Bumper crops and floating holidays

Have you heard about August 8th?

That would be "National Sneak Some Zucchini On Your Neightbors' Front Porch" night. Easily one of the most important holidays of the year since the vegetable multiplies faster in the garden than rabbits do.

Now, I don't grow zucchini but I have been the recipient of others' bumper crops. I've smiled politely as gardeners big and small proudly proffer bags of the stuff for me to puzzle over. I've grilled it, sauteed it, fried it, barbecued it, even baked it into bread, but mostly I find the stuff about a week later, liquified and rotting on my kitchen counter.

So I'm fairly certain if I actually grew zucchini I would have participated in this seemingly harmless prank. Yes, if I grew the prolific plant I might even lobby the people in charge of ratifying such celebrations to extend the merriment for the entire month.

But, like I said, I don't grow zucchini. What seems to grow uncontrollably, under the cover of night, at my house are baby clothes. We are drowning in perfectly lovely things for newborns. We're also swimming in outfits for boys ages six months to a year.

I'm not really sure how this happened since 20th century conveniences such as washers and dryers have taken away much the work involved in laundry, but I'm sure mass production and slave wages, which have made most goods relatively inexpensive, have everything to do with the superabundance, making baby clothes almost disposable. Almost but not quite because no matter how many closets full we have we tend to wear the same 10 items over and over.

I'm happy to do laundry every day if it means I can wear my favorite sweater over and over. While I'm at it, I'll just throw in the orange stripy snapsuit that I love so much on the Champ, as well as the brown polka-dotted skirt that I think looks so cute on Ittybit and that she MIGHT actually wear if I pull it out of the basket and marvel about how CLEAN it looks.

I do this washing of the same two loads of laundry day in and day out even though we have drawers full of perfectly good alternatives, most of which came handed down by people just like me; people who found themselves drowning in baby clothes and saw the opportunity to drop a few bags full on my front porch. Figuratively speaking that is.

Some of them asked sheepishly, almost pleadingly, if we needed baby clothes for the Champ. Some sent boxes of next-to new (and new) items cross country through the mail. Others waited until we were safely ensconced in their living room, eating hors d'oeuvres and sipping tasty beverages before they stealthily placed boxes upon boxes of their sons' baby clothes in the trunk of our car.

From first-hand experience, I know that what seasoned parents think when they learn of an impending birth. They don't really think: "AWWWW how sweet, a baby. What a blessing." Oh no, they're thinking: "If I play my cards right I can unload the metric ton of onsies that have accumulated in the attic."

Just this past week I learned that my husband's colleague and his wife are expecting twin girls. I did what all second-time parents do: I packed a zippered comforter bag (king sized) full of Ittybit's more presentable duds and left it NEAR his truck, telling him he could take it or leave it. I wasn't going to foist more clothes than anyone could humanly use upon him unless he was willing.

Score ONE for me. He took the bag.

It will be difficult to pick just one day out of the calendar year to drop baby clothes on the front porches of unsuspecting expecting parents.

Perhaps it can just be a floating holiday.

A bridge to nowhere

As I got to the midway point beads of sweat collected on my forehead.

Ten years ago one winter I'd reached this very spot on the bridge and lost control of my car. It had skated in a complete circle. Before I knew it the car came to a stop and I was facing the river, my knees shaking. I hadn't even considered what to do as the world slid sideways, I just held my breath and steered into the skid. Knees still knocking against the steering wheel, I righted the car and continued driving, thanking the universe there were no cars behind me.

Every time I drive over the span of metal and concrete, I relive that cold night and think about what could have happened.

This time as I traversed the bridge it was mid-summer, Champ was in the back seat, presumably sleeping and there were no impediments to a safe and uneventful crossing. But in Minneapolis, where a bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River at rush hour just the day before, there were hundreds of commuters who probably thought the same thing. I imagine some of them routinely held their breath as they crossed time and again.

I'm not particularly afraid of bridges, but I have to admit that I tend to go through a mental run-through of all the things I could do should the concrete evaporate under my wheels. I never get far before I have to chastise myself for neglecting to put a hammer under the seat. Should the car submerge and the power windows short out, I'm fairly certain I won't have the strength to open the car door underwater.

I briefly consider precautions to take the next time I'm crossing over a bridge. Maybe I'll wear the baby sling. If we go under, I can crawl into the back seat, pop him in the sling and swim on my back once I get to the surface. But then I look into the rearview mirror and see the toddler car seat, which is currently empty since she's spending a few hours with her Amah and Papa, and mentally wad up that particular solution and toss it into the trash.

It may sound funny but I know people who are getting prepared for all types of disasters. They've got flashlights and batteries, duct tape and plastic bags, sterno and stereos. They're stocking up on bottled water and canned goods, they're tucking sleeping bags and road flares in their cars and they're putting Iodine in their medicine cabinets and candles in their cupboards.

Of course they're not crazy, they just want to be prepared in case the end begins with them.

We all have our particular fears, too. Some living along the coast fear hurricanes, some fear floods. Terror is on everyone's mind, while faulty bridges (specifically those over water) is my fear trigger.

It's not as if such things as the Minnesota bridge disaster haven't happened here, they have. Ten people were killed in April 1987 after the collapse of the Thruway bridge over the Schoharie Creek near Amsterdam sent several cars and a tractor-trailer into the water.. Other failures have occurred, fortunately without the loss of life. Two years ago a ramp of the Dunn Memorial Bridge partially collapsed, but was identified by a woman who had driven over the fault and who alerted authorities. The episode vaguely recalled another stunning bridge failure that similarly resulted in no casualties -- the Green Island Bridge, which in 1977 collapsed after flooding weakened its foundation.

We've been lucky. According to 2006 Federal Highway Administration reports, of the 594,709 bridges in the United States, 152,945, or 26 percent, are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Likewise, 17 percent (161,750 of the 961,382 federal-aid road miles) of U.S. highways are reported to have conditions needing resurfacing or reconstruction.

Sobering statistics that always seem to bring me back to my mental drawing board, tapping my imaginary pencil on the paper of my empty plans.

Maybe if I had an inflatable raft ...

Just keeping up with the Jones'

When my husband asked me if I heard about the new study that claims obesity is a social disease, my first response was "I don't buy it."

I tend to do that a lot: I hear the summary of a thought and pass judgement immediately.

"No, really. It says here that once a person becomes obese for whatever reason, it may make it more socially acceptable for people close to him or her to gain weight, and that new social norms can proliferate quickly. Really, just think how many of our social gatherings revolve around food."

"Somebody actually PAID somebody to study this? That body size can be in fashion? That the 'birds of a feather adage,' may not be in play in weight? Whoa nellie. Back up the truck."

"OK, now you're just making fun of me," he said, miffed that I wasn't taking him seriously.

"No, your right. There's definitely something to this theory that obesity may have a social component. ... Like when everybody and their mothers were trying to get the 'pooch,' the little tubby potbelly everyone thought was sexy. And how all the models bulked up during the 80s when Reagan was in office, but then slimmed down again during the Clinton administration."

And the more I thought about it the more rational, even comforting, the thought became.

Is it possible that the BACK FAT I've recently acquired after incubating the Champ might actually be because all my friends are doing it and NOT merely a stunning lack of physical activity mixed with over indulging in copious amounts of junk food? Pass the Ho-Hos, where do I sign up?

I mean, really. ... I'm never going back to the days when my friends and I would get together and exercise. Long gone are the long walks after sunrise. Now the most I can manage on the rare occasion is to weed my sorry strip of garden alongside the house. I didn't even have the stamina to watch when a volleyball game broke out at a barbecue over the weekend. This study may just give me the impetus to ditch any and all remaining thin friends. stock up on Ben and Jerry's New York Superfudge Chunk and stay in the house all day watching back to back Law and Order reruns.

Turns out my friends are 57 percent as likely to gain weight after I do even if we only call each other friends but never actually see each other. Friends who move away might as well burn my address and stop sending Christmas cards because this study claims if they don't they'll still be trapped in my weight-gaining whirlwind. It doesn't matter if they move to Peru, they're still influenced by me and my back fat.

But what if my friends no longer find their back fat acceptable? What if they are successful in getting rid of the unsightly bulge? Not to worry, I, too, will miraculously shape myself accordingly. Then all I would have to do is dump all my non-back-fat shedding friends to keep the weight off.

Oh, and it's not just friends and neighbors I call friends (the neighbors we don't like are apparently safe from my back fat) it's also my husband, but to a lesser degree. Should I become obese, he's is only 37 percent more likely to become obese in just a few years. What a shocker! Perhaps we should divorce before it comes to that. It would NOT be pleasant to go through life with a husband sporting his pregnancy weight back fat.

But really, how ground breaking is it to realize we are keeping up with the Jones' on the bathroom scale as well as in the driveway and on the fashion runway?

What this study is seriously suggesting, and what scientists are all spinning their wheels about, is the idea that if there is a social component to weight gain there should be an equal and opposite social component to weight loss. And such a finding will make socially-driven programs and group weight loss endeavors more effective in fighting our battles with bulge. I wonder if the Weight Watcher's people know about this?

Dog is my co-pilot

Before the engine stopped the door of the house swung open and she was headed my way, arms outstretched. My mother-in-law didn't need to ask me how it went. "I was thinking about you the whole day," she commiserated, "reliving so many trips alone."

But she hadn't been alone, and like the her of so many years ago, I hadn't been alone either. I had just driven a four-hour journey to Maine in six, precisely because was traveling with two small children.

I'm not sure what I was thinking. Four weeks post-partum, juggling a tender tummy and an irritable three-year-old, and I was headed back to Vacation Land to hang with the extended family.

I never liked traveling solo even before I was a parent. Even if I had to do all the driving, it was just nice to have another adult voice emanating from the co-pilots seat. As it was, the tiny voices wafting from the backseat -- one a song-singing, joke telling tiny one and the other just a series of grunts arching into a creshendo of blood curdleing cries -- aren't much comfort as I white knuckle my way through summer traffic.

Oh sure, I'd done as much as I could to prepare: I bought a toddler-sized portable DVD player and the best movies the bargain bin had to offer. I packed bags of easy-to-eat snacks in individual containers. And all manner of time biding activities from coloring books to sing-along games. I even had the infernal "Strawberry Shortcake" discography for HER listening pleasure (because the only thing that would make the cloying kids' music more bearable for me would be a fifth of vodka.)

"We are as ready as we'd ever be," I thought as I packed our things, the kids and my geriatric, incontinent dog into the family car and steered it onto the Massachusetts Turnpike on a Friday afternoon. Five minutes later, and still miles from the Mass Pike, fate made an impassioned plea for me to turn back: a traffic jam.

But I refused to listen. Even as the dog nervously shifted in the cramped space and Champ wailed pitifully in the absence of a moving car's vibrations, Ittybit sat glued to her new movie, "Alice in Wonderland," in rapt silence. I held out hope that once traffic got a move on my car's other occupants would settle down, too.

I wasn't wrong, but the peace and tranquility as the road opened and our speed increased didn't last long.

Not even an hour into the trip Champ's fussy protests turn into urgent screams. The mind games start: "If he's still crying when we get to the next service area I'll pull off," I tell myself. I hope he'll calm down, I don't want to spend the next 250 miles wishing I'd brought earplugs.

Champ must have realized the bargain I'd made with myself and calmed down three-tenths of a mile before the entrance to the service area, and resumed his plaintiff howl mere seconds after passing the turnoff. Dang!

I press on meeting each green road sign heralding the approach of another service area with the same bargain, only to have the screams return each time I'd made the decision to keep on trucking. "Just 28 miles to the next service area," I'd tell myself, "... just 28 miles to go." And I was just about to congratulate myself of finding a way to shrink the pain into 28-mile increments when I bumped against our second roadblock.

No matter what I did, traveling 28 miles at five miles an hour was going to be torture.

When I finally pulled into a rest stop, the cars were traveling at a snails pace. We watched the other motorists lumber past as we sipped beverages and dripped great puddles of ice cream onto the hot pavement. Before long the spaces between the vehicles lengthen and the speed picks up. We get back in the car and ease out onto the highway, slipping easily into the fray. Once I get into the rhythm of the road and feel my confidence return the inevitable happens:

"MAAAAAAMMMMMY. ... I have to go to the potty!"

I can almost hear the dog snickering at me as I pull off at the next exit.

Making acquaintances

I just wanted to get through the checkout line.

It was the first time I'd been away from Champ in nine months and three weeks and I wanted to get back home.

I had taken Ittybit on an adventure to the grocery store and left the boy with my parents. It was only a mile away but it felt like a million. Usually a grocery store adventure entails racing up and down the aisles in the souped up shopping cart, and getting only half of what we intended to purchase. Sometimes it means getting a few unintended items, such as Hershey's Kisses, too. On this day, however, I was on a mission: hydrogen peroxide (or as Ittybit pronounces it "Higher Than Rock Slide") and some special ice cream for a good little girl.

Since the open checkout lanes were few and long, I steared us toward the self-serve aisle with our two items. While I was trying pitifully to scan the barcode of the brown bottle an elderly man in a motorized shopping cart wheeled up behind us.

"May I talk to your daughter," he asked quietly. "I have girls, too," he said, "but they're 14 and 16 now."

He was obviously a grandfather. His name was Tom. It was also obvious that he finds the little ones to be oodles of fun.

Ittybit and he spoke for a long time. He asked her age, and what she liked to do. She largely ignored his questions and answered with a random assortment of thoughts of her own.

She told him "people always say 'congratulations' when you have a new baby at home like I do."

He couldn't believe his ears. "Did she just say that? Wow! She's quite a fine speaker. How old is she did you say?"

"My baby doesn't eat ice cream yet but when he does I'm going to show him how. I'm a big sister you know."

"That's marvelous," he replied, winking at me and telling me about his grandchildren who were currently traveling without him. "She's at a wonderful age ... my favorite age."

Then she had a few questions of her own. "Are you shopping for groceries? I see you have bananas. I like bananas but we don't need any. We have some home. Where are you going now? Do you like ice cream?"

Years ago I'm sure I might have been embarrassed by the 20 questions. I might have tried to shush her and continue my fruitless endeavor to get the self-checker to acknowledge my existence. But the magical force that draws people to small children draws me in, too. Of course I noticed how friendly people are when you have a newborn. They ooh and ah and tell you all sorts of things about themselves. Babies are a ticket to making acquaintances. They are the impetus to approach a stranger and smile, something so few of us ever do anymore.

The internet hasn't necessarily taken away our ability to relate to one another in face to face, but I'm not sure how it will make real life meetings any easier. While some would tell you anonymity makes us ill-mannered out in cyberspace, others, especially those who are shy, can be something they are not in real life: personable and brave. The sad thing is that while we're honing our skills in a virtual world after the kids go to sleep, in the grocery store we never meet anyone. We don't even have to practice etiquette with cashiers thanks to the miracle of un-manned merchandizing.

And yet the magic of children only lasts so long. When they grow up, like Tom's grandkids have done, your little family unit becomes invisible again or worse, temper tantrums and hormonal outbursts give folks something to sneer at.

I was thinking about all this when Tom announced he had to go. He still had items to get and he could sense we had somewhere else to be. "Well, sweetie, I have to go now but I do hope to see you next time."

Ittybit said goodbye, but she must have been thinking about the encounter just as I had been, because she stopped him to ask if we were "making his acquaintance?"

I thought I was going to swallow my teeth when she came out with that little nugget of wisdom, then I looked and him and realized he looked like he was about to swallow his, too.

"I really, really hope to see you again," he told her. And I hoped so, too.

The name game

Where has my baby gone?

It seems as if Ittybit has grown up overnight. The three days I was away in the hospital, lounging around in the oh-so-flattering hospital blues watching cable and waiting for the nursery personnel to come and borrow the boy for his periodic weights and measures checks, she grew up.

Although I wasn't allowed -- or even able -- to pick her up, I could tell in just the 72 hours I'd been away, she'd changed ... gotten heavier, more substantial, more mature. I couldn't have been more surprised than if she'd traded in her Dr. Seuss books for Dr. Zhivago.

She is, after all, a big sister now. Big sisters have big responsibilities. Not only are they in charge of keeping their parents apprised of everything a newborn is doing. ... "Mom! He's waking up!" "Mom! I think he's hungry!" "Mom! He wants you to pick him up!" "Mom! He wants you to put him down!" "Mom! I think he needs a diaper change!" "Mom! I think he wants me to have that last piece  of watermelon!" ... but they are also responsible for making sure the back of their heads are covered in kisses during each commercial break. 

So as I agonized over choosing a pet name from the many wonderful reader suggestions, it occurred to me that letting Ittybit pick the winner would be most fitting and definitely well deserved.

In the weeks prior to his birth, you see, she had second thoughts about the name her father and I had chosen for his birth certificate. I was quite a dilemma for a while as she howled in disgust anytime it was mentioned. "Mommy, I want to call my baby Charlie. I don't want to call him that other name," a name, I might add, she once sang in the sweetest dulcet tone but now would no longer say aloud.

"Honey. We're not naming him Charlie. Sorry."

My answer does not compute.

"BUT I WANT TO CALL HIM CHARLIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."

Her sweet song has turned shrill.

"NO!"

"YES!"

"NO!"

"YES!"

"NO!"

"BUT I WANNA!"

"WELL, IT'S NOT YOU'RE DECISION TO MAKE!"

"WELL, I'M CALLING HIM CHARLIE."

I think through all available responses, and  come up with an equation that just doesn't make any sense: Three-year-old plus tantrum minus tolerance and earplugs times the desire to drink copious amounts beer and bang own head against wall equals an uncontrollable urge to rename HER something juvenile and inappropriate. Something like ... "Poopyhead."

All I'm left with is ... "FINE. GO AHEAD. YOU DO THAT!" (Soooooo mature of me don't you think?)

And so I decided to recite each name submitted to the contest and see which one struck a chord with the big sis. 

There were some that leapt out at me right away for their humor and inventiveness.

Ann, a reader from Melbourne, Australia, suggested Nigel. “Nigel is good since no one in their right mind would actually NAME a kid that!"

"Ladeedah," another reader from the Internet, offered the following inspiration for calling the kid Spider:

“I totally think you should go with Spider ... Ittybit and Spiderclimbed up mommy's nerve. Down came the tears and chased ittybit and spider away, out came a breath of relifen and ittybit and spider climbed up mommy's nerve ... Not that your new impending Thing 2 will EVER do that. Newborns are precious and wonderful things that we love so much and never ever make us wish we were in Tahiti with copious amounts of Corona, no, that'swhat three-year-olds are for ..."

But for Ittybit, the decision making was a relatively quick process -- I recited the names and she made her most thoughtful and considered decision.

Trim? No. Bittybits? No. Ittyman? No. Ittybro? No. Babybro? No. Spider? No. Lil Bubba? No. WeeOne? No. Conway Sil? No. Chief? Peanut? Nigel? No. No. No. Buddyboy? Nope. Grit? No. Patch? Munchkin? Tater Tot? No. No. No. Rocky, Skipper, Rip, Squeeky. Sonny, Tripper, Manny, Moe or Pip? Nope. Nada.

Well how about Champ?

"Champ? Champ. I like Champ. But can I still call him Charlie?"

So while we may slip up and call him Charlie from time to time, officially "Champ" -- courtesy of Jayne Winner of Cohoes -- he will be.

Congratulations, Jayne. You truly are a winner.

Getting around any way you can

I'm typing one-handed from bed. This time around I find the 'mothering' aspects of newborn life to be relatively easy while the recovery from surgery to be hard. Both, I'm learning, can be equally as debilitating.

Raging hormones, complications from fluid retention and nursing snags made me an emotional psychopath through the Christmas holidays, one week after Ittybit's birth. However, I was feeling much more human and was even able to get out to dinner by New Year's eve.

This time, with all those things in check but considerably more surgical pain from the incision, the Fourth of July exploded around me as I sat right here in bed, begging my family to bring me snacks.

I'm trying not to dwell on it, but I think I've already built the foundation of a grand abode of self pitty on our new Serta Perfect Sleeper.

Joy.

And to top it off, while I'm not getting around in the Real World, my credit card is getting a workout in the Virtual World.

So far I've purchased a new diaper bag and portable changing pad; birth announcements; a baby sling sized for the husband; gift cards for the nurses who took care of me at the hospital and a bunch of things that just made my heart twitterpate while viewing the vendor's cleverly designed Web sites.

I'd guess I've spent about $300 I normally would have saved by actually going shopping. (I can admit it, once I see the stuff in person -- hold it in my hand, that is -- I'm usually capable of putting it back.)

It's really been a lot like bed rest, only after the baby comes.

If I take the drugs that are supposed to make the pain go away, I sleep the day away. If I don't take them I can't stand up for more than 15 minutes at a time before I get a burning sensation at the surgical site.

I can't lift, run after or play with our active pre-schooler, and I'm not allowed to climb stairs or drive a car.

Leaving me to wonder: How do people do this?

I have an amazing family that has taken on the tasks of the house while trying to keep Ittybit as active as possible when she's not busy being a second mommy to the boy.

"Mom. You need to nurse the baby. No not that side, you used that LAST TIME."

(See what I mean? I just knew she'd be a know-it-all.)

My husband has been helpful, too. Making shopping trips for all types of unmentionable items without complaint. The best of which is when my "non-consumerist" returned home from Target bearing $600 in extra purchases.

That alone made me feel a little better. My $80 binges at the store seem much more inline with reality.

It's just hard to want to be able to do all the things you thought you could do, only to find out you are merely a simple human.

I think last time, one week after surgery, I felt good enough to ignore the rules. This time I think the rules could break me if I even try to bend them.

Catching up with 'The Family'

When the television went black on Sunday, June 10, I hauled my 9-month pregnant body off the couch, waving my arms in protest.

“I can’t believe they’re ending it like that!” I yelled and then covered my mouth, realizing the last thing I wanted was a groggy three-year-oldtoddling out from her bedroom to see what all the fuss was about.

I didn’t want to admit it, but I wanted Tony Soprano dead.

As the week wore on, however, I came to see the brilliance of the final episode of perhaps the most talked about series ever to hit the small screen.

Closure is a psychological red herring. It doesn’t exist and yet we all keep searching for it.

For eight years (two of them just waiting for the series to return) I dropped everything to watch HBO’s organized crime drama about a mob boss who suffered from panic attacks, momentary conflicts of conscience and the angst of having two families; both of which seemed time bombs readyto explode on any given Sunday. I scheduled my life around being home on
Sunday nights at 9 p.m.

The first year was the most magical because it was all new. And because so few people subscribed to HBO another phenomena seemed to be happening. It was the most watched and least talked about series of theyear. I’d video tape the week’s offerings and before it got through the entire office, the next episode had come and gone. We all kept mum on
the happenings.

Soon the series began to define its viewers as much as it revealed its characters.

Those of us having no experience with organized crime were entertained by the hard-core nastiness of the main and sub characters. And yet we read with interest all the pundits who claimed to have the inside scoop, and that the show was right on the money about everything from Analysis to Omerta.

Those of us who had lived in the neighborhoods depicted were less inclinded to find redeeming value in the artistic reflection.

I suppose it’s interesting to know which little tidbits are based on reality and which are complete flights of fancy, but in the end the whole show has to be seen as fiction rather than fact.

So I must say I’m laughing my fool head off as I read about the New York State Psychological Association’s rant against the episode in which Tony’s long-term psychiatrist gives him the boot.

“A recent episode of ‘The Sopranos’ has caused concern among many in the mental health community. Dr. Melfi’s dismissal of Tony Soprano as a reaction of unchecked counter-transference was just one aspect of poor and unethical treatment. Her angry abandonment of Tony was preceded by another scene that has Melfi and her supervisor (sic, therapist) at a
party with other doctors. The supervisor violates confidentiality by revealing Tony’s identity.”

The issue the community has with the portrayal is that, they say, for the most part Melfi’s depiction in the series was viewed as one of the better portrayals of psychotherapy in television. Chase pulled the rug out from underneath them.

But this isn’t a documentary. It’s entertainment. We love to see people do things they shouldn’t do.

To be frank, it’s likely that some therapists are unethical. That some professionals sitting around a table, sipping Pinot, will likely talk shop. They may even name names even though they shouldn’t.

I know as I was watching Kupferberg (the therapist’s therapist) say “we’re all professionals here” after he revealed Tony’s identity, I couldn’t help but reply “Not you. Not anymore.”

The thing is all these ethical dilemmas were why the show did so well in the first place: A mob boss who loves ducks and babies, but kills his own nephew; a family man, who, while taking his daughter on college campus tours finds himself taking out an informant in witness protection. We waited for Tony to finally break from the conflicts of the two worlds. We watched and we waited. He never did.

True or false, right or wrong, ethical or not – “The Sopranos” was fun while it lasted, and it’s left us with lots of food for thought. And it left Tony looking over his shoulder. Forever.

And all their fears wash away ...

"I have bad news and I have worse news," the man on the telephone said.

It was the furniture store calling to tell me that the dresser I'd bought for Thing 2 was on backorder until August. The worse news, he said, was the bookshelf I'd ordered for Ittybit was discontinued and it wouldn't be coming at all.

"That's it? That's not a big deal," I said calmly. It was the morning of the day Thing 2 would be born, and I was trying to rest. With all the angst and worry over last-minute potential health issues for the new baby -- a enlarged kidney discovered in a 36-week ultrasound, and a forewarning that such anomalies are considered markers for Down syndrome -- it was obvious to me, the lack of furniture doesn't rise to the level of "bad" anything. (Unless of course the dresser or bookcase falls on you, and then THAT WOULD be bad.)

I was nervous -- that was true -- but I was also ready. After opening up and telling people about our worries, I got a crash course in kindness. People from all over sent word that they were praying for us and thinking about us and about Thing 2.

Then there was something I didn't expect to happen: A reader sent me an article from the New York Times that looked into the change in our communities since the medicine has made leaps and bounds in prenatal detection of chromosomal abnormalities such as Trisomy 21 or Down syndrome.

The article claimed that roughly 90 percent of mothers who are given this information early on abort the fetus. It makes sense, but it also does something else. It changes the face of our society. With fewer children born with Down syndrome, there will likely be implications such as fewer services available to those individuals as well as a shrinking social circle.

I'm not sure which made me more melancholy: that we could have a special needs child in a few hours or that this child's circle of support would be shrinking from year to year.

It's not that I'd want my child to have difficulties, no parent does. But I know that none of us gets through this life without disappointments, situations we can't control and hardships. Down syndrome, after all, isn't the worst diagnosis one could have. There are hardships, for sure, but ultimately it just means a different kind of life.

We all make decisions for ourselves and our families based on so many different little bits of information. So yes, I was nervous. I was worried. I wanted the best possible outcome, like all parents do.

In the childbirth center, my doctor prepared me for everything that could happen: The kidlet could be perfectly fine and join us directly in the recovery room or he might have some problems that would require him to be sent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit; there was also the possibility that we still wouldn't have all the answers we wanted to have when he was born, but that no one would keep any information from me.

The important thing was that no matter what happened, he was going to be getting the best care and that ultimately he would be happy and he would be loved.

I took a deep breath and let it out. No turning back now.

And when the good doctors brought him screaming and kicking into the world, the high-risk pediatrician checked him over and pronounced him healthy and definitely "NOT" a Down syndrome baby.

We had all the assurances we needed.

And then our red-faced boy peed on the doc's stethoscope. His father was so proud.

The naming contest will continue through the month of June. Please continue to send your entries to sconnally@troyrecord.com or mail it to The Record, 501 Broadway, Troy, NY 12180.

Smiling all the while

I am a worrier.

Some people call me a hypochondriac, but I just think I’m extremely sensitive to minute physical changes.

Of course, you get to a certain point in all things — especially pregnancy — when you let your guard down and you begin to relax. The inevitable will happen, ready or not.

Having everybody constantly telling you "it won't be long now," for some has a universally calming effect – like Xanax. For folks like me, though, it just sets off alarms.

As I left the house for my 36-week doctor’s appointment, complete with a special womb-with-a-view monitoring of Thing 2, I had that icky feeling. That creepy, crawly, I-hate-the-late-term-appointments feeling: Something always goes wrong.

It was a familiar routine: I waited in the office for the ultrasound, reading Martha Stewart's instructions on making your own heart-shaped candy box. (This will be helpful, I think, if I ever lose my mind or decide to drive myself crazy next Valentine’s Day.)

I chat with the ultrasound technician as she scans around taking measurements. She notes that Thing 2 has moved into a head-down position, and shares my confusion over why anyone cares since the kid is going to be hatched anyway. She measures the head, legs and other body parts, which I think look more like pockets of clouds than parts of kid.

"He's really taking up every spare space there is," she laughs.

She takes a fuzzy picture of his face, and rips it from the machine handing it to me saying everything looks good. I go back to the lobby to wait for her report, which I carry to the next doctor upstairs.

I peek at the contents of my file while I climb three flights. Numbers, dates, ratios ... it seems as if I'm trying to read assembly instructions in Greek.

I’ve been through this before. There is nothing out of the ordinary.
When my name is called I go into the exam room. The doctor shakes my hand and introduces herself. We’ve not met yet. She smiles and looks at the chart.

"Well it looks like there's a dilation of one of the baby's kidneys. What we tend to do in this instance is have the baby looked at by a neonatologist after it's born to determine a course of action. It's difficult to say at this point what the significance is. ... surgery could be warranted or it maybe something that will resolve itself. ... "

Blink. Blink. Blink.

"What? What? Surgery? Watchful waiting? What?"

Her whole demeanor changed when she realized this was all new to me.

"Have you had all normal ultrasounds before?"

"Yes. Normal. Every single one has been normal."

I left the office with my head spinning. The only thing I could hold onto was the words "try not to worry" and some vague recollection of a friend whose children had been diagnosed similarly.

"This is not the end of the world. This is not the worst news you could get," I tell myself as I dodge cars and ignore traffic safety as I head back to the office.

I do the exact opposite of what one should do when I get back to my desk. I consult Dr. Google to find out what this means. I select university medical Web site information and read summaries. I come up with a 14-letter name for the condition and perform a Web search on that.

Then I call on my friends to see what they have to say.
Mostly they tell me I should be prepared for years of visits and tests with a specialist. Be ready for the smiling faces of people telling you scary things. Be ready to ask questions but try not to worry.

"Ninety percent of the time it's no big deal, but doctors follow everybody. They have to cover their butts," said a mom of a 2 ½ year old with the condition, who has gotten by with no intervention as yet. "The hardest part," she explained, "is when the doctors, who see this all the time, tell you nonchalantly, 'this could be nothing, it could lead to kidney failure or it could require surgery'."

Or, in my case, having "you realize this is a marker for Down syndrome?" thrown in for good measure.

It's never easy to convey potentially bad news, I realize, but I wish they'd take a moment to notice I am just a mom whose emotions are all intertwined with the child attached to a wonky kidney.

What's in your Mouskatoolbox?

If you have the misfortune of suffering through Playhouse Disney’s "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" on Sunday mornings (like I do) you already know that when our mouse hero has a dilemma he needs only the shrill voice of a toddler yelling "Oh Toodles!" to make a special toolbox appear and the troubles disappear.

Inside this computer-animated helpdesk are usually three Mouskatools and a Mystery Mouskatool that, when called upon in the correct order, will solve all of the show's plot predicaments.

Of course if these were real-life situations the tools would be useless, but the large-eyed, big-headed small fries staring into the black hole of the picture tube don't know this because in the magical world of Mickey Mouse a glue stick is all that’s needed to glue the keys back onto a broken piano, a catcher's mitt will indeed capture an "oooey gooey fish" bouncing around in a rowboat and a watering can is all that is required to make flowers grow.

But what tool do you call on when you open a kitchen drawer and the BIGGEST FIELD MOUSE you've ever seen comes scampering out and disappears under the stove?
Let's just say that if I were writing for the show there would be a few changes.

First, the mouse would NOT be the hero.

I don’t have too much empathy for any fictional rodents, no matter how sweet and cuddly and human-like, when I find half-eaten packets of cocoa; an empty bag of mini marshmallows, and tubes of green, purple and black frosting (but not the red) licked clean along with the tell-tale evidence in the bottom of my baking drawer.

Secondly, there would also be a lengthy discussion about food choices. Because aside from turning up his whiskers at the red-dye frosting, the animal ransacking our kitchen chose only the most sugar-laden items in the cache, leaving bags of raw almonds, walnuts and cashews completely untouched.

"Arrrrgh!"

"What mama?" Ittybit asks and I jump back from the cabinet.

"There is a mouse in the house," I say as I point to the place where I saw the revolting creature dart under the appliances.

"Oh, man," she exclaims, mimicking my displeasure but feeling the excitement of a new adventure as she throws herself down on the floor and peers under the range. "Where did he go?"

"Probably to tell all his friends that the jig is up, the die's been cast and there's a new sheriff in town," I say as I plan for the final changes in my clubhouse storyline. ... the tools in the new and improved Mouskatoolbox would have teeth — sharp, pointy, deadly teeth.

Although I'm not afraid of mice, I don't want to share my baking supplies with them, nor do I want to risk the slim potential for anyone in our household to contract haute virus by allowing the uninvited guests to continue to raid our non-perishables.

It's quite a shift from my mouse-loving days as a child. Standing over a mouse-gnawed mess, I couldn't be further from the kid I was who wouldn't speak to her own father for three days after he dispatched a mouse in the basement with a spring trap and a chunk of bacon.

Here I am, decades later, openly hoping the little critter suffers its demise with a fitting case of diabetes or a grotesque battle with gout before it meets its end in a silvery trap.

But my daughter is just like the "me" I was way back when ...

"You can't kill it. It's a living thing," she protests.

I intercept her as she heads for the drawer, presumably to paw through the debris where the mayhem took place. I call for assistance, asking her dad to take her to the park so I can clean up the mouse mess. He tells me he'll clean it up, but I'm beyond the point in the program where I can let it go. Since cleaning is easier than preschooler wrangling, I continue with my storyline and gather the supplies.

The tools that await me in my Mouskatool box include a vacuum cleaner, disinfectant and paper towels. I'm assuming the tools in the dad's tool box will include a series of dreadfully effective mousetraps and a shovel. Of course in my version, if all else fails, the Mystery Mouskatool would be howitzer.

Needless to say, the episode I'm working on will have to air on HBO following the Sopranos, but it would be worth it just for the "R" rating.

Chiropracty is the new black

"That's definitely a foot," the doctor laughs as she pushes on the left side of my abdomen. "And I think he's moved into position," she muses. "I would say his head is definitely engaged now."

Last time I was here -- a week ago -- she wasn't sure which end was up: the rump end or the head end.

She pushes on my side ligaments and pelvic bones, rocking them back and forth. I struggle to keep from laughing.

"Oh my, that tickles."

Curled up like a pretzel, she cracks my back from each side.

"O.K. That's it for today. You're good to go."

I hand over my co-payment check and head for the car, feeling an inch taller.

It's official: Chiropracty is the new black.

As the daughter of a nurse, there’s always been something about "the alternative" medical practices that I’ve never really trusted.

"I don't care if there's three million years of ancient wisdom behind it, there is no way in this lifetime anyone is going to stick pins in me."

I've listened, and tried to keep my eyes from rolling upward, as friends and family have told me all about the amazing results they've experienced with acupuncture, acupressure, aromatherapy, biofeedback, botanicals, kinesiology, chiropracty, massage therapy, reflexology and even primal scream therapy until I've wanted to scream.

It also didn't help that I once went to a chiropractor at the insistence of my husband, who has chronic low back pain and apparently wanted me to share in the joy of adjustment. I'll admit, the mobility I experienced after the visit was more than I'd thought possible. But the next day I woke up in the worst pain EVER. EVER!

Pain is bad: very, very bad. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.

"Your body always wants to go back to where it's been," the doctor assured me as I walked back into the office sideways, like a crab, with my chin seemingly cemented to my shoulder.

In a few more visits, I was back to where I started: standing upright, pain free and feeling fine.

No more alternatives for me, I decided. Even though I've since experienced massage therapy and reiki with pleasing results, I will not be converted. I grudgingly get a massage, feel great for three days and never make another appointment. Reiki was the same. It just relaxed me to the point of not caring whether I ever made another appointment again.

Feeling good is one thing … having to make an appointment to feel even better seems, I don’t know, overly self-indulgent maybe?

So when I got up from my desk one day and felt my right hip slide over in protest, shooting sharp pain around the region like a pinball, I called the obstetrician.
"Unfortunately, it's a normal part of pregnancy, especially when you start to 'pop' out," she said. "Your center of gravity gets all out of whack. Very common in second pregnancies," she says, offering only time as a cure. "Once the baby comes you'll feel better."

Now I've put up with heartburn, leg cramps, pregnancy rashes, the dreaded tired and the indignities of having "cankles" connecting my feet to my legs, but another six weeks of near debilitating pain would not do. I was going to have to seek an alternative.

I swallowed hard and called a chiropractor who specializes in pregnancy adjustments, justifying it in my head the whole time.

All my friends are doing it, and insurance kind of covers it so it can't REALLY be all THAT alternative right?

After only one visit I was feeling better but still worried about the dreaded "snap back." I walked around that whole weekend like an octogenarian on ice. The discomfort gradually moved back to the neighborhood during the course of the week, but only now it seemed to be a new and more agreeable tenant.

A few visits later, however, and I'm feeling so fine I'd considering naming the kid after her.

I know I'll probably revert to my old "I'd-like-massage-therapy-if-they-didn't-have-to-touch-me" self, but I've got to say I'm so glad there are alternatives, even if I'm usually to pig-headed to try them.

A magician for all seasons

The conjurer was cunning. Dressed in khaki slacks and a checked shirt, he didn’t much look like a magician at all.

His act was missing all the glitz and glam of a David Copperfield extravaganza not to mention the over-the-top theatrics of David Blaine's protracted feats of strength. Instead he had only comedy store props — like the wonky wands he generously handed out to every pint-sized assistant in the room.

To the initiated there was nothing special about the resort entertainer’s talents.
But to the uninitiated there was nothing but enchantment in his dime store tricks and sleight of hand.

"Who will assist me with this next trick?" he asked as all the chubby little hands in the audience stood at attention. One by one each junior conjurer took turns holding a wand, saying a magic word and pulling something unexpected out of some container previously shown to be empty.

When it was Ittybit's turn, the magic man produced two foam rabbits and held them up for all to see. He squished them into his hands and transferred them to hers. She looked so serious as he said the magic words … "Ipso, Upso, Grandilillyposo!!!" She dutifully tossed out the foam die-cuts to reveal a bunch of tiny bunnies had miraculously taken the place of the two original yellow silhouettes.

"WOW!!" she exclaimed, proud of her own happenstance talent. "Could there be more?" she wondered.

"Come closer, children. I have something to show you," the magician called.

As the kids crowded around he pulled a red kerchief from his shirt pocket. With a flourish, he juggled the tissue-y gauze from hand to hand before he began stowing the little prize precisely into a closed fist. The room was silent as he wiggled his fingers and opened his hands to show the hanky’s disappearance.

A second later he pulls the red cloth from the previously emptied hand.
And that’s when the magician steered off course ... "Let me show you how it's done."

I could feel my own eyes bulge. Was he REALLY going to reveal the "magic?"
The adults scooted closer to the edge of their chairs.

Sure we all thought we knew where this was going. We had all seen this trick dozens if not hundreds of times, but we’d all simply accepted that there WAS a trick to it and let it go without detailed explanation.

And that's when he took off his thumb. ...

"If you will direct your attention to my left thumb you will see that it is slightly longer than my right. Inside is where I've hidden the handkerchief. Holding the false finger in one hand, you put the cloth in with the other. Once you are done stuffing the cloth into it, you push your own thumb into it and just keep your hands moving ..."

You would think that such a revelation would be a let down. It would turn magic into a cheap parlor trick and the enchantment would be lost.

And yet, each kid took a turn at the sleight of hand. And each kid made magic happen.

Of course, that was his point: Anyone can make magic.

Later that evening, on our way to the resort's dining room, I noticed a man tuning a distinctive wood piano, getting ready to play a little dinner music. It was the magician.

As his fingers closed around the tools of the trade and he gave the wire a little turn, he let me in on another little secret.

"Hey, I saw that you signed up for the 7 a.m. yoga class ... I teach that group, so I'll see you tomorrow."

Magic indeed.

How to tell if you need retail therapy

Repeat after me: Don't get attached to things. Let things attach to you. Say it again with me.

You can't go to Target and swing a cat without hitting a pregnant woman.
The red and white bulls-eye, I suppose, just reels them in with their funky finds for new moms.

So it seems a little strange that I should be avoiding the place. It has to be pregnancy related.

I’ll admit that during the 15-month pregnancy drought, which finally ended in September, I'd tried to steer clear of the Midwest-Mecca of multi-department merchandising for just that reason. All those burgeoning bellies just made me feel down in the dumps.

Whatever incidental hunk of junk I sought could probably be found on the Internet, I told myself. "Shipping schmipping, at least I'd never have to bump into a baby bump again."

But recently I've felt its aisles, filled with brightly colored merchandise, closing in on me again.

With only a month to go, I feel as if Newton’s third law of motion -- For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – is guiding me into a quagmire of retail inertia. I feel as if I'm in the scope of the bulls-eye, surrounded by other women staking claim to the aisle's precious real estate, happily stocking up for their own impeding arrivals.

Do I clean the old carseat or buy a new one?

If a buy a new one, will it help me avoid tennis elbow I suffered through most of 2004 and 2005?

But standing in the happy glow of Target’s offerings, all I see is more stuff. ... More stuff to add to the stuff I’ve already acquired and can't manage. More stuff to be unpackaged, stored, repackaged and recycled. More stuff that will wind up abandoned in closets.

I need to snap out of it. I have to get retail therapy.

So I let my fingers do the clicking and decide I am going to fling the old baby pack and buy a sling.

For Ittybit, we used an adjustable front pack, similar to the much touted BABY BJÖRN, but half the price. It was wonderful for about four or five months, until she doubled her birth weight and caused my back to protest. It was also cumbersome to put on. Straps and buckles had to be adjusted and readjusted every time.

This time I knew I wanted something that I could just put on and go. Something that seemed fool proof. Something that wouldn't make me want to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. But here I am balking at the median $60 price tag. So as is my way, I found an agreeable alternative -- a Peanut Shell baby sling from a company called Goo-Ga Style, Inc. in the clearance/discontinued item page of its online shop.

When it came in the mail I was so excited I practically chewed through the weather resistant mailing pouch to get at it. In the process I unfolded the precisely folded sling and stood in the kitchen with what resembled a brightly colored, gigantic fabric Cheerio.

"I am never going to figure this out," I lamented as I remembered the ALL SALES FINAL deal that made the price so attractive.

"I found a pocket! ... NO, the baby is DEFINITELY NOT fitting in there."

I looked at the picture on the brochure ... "how do they ..."

I folded it up, put it back in the bag and walked away.

"Maybe it's too small. It looks to small. What was I thinking? I am not that small."

I returned to the table a few minutes later -- unable to give up on the puzzle -- and I extract the sling again. This time I tried folding it in and slipping it over my shoulder. ... "Ahhhh. Maybe? ... Nope. It's upside-down."

I turn it inside out and try again. "There! That's IT! I've got it."

But then I wonder: "OK, I've got it on, but how to I get the baby in there? Maybe I should test this on a doll."

So off I go, looking for the most baby-like toy in Ittybit's collection. I settle for Elmo.

"Mama? What are you doing?"

"I'm just testing the new baby gear out on the little monster."

"Does it fit?"

"Yes, I think it does."

"Well ... daddy can be pretty, too."

"What do you mean?"

"If daddy wore that he'd be pretty, too."

I've no doubt he'd look mighty purdy in this, but I have a confession: The Peanut Sling so comfee I may just wear Elmo around the house until there's a suitable replacement. And by then, who knows, maybe my aversion to Target will have gone the way of sciatica and heartburn. Maybe I’ll throw caution to the wind and buy the new carseat after all.

Happy Mother's Day! How about a contest?

BUT FIRST ... A word from our sponsors ...

DEAR EXILED IN TOYLAND READERS ... In case you weren't aware, Exiled in Toyland is a place where I've been personally archiving a column I write for a local newspaper, The Record. Up until recently it has been corporate policy to upload only a few items to our official web presence. Since that edict has changed, my columns will now be published every week here.

I hope you will come on over and visit at my "day job," where you can enter the "official" baby-naming contest and browse around.

*****

Desperation can make you do strange things.

Like many women in my condition, I've been on the lookout for the perfect baby name.

Not the name that will go on the birth certificate, mind you. Miraculously the selection of the official designation has been relatively easy. It actually took up residence in my head the moment the ultrasound technician clued me in that Thing 2 was a boy.

No, I'm looking for something to use as a nom de plume here in these pages (and over at Ittybit's & Pieces).

You know, 'cause I have my priorities: A name is just a name but a nickname out in cyberspace lasts forever. So here I am obsessing over a name that fits well with "Ittybit" but doesn't make the kid seem as if he was an afterthought, affixed into the masthead with Scotch tape.

Ittybit and ...

I've got nothing.

Up until now I've stolen rather unabashedly from Theodor Geisel and his "Cat in the Hat" classic when referring to the kidlet swimming around in my gene pool. But when push comes to caesarian section sometime mid-June, I know a real fake name will have to be substituted.

But still, with the pressure on and the heat moving to the front burner, a suitable silly subtitle hasn't been forthcoming.

What's a mother to do?

Well, this mother consulted baby name books and Web sites, and watched movie credits roll past with more concentration than she spent on the movie’s plot. Unsuccessful, I waded through countless children's stories, looking for literary characters that would make snappy names. I started looking a products in stores, wondering if perhaps a name would jump out at me.

Hmmmmm. How about Ittybit and Tums? Nope. 'Not gonna do it.'

Then I took the passive approach. I waited for suggestions, hoping for intervention. When none showed up in my inbox, I wandered onto the Internet.

There I was, Googling for pet names when I stumbled across Pet Name Finder.
"This is promising," I thought as I typed my answers into the pop-up menus, pausing just before I clicked the send button. "Maybe an actual name for a pet will be the ticket."

To my surprise, though, the name that the computer came up with for my fictional fido was the EXACT one I'd had my heart set on for the child's given name.

So, OK, I have a name suitable for a child (or a pet), but I still don't have a pet name that rolls off the tongue and plays nicely with Ittbit. (Let’s face it, making sure the kidlets play nice is what it's all, right?)

With all my options running out, I'm doing what I should have done in the first place. Begging.

And that's where you come in, dear readers. I need your collective expertise, your naming acumen and most of all your At-least-I'm-sleeping-eight-hours-per-night minds.

I don't care how you do it. You can consult tea leaves or the stars or your loveable (but not so with-it) Aunt Marge, but send me your entries for Thing 2's nom de plume and a completely biased and arbitrary decision could make you a winner.

What you win will be determined, but I promise you won't be asked to change diapers.


To submit a entry: Write to me at The Record, 501 Broadway, Troy NY, 12108; email sconnally@troyrecord.com or fax 518.270.1202. Include your name, address and phone number with your submission. The deadline for entries is June 15. A winner will be announced when Thing 2 arrives.

What light through yonder window breaks?

My daughter comes into our bedroom almost every morning at 6 a.m., stands by MY side of the bed and claps her hands twice.

I startle awake. Gone are the days when she’d stand there and stare at me until my eyes would open without the added joy of my heart jumping into my throat.

Now she’s become The Clapper.

Of course, it won't surprise me in the least if one of these mornings her usual routine causes the lights to blaze, the television to roar to life and the coffee maker to start perking. It's just the way the house is wired now that my husband — a gadget and techno-geek — has been doing home repairs.

Slowly, (emphasis on S-L-O-W) my husband is transforming our barn into a home. In the years we've lived in this rambling abode, he's rebuilt rotted decks, replaced some old doors and windows, reconstructed entire rooms, installed wood floors and new kitchen cabinets. He's even framed out an area for a luxury spa bathroom and purchased the decadent air-jet tub, where, once installed, I plan on moving all of my Earthly possessions.

Although the overall appearance is one of little progress since none of the projects started HAS in fact BEEN completed hitherto, the list of changes made during the last seven years is nothing short of impressive nevertheless.

Of course I tell him the work he does is appreciated, but I'm careful not to gush. After all, I do want moldings someday so I can't have him resting on his laurels. I also like to reserve the right to gloat on his jack-of-all-trades shortcomings just for kicks.

For instance take the aforementioned lighting. In most homes you don’t have to think about turning on the bathroom or bedroom lights. You flip a switch and the room comes into focus under the glare of energy-saving compact florescent luminosity.

Not in our house. Some folks find programming their VCR impossible? I have trouble working our lights.

Whenever we have guests I practically have to hand them a manual on how to work the lights:

"Ok. If you need to use the bathroom, remember to turn on the track lights in the dining room first. They are on the same circuit and the bathroom lights won’t turn on without the dining room lights on. … And if you turn on the hall lights and they go off by themselves don't worry, it's nothing. Just turn them back on, making sure the switch that is all the way to the left is turned on first. Oh. ... and the light over the bed works on a remote control. If you can't get it to come on you'll have to go to the main panel on the wall and see that the switch is pressed DOWN then press the sensor to the right seven times until the little green lights on the left side of the switch glow."

Even my husband's bedside table has a contraption that allows his lowly lamp to be transformed into a resplendent "natural alarm clock," which, unfortunately, I haven't learned how to operate. I often curse his name as I struggle to turn the thing off a half hour after the light fooled him into thinking being awakened at 4 a.m. is actually "natural."

After I pull myself out of bed and grope around for the plug and end my suffering, all I can think about is Shakespeare ... "so this is what he meant by 'But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?' I bet some grumpy wife threw her husband's 'natural light' alarm clock out of the window when she couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

Rad mommy ... I mean Bad MOMMY!

Apparently I've lost my moral compass. I know I had one. It was here somewhere, buried under the stacks of unopened junk mail in the kitchen, or perhaps mingling with the detritus in the disaster area I call my purse.

But according to officials at the Marilla Cuthbert Academy for Unspeakably Charming Children (or MCA-UCC for you acronym lovers) where Ittybit attends classes twice weekly, it is gone and I am officially a menace.

A hipster mom. A woman woefully bereft of common sense. I may already be on some early education watch list.

I'm going to say it all started because Ittybit learned to dress herself, and has apparently adopted my penchant for the color black and silly, decadent things that conservative, mommy types who live in the suburbs shouldn't enjoy.

In her self-chosen black Little Girl Big Attitude T-shirt, accessorized with Jolly Roger emblazoned legwarmers covering her exposed arms, we groove to pop tunes and hip-hop in the car; she asks for Bank Job by the "Naked Old Ladies" and sings Black Eyed Peas’ "Let's Get It Started," at the tops of her lungs.

Now, it's not that we didn't try the kid stuff. I suffered through The Wiggles and Barney just like every parent of every tot in the Western hemisphere. I even came to love Elmo despite his red furry insistence on referring to himself in the third person, but Ittybit moved along to our Dave Matthews CDs as easily as I followed to my folks into Folk.

It wasn't intentional. It was pure luck. To have her actually prefer my musical preferences to those of her peers seemed nothing short of miraculous.

But when she takes off her coat in the brightly painted pre-school, and the prim and proper teachers notice the skull and crossbones-knitted woolens warming her arms, two words that never would have occurred to me at this juncture become abundantly clear: DRESS CODE. And listed prominently under the heading "INAPPROPRIATE" would be the Jolly Roger.

Mind you, I saw an inkling of this strict adherence to suitability the last time I showed up at the decorous academy to do my part by assisting with snacks and tripping over myself and the many tiny chairs. Ms. Cuthbert had asked ittybit, as is her custom on a child's "special day," to recite how many people live at her house.

"Mommy, Daddy and MAD-O-LINE the dog ... Maggie dog used to live there, too. But she died. She's buried in the backyard. ..."

"OH KAY" sings Ms. Cuthbert with the distinct tone of uncertain surprise one might have when unexpected unpleasantness escapes its moors. "Moving right along ..."

As a parent teaching their toddler to accept death as a part of life, and as a woman who believes we are fast becoming a society that can't see the forest for all the trees as we try to clear cut to our moral high ground, I find myself wishing that I could muster some righteous indignation. Just enough to show my distain for prejudice based on outward appearances.

I want to rail against how we’ve all come to fear things that are not bathed in sweetness and light, cuteness and bows; and the thinking that the wildest hair color or the wackiest clothing is a dangerous thing.

Skeletons, after all, have a prominent place in medical and anatomical education, too don’t they? Well? Don't they?

The thoughts in my head become as shrill as a scream. But then I realized I signed up for this. By becoming a parent I had willingly joined a club with strange rules and customs and members who have different ways of seeing the world, let alone chart its course. And as a new community member, I'd have to navigate the waters with care so as not to sink the ship. Even though I still see no harm in a pint-sized pirate, I also see no reason to shiver the timbers. Not just yet, anyway.

Prevention may not be the cure

I've heard it a million times: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." But lately I've been wondering if that ounce of prevention doesn’t also equal a metric ton of unnecessary angst?

If you've followed the news at all during the last decade, you’re probably aware of the billions of ailments and hardships we can prevent by eating the right foods, getting the right exercise, getting the proper amount of rest and moving to the right neighborhood ... or being born to the right parents ... or jumping around on our left foot while tugging at our right ear.

Sorting it all out isn't even the biggest problem, although it probably doesn't help that the "Good" list includes coffee, sunlight, red wine, chocolate and sex for their anti-oxidant and stress relieving properties — all of which may also be found prominently on the "Bad" list, presumably for their cardiac weakening and carcinogenic properties, too.

Maybe it's just coincidence that since the advent of safety campaigns such as "Loose Lips Sinks Ships," to "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires," we've seen a collective increase in American anxiety.

Is it possible that the idea that we can effectively stop bad things from happening has turned prevention into avoidance and pushed us all into a state of undue anxiety?

Perhaps it's a bit of a leap or an over simplification, but I keep asking myself what has changed since I was a kid and the answer I keep coming up with is fear.
Improvements are everywhere:

*Car seats are safer
*Footwear for kids is better
*Cribs and toys are better designed
*Getting the word out on hazards is instantaneous and fixes are just as speedy.

And yet we'll say "the world is a different place" today as easily as we said an "ounce of prevention ..." yesterday.

We've all seen stories of children abducted from their own homes or on their way to school, and we put ourselves in the place of the victim. But no matter that numbers indicate stranger kidnappings are statistically insignificant, we can only wrap our minds around the fear and the possibility of preventing a tragedy even if we can't do it.

This week, and the many weeks that follow, will be especially difficult to keep from speculating how things went so wrong as the nation mourns the tragic horror that took place on the campus of Virginia Tech on Monday.

How could anyone look around them and see reason for hope? How do we keep from retreating further from the world and each other? And yet we must. We must move forward.

For doesn't it seem strange that very bad things continue to befall us, despite our continuing to meet tragedy with legislation? Or despite the fact that kids aren't allowed to be without parental supervision anymore? The playgrounds in my neighborhood are always empty of the kids I would have known in my suburban pre-adolescence: Kids who showed up after school with their gloves and their bats and wondered who wanted to play pitch and catch. Kids who wouldn't go home until their mother's called or darkness ended the game. Instead there are huge playfields and droves of parents trucking their uniformed children from one league game to the next, setting up the tailgate of their minivan with Gatorade and low-fat snacks, and yaking on the cell phone during play.

Despite all my digging in of heels and refusing to believe the world has changed for the worse, I fall into the trap of such ill-perception myself.

Anxiety is always the first emotion to appear as I drive my family sedan on the windy, back roads I used to ride my ten-speed Schwinn an unhelmeted five miles alone. What ifs start coming like mad. What if a driver didn’t see me; what if there was an accident; what if I just disappeared.

I wonder how my parents were able to let me go. How I will let Ittybit go? But then I realize, sadly, I probably won’t have to let her go: There won’t be anyone for her to meet if I did. All of her friends will be at soccer games with their moms or dance lessons or gymnastics after school.

The playgrounds will still be empty.

A second pregnancy unlike the first

A friend of mine recently relayed a story about how, at 27 weeks gestation with her second child, she'd attended her first prenatal yoga class and nearly cried at the thought of how this time around she hadn't been taking care of herself.

How is it possible, she wondered, that it had taken so long to check in with herself and connect with the newbie? Just one hour a week, that's all she needed.

That's what it's been like for me this whole winter. The weeks just seem to fly by, bringing with them one niggling sickness after another. From one head cold to a stomach ailment and right back to nasty head cold, I've been coping since November with this cyclical suffering.

If it weren't for monthly obstetrics appointments I'm sure I'd forget I was pregnant at all. I can't help but feel sad that I haven't been as present with Thing 2 as I was with Ittybit. I haven't enjoyed it as well, either.

If I say that aloud I instantly feel the cold gazes of women and the incredulous looks from their menfolk. To many of them, enjoying pregnancy is a contradiction in terms. No one is supposed to take pleasure in the discomforts of weight gain and other Kafkaesque changes our bodies go through during fetal incubation.

But I readily admit that I am one of those oddballs who LOVES being pregnant.
For the most part, I feel fine if not better than I normally do during my regular, single-serve existence.

Even the not-so-nice parts -- the heartburn, nosebleeds and itchy skin -- are merely momentary inconveniences easily explained and easily set aside. I know it's the pregnancy that causes it, and as such I can let it go. No worries.

With Ittybit I attended my regular, weekly yoga class religiously; I went to the gym after work three days a week and walked my legs tired on the treadmill; I took time most every morning to follow Shiva Rea's lead on a prenatal exercise tape I vowed would become a staple in my life, even after the pregnancy was over, because I enjoyed its flow.

But my life is markedly different this time around. I come straight home from work, feeling the weight of guilt for having spent so much time away. Every weekend is set aside for "Mommy" time.

"Me" time is what I steal late at night and early in the morning, and cheat my husband out of whenever I get the chance. Me time is for writing about HER, and processing photographs of HER life, and checking in with other moms to reassure myself that I'm at least getting a quarter of it right.

That's the ME I've become. A mother. And not even an efficient one at that. Every morning I pat myself on the back for being able to get out of the house with a kid who's only partially dressed and fed a mere 20 minutes past the time I'd really wanted to leave.

What pains me, though, isn't the "ME" time I'm missing. It's the "HE" time.
I've been making due by keeping score during the morning and evening kickfest game that the inside of my belly has become. I lift my shirt and look down in amusement as one quadrant of my blue-veined abdomen jumps and squirms, seemingly passing some plaything to another area of the field.

I may not feel as if I'm in this game, but at least I'm cheering it on.

... That's what I tell myself, anyway.


*****

Note: I'd like to thank MommasWorld for nominating this site for a Bloggers Choice Award

The thought makes me swoon.

Return to the valley of the dolls

I hate McDonalds.

With the fire of a thousand suns does this hatred burn in my soul. Hate, I tell you. H-A-T-E.

I didn't have such a remarkable odium for the place until Ittybit was born and the lure of easy pancake breakfasts on the run attracted me like a mackerel to a live anchovy.

Because, you see, my failure as a mother is directly and concretely measured by the number of times we visit "Old MacDonald" each week instead of firing up the stove.
This week I'm 0 for 5.

However, this week, and until April 19th, it's not laziness and an inability to subvert the "cheese and whine" that's steering my car to the formidable Golden Arches – it's a fear of the warning: "while supplies last."

You see the Alexander Doll Company, makers of Madame Alexander dolls, has again teamed up with the fast food giant. This year the Happy Meal giveaway is one of eight, 4 ½-inch Wizard of Oz-themed dolls.

While I can resist the remarkably fragrant hotcakes and sausage biscuit sandwiches, and can forgo Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets completely, I can't pass up the toys. For decades I have had an addiction to the cutesy things all wrapped in plastic that Mickey D's been putting in its Happy Meals.

I'm so hooked, in fact, that the one thing I regret about my New Zealand honeymoon was passing up an opportunity to visit a makeshift Happy Meal toy museum in a little drinkwater town, which boasted a million exhibits.

Until this latest promotion, though, I was able to resist temptation. The weird aliens and My Little Ponies didn't reach out and grab me with their wily plastic charms. I successfully adhered to a self-imposed rule of "only on days when the pancake batter runs out," usually a planned occurrence once a week.

But this Madame Alexander thing — this nostalgic trip back to childhood, a behind-the-glass plaything, something to admired more than played with — is too seductive. I NEED to collect all eight.

And that's what they want me to do. They want me to indulge my inner child while I indulge hers. They want to indulge the little girl hiding in the pockets of my maternity wear who, as a child, coveted the super expensive baby dolls, the only purpose of which is for decorating beds. These dolls, mothers would explain, are not for touching. They are not for dragging around by the hair. They are special.

My childhood Madame Alexander Doll – "Beth" from the Little Women series – is still in its original box in my parent's bedroom closet. It was stored there throughout my childhood, taken down once in a while and shown to me so I could 'ooh and ah' at its beauty.

It was a little like the Lionel train set in my father's collection that came out each Christmas and circled the tree. The only difference was that we got to play with the train eventually once my dad had given us the refresher course on model train engineering, which usually lasted at least a week and included various tests in the art of breaking and reversing.

Now it was my turn.

When I opened the bag to dispense the breakfast fare and complementary toy and saw the doll staring up at me I froze. It was Dorothy. I threw the napkins over the package and hauled out the hotcakes.

She was so famished she forgot about the toy prize, and my greedy self decided not to remind her. "That doll is special," I thought with the squinty eyes calculation.

Eventually she remembered the loot and out of the package it came. She named her new doll "Pollycina, her crunchy doll" and immediately "combed" her hair into a do remarkably similar to an ’80s-era Flock of Seagulls look.

I watched in horror, but I knew what I had to do. As soon as I dropped her off at the sitter's house I had a date with a drive-thru.

Role reversal

I am not a morning person. I used to be a morning person. I think. But 11 months of midnight, two a.m. and 4 a.m. feedings – not to mention the subsequent Internet addiction that followed as I furiously searched "Sleeping Through The Night" and found dozens of moms like myself trolling the Web at all hours looking for small shards of useless advice -- has robbed me of my early-morning zeal.

Gone are the 6 a.m. walks with the dogs and the-greet-the-dawn yoga classes with television gurus.

These days my husband wakes me up at the crack of daylight and tells me "If you want a shower, now's the time." Meaning I've got at least 20 minutes before he's got to hit the road.

So under the pulsating needles of hot spray, I linger for as long as I can possibly manage before my skin turns all pruny and the water turns icy.

It's a test of strength really; his strength.

If I stay lost in the steam of the shower, I muse, maybe he’ll have managed to wrestle Ittybit into her clothes. If I rinse and repeat just once more, maybe he'll have managed to get her to choke down a few bites of cereal or a purse-sized portion of pancakes.

It's not often that it happens this way, but when the universe aligns and I emerge from the shower to find a little girl already dressed in her Wednesday best and sporting a big-old milk moustache as she bellies up to a plate of cottage cheese waffles, I think I should probably buy a lottery ticket because this is my lucky day.

Of course the decadence of it all goes straight to my head as I take more time to get ready for work. I'm even so bold as to check my e-mail messages and the New York Times Web site before relieving him of toddler duty.

When that happens I notice there's enough time to indulge Ittybit in an online video game filled with dancing bears and jumping squirrels before I have to coax her into the car seat.

The husband frowns at me as we sit calmly on the couch, giggling as the animated squirrel misses the berries and falls of the window ledge for the gazillionth time. "This is really hard," she says, commiserating.

"Could you at least clean up the kitchen a little before you go," he asks with a familiar sigh. It's the mantra of the one worker, one slacker household.

I turn off the computer and tell Ittybit we’ve got to get a move on. As she pulls on her coat, I grudgingly gather dishes from the table, depositing them into the dishwasher, and clear the counter of the breakfast debris. I apply some spray cleaner to the globs of pancake batter on the stove and wipe.

It occurs to me that this day, of all days, has felt like a role reversal. For the briefest of moments I understand what it feels like to be the proverbial dad. To have someone taking care of the nitty gritty of everyday life because, let's face it, during this window of development all roads usually lead to mom. ...

I want MOM to read to me.
I want MOM to help me get dressed.
I DON’T want DADDY to make me breakfast.
MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMMAMA ... .

By the time I've grabbed my own coat, Ittybit is halfway down the stairs and headed to the car as her father is heading up the stairs, having forgotten his keys.

"Hey, is your mom on her way?"

"No. She's just wasting water."

Living in a godless house ...

We live in a godless house.

That's not to say we don't have spirituality or values we want to impart to our children, just that they don't happen to include a supreme being.

We've always said that we will let Ittybit decide for herself what to believe about organized religion. It's a philosophy we understand parents of a certain age and upbringing to have harbored for at least a generation. We grew up with many kids whose spiritual search lead from Atheism to Zionism, and who eventually found something that best spoke to them.

Spirituality in our humble abode is more of a life tenet than dogma. Be good for goodness’ sake is our unspoken motto, and instead of church sermons our Sunday ritual has been sitting cross-legged or running around barefooted in a yoga studio with other moms and kid: a bendable play date.

It had occurred to me that Ittybit would learn things from other people that I don't agree with. I know my beliefs hold only so much weight and only for so long until I have to let them go and they evolve into her beliefs and her understandings -- beliefs that might be completely different from my own.

The last thing I wanted to do was raise a child who is intolerant of other people, and yet it seems that's just what I’m doing when I intervene on matters of fact when it comes to "faith."

I had envisioned explaining that we believe a certain "thing" and how that may differ from what others believe; diligently trying not to instill a prejudice that others' beliefs might be wrong. Of course I also envisioned these conversations taking place sometime in the not-foreseeable-future, say about the time she was trying to hit me up for the keys to the car or a raise in allowance.

But when a tired-of-being-cold preschooler, strapped into her car seat for our long Sunday drive, asked me to tell her "when God was going to bring spring" I had to pull the car over.

All of a sudden there seemed to be a definite right and a definite wrong.

"Honey, God doesn't bring spring. ... The seasons come based on the Earth's tilt and it’s rotation around the sun."

I didn't really expect her to understand, but I didn't expect big, fat, painful tears either.

"God does bring the spring … and the summer! He. Does. Bring. The. Seasons. So-and-so says he does."

And there it is -- a clash of faith.

"Well, honey, some people believe God is responsible for the creation of everything on Earth and in the universe, and that he sets things into motion, but we know that the seasons occur as a result of the Earth’s position in the solar system. It's nature.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

More tears and sobs -- so many in fact that I can barely make out the words that punctuate them.

"GOD BRINGS THE SUMMER. GOD BRINGS THE SPRING, I KNOW HE DOES."

How can I explain science to a preschooler? She neither understands nor cares how the universe works, but who's to say we can't start now? If God can personify faith, why can’t someone else personify science?

What we need, I think, is a woman. A strong woman who symbolizes all the wonders embodied in the natural world but who will recede in time, allowing science to stretch its wings and eventually leave the nest.

"Honey, let's just say, for now, that Mother Nature ushers in spring. She walks with spring around the globe to wherever it's going."

She was quiet for a time. She turned to look out the window and dried her tears.

The car was silent as I pulled back onto the road and drove a while longer.

When I checked the rearview mirror I saw the corners of her mouth turn up suddenly.

"Ittybit? How are you doing? Are you OK?"

"Yes, Mama. I'm fine. I'm just going to wait for Mother Nature to bring spring."

Good night, Maggie dog, sleep tight

Last summer, a friend of mine in the publishing bidness asked me to work on a photographic children's book with him. I would provide the photographs and he would write the text.

It would be all about my dogs — Madeline and Maggie.

His idea was simple:

"Take about 48 photographs of them playing together, spread them out on a table and we'll come up with a story about "Best Friends."

I stopped cold, realizing that with all the photographs I've taken over the years there are very few of the "Wonder Twins" together. Ok, they're not twins and we are actually a step-family. My husband came to the relationship with Maggie and I showed up with Madeline. And it was a rough start.

Maggie, two years older than Madeline (who, incidentally, we refer to as Jerk Monkey Hose Dog for her pranks and antics), would have nothing to do with the little pest for quite a while. She'd snap and growl and slink away to anywhere that would be puppy free. Maggie always seemed mature beyond her years ... for a Lab.

My friend's request also made me realize that even if I could get the girls to play together — my first babies, the furry loves of my life — are not as photogenic as they once were. They have bumps and skinny haunches, puffy bellies and graying fur. Though they are still beautiful to us, the industry might not agree. And too soon these creatures will be only a memory.

"That's even better," he said jovially. "We'll do a children's book about coping with the loss of a pet."

As I looked over at Ittybit as she splashed in the pool, it dawned on me that the past two years have really brought about an amazing transformation of our entire family, fuzzy members especially. They have gone from being standoffish and frightened of the pink little bundle that made all kinds of strange noises to being watchful and proud.

"Oooh, this is even better," says my friend. "I see morning show bookings in our future."

But we never got started. We never laid out those pictures on a table before we had to lay our dear Maggie to rest. A few weeks after the idea was hatched, a trip to the veterinarian revealed the old girl had a tumor filling one lung. He gave her eight weeks.

She lasted nearly eight months longer. For eight months she followed our girl around, slept in her room and seemed to perk up every time she heard her little voice call her name: Maggie dog ... Maggie.

I'd almost forgotten how sick she was; how little time was left. She still lumbered up and down the stairs, eating voraciously, and draging hers and all bowls of dinner-time giveaways away from her adopted sibling, who, incidentally, seemed to be gaining the weight poor Maggie was losing.

And just like that, Maggie just stopped eating. She stopped sleeping at Ittybit's bedside and spent more time outdoors, eerily staring in the direction of the place my husband had decided to lay her to rest.

Our regular vet doesn’t make house calls, so I pestered my husband to ask an imposition of a friend (and veterinarian) to make a long trip out of his way (and on his day off) to make sure her last sight on Earth was a view of home.

Ittybit and I went out for cake and bacon (kid cravings?) during Maggie's final treatment.

I worried how Ittybit would take the news. We'd been explaining what was happening all along, but I knew none of us would ever be prepared for the hole that such a large dog creates when they leave their families.

We talked about how Maggie would be gone when we got home.

It was a shock to see how much more prepared she was than I.

"Mama, don't cry. I'm not sad. Maggie's OK now."

Empty nesting

Nesting. How I hate that word.

For me it conjures up the image of some corybantic crow fruitlessly frittering around a nest, getting nowhere and next to nothing accomplished, as she waits for the egg to drop.

It's something quaint that only the female does; a force of nature that can be neither denied nor explained. We all just chalk it up to hormones and let it go at that.

Not me. The first time around I seemed to have missed that portion of the pregnancy.
When Ittybit was busy baking, we were renovating the house (or I should more accurately say my husband was busy ripping out walls and putting in floors) -- reconstructing our two-bedroom flat into a three-bedroom abode fit for a family.

Since I was that furibund creature flapping with nowhere to fly, I plunked myself down on the couch and watched back-to-back episodes of "Trading Spaces," "Design on a Dime" and "While You Were Out."

Nesting wasn't in my nature.

We had a hand-me-down cradle, some hand-me-down clothes and lots of gifts pouring in. I wasn't concerned with furnishings and other kiddy accoutrements because there wasn't a finished room to put them in anyway. The most involved I got in decorating the room that would be hers (11 months after her birth) was choosing the paint color and selecting a carpet. What more could I do?

I might have had a little of the urge to clean right before the contractions started clamping down on me, but then the husband and our dogs tracked in mud and snow, and threw their clothes on the floor, or dribbled water from the bowl, and all my efforts disappeared like magic.

I’ve heard people say that the first child changes your life, turns it upside down and inside out in a dramatic way, but that the second child just slips in during an intermission and quietly becomes part of the drama.

Often, they’ll say the frantic need to ready the nursery and gather supplies for the newbie gets lost in the chores of everyday life. The newness and need to do something — anything — while you wait just isn't there to the same degree since it was the first child who stole the show.

Yet for me, it's as if the process has been reversed. Since we found out Thing 2 is a boy, I seem to have a need to get ready. The room that he will call his own is little more than a closet with sliding doors and no windows. There is just enough room for a bed and a dresser and a few shelves.

The challenge of fitting as much as I can in a small space has filled my head with dread.

Oddly, my craving for television design shows hasn’t returned. Instead the urge to declutter my own closets and organize Ittybit’s has reared its ugly head. In addition to disappearing neglected toys and outgrown or threadbare clothes, I've delivered trunk loads of items to Goodwill, purchased new hangers, shelves and chests of drawers, and even devised elaborate plans for storing off-season attire in a more organized way.

Everything on table and countertops either finds of permanent home or finds itself at the bottom of the trash, hidden under orange peels and coffee grounds so that it's demise will remain unnoticed.

With each toss, I remind myself: less is more. But somehow it still just feels as if I'm merely flapping.

I imagine its all just preparation for when I'm ready to tackle decorating the baby's new closet ... er ... room.

We interrupt the weekday peace and quiet with this unexpected announcement ...

i obsess has bestowed on this here "blog" and it's weekly offerings a Thinking Blogger Award. It's some happy "share the love" token thought up by some brainiac over at The Thinking Blog



I'm terribly honored that the designation came from her, a blogger whose writing I drool over.

And so, as is the custom of this particular bloggy meme, and without further ado, and in no particular order, here are my nods to bloggers who always make me think:

The Mad Momma
Little Bald Doctors
Mean Girl to the Rescue
Gingajoy
Half of the Sky

Go pick up your awards, peeps. You deserve them.

Via con heuvos then ... until Sunday.

UPDATE: Unbeknownst to either of us, Gingajoy and I were nominating each other at the same time. How's that for great minds thinking alike?

Zen and the art of prenatal maintenance

Circling the block for the seventh time, waiting for the gods of parking to smile down on my green trash-strewn sedan, it hits me: My mind is finally blank, the zen I've been dreaming of.

But I can hardly remember why I'm here let alone obsessing over the lack accessible spaces. With each turn of the wheel, each pass of the same neighborhood, my reasons for being in this very place eludes me.

At this point I'm just circling. If a car came careening out of a space right in front of me, I'd probably take no notice and continue my laps.

Yoga and meditation couldn't accomplish in a dozen years what a growing level of human chorionic gonadotropin -- that's hCG to you medical types -- could pull off in a matter of days: What the Zen Buddhists call 'No mind.'

But this isn't what I would call enlightenment.

I imagine that the 'No Mind' enlightenment promises has very little to do with a mind unencumbered by facts and figures; a mind that can't remember any more telephone numbers or its own wedding anniversary. The enlightened mind, I believe, has more to do with a being able to witness without judging and let go; a mind that is aware but unconcerned.

Pregnancy mind is just blank. And not a good blank, either. It's the kind of blank that the FCC has been vigilantly leveling heavy fines against: The blankity-blank-blank blank!

Pregnancy mind wakes you up at 2:30 a.m. to warn you that "very bad things" are going to happen and then goes cackling away while you obsess for the next several months. Pregnancy mind forgets everything you struggle to remember, save for doctors' appointments and Skor bars hidden in the kitchen last October. It keeps you from sleeping or (depending on the model) from staying awake. Pregnancy mind wanders about unleashed.

It's as if my real mind has taken a vacation without me. I imagine it's lolling on some island off the Pacific Rim, slurping Mai Thais through a straw; eating unpasteurized cheeses and reading Dostoyevskii, while its pregnant equivalent is on a diet of saltines and decaffeinated tea and can't even focus on reading the return address labels on incoming mail.

My vacationing mind, I imagine, is thumbing its proverbial nose in my pregnant mind's direction; asking its cabana boy to deliver a fresh cocktail as I try to remember where I put my keys.

It's all too much really. The pressure of remembering to send Ittybit out into the world each morning complete with shoes and socks is weighing on me.

On good days we arrive at the sitter's house without lunches, sneakers and sippy cups. These days I'm lucky if I remember to bring Ittybit.

The stress of it doesn't help. It's similar to finding an all-day parking spot downtown on a weekday; because waits at the doctors’ office, unfortunately, require such a time commitment.

I'm trying to let it go. I'm trying to realize as I drive around in search of a blank slot in which to dock my car, willing one into existence is futile. The more I want it, the less likely it is to appear. It's like the pregnancy itself: the more I wanted it the more it seemed impossible. When I had just about given up hope, there it was.

Now if I can just remember where I parked the car.