "And it crashed into an iceberg, and it broke in half, and all the pieces fell into the ocean, and all the people got dead."

"Um. Do you mean the Titanic?"

"Yeah, the Titantic. And the driver -- "

"No, the person who drives the ship is called the captain -- "

"Yeah, and the captain got dead too."

My son, James Cameron.

I couldn't figure out where he'd learned about the Titanic, since it seemed not precisely age-appropriate to his class, and I don't think he's scored a Netflix account recently. My friend M., whose daughter is in his class, reported to me later that she'd stopped by the classroom for something and had noticed kiddo building a large boat out of Legos. She complimented him on it, and then he told her about the Titantic, and the iceberg, and how all the people got dead. M., slightly flabbergasted, asked the teacher if that was really the sort of thing the kids should be learning right now.

We figured out that another kid in their class had brought in a book about the Titanic, and that had been kiddo's source material. So ... good memory skills, sweetie!

I suppose it's not any worse than his explanation for why you have to look both ways before crossing the street: "If you don't, a car will run over you and you'll turn into a skeleton. Then you have to eat another little boy to turn back into a boy."

I swear we have not shown him one zombie movie.

It got even weirder a few days ago. He was throwing his usual "I don't WANT to go potty and you can't make me" fit, refusing to go upstairs, refusing to pull his pants down, and finally I snapped and really yelled at him. Because the word "saint" is nowhere in my name. And frankly, if you're going to pick something to throw a power-play tantrum over, why would you pick bathroom breaks? Is needing new pants and underwear really worth your moral high ground?

The next morning he told me all about the mommy monster. She came out of her cave and went into his classroom and came after him, and tried to drag him away, and then he kicked her in the face and tied her hands and she got dead.

"Uh huh," I said, wondering, should I take this personally?

He went on to explain that I am not the mommy monster, that the mommy monster is in fact a monster. I told him it still isn't nice to kick people in the face.

And then later that day, we were sprawled across the couch together when he looked down and suddenly said, "Mommy, is that your penis?"

Uh .... what?

I had to explain to him that women don't have penises. He didn't make the connection between women and Mommies, and asked again. I said that boys had penises but that girls did not. "But what do you have?" he persisted, and I somehow managed to avoid answering the question. Because really, I didn't think we were going to be tackling that until, oh, grade school? How about college? College okay on that one?

DH, by the way, found the whole exchange five kinds of hilarious, which means that 11 years from now when kiddette gets her first period, I will be making him explain the whole thing to her. Ha!

No. Sleep. Till. Brooklyn!

2012-01-19T00:31:00.000-05:00

Or at least I'm assuming that's the song running through kiddette's head these days. Not that she's ever been to Brooklyn. But she's taken a firm no-nap stance for several weeks now. Which would be fine if she didn't actually need the sleep, but since she's a weepy, hormonal little mess every single evening, clearly she does.

She drops a toy, she cries. Her slipper gets jostled loose, she cries. She drops a piece of pasta at dinner, she cries. She has to stop watching "Phineas and Ferb" so we can eat dinner, she cries. Basically it's non-stop sobbing from school pickup to bedtime. Just imagine how much more enjoyable that makes dinner conversations.

Weirdly, she still naps for us on the weekends, at least eight times out of 10. (Although she didn't on Sunday. But Grandma and Grandpa were here, so the excitement might've kept her awake.) I figure she needs total silence and isolation to nap, and she can't really get either of those at school. Instead, she tries waking her little friends up so they'll play with her. Teachers: I am deeply sorry.

This is yet another way in which she's the polar opposite of her brother, who needs to listen to his favorite CD in order to go to sleep. He's been listening to this CD every night for several years. In fact he likes the first song so much, he'll yell through the bedroom door for us to come back in and replay the song for him. If he is somehow still awake toward the end of the CD, he'll yell for us to restart it. If you're thinking this is incredibly annoying, you are correct.

I just don't get all the fuss. I would love to have naptime. Every single day. I would save so much money on chocolate and caffeine.

They're both pretty good, actually, about staying asleep once they get there. There are no midnight wanderings or unexpected parental bed visits in this household, which I know is not the case everywhere. So once they're both down for the night, we can legitimately relax. I mean, after the dishes are done and their lunches are made for the next day, and laundry, and ironing, and cleaning the bathrooms etc., we can relax. And after I take kiddo for his late-night potty run so we avoid a.m. accidents. OK, basically we don't relax. But we could, is my point.

My real fear here is that kiddette is trying to ditch the nap altogether. And that would be bad. She'd be a weepy mess every single day, and I would never get anything done on weekends. Basically a lose-lose all around.

I hope she changes her mind. Either that or she and I can swap places for a few days. I'm sure she would do wonderfully at meetings. And I could nap!

My son the Angry Bird

2012-01-10T22:35:00.001-05:00

I can't say I begrudge him his love of "Angry Birds." Or "Where's My Water?" I grew up on video games. The big Hanukkah present for us one year was a Nintendo. I had some moments of giddy euphoria trying to beat all the levels on "Super Mario Bros." And defeating the final big bad on "Legend of Zelda" gave me a strange sense of accomplishment.

While I was commuting into the city, I used to take my Game Boy Color on the train and play "Tetris" -- with the sound off, making me that much more considerate than every jackass around me conducting a cellphone meeting at 7 a.m. "Hello! Hello! Did you get my memo? What? What? We're going into the tunnel, I'm going to lose you!"

And let's face it -- I didn't just download the iPhone games for kiddo. I especially like "Water," even though it's so much harder than it looks, because the little gator is so goshdarn cute.

So I'm not really worked up about kiddo playing the occasional game app. His spotty concentration skills seem much more concentrated when there's a screen involved, and an interactive thing like a game has to be better than watching TV.

I did not, however, expect him to start live-action role-playing.

He decided one night that he was an Angry Bird, the pillows at the other end of the couch were pigs, and he threw himself across the couch to smash them. Fortunately he did not 1. smash the couch or 2. smash his head on the hardwood floor. No word on whether he rescued the eggs.

He decided this week, while I was on the phone with my mother, that the phone cord was in fact an Angry Bird slingshot. He proceeded to back up into the cord, then launch himself through the kitchen, the living room, the foyer, the family room and back into the kitchen. Several times. No idea whether any pigs were destroyed, but the phone conversation definitely took a beating.

Really, I love that he's so imaginative. Except that sometimes I don't.

Obviously he needs more ways to blow off steam. My cousin says a small trampoline works for her son, but I'm a little concerned about floor space. She also suggests loading up a small backpack, calling it an "explorer pack" or something similar and having him tote it around for a while, and I think this is genius because it's sneaky exercise.

I have checked out a karate studio nearby, and that's still an option, but it's a slightly pricey one. Haven't tried the indoor soccer place yet. There are a couple kiddie gyms -- thanks to all the birthday parties we've been to, I think we've sampled nearly all of them -- but for some reason I feel like an activity with very structured rules would be good for him.

The real problem is, by the time I get home from work, I'm just about out of energy (let's say I'm down to one bar) and he has just as much as he did when he woke up (let's say he figured out the cheat code and now has endless lives). A more awake me would have some sort of creative way to rein him in. The actual me sits there morosely and thinks, "Just ... please ... stand ... still."

We'll figure something out. In the meantime, we've warned the Angry Bird to fly a little more carefully.

Something's fishy

2012-01-03T23:29:00.000-05:00

So as we continue the endless wait for the hospital evaluation to tell us whether kiddo does in fact have ADHD or is just exhausting and occasionally maddening for no good reason, I've been doing some minor (very minor) research. Minor, because I'm trying not to obsess. I have a talent for that. (I just spent the past three or so days flipping back and forth over whether I should get my hair cut, or keep growing it. Current decision: Cutting it.)

Several sources suggest that fish oil helps brain function and could therefore be beneficial to ADHD (see here and here and here), although the evidence doesn't sound conclusive. To sum it up: Might help, couldn't hurt, sure why not? Our first pediatrician, who was this interesting blend of holistic and mainstream, had recommended giving fish oil anyway, on general principle, back when kiddo was a baby. Which I did for a while, except he would spit it out and then his outfit would smell like fish all day.

And there lies the problem with fish oil: It smells like fish. You can't really get around that. The brand I'd been using is "strawberry" flavored, meaning it tastes like strawberry fish. Yum yum!

I got a supplement in "chewable" form at the vitamin store, thinking maybe it would be easier to take than the liquid form. Then, to be fair, I tried it myself. It's gross. "Chewable" means it pops fishy liquid inside your mouth. I knew kiddo was not going to go for this, but it was $23 for heaven's sake so I gave it a shot anyway.

Truly I am psychic. He hated them. Wouldn't touch them. I tried forcing them down his throat once, but decided that was not a long-term solution (or an especially nice one). Then I resorted to pricking the little balls open with the kitchen shears and letting the liquid trickle down into his orange juice. Which he caught on to in about, oh, two seconds, and complained. Also, the shears stank.

I tried another vitamin store and perused the nutrition labels on the kiddie DHA supplements. There are non-fish options available, but the liquid brand I'd used before appears to have the highest DHA/EPA content, so I went with that again. Because he wouldn't spit it out this time, right?

Actually he didn't. I put it in his orange juice again, and told him I'd done so when he asked about it, but this time it didn't bother him. Different enough taste, I guess. "I like this vitamin!" he announced. Hooray.

So we'll see if anything actually happens. In the meantime, I'd been meaning to get on a fish oil supplement myself ... and we've got most of a bottle of the little chewables left ... sigh.

Santa dreidel dreidel Santa

2011-12-22T01:27:00.000-05:00

Kiddo goes to school with contraband dreidels stuffed in his coat pockets and makes Christmas crafts. We light the menorah my parents brought us from Israel and then open another box in our Playmobil Advent calendar (this one, courtesy of a co-worker, and it's entirely cute). The candy canes are piled up next to the chocolate gelt. Welcome to our schizophrenic holiday, 2011 edition.

The kids' classes have a sign-up sheet asking which holiday everyone celebrates, I guess so the teachers can talk about the holidays with them. Our kids are the only ones on the sheet to have Christmas and Hanukkah next to their names. So far they're completely blase about it. Kiddo seems to find this book useful, and has been making happy comments about his "two holidays." Which is good.

So far we have seen Santa several times, and the kids have yet to wonder when Santa has time to make all those toys if he's bopping around having breakfast with everybody and riding random trains to nowhere. I assume that whole logic thing will kick in in a couple of years. Or else I will be a dumdum and slip up.

At any rate, we took the Santa train out of Hackettstown this year, which gave me the added bonus of now knowing where the train station is in Hackettstown. Sometime this decade, I sincerely hope to learn my way around the area. Grandma came with us this time, because she was in town, and because she is a good sport. We took two cars, because the car seats basically suck up all the extra space in our car, and that provided the added bonus of 1. our cars getting separated and 2. Grandma getting lost. She insisted we go without her if she didn't get there in time. I had visions of the kids' faces pressed to the train window, horrified that we had abandoned Grandma.

We got to the station just barely in time, I thought, and then I saw other parents frantically hauling small children toward the train and I realized the train folks must be used to this sort of thing. Because when do parents of small children ever arrive on time for anything? Inevitably there is a diaper blowout or a lost toy or a sudden tantrum, or the child decides now would be the perfect time to run in the exact opposite direction from you, and you're lucky you're able to leave the house at all, frankly.

So we walked up to pay for our tickets and we realized that the Santa train is so adorably old-fashioned that tickets are cash-only. And we froze, because we never carry cash anymore. The "conductor" took pity on us, though, and took whatever cash we happened to have and let us on board. I guess the slight monetary loss was easier to take than the inevitable crying fits when the kids weren't allowed on the train.

And we were on our way! Sort of. In that the train was experiencing technical difficulties. So it started, briefly, then stopped. In the meantime, Santa began to make his rounds. He was quite a friendly Santa, and posed quite nicely with the kids, even if he couldn't get a smile out of kiddette. But then Miss Poker Face never smiles for pictures, except the school pictures, and I would love to know that photographer's secret.

Santa went his merry way, even though the train still wasn't going anywhere. And then out the window, we all saw ... Grandma! Hustling toward the train. And they let her on, since we weren't moving yet anyway. What a perfectly timed electrical problem. The kids were thrilled that Grandma made it, I was secretly relieved, and we'll be coming back to this train group next year, because they were so nice about the whole thing.

Of course, once the train actually got moving, kiddette realized that Santa had been the high point, and was exceedingly annoyed that I wouldn't let her spend the trip racing up and down the aisle. Fortunately, Snoopy and the Grinch came around too, and Mrs. Claus, and then one of the women pulled out a guitar and started singing holiday tunes, so that kept the kids more or less occupied. (A quibble: "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"? I thought it was funny too when I was in 8th grade, but isn't that a little ... dark for a holiday sing-along?)

Balancing things out, we visited my parents' synagogue over the weekend for a Hanukkah party. The party kicked off with each Hebrew school class performing a skit, which was cute, but it did remind me that I have years of such performances to look forward to. Also, now I can't get this song out of my head. Then everyone headed downstairs for a DJ dance party, latkes and crafts. The kids have developed an appreciation for latkes, but they haven't quite figured out the point of the applesauce yet. It'll come with time. (And yes, applesauce. Not sour cream. Absolutely not ketchup. They're not Tater Tots, people.)

Kiddo danced a little and then sweet-talked yet another adult he'd just met into giving him something -- in this case, one of the light-up toys the DJ was giving out. I think maybe I should prevent this kid from going into politics.

The music actually made me a little nostalgic for when I used to go out dancing. Clearly I wasn't the only one, considering all the moms on the dance floor. Can't say I blame them.

We left after the Limbo started, mainly because I'd gotten hit with a cold or something cold-like and was petrified I was going to infect someone, even though I was slathering my hands in sanitizer. Still, good timing, since kiddo left under the impression he'd won Limbo, because the DJ had given him (along with all the other eliminated folks) a shiny dreidel. He was so taken with the dreidel, he decided to give it a spin, right there in front of the Limbo bar. I had to haul him away before someone tripped over him.

And now, as our Merry Everything celebration gets well under way, I say to you: Merry Everything! May your latkes be crisp and your eggnog incredibly spiked. May Santa or Hanukkah Harry bring you whatever you wanted, except a Lexus, because I hate those commercials. And maybe one of those guys could bring me what I want too. I don't care which one. They can draw straws for it.

Progress, of sorts

2011-12-05T23:54:00.001-05:00

Apparently all I had to do to get the hospital to call me back was leave an icily angry voicemail noting that this was the fourth time I was calling, and no one had returned my calls yet. Literally, within minutes they called me.

Man. Every time I feel bad about my icy voice and Look of Death (as DH refers to it), not wanting to be a jerk and be mean to people, I'm reminded all over again that being a jerk is frequently what works. Whoever said you catch more flies with honey than vinegar is a moron. You don't catch more flies with honey. You catch more flies with a flyswatter.

So we've got a February appointment. Yes, that would be February as in next year. Apparently no one else is as bothered by this as I am. But then, I'm impatient. Anyway we're on the waiting list in case something else opens up.

Meantime, his letters are looking slightly less like chicken scratch, but he still loses interest in writing pretty quickly. And his attention span is ... finite.

I took the kiddies downtown for lunch, and for the Victorian carolers and horse-drawn carriage rides (yes, really. It's that kind of town). He was fine through lunch. He was fine on the carriage ride -- though he, and the other little boy on the ride, were incredibly quick to notice the horses', um, deposits on the street. Walking back through downtown, clearly, was when his attention ran out. He started to run ahead and behind us, instead of walking with us. I warned him, and then he ran off again in a parking lot and started to mess around with one of the bushes -- which happened to have berries on it. Which, with my luck, would have been the toxic kind. This scored him an early end to the field trip.

I wonder if it's length of time, or the amount of stimulation, that sets him off. I wonder if that's something I'll find out in February.

The waiting game

2011-12-01T00:16:00.001-05:00

Really, three phone messages in two weeks and the hospital still can't be bothered to call me back? Oh, sorry, did my kid's situation not sound dire enough for you? Tell you what, office staff, I'll just swing by and drop him off to hang out with you for a few dozen hours or so. Then you tell me what you think about his hyperactivity. Kay?

Honestly. I cannot stand unreturned phone calls. I return calls when I'm at work. Blowing off messages isn't just unprofessional, it's rude. And also it will make me leave even more messages.

When I am presented with a problem, I want to solve the problem. On the spot. Five minutes ago if possible. Waiting and waiting while other people maybe sorta eventually get around to caring about the existence of a problem is maddening.

And I'm not really sure how long we can wait on this, since as things stand, is kiddo really going to be ready for kindergarten next year?

He's at least a little better with the letters, in that they sort of resemble letters, except the capital D, which resembles a crooked balloon. But it's hard to know when he's genuinely having a problem with a task and when he's goofing around because, you know, he's 4. Which is the sort of thing an expert could probably help out with, if we could get one on the phone.

I'm going to chat with the pediatrician about alternatives, I think, because a place too busy to return my calls is too busy to be of much use.

An un-diagnostic diagnosis

2011-11-23T00:37:00.001-05:00

So after I last posted about kiddo maybe/possibly/who knows? having ADHD, I heard from my cousin down South (who very nicely gave the OK on being mentioned here). Her son, a little older than my son, does have ADHD and has been in occupational therapy for a few years now. And some of the things she described seeing sounded extremely familiar.

And then we had our first "parent-teacher conference" at the new school. And they -- nicely, supportively -- said kiddo was behind where he should be, especially with fine motor skills and with listening/paying attention. I asked about ADHD, figuring they wouldn't bring it up unless I did first. Turns out the director's son has ADHD. "A lot of the things my son did," she said, "I see in your son."

She suggested avoiding red dye and severely limiting soda. Which raised two questions: Were we even giving him any red dye-ish foods now? And who the hell gives a 4-year-old kid soda? We don't even give him that much juice -- he uses a water bottle at school. Thankfully kiddo's teacher noted that he seems to eat a lot of healthy foods as it is. Which he does -- lots of fruit, whole wheat everything, cheese sticks, sunflower seed butter, carrots and hummus.

Conversations like this are what make me think all other parents are raising their kids on Dr. Pepper and Pop-Tarts.

Anyway they said they'd work with an OT if we needed one to come to the school for sessions. And they said whatever disciplinary method we use at home, they'd use as well for consistency. So that was nice. Certainly more than the other school offered. Of course, the other school also didn't bother to flag us about his handwriting, possibly because everyone was quitting for better jobs at that point.

We took him to the pediatrician to get a referral for evaluation. And she agreed, after watching him for a few minutes, that he was definitely showing signs of hyperactivity. Mostly because he was bouncing off the walls of the examining room like he was the ball in a pinball game. She said ADHD frequently shows up along with something else, like autism, but she didn't see any sign of that, since he was peppering her with a million questions about the decorations on the walls and came over twice to give her a hug. She also said most 4-year-olds wouldn't think to ask so many questions about something, and that he's a pretty smart kid.

I actually think that's the frustrating thing: That he can be so fantastic and so completely exasperating at the same time, literally at the same second. That he really likes to go, say, food shopping with me, but while food shopping, will demand to hold the bananas -- wait, just one banana -- no, two bananas -- no, not those two bananas -- no, wait, the cranberries -- no, the mini bagels -- no, the bananas! And then will pretend the banana is a phone and walk down the aisle chatting into it. (OK, I admit this was pretty funny. People were walking by us and giggling.)

Per UMDNJ and a bunch of other places, here are the symptoms of ADHD:

Get distracted easily and forget things often
Switch too quickly from one activity to the next
Have trouble with directions
Daydream too much
Have trouble finishing tasks like homework or chores
Lose toys, books, and school supplies often
Fidget and squirm a lot
Talk nonstop and interrupt people
Run around a lot
Touch and play with everything they see
Be very impatient
Blurt out inappropriate comments
Have trouble controlling their emotions

The red flag is if you see at least six of these. I count between seven and eight, depending on the day.

So we have a call out to the child development center at the hospital, but of course not expecting to hear back until after Thanksgiving. My therapist says some of the tests they would use, he just isn't old enough for. So we could go through all this and still not get a clear diagnosis until after he's 5. I'm thinking the best course of action is to proceed as though he does have it, and keep things very structured for him, and see what we can do about the handwriting. At least until we hear something different.

Last year it was his eyes -- literally, the surgery was a year ago -- this year, it's his mental development. Can't wait to see what I need to freak out about next year.

Stroller derby!

2011-11-14T23:07:00.001-05:00

Some time ago we decided kiddo needed his own baby doll (as chronicled here) and got him one. More precisely, my parents got him one. They were very careful to meet my specifications -- no creepy blinking eyes, no fake-wetting, must gurgle and make baby-like noises. They gave kiddo the doll ... and he promptly rejected it in favor of kiddette's doll, which he liked better.

Honestly. They're both baby dolls. They're both cute. One is in purple and battery-operated, so it waves its arms around, and the other is in pink and doesn't. They both talk (though purple baby mostly gurgles happily and pink baby cycles through gurgling to crying to snoring). They both have little hats. I'm not seeing what makes one more special than the other.

This seemed like it could be a bit of a baby war, except kiddette decided she liked kiddo's baby, so kiddo could claim her baby. And all was well in fake-babyland, except when kiddette forgets she likes pink baby better and grabs purple baby, and then kiddo flips out over the babynapping.

They're actually pretty good fake parents. Kiddo likes to feed purple baby its bottle because if you hold the bottle to its mouth it makes little slurping noises. Kiddette likes to squeeze pink baby's belly so it makes all the sounds, and then when it starts crying, she cuddles it and says "Okay, baby." Which is exactly how I used to comfort her, so it's entirely cute. Then they both sit on the couch with their babies and watch TV, which probably loses them a few fake-parent points, but on the other hand, I'm letting them watch TV in the first place, so I guess I get a demerit. Plus an extra demerit for corrupting little plastic minds as well as little real ones.

Then there are the doll-size strollers. My MIL gave one to kiddette to go with purple baby, but then kiddo wanted purple baby. I ran out and got another stroller for pink baby, and now they each have one. Unfortunately I forgot what happens when these kids are anywhere near something with wheels. So every day they put their babies in their strollers and race around the house. Apparently it's a multi-lap race. Also, collisions are not only allowed but welcomed. Because there is, after all, very little difference between a stroller and a bumper car.

How excellent for them that we had hardwood floors installed on the main floor. Now they can go even faster!

So adult conversations in our house go something like this:

"So at work today I" WHOOSH ZOOM HA HAHAHA

"What?"

"I said" ZOOMZOOMZOOM CRASH

"Mommy can you fix my stroller?"

"My baby!"

"No my baby! Mommmeeeeeee she took my baby!"

"NO MINE!"

And then we propose to table all adult conversations until kiddie bedtime.

I can't be sure, but I do strongly suspect that other children do not play with their dolls the way these two do. Truly I don't know how the fake babies are going to live to fake adulthood.

But hey, I guess this counts as exercise.

Son of Halloween Part II: The Sequel

2011-11-07T23:28:00.001-05:00

So we lost power last Saturday. We could kind of see it coming, what with all the thick, heavy snow and the wind, and the way both were making the trees around our house lean crazily forward. We shrugged it off and continued unpacking the china, which we were getting to roughly a year after moving into the house, which actually is pretty good for us. Then the lights went off and we shrugged again, figuring they'd come back on soon.
And then, of course, day turned to night and still no power. We dined on salmon and cannellini bean salad, and chips and salsa. We bundled everyone up and went to bed.

I dreamed we got our power back overnight and we were having a lovely warm breakfast. Then of course I woke up and my alarm clock screen was still blank. No power. Argh! Oh, and it was going to be 20 degrees that night.

Every hotel we could find within a 30-mile radius was booked by people quicker on the uptake than we were. So we gave up and drove to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

What I was most unthrilled about, aside from inevitably losing everything in the fridge and trying to get work done via e-mail while the kids ran laps around Grandpa, was losing Halloween. Because I like Halloween. I like dressing up. I like dressing the kids up. I like going trick or treating and admiring the costumes of trick or treaters at my door. I like watching the Peanuts special. I like pilfering the kids' candy when they're not looking. I am a dork and I don't care.

But since our town was one of those especially hard hit by the storm -- the spooky thing once we finally made our escape was driving south through darkened neighborhoods, black street lights and trees lying across downed power lines -- Halloween was canceled. Who knew you could cancel such a thing? Next Santa will postpone Christmas on account of a monsoon.

Weep not for kiddo and kiddette, because we brought their costumes to Grandma and Grandpa's house. They had a lovely time charming the neighbors. Pirate kiddo refused to ring a single doorbell because of all the "scary stuff" decorating the houses, so I had to do it instead. Meanwhile fairy princess kiddette told off every single dog she met at every single house, even when they were cheerily thumping their tails at her. "No! No woofy!" she said sternly. My mother took a picture of one dog wearing a doggie witch's hat. Kiddette stared down the dog, clutching the lollipop she was sucking on. "No!" she growled. "MY lollipop!" The dog just looked back at her, clearly thinking, "I don't even want your stupid lollipop. Now get this hat off me!"

Also, she stomped a bug. I mention this because 1. I'm pretty sure most 2-year-olds don't concern themselves with the existence of bugs, and 2. she was dressed in a pink tutu and fairy wings, and the cutesy girlyness of it all was kind of a hilarious contrast. The poor beetle was trundling across a driveway, and she looked at it and stomped. Lifted her foot, checked to see if it was dead yet. Stomped again. Oh boy was it dead. She was quite pleased with herself.

At any rate they both got a good haul of candy and enjoyed the rest of their stay, which lasted until ... Thursday. Right. We didn't get power back until Thursday. Now the extremely cold folks in Connecticut definitely had it worse than we did, and we did have a warm place to stay while we waited things out (not to mention all the food -- thanks, Mom and Dad), but living out of a suitcase for five days is only fun when there's an actual vacation involved. Preferably with some sort of amusement park rides.

I'm not sure what New Jersey is being punished for, but after Hurricane Irene and Snowmageddon 2011, I think we've done our time. And "Jersey Shore" is not our fault because they're mostly from New York anyway.

Here is where kiddo and kiddette made out like little costumed bandits. Halloween -- or trick or treating, anyway -- was rescheduled for Saturday in our town. Do-over! Let's pretend the past week never happened!

So we went around again. This time kiddo happened upon a group of other kids going around with their moms, and decided that he too would be part of this group, even though we'd never met them before. He ran ahead with them, with DH struggling to keep up, and kiddette and I ended up about five houses behind. What can I say? He's a joiner. We fear his high school years, when his friends peer-pressure him into every stupid thing under the sun.

He also got one of the moms to give him an extra glowstick bracelet. I'm almost impressed by the sheer nerviness of his mooching. I've seen random people give him all sorts of things. Snack food. Toys. Do they feel sorry for him or is he just that charming?

Kiddette and I hit a few more houses until the sugar crash caught up with her and she had a big meltdown, mostly because I wouldn't let her eat all the candy. Then we went home. Kiddo and DH joined us shortly after. Then kiddo insisted on helping me hand out candy at the door. "Thanks, little man!" one teenager told him. Highly cute.

So Halloween was saved not once but twice. And the kids have an unbelievable mountain of candy to show for it. Not a bad way to end up really.

Except for the part where I keep eating the candy.

Scarier than Halloween

2011-11-01T00:34:00.000-04:00

is a massive snowstorm that knocks out the power to, more or less, your entire town. And also the town next to it. And a few towns around that town. And pretty much the entire northern half of your state. Leaving you without 1. heat 2. a working refrigerator 3. daycare. And a 20-degree night is coming.

And ... Boo!

OK, so obviously we have found a warm place with actual working electricity from which I can type this. (Or else I am powering the computer with MY MIND. Mwa ha ha OK look, it's Halloween, all right? I need to find my fun somewhere.) But this isn't a long-term solution. There's that whole job thing, for instance. Also the need to clean out the food currently rotting in the fridge. Including the applesauce that I had literally just made two hours before the power went out. Hey thanks, storm.

So we're in a bit of a waiting game. And I guess it's a smallish good thing that we hadn't carved the pumpkin yet, since the pumpkin would have then been buried under snow and no one would've seen it anyway.

We'll just ... um ... delay Halloween. Until after we have heat. And after we clean out the fridge. And after our supermarket opens long enough to have actual food in it. And after the snow melts.

And by that time, of course, it will be Christmas shopping season.

Socializing with kiddo

2011-10-23T22:26:00.000-04:00

And he is quite social. For all his problems/alleged problems/who knows at this point?, he's perfectly willing to chat up whatever other human being happens to be within 20 feet of him. We were at the apple orchard yesterday -- in other words, the only orchard out of three or four farms that still had those suckers on the trees -- and another family was walking down the muddy path in front of us, and kiddo called out to them that there were puddles on the path, and also that we were going apple picking! In case, you know, the total strangers cared.

At dinner last night, he helpfully ordered his own entree (the waiter said kids never do that anymore, just stare at him blankly), then introduced his sister to the man bringing our drinks. (His usual line: "This is my sister. She's a baby. She doesn't do much.")

Later in the meal -- which by the way was excruciating, in that we waited for about a century despite making reservations, waited even longer to get entrees, had to repeatedly request things like silverware and drink refills, and oh yeah, they got my mother's entree wrong and tried to get out of comping us -- kiddo required a potty trip, and since I was dangerously close to throttling the waiter, DH decided it was my turn.

We were in the stall while kiddo did his business, and we could hear the mom and daughter in the stall next to us. Mom was letting Daughter have it over not eating her dinner and then whining about it after. And actually things were getting a little heated. Mom had clearly discovered the fabled last straw.

And then kiddo said, "Excuse me!"

I tried to gently hush him. Daughter complained that she couldn't reach the toilet paper. Kiddo called out, "I can't reach the toilet paper either!"

The other mom and I started giggling. Kiddo continued to announce his progress in his toileting adventure. The other mom began speaking to her daughter again, but there was laughter in her voice now.

We all exited our stalls at the same time. Mom looked roughly my age; Daughter looked about 6 or 7. "Hi!" Mom said to him, smiling. Then she said, "He made my night. I was about to give this one up for adoption!"

"I know how you feel," I said, though I don't think I've ever quite considered adoption -- seems like a lot of paperwork -- but mom solidarity and all that.

He was still washing his hands after Mom and Daughter left, and doing his usual ABC chant for the soap (which is one recommended way to get them to scrub long enough. Their school taught them. I'm not weird, I swear). Another woman came out of a stall and complimented him on his hand washing skills. He seemed a little thrown by that one. She said to me, "He doesn't talk much to strangers, does he?"

Kiddo, being done, decided he simply could not be in the bathroom any longer and dashed for the door. "That's never stopped him before," I called back to her as I ran after him.

'I don't want to alarm you, but ...'

2011-10-19T07:19:00.000-04:00

Oh, well, gosh, you didn't then. Mission accomplished.

What my therapist went on to say was, poor handwriting is frequently a sign of ADD.

The red flag was when kiddo's little friend gave me her apple tree drawing. We hang out frequently with the family, and she's apparently decided I'm good people, so when I dropped kiddo off at school the other day, she asked me to spell my name for her and she wrote it on the back of her tree, and gave it to me. Which was 1. the most adorable thing ever and 2. a bit of an etiquette issue -- are you supposed to take other kids' crafts? Aren't parents supposed to hang on to those forever and ever until they disintegrate? (Just me? Oh.) I did alert her mom, who was fine with it, and said she was glad her kids liked us.

But I looked at the handwriting on the apple tree. And it was ... good. Very readable. Straight lines. Very much not what kiddo does.

The only thing the other school ever said to us was, he doesn't press down on the pencil very hard. If they had also said, and by the way, he can't form a single letter properly and this is not up to par with his age group, we might have, oh I don't know, done something about it?

The new school, however, which gives the older kids real school-type homework, did catch on. And asked us if it was all right to hold off on the more advanced stuff with him -- since he seemed a little out of his depth anyway -- and focus on the handwriting. We've also been getting him to do letters with us at home. Which, maybe we should've been doing anyway, but we weren't expecting him to have academic issues at age 4.

At any rate, my therapist -- who's logged time treating ADD/ADHD kids -- also said kiddo is too young to diagnose properly and we should see how he does over the next year. If he's still having handwriting issues in kindergarten, we should alert the district's child study team, or whatever it's called.

But we've noted kiddo's extreme stubbornness. How easily he gets distracted and how bad he is at listening to instructions sometimes. How he still has tantrums on occasion, even though we've never given in to one and throwing a tantrum is going to get his butt thrown into time out. He works himself up into such a fit, isolating him until he calms down is the only option.

Granted, new school/teachers/classmates and no more naptime. So even though he's seemed more emotional than usual this week, that's probably a factor. (He was so tired last night he fell asleep halfway through his bedtime book.)

But. Previous daycare/teacher types have noted the stubbornness as well, the distractedness. He's our oldest kid -- our only other basis for comparison is our other kid. We're not always sure whether what we're looking at is normal.

Are you helping your kid more by assuming he's normal, or by assuming he isn't?

We also did a little homework last night, which he seemed to get the hang of, and then I convinced him to write his name at the top in marker. It did more or less look like his name, except for the backward N. So who knows.

He's a funny, smart, creative kid. It's just tough to figure him out sometimes.

You can dance if you want to

2011-10-11T22:37:00.000-04:00

Now hey, I'm not the most patient of mommies (as you might have guessed from my handle, there). I am easily annoyed by whining. I give time outs for talking back. My voice rises a little bit every time I have to repeat a request/command/that's an order do it now or go to your room. I'm going to assume this is somewhere in the realm of the normal. Still, I do try to be as calm and non-yelling as possible, mostly because I don't want all my kids' childhood memories of me to be "and she was always mad at me and she hated me!"

So it gives me some comfort to know that I could be worse. Like the mom I witnessed at a birthday party recently.

It was a dance party, and the kids were having a dance lesson. Her two kids didn't want to go in the studio and join in. Rejected it. Flat out refused. And their mom blew up at them for several minutes. "Go in there now! I said now! You don't want to go in there, fine! You stay there if that's what you want, I'm leaving!" And she huffed off somewhere or other.

Now I have no idea what happened with them before they got to the party. That may have been the last straw poking up out of the Worst Day Ever. But still. If you're going to snap at your kids over something -- and I mean she was yelling -- do you really want to go with my kids aren't dancing? I say this, of course, as someone who had to be physically dragged onto dance floors until I was in college (and then realized no one was laughing at me because they mostly couldn't dance themselves).

By way of a completely unfair comparison, kiddette -- one of the younger kids on the guest list -- didn't want to go dance either. So she hung out with me outside, watching the dancing, periodically swaying to the music. Eventually she went in. And sort of danced, in that she wiggled her butt every couple of minutes in between running around the room. Which actually is more or less what kiddo did. I did get them dancing in a circle with me for about 30 seconds -- the world's smallest hora -- but they each got annoyed about having to share my hands with the other one, and the circle disintegrated.

Ultimately you can't worry about whether your kids will embarrass you by doing X/not doing X/doing too much of X/having no idea what X is. Because they're going to embarrass you. And they won't always play along with something they don't like or don't want, because they don't have those skills yet. Duplicity comes with adulthood.

And now that I've broken the First Rule of Parenting again ("Thou shalt not judge other parents"), I should note that the other mom's kids, whenever I noticed them, seemed to be enjoying themselves at the party. (No idea where the other mom was, though I don't think she actually abandoned them.) I'm not sure they ever got around to dancing, but who cares really?

In transition

2011-10-04T23:55:00.000-04:00

So the kids' last day at the old school/day care was Friday. And about time. They've lost so many families -- not to mention teachers, the director and the assistant director -- that walking through there for drop-offs and pickups was like entering a ghost town. I kept looking for tumbleweeds.

Things had been going steadily downhill since new ownership took over early this year. Parents Night Out went away. "Summer camp session" went from a whole bunch of field trips to, oh, maybe three. Parents' accounts started getting audited. The food got worse. As in, corn dogs for lunch, chocolate cake for afternoon snack. (I have nothing in particular against chocolate cake, as long as it's at a birthday party or holiday or something. But if the school serves it as part of its regular snack rotation, that's basically an official entity declaring cake perfectly fine to eat on a regular basis, which no, it's not.) Special events, like the Grandparents Day breakfast, went away. Various discounts started disappearing. Teachers started pulling their own kids out of the school because they couldn't afford tuition anymore. I heard rumors that rainy days had become "plop the kids in front of the TVs" days. And families started leaving.

The capper on the whole thing, which told us we were making the right decision in looking elsewhere, was the letter announcing we owed them $80, after DH had already gone over the records with the front office to make sure we were up to date. He asked for copies of the records and went over them all himself. Turned out we'd been given the 4-year-olds rate a few weeks before kiddo's birthday, so technically we'd been undercharged. But it also turned out that we hadn't been credited for the second-child discount for most of that time, so we'd also been overcharged. Bottom line, we owed about $40.

Once I got the regional whatever-her-title-was on the phone -- which didn't happen until after I sent a screamingly nasty e-mail to her boss -- she agreed that, technically, we owed about $40. And I said, "Since none of this was our error in the first place, and this has all been pretty aggravating, I think we should be credited the full amount." Immediately she agreed. But obviously, she'd been willing to sit back and let us pay the $40, as long as we didn't challenge her on it. Which is a jerk move, and unbecoming of a nationwide business. We gave notice two days later.

Most annoying? She said to thank DH so much for doing the extra work of going through the records. Which he hit the roof over, because that's their job, and doing their work for them took time away from his job.

At any rate, we started at the new school (which now has a waiting list, thanks to all the people fleeing the old school) this week. It's less money, seems nice, convenient location, etc. We have to make their lunches, but you know, I'll happily slap a sandwich and some fruit -- or in tomorrow's case, a sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich on wheat and a container of grape tomatoes -- together if it means no more corn dogs. I even got them their own lunch bags, which they decided were actually backpacks and carried around the house until I snagged the bags back to wash them out.

So far kiddo seems more or less fine. He's been a snotty mess to us all week, but no evil reports from school. Although I don't think he's napping at school, so that might explain the hormonal wackadoo-ness. Kiddette, however -- the one I wasn't worried about, because she likes everyone and everyone looooovves her -- is having a freakout. She totally melted down Monday when DH dropped her off. She totally melted down today when we both dropped her off. Tonight, she out of nowhere went on a more or less continuous crying jag until after bedtime. She would stop long enough to notice I was holding her, say happily, "Mama!" and then dissolve into tears again. I resorted to animal crackers to improve everyone's mood. (Yeah, you would too. Judge not.) Really she was under a year old when she started at the other school, so she was there more or less half her life; I guess I should've seen this coming. I hope it doesn't last.

Ultimately I do think this will be a better situation for us. If we can just get through this week.

Halls, I hate you.

2011-09-25T16:45:00.000-04:00

Not because of your menthol goodness. Not because I've been hack hack coughing enough to need you in the first place. Because of the stupid little messages on your wrapper.

"Power through!" "Take charge and mean it." "Fire up those engines!" "Tough is your middle name!"

No, actually my middle name is "Hates Going to Work While Hacking Up a Lung." It's a little long for monogram purposes.

Now I am completely late to the party on this because the Interwebs tells me this particular stealth ad campaign has been going on since last year. But I didn't hack this much last year, or else I was, you know, too busy ripping open the wrapper in an attempt to stop a coughing fit to bother seeing what was written on it.

I'm going to guess somewhere, out there, are people who enjoy these little pick-me-up messages. Maybe they even feel inspired. Maybe they also enjoy learning Chinese from the backs of fortune cookie fortunes. (I like the fortunes. But only when everyone reads theirs aloud to each other and then we all mock them.)

All I think of when I read these messages is "I feel lousy and I have no voice and I still have to go to work and potentially conduct business calls while hacking into the phone and everyone around me will recoil in horror in case I'm contagious, even though the doctor said I'm not and shrugged the whole thing off, as in: Sucks to be you, take some Mucinex." And then I kind of want to punch the wrapper.

I'm just not an inspirational-message kind of person. Those messages always seem designed to make people do things they don't want to do, or shouldn't be doing. I don't get inspired by the kitten hanging from the branch. I think, "Why is that kitten in the tree? He's way too young to be climbing trees like that. What if he falls? Where's the fire department?" Partly because I'm a cat person. But mostly because I'm a smartass. Want proof? I thought this was funny.

So I keep taking the Halls and I keep going to work (since calling in sick did absolutely nothing for my cough). Today I seem to be coughing only a little bit. I'm hoping that's some sort of upward trend.

Because otherwise I'm going to have to keep reading those stupid messages.

Featured post on BlogHer ...

2011-09-25T14:18:00.000-04:00

http://www.blogher.com/baby-doll-dilemma

Enjoy.

And the house is still standing

2011-09-14T00:07:00.000-04:00

I suppose when several moms in a row tell you how brave you're being, it probably means they're thinking you poor dumb sap, nice knowing you. But really I didn't think of it as "brave" to host kiddette's 2nd birthday party in our house. There are almost no kids in her school/daycare class, and we weren't sure how many friends of ours with kids were going to show up, so it didn't seem to pay to book a kiddie party place. Plus we tend to invite family and close friends back to the house anyway after one of those shindigs -- which after all are only an hour and a half, and our family/friends are scattered all over several state lines -- meaning we end up holding two parties, basically, with two parties' worth of food. So DH and I shrugged at each other and said, let's just have it here.

We did have a momentary panic when we realized we were expecting 40-plus people, 14 of which were children ages baby to 5. And then we shrugged again. We were going to order pizza anyway, we could figure out some games, we could toss the kids in the back yard if it didn't rain. We have a playroom and a mostly empty living room, on account of we moved here from a condo and are a little light on furniture. It would be fine. And if it wasn't, kiddette wouldn't remember any of it anyway.

Some lessons learned:

• Party hats are a waste of money because they are easily disassembled.

• Pin the Tail on the Donkey is not played at kiddie play places and therefore will not be a hit at your house party.

• Go light on hors d'oeuvres, heavy on juice boxes.

• Your pizza joint may say they'll double-cut a few pies for you, but you will end up doing that yourself with a random kitchen knife -- because you don't own a pizza cutter -- as hungry kids watch.

• The hardest part isn't getting the food, or preparing it; it's serving it to said hungry kids while trying to make sure there's some left for the grownups.

• If your son takes a few buddies upstairs to play in his room, that means they're jumping on the bed.

• If you go to the trouble of creating an iPod playlist for the occasion, the speakers won't work.

We had no particular schedule of events. No clown. No musician. No balloon artist (in fact, no balloons. Kind of a choking hazard). No traveling zoo or costumed pirates/princesses or any of that. Just a bunch of kids running around, and room to run in.

Needless to say, they appeared to have a blast. And the grownups, who were able to mingle and chitchat in a way they can't while watching their kid climb the inflatable slide at a play place, seemed to enjoy themselves as well.

Don't get me wrong -- it was chaos. But the happy kind. I don't think I heard one tantrum or argument (although possibly I was deaf at that point). And since there were adults in nearly every room keeping an eye on things, I was even able to mingle a tiny bit.

I don't think we would do a house party every time. It's definitely more work, in terms of the cleaning and the cooking and the logistics of serving the food. But it was -- dare I say it -- fun.

And as soon as we get the empty gift bags off the floor, toss the tissue paper and boxes and find a spot in kiddette's bedroom for the mini menagerie of plush she got, we'll be back to normal. Ish.

He makes me proud, and then he makes me nuts

2011-09-06T23:53:00.000-04:00

Our fine young kiddo has gotten himself potty trained. To the point of peeing by himself, washing his hands by himself, and five hours later, turning off the faucet by himself. (Just can't wait to see the water bill this month.) I'm still waking him at night for the after-hours bathroom trip, but nine times out of ten, he's still dry when I do it. Then he staggers, blank-eyed, down the hall, and after I prevent him from walking into the wall three or four times, he goes potty. Halfway through this process he wakes up a little more, and gets this grin on his face, like oh, here we are again. And then I guide him back to bed.

We're also still using the suppositories, but some nights he doesn't need them. Sometimes he goes all on his own, like the other day at a restaurant where he and I were eating lunch before our monthly Trader Joe's trip. He announced that he needed to poop, we hurried down to the restroom, he did his business, no problem. Absolutely the opposite of a few months ago.

So all appears more or less well there. Now if only he would, oh, I don't know, listen when I talk. Like if we're at the farmers market and I tell him to stay with me, I would appreciate it if he did not run right into the street. (The street is blocked off for the market. But still.) Or if I tell him not to touch anything, it would be nice if he did not use his hand to compress a loaf of bread into flatbread. Or if I say "no doughnuts," if he would be so kind as to not whine "I want a doughnut I want a doughnut I want a doughnut" until my ears want to crawl right off my head so as not to hear the whining anymore. Or also, if he would not sit on the ground under the produce tent and throw a mini fit because of the no doughnuts.

Really, I think the farm salesfolk dread our visits at this point. I go to pay for my produce and they have this look on their faces like You are a horrible mommy and we hate your child. I would buy produce elsewhere, but support local farmers/get fruits and veggies as fresh as possible/etc.

What's irksome is that the entire reason I bring him with me is for some mommy/son time, since kiddette has gotten especially clingy lately and does not think she needs to share her mommy with anyone on the planet ever. But mommy/son time is getting seriously compromised by the fact that I just want to buy some lettuce and peaches, dammit, without having to run after a small whiny person who seems to have a perverse desire for time outs.

I'm just wondering how long it will take for him to get the message on this one. The message being "No means no and whining annoys Mommy and then there is time out." Considering how long the potty thing took, I guess I shouldn't hold my breath. But you'd think he'd catch on that I don't change my mind and he doesn't control the universe.

While at Trader Joe's, he insisted on holding something, so I gave him a bag of raisins. In the checkout line, he broke into dance, wearing the raisins like a hat, chanting, "I'm a raisinhead! I'm a raisinhead!" Which I tried very hard not to laugh at, since I figured it was annoying the people around us. Then the cashier mentioned how funny he was. And the woman behind me said "He's so cute" and proceeded to tell me about her grandchild.

I know most people (farmers market excepted) find him far more charming than I do. Just a thing for me to keep in mind.

Stupid natural disasters

2011-08-28T14:24:00.000-04:00

Clearly someone hates New Jersey. I mean, someone besides the usual. Because why else would we get an earthquake, a hurricane and a tornado warning in the same week?

Right, I know, the earthquake wasn't too bad up here and West Coasters are mocking us for being wusses. (Oh yeah? Well ... you have bad pizza!) Irene was slightly worse, in that one person died and there's flooding all over the state. And since I have basically lived all over the state at some point or another -- south, central, north, northwest -- it upsets me to see streets flooded and towns damaged. But where we are now, the power is on, my garden is still intact (though the tomato plants appear to be doing the downward dog) and only a little water seeped into the basement, so really we can't complain. I have no idea what the rest of the town looks like and I have no intention of finding out until tomorrow. Way too windy.

I could've sworn we were leaving all this behind when we left Florida. In 2004. The year four hurricanes hit Florida, one right after the other. And we thought, man, are we making the right decision.

Poor DH had to suffer through the one that most directly hit Broward, where we were. I'd already gone back north to start the new job. Our apartment complex (pink. The whole exterior. Not kidding) had storm shutters available for the sliding balcony doors, and our downstairs neighbors were nice enough to help him put them on. And then they lost power during the storm. So he had to sit there, in the pitch dark -- those storm shutters are seriously thick -- with the cat, all five thousand of my orchids he'd hauled in from the balcony, the metal chairs and table he'd also hauled in from the balcony, and a non-working fridge. For more than 24 hours. He kept calling me for storm info, since he had no way of looking it up himself.

A few weeks later, I came back. For the cat. Because I knew he wouldn't be able to bring her to a shelter if there were another hurricane. Shockingly, he did not divorce me on the spot.

So things this time were a bit of an improvement, I guess. I was even able to get the usual milk/bread/produce on Thursday night and avoid the apocalyptic madness that is the supermarket right before any kind of weather happens. I couldn't find flashlights anywhere, though.

We got worried about the tornado warning, since if there really was one coming we'd have to get the kids out of bed and hide with them in the bathroom. So we stayed up, in shifts, watching News 12 and making sure no tornado happened. Today we're both a wreck and the kids, having had the best night's sleep ever, are running circles around us. Now they are napping and it is blessed silence, except for the wind outside.

But definitely, could've been worse.

I look forward to the locusts and fiery hailstorms next week.

Come on with the rain, there's a smile on my face

2011-08-19T22:26:00.000-04:00

Okay, no, not me personally. I dislike rain. I'm fine with it if I'm inside at the time. Best-case rain scenario: comfy chair, cup of tea, good book, warm fireplace. Cat purring on lap. Ideally not dislodging tea. (Bit of a moot point since I'm catless at the moment.)

Outside in rain is bad. It's wet. It feels clammy. It frizzes out my hair and then I flip because I hate when my hair frizzes. You have to be careful when you have curly hair. Why yes, my name is Frieda, how did you know?

So having a picnic in the rain did not seem like the most fabulous idea to me. Except that we were meeting up with, among other people, friends who were visiting from across the country, and this was the only day to see them, and who knew when we'd see them next. Last time we'd seen them? I was still pregnant with kiddette, who is almost 2.

So I made my bean dip and we headed south. Hoping that maybe the rain would let up.

It did not. It became ark-worthy. Fortunately the park had a fairly sturdy pavilion that we were able to hide under. And by "we" of course I mean the parents. The kids, nearly all 19ish of them, gleefully dashed out into the rain. They puddle-jumped. They chased each other. They played in mud. Kiddo made his toy truck go swimming. Kiddette happily wandered the park path, raincoat hood down, hair soaked.

Some of them had raincoats. Some of them had boots. Some just had T-shirts and shorts on. All were equally drenched, and none of them cared, including the barely-walking toddler who was following kiddette around. We watched them from under the pavilion, occasionally shrugging at each other.

I do realize that letting one's kids play in the rain non-stop for a couple hours would probably raise a few eyebrows in the antibacterial playdate era. But you know, they had a blast. I keep forgetting: Kids don't think like grownups. They think, I'm not supposed to be doing this and it's awesome!

And hey, I can remember going down to the neighborhood beach as a kid and jumping into the water fully clothed with my friends, because we didn't have our bathing suits, and because it was fun. And our parents let us. Even though we'd drip all over the car seats on the way home.

(As our Pacific Northwest friends pointed out, if they kept their kids inside every time it rained, they'd never get outside at all. So everyone does everything in the rain there. In other words, we are East Coast wusses.)

So despite all appearances, the party was a success. And I got a reminder that sometimes the best thing a parent can do for their kids is lighten up. Even if the kids' shoes take four days to dry out afterward.

Totally wrecked my hair, of course. What did you expect?

And it's nature over nurture, by a mile!

2011-08-14T22:12:00.000-04:00

I'm really fairly sure we've been treating kiddette the same way we treated kiddo at her age. Same foods. Same bed/bath routine. Same more-or-less unstructured playtime. The three major differences: Pink clothes (with an occasional side of purple). Full-time daycare at an earlier age. And full-on exposure to Boy World.

Thomas. Planes. Trucks. Running. Throwing. Climbing. The absolute preference for sneakers over any other type of shoe. The sheer joy of running around the house shrieking at the top of your lungs. (Which they do every night. Earplugs. Someone buy me earplugs.)

And yet despite all that, kiddette has somehow morphed into ... a girl.

She puts her plush Elmo in her booster seat and gives him a drink from her sippy cup. (I have drawn the line on her sharing food with him.) She brings her blankie over to him on the floor and covers him with it. If she's sitting on my lap while I eat, she monitors my food intake: "Eat? Yes? Good? Yes!" She is instantly drawn to stuffed animals. She proudly wears her fairy wings. She is a serial hugger and insists on goodnight kisses.

Kiddo did none of this. He ignored stuffed animals in favor of toys with wheels and gears and battery-operated noises. He demanded we sit at the train station and wait for a train to go by so he could watch. He figured out how to turn on the Christmas lights at his first daycare provider's house, and then kept turning them on and off over and over again, because he could. He didn't pay much attention to what I was eating, unless he wanted some.

To be fair, he's still a pretty good hugger.

It's kind of amusing to watch, this very boyish boy and this very girlish girl. And kind of reassuring, in that clearly they are wired to be into what they're into and I shouldn't stress about imprisoning them in gender roles or trying to subvert the gender roles or whatever it is we're supposed to be doing these days. They'll be what they'll be.

Of course, toy guns and play makeup are still not allowed in this house, but that's just being reasonable.

Say 'photon torpedoes'

2011-08-06T15:35:00.000-04:00

I wasn't planning on deliberately geeking up my kids. Not because I don't enjoy being a geek. Oh, I do. I love Star Trek and Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and comic books and I used to go to conventions. I secretly envy the kids who got to grow up with Harry Potter. I played D&D in college and my friends and I used to write messages to each other in the college paper's Personals section using our characters' names. (I played a thief, even though I am the most goody-two-shoes honest person you will ever meet, because it seemed like less work than being a magic user. All those spells to learn ...) I have all seven seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on DVD and the soundtrack to the musical episode on my iPod. And I sing along.

But being a geek is such a specific, niche sort of thing that I didn't want to force the little ones into it. Plus I'd like them to get dates.

So it was purely accidental that I happened to be cleaning out our bedroom closet -- not being able to see the floor is generally a bad sign -- and while going through some old boxes of mine I found some little Star Trek spaceship models. And kiddo immediately claimed them.

There are three -- an Enterprise shuttle, a Klingon ship and a Borg ship. I have no idea anymore who gave them to me, since I was never much of a model (or "toy") collector. Kiddo wanted to know which ones were the bad guys (that would be the latter two) and which was the good guy (the first one). He wanted to know where the guns were on the Klingon ship, because he's a boy. I explained that actually the ship uses photon torpedoes, which I taught him how to say. At this point DH's eyes had rolled up somewhere into the back of his head.

Hey, he knew I was a geek when he married me. Just like I knew he came accessorized with a store's worth of boxed-up baseball cards.

Kiddo was so taken with the ships that he brought the shuttle to school/daycare the next day. He played with the Borg ship at the dinner table (he finds it hilarious that it's a giant cube. That is actually pretty hilarious). Right now I have no idea where the ships are, since toys migrate from room to room on a constant basis no matter how many times I toss everything into the playroom and shut the door. But I expect they'll turn up, probably under my bare feet for maximum ouch.

Kiddo (and kiddette, when she's older) are welcome to whatever leftover geekness I've got lying around. I certainly don't want to hide it from them -- except for the "Sandman" and "100 Bullets" comics, which are vastly age-inappropriate. Already I have a short list of books I can't wait to read to them when they're a little older, including the Narnia books, "The Little Prince," "The Neverending Story" (so much better than the movie. Go read it), the Spiderwick books, "Bridge to Terabithia" and of course, Harry Potter.

But if he decides he's into football stat books, and she goes all American Girl, that's OK by me too.

I mean, they're going to be embarrassed by me anyway when they hit tween years. I might as well give them something to be embarrassed about, right?

Featured on BlogHer!

2011-08-02T00:13:00.000-04:00

Read and enjoy. Or read, anyway.

How to vacation with small children

2011-08-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

1. Cheerios are your friend. And sometimes raisins or Golden Grahams or animal crackers. They serve as car distractions, and they make good hors d'oeuvres while you're waiting for your meal to arrive.

2. If the kids are sleeping in the car, do not stop the car for any reason. Even if you really need something from the Walgreens on the right. Because they will wake up and never, never go back to sleep.

3. You will become intimately familiar with the public bathroom, even though you aren't the one using it. You will also curse out the designer of that bathroom when you realize there isn't a changing table in it.

4. Explain to your children that cranes, wheels, balloon races and other such games of chance are massively rigged, thus steeling them against disappointment when you don't win a single freaking stuffed animal for them.

5. Spray-on sunblock, though convenient, is harder to apply accurately, and you will miss spots.

6. If you split your ice cream with them, you will save money and no one will eat too much ice cream. Plus you still get a sugar crash out of them and, possibly, a quiet ride home.

7. Tantrums average about one an hour. Time outs average about two.

8. Meeting up with Grandma and Grandpa will be the most exciting thing about the children's museum, until they see the gift shop.

9. Most other children will seem less well behaved than your children, even after a time out or two.

10. When your child begins falling asleep at the table in the middle of the restaurant, you have overdone it on day trips. Stay home and relax.

Progress progresses, progressively

2011-07-24T21:59:00.000-04:00

So there is good and there is bad. The good: Kiddo has gotten much more proactive about the whole potty thing. He even, occasionally, voluntarily uses it. For some reason public restrooms have a special allure that our boring old bathrooms at home do not (could it be the paper towel dispensers? the separate stalls?), so he's much more enthusiastic about the whole business when we're out and about. We've basically ditched the pull-ups.

The bad: We're not using them at night, either -- per the recommendation of his teacher -- and that's meant a whole lot more sheet-washing. I'd hate to go back to the pull-ups now, since it would feel like backsliding. But he just does not wake up to pee. I've started waking him up to go potty right before I go to bed, but I haven't quite found the magic pee time yet. 11:30? Already peed. 11? Already peed. 10:30? Can't pee yet. And yet, after falling asleep on the couch last night, then waking up in a panic at 12:30, I rushed upstairs and he was miraculously dry. This kid's bladder is playing a mean, mean game with me.

The worse: His #2 issue is so problematic it's requiring medical intervention. As in, suppositories. Every night. I don't know if it's officially considered encopresis -- I wasn't in the pediatrician's office for this latest visit -- but that does sound like what's going on. So at least we know he's not deliberately soiling himself, and at least the "medicine" (as we're having him call it) seems to be doing something or other. I will of course spare you the incredibly gross details, except to say that he's been putting up with all this remarkably well, considering, and he seems positively gleeful when he actually produces something in the proper place, and then makes me come look at it. I thought it was bad enough when my cat would kill things and then casually leave the little corpses around so I could praise her magnificent hunting skills. (Except for bugs, which she ate on the spot.)

What's really kind of aggravating is that I hear and see what other kids eat and I know my kids have better diets, in that fruits and vegetables are involved, dessert is not every night, bread products are whole wheat and high-fructose corn syrup is not allowed near our front door. But clearly this isn't just a diet issue.

I cannot believe how much of my brain is occupied with my child's other end. I mean, I just had to show the cat where the litter box was, once, and she was set for life. Obviously cat ownership did not fully prepare me for this little problem. I feel like the world's worst conversationalist -- like you could drop me in a room full of fascinating people holding forth on art, politics, modern philosophy, the slow food movement, and all I would have to say is "My kid peed in the potty five times today and his bed was still dry after his nap, isn't that just fabulous?"

But, we had the smarts to bring him to the doctor when we did, and he is getting better. So there is hope on the horizon, and eventually, if I actually want to occupy my brain with poop-type matters, I'll have to resort to watching "Dumb and Dumber" again. (I won't.)

On my way, to where the air is sweet ...

2011-07-14T00:35:00.000-04:00

It's a milestone of sorts, your first family amusement-park trip. Your first chance to pay way too much for parking. Your first time thinking maybe you should've packed lunch instead of eating at the park. Your first hour-long line for a two-minute ride. Your first sunburn. You know. Fun!

I kid. Because I love amusement parks. I love roller coasters and totally rigged games of chance and water rides and occasionally even souvenir shops. And we'd been planning on bringing the kids to Sesame Place at some point, so when friends of ours said they were heading down for a weekend trip, we decided to meet them there.

I was at Sesame Place myself maybe once when I was a kid, since by the time it had opened, I had more or less aged out of it. I remember the ball pit and that's about it. So the park was basically a new experience for me. Which would explain my many, many rookie mistakes.

1. No pocketbooks. Really. You're going on water rides. Unless your purse is waterproof, stow it in the locker. We hit the lazy river first, and I was leaning on kiddette's tube, holding her around the waist (they do supply little life jackets, which is nice, but still), secretly praying that my leather backpack/weekend purse was not going to get doused to the point that my cell drowned. Shortly afterward, I bought a couple of those little clear waterproof containers for the money and such, and stowed the purse in the locker.

Most embarrassing: I worked at Six Flags in high school. I know all too well what happens to unprotected valuables on water rides, because when I was a cashier, people would hand me sweaty, wet dollar bills and I would have to take them without looking too nauseous. Customer service and all.

2. Wear shoes you can walk around in wet. DH and kiddo had their sneakers on. DH, realizing his error in time, bought those water shoes for the two of them. Kiddette and I had sandals on, and neither of us cared so much.

And no, barefoot is not an acceptable option. The ground is hot. Your toes will melt off.

3. Sunscreen ... and then more sunscreen. The kids and I ended up OK, because I kept reapplying. DH, I would swear, had gotten enough on, but apparently he is the fairest of them all, because his shoulders are still red days later. And I thought I was the master of sunburn.

4. Timing is everything. By the time we'd gotten our plastic purses and water shoes and gotten our gear settled, we'd about run out of valuable ride time. The crowds only get bigger as the day goes on, and then the lines get longer.

Fortunately our friend is a world class ninja master in amusement parking. She got us there before the park even opened, she arranged the character lunch, she steered us to the good rides, she knew where to park the strollers so the younger ones could attempt to nap. She'd given us the heads-up to reserve a locker in advance, online. Truly, she knows all.

And did the kids like it? Is Big Bird yellow? They dug the lazy river. Kiddo and I went on a two-person inner-tube slide together, and he bawled when he realized we couldn't go right back on the ride after it was over. He was remarkably patient about the line even, though he did kind of creep his way ahead of the people in front a couple of times. Everyone smiled indulgently, which I'm chalking up to his giant Elijah Wood-size eyes because they seem to have an effect on people.

The character lunch was the first one I'd ever been to, so I don't know how it measures up. It was a decent enough spread (buffet, of course), in that veggies were involved and not all of the chicken was breaded. Cookie, Ernie, Bert, the Count and Abby wandered around for hugs and photos. Elmo, proving he is in fact the A-lister of the bunch, sat in the corner for posed shots, Santa-like, and you could take those shots home for just a little extra cash. (Or you could run over to Elmo when he got up and get some shots that way, like we did.) Big Bird sat in one corner of the room, very still, to the point that DH and I were debating whether there was a guy in there or it was an animatronic thingy. But then Big Bird got up to dance, a little jerkily, and we realized the guy had to move veeeerry carefully in order to hold up that giant head. Which struck me as odd, since out of all of them, Big Bird was the only one who was the exact same size he'd be on the show. How does Caroll Spinney do it then?

You know I'm only obsessing on this because Big Bird was my favorite character.

I wasn't especially worried about the kids being afraid of the giant walking Muppets, and they weren't. Kiddette hugged Cookie Monster a lot. And Elmo. Because she loves Elmo. Sadly.

All the characters have their own shows, apparently, and lucky us saw two Elmo shows. In one, all the characters decided to form a rock band and sing rock versions of their signature ditties, except Cookie, who rapped instead. I died laughing. Elmo wore a black leather jacket, which bothered kiddo, because the sign outside the theater showed them all wearing different rock-star outfits from what they had onstage and he couldn't get past that. Spent the entire show pointing that out, in fact. He'll make a great theater critic.

The second show was a live-action version of "Elmo's World." If you've ever seen the "Elmo's World" segment on "Sesame Street," this is it. Weird crayon drawings on the walls. Mr. Noodle in the window. Dorothy the goldfish. Yep, all there. If you are cringing, you must be a grownup.

Kiddette, however, had her tiny mind blown. She stood clutching the plastic barrier, mesmerized, occasionally yelling "Eelllmooooo!"

Mr. Noodle, incidentally, taught the audience how to Hokey Pokey.

The part of the park I liked, actually, was the part that looked like the show set. I pushed kiddette down Sesame Street while kiddo climbed up on the fire truck (again). There was a hopscotch grid set up in the "alley" next to 123, so I did a little jump to see if I could still do it. Kiddette was quite impressed. "Gainagain," she said, which is kiddette-ese for "I would like you to repeat that." So I did. "Gainagain," she said, but this time I politely declined.

We did manage to get the kids into the car and away without entering a single souvenir shop, but since we'd already bought lunch, dinner, two plastic purse things and two pairs of water shoes, it was kind of a hollow victory.

The next morning, I came in to get kiddette from her crib and, much distressed, she demanded we get her stuffed Elmo from the floor. I leaned down. She hugged it to her cheek. "Elmo," she crooned.

Later, I heard her trying to sing the Hokey Pokey song.

Chitchat in girl world

2011-07-05T00:37:00.000-04:00

Been meaning to note this post, via the Huffington Post, about how to talk to little girls. I find it pretty interesting, and precisely dead on in that it's all about how cute/precious/adorably pretty a girl is and not much else. Because it's still largely that way for grown-up girls too. How an actress/singer/politician-who-probably-ought-to-be-treated-with-more-respect-than-this performs in public, what she says, how she says it, is nowhere near as important as how she looks and what designer she is/isn't wearing. And then DH wonders why I obsess about my hair.

Hey, I know I'm judged on my looks more often than I'm even aware of. I'm not especially cool with that, even though I'm more or less happy with my looks. (Except in a bathing suit. Curse bathing suits.) But I am absolutely sure there have been times I've been dismissed as a lightweight because I'm under 50, and moderately attractive.

There's this one earlyish episode of "Scrubs" that I love. Elliot shows up for her hospital shifts in full hair and makeup, looking fabulous, and a bunch of her colleagues rip her for it, suggesting she's vain, saying no one takes her seriously, etc. So she shows up for work one day, hair a mess, no makeup, and those same people make fun of her for looking bad. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Very rarely have I seen that point made so succinctly.

So occasionally I worry about how to raise kiddette in this sort of screwed-up "Girls Gone Wild"/kiddie beauty pageants/high heels for babies world. And one starting point, per top link, is to say something to her besides "you're so cute!" Even though she is of course the cutest kiddette who ever was. But she's also smart and tough and crazily enthusiastic about, you know, everything.

She had her first bounce house experience today. I was holding off on that since I wasn't sure she was old enough, and also because I've heard about freak accidents involving these things when older kids crash-land onto younger ones, and when the house isn't properly secured to the ground and it gets windy (don't believe me? Here). Hey, even when kiddo is in one I'm right outside, watching, just in case. But this was a rare occasion, in that I knew personally nearly every kid inside, and was reasonably sure they could be trusted. (And no wind.) So I let her in.

Other small ones were terrified to even get inside this thing. Kiddette crawled right in. She had some difficulty standing, and she did get knocked into once or twice. And then she got right back up again and imitated the older kids, going "Yaaaaahhh!" and waving her arms as she ran across the floor. She had a blast.

I love this fearlessness about her. I love that she loves books so much that she will walk up to you, crawl into your lap and give you a book, curling each of your hands around it, and say "Read book." I love that she thinks it's the height of hilarity to run screeching around the house after her equally screeching brother, even though my eardrums do not so much love it.

So occasionally I'll tell her something besides "you're my cutie girl." Occasionally I'll tell her how smart she is and how brave and how wonderfully crazy. I hope I always remember to do that.

Why yes, sure I'd like a biopsy

2011-06-24T21:45:00.000-04:00

Spoiler alert: I do not have cancer. Just saying that going in. In fact I waited until this whole aggravating procedure was over before writing about it because I didn't want to spend whole posts whining about maybe having cancer, if in fact I did not. Because who wants to listen to that crap? Cue the violin.

Anyway what I do have is a nodule in my thyroid. And apparently said thyroid is enlarged on one side, according to the doctor who spotted it during my checkup, but for the life of me I can't see it and I've been looking at my neck for years. But the doctor sent me for an ultrasound, and then when they got the results back they sent me to an ENT, and then when the ENT saw me she sent me to the hospital for another ultrasound and a biopsy. Frankly I think ultrasounds are more fun when there's a baby involved. Way less strain on the neck.

From my minimal research I found that thyroid nodules are usually spotted in exactly this manner, they're way more common in women than men and there are frequently no symptoms of thyroid cancer. Which didn't help matters, since I felt fine. You know, upset and stressed out, but fine.

The above description might sound like this whole thing took a matter of days. Um, no. The physical was at the end of March. The first ultrasound was a few weeks later. The ENT visit was at the end of May, and the biopsy was the first week of June. And then another agonizing week for the results. Good thing I don't have cancer or I'd be dead by now.

One (small) benefit was that I got to check out another of the hospitals in the area, since we've been going to a different, larger one for all our emergency-fever/you-should-get-your-kid-behaviorally-tested-because-he's-been-acting-up-in-school needs. This other one is a little closer, and the parking setup is better, which is a good thing to keep in mind for emergency fevers. I'm not especially a fan of driving aimlessly all around the hospital, going right past the emergency room, trying to figure out where I'm allowed to park. That's annoying enough in a non-emergency, mall situation.

It's a St. hospital, which I didn't think about much till I got there and saw the whole building is designed around a chapel in the middle -- pretty interesting architecturally -- and I happened to be walking down a hallway and in an alcove was Jesus. Fairly big statue, too. I guess he kind of blended in. Waiting area, restroom, radiology department, Jesus.

The doctor who did the biopsy was nice enough but he needs new material. I told him and his assistant as they were getting me ready that I'm pretty sensitive about things touching my neck (ironically, since I'm a scarf fiend), and he cracked a line about my husband choking me. Generally when someone lobs a joke at me I'll whack it right back, so I said, "How did you know?" but I was thinking, Get smacked down by HR much, doc? And he riposted that he does the same thing to his wife at home. Dude. If DH ever made a joke like that about me he'd be sleeping in the yard.

Doc was perfectly careful and professional during the actual test, so I guess he's just a lousy comedian. But many people are.

Not a test I would recommend for funsies, incidentally, unless you like having your neck hyperextended, Also if you like looking like someone punched you in the neck for the next week. Fortunately I have a closet full of scarves. So I either looked weird for wearing them to work six straight days, or I looked hypertrendy. I prefer to think it's the latter.

The ENT said they'd get the results in 8-10 days. The hospital said 4-5 days. In search of a straight answer from somewhere, I started calling the ENT's office on day 4. They said "we're not supposed to give results over the phone" and call back tomorrow. Two days in a row. But then they said the nurse practitioner would call me Friday. The one who I'd originally made the follow-up appointment with for that Friday. Who suddenly had to cancel all her appointments that week, forcing me to push off my follow-up to Monday. Right. That nurse practitioner? Was suddenly going to be in the office on Friday?

And then my head exploded a little bit.

Fortunately she actually did call on Friday to say it was benign. Un-exploding my head somewhat.

So at least I got to spend Father's Day not going cancer cancer cancer. The ENT himself, at the long-awaited but anticlimactic follow-up, told me he never gives results over the phone because of the one time he did and they were fairly dire, and the freaked-out patient got into a car accident on the way to the hospital. Well, OK. Good reason. He also said the 8- to 10-day window is in case the test is screwed up or doesn't provide all the info he needs and he makes them redo part of it. I got the impression this guy is a bit of a hardass. My kind of doctor.

In six months I'm supposed to get another ultrasound, for monitoring purposes. But not a biopsy. Fine by me.

Deputy Underpants

2011-06-12T22:51:00.000-04:00

I'm not quite ready to promote him to captain yet, but he has been wearing them all week. To school. In bed. And my Lord the laundry. Oh it piles up. But I figure getting this done is worth the sky-high water bill we are inevitably going to have. (Man reading the water meter: "What are they doing over there, showering a yak?")

At first he had a few accidents a day, and then by the end of the week it was one. And it was one yesterday (I think). He has gotten his shoes a few times -- thankfully they appear to be machine washable -- so I just got him an auxiliary pair to keep at school (their suggestion), just so he can still go out on the playground even if his shoes are wet. Hey, I'm shopping at Payless. It's not like he's drenching hundred-dollar Nikes.

A couple days ago, to help him remember which end of the underwear goes in back, I showed him the little emergency opening in the front and explained what it was for. Side note: Really, guys, how lazy are you that you need an emergency hatch in your underwear? Because pulling the whole thing down is somehow too much work? I didn't even realize the emergency hatch is in every single pair, until I started helping kiddo get the underwear on. Anyway kiddo was especially intrigued by the hatch, and when he hit up the potty after breakfast, he was in a hurry and used it. Highly impressed with himself, he explained to us, "When my penis gets in trouble, I can use this!" And we promptly had a giggle fit over that behind the bathroom door. Oh no! The penis is in trouble! To the emergency hatch!

A more mature person would not be so quick to embrace the toilet humor. I am not that person.

There's still the inevitable "but I don't WANNA use the potty" whine after meals and after "Phineas and Ferb" is over but it seems at least a little halfhearted. And he is genuinely using the potty, nearly every time.

I even daringly brought him to a birthday party yesterday, in underwear. At one of those kiddie play places that had a bounce house and video games, either one of which could keep him occupied (and not remotely focused on his bladder) for hours. I brought extra shorts and underwear, just in case, and did not need them. Granted I had to time him more or less precisely, then corral him and drag him to the bathroom, but it worked. Huzzah.

So we'll see how this week goes. I am, finally, optimistic.

Every single parent I talk to, no matter the generation, says potty training is the worst part and they were so happy when it was over with. So ... it gets better from here?

Potty war: A new hope?

2011-06-01T22:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday morning, I prodded him over to the potty for his usual post-breakfast constitutional, and he looked distinctly like something big was coming. He asked me to leave. More precisely, to "go somewhere." Which was a strange bit of delicacy, but I complied. After several long minutes, he triumphantly announced, "I pooped!" And oh boy he certainly had. There was enough left over for an auxiliary potty.

He was highly pleased with himself and the world, until we'd gotten the whole production into the toilet and flushed it. Seems the whole production was too much for the toilet, and it promptly stopped right up. Then made some ominous gurgling noises. Kiddo backed off, a little spooked. And then a stray bit of leftover production fell out of wherever it had been hiding, and kiddo stepped on it. With his new sneakers on. That I had just bought him 24 hours ago.

Fortunately everything cleaned up nicely and neither kiddo nor the toilet seem to have developed post-traumatic stress disorder.

Honestly. I'm reasonably lucky in that my work hours are a little flexible. What do parents do when they're on a stricter time clock, and this sort of thing happens? What do they say? "Well, my kid and the potty and the poop was everywhere and cleanup and, you know, sorry I'm late."

Kiddo also announced at school/day care yesterday that he needed to pee, then ran into the bathroom to do so. And then used the potty three times after getting home last night. Then while climbing into bed, announced that he needed to use it again, and climbed back down and did so. All promising signs. His teachers think give it a few more days, then send him to school in underwear and see what happens.

In the meantime, kiddette is now capable of informing us that she needs a diaper change by pointing at her butt and saying "poop." Which her brother never, ever did. So I'm thinking once kiddo is finally off the pull-ups, we start right in on kiddette. I'm envisioning a world of no more diapers, of retiring the Diaper Genie permanently, and it's a beautiful world. Also a cheaper one.

Pretty fairy wings and pee talk

2011-05-26T23:20:00.000-04:00

So there was, I am not fibbing, a fairy festival in town last week. Co-sponsored by a local dentist - tooth fairy, get it? -- and our school/day care, so I thought we'd check it out.

Oh, who am I kidding? They had me at "fairy festival." Because I am a geek girl from way back and to me, fairies are cool. What's the difference between a girl and a geek girl? Girls go through a horse phase. Geek girls go through a unicorn phase, with a side of Pegasus.

Anyhow, we get to the park and it is a small ocean of girls in fairy wings. Sparkly dresses. Tinker Bell outfits. Blue and green wings. Purple wings. Red and yellow wings. Just wings and curly ponytails and glitter as far as the eye can see. It was the cutest thing ever. If you were somehow allergic to cute, you would have died on the spot.

What amazes me is, this was the first-ever fairy festival and all these families just showed up with their girls already bewinged, meaning 1. they bought the wings specially or 2. they already owned the wings. I'm guessing 2. because 1. seems like way too much effort. Who knew you were supposed to make sure your little girl was equipped with wings, just in case a fairy festival should break out? Shouldn't someone have mentioned this at one of those hospital classes? Shouldn't there be a space on the baby registry for Wings, Glitter or Non-Glitter?

Fortunately they were also selling wings at the festival, so I got kiddette a pink pair, and properly equipped, she proceeded to run around the field with a lacrosse stick in one hand and a hockey stick in the other, being most un-fairylike.

Yes, there was lacrosse and hockey, preschool version, obviously so the wingless boys had something to do. (Apparently human children are like Gelflings, in that only girls get wings.) There were also arts and crafts, pony rides (we at first thought the ponies were wearing fake unicorn horns, and were slightly relieved to realize it was just ribbons in their mane), "fairy dancing," jewelry for sale, grownup fairies in princess outfits posing for pictures, a hot dog stand and "fairy treats," aka the ice cream truck.

Kiddo had a fine time taking shots at the net. DH pointed out how natural his stance was, even comparing him to a slightly older boy next to him who didn't quite have the movement down. Which means, of course, we need to sign this kid up for sports. Preferably not hockey, since I like him with all his teeth. Maybe he'll like baseball.

Eventually he realized he wasn't the target market for this event and he and Daddy wandered off to the playground. Fairy kiddette made a fairy flower -- alas, they were out of wand materials -- danced a little to what I'm pretty sure was the soundtrack to that Tinker Bell movie, and then told me she was thirsty. She did so by trying to grab random other kids' sippy cups. She also explained that she wanted to sit by wandering over behind the school's display table and climbing into the nice school person's chair. (Fortunately the nice school person was amused.) So kiddette and I plopped down on the grass and split a lemon ice. And then kiddo and DH discovered us, and split their own lemon ice, by which I mean DH got about a spoonful.

It was a pretty nice event, actually. I'm betting they do it again, considering the turnout.

On the way back to the car, kiddo, clearly annoyed that kiddette got wings and he didn't, whined, "But I want to be a fairy!" DH assured me that's just what every dad wants to hear from their son.

The next day kiddo and I went to a classic car show, which was basically cool old cars lining the streets of the town, so you could look at cars and window-shop. Or someone not accompanying a kiddo could window-shop, because he was in full-on drag-you-behind-him St. Bernard mode. "Look at this car! Look at that car! Wow! What kind of car is that, Mommy?" And if I didn't see the make listed on the rear, I had to deflect the question, because I know precisely nothing about cars. But they did look cool. I love those fins.

We had lunch at the "lunch store" and were on our way back when kiddo announced he had to pee. Which is information he has never, ever volunteered for any reason. And of course, the first time he chooses to volunteer such information, we're in the car.

"OK, kiddo, we'll be home soon. Can you hold it until then? Say 'Pee stay in.'"

"Pee stay in." Pause. "The pee wants to come out."

"But tell the pee it can't come out yet and it has to wait till you sit on the potty. Say 'Pee stay in.'"

"Pee stay in." Pause. "The pee is crying because I'm talking to it."

"Um, OK."

We got home and rushed him onto the potty, and as far as I could tell, he made it. Then he told me the pee was happy that it was in the potty. So really, everyone was happy.

There are no conversations quite like the ones you have with 4-year-olds.

Potty war: The continuing saga

2011-05-20T22:30:00.000-04:00

So we turned a bit of a corner. I think.

We were up at Grandma's for the weekend, and we brought the potty with us. Have small plastic toilet, will travel. It's a little like when we used to bring the cat places with us and we'd pack her litter box. Periodically through the weekend we would declare potty time and have him sit -- and when I say "periodically" I mean there was a little timer constantly ticking in my head, counting down the minutes between the last potty time and the next potty time, between a meal and the next potty time, between a nap and the next potty time. Because really, could there possibly be anything else more interesting to occupy my brain? He peed occasionally, but reluctantly, since potty time was taking valuable Grandma's-toy time away from him.

And then ... he pooped. I mean he really pooped. I mean it was bigger than some of the dogs we'd seen at the park that morning. DH, I believe, is scarred for life just from the sight of it. And kiddo was thrilled. It was the first time ever he'd fully, willingly pooped in the potty, and he was apparently delighted to have survived the experience.

Since then he's pooped in the potty two more times, and he's peeing nearly every single time we get him to sit. He's way more excited about it than he was before. The pull-ups seem to be drier a little longer. And once he's on the potty, he stays on it, even if we get up and leave the room. He may scooch the potty out of the bathroom and into the hallway to retrieve a toy that rolled away, but he is, technically, still on the potty.

We're still holding the doctor's "special prize" over his head, because it works. I fake-called the doctor one more time, and since then I just have to threaten to do it and he yelps, "No, I don't want you to give the prize to the other boy!" Sometimes he gleefully talks about how he's going to get the prize and the other boy won't, and the other boy will cry. He's decided the mythical other boy is one of his buds from school. Not sure why he wants to make his friend cry. Is this a guy thing?

I've been quizzing his teachers on it, and they're not so much impressed with his progress. He still fights them on sitting, especially before nap. It's true he's still not volunteering to use it on his own. But I clued in one of the teachers about the doctor-prize strategy, and at school today he peed and pooped. So we'll see how this weekend goes. I figure on sticking him in underwear again to see how he does. Unless of course the world ends, in which case I may be a little annoyed that this is how I spent my last days on Earth.

Potty war

2011-05-09T07:19:00.000-04:00

And oh man is it a war. He doesn't want to do it. Won't have it. Doesn't care if he pees or poops his pants, even when wearing underwear instead of pull-ups (so all the books/magazines/web sites that endorse that method, please take a flying leap). I took all the toys out of his bedroom and told him he would earn one back each time he used the potty. Which he'll do, and he's happy to get a Matchbox car or a Thomas train back, until the next time we tell him to use the potty and he throws a screaming fit and runs away from us. Even though it would obviously earn him back another toy.

The doctor noted he's clearly strong-willed in general (as in, if you give him the chance he'll walk all over you, something every single authority figure who's ever dealt with him has learned at some point) and recommended counseling. For us, not him, to give us techniques on dealing with him. Not sure how that works exactly. We get on the couch and they say, "Hi there, sucky parents! Here's how to do everything you've been doing wrong!" She also told him that she was going to call every night to find out if he'd used the potty, and if he had, he would get a prize. So dragging that line out has helped some. Although it's gotten to the point where I faked a phone conversation with the doctor yesterday, explaining that kiddo would not use the potty and she would just have to give the prize to the other boy. Kiddo freaked out and immediately got on the potty. I told the dial tone I would have to call her back later.

Then of course he asks for the prize, and I tell him he has to use the potty for a whole day and not pee his pants if he wants the prize. And then 20 minutes later he pees his pants.

We didn't force it while he was having trouble pooping and we had to put him on Miralax. We didn't force it when his sister was born, because that was upheaval enough. Then we moved -- even more upheaval -- and he started a new school (or day care) with kids he didn't know. Not to mention this new bedroom he was sleeping in, with a bed instead of a crib. So we would try to get him on the potty, but we didn't try that hard, because he was already having problems settling into his new class. But now he's 4 and the only one in his class still in pull-ups. Enough is enough.

Yesterday, I let him watch a little TV because he'd used the potty, and sometime during the show, he peed his pants again (and knew it, clearly, because he was standing instead of sitting on the couch and trying to squeeze his legs together). So no more TV, I think, since clearly he won't leave it to take care of business. I was so furious I hauled him upstairs and left him in his room, pantsless, with the potty, and told him he could come out after he'd used it. He did, almost right away, and then asked, with complete sincerity, "Are you happy now?"

And then I felt like the world's biggest schmuck because all I do is yell at him.

So that was my Mother's Day, how was yours?

The sick that wasn't

2011-04-24T22:36:00.000-04:00

People told us that kids get sick a lot when they start day care, and oh boy did they understate the case. Viral infections. Ear infections. Stomach viruses. Strange unidentifiable illnesses that vanish after lasting just long enough for you to yank them out of school and haul them to the doctor. I feel like I should prerecord myself saying, "Kiddo/kiddette is sick and DH took them to the doctor, so I need to leave early to pick up kiddette/kiddo from school," and just hit "play" whenever I need to inform my boss. Saves wear and tear on the vocal cords.

So this time around, we'd just gotten kiddette in for a follow-up visit after her ear infection -- all looked much improved, but he said to keep tabs on it -- when kiddo developed his own ear infection two days later. A round of drugs for kiddo. That evening, kiddette started fussing and crying, generally acting in pain, slight fever, refusing food, and we both thought, the ear infection returns. Arrgh. I called the pediatrician, but by the time he got around to calling back, I was halfway to the ER, because it was Good Friday and we were not going to wait out a holiday weekend on the off chance her ear really was worse. Naturally, she fell asleep in the car. Which probably should've clued me in right there, in retrospect.

Fortunately the ER wasn't packed, and they have a separate sitting area for kids, which we spent zero time in anyway. I guess they didn't want to keep the small child waiting. So the doctor -- who I think might've left his bedside manner in the pocket of his other white coat -- came in and checked her over, declaring her ears looked fine and it was probably a viral infection. Duh on me. So, looking at me like I was a crazy person to panic over my kid having the sniffles, he told me to give her 130 ml of ibuprofen. And left.

While waiting for the discharge papers -- yes, apparently we needed some, and no, they didn't say THANKS FOR WASTING OUR TIME, YOU NUMBSKULL -- I checked with DH, who noted that our bottle of kiddie ibuprofen measured in mg, not ml. So I asked the nurse about that when she bustled back in with the paperwork.

A note about the nurse. I don't know if she was on loan from the grownup ER, or if she just does the kiddie ER thing on her way up to becoming chief of surgery or whatever, but seriously, if you're going to treat ill children you should have some sort of way with them. Shooting up your voice 15 octaves and talking in exclamation points does not cut it. Don't get all cutesy-poo about how adorable my kid's pink coat is. She knows. But she doesn't know you, and no power on this planet is going to make her crack a smile for you unless and until she decides you're cool by her. And why are you trying to get a smile out of a presumably ill and unhappy child, anyway? Where do you think you are, the playground?

Anyway. She bustled in and I asked her about the mg/ml thing. She seemed startled that I was talking, because clearly that's not how discharges are supposed to go. But then after hemming and hawing about it, she said mg and ml are the same thing. And that 5 ml equals one teaspoon. Thus having explained the math for us, she went back to her prerecorded discharge speech, collected my signature and left.

So I got kiddette home, and we looked at the label for the ibuprofen again and realized the amount the doctor had said to give her would've been about 15 times the amount you'd give a 2-year-old. So either he gave me the wrong number, ml and mg are completely not the same thing or the kiddie ibuprofen they use in hospitals isn't the same as what you buy at CVS. (A quick Googling tells me the answer is #2. Also, that you can't convert one to the other because milligrams are mass and milliliters are volume.) We gave her half the amount of the dosage for a 2-year-old -- that's half a teaspoon -- put her to bed and hoped for the best.

She seemed, of course, completely the usual the next morning, except her fever was still a little high. We even made our family playdate, since the other kids' parents figured, if our daughter was going to infect their son -- her classmate -- she would've done it already. And a fine time was had by all.

And then the mom made the most obvious point in the world: "You know, she could just be teething."

Why yes. Yes she could. Since she's had a couple teeth coming. And her behavior tracked much more with a teething episode than with an ear infection (no tugging on the ears, for instance).

Seriously, next time before I call the doctor, I'm just going to call all the moms I know and see what they think. It'll save me some angst.

Socializing, 2.0

2011-04-11T23:51:00.000-04:00

Mixing and mingling and small talk have never exactly been my thing, since I'm the introverted type who won't open her mouth without having something specific to say, and since my extra-low voice won't carry in large groups. I'm pretty sure both of my kids could out-shout me at this point. Not that I'm telling them that.

But I realize I have to step it up a little and be more social, being that we live in a new area where we don't know people, and being that the kids our kids are in school (day care) with are probably the ones they'll be going through kindergarten/first grade/etc. with, so now would be a good idea to make friends with them. Which, I've realized, at least partially depends on me making friends with the other moms. Because 21st century/changing gender norms/more involved dads doesn't mean jack when it comes to preschool world. Moms still rule.

So I've actually been pretty eager to go to all the birthday parties kiddo gets invited to, even if I'm not sure he actually plays with or likes the birthday child in question, because he gets used to hanging around the other kids and I hang around the moms (and the occasional dad).

It's been going fairly well. The other parents seem nice. Although I hate to admit to them that I think of them as "Soandso's mom" or "Suchandsuch's dad" because I still don't know their first names. I so, so hope they're doing the same thing with me.

The real test, I figured, was kiddo's own birthday. Would any of his classmates show? Would it go well? Would my goodie bags stack up to the other goodie bags (because man, do these things get elaborate)? Would the parents be happy or annoyed if we didn't serve pizza?

The answers were yes, yes, I think so -- judging by the gleeful shouts as the kids peeked inside -- and happy, I think, since a fair number of bagels got eaten and the cream cheese was entirely devoured.

It was kind of a funny mix of classmates, one or two younger siblings of classmates, friends of ours and their kids, and assorted family members. The kids were instantly entertained because it was at a kiddie play place and they were let loose to run around and climb and lob balls at each other in the ball pit. These places are the best. The first time we went to a kiddie birthday party at one of these places, we thought, an hour and a half party? What a rip! But now we are older and wiser and know that that is the perfect length of time for a small child's party, so parents can get their kids up and out before they get too whiny or bored or before the sugar crash sets in. Besides, you don't have to clean anything up. Bonus.

So the kids are running around and it occurs to me, as the de facto hostess of this shindig, I should "mingle." I don't think I ever passed Mingling 101 but I think I performed adequately. I talked to one group of moms about the upcoming parent-teacher conferences, I checked in with our friends and their kids, I talked to a few other moms. I made jokes. Really, it was like I was social or something.

Most embarrassing moment: Being five minutes late to our own party. It takes forfreakingever to get everyone out of the house on a normal day. When you're also toting a very large cake, a bag of goodie bags, bagels, Goldfish and fresh fruit? Forget it. And that was with the grandparents helping.

Most adorable moment: When kiddo's bestest buddy from school waited outside the play room for us because he refused to go anywhere until he had personally handed me kiddo's gift.

Most secretly hilarious moment: When one of kiddo's girl buddies was in the ball pit with him, and they were climbing up onto the ledge on the side and jumping into the balls. I guess he was taking too long, because she shoved him right off the side and then jumped in after him. Oh, he is going to be ruled by girls. I can see it now.

Most idiotic thing I could possibly have done: Giving them noisemakers. I have no idea what I was thinking. Because of course the girls working the party put one out at each plate, and as soon as the kids came into the food room and saw them, the room was filled with HONK HONK HONK for the rest of the party. "What did you do?" one mom mouthed to me. "I'm so sorry," I mouthed back. You'd think they would've eased up once they started eating, but you'd be wrong. (C, dryly: "I understand the geese are migrating early this year." Heh.) One little girl actually started crying, and I thought, oh great. The noise hurts her ears. Then her mom came over and explained she was upset because her noisemaker didn't work, and did I have any more? I didn't think so, but checked again and indeed yes. I gave it to the girl and all the moms around her applauded so she would stop crying.

I even apologized to a couple of the moms individually about the noisemakers, but they said, eh, don't worry about it. We'll "accidentally" lose it on the way home. Resourceful!

So now I just have to write a bunch of thank you notes for the lifetime's worth of Matchbox and Hot Wheels kiddo is now the proud owner of, and then moving on.

Well, sort of. We have another birthday party next weekend.

What do I need to do, tie cans to my back bumper?

2011-03-26T21:18:00.000-04:00

Got rear-ended once again, at the Somerville Circle -- AGAIN -- while heading back from a lovely birthday party (well done, C). I swear to you, at exactly the same spot I last got hit at this circle a few years back. I slowed down to check for oncoming Rt. 28 traffic, and bam! Because apparently slowing down at these things is so passe.

Granted the Somerville Circle is at least the eighth circle of hell, right there with the Lambertville Circle and other Horrible Places to Drive Through in New Jersey (other spots: the Turnpike at the 8A merge, Rts. 4 and 17 during rush hour or Christmas shopping season, the "spaghetti bowl" in Wayne where a bunch of highways converge for no rhyme or reason, the Parkway, oh, anytime). The nice cop who came to take our reports admitted as much: "It's the traffic circle. This happens a lot." In fact we had to wait a while for him to show because the department was already dealing with another accident further down the same road. Fortunately we had goodie bags to keep us busy while we waited. Unfortunately, the Chinese yo-yos did not survive the encounter. Ah well.

The last time I got rear-ended there, it was such a small bump and so clearly no damage that the other driver and I shrugged it off and left. This time, a harder BUMP. I didn't see damage but I did see the imprint of her license plate on my bumper, plus I was livid that someone had hit my car with my children in it, so after jumping out and having a minor hissy fit at the other driver (who, to be fair, also had a small child on board), I called the cops.

I'm assuming he wrote her up or whatever, though I haven't checked yet. The car seems OK (the imprint, or what we were referring to as the car's tramp stamp, seems to have washed off in the rain), and frankly it's so old that angsting over its appearance is a little bit overkill.

But these still aren't the only times I've been rear-ended. Once on my way to work, and again no damage, but the other driver -- who was already freaked about the job interview he was heading to -- was nice enough to give me his info just in case I noticed something later. I didn't.

Once again on my way to work, this time right after dropping kiddo off at day care, this time bad enough to require repair work. Idiot girl was driving parent's car, wasn't paying attention, didn't notice the light was red, blamed the sun for being in her eyes. So wear sunglasses, genius.

And most memorably, one whale of a smashing-into in South Jersey, about a week after we'd confirmed I was pregnant with kiddo. I mean the car (DH's, that time) was undrivable. I'd been applying makeup before we got to our friends' house, and the compact flew out of my hands. (I found it later under the back seat.) After I caught my breath, I jumped out of the car and yelled, "I'm bleeping pregnant, you bleeping bleep bleep!" at the idiot teenager until DH convinced me to get back in the car. The kid cowered in his (smashed-up) car and called out, "Sorry!" "Bleep you!" I said. Not my most mature moment, but considering the kid had fake insurance and we never did get that deductible back, I don't regret it. Bleeping kid.

I just don't get it. Is there some irresistible force of attraction between chronically distracted drivers and my car's rear end? Did someone glue some magnets down there when I wasn't looking? Should I get a big bumper sticker that says "DON'T HIT ME"?

Some would say the problem is that New Jersey drivers can't drive. Except that they can't drive in Florida, New York, D.C. or Boston either. Or anyplace else I've been, ever. Except Nantucket, because there just aren't as many drivers -- island -- and you can't really gun it on cobblestone streets anyway.

So I don't know. I'm glad our family's latest car misadventure was so much less serious than the last one. But none of this convinces me I should ever like cars.

Now a hovercraft, that would be cool.

The mighty kiddette

2011-03-17T00:03:00.000-04:00

We have the crib immobilizer and no free time with which to install it, on account of you have to take the drop side off entirely and insert these metal things into the frame and do some other arcane things that obviously I am letting DH do because tools and hardware and instruction manuals make me zzzzzz. But, you know, we have it so that should count for something or other. Maybe a half-point.

In the meantime, kiddette is developing some Supergirl qualities. She's tough enough to giggle it off when her brother accidentally pushes her over (again). She's quick enough to outrun Daddy when he's trying to get her pajamas on her, and she flies down the hall in a diaper and nothing else, laughing madly.

But the kicker is her pen. The circular gate-type playpen, set up over one of those big alphabet mats, originally went up for her 1st birthday party, so that the smaller kids expected to attend would have a trample-free play zone. Then we left it up, because it was a nice convenient place to plop her in the morning so I could have my tea. She even likes it in there, until she realizes how much of the house is left to explore and she hasn't got all day to do it. Then she agitates for an early release program.

This week, she realized she could push the pen and it would move. So she pushed. And pushed again. She pushed it all the way across the room. Its nice hexagonal shape warped into a trapezoid. Then she ripped out most of the letters from the mat. The whole setup looks like some tantruming five-year-old rock star barged in and trashed the place. Kiddette, however, is only 18 months.

She seems a little surprisingly strong for a girl. More accurately, for a girl who came from me. Being the type who was picked last for every team, ever, in the history of school, and then sometimes the team captains fought over who had to take me. (Hey, if we'd done archery more often I might've been more into gym class.) I'm guessing kiddette won't have that problem.

I'm glad she's tough. It's good for girls to be tough, I think. But I have no idea how I'm getting to have my tea tomorrow.

The government would like to inform you that your crib is a deathtrap

2011-03-06T16:10:00.000-05:00

So the CPSC has posted an extended FAQ of sorts about the new crib standards. As of June 28, "it will be illegal to manufacture, sell, contract to sell or resell, lease, sublet, offer, provide for use, or otherwise place in the stream of commerce a crib that does not comply with the CPSC’s new standards for full-size and non-full-size cribs. This includes manufacturers, retail stores, Internet retailers, resale shops, auction sites and consumers." Apparently, if you need a new crib before June 28, you're on your own in making sure the crib meets the new standards (which apply to slats, mattress supports and hardware in addition to drop sides).

Also, owners of drop-side cribs are encouraged to get immobilizers. If your crib was in a recall, the manufacturer is required to provide one for free. If your crib was never recalled but you figure better safe than sorry, pony up $10, sucker, and be glad we didn't charge you for shipping.

Does the immobilizer make your crib safe according to the new standards? No. Also, the CPSC only tested and approved immobilizers for recalled cribs. You with your non-recalled crib, you are, once again, on your own.

And you over there with your perfectly functional stationary crib? Don't be so smug:

"Is a study, non drop-side crib okay for a consumer to use?
It is unlikely that your current crib will meet the new crib standards. The new standards require stronger hardware and rigorous testing to prove a crib’s durability. If you continue to use your current crib, you are encouraged to check the crib frequently to make sure that all hardware is secured tightly and that there are no loose, missing, or broken parts."

Obviously, you can't resell or give away your old deathtrap. The CPSC suggests you dismantle it and discard it. Gosh, maybe we could all have a big bonfire and invite the manufacturers whose shoddy manufacturing caused this big, expensive, fatal problem in the first place. Want to bring the marshmallows, guys? I'll get the graham crackers and chocolate. I know you can't afford much, what with all the recalls and the immobilizer kits and all that. You poor things.

So what to do if you're still using your deathtrap and don't really have the money to go out and buy a non-deathtrap crib in June? Check the hardware frequently, or consider switching to a play yard. Because there are never any recalls associated with play yards. Nope. Never. Not a chance. No way.

Contraband crib, continued

2011-02-25T20:44:00.000-05:00

So I walked into kiddette's room yesterday morning to see her clutching the drop side of the crib, jumping up and down like she's on a trampoline, grinning ear to ear. Boy, if that doesn't wear out the drop side, nothing will.

I ordered the immobilization kit. Even though I am really pretty offended by the whole situation.

How do you jump like that in a sleepsack? Honestly.

The contraband crib

2011-02-22T23:08:00.000-05:00

As of June, kiddette's crib becomes illegal-ish. That is, I think we can keep it but we can't resell it. Or we can't let it out in public. Or something.

The problem is that since our drop-side crib was never the subject of any recalls, and I'm feeling confident it was assembled correctly, and frankly we haven't even moved the drop-side part since before kiddette started sleeping in the crib, there's no clear-cut course of action recommended. This blog, which seems to have good info, basically says, don't use the drop-side and keep checking the parts for wear. One-half of which we've already done. The CPSC -- which now has an entire section on its site devoted to cribs -- says get an immobilizer kit anyway, because you never know.

The company that made our crib very nicely pointed out (after congratulating me for being such a conscientious mommy -- um, thanks?) that their cribs hadn't ever been recalled and they stood by their products, but if we'd like to buy an immobilizer kit they have one. Of course, there's no clear picture of said kit on their site, so I have no idea what it looks like or how it would work, and by the way wait three weeks for delivery.

We've had absolutely no problems with the crib, ever since it was kiddo's. If anything, the drop-side was too tough to lower, not too easy. And every time I pulled it back up, I'd lean on it and jump up and down a couple times, just to make sure it was firmly in place. Yes, I really am that way.

But I know hearing about all the other crib problems is going to get in my head. Which exasperates me to no end, because then I feel like we're being penalized for other people's screw-ups. "Other people" of course meaning the shoddy manufacturers as well as the people assembling the cribs who apparently had no idea how to follow directions. Really, installing the drop-side upside down? Backward?

And that just gets me worked up all over again about how many kids' products out there are cheap, useless, dangerous crap. It's like manufacturers and retailers have absolutely no regard for the potential harm their products could do, as long as they get your credit card number first. How can anyone seriously come down on parents for being neurotic crazy messes when they can't even trust their child's bed to be safe?

I don't know if parenting really is harder than it used to be, but I do know worries like this absolutely should not need to be part of the job description.

Anyway. Still debating the kit. Cause I guess I'd be some sort of bad parent otherwise, right?

Strike out

2011-02-19T17:41:00.000-05:00

So we're developing sort of a preschool social life here, which is good because it'll help kiddo further settle into this new place we've deposited him into, and also because you can only have serious conversations about potty usage and tantrums and snot color with other parents. Non-parents must think we're loons at this point.

Kiddo had his first bowling birthday party the other day. This had me a little worried, because he'd never been within 50 feet of an actual bowling ball in his life, and also I was going to be no help, because I suck so much at bowling that I'm not even sure bumpers would help me. Also I hate doing badly at things in public. I don't even enjoy Trivial Pursuit games once I've blown a couple questions too many. (Which inevitably happens once the sports questions roll around.) DH of course is a fine bowler, and owns his own ball and shoes. He also couldn't come to the party. Leaving me to coach kiddo, which is a bit like asking that Sanjaya dude to teach you opera singing.

Most of the other parents were bowling themselves, and were all shoed up and ready to go. I begged off on account of my suckitude, and also I suspected kiddo would run up and kick the pins over himself if I weren't watching him. Tactical error: You're not supposed to walk onto the lane part in your street shoes. Not wanting to break the rules, I hovered near the ball return as kiddo staggered up to the lane, carrying the ball with both hands: "OK, bring the ball up to the line. Not that line. The other line. No, that's not your lane. Go straight ahead. Straight ahead! OK, now push the ball down the lane. Push! Go ahead, push! That's it! No, don't cross the line! Don't cross the -- "

Bzzzzt.

"OK, that's OK, come on back, you get to go again. Come get your ball. Now bring it up to the line. No, don't push it from back here. Up to the line. Up to the line. Go ahead! No, not that far --"

Bzzzzt.

Seriously, I think his score sank into the negative numbers.

Before we started, he'd discovered the glory that was the video game nook behind the lanes we were using. He was especially fascinated by the racing car game, even though he never caught on that what he was "playing" was the demo. Hey, he's entertained, I get to keep my quarters, it's a win-win. But naturally this racing car game was way more fascinating than whatever arcane task I was trying to get him to perform with the bowling ball, so every time he was done with his turn, he ran right back over to the video games and grabbed the steering wheel. I spent several frames positioned between the games and the bowling lanes, watching the monitor, so I knew when to grab him and haul him -- over his protests -- back over to the ball return. At about frame six, I had a sinking realization: There are four frames to go. What if we were expected to actually finish out a game before they wheeled out the pizza and cake? How long were the lanes reserved for? Could kiddo maybe nap in the party room in between turns?

Thankfully, that was when they wrapped things up and we commenced eating.

Don't get me wrong, it was a nice party. It's just that kiddo, clearly, is my kind of bowler.

Testing testing

2011-02-10T23:25:00.000-05:00

Going car shopping on your own is kind of fun. (As long as you don't examine the price sticker too closely, that is.) Going car shopping with two small children is a logistical nightmare. Do you: 1. haul the car seats into the car to be test driven, so you can make sure said seats and children fit inside the car, knowing you'll have to haul everything back out of the car five minutes later; 2. take turns watching the kids at the dealership while the other person drives the car; or 3. make the nice man at the dealership watch your kids for you while you motor off into the sunset? Believe it or not, the guy offered #3; we went with #2.

They had a little kiddie area at the dealership, with some 1970s-looking toys and a tiny TV/VCR combo that, impressively, still worked. We watched Elmo. I swear I will never understand the appeal of Elmo, what with the squeaky voice and the grating little laugh and the weird grammar that's almost as tortured as Yoda's. I say this even though I've been reading interviews with Kevin Clash lately, since there was a documentary about him showing at Sundance, and he seems like a lovely person. Basically I'm just a Big Bird kind of girl.

I suppose I should have been horrified that Cookie Monster came out to sing "C is for Cookie" because it gives the kids bad ideas about cookie cookie cookie no bad sugar -- isn't that how moms are supposed to react these days? -- but mainly I felt sweetly nostalgic, and I caught myself singing it to kiddette the other day. Hey, I grew up with it, and I eat salads anyway. (And cookies.)

Ultimately we went with the car we test drove, which is an SUV but not a scary behemoth gas-guzzling one. Good thing we did not go with a minivan, since the one we were renting while we waited for our car to be trucked in was both behemoth and gas-guzzling. Apparently the needle flipped to empty if you breathed on the dashboard a couple times.

So here we are, a two-car family once again. Back to normal ... ish. Though I don't know whether DH will ever be comfortable highway driving again. I guess time will tell.

At any rate, we can spend our weekends doing something more relaxing than car shopping.

And as if I needed a reminder ...

2011-02-02T00:02:00.000-05:00

I passed a flipped-over car on the way to work today. On the roadway, not on the snow, and resting more on the front end than the roof, which is where DH's ended up. It looked pretty bad, crunched in all over. I'd have to guess head injuries at least.

Then checking the headlines from work, I found out there were three other accidents on that same highway later in the day. All car rollovers. All with injuries. One happened right near my exit.

DH is looking luckier and luckier.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that you need to take your life into your hands just to get to work.

Maybe it won't be as bad tomorrow.

Our scary week

2011-01-23T21:58:00.000-05:00

Occasionally DH has to ditch telecommuting and actually commute up to the office for meetings and face time and, I'm told, dinner at Friday's. Or maybe it was Chili's. At any rate, he was supposed to drive up last Tuesday. That being Massive Ice Storm Day. The roads were clear enough out here in the western badlands of NJ, and I got in to work OK, so he got going. A couple hours later, he calls my cell to say first, that he's fine, and second, the car went off the road entirely and flipped over, and he's waiting for the police and ambulance.

My initial reaction, because I'm not one of those graceful heroines in the movies, was unprintable. And then I kept asking if he were OK, as though examining him over the phone was going to do the same good as, say, an actual doctor doing it in person. Way to react, there.

This, more or less, was his description: He was on one highway, it seemed fine, he switched to the next one, it seemed slippery, he started to get out of the left lane, it spun out of control. It may have only flipped once, or maybe more than once. He was very, very grateful to have been wearing his seatbelt. He was also grateful that he'd taken the car seats out of the back before he left (the idea being that his mother would be picking the kids up from school for me, so I wouldn't have to duck out of work early), because that was how he got out of the upside-down car -- through the back seat. Not too sure how he would've done that had the car seats been in the way.

Also, instead of being out a car and two car seats, we're just out a car.

Because oh boy is that car totaled. At least that's what the tow truck guy said when I called him to check on getting DH's laptop/suitcase/etc. out of it. And the insurance folks told us flat out, start car shopping. I have not seen the car, or pictures of it, and I'm guessing I don't want to, ever, or this whole thing is going to come home to me in a way that it has not and I will have a breakdown of some sort.

A nice couple going to have lunch saw the accident happen and the guy jumped down to try and help DH out of the car, and then they sat and waited with him till the cops got there. Anonymous couple, you have my gratitude, because DH was especially freaked at that point. Then DH went to the ER to get checked out, just in case, which of course took basically the rest of the day, but the tests were fine. He's since had some stiffness, but otherwise more or less good.

I spent the day at work basically not working, running point between him and his bosses and his mother and letting my bosses know what was up, in case I needed to leave, although I couldn't figure out whether that was the right move. 1. I probably would've spun out exactly where he did. 2. I also probably would've gotten massively lost in upstate NY, even with a GPS, because that's a special talent of mine. If he'd been admitted to the hospital, of course, that there is a different story.

The thing we couldn't figure out was how to get him home, and a colleague of his solved that by driving up and getting him, on the grounds that it would've been on the way to the office anyway. We owe him, big time, and he wouldn't even let us feed him dinner. I think we managed to shove a bottled water into his hands before he left. He did see the car, when the two of them stopped by the yard to get the laptop and suitcase, and he seemed pretty freaked about it in his own right. He said DH was lucky.

Which yes, I think so. It seems unreal to me that he could've walked away from that kind of wreck with basically not a scratch. Consumer Reports said about 33 percent of car rollovers result in fatalities. Scarier in retrospect. I feel profoundly grateful that he's home, and that our biggest worry right now is getting another car.

I am sad about that wrecked car. It was the first one we bought together, when we were engaged and living in Florida, and it had a sunroof and leather seats and cruising down A1A in it was a nice way to spend a sunny afternoon. I was amazed we could even afford a car so nice.

No more leather seats for us, I think, what with the years of juice boxes and playground dirt and beach sand and who knows what else ahead of us. We just started looking at cars yesterday, and we were looking at (shudder!) SUVs. Small SUVs. Non-ostentatious SUVs. Big enough for a family, not a soccer team.

In the meantime, I am driving my car very very carefully, because I've never felt that luck was an infinite thing.

No more wandering

2011-01-03T22:03:00.000-05:00

Kiddo's eyes, that is. It's been more than a month and we haven't seen them drift out once. The redness seems about gone, too. And the eye doctor is quite satisfied with his progress. I guess you'd call this an optimum result.

He seems to have forgotten the whole thing, which might be for the best. I will be perfectly happy if the only thing we ever have to worry about with his eyes again is the inevitable glasses, since Mommy and Daddy are both four-eyed types.

I can't say he's behaving any differently -- he seemed to be doing well in school anyway, and he still won't eat dinner unless dinner involves pizza and/or chicken nuggets. But the point, I think, is that this would've eventually affected his behavior if his eyes had continued to deteriorate. So the timing was dead on.

Now if we could just get this kid to use the potty regularly, we'd be set.

How many Santas does it take ...

2010-12-24T01:01:00.000-05:00

nah, I can't even make the lightbulb joke. That's just wrong.

So we did three events with the jolly dude in red, partially to see how such events are in this new area we still don't know a whole lot about (still haven't found my way to the library yet, for instance, which for me is sacrilege) and partially because, well, we could. #1: Kiwanis Club breakfast with Santa. Not bad. Food OK if unmemorable -- your bagels, your Pop-Tarts, your coffee. Santa nice enough. Beard: Fake. Arts and crafts were cute. Kiddo flipped because the bagels were "broken" (pre-sliced) and then flipped again because he asked Santa for a garbage truck but could not find one among the freebie goodies they were giving out. We explained that Santa had to go back to his shop and make the garbage truck first. Kiddette gave us a "huh?" look about the photo but put up with it pretty well.

#2: Santa train at this place. Kinda fun. Nice train, travels out for a bit then reverses back to the station. Mostly you see back yards. Santa (beard: fake) ho-ho-hos through the cars and poses for pics. Very nice about it, chats with the kids, poses as much as you want. Kiddo made sure to remind him about the garbage truck and Santa quickly pretended to jot down a note about it. A conductor handed out little plush snowmen. Kiddo and the slightly younger boy in the seat in front had a grand old time pointing out the window, jabbering at each other, jumping up and down and yanking on the garlands strung from the overhead racks. Kiddette used her big blue eyes to charm the heck out of that boy's dad, then swung around to conquer the older kids in the seat in back of us. She also managed to get into their picture. Fortunately the mom thought that was funny. Sadly the snack bar back at the museum was out of lemonade. Cue kiddo flipping (mildly).

#3: Another Santa breakfast, but this time at the local hangout restaurant. Just kiddo and me, since DH was working and I thought we could have some Mommy-and-me time. Santa (none of these guys grow their own beards, do they?) was stationed in the back of the restaurant, ready for quick photos and hugs -- and in kiddo's case, a high five. I took pictures of him with Santa, of him looking at the decorations on the windows, and at his insistence, of his toy car. He ate an entire waffle, thus proving he still does have an appetite when carbs and/or sugar are involved. There was face painting, which kiddo did not want, and decorate-your-own cupcakes, which he did. Also managed to dump half the sprinkles all over his plate, which was our cue to leave.

You'd think all this Santa-ness would be confusing, because how could Santa be everywhere at once, all month, but still be able to make all the toys? Are the elves on permanent time and a half? DH is no help on this point, because he doesn't remember there being this many Santa-type events when he was a kid. He remembers going to Macy's, waiting on line, doing the lap thing and that was it. I don't know if it's nice or a little weird that you could see Santa, literally, everywhere if you wanted, from Thanksgiving right on through Christmas.

I don't know how I would feel about that if I were a Christian. Would it be heartwarming, or another example of the crass commercial juggernaut that Christmas has become? I'm trying to imagine Hanukkah getting to that level of saturation, so I could see how I felt about that, but the idea of Hanukkah achieving total Christmas-esque domination is so laughable that I can't do it.

At any rate kiddo didn't seem confused. I guess at his age all adults are mysterious and unexplainable, so why should the dude in the fake beard be any different?

How to get your kid excited about going to the hospital

2010-11-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

Gorge him on pizza and ice cream first. Mr. Persnickety never eats dinner anymore, and we knew he wasn't getting breakfast before surgery, so we let him eat his most favorite food before we drove up to the hotel. He was in heaven. He discovered all seven levels of nirvana simultaneously. Pizza! and ice cream! The nice folks at the neighborhood joint we got the ice cream at (mmm, they still had pumpkin) let us take our time as Mr. Nirvana savored every teeny spoonful, even though they were putting chairs on top of tables and sweeping down the floor. The girl at the counter got a huge kick out of his excitement when we ordered, telling us that was one of the perks of her job. Have I mentioned how nice people are around here?

Of course, he sugar-crashed about two seconds after we got back into the car and slept the whole way to the hotel.

If we ever do this again -- and I hope we don't -- I'd spring for a suite, just so he can sleep in one room and we can watch TV or something in the next room. Once we got him changed and resettled, we were afraid to move around too much in case we woke him.

I didn't sleep much, on account of the mattress was hard and it was an unfamiliar setting and I was worried about oversleeping and my kid was having surgery in the morning.

We each snuck downstairs to grab food for ourselves so that he wouldn't catch us. I guess we could've also fasted to show solidarity, but hey, he didn't have to drive. Luckily he didn't seem to notice the lack of breakfast, what with all the interesting stuff going on around him.

There was another couple with a young son checking in the same time we were. He was having a different type of procedure, though I can't remember what. The kiddie waiting area had these cool magnet-boat table things that fascinated kiddo, and I briefly wondered how expensive they were.

All the little curtained-off pre- and post-op rooms have little TVs in them. That is genius. Because kiddo got to watch Mickey Mouse pre-op and Special Agent Oso post-op, and it was practically as good as a narcotic. Which begs the question: If TV is so good at keeping kids in hospitals docile, why do we let them watch the stuff at home?

Anyway, the team was brutally efficient at managing kid and mommy. I took him into the operating room, they coaxed him up onto the table by showing him the neato equipment, they got the mask over his face just long enough to put him out, they suggested I give him a kiss and then reassuringly ushered me out. So clearly down to a science. I was both annoyed by it and impressed despite myself.

The hospital's downstairs cafeteria has Starbucks coffee and a huge wall aquarium. (And, DH said, pretty good omelets.) I saw a clown fish ambling about and wondered if it was there because of "Finding Nemo." Just one of those things you think about when there's something else you don't want to think about.

And then it was over. He took a while to wake up, and he was groggy and grumpy and kept rubbing his unbelievably red eyes. We offered him ice packs, but they would've blocked hs view of Special Agent Oso, so no way. He sat on the oversized wheeled recliner chair in Daddy's lap, as zoned out as he could manage to get, munching graham crackers.

And then when they gave us the all-clear to go, he spied the playroom in the back of the recovery area and threw a fit because he wanted to play with the trucks in there. So we hung around the hospital for an extra 20 minutes or so.

His eyes are still red at the edges but less so, and he hardly ever rubs them. They're turned inward a little now, but overcorrecting is common in cases like this and they might snap out a little more later. They're definitely not wandering out the way they did before. So promising, I guess.

Of course, they're going to look red in photos, so I'm not too sure how to handle the holiday card thing. Stick sunglasses on him?

I do wish we hadn't forgotten the leftover pizza in the hotel fridge. Maybe the maid got to eat it.

Waiting for one thing to go right over here

2010-11-17T21:55:00.000-05:00

Kiddo has a tiny cough, not the sort of thing I would remotely worry about normally, except his surgery is in two freaking days and we already postponed it once because he had a (much more noticeable) cough. Worse than waiting for your kid to have surgery? Preparing yourself mentally for it for two months and then finding out you have to wait another month anyway. Really just kind of want to get it over with.

He also had a fever a few days ago, although that's gone. So just the issue of, does he have a real cough or is he OK for anesthesia? Making things worse is that he's figured out he gets to schlump on the couch and watch more "Phineas and Ferb" if he stays home sick, so periodically he fake-coughs and says he can't go to school because he's coughing. We are never, never letting this kid see "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

The whole apparatus is primed to go. Grandparents are ready to drive up. We have a hotel room booked near the hospital so we can get there on time. I have the day off from work. I have a monster truck ready for him as a post-op reward. He just needs to be OK for two more days and then he can cough -- or fake-cough -- all he wants. Although he still isn't getting to watch extra Ferb, because he's getting a little too TV-obsessed lately.

Curse you, Phineas and Ferb, for being so funny! And curse Doofenschmirtz, too. Also Perry the Platypus.

I guess it's a little hypocritical to freak about his TV watching time when I have every intention of going downstairs and catching up on Stewart and Colbert till I fall asleep on the couch. But then I don't throw a tantrum when the TV gets turned off.

Still waiting to give poor Pigeon a proper burial. The emergency vet (who, incidentally, sent a nice condolence card, doubly nice considering they'd never seen me or my pet till that night) said their standard procedure is to mail the cremains to the house. Convenient or creepy? Celia already voted creepy. I voted they're 40 minutes away from my house and if I walk back in there I'll start sobbing again, and I dislike crying in front of people. Otherwise I'd watch Nicholas Sparks movies.

I hate "cremains." It sounds so stark. Like a lame attempt to put a tactful spin on a gruesome word. "Ashes" is better, if not completely accurate.

At any rate, I got some bulbs to plant over her in the yard. Ironic, really, since all she ever did was eat my plants. But it seemed like a nice touch. I kind of need the ashes, though, before I can plant anything, and I very much hope the ground doesn't freeze before I get a chance to do this.

Bad week, please get better.

The carrier is empty

2010-11-11T21:28:00.000-05:00

But I can't quite bring myself to touch it yet, or put away the food and water dishes that still have food and water in them. At least we can leave the bedroom doors open now, since there's no worry an ailing cat will seek out a substitute litterbox.

By the numbers: 14 years, 7 homes, 2 states, 5 jobs, 1 marriage, 2 kids and any number of car rides. I drove her back and forth between my first (and second) apartment and my parents' house countless times. I worked nights and was physically unable to wake up early, so sometimes I drove us down after work -- at 2 a.m.

We drove her down to Florida when we moved because I refused to bring her on a plane. (Although I reversed course on that when we moved back, because that was the year four hurricanes hit the state one right after the other, and I'd already moved back to start my job, so I flew down and got her. Nice how I left DH there but came back for the cat, right?) We let her run loose in the car because hey, 14-hour trip, and she bopped around and eventually settled on the back of the back seat, that little shelf under the rear window, and stared at the cars behind us. We only ate fast food that trip, because we needed to be able to bring food back to the car.

So I guess it's appropriate that she died in the car, on the way to the emergency vet, radio off, moving quietly through the dark. I had a feeling she was gone, but I kept driving, just in case.

She never liked traveling much, especially not in the carrier, but she liked being places. She knew every hiding spot in my parents' house. Her first trip to my mother-in-law's house upstate, she saw a bug outside and leaped straight up to grab it, attaching herself to the screen door three feet up. (I still wish I'd gotten a picture.) She liked the high living room windows in my second apartment, the huge living room/dining room in our third apartment, the year-round balcony in our Florida apartment, the sunny living room spots in our New Jersey condo. In the new house, she'd claimed the big window in our bedroom as our own and was apparently taunting the neighborhood dogs from it. Plus our bed. Always our bed. Frequently on top of me. The only times she was evicted were when we had a newborn in the room, and she did not like that whatsoever. Anytime I wasn't holding a child was fair game for lap time.

She liked to play fetch and hunt bugs, and then eat them, even though they didn't agree with her. She destroyed nearly every couch we ever owned, plus a recliner, the sides of our mattress and several patches of carpet. She also destroyed about half the knickknacks I owned when I first got her, along with all the plants. Including an aloe, normally unkillable, just by knocking it over repeatedly until it gave up. And I'm pretty sure she scared the iguana into a premature death, because she loved the heat lamp on top of his tank and kept hopping up there to warm herself.

She was also sweet and friendly and loved being petted by whoever. Even people who didn't like cats, liked her. Which says something.

We knew for a few years that the kidney failure she was suffering from would eventually kill her. But we could never get a firm read on when, or which medications meant something and which were meaningless, or which tests were necessary and which were padding the vet's apparently bottomless pockets. She wouldn't take pills. She wouldn't eat special kidney-diet food. The only thing that ever did anything was injecting her with fluids -- a fun time, really, I'd recommend that to anyone -- and it got more and more difficult to do, what with all the scar tissue on her shoulders.

Don't for a minute think I'm claiming to be Saint Pet Owner here. I'm not. Minus the kids, minus the jobs, with an ounce more free time or sleep, we would've taken better care of her. She got so emphatic about not being medicated that I quit, well before I should have. I got tired of waiting for her to die, which is a horrible feeling to have. I'll never know how much longer she would've lived if we'd done everything right.

As it is, her last conscious memory may well have been being medicated one last time, because she went limp right afterward. I hate that.

But at least I never had to make the conscious decision to put her to sleep, which was my deepest fear all along. I didn't want to choose to do that to her.

There are worse ways to go, I think, than a quiet ride in the dark.

Goodbye, Pigeon. I'll miss you.

Trick or treat and treat and treat and treat

2010-11-04T07:19:00.000-04:00

Wow. Seriously. 15 bags of candy. They just kept coming. DH spotted cars lined up around our complex, so we're figuring people were coming in from outside because it's a nice easy sidewalked kind of walk with lots of houses. Our last place, if we went through two bags it was a good night. Here it's Trick or Treat Central.

It was nice though (even despite DH running out twice for more candy). Because I love Halloween. I dress up. I put bats and spiders in the windows. I watch Charlie Brown. This was the greatest holiday when I was a kid (you get to wear costumes! People give you candy!) and I hope it still is for kids today, so I want to do my part.

Especially for my kids, even if our trick-or-treater was still coughing. Possibly from asthma, we're now told. Hooray and I'm sure that won't affect the rescheduled surgery at ALL. But at any rate, he seemed at least well enough to take a spin around the block. Kiddette had an attack of the teething, so she and I answered the door together. (Her: Princess Kiddette. Me: Black and red brocade dress, pink witch hat.)

Here's a gender quiz for you: When someone answers the door holding a small girl in a pink princess dress, who will react to her, 1. girls or 2. boys? Really, you need an answer key on this? The boys went right for the candy. The girls, no matter how old or young they were, went "Awwwwwww" and "She's so cute!" and "I love her dress!" and "Aw, did you go trick-or-treating?" Which just proves that girls always check out other girls' outfits, and boys have no idea girls exist until puberty.

The kids were mostly in costume -- OK, teenagers, if you're too cool to dress up shouldn't you be too cool to do this at all? -- and mostly polite enough to say "thank you," which is about all you can ask for. Many of them openly approved of our candy choices (that would be all chocolate, all the time). I saw some Elvii, a couple Hogwarts students, some '50s girls, at least one flapper, a bunch of fairies, a few princesses, a ninja, a Spider-Man and the cutest little ladybug girl, whose dad was apparently filming our entire exchange on his smartphone. "Say 'trick or treat'! Now say 'thank you'!" he coaxed without ever taking the thing away from his face. I thought about demanding he produce a release for me to sign, since he was using my image and all, but then figured negotiations would really drag things down and the next batch of kids needed candy.

The parents were generally cool, coaching the kids on politeness and waving to me from the street, but I have to say, I think some of them weren't getting the point of the whole thing. You're not supposed to be driven from house to house. You're supposed to WALK. Boo hoo, it's cold. Wear a turtleneck under your costume and suck it up like I did. Was I cold? Yes. Did I get a ton of candy? Hell yes. The good outweighs the bad, kids. Also you should probably burn some calories before you scarf down all the Reese's.

Honestly, parents, land the copter for one night. It's a safe neighborhood.

So, things we know for next year: Buy more candy. Have a little more fun with the decorations (which were on the sedate side). Film the parents and see how they like it. And don't even try to have dinner until at least 9.

And decaf can go take a flying leap

2010-10-26T23:20:00.000-04:00

because kiddette is all weaned and the only body I will be abusing with whatever I ingest is my own. Huzzah and get me a size small, cream, two sugars. And hey, toss some Kahlua in there while you're at it.

She more or less decided she was done on her own. She was eating less and less, for shorter and shorter periods, while simultaneously inhaling whatever solid foods we offered her. And sippy cups. She loves sippy cups. She especially loves whacking them on the kitchen table. So we were down to the final two -- the morning and the night feedings -- and she really didn't seem that into it, and I was feeling sick and about to start antibiotics anyway, so I just put her in the crib without feeding her and she went to sleep no problem. The next morning, I took her out of the crib without feeding her, and again no problem. And like that, the year-long commitment was over.

(Note: I do not recommend ditching the last two feedings at once. Shutting the factory down early only confuses the production line, and then the factory's a mess and the janitor has to work overtime.)

I feel a little sad about it, since nursing is such an easy way to get in cuddle time, and also get caught up on your reading. But I'm also looking forward to going out for dinner and letting someone else put her to bed. Also drinking at my sister's wedding. Looking forward to that.

It's a huge commitment in terms of time and effort (if you're pumping, anyway), but it's totally worth it and I'm glad I did it.

I will say, though, that I'm still endlessly annoyed by the lack of breastfeeding or breastfeeding imagery in pop culture. The only time I can even think of seeing it done is in "The Hangover," where it was basically played as a tit shot. Otherwise, every single time you see a birth -- from "9 Months" to "Knocked Up" to "Frasier" to whatever -- you never see the baby eat. Everyone's cooing over the newborn and seriously, the newborn is thinking, "Dude! I just got born and I'm starving! Which one of you guys is bogarting the milk?"

It's part of a larger desire, I think, to go "la la la la" whenever the topic comes up, because people are grossed out by it or think it's actually a sexual thing or are, I guess, afraid *they* will find it a sexual thing or have this crazy notion that breastfeeding means whipping it out and shining a great big spotlight on it so they can't avoid seeing it even with their eyes closed. Sure, honey, nurse your kid -- nowhere near me. (Even Barbara Walters. Thanks, Barbara Walters. You're a big help.)

But women pick up on that attitude, and that lack of societal support, I think, contributes to the relatively low breastfeeding rates in this country. Says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "The most recent CDC data show that 3 out of every 4 new mothers in the U.S. now starts out breastfeeding. ... However, rates of breastfeeding at 6 and 12 months as well as rates of exclusive breastfeeding at 3 and 6 months remain stagnant and low." See the full report here. If breastmilk is clearly better than formula -- and every study or article I've read on the subject says yes -- then shouldn't people be backing up that conclusion with action, or at least an attitude adjustment?

Also, seriously, I'm back down to my pre-pregnancy size 6 and it's not because I joined a gym.

Anyway, to my original point: I found this site and thought it was neat. I had no idea you could even find this many images, or that they would go back centuries. Such a nice idea to compile them.

But still glad I'm done. Now for the wedding, should I visit my old friend whiskey sour, or just head right for martini land?

Unintentional psychological study

2010-10-18T21:41:00.000-04:00

Kiddette at 1 looks just about the same as kiddo at 1 -- short brown hair, big blue eyes, round cheeks, serious face. (Though kiddo's eyes are now brown-gray, and I was a little sad when they changed.) When kiddo was her age, people assumed he was a she. Always. He could be wearing bright blue dinosaur truck monkey motorcycle tiger train corduroy overalls and people would still walk up to him and go, "Oh, she's beautiful!" My MIL gave us a onesie that said, "Before You Ask, I'm a Boy!" I don't remember anyone reading it.

Kiddette and I were running errands yesterday and since it was Sunday and who cares, she was wearing some kiddo hand-me-downs -- a gray Mickey hoodie and a red henley-type top. And sure enough, everyone said, "Hi there, buddy! He's so cute!"

I'm not too sure what to conclude from this. Kiddo's eyes are a little bigger than his sister's; did that make him look more feminine? Kiddette tends to look more serious and studious than her brother did; do people think of that as masculine?

Is pink -- or the lack thereof -- that much more noticeable than blue?

What's weird is, I would've described his face as looking boyish, just about right from the start, and hers as looking girlish. I can't understand how people would see it otherwise.

I guess I could completely screw with everyone's heads and dress them both in green.

A fine week, really

2010-10-15T06:56:00.000-04:00

So right about now kiddo should've been at the hospital, getting prepped for surgery, except he has a sinus infection and the doctor called it off two days ago. I appreciate his conscientiousness, but after psyching ourselves (and kiddo) out to be ready for this all month, it's aggravating to have to wait another month. It's almost a letdown. Plus side: The hotel rate went down. Minus side: I have to worry about the increasingly noticeable eye turn for another month.

Also: Kiddette got sick -- in fact, all the babies in her room got sick -- I've been hacking up a lung all week and I think my co-workers are annoyed I came in to work even though I saved them from having to do my work (post-nasal drip, incidentally; I broke down and went to the doctor yesterday), and I got one pre-printed rejection card from an agent about my novel (Dear Author, You suck. Sincerely, Us.) and another rejection letter about a short story. So a banner week was had by all.

This is in fact the second time we've postponed the surgery -- they originally scheduled it for Yom Kippur and we said, Uh, no. Date #3 is a week before Thanksgiving. Hoping things go well enough to have a good holiday.

One tiny bit of happy news is that I quit pumping at work. Kiddette is well on her way to weaning and I am not killing my shoulder anymore carrying that stupid thing around. Just in time, because I think the covering was starting to disintegrate. They don't make those things to last, do they?

Back to School Night

2010-10-10T07:22:00.000-04:00

It is a little odd for what is technically a day care, even though it functions like a school for the older kids, to have a Back to School Night. Since we're paying for the kids to be there in the first place, and I'm not really expecting kiddo to learn much right now beyond "biting bad" and "sharing good!" so anything on top of that is just a fabulous extra. On the other hand, some of our other parent friends were talking about their preschoolers' Back to School Nights so maybe it's not so odd these days. But my boss still went into a giggle fit over it when I asked to leave work early.

A lot of other parents showed up, which was nice, and the director and kiddo's teacher (who I like a lot, actually, she seems good for him) kept going out of their way to praise us for it, as in "We know your child will succeed because you're here!" Rah rah for us, but you'd hate to think the parental bar was set that low. Hey, maybe we were looking for free cake. You don't know that. (Note: There was no cake. I'm just saying.)

Apparently they're doing a letter a week with the kids, and they've already started on penmanship, and they're learning colors in English and Spanish, which all seems fine. And all the kids are doing great with circle, because they're being asked to sit still for a long time and they're doing it. Which yeah, is probably the hardest thing they're learning. And kiddo is even sitting on the potty there, apparently more willingly than he is for us.

One mom was talking about how her daughter tells her about everything they did that day and about all the other kids, and I forget the point she was making, but the rest of us were going "huh?" because our kids tell us squat about their day even when we ask them directly.

"Kiddo, what did you do in school?"

"Mmmm."

"What did you learn?"

Shrug.

"Who did you play with?"

"I dunno."

I expected this in high school, but not now.

His teacher made a point of telling us during the presentation how great he was doing, twice, and called him her "little man." Which is sweet, and he is a charming kiddo. And he did have some issues when he started a few months back -- some pushing, some hitting, some stealing food from other kids -- that we chalked up to a rocky adjustment, and that seems to have stopped. So likely she was just being reassuring. But both DH and I have done the teacher's pet thing in our own academic careers, and it's not all that enjoyable, so I think both of our radars pinged. Just something to watch for, I guess. It's great when your teacher loves you, but not when your teacher loves you way more than the other kids.

Still, a good night. Except for the chairs. The tiny, tiny chairs. I can't believe none of us broke the chairs. DH swears sitting on one threw his back out. My other boss said Back to School Nights get better as the kids get older, because then the chairs are bigger.

Franklin Goes to the Hospital

2010-09-28T23:56:00.000-04:00

is just one of the books that my mother sent our way to help explain to kiddo what's going to happen to him next month. DH and I secretly loathe the Franklin TV show, on account of it's so treacly sweet my gag reflex kicks in. Although the obvious Canadian accents are kind of funny. But the book seems OK. Except for the part where Franklin doesn't want an X-ray because it'll show he's scared inside and not brave. I'm pretty sure an actual kid is not going to be thinking along those lines. More like, "I don't wanna wear the apron! Moooooommmmmm!"

Kiddo is fascinated by the books. (There are two others. One involves stickers.) I've explained to him that he'll be going to the hospital just like Franklin and the doctor will fix his eyes. Which he seems all right with. He had his physical today to get the all-clear for the surgery, and now we know he's in the 75th percentile for weight and height, shocking us not at all because Daddy is 6-foot-2. We also know that he is not cool with tongue depressors, unless there's a lollipop in it for him after.

The surgery is set for the hour of Ungodly Early in the Morning. Probably better to get it over with, and easier to keep him from eating beforehand, but harder to get to the hospital on time. We might have to get a hotel room in the area the night before. Slightly ironical, since that's more or less the area we used to live in. I guess we couldn't crash at our old place overnight, since the new owners might get irked.

He said out of nowhere this morning that his eye hurt. I think that means the surgery is the right thing.

Do I have to hand in my secret blogger ID card?

2010-09-14T23:21:00.000-04:00

On account of I haven't written in a month or so. But I've been painting/unpacking/keeping the kids from running off a cliff/planning kiddette's first birthday party/attemping to find an agent to sell my novel/working on a short story/catching up on Stewart and Colbert/you know, sleeping. And shoot, those diapers don't buy themselves.

Anyhow. Party went splendidly except that there were barely no children there, because kiddo caught a cold the day before and it scared them all away. So now we must have a separate party with actual children at it, which I suppose we should've planned on in the first place, instead of trying to make our relatives deaf with the screeching and the switching on of toys. But the next time we have that much leftover birthday cake in the fridge, I am tossing it in the trash right away and of course I am lying because mmm. Cake.

Amazing that she's a year old. It's always more amazing with smaller kids because they get so much more done in a short span of time. I age a year and I get an extra wrinkle or a gray hair. Kiddette about triples her weight, develops a hairstyle, learns to eat from Mommy's plate (she likes risotto, we discovered tonight) and starts to think about walking. And she can kind of pet the cat without causing injury. To the cat, I mean.

Kiddo had a rough patch at school but seems to be doing OK now. His surgery is next month. I carefully broached the subject this morning on the way to school to see how he'd take it.

"The doctor is going to fix your eyes. How do you feel about that?"

"No want doctor fix my eyes. No want go doctor's office." Pause to watch the trucks go by. "Go doctor, then go school?"

"No, we're not going to the doctor today. That's later."

"Just go school?"

"Yup, just school today."

And then he lost interest. So that could've gone worse.

My parents sent us a bunch of "let's go to the hospital!" type books to help explain what surgery is like. They seem OK. I think I'll give it another couple days, then show them to kiddo. In the meantime, I found several helpful sites; this one goes over the process in detail and tells you what to expect. And now I know he might cry slightly bloody tears afterward, and that would be normal. I'm sure you're grossed out too. This nice family wrote a book about their experiences with it, which seem to have been positive. There also appear to be YouTube videos of actual surgeries, which there is not a snowball's chance in hell that I will be watching.

His eye turn is to the point where other people notice now, so it looks like now is the right time. Still an unsettling thing.

The knife after all

2010-08-09T00:22:00.000-04:00

So after visits to two different pediatric opthalmologists over two years, we've finally heard the official word that yes, he needs surgery. Scheduled for October, and we have to run around and do crazy things like get him a physical less than 30 days beforehand but not too early, because I guess his physicalness could change in a month. And if he's got the sniffles, they cancel. And he has to fast for eight hours beforehand. Which, if you've met my son, is impossible. We'll have to sneakily eat breakfast behind his back that morning, cause if I have to sit in a hospital waiting room for an hour while someone cuts into the muscle attached to my kid's eyeball, no way am I doing that on no food.

Would anyone notice if I snuck a flask into the hospital?

The p.o. said it used to take one blink for kiddo's eyes to snap back into focus, but now it takes longer. And watching him more closely this week, sure, I see it. His eyes are more consistently off balance. I used to tell him, "Hey, focus!" but clearly that's not going to cut it so I'm not bothering.

We were in the waiting room at the p.o.'s -- and I must say, the office at their more northerly location is way nicer, offering a TV, kids books and more than two inches of free space (I'm being unfair; they're remodeling this other one) -- when a couple of women came in with a younger boy still in the infant car seat, wearing glasses, clearly with the same problem kiddo has. So about a year old, judging from the seat and the way he wasn't quite standing on his own yet. Already in glasses. I can't even imagine. How did they keep the things on his head? We couldn't make kiddo wear a patch for more than five seconds at a time, even a patch with cool soccer balls on it.

So his entourage (mom/aunt?) let him loose to crawl around the floor, and kiddo found that hilarious, seeing it all the time as he does with his sister. He crawled over to join the other boy, and they spontaneously created a game in which kiddo would crawl away and the other boy would follow. After kiddo's appointment, we passed the other family on the way out of the building, and the two boys bonded again over the fact that they'd both picked the same cheapie plastic motorcycle man out of the prize box. Too cute.

I knew the surgery was coming at some point. That's been clear to us from the start. I'm not happy about it, but I'm not lying awake nights, either, mostly because I've been sleep-deprived for three-plus years now and *nothing* is keeping me awake nights short of a bomb or a crying child. We'll just have to see how this goes.

But hey, the other p.o. said that aside from his strabismus, his vision is perfect! Um, thanks?

Dress Like a Pirate Day

2010-07-09T22:48:00.000-04:00

So our day care, which is also a school but really day care, does fun things with its classes like Pirate Week. An entire week of fun activities like Treasure Hunt and Make a Pirate Picture Frame and Sprinkler Day, which seems slightly unrelated to the rest but hey, it's hot out. And Friday was Dress Like a Pirate Day.

Never mind the fact that I'm not actually sure 3- and 4-year-olds are ready for pirate chic. Or for the real-life pirates who were in fact fairly bloody people. If I wouldn't bring my kid on Pirates of the Caribbean yet, should I be dressing him pirate-ish?

But hey, new town, first time in a formal school (day care) setting, new friends, he's been a little slow to adjust, bring on the pirates, maybe he'll like it.

Two problems. One, last year was the first year we actually bothered to dress him up for Halloween (if you've ever seen this kid on sugar you'd understand), so we don't have a backlog of costumes for him. Two, where do you find pirate gear in July?

Answer: Nowhere. Unless Babies R Us happens to have some early Halloween stuff in the back and will sell it to you for full price.

You may be cringing. I was cringing. I don't buy Halloween costumes. I make them. Thrift stores are my friend. One year I found a giant inflatable shark, attached him to my shoulder and went as a shark attack victim (we were living in Florida at the time so it was funnier. Um, in that sick way). Another year DH and I wore a dress and a tux, added horns and creepy makeup and went as demon prom dates. He even made me a corsage of black roses. (And now I can say that yes I did wear that bridesmaid's dress again.) So the very notion of shelling out for a pre-fab costume, especially one too hot to wear in July anyway, was bothersome. But we figured, it's a backup option in case I didn't find anything else.

Yeah. The closest I came was a pj set with a big shark on it and a pirate ship in the background.

Somewhere in all this I realized, we've become those parents. The micromanaging ones. The neurotic ones who would spend $30 on an unnecessary costume just so their kid wouldn't feel left out on freaking Pirate Day. Geez, next we'll be hiring him happiness consultants.

Anyway. I decided the best compromise was, he'd wear the pj shirt and use the floppy skull-and-crossbones hat and sword from the costume. Pirate-ish and no heat stroke. Which seemed to suit him, although he'd rather tote a Matchbox car around than a sword. We even got him to do his pirate impression.

"Kiddo, how does a pirate go?"

"Aaaaaarrrrrrr!"

Apparently they made telescopes out of paper towel rolls, got temporary tattoos and had a fine time. And I still have the option of bringing that costume back to the store. So let's call that a win-win.

Next week they want the kids to come in dressed like cowboys. Honestly.

Do chipmunks eat plumeria?

2010-06-15T22:27:00.000-04:00

Because dammit if my plumeria in a pot gets eaten I will go after Chip and/or Dale and I will have my revenge. I saw the little bugger sniffing the pot the other day. I've had that thing for three years, ever since I got it at the Philly flower show. I did not in the least think it would survive, let alone bloom. Plumeria (aka frangipani) were among my favorite aspects of living in Florida and I do not want this one to die.

So here we are in what might be reasonably considered "the country." Or as country as North Jersey gets. Mountains all around. Farms all around, with yummy yummy apple cider doughnuts (and also produce). Horses. Occasional country music. Quiet. Peaceful. How quiet? Both the supermarkets close at 10 (and the cashier I was chatting with, after frantically rushing to grab everything in 10 minutes, commented how great it was for parents that they're open that late. I noted that I was used to 24-hour supermarkets).

So far I've attended a craft fair (very nice) and a vintage rummage sale (so-so) and otherwise unpacked and rearranged and we've bought things like a lawn mower and a grill and a spade, which we did not own before since we lived in a condo and had no yard. I love love love having a yard. It's nice and flat and there's space for kiddo to run around -- which he does -- as well as a garden bed that was just sitting there, waiting for me.

Not that I know in the least what I'm doing. Plants in pots I understand. Like the orchids currently scattered around the house, all recent acquisitions. (The nice lady at Lowe's gave me one half-off. How cool is that?) But plants in the ground I'm a total newbie at. Also I missed the early part of the planting season because we didn't close until May. So this year is purely experimental. I just threw plants in the bed to see what they would do. Conveniently my family, knowing me well, gave me plants. So I have a rosebush and a moonflower; some marigolds; a clump of Johnny-jump-ups; some lavender that lived in a pot on my balcony and, against all odds, survived last winter; a couple of tomato plants, some basil and some oregano. And that still doesn't really fill the bed, but I think I'll leave things be and see how they grow.

-- Incidentally, that bit about how marigolds repel rabbits? Bogus. This one *ate* the marigolds. I saw it hopping away from the scene of the crime. I shall name it Hasenpfeffer!

At some point we will need to figure out things like lawn care and how to trim shrubs. But our neighbors don't appear too anal about their landscaping, so I don't think we've become a blight on the street just yet.

The sky here at night is unreal. Nothing but moon and mountains.

I still can't quite believe we did it. We sold our place -- for a decent amount, if not quite what we paid for it -- and got the house we needed. And now I have a nice size master bathroom and a little corner sitting area in the bedroom, from which I am writing this post. It feels almost as strange as moving to Florida in the first place.

Well, not quite as strange. Florida greeted us with giant roaches.

How not to sell a house

2010-05-30T07:34:00.000-04:00

This one's for you, Realtors!

1. Don't call the seller to say you're running two hours late on a showing.

2. Don't call the seller to say you're not coming at all.

3. Show up at the seller's house without making an appointment first, beg your way in anyway, then casually reveal later your "client" is your daughter.

4. Get so chitchatty with the seller you fail to notice your client has let the seller's small child out onto the balcony.

5. Stay home sick, but send your clients over anyway to roam a stranger's home unescorted.

6. While running an open house at a different unit, tell a random unescorted person to go check out seller's unit, without calling seller's agent first, just for kicks.

7. Get so distracted by cooing over seller's cute baby that you forget to give seller your card.

8. Make it exquisitely clear you'd rather deal with husband seller than wife seller, from returning phone calls to introducing yourself. Because wife seller, obviously, is brainless idiot who makes no money.

9. Bring in snotty out-of-state clients who know nothing about (still-pricey) North Jersey market and snottily declare, "If I had to live here, I'd kill myself," before ditching agent while he's in the bathroom.

10. Bring stairs-allergic clients to a unit with two sets of stairs.

aaaannndd finally:

11. Make lowball offer that sellers spend days negotiating to a halfway decent offer, get outbid by a better offer, throw an e-mail tantrum at seller's agent in which you declare sellers are not trustworthy and you found your clients a way better deal in the same complex anyway, so nyah nyah. Then call seller's agent days later to explain deal was not so good after all, and what's the status of the seller's deal again? Definitely under contract? Oh.

Driving down Route 80 today ...

2010-04-22T22:45:00.000-04:00

... saw a woman in sunglasses barreling past in her SUV, toss a cigarette out the window. I pulled up to her and mouthed something nasty through the window, but since she was incredibly absorbed in her cell phone conversation, I don't think she saw me.

And Happy Earth Day to you too.

Happy Birthday, dear kiddo

2010-04-13T23:37:00.000-04:00

I'm still trying to figure out this whole kiddie party etiquette. Which little friends do you invite? All of them? Some of them? The ones whose parents you like? The ones whose parents you actually know by name? How many adults? Any adults? Is there something fundamentally wrong with getting the kids all worked up, filling them with sugar and sending them home? And if you put a minimal amount of cheapie plastic in the goodie bags, are you being eco-savvy or just chintzy?

Anyway kiddo's third birthday party was over the weekend and I think it went well. In that the kids seemed to be smiling and such. We used one of those kiddie play places with the crazy padded indoor jungle gym-like contraptions, where the guests all run around for a bit and then do games, then have the inevitable pizza and cake and get tokens for the downstairs video games on the way out. We're now veterans of these places, having been to a few kiddie parties. They're a pretty good idea, in that the party is more or less planned for you and the kids are stampeding around a place that is not your house. (We had the grownups and a few of the kids back to our place after; every toy in the house ended up on the floor and DH's laptop was mysteriously non-working the next day.) Some are better designed than others; if there's no barrier between the play area and the spectator seats, you're a little too much in the action. If there aren't enough seats, you're left standing uncomfortably waiting for your kid to hurtle down the slide for the 25th time. There's never room for a stroller. Apparently infant siblings are not invited to these parties.

I needed hands free for my decaf coffee (I'm pretending it's real coffee, dammit!) so kiddette promptly went into her sling, which promptly prompted some to ask whether that was one of the recalled slings. (Told you.) I kept my sling rant to a minimum. Kiddette, not especially interested in the conversation, proved my point by peacefully dozing off.

I hope I was a decent enough hostess. I didn't actually know all the parents involved, and casual conversation with strangers is not my strong point. But then you spend most of your time at these things watching your kid anyway.

Kiddo ran around like the maniac he is, though seemed a little overwhelmed by being the center of attention. They even skipped the parachute. By the time the food came around, though, he was back to normal. He even blew out the candles on his own (unlike last year, when he tried to grab the candle on his brownie and I blew it out for him).

High point of my day: I'd just put a skirt on as we were getting ready to go, when kiddo saw and said, "Mommy a princess!" Too. Cute.

Now only about five months to go before we have to throw another shindig for kiddette. At least she won't be wanting a Thomas cake.

Still slinging

2010-03-21T22:37:00.000-04:00

I'm a little annoyed about the Consumer Product Safety Commission's sling warning. Not because it's unwarranted -- three babies dying in one year is alarming -- but because it's not making any distinctions. The sling that keeps coming up in news reports by way of example is this one -- and I have to say, I breezed right past it when I was sling shopping because it looked chintzy. I've used this one and this one, and they've both struck me as being pretty well made and durable. I feel like the warning is lumping all slings together as being dangerous, which may be overstating the case.

The key to using a sling properly is the sizing. If it's too small, the baby doesn't have enough room; if it's too loose or hangs too much away from the mother's body, the baby is more likely to slide around or fall out. Reputable sling sites emphasize this and suggest you whip out a tape measure to be absolutely sure you're ordering the right one.

And even still, I refused to use one with kiddo until he more or less had head control, because it made me nervous. I started earlier with kiddette, for the sheer practical reason that I needed my hands free to corral kiddo. But I always stuck a small blanket under her head and neck to give her extra support, and I glanced down to check on her constantly, listening for her breathing.

Mothering magazine awhile back published a guide to babywearing that more or less sums it all up -- the different types, the pros and cons, some specific products to try out. And it specifically warns to make sure the baby can breathe properly. Among other things like, don't cook with the baby strapped to you, or bend over without holding the baby in place. As though you needed to be told that.

Here's what's frustrating: Apparently some people do need to be told that. I have absolutely no desire to trash parents who lost their babies, because that isn't right. But if you're going to carry your baby around strapped to you with a piece of fabric -- that's fabric, not armor -- you have to exercise more than the usual amount of common sense.

It reminds me of the Bumbo seat recall of a few years back. Seems some parents were leaving their babies in these things on top of tables and other such elevated surfaces, and then the baby would arch backward out of the seat, fall off the table and fracture their skull. Right. So why would you put your baby on an elevated surface for any reason, no matter what they're sitting in? We have a Bumbo. We used it with kiddo. We're using it with kiddette. On the carpeted floor. Like the instructions said to do.

Look, it frustrates me beyond belief how often products designed for children are cheap pieces of crap. But knowing that, I'm as careful as possible about what we use and how we use it. And maybe some people just grab whatever off the shelves and figure it's fine without reading the instructions, or researching it. Parenting = research. It just does.

There are apparently industry trade standards in the works for slings, and I think that's a good idea. All I know is, the next time kiddette and I venture out sling-style (she sits upright now, making things easier), if I get a fish-eye from someone about it, there will be an unpleasant scene.

The things she carried

2010-03-05T22:31:00.000-05:00

On the left side: One five-ton breast pump, masquerading as a large black briefcase, likely not fooling anyone. One Coach bag, proving that I do in fact possess some sense of style and at least one purse that is not designed to hold diapers. One tote bag full of kiddo's lunch, kiddo's diapers and kiddo's backup outfit in case the diapers are overwhelmed. On the right side: One small hand, preventing kiddo from picking a direction at random and running off to play in traffic.

My left arm has been feeling weird for the past couple days. Think the pump is killing it?

It's more or less the same morning routine as before -- get up, get fed and dressed, get kiddo fed and dressed, get out the door, drop him off at daycare, get to work -- with the addition of a hungry kiddette who also needs to be fed and dressed, and is in no hurry to finish feeding. Ever. This is not helping time-wise. I have a mark I'm trying to hit and I keep missing it. I'd rather get in to work earlier and leave earlier, but when other small beings are involved the equation gets tougher.

But then I stubbornly refuse to skip breakfast or resort to sugar-bomb pastry crap, so that takes a little more time. Fortunately kiddo is pretty happy with Joe's O's and fruit every day, so I don't have to overthink anything. And I've been eating my regular yogurt/fruit/English muffins/tea meal for about my entire adult life. Boring? Sure. Easy? Yay.

Every day is a race: How fast can I get in? How much can I get done? How fast can I get home? How many times will I get stuck in traffic on the Parkway? (Curse you, Parkway.) How many seconds after I walk through the door will I have to feed kiddette? How much playtime will I get in before double bedtime? And how much of one "Daily Show" episode will I get to watch before conking out on the couch?

I already knew this would be the case. It's just that the second child means more coordination, more energy, more strain on the left shoulder. Seriously, if my arm keeps bothering me I'll have to get one of those little dolly things. Stupid pump and its stupid five tons.

The nice thing is watching kiddo and kiddette interact. He flops down next to her on her mat; she smiles up at him and reaches for his hair, his nose, his hand. He gets right in her face and laughs. She gives him a big toothless baby grin. I still worry he'll accidentally squish her, but at least they like each other. For now.

Back to work, you

2010-02-13T21:45:00.000-05:00

So this is the part where I guess I should cry and wail and tear my hair out about the fact that I am leaving my precious babies in the hands of another while I head off to my drudgery job, but I'm just not feeling it. Sorry. We do have a pretty good situation, in that kiddo goes to a day-care setup we like with other kids he likes playing with, and DH telecommutes so it's him with kiddette all day and not some stranger. And I have a certain amount of flexibility in my work hours and can do some things from home, so between the two of us we'll figure out a schedule that works for both of us. Also I like my job. And frankly I think a lot of women feel compelled to do the wailing/tearing hair out just because they think they'll look like a bad/uncaring mommy if they don't, like racking themselves with guilt is how they prove they really, truly love their kids. I really, truly don't feel compelled to prove my mommy-worthiness to anyone except my kids, and as long as they're happy to see me at the end of the day we're cool.

The first day went better for me than for kiddette -- she's a bit needy and spent much of the day on Daddy's chest. He even stuck her in the Bjorn and kept working, which helped a little. But even still, here was the scene I walked in on: kiddette on the play mat yelling; kiddo in his room, in time-out; DH cleaning kiddo's dinner out of the carpet with a snarly look on his face. At which point I said absolutely nothing and walked over to retrieve kiddette. Dinnertime is going to be trouble. We'll have to see how the next few days go.

I have to say, though, the weight loss has been easier this time. I'm still not where I want to be, which is around 120, where I was before kiddo. But I am a little over 130, which is where I was at before kiddette. So I fit into my pre-pregnancy size 8 work pants, unlike last time when I had to run out and buy size 12, then size 10 pants just so I had something to wear. It's nice feeling like I'm sort of within shouting distance of my old body. And I bought some new clothes anyway, because shoot, wouldn't you?

Overheard in the post office

2010-02-08T13:42:00.000-05:00

Kiddette and I were on line when two little old ladies entered behind us and their "cute baby!" radars immediately pinged. "Oh, how sweet, she's looking at Mommy, how old is she," etc. Then one started to tell the other about her granddaughter, whose name is Danica.

"Oh, is that Hungarian?" the other asked (I'm assuming the grandma was Hungarian).

"No, it's for a race car driver," the first explained to some amazement. They spent several minutes going back and forth about the interesting race car driver.

So which is funnier, that someone thought so highly of Danica Patrick (despite, or because of the Go Daddy commercial?) that they named their child after her, or that even after Danica Patrick's full media onslaught of the past couple years, two little old ladies had no idea who she is?

Anyway, the postal worker at the counter and I were amused.

------------------------------------------

... Aaaand happy to report that I have completed my Jane Austen project, just in time to head back to work and lose all leisure reading time that does not involve "The Wheels on the Bus" or "Red Light Green Light." Celia will be less pleased to know that I liked "Northanger Abbey" but did not love it; I think I just enjoy Austen's heroines more when they're smart and self-possessed, not wide-eyed and innocent. I did laugh at how "Northanger" makes fun of Gothic stereotypes, and there are a couple of passages in praise of novel reading and of writing that appealed to me. But my favorites are still "Pride and Prejudice," "Persuasion" and "Emma," in that order.

Scalpel?

2010-01-29T22:41:00.000-05:00

Actually I don't know if scalpels are used in strabismus surgery. Maybe they use something else equally sharp and horrifying.

We went for our second opinion this week. Kiddo was pretty well-behaved, I must say. We read a Highlights together in the waiting room (infinitely more interesting than Rachael Ray on the TV) and after we headed to the examining room, he was perfectly happy to play with the toys in it while hanging out in the big chair. He answered the opthalmologist's questions like a pro. Even after getting his eyes dilated, he shrugged it off pretty quickly and bopped around the rear waiting room -- clearly designed for dilated kids and bored mamas, with more toys and a few magazines -- not even trying to escape and run wild through the place, which he's been known to do. The opthalmologist was impressed, calling him both smart and mature for his age. Excuse me while I bask in that for a minute.

Of course, he also said kiddo absolutely needs surgery. Excuse me while I freak.

He said 25 percent of kids with this problem grow out of it more or less on their own, and the trick is figuring out whether the kid you're looking at is in the 25 percent or the 75 percent that need intervention. He also said he doesn't think patching ever works and he's had kids come to him after patching, vision therapy and glasses but he's never had to redo a surgery. And that the parents most against the surgery in the first place tend to be happiest with the results.

It's a half-hour procedure, they put the kid under for it, he's been doing it for years, etc. and yada and yikes.

I can't argue the fact that kiddo's eyes are worse. And obviously patching only worked for a little while, and you can't patch an eye indefinitely unless your name is One-Eyed Willie. And boy, there was absolutely no hesitation on the doctor's part; about five seconds into the exam he was talking surgery.

So there's the second opinion. The pediatrician recommended yet another specialist if we wanted to explore the issue further; do we try for a third?

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Better writers than me have already weighed in on the late lamented Mr. Salinger, but I thought I'd note that I just reread "Catcher" a couple months ago and liked it all over again. Holden's such a screwed-up kid, but you can see the wry, caring adult he might actually become if he can manage to survive to adulthood. I especially like when he offers to buy the nuns a drink, which is both kinda creepy and a nobly failed attempt to be as sophisticated and gentlemanly as the adults he hates.

I think I'd like to be the catcher in the rye too. Except I'm old enough to know you can't always save people from themselves.

Strabismus: The Sequel

2010-01-24T23:03:00.000-05:00

For the longest time we thought kiddo's eyes were better. The patching seemed to work. It was almost like the visits with the pediatric opthalmologist were a formality.

Yeah, that didn't last.

So his eyes are worse. To the point where someone besides us might notice the wandering eyeball if they watched him closely enough. Sometimes he seems to do it deliberately, push them in opposite directions to get a rise out of us, and then he looks a little like a lizard creature. Which kills me, because he's a pretty adorable kid.

And the doctor's verdict, so far, has been, and I'm paraphrasing here: "Huh. Looks worse. See you in three months."

I cannot believe there's nothing else we could be doing right now. What are we supposed to do, sit back and wait for it to get bad enough to require surgery? Because that seems to be the doctor's strategy. And surgery doesn't always work. And also: It's surgery! He's not even 3 yet.

So I'm taking him to another specialist for a second opinion, because I'd like to feel like we really did exhaust all other options.

Periodically I meet another adult who clearly has a variation on what he has, and it's incredibly disconcerting. You can't tell whether they're looking at you, so you can't watch their face for social cues. Makes conversation difficult. I always want to ask them about it -- have you always had it? did anyone try to treat it? how does it affect your life? -- but of course that would be crazily rude so I don't. And then I feel like a jerk, hoping my son doesn't turn out like them.

On the plus side, he seems to function pretty well with a wonky eyeball. He loves being read to, and is starting to figure out the words in books (by having them read to him over and over and over and over and sigh). He can focus on his toys or his food or that godawful "Super Why" show with no problem. Just sometimes, when he's tired or cranky or when he feels like it, he unfocuses.

I hope the doctor tells us something useful.

I hate to eat and run, but the kid sure doesn't

2010-01-13T23:26:00.000-05:00

This time around on the baby train, I've definitely expanded my repertoire of semi-public places to nurse in. I don't know if it's because I'm more laid back about the whole thing or because kiddette is hungrier than her big brother was (which I find hard to believe, considering his monster appetite). For instance, I discovered handicapped fitting rooms in department stores work nicely, because the stroller fits in them and there's a seating area. But it does bring up the Miss Manners question: "So, Miss Manners, does a hungry baby get dibs over a disabled person looking to try on a blouse?"

I was using just such a fitting room recently when I heard a knock on a door -- couldn't tell if it was my door -- and a woman poked her head in, saw me (didn't see much else, I'm quite discreet), apologized and backed out. I heard her wheeling something away and muttering something or other about trying the store's other set of fitting rooms. And I thought, Oh dear Lord, I just prevented a woman in a wheelchair from using the fitting room legally designed for her use. And I felt horribly guilty. And also annoyed because if regular fitting rooms were bigger, I could've used one of those; if there were another sort of private-ish room I could use in the vicinity, I'd use that; if people weren't so weird about mothers nursing in public, I could just grab a bench near the food court and no one would blink an eye, and I wouldn't have to worry about, say, getting the cops called on me at Target.

But I finished feeding kiddette and put her gently snoozing body back in the stroller, then opened the door to see the same woman from before. And I was hugely relieved to see she was pushing ... another stroller. I told her we were done and she was welcome to the room. We chatted briefly, exchanged our daughters' vitals (age? weight? serial number?) and then kiddette and I headed out. I have no idea whether the other mom wanted the room to feed in or just to try stuff on in, but it's a bit of a moot point.

Still my etiquette question remains. What if it had been a woman in a wheelchair? Because normally I get all kinds of peeved at non-disabled people who use disabled fitting rooms and restroom stalls and parking spaces. But if there isn't another space available to use, what's a mother (and wailing baby) to do? You'd think, as more women breastfeed and do so for longer periods of time, that this issue would pop up more often.

In case you were wondering what other wacky places I've nursed lately: Church. Precisely one minute into the baptism we were attending. (In the hallway, not the pew.) Hungry little stroller jockey, isn't she?

Fanny Price is a pill!

2009-12-30T00:08:00.000-05:00

That is my conclusion after finishing "Mansfield Park." It's part of my maternity leave reading list. Last time around, I read "War and Peace." No, really. It's good. All you ever hear about is how long it is, boo-hoo and wah, but if you can handle the last four or so Harry Potter books you can do this too. Worth the effort.

So I thought, what should I read this time around? Because the thing about nursing is that you spend lots of time sitting down. You can get on the phone, you can watch TV or you can read. You can of course also interact with your baby, but your baby will be feeding for up to an hour, every two to three hours, and no matter how much you want to be Ultimate Mom, you're going to want a diversion after a while.

Now I love "Pride and Prejudice." I've read it over and over. I've seen, I'm fairly sure, every movie version, including the Bollywood one ("Bride and Prejudice," so-so acting but great dance scenes). But I realized that I'd never read Austen's other novels, and she only wrote six (not counting "Sanditon," which was unfinished at the time of her death). Hey, I can read five novels in a few months.

I was surprisingly so-so on "Sense and Sensibility," finding it a little overwrought plotwise. Also I felt like the ending sold out Marianne a little. Which is odd because I didn't remember getting that sense from the movie. Also odd: One scene that stuck in my head from the movie -- a heartbroken Marianne standing in the pouring rain, reciting poetry to the house her lost Willoughby was in -- wasn't in the book at all. When she falls ill, it's solely from Willoughby spurning her ("dumping" doesn't sound right, does it?). People in these novels keep getting sick just from hearing bad news. Delicate 19th-century constitutions?

I liked "Emma" a lot; it has a light, arch tone that makes it a fun read. The heroine is so sure of herself, and so completely wrong about everything, that you sort of want to roll your eyes and hug her simultaneously. Also I developed a new appreciation for "Clueless," which is a surprisingly faithful adaptation, aside from having a pretty good soundtrack.

"Persuasion" is the one you want to read when feeling most cynical about human nature. The satire verges on viciousness. (Occasionally you get the distinct feeling that Austen didn't like most people.) But Anne Elliot is someone you want to root for, getting a second chance at love even though she's a spinster in her late twenties (ancient, I know).

"Mansfield Park," though, has left me a little cold. All the other heroines are likable in their way, from calm and sensible Anne to smart, witty Lizzy Bennet. But Fanny Price is completely reactive. The entire novel happens around her, and she just mopes and cries and waits for her beloved Edmund to get around to noticing that she exists, and gosh, wouldn't they make a cute couple? Which the reader picked up on somewhere around chapter three. I read that Fanny was Austen's favorite heroine, and I really hope that wasn't true.

It's funny how contemporary the novels feel. Frenemies! Lousy parents and spoiled kids! City snobs snarking about the country! (Oh you New Yorkers with your better-than-Jersey holiness.) Not to mention adultery, illegitimate children and the occasional gold-digger. I don't know if it's reassuring that society hasn't changed that much, or depressing.

But this has been a fun read. Just "Northanger Abbey" left, assuming the library has it, and then I think I can legitimately consider myself an Austen fan. For whatever that's worth.

But at least they gave us gelt

2009-12-17T00:15:00.000-05:00

A local Jewish group was holding a menorah lighting ceremony at town hall, so we figured we'd go, since we'd already hit the town's tree lighting-palooza. Plus there'd be latkes and doughnuts. I refuse to make latkes from scratch because there's only so much work I'm prepared to put into dinner, but I'm happy to eat them if someone else makes them. (Side note: Trader Joe's frozen latkes are quite good.)

So we showed up a few minutes late and figured the menorah -- a decent-sized electric one next to the lit-up tree -- was already lit and the party had moved inside, except for the few stragglers still around the menorah. Then we realized the stragglers were the party. The entirely outside party. After dark. In December. With the wind whipping through our entire bodies.

Outside?

Let me just say, you all seemed like very nice people, as much as we were able to talk to you in between the teeth chattering, but ... outside? Two feet from a parking lot? In the freezing cold? With children in tow?

I know the whole point of Hanukkah is to shine a light against the darkness and all, but you know what else beats back the darkness? A well-lit room. With heat.

I almost made us leave on the spot, but we'd promised kiddo latkes so we trooped on over. There was a radio playing Hebrew party tunes, a table with doughnuts and dreidels, and that was just about it. We politely stayed a few minutes and then skipped on out before our children got frostbite. "You brought a baby -- you must really be dedicated!" one man called out as we were leaving.

No, sir, just expecting a *ahem* warmer reception.

And I wouldn't even be that annoyed, except that here was how the tree lighting party went: chorus sings, fire trucks blare, Santa arrives, tree lit, big crowd heads inside for Santa photo ops, balloon animals, cupcakes, hot chocolate and other assorted goodies. Sure, one was town-sponsored and one was a private group. But they were both held at the same spot, so yes, folks, comparisons are inevitable.

Jews are not good at outreach. Or PR. I think we're so used to everyone hating us that it doesn't occur to us that people might want to, say, know more about our culture, or maybe attend one of our cultural events without it being unbelievably inconvenient. (DH has complained before about feeling unwelcome in all-Jewish places.)

In all fairness, it's easier to get into the Christian holidays because they tend to have a secular (pagan?) component to go along with the more serious religious component. Christmas has Santa. Easter has the Easter bunny and gobs of candy. Neither one is the point of the holiday, but they give the kids (and wary Jewish adults) something to hang onto unless and until they're ready for the real point. Jewish holidays are the point. There's no Pasky the Passover Pascal Lamb, for instance. Just the seder. And gobs of matzah.

But the end result is that we are going to do our damndest to educate our kids in both sides of their heritage, and Judaism is going to be a harder sell. Unless we can find better Hanukkah parties.

Santa Santa Santa and also Santa

2009-12-06T23:14:00.000-05:00

People make such a big thing about Christmas envy. Oh, you poor Jewish thing, you must've hated growing up watching your friends and their Christmas this and Santa that. Trees and lights and ham and lamb and mint sauce (I still don't understand the mint sauce, can some gentile out there enlighten me?) and candy canes and TV specials and stockings. You poor deprived child. Boo hoo and wah.

But not really. The thing is, I like Hanukkah. Always did. You get to play with fire -- in front of your parents, no less -- you get to hear a cool story about war and miracles, and you get eight nights of presents. And no matter what Lewis Black tells you about back-to-school holidays, some of us actually got toys at Hanukkah. Like the Cabbage Patch dolls and the Pound Puppies and the Nintendo and could I be dating myself any more here? Anyway, Christmas-Hanukkah never bothered me.

(Easter-Passover, that bugged me. Macaroons? Chocolate bunnies? No comparison.)

What I'm realizing, though, is that when it comes to the sheer fun quotient, Hanukkah can't compete. It's just outclassed.

We took kiddo to see Santa on Saturday -- right, the day it snowed, and then tried to find a tree even though there was snow in our eyes the whole time -- and went to our town's tree lighting on Sunday. He had a blast. He ran right up to Santa, high-fived him, sat on his lap, said thanks for the candy cane, and then while we were drinking our hot cider he ran back over to Santa and scored a second picture. Probably would've shot for a third if we hadn't dragged him outside to the tree lot. We'd have an album full of him mugging with Santa.

For the tree lighting, everybody gathered outside the municipal building while every single fire truck and ambulance the town owns (or it felt that way, anyway) came screaming into the lot, followed by Santa on a smaller truck. Kids shrieked when they saw him. Santa is a rock star! Then everyone looked up at the big tree at the top of the hill and counted down to 1, when the tree magically lit up in primary colors. And then inside for cupcakes and hot chocolate, plus pictures with Santa (absolutely not, it was a mile-long line).

Such excitement, such drama. Even I got a thrill when I knelt next to kiddo and pointed: "Look, here comes Santa! Look at the tree, they're turning on the lights!" It draws you in. I started to wonder what it would've been like for me, celebrating these things as a kid. What would it have felt like? What's it like to see Santa for the first time, and to believe in him? Kiddo looked dazzled.

(I am aware that Santa is not actually the point of the holiday. We'll tackle that part, too, when kiddo is old enough to understand a little better. Right now I'm focusing on the more secular aspects.)

Hanukkah has a pretty compelling story in its own right, but it's a more quiet sort of celebration. It's not even a major holiday on the Jewish calendar, nowhere near the status of Passover or the High Holy Days. Any attempts to raise it up to the level of Christmas are -- let's face it -- Christmas envy.

We celebrate both, obviously, but we don't mush them together. They're separate holidays held for separate reasons and that needs to be acknowledged. Still I wonder how much more we'll have to push to make Hanukkah stick in the kids' minds. Because Christmas has a magic that's hard to resist.

Hello, I'm Kanga and this is Roo

2009-11-29T14:28:00.000-05:00

Long long ago in my single days, when my pets were my substitute children (because who are we kidding? Of course they were), I had an iguana named Beast. He liked to ride around on my shoulder. So I'd put his little leash on and stroll outside for a walk, and every kid in a 300-mile radius would come running to see the cool lizard. It was hilarious. I'd never been the center of attention that quickly, ever.

Occasionally I get a flashback of that when I stroll around with kiddette in her sling. People are fascinated. "Is there a baby in there?" "Wow, what a neat pouch!" "Oh, honey, look at the baby!" Etc. Which is kind of cute and amusing -- and yes, I do think I have the most adorable kiddette on the planet anyway -- but clearly a fair amount of the attention is over the sling.

Not sure why they're still such a novelty. I see parents using other carriers, like the Bjorn and the Ergo, fairly regularly. My Peanut Shell, though -- and all the other slings like it, rings or no -- not so much. Which is weird considering I got it at a big-box baby store.

Maybe slings are too hippie-dippie hipster for the North Jersey parenting set? Or maybe, and this seems more likely, they're not incredibly cost-effective since they seem to be designed for and marketed to women? (DH uses a Bjorn.)

I'm pretty fond of it though. Kiddette has ridden in it through a holiday craft fair, a holiday open house in a historic building and a train show, all of which were in stroller-unfriendly places, and we got around fine. Plus happy sleeper that she is, she snoozed through almost all of it. Pretty unbelievable with the train show, considering the huge noise in a small space and her brother zooming around like a maniac yelling "Trains! Trains!"

I guess I don't mind being the novelty act. And this is way better than carrying a lizard around.

H1N1 vaccinations: More fun than you can shake your fist at

2009-11-20T16:04:00.000-05:00

So getting out of the way the whole Should I? Shouldn't I? part -- we have a toddler and an infant and I already personally know one kid who's gotten swine flu, and I'd rather risk side effects from the shot than side effects (or any effects) from the virus. But hey, you want to fret about government conspiracies, that is of course your call.

I got kiddo and me into a clinic for high-risk groups a few hours before registration closed out entirely. It ran 4:30 to 8:30 p.m., and no you could not register for a specific time, what do you think this is, a haircut?

So we waited on line. And waited on line. And some more. And genius me for bringing the stroller, because I could stash our coats in the storage bin and have something to lean on while also keeping maniac kiddo contained in one spot instead of chasing him all over the room. You anti-stroller people, you have no idea how much they simplify our lives. At least I apologize when I accidentally run over your toe.

We moved from one line to a room where I had to fill out forms providing essentially the same information I'd already provided on the printouts from the registration. And then to another line, in which we discovered that they were going alphabetically by last name and I possess the most common first letter in the alphabet. Occasionally a guy walked back down the line calling out, "Any Ds? Any Fs?" I thought maybe we'd be getting a seating chart and a syllabus next.

Kiddo was putting up with all this remarkably well because he had a granola bar and my iPod. There's one episode of "Sesame Street" on it I just keep showing him over and over, and whenever he sees the iPod he says, "See Elmo!" Somehow he figured out where the earbuds go, though I've never showed him that, and he sat there playing with the clickwheel and listening to my music. I hope he didn't find the Metallica.

We got to the front (!) of the alphabet line and found out that we had to go to the "verification room" because kiddo got his regular flu shot last month and they were, I dunno, afraid he might explode or something. So we went to that room and waited on another line to be told that he's good to go, and we should go down the hall where there is -- wait for it -- another line for kids under 36 months.

We got there and there were two lines leading through double doors into a bigger room, and the nice lady who was trying to direct me started to bring me in front of the double doors, in between the two other lines. Another worker tried to stop me, assuming I guess that I was a line-jumper, and after I had a minor hissy and explained that I was following someone, he let me pass without a password or anything. And then I stood there at the front, on no particular line, waiting for I knew not what until the first worker beckoned me into one corner of the next room, which was apparently the kiddie corner.

They had quite the assembly-line operation going. Haul the kid onto a table, yank his pants down, stick him quickly, shove him off on his parent while he's screaming. Next!

I wheeled still-crying kiddo to a quiet spot against the wall and brought out my secret weapon: A fun-size Butterfinger. "Want some chocolate?" I wheedled. Kiddo stopped crying, perked right up and attacked it. Leftover Halloween candy, I love you.

The chocolate perked him up so much, in fact, that he was calm and happy while I got my shot and while we waited the required 15 minutes after to make sure neither of us had a reaction. There were rows of folding chairs set up at the other end of the room so all the recently stuck could wait together. Kiddo hung out in the stroller while I texted DH and we had another round of granola bars (it being past dinnertime). He was so calm, in fact, that the grandma next to us scolded her weeping little girl: "Look at that little boy, see how happy he is?" Oh, silly grandma, where's your chocolate?

And we're done. Except that kiddo needs two shots on account of his age. Can't wait to do this all again in a month, assuming of course there's any vaccine left.

Lose weight sitting down!

2009-11-13T12:40:00.000-05:00

Or such is the tone, more or less, of this article from the NY Times, discussing the weight-loss benefits of breastfeeding. It kind of treats the whole idea like some hot new fad diet, then suggests it might not work anyway, then finds people to criticize women for treating breastfeeding like some hot new fad diet. You horrible mothers for wanting to lose weight!

It's actually a fairly interesting piece if you get past the usual Times-ness: "Nursing mothers can buy form-fitting tops at YummyMummyStore.com so they can flaunt their shape as they push their Bugaboo." Yeah, we all drop $1,000 and up on strollers, you're so totally right.

But I'm not sure the approach works. For one thing, the weight-loss benefits aren't a new concept. Every article/book I've read on breastfeeding notes that as a possible side effect. And I can vouch for it, to an extent. I'll even roll out the numbers: I was 118 before my first pregnancy, gained more than 30 pounds (I'd say how much but I forget and also it was horrifying), and after just over a year of breastfeeding and not nearly enough exercise, I was hovering around 130. Which is where I started off the second time, got up to about 168ish, and eight weeks in am down to about 141. Hoping this time to go all the way down to 118, because there's a cute dress in my closet I can never wear again otherwise.

So yes, I'd definitely say nursing *helps* weight loss. But at some point I'll have to do the rest myself, either by walking more or showing up at yoga again finally, or chasing after kiddo a lot (I'd recommend that, actually. I could rent him out for running practice). And that I think is where the article stumbles, because it seems to suggest that moms might be able to lose all the weight solely by breastfeeding, and not also exercising or changing their eating habits. Because boy, it's easy to keep eating like you're pregnant when you're not anymore.

I do very much like this sentence though: "Breast-feeding mothers face many obstacles: little hospital help, public squeamishness and too-short maternity leave." Yes and yes. And I had a good experience in the hospital and really can't complain about my leave, but I've heard horror stories from other moms and it burns me up.

Dear other families on the hayride,

2009-10-30T23:47:00.000-04:00

I would like to apologize for my son's nearly bowling your kids over on the way to the pumpkin patch. He likes pumpkins.

I'd also like to apologize for the fact that he immediately lost interest in the pumpkins in favor of the rocks, though I'd like to note that he is a collector of rocks (acorns, leaves, etc.) and not a thrower of rocks at others.

And also for the way he ruined several photographs by barrelling through the scene just as you were about to hit the button.

And further for making the rest of you sit on the tractor cart and wait until we 1. grabbed the pumpkins we wanted and 2. corralled our child, realizing that even though you had the time to swing a hayride in the middle of a Monday, you of course were in a big hurry to get to the next item on your busy schedules.

And also for making some of you scoot over to allow us to sit down for the ride back, as you appeared to have mistaken the tractor for a subway and us for straphangers. So very sorry especially that I had some desire to sit down while toting around an infant.

But mostly I'd like to apologize to the preteen in the sweatshirt and shaggy hair who slumped in one corner of the cart, his entire look saying "I can't believe my mom still drags me on this thing every year," because little does he realize that in 20 or so years he'll be right back here doing the same dorky Halloween thing with his kid, and he should enjoy his utter coolness while he can.

Mean thought at the OB's office

2009-10-26T23:38:00.000-04:00

Is it so wrong, after months of sitting on hold, sitting and waiting in the office, waiting for callbacks from the nurses that never came, waiting to make an appointment and then finding out the computers were down, waiting to get HR paperwork filled out only to find that the staff lost it, and waiting for test results that were given to me via an automated voicemail system no matter how serious the results were, that while sitting and waiting -- once again -- to be seen at the six-week follow-up visit, kiddette started to wail and I had the fleeting desire to hand her a mike, kick back and let everyone else be annoyed for a change?

The Type A child vs. the happy sleeper

2009-10-07T14:12:00.000-04:00

Truly it is amazing how very opposite these two kids are.

Firstborn kiddo was ready to go from minute 1. Full of energy. Always loud (to the point of scaring other children). Always alert. Always into everything. A favorite running joke at home: DH comes out of the bedroom, watches his son for a few minutes and says, "What did you feed him?" "Crystal meth," I say.

Eventually, of course, kiddo will start saying that himself and all the other parents will run away when they see us coming.

Now there's new little kiddette, who never met a nap she didn't like. Sometimes the exertion of napping tires her out so much she has to take a nap afterward. Other favorite running joke: Whenever she bothers to ascend into wakefulness, one of us will say to the other, "Look! She has eyes!"

It got to the point, in the hospital, where I made a lactation consultant come to the room and consult because I wasn't sure she was getting enough to eat. I'm thinking now she is, since the little pink newborn outfits fit her now, but I still wake her myself for feedings half the time.

Kiddo never missed a feeding. And four of his favorite words are "breakfast," "lunch," "dinner" and "snack."

Also, kiddette is noisy. She makes more odd sounds in her sleep than an 80-year-old lifetime smoker with a snoring problem. It's like she's making a loud and forceful argument about something or other (health care? the national deficit? who knows). Although occasionally it's just gas.

I think I can pretty well call their teenage years: Kiddo will bust through the door after practice for whatever five sports he'll be playing, eat everything in the fridge and run outside to do laps around the county. Kiddette will stroll in, cellphone attached to ear (and by then I assume we really will be able to attach cellphones to ears), assure us she's not hungry -- again -- and head upstairs, continuing the seven simultaneous conversations she's having while also texting five other people with the second cellphone permanently attached to her hand. And then she'll sleep for 10 hours.

Truly, she's making me nostalgic for my college years, when I'd come home at the end of the semester and sleep for a whole day or so. But that was after a semester of more or less not sleeping.

Which, come to think of it, is more or less what I'm doing now. Minus the beer and 8 a.m. lecture hall classes.

Oh, who am I kidding, peach schnapps and iced tea. I never drank beer in college.

Dear FDA,

2009-09-20T15:05:00.000-04:00

I feel you must investigate the use of Americone Dream as a possible labor and delivery aid.

During my previous pregnancy, I ate some of the ice cream a week before my due date and promptly went into labor. During this pregnancy, I went into labor spontaneously but it progressed so slowly that I resorted to eating the ice cream -- at which point the pace quickened noticeably and my daughter was born a few hours later.

Pregnant women should be notified, especially, not to eat the ice cream before their 37th week. Please see what you can do to expedite this.

Sincerely,

A bemused Colbert fan

There is Colbert ice cream in my freezer and I am afraid to eat it

2009-09-13T22:27:00.000-04:00

Let me explain. Last time around, that delightful caramely concoction known as Americone Dream had just hit the market and we looked everywhere for it, because I am a huge Stephen Colbert fan. Also a huge Jon Stewart fan, but he doesn't have his own ice cream.

It took forever but DH finally tracked it down and brought me some. We ate it that night, about a week before my due date, and while we were watching the Report I went into labor.

Coincidence? I think not!

Every person I tell that story to says I should write the show about it, but I was afraid to on account of Colbert probably would put it on the show. (Although that isn't stopping me from blogging about it so there you go.) Now here we are again, at week 37, and there is a pint of Americone in the freezer that has been sitting there for weeks because I am not touching it until I am ready for this kid to be born. Just imagine if it happens again? I think I would need to petition the FDA to regulate this stuff.

And unrelatedly I'm kvetching because the FakeNews Hour has been on another three-week vacation and I hate when they do that. C'mon, you work four days a week! So glad they're back tomorrow.

I guess we're doing something right

2009-09-03T21:45:00.000-04:00

Because the kid eats salad and won't eat mozzarella sticks. How did that happen? Does that not go against every rule of kid-dom? Shouldn't he be refusing to touch anything that isn't fried, breaded or smothered in Velveeta?

We had salad with dinner tonight and I figured, what the heck, I'll give him a little and see what he does. So I put some romaine, radishes and mushrooms on his plate. He wouldn't go near the mushrooms (they're getting mushy, I don't blame him) but devoured the rest. And then asked for more. "More sa'ad." "More ra'ish." Repeatedly. I was feeding him off my salad. Just surreal.

He also eats broccoli, peas, carrots, sauteed spinach (at least when we order it from the local pizza joint he does) and the occasional tomato. And every fruit known to man except for citrus, I think because an orange looks like a ball and he gets upset when you peel it.

I'm not complaining in the slightest. I think it's terrific. I just don't get how we did it. All you ever hear about is kids refusing to go within 50 feet of anything healthy. All you ever see on kids menus is chicken fingers, grilled cheese, hot dogs and mini burgers. The bar has been set so low it's basically a limbo pole.

Do we have an abnormally healthy eater? Or do lots of kids eat this way and no one bothers correcting the stereotype (or complaining about kids menus)? Hard to tell.

Of course he may decide in a year that he hates radishes and loves mozzarella sticks. And I fully expect him to live off cold pizza and Wendy's in college, because I did. (Favorite breakfast freshman year: granola bars dipped in Fluff. So. Gross.) But for now, it's looking good.

Apart from the fact that he already loves pizza, macaroni and cheese, ice cream and cake. Hey, we're not total killjoys.

I mean, it's just one finger, right? There's nine more.

2009-08-20T22:38:00.000-04:00

So if I'd been thinking about it, I would've clued in when my favorite peep-toe heels got tight. Or when all the other shoes got tight and I had to buy a larger pair of sandals with arch support to do something about the foot aches. Or, I dunno, when I remembered that this was the third trimester and that swelling was normal.

But nooo. Why remember to take the rings off? That would take brains and I am obviously fresh out.

Not even when my hand started to ache a couple days ago did I figure it out. Until I looked down at my hand and realized what was on it. Oh no, I thought, because the rings suddenly seemed carved into my finger and in no way coming off without the assistance of a blowtorch.

Honestly, like I hadn't been through this drill before. I was way more on the ball with the first pregnancy, what with the reading and the classes and interviewing a dozen doulas (this time? two) and constantly pestering the OB's office with questions. Also way more neurotic about every little thing (might have been all the reading and the classes and etc.). But this time I've been so laid-back about the whole thing it's like I only remember I'm pregnant when I catch a glimpse in the mirror and think, Man, when did I swallow the bowling ball?

Really, really didn't want to cut the rings off. The wedding ring especially, since it has a pretty Greek key pattern and is engraved on the inside.

"Cut the rings off," said the OB. Thanks, that was helpful. Although he did suggest soap.

The Interweb proved more interesting reading. Lots of sites say Windex. (What I want to know is, does that advice predate or postdate "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"?) Others say shampoo/conditioner or vegetable oil. Several suggested this method: Slip dental floss under the ring, then wind the other end all the way up the finger. Start unwinding it from the bottom and it should push the ring up and off, assuming your finger doesn't fall off first. I found this intriguing and also scary.

We used a combo of Seventh Generation spray cleaner -- hey, we don't have Windex -- and Vaseline, along with icing down/elevating the finger beforehand. It was a two-night process, since the finger swelled up in the process of yanking the engagement ring off and I figured we should give it some recovery time in between. But they're off and staying off, and I expect the circular indentation in my finger should go away in a couple days. Yay.

So it's back to the unwed-mother look for me. I suppose I could stick the rings on a chain and loop them around my neck, but boy, that's a little high school. If I were going to do that, I might as well haul out a class ring and stick it on for good measure. And wear DH's varsity jacket, assuming he had one.

Ah well, at least nothing had to get cut off -- the rings or my circulation.

Gasp! Is that pregnant woman entering a liquor store?

2009-08-11T22:15:00.000-04:00

Yes, she was. She just wanted some empty boxes. Liquor stores are great for that -- they always have a ton and the boxes are pretty sturdy. On account of they have to hold heavy glass bottles of liquor.

But oh the fisheye I got from the two employees I approached to ask about the boxes. They looked a little relieved when I explained what I wanted. One of them walked me over to the bin where the empties were piled up, then asked if I needed help with them, since I was "in the family way and all." I politely declined. Cause if I can tote around my 28ish-pound kid along with the big belly, I can handle some empty boxes, Sir Galahad. And all.

Really what I should've done was walked up to them and asked where the Boone's Farm was, just to watch them have vapors.

The best was the day before, when I brought kiddo into a different liquor store for the same reason. Now you've got a preggie lady and a small child surrounded by liquor. The humanity! But the nice man behind the counter seemed completely unfazed and cheerily pointed out the corner where the empties were. He was amused when I convinced kiddo to help out by carrying a box; by "carrying," of course, I mean lifting the box, plopping it on the ground, lifting it, plopping it, in a more-or-less forward motion. Until kiddo spotted the movie playing on the mounted TV and yelled "Cool bus!" meaning school bus, because all buses right now are school buses, and plop-walked his box over to the other end of the room so he could watch the cool bus on the TV. Man at the counter found this hilarious.

I do occasionally wonder whether I'm setting off pregnancy alarm bells in anyone around me. Whenever I walk in a room with a Dunkin' Donuts cup I have the urge to announce "It's decaf!" so no one freaks. In fact when I order said coffee I always make a point of saying, "You heard I wanted decaf, right?" which is as much for the benefit of the other people on line as it is for the counter folks. And just because I've been eating lunchmeat this whole time, doesn't mean I touched any at the baby shower I went to recently.

But hey, when you're sporting a belly the size of a basketball, you ought to be able to have some fun with it.

Hallmark not spoken here

2009-07-31T23:47:00.000-04:00

Someone who hadn't seen me in a while came up to me the other day and asked if I were pregnant. I said, completely straightfaced, "No."

On other occasions, I have been known to accuse people of mocking my beer gut.

Am I too much of a smartass to be a good mommy? Occasionally I wonder. Although smartassery seems to be the way to handle certain aspects of this whole parenting thing. Like when kiddo is careening off the walls at 8 a.m. and DH asks, "What did you feed him?" and I say "Crystal meth." Which is a lot simpler than saying, "I have no idea why a whole wheat mini-bagel and blueberries have caused him to run around in circles at 50 miles an hour for the past 10 minutes."

Sentimentality is a tiny bit foreign to me. I hate chick flicks, on account of the female lead characters always seem to be idiots (and the male leads always seem to be cardboard, and also idiots). I bawled at "Bridge to Terabithia," sure, but I dare you not to. I never read romance novels, unless you count "Pride and Prejudice," and you shouldn't, because it's a comedy of manners and transcends the genre and don't you dare insult Ms. Austen.

However it is an expectant mother is supposed to be acting, I'm probably not acting like it. I'm too busy cracking jokes in the corner.

And clearly I'm about to have competition there. Kiddo distinctly smirks when he crawls under the dining room table and announces "Hide!" And when we count down to 1 to get him to stop whatever it is we don't want him doing, he deliberately waits until 2, or 1, before he quits. Like a defused bomb in an action movie.

Ah well. Smartassery is a family trait.

Sure, I'd love to not eat for 15 hours, thanks

2009-07-14T22:15:00.000-04:00

So I failed the one-hour glucose test for gestational diabetes, which instantly qualified me for the needle extravaganza otherwise known as the three-hour test. "I have to fast for 12 hours?" I said faintly.

Yes, said the nurse, and then we take your blood once an hour for three hours and you still can't eat until after that's done. Just what every pregnant woman wants to hear when they get hungry, oh, once an hour.

And still I might not have flipped out much were it not for the family history of Type II diabetes. GD leads to Type II later on in life for something like two out of three women. Oh great, I thought, I didn't escape after all.

Which is mean really. The family members who have it seem to manage pretty well, between medications and dietary restrictions. Properly managed, it shouldn't wreck your life or even get in the way much.

But still. Type II has the added bonus of being brought on, usually, by weight or diet issues. So I wonder if there isn't the feeling of having failed somehow, of not trying hard enough to be healthy. When people are diagnosed, do they start mentally ticking off every single doughnut or soda or piece of pie they had in the past year, trying to figure out which was the tipping point? Because I did that before I even took the three-hour test.

I grumpily dragged myself into the OB's office, drank the lemon-lime sugar-shock bottle (I hate to admit it, but I didn't think it tasted that bad) and sat in the waiting room and wrote. Yes, I was the freak with the little notebook in the corner. There's a short story I'm working on -- I do write fiction, in the delusion that it will be published someday -- and I figured, why waste three perfectly good hours of writing time when I never get three hours of writing time? Anyhow the magazine selection in the waiting room is weak at best. I read the same one two visits in a row once.

There was another woman there taking the same test and we ended up on the same needle schedule; the nurse would call us both back at once, draw her blood and then draw mine. Funny in a way. Then the nurse would ask me, "How are you doing?" and I'd say, "Well, I'm pretty hungry," because I was on the verge of pretending every object around me was a turkey leg like they do in the cartoons, and she'd say cheerily, "Well, you've got two more drawings to go," which is two more hours if you're keeping count. And I'd grump my way back out to the waiting room.

I wasn't allowed to fall asleep, she said, just so they'd know I hadn't fainted.

A couple other patients came and went -- a young Indian couple with a most adorable toddler, a couple of whitish-haired older women, a younger one in hipper-than-thou jeans -- and my glucose buddy and I stayed, she on her Crackberry, me on my notebook. One of the workers came out from the back and made a snappy comment about how we seemed to be camping out there, or something like that, and I wanted to take an outdated magazine and swat her upside the head with it.

Final insult to injury: The last drawing took forever because my veins decided they'd had it and wouldn't give up any more blood (this was on top of the one-hour test the previous week, in which the woman drawing my blood couldn't get a vein, stuck me again, remembered afterward, oops, forgot to get the hemoglobin!, stuck me again, couldn't find a vein and ended up using a tiny needle on the back of my hand to get it done. She hadn't drawn blood in a while, she said apologetically). So a few extra tries later, we were done and I looked like I had track marks inside my elbow. And I ate the fastest lunch you ever saw in your life.

And the final result was ... normal. Completely normal. Which was a relief, but also a surprise. I really figured I'd flunk this one. I felt a little guilty over all the angst. What, I'm better than my diabetic relatives? I don't deserve to live their life?

Didn't stop me from having celebratory ice cream though.

Kiddoese-to-English glossary

2009-07-06T21:57:00.000-04:00

Ba-bus -- The sound a bus makes.

Beep -- Car.

Da-doo -- I would like something to drink.

Dandy -- Daddy.

Dinner -- Every single meal.

Elmo -- Every red Muppet on "Sesame Street."

Ni! -- Yes.

La la la -- What three singing pigs say. *

Hide! -- I realize you are trying to put me to bed, but I much prefer laughing at you from under the dining room table.

Pe pe -- Percy. (See "Tee tee.")

Pees -- Please.

Ride ride beep! -- I would like to ride in the car.

Rideriderideride beep! -- I would really like to ride in the car.

Tee tee -- Train. Specifically Thomas.

Tee tee boom -- I seem to have pushed my train off the coffee table again.

Teet! -- The sound a train makes.

Ten -- Every number over ten.

Tick tock -- Clock.

*OK, that one's our fault. It's from a Sandra Boynton book.

Or, why the child obesity problem is so rampant

2009-06-28T22:46:00.000-04:00

So a few weeks ago we were eating in one of those '50s-style diner-type places with the jukebox and the milkshakes and the white linoleum and the Chubby Checker in the air, which is all very cute to me even though I wasn't alive anywhere near the '50s. (When will we have '90s nostalgia diners? The waitresses could wear flannel dresses, the sound system could play nothing but Green Day, Live and Nirvana, the drink menu could feature Zima ...) I was more or less resigned to kiddo eating a burger of some sort since burgers are basically all they serve at places like this, but I figured I could pull the same trick I do at Houlihan's, Chili's and other fine eating establishments that are accepting of children, which is to say swapping out the fries for broccoli. (Yeah, I'm one of those moms. Kid likes broccoli. Sue me.)

So I ask the waitress about that, and she says: "We don't serve broccoli." I wanted to do a Jon Stewart spit-take and I wasn't even drinking anything at the time. You don't serve broccoli? What if I brought some in from home, would you steam it for me? Or would that wreck your culinary theme? Because after all, no one ate broccoli in the '50s!

(For the record: There were a couple of salads on the menu. Almost entirely Caesar. Big help for the preggie lady.)

So kiddo had a burger for dinner (didn't actually come with fries, either) along with a couple of pieces of lettuce from my crabcake sandwich and we all pretended we'd met the USDA requirements.

Man. Occasionally finding healthy kiddie food on a restaurant menu is like jumping through the world's biggest hoop.

If hell is other people ...

2009-06-20T16:02:00.001-04:00

... heck is other people's children.

So we're at this community event and inside because it is raining like the Second Flood is coming, again. Kiddo runs over to the glass doors to watch the beeps (kiddoese for "cars") go by. There are two little girls already there, a blonde and a brunette, in a nook they've created behind the couch. "You have to be in the club to sit here," they inform us sternly.

"Oh. Well, we formed our own club," I say. Which mystifies them, and I figure that ends it. They all more or less coexist for a little bit until kiddo runs back toward the table where our food is. He keeps running back and forth, door to table, beeps to Daddy, and the girls have evidently decided to adopt him, like a stray puppy, so they keep asking questions about him, like "how old is he?" "can he count to 6? can he count to 7? can he count to 100?" which at least is cute. The girls pop by our table periodically, to demonstrate their talent at balancing water bottles on their heads.

So DH and I end up sitting on the couch for a bit (since kiddo, aside from two slices of watermelon, wasn't showing much interest in food) and the girls come back, still intent on protecting their "club" space. The brunette (clearly the Princess Bee to the blonde's Wannabe) announces she's getting food, comes back with a half-eaten hamburger roll (hamburger mysteriously missing) and tries to feed it to kiddo. I politely say no thanks, he's eaten. She tries again. And again. And again. Now both girls are chattering "Just give it to him!" even though I've already said I don't want him getting other people's germs, and have physically taken the roll and handed it back to her. Kiddo, of course, sees bread shoved in his face and then denied, and starts crying. "Just give it to him, he's going to cry anyway if you don't!" says the brunette.

From entirely across the room, the girl's mom calls out, "Are you making that boy cry?" but since she doesn't actually get up to investigate, nothing happens except that the girls try feeding the roll to DH instead. I briefly think black thoughts.

Kiddo, already overtired, never fully recovers from this incident and we leave shortly thereafter. As we're walking downstairs toward the exit, the brunette runs after us to say, "Next time put him in a cage or a stroller!" I decide four-letter words would be inappropriate, say, "Okay" and leave.

Seriously: a cage?

When I was a kid, if I had pulled one-tenth of the rudeness these two exhibited I would've been made to regret it. Nobody taught them to never never sass a grownup? I heard the girl's mom ask her as we left, "What did you say to them?" and somehow I know when she told them, they said, "Oh, isn't that funny!" instead of "That was very rude, we're leaving right now, enjoy your time in the time-out chair."

It's still pretty hard to gauge how hard-line I should be in these circumstances, and I tend to be hands-0ff with kids not my own. I guess I keep assuming -- wrongly -- that kids will show you respect, even if they don't to your kid. Maybe I should've just taken the roll and tossed it into the trash. Maybe I should've stalked back up those stairs and said to the girl's mom, "That was incredibly rude of your daughter and I'd like an apology."

And maybe I'm getting worked up over nothing. Worse things will happen in preschool, I'm sure.

2009-06-14T22:14:00.000-04:00

It's kind of fascinating, watching people's reactions when I answer the question "So do you know what you're having?"

A lot of women immediately coo happily, "Oh, a girl, girls are wonderful." Other people seem pleased that we're ending up with one of each. The nice man at the convenience store the other day couldn't believe it, because I'm carrying mainly in front and when his wife was pregnant, the sons were all in front and the daughters were all over. (And then he proudly pointed out his 12-year-old boy, working at the gas station outside. It was too cute.)

And then everyone wants to know am I happy about it. Did I have a preference? Kind of. Maybe. Not really.

Sure, a girl will be nice. I'll have someone to pass on makeup tips to, for one thing, now that I have half a clue about makeup. Also I guess there's jewelry to pass on and such. Girl Scouts. Prom dress shopping.

But this boy's world of Thomas the Tank Engine and dirt under fingernails has actually been kinda fun. (Although I'm hoping he never goes out for football.) And there are so many same-gender siblings in our families, I was prepared for two boys.

Ultimately I'm happy it's a baby. And whatever that baby is like is fine by me.

Although it would be cool if she were the first woman to play major league baseball. Unlikely. But cool.

2009-06-03T22:17:00.000-04:00

2 pairs of super-special compression maternity hose: $20.

Time elapsed before runs in hose: 2 weeks and 4 weeks.

1 pair of super-special compression footless maternity hose to enable sandal wear: $28.

Time elapsed before run in hose: 2 weeks.

2 more pairs of super-special compression maternity hose: $20.

Time elapsed before run in hose: 1 day and counting.

Realization that these flimsy tissue-paper ripoff contraptions will do absolutely nothing to stop varicose veins: Oh, just priceless.

2009-05-24T22:14:00.000-04:00

Actual conversation:

"So, you're what, seven months pregnant now?"

"Uh, no, I'm about 21 weeks..."

"Wow, you've got a big one coming, huh?"

Well, sure, I guess so, hey, thanks for calling me fatso, I greatly appreciate it.

Actual (allegedly humorous) comment from previous pregnancy:

"Wow, you'd better stop eating in the cafeteria. You're starting to get fat!"

Why oh why do people feel the need to remark on your size? Seriously, no pregnant woman on the planet is going to hear that and *not* think "OMG I'm huge and ugly looking and I'm hiding in my bathroom until my water breaks." I get that it's a clumsy way of expressing interest, but either come up with something less clumsy or hey, say nothing. I do not have a giant neon sign on my belly saying "Ask me about my pregnancy." Sure, I'm thrilled about it, and I'm looking forward to holding my baby, but I do have, you know, stuff to do. There's an incredibly good chance you're catching me at a moment when I am not at all thinking about being pregnant and you might as well say "So how about those Yankees?" (For the record: Shame the winning streak ended, I think Teixeira and Swisher were good additions and the food at the new stadium is a huge improvement.)

As a rule, I don't make fat jokes. I've known too many people who struggled with weight issues to think that's OK. My two exceptions are professional athletes -- I don't care if you are a pitcher in a DH league, can't you at least try to look like you play sports for a living? -- and the late, lamented 20-pound cat who once belonged to my in-laws, informally known to everyone as Big Fat Kitty. Because seriously, he was a big fat kitty.

I especially dislike weight jokes made about women, since women are invariably, unfairly judged on their appearance and the threshold for what people seem to consider "fat" on a woman is unrealistic to the point of laughability. But to comment on the weight of a pregnant woman, who is gaining weight for a very specific reason and will have very little control over her appearance until well after the baby is born, just seems like a low blow no matter how it was meant.

What to say to a pregnant woman: "Congratulations. You look great!" The end.

2009-05-07T21:46:00.000-04:00

So last week I had a roast beef sandwich. And then a turkey and Swiss sandwich.

Horrors! Enemy Number One on the Official Pregnancy Diet! Except that I asked my OB about lunchmeat and he said, "Mmm. Love it. Good source of protein." And added that the risk of listeriosis is so low it wasn't worth worrying about. Enjoy, he said. Obviously I took him at his word.

And thus another complete contradiction in the world of preggie eating. Most Web sites and people (and, from my perusing, many OBs) will tell you to avoid lunchmeat like the plague it is. In addition to alcohol, caffeine, soft cheeses, tuna, swordfish, sushi and various other random things that people get in a panic about. Example: the site I found that warned of the risks of soft-serve ice cream, because bacteria could get into the machines if they weren't cleaned properly.

OK, first of all, yes, listeriosis happens. For instance, this outbreak in Canada. But so do E. coli in spinach and salmonella in peanut butter cookies, as we have seen recently. Should we seal off all the supermarkets and grow our own food?

Second, not all of the above sources are trustworthy. I trust my OB because he's very commonsensical and doesn't rattle easily. I don't trust random Web sites that contradict each other. For instance the one that warned against all herbal teas -- listing green tea as herbal! Any serious tea drinker will tell you that green tea uses the same leaf as black tea, just prepared differently. Herbal tea by definition involves something other than Camellia sinensis. (My OB also cleared me for tea. Regular and herbal. I've been drinking blueberry green.)

The magazines are no less contradictory. One said flat out canned tuna was a no-no and offered an alternate salad using canned salmon and cannellini beans. (Which is pretty good, I must admit.) Then another one I was scanning recently offered a tuna recipe.

Why do pregnant women get so neurotic about food? This is why. You can't get a straight answer.

There was a NY Times story a few years back -- and if I could find a link to it, I'd post one -- pointing out that a lot of these warnings aren't necessarily based in science. Because who's going to test out these theories on actual pregnant women? There's also this story from Slate which delves into the issue more deeply than I'm doing. And I have gotten the impression, lurking on various boards, that some of these recommendations are U.S.-specific -- that if you were to visit another country, you'd hear an entirely different list of forbidden foods.

What happens when you don't know whether down is up and cheese is safe? You stop a waitress in a restaurant after she serves your entree and ask whether your risotto was cooked in alcohol. Even though you've *made* risotto at home and know precisely what goes into it. That was near the end of pregnancy #1. The waitress gave me a kindly talking-to. "When we were pregnant with you," she said, "we drank, we smoked, we ate whatever we wanted, and you all turned out fine."

I'm of course not advocating the drinking and the smoking. But: In the four weeks before I figured out I was pregnant with kiddo, I ate sushi, a turkey sub, tableside Caesar salad, swordfish, and went to a wedding and drank. I can't remember if I broke the rules so flagrantly this time around, although backdating puts us at around the holidays and there would've been eggnog involved.

My point is, you're not supposed to view every morsel of food you see as a potential enemy. You're supposed to enjoy food. And your doctor knows more than Web sites or magazines.

Also, roast beef with provolone, lettuce and tomato, with just a little oil and vinegar, is really, really good.

2009-04-29T22:01:00.000-04:00

How do you find out whether your kid has peanut allergies?

How about seeing what happens when the babysitter decides to give him a peanut butter sandwich?

To be fair, because I like the babysitter, we didn't specifically tell her no peanut butter. And there is peanut butter in the fridge. Chunky unsalted, which is the best kind ever and people may like creamy but there is no accounting for taste. And food allergies don't so much run in our families. And Lord knows the kid has been able to eat whatever else we've thrown at him (or allowed him to throw) without a problem.

But still -- the pediatrician had asked us to hold off. And a friend, a few months back, had tried giving a peanut butter sandwich to her son and ended up calling 911 when he had trouble breathing. And now she has those epi-pen things.

So I had a "yeek!" moment when I found out about the sandwich. But he's fine. As fine as he gets, in fact. So I'm torn between continuing the "yeek!" moment or just being glad that we can give him peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. Because planning lunches was starting to get difficult anyway.

I bet he'll really like peanut butter and banana sandwiches. His mommy does.

2009-04-23T21:43:00.001-04:00

I have decided that kiddie shows don't think much of parents.

OK, I get it, they're from a more or less kiddie point of view and so grown-ups are supposed to fade into the background a bit. That's fine. You want to do that? Do it "Peanuts" style and have all these disembodied voices around the kids going "Wah wah wah wah wah" then disappearing. (Much funnier in retrospect, actually.)

But no, that's not what these shows do -- and I'm thinking of "Wonder Pets," but "Dora" and "Diego" have been guilty of it too. How does the plot go in these shows? Save the baby whatever-it-is animal of the week and bring it back home to its flaky parents who were neglectful enough to let the kiddie animal wander off through the rainforest or the ocean or onto the Statue of Liberty's nose (actual episode of "Wonder Pets"!) in the first place. So these random stranger kiddie heroes are supposed to spend all their time picking up after the lousy parents of the animal world? Couldn't they just start handing out Supernanny's business card and save themselves some trouble in the future?

The parents, of course, are never the slightest bit embarrassed that some pint-size strangers went out of their way to bring their missing animal kiddie home. They say "Thank you, [name of show's hero here]! Let's have some celery or dance or something!" And they all lived happily ever after until the kid wandered off again two days later and the kiddie heroes had already moved on to the next abandoned elephant/lemur/ Tasmanian devil.

I know I'm reading too much into harmless kids' entertainment and if I'm so irked about this I should just drag kiddo away from TV and read him "Harold and the Purple Crayon" again. But still. If I have to occasionally sit through this stuff I shouldn't have to suppress the urge to roll my eyes at the screen.

And seriously, what's with the celery anyway?

2009-04-15T22:38:00.000-04:00

I quit and I ate bread. Man, the whole pregnancy diet is tough enough without taking away my bread products on top of it. Bagels. Focaccia. Giant coffeehouse muffins. Whole wheat toast with peanut butter and raisins on it. (It's good, I swear, no matter who tells you it's vile.) I made it to today and that, I think, is good enough.

Sadly I don't think there's enough matzah left to justify bringing it in to work. Also, my co-worker brought in fudge cookies today and what a letdown I would be. Maybe I can use it for insulation. Or build an addition onto the deck with it. Hmm. Possibilities.

2009-04-09T22:09:00.000-04:00

Breakfast for kiddo: English muffins and pear. Breakfast for me: matzah with Temp Tee cream cheese (absolutely required) and yogurt.

Being interfaith in April can make meals a little strange. I don't expect husband and son to follow my no-bread Passover rule for the next week. Frankly I spent most of my childhood (and adolescence, and young adulthood) complaining about it. (Though mostly because the prepared foods available back then were inedible, to put it politely. There were these "rolls" my parents got once that I wanted to spit right back out.) I continue to do it because I like to honor some part of my heritage, no matter how small. (No, really, she's still Jewish! she insists. Though her old rabbi would just snort "Feh!" and stalk off.)

But since DH and kiddo will continue to eat bread product without me, that means things like, say, turkey burgers for them and burger minus bun for me. Regular pasta for them, special Passover pasta for me. Lunches are actually harder because I try to stay away from carb-heavy vending machine food. Fortunately I eat a lot of fresh fruit and veggies anyway. Trail mix is my friend. But you have to go with things like salads; 1. matzah makes a terrible sandwich (it crumbles when you breathe on it, for heaven's sake) and 2. if you eat too much of it it will kill your stomach. It's heavier than you think, goyim -- this is your warning. Because I know you'll scarf it up when I bring the leftovers to work. Always happens. DH, though, does enjoy the stuff with melted cheese and barbecue sauce on it. Really.

Kiddo actually did seem to like matzah when I gave him a piece. Go figure.

Part 2 of the conundrum, of course, is Bunny Sugar Chocolate Day, which is more or less how I enviously saw Easter when I was a kid. Boy, everybody always focuses on the Christmas-Hanukkah thing but they're totally missing the boat. I never felt jealous of Christmas. Hanukkah has a cool backstory and you get to play with fire. Also, eight nights of presents. (Toys, people, not pencils. Don't listen to Lewis Black.) But Easter killed me. There I was, eating matzah and macaroons and dark chocolate, which was the only kind kosher enough for us tribe members, and all my little Christian friends got Cadbury Eggs and Peeps and jelly beans and giant chocolate bunnies and wah. (I didn't know the bunnies were hollow. I thought they were solid chocolate. I've since been corrected.)

Now kiddo is not nearly old enough for a big sugar binge. But I do figure on coloring some eggs and I did get a little candy. Which must have puzzled the cashier at the supermarket, what with the Paas and the Cadbury Eggs and the Temp Tee and the Passover soup mix all in the same cart. Heh.

You may ask, but what about the religious significance behind all these things? And it's a fair question. Each holiday has its own fascinating story, but each seems to me to be ultimately about new life and new beginnings. I think it's appropriate that they're both in the spring. And I like that eggs are an integral part of both -- whether dipped in dye or placed on the Seder plate. I think those things become our starting point, when kiddo is old enough for us to really teach him what's going on. And I think it's neat actually that he was born on a Good Friday, during Passover.

In the meantime, it's all about the food.

2009-03-29T14:11:00.000-04:00

So I'm studying cupcake recipes online, trying to decide whether I dare.

The kiddo's birthday party is upcoming and we'll need dessert of some kind. Preferably something we can stick a candle in and convince him to blow out instead of, say, grabbing it and trying to eat it or grabbing it and trying to stick it in his hair, both of which seem more likely options for him. We're getting the entree food from a caterer because we're not insane, but dessert remains undecided upon.

Boy, what is it about special occasions that makes people want to prove they can cook? It's not enough that the place is clean and you're out of your pajamas? "Look, I'm actually Martha Stewart! You had no idea, on account of I have Vito's Pizzeria on speed dial and I spend half my workday scarfing vending machine food!" It's like if you can make one side dish, one appetizer from scratch, you've justified referring to yourself as a grownup.

The truth is, DH and I actually can cook. Fairly well, unless our friends are politely lying to us. (For the record, I make a fine banana bread and tasty chocolate chip cookies.) Ability isn't an issue -- time is. When you work all day and then your insatiably hungry Hoover vacuum of a child demands dinner RIGHT NOW, are you going to make beef Stroganoff or are you going to griddle up some turkey burgers, unfreeze some peas and call it a meal? And if you're working the day before you host a party, and you have precisely the amount of energy left over after work and dinner and getting the kid to bed to sink into the couch and watch "What Not to Wear," are you really going to get out the flour and baking powder and start up the mixer?

I can't help but notice that a lot of the cupcake recipes seem to involve using a mix anyway. So Rachael Ray!

So I'm trying to decide what to do, but I'm also deciding dessert is dessert and don't sweat it. Of course, if anyone actually invited to the party reads this, I made it from scratch and Martha loved it.

2009-03-26T22:42:00.000-04:00

I have decided that I am in no way a bad mother if I occasionally, secretly count down the minutes until bedtime. Ah, blessed silence, restfulness and adult-only television.