I am NOT ready to go back to school. I want to stay right here in THE REAL WORLD.
I was reminded of the many worlds we inhabit last weekend when I somehow stepped off a perfectly good spot against the wall at a cocktail party into a spiraling vortex of darkness of my own making: attempting small talk about schools.
The very thought of having to deal with teachers, administrators, No Child Left Behind and all the other complexities that come with herding; not to mention having to have six, sharpened pencils; three pens; four binders; two theme composition books; a scientific calculator; a package of markers; two Pink Pearl erasers AND a rectangular-shaped box of Kleenex gives me chills.
No, I am not ready to leave the REAL WORLD and return to a place where irrational numbers actually make sense to someone.
You know The Real World — that mythical place our parents and teachers warned us would be none-too hospitable if we didn’t know how do any number of menial tasks from reading to chewing with our mouths closed.
In the Real World a person would be doomed to living life under a bridge if they don't learn how to balance a checkbook, or memorize Pi to the tune of 17 numerical stops. In the Real World spell checkers may save your sorry illiterate soul but they won't make you Chaucer of the e-mail message. In the Real World it might be helpful to know who was the Ninth President off the cuff, but Google and your Blackberry have your back should the need to know who served the least amount of time in the Oval Office arises.
These conversations never start innocently. The topic of education is rife with potential pitfalls. Teachers don’t get paid enough. They get paid too much. Parents don't care about their kids. Parents are over protective of their kids. There aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done. Everyone has too much free time on their hands.
When kids get into The Real World, the thought is, they will not be ready for the workplace. They are not prepared for life. And some one is to blame.
Parents.
Teachers.
Society.
Nobody knows what the solutions are but everyone can point to a problem and person who bears responsibility.
So there I am, standing with my vacant stare (all mothers in some way or other can relate to that one I think) next to the cheese plate when someone shoots off their mouth about 'kids today' and the fog in my head evaporates.
"You know, I really don’t think there is a problem with kids today. I think the problem with education is really a red herring.
"We educate everyone. Most countries don’t. And let's face it, not everyone is a rocket scientist. Not everyone is going to Harvard or Yale.
"When we rail against the kid in class who is disruptive – That kid who ends up sitting outside the principal’s office four days out of five - we don't stop to think that that kid is talked about in the staff rooms, his record follows him and his behavior, in turn, becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Why don't we think of children as innocent and perfect after they are toilet trained?
"Why don't we call ourselves the problem?
"When a student is acting out, why do we rush to labels and intervention and medication?
"Why does that kid get labeled and tracked? Why do we not try different things to get that kid back?
"Why? Because the teachers have 30 students and just as many mandates.
"Why? Because it’s easier to get people to fit into a mold.
"Why? Because as a society we all have to follow rules.
"Why? Because IT’S NOT FAIR to someone who's really working hard.
"And I guess I say to that: Life isn't fair.
"Seriously, look around you. There's someone in your office slacking off, just like in school. There’s someone you detest. There's someone who someone else is always talking about: 'In A Real Office, so-and-so would NEVER get away with that. A Real Office would NEVER put up with …'"
I stopped ranting for a moment and looked around me. … "They'd all moved away from me on the bench, there, glary eyeball and all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things. ... "
Then it occurred to me:
I never really did find The Real World all those people warned me about. Everything I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten, and for all else there's Google.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Getting at the root of the problem
I couldn't help but smile as I held the camera to my face and pressed down on the shutter. All I could picture were Willy Wonka's Oompa-Loompas twittering around Mike T.V. as the technician brought Ittybit into the closet-sized x-ray room and suited her up for her close-up.
It was going remarkably well. Even Ittybit was confident things were going to be better on this, her third official visit to the dentist: "Hey mom! I didn't even throw up in the car," she said as we pulled into a parking space in the dental office parking lot. "Well, that is an improvement," I admitted earnestly.
The first two x-rays went well, but the third one that was to show the back teeth was tricky. She had to bite on a stick, and the card flaps of the film dug into her gums. It was "ouchie."
I could feel the discomfort in my own mouth, just recalling the procedure. I put the camera back in my bag. No need to preserve the pain.
Still, though, Ittybit was willing to try. She even let the technician attempt five or six insertion variations before we all threw in the towel. She's got a tiny mouth like her mom.
Of course I became worried when the dentist came into the exam room carrying the film. This unexpected visit, I knew, trumped the usual procedure: FIRST the hygienist cleans and THEN the dentist examines.
Turns out the dentist wanted to know if she ever had a traumatic fall, perhaps when she was a toddler, because the roots of her top front baby teeth were fractured clean through.
I was stunned. How is it possible to have damage to the root and not to the teeth? The doctor kept talking and I kept trying to remember a fall that would cause such an injury?
I tried to extract the lost memory.
Nothing.
"Could it have been more recent?" I ask after not being able to dredge up one traumatic early fall.
"There was that time when she was two, we were visiting her grandmother in Maine, when she fell off a chair and onto the dog's water bowl. No, that injury was really along her chin line. ..."
Perhaps it happened at the babysitter's house.
"Do you remember falling at your babysitter's house? She said you 'took a header,' do you remember that," I ask Ittybit.
"NO! That wasn't it, mama," she chides. "I hurt my hand and chest that time."
I couldn't let it go.
"I vaguely recall her hitting her face on something recently and there being blood in her mouth ... I thought she'd bitten her tongue or her lip."
And I thought my inability to prevent cavities in her little mouth was going to make the "Somewhat-Marginal Parents’ Union" parental advisory board rescind my application for "Mother of the Year." Not noticing that she’d suffered a "traumatic" injury was likely to get me permanently barred from membership.
"Don’t beat yourself up; this isn't uncommon," said the dentist, noticing my alarm. "We just have to watch it to make sure it doesn't get infected and damage the permanent teeth."
Another thing the injury changes is the course of action for her two cavities that are smack dab in the middle of her front teeth. She's not going to have to get them filled now.
"But I want to get the cavity fixed today," she wailed, no doubt wanting her "perfect princess teeth" to indeed BE perfect.
"They will be fine," I try to reassure her later. "The cavities are in your baby teeth. Eventually they will fall out and be replaced by permanent teeth that don't have any cavities."
"When I am five or eight."
"What do you mean, five or eight?"
"Yeah. That's when my teeth will fall out — when I am five or eight."
It was going remarkably well. Even Ittybit was confident things were going to be better on this, her third official visit to the dentist: "Hey mom! I didn't even throw up in the car," she said as we pulled into a parking space in the dental office parking lot. "Well, that is an improvement," I admitted earnestly.
The first two x-rays went well, but the third one that was to show the back teeth was tricky. She had to bite on a stick, and the card flaps of the film dug into her gums. It was "ouchie."
I could feel the discomfort in my own mouth, just recalling the procedure. I put the camera back in my bag. No need to preserve the pain.
Still, though, Ittybit was willing to try. She even let the technician attempt five or six insertion variations before we all threw in the towel. She's got a tiny mouth like her mom.
Of course I became worried when the dentist came into the exam room carrying the film. This unexpected visit, I knew, trumped the usual procedure: FIRST the hygienist cleans and THEN the dentist examines.
Turns out the dentist wanted to know if she ever had a traumatic fall, perhaps when she was a toddler, because the roots of her top front baby teeth were fractured clean through.
I was stunned. How is it possible to have damage to the root and not to the teeth? The doctor kept talking and I kept trying to remember a fall that would cause such an injury?
I tried to extract the lost memory.
Nothing.
"Could it have been more recent?" I ask after not being able to dredge up one traumatic early fall.
"There was that time when she was two, we were visiting her grandmother in Maine, when she fell off a chair and onto the dog's water bowl. No, that injury was really along her chin line. ..."
Perhaps it happened at the babysitter's house.
"Do you remember falling at your babysitter's house? She said you 'took a header,' do you remember that," I ask Ittybit.
"NO! That wasn't it, mama," she chides. "I hurt my hand and chest that time."
I couldn't let it go.
"I vaguely recall her hitting her face on something recently and there being blood in her mouth ... I thought she'd bitten her tongue or her lip."
And I thought my inability to prevent cavities in her little mouth was going to make the "Somewhat-Marginal Parents’ Union" parental advisory board rescind my application for "Mother of the Year." Not noticing that she’d suffered a "traumatic" injury was likely to get me permanently barred from membership.
"Don’t beat yourself up; this isn't uncommon," said the dentist, noticing my alarm. "We just have to watch it to make sure it doesn't get infected and damage the permanent teeth."
Another thing the injury changes is the course of action for her two cavities that are smack dab in the middle of her front teeth. She's not going to have to get them filled now.
"But I want to get the cavity fixed today," she wailed, no doubt wanting her "perfect princess teeth" to indeed BE perfect.
"They will be fine," I try to reassure her later. "The cavities are in your baby teeth. Eventually they will fall out and be replaced by permanent teeth that don't have any cavities."
"When I am five or eight."
"What do you mean, five or eight?"
"Yeah. That's when my teeth will fall out — when I am five or eight."
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Last stop, ‘Wonderland’
The saddest part about growing up is the fact that our sense of wonder changes so drastically.
When I was a kid and my parents told me we'd be going to the aquarium in Boston, I was predictably giddy. I knew there would be a sea lion waiting to greet us outside the place and countless fish swimming about inside. I wasn't afraid of the darkened inner chamber that made the multi-storied tank a standout.
As a parent, I may still be giddy at the thought of taking my kids to the places I remember fondly from my own childhood, but something always happens between the time the plan is dreamt up and the time it actually happens.
In our case the "something" was four inches of rain.
We were visiting relatives in the suburbs of Boston and had decided to take the kids to see the city's famous sea life. We took the subway instead of driving our car to save the headache of finding parking.
Since I was the only one without a raincoat I shouldn't have been surprised to find a line of people snaking its way past the ticket booth almost to the street, where trolley shills were trying to entice would be aquarium visitors out of the rain.
Not even an hour into the day and I was already feeling despair.
"We can't wait in this rain," I say to my husband, who cannot, as yet, admit defeat.
"WHAT!? NO AQUARIUM?!?" shouted Ittybit, tears welling up in her big green eyes as I try to explain that her brother and she are too little to wait in the icy damp.
My husband, with his eagle eyes, spots an ice cream shop across the street and suggests I take the kids there and get a cone. He'll wait on line.
We spend as much time in the two-seater shop as we can, sharing a double chocolate Oreo chip cone and being laughed at by the counter man, who, if his t-shirt was any indication, hadn't outgrown his fanaticism for '80s hair bands.
"Yeah, usually they set up a tent for the people in line when it rains," he says. "Too bad you didn't wear a raincoat."
I sent Ittybit up to the counter with a buck for his tip jar even though my ego wanted to send her up with a suggestion to ditch the threadbare Bad Company swag. But who was I to preach? I was just a middle-aged mom out in the rain without a coat.
So back I trudged, head down, to the ticket line, hoping the husband had inched his way under the overhang.
Not yet.
Of course at that very moment I hear: "I have to go potty."
I look around and notice a gaggle of people huddled underneath a movie theater marquis. We make our way over. As a seasoned parent who has witnessed a lion's share of "accidents" I effortlessly ignored the sign read: "Restrooms for patrons only" and marched right through a throng of people into the throne room.
By the time we found our way back outside, the husband was waiting near the aquarium door, drenched, with nearly $50 in tickets and motioning us inside.
There a photographer was waiting, armed with a squeaky toy shark and the promise of more soaking to come.
"When you leave, don't forget to stop and look at your pictures. The complete set is only $21."
By the time we got back on the subway — $100 lighter and four scary-looking commemorative photographs heavier — we really were headed to Wonderland. It was, after all, the last stop on the T.
When I was a kid and my parents told me we'd be going to the aquarium in Boston, I was predictably giddy. I knew there would be a sea lion waiting to greet us outside the place and countless fish swimming about inside. I wasn't afraid of the darkened inner chamber that made the multi-storied tank a standout.
As a parent, I may still be giddy at the thought of taking my kids to the places I remember fondly from my own childhood, but something always happens between the time the plan is dreamt up and the time it actually happens.
In our case the "something" was four inches of rain.
We were visiting relatives in the suburbs of Boston and had decided to take the kids to see the city's famous sea life. We took the subway instead of driving our car to save the headache of finding parking.
Since I was the only one without a raincoat I shouldn't have been surprised to find a line of people snaking its way past the ticket booth almost to the street, where trolley shills were trying to entice would be aquarium visitors out of the rain.
Not even an hour into the day and I was already feeling despair.
"We can't wait in this rain," I say to my husband, who cannot, as yet, admit defeat.
"WHAT!? NO AQUARIUM?!?" shouted Ittybit, tears welling up in her big green eyes as I try to explain that her brother and she are too little to wait in the icy damp.
My husband, with his eagle eyes, spots an ice cream shop across the street and suggests I take the kids there and get a cone. He'll wait on line.
We spend as much time in the two-seater shop as we can, sharing a double chocolate Oreo chip cone and being laughed at by the counter man, who, if his t-shirt was any indication, hadn't outgrown his fanaticism for '80s hair bands.
"Yeah, usually they set up a tent for the people in line when it rains," he says. "Too bad you didn't wear a raincoat."
I sent Ittybit up to the counter with a buck for his tip jar even though my ego wanted to send her up with a suggestion to ditch the threadbare Bad Company swag. But who was I to preach? I was just a middle-aged mom out in the rain without a coat.
So back I trudged, head down, to the ticket line, hoping the husband had inched his way under the overhang.
Not yet.
Of course at that very moment I hear: "I have to go potty."
I look around and notice a gaggle of people huddled underneath a movie theater marquis. We make our way over. As a seasoned parent who has witnessed a lion's share of "accidents" I effortlessly ignored the sign read: "Restrooms for patrons only" and marched right through a throng of people into the throne room.
By the time we found our way back outside, the husband was waiting near the aquarium door, drenched, with nearly $50 in tickets and motioning us inside.
There a photographer was waiting, armed with a squeaky toy shark and the promise of more soaking to come.
"When you leave, don't forget to stop and look at your pictures. The complete set is only $21."
By the time we got back on the subway — $100 lighter and four scary-looking commemorative photographs heavier — we really were headed to Wonderland. It was, after all, the last stop on the T.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Can you see me now?
Skype is the Devil.
For those of you living happily in the 20th century, let me explain: Skype is a little piece of software that allows computer users to make free "phone-like" calls over the internet to anywhere in the world.
Founded in 2003 by the people who created (and then sold) the demonized file sharing site KaZaA, Skype is really a kind of peer-to-peer networking system that allows for large file shares but is also billed as a computer to computer voice and image telephony service.
Got that? No? Just read on.
I first heard of Skype when I sold a photograph to a company that makes REALLY EXPENSIVE strollers in New Zealand, and they wanted me to send them a large file; too large for regular e-mail.
The lovely woman who made sure a tidy sum of U.S. money was wired to my bank account, also walked me through the downloading and uploading process of Skype.
For that little transaction the heavens opened.
But a few months later, my mother-in-law, who is spending a year in Europe, has discovered what I believe is the darker side of the free service: Video conferencing.
Oh, it sounded SOOOOOO perfect.
All we had to do was download the software and call each other online. We could bask in the glow of the computer's time-lapse imagery for the bargain price of free instead of paying gobs of money to have a few measly little minutes saying "hello, how's things, everyone's fine."
Of course there are glitches.
I'd already downloaded the software months ago, so I was feeling technically superior. The Napoleon complex wore off post haste, however, when I learned the squirrel that powers my laptop from its tiny little wheel in the hard drive carried off the little blue Skype icon and presumably fed it to its young.
Three hours later, I've downloaded the software twice and have found and lost all the screen names of all my newly membered Skype family members at least three times.
Eventually I get to the part where my computer was enabled to call the far-flung members of our family but the list tells me none of my people are online.
So I wait, staring at the computer screen, hoping one of the faint blue dots will darken.
Can you hear the drumming fingers? No?
Well believe me. I was drumming them to stubs.
"I can't believe we are going to have to CALL them to tell them to turn on their computers so we can CALL them," I complain to the husband.
So he does his best squirrel wrangling and e-mail slinging and in no time we're back online.
There we are, the four of us, sitting on top of each other in front of the laptop.
"Mom! Champ is pulling my hair!"
"That's nothing," I one-up her, "he just head-butted me."
Still no granny.
"She was here," my husband says, wondering if the squirrel, angered by our demands upon him, has turned into a harbinger of revenge.
But a few mouse clicks and several e-mails later and we really are ready to go.
Well almost. It seems grandma has trouble keeping her video feed on, and our computer keeps shutting off.
Ittybit - book in hand ready to read to her grandma all about the "Three Little Pigs" - is about to melt down.
"I'm NEVEREVERNEVEREVER NEVER going to be able to read to grandma EVER AGAIN!!!! AAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRR GGGGGGG AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHTTTTT."
The husband tries to save the day, walking his mom through the minefield of voice over internet protocol as I try to distract Ittybit from her tirade and juggle the Champ who's getting antsy for his midmorning snack. He swivels the computer in my direction just as I try to get the boy latched on ... "Ahem. Thanks for that."
He swings it back as Ittybit starts reciting her book with all the flair of a Shakespearian actor.
" ... And I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down. ... and then he gobbled up the pig."
"Oh, dear. You have one of the OLD books, where the pig gets eaten?" Granny says in mild shock.
And it occurs to me that while getting to see her grand kids hop about on the couch from "across the pond" is one thing, getting to see the clownshow behind the scenes - including me with my sweatshirt ever-so-fashionably tucked into my bra - is quite another.
For those of you living happily in the 20th century, let me explain: Skype is a little piece of software that allows computer users to make free "phone-like" calls over the internet to anywhere in the world.
Founded in 2003 by the people who created (and then sold) the demonized file sharing site KaZaA, Skype is really a kind of peer-to-peer networking system that allows for large file shares but is also billed as a computer to computer voice and image telephony service.
Got that? No? Just read on.
I first heard of Skype when I sold a photograph to a company that makes REALLY EXPENSIVE strollers in New Zealand, and they wanted me to send them a large file; too large for regular e-mail.
The lovely woman who made sure a tidy sum of U.S. money was wired to my bank account, also walked me through the downloading and uploading process of Skype.
For that little transaction the heavens opened.
But a few months later, my mother-in-law, who is spending a year in Europe, has discovered what I believe is the darker side of the free service: Video conferencing.
Oh, it sounded SOOOOOO perfect.
All we had to do was download the software and call each other online. We could bask in the glow of the computer's time-lapse imagery for the bargain price of free instead of paying gobs of money to have a few measly little minutes saying "hello, how's things, everyone's fine."
Of course there are glitches.
I'd already downloaded the software months ago, so I was feeling technically superior. The Napoleon complex wore off post haste, however, when I learned the squirrel that powers my laptop from its tiny little wheel in the hard drive carried off the little blue Skype icon and presumably fed it to its young.
Three hours later, I've downloaded the software twice and have found and lost all the screen names of all my newly membered Skype family members at least three times.
Eventually I get to the part where my computer was enabled to call the far-flung members of our family but the list tells me none of my people are online.
So I wait, staring at the computer screen, hoping one of the faint blue dots will darken.
Can you hear the drumming fingers? No?
Well believe me. I was drumming them to stubs.
"I can't believe we are going to have to CALL them to tell them to turn on their computers so we can CALL them," I complain to the husband.
So he does his best squirrel wrangling and e-mail slinging and in no time we're back online.
There we are, the four of us, sitting on top of each other in front of the laptop.
"Mom! Champ is pulling my hair!"
"That's nothing," I one-up her, "he just head-butted me."
Still no granny.
"She was here," my husband says, wondering if the squirrel, angered by our demands upon him, has turned into a harbinger of revenge.
But a few mouse clicks and several e-mails later and we really are ready to go.
Well almost. It seems grandma has trouble keeping her video feed on, and our computer keeps shutting off.
Ittybit - book in hand ready to read to her grandma all about the "Three Little Pigs" - is about to melt down.
"I'm NEVEREVERNEVEREVER NEVER going to be able to read to grandma EVER AGAIN!!!! AAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRR GGGGGGG AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHTTTTT."
The husband tries to save the day, walking his mom through the minefield of voice over internet protocol as I try to distract Ittybit from her tirade and juggle the Champ who's getting antsy for his midmorning snack. He swivels the computer in my direction just as I try to get the boy latched on ... "Ahem. Thanks for that."
He swings it back as Ittybit starts reciting her book with all the flair of a Shakespearian actor.
" ... And I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down. ... and then he gobbled up the pig."
"Oh, dear. You have one of the OLD books, where the pig gets eaten?" Granny says in mild shock.
And it occurs to me that while getting to see her grand kids hop about on the couch from "across the pond" is one thing, getting to see the clownshow behind the scenes - including me with my sweatshirt ever-so-fashionably tucked into my bra - is quite another.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
There are a lot of boobs in the world, but the law is on the side of the lactating ones
TAP, TAP, TAP!!!
What time is it?
Two Thousand Eight you say?
Oh. ... Really? 'Cause after the hoopla at the New York State Museum recently, I could have sworn it was half past 1600. You know, when the Puritans started putting roots down in New England. And yet, as details trickled out, it also felt a little like the Twilight Zone.
A woman breastfeeding an infant alleges someone wearing a badge and acting as an authority figure told her to move her baby's snack into the loo, and further threatened that she'd better hop to it since another employee had already gone to report the incident.
When the woman and her husband complained about the treatment to museum authorities, they said instead of receiving an apology they were told simply that the admonition wasn't leveled by a museum employee.
Can't you just see the collective shrugging of shoulders?
Museum officials contend that if the mother was approached by anyone it could have been one of the many state employees with ID tags who regularly walk through the museum as part of their daily walking route. The incident — as reported — they explain does not reflect the policy of the museum or the actions of its staff.
To paraphrase broadcast and written accounts the official stance seems to have been: we're not saying it didn't happen, but we're saying it wasn't one of our people. And we can't control the unwashed public. We have always welcomed breastfeeding mothers.
The results were somewhat predictable.
Outraged mothers assembled grass-roots style — prompted by posts in online forums and bulletin boards — to participate in a nurse-in to either protest the museum's handling of the incident or the fact that a woman was made to feel bad for something the law protects.
As a nursing mother I may get drummed out of the corp for suggesting nurse-ins seem a little silly to me, especially in light of the potential that some random state employee threw some weight around they shouldn't have. I understand the sentiment, but I think it's time for knee-jerk reaction to go in a forward-moving direction.
I think, at some point, we have to get past the indignant outrage and the desire to have everyone accept the laws with unfettered joy. Especially when you KNOW the law is on your side.
In a case like this one, I’d have no qualms about telling the offender: "YOU with the pointy finger! Bring me to your leader! Let's settle this here and now, because you are so wrong the light from right is going to take 50 million years to get to the place where we are currently standing."
I say this because I know that I can nurse my child in any public place because our state specifically says I can.
I don't have to change anyone's mind.
I don't have to admonish the puritanical mother who doesn't want her prepubescent son to see that kind of thing. I don't need to tell her to "Grow Up!" or let her know I think she could better educate the video-game obsessed fruit of her loins if she accepted the notion that breasts — outside of Playboy magazine — aren't always that titilating.
I don't have to nurse in a toilet.
I don't have to plan my errands better.
I don't have to pack a folding tent in my diaper bag for camouflage.
I don't have to express milk and bottle feed.
I don't have to feed my son formula.
I don't have to stay home until he's weaned.
I don't have to do any of that because the laws already say I have the right to nurse in public.
The law doesn't even say I must practice discretion. If I want I can show more than Janet Jackson at halftime.
The museum might have been able to stem the tide of outrage with a quick and profuse apology, but I think the outrage about acceptance is really what's in play, here.
I believe people who stare do so just because they know what's happening whether they can see anything or not.
It may very well have been someone outside of the museum's employ who took it upon themselves to admonish a fellow patron. The surest way to combat that, however, is stand up to it immediately and without malice.
Even most shopping malls – which are essentially private places that invite the public to spend its money – have policies that allow open nursing as well as offer "family rooms" for mothers who wish to nurse in privacy.
Since the battle has been fought and won already, it's time for individual women to take advantage of the victory and stop beating this dead horse.
There are a lot of boobs out there, but the law is on the side of the lactating ones.
What time is it?
Two Thousand Eight you say?
Oh. ... Really? 'Cause after the hoopla at the New York State Museum recently, I could have sworn it was half past 1600. You know, when the Puritans started putting roots down in New England. And yet, as details trickled out, it also felt a little like the Twilight Zone.
A woman breastfeeding an infant alleges someone wearing a badge and acting as an authority figure told her to move her baby's snack into the loo, and further threatened that she'd better hop to it since another employee had already gone to report the incident.
When the woman and her husband complained about the treatment to museum authorities, they said instead of receiving an apology they were told simply that the admonition wasn't leveled by a museum employee.
Can't you just see the collective shrugging of shoulders?
Museum officials contend that if the mother was approached by anyone it could have been one of the many state employees with ID tags who regularly walk through the museum as part of their daily walking route. The incident — as reported — they explain does not reflect the policy of the museum or the actions of its staff.
To paraphrase broadcast and written accounts the official stance seems to have been: we're not saying it didn't happen, but we're saying it wasn't one of our people. And we can't control the unwashed public. We have always welcomed breastfeeding mothers.
The results were somewhat predictable.
Outraged mothers assembled grass-roots style — prompted by posts in online forums and bulletin boards — to participate in a nurse-in to either protest the museum's handling of the incident or the fact that a woman was made to feel bad for something the law protects.
As a nursing mother I may get drummed out of the corp for suggesting nurse-ins seem a little silly to me, especially in light of the potential that some random state employee threw some weight around they shouldn't have. I understand the sentiment, but I think it's time for knee-jerk reaction to go in a forward-moving direction.
I think, at some point, we have to get past the indignant outrage and the desire to have everyone accept the laws with unfettered joy. Especially when you KNOW the law is on your side.
In a case like this one, I’d have no qualms about telling the offender: "YOU with the pointy finger! Bring me to your leader! Let's settle this here and now, because you are so wrong the light from right is going to take 50 million years to get to the place where we are currently standing."
I say this because I know that I can nurse my child in any public place because our state specifically says I can.
I don't have to change anyone's mind.
I don't have to admonish the puritanical mother who doesn't want her prepubescent son to see that kind of thing. I don't need to tell her to "Grow Up!" or let her know I think she could better educate the video-game obsessed fruit of her loins if she accepted the notion that breasts — outside of Playboy magazine — aren't always that titilating.
I don't have to nurse in a toilet.
I don't have to plan my errands better.
I don't have to pack a folding tent in my diaper bag for camouflage.
I don't have to express milk and bottle feed.
I don't have to feed my son formula.
I don't have to stay home until he's weaned.
I don't have to do any of that because the laws already say I have the right to nurse in public.
The law doesn't even say I must practice discretion. If I want I can show more than Janet Jackson at halftime.
The museum might have been able to stem the tide of outrage with a quick and profuse apology, but I think the outrage about acceptance is really what's in play, here.
I believe people who stare do so just because they know what's happening whether they can see anything or not.
It may very well have been someone outside of the museum's employ who took it upon themselves to admonish a fellow patron. The surest way to combat that, however, is stand up to it immediately and without malice.
Even most shopping malls – which are essentially private places that invite the public to spend its money – have policies that allow open nursing as well as offer "family rooms" for mothers who wish to nurse in privacy.
Since the battle has been fought and won already, it's time for individual women to take advantage of the victory and stop beating this dead horse.
There are a lot of boobs out there, but the law is on the side of the lactating ones.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Just another suburban dwelling illness
When I was growing up I heard the term "Cabin Fever" a lot at this time of year.
Usually it was someone trying to describe why the Kool-Aid mom was in a funk.
I always wondered why they called it that: CABIN FEVER. It sounded so ... rustic; so quaint.
I suppose it must have something to do with a simpler time when log homes dotted the landscape and a quick trip to the corner store took four days and a team of horses (uphill, both ways of course). Once the snow came, going out into the world just wasn’t an option.
But how, one might wonder, has such a quaint term survived as equine ingenuity evolved into combustion engines, and cabins in the woods became a horseshoe drive of split-level ranches tucked neatly into bedroom communities?
We have all manner of technologically-enhanced gadgets that make withstanding winter's worst effortless. Aside from the elemental snow, ice and cold, there's really nothing that society hasn't tamed in winter.
For example, there's really no such thing as seasonal produce. Want fresh strawberries in the dead of winter? Someone's growing them somewhere. They're never more than a truck ride away.
There's so much to do out in the world during all seasons, especially with our modern all-wheel-drive and all-hours-merchants, and yet Cabin Fever persists. How is that possible you ask?
You might try and get scientific; point to the sky and start talking about the length of the day or the angle of the sun. You might say it's the light we lack.
But you'd be wrong.
Because as sure as I am about the ennui of winter, I am also positively positive I know what REALLY causes cabin fever.
Children.
Children cause cabin fever.
You thought their germy little mitts spread only the common cold and minor cases of typhoid, didn't you?
As I look at my firstborn, dressed in a tutu and cleats as she dusts the house with her cache of tiny toys, it becomes apparent how my sloth has settled in firmer with each passing year since her arrival.
"Let's go for a walk," I say, amplifying manufactured excitement. "We'll get all dressed up, put The Champ into your old bear suit, and we'll walk into the village for some cocoa!"
"No. It's too cold. We can do that when it's spring," she answers.
Children, with their slow-motivating natures and their inability to withstand any one activity for more than the time it takes the commercial to change – not to mention the inevitable happenstance that once you get them dressed in their infinite layers of socks and thermals and snow pants and winter jackets and five-fingered mittens and hats and scarves, someone is going to have to PEE - are festering Petri dishes of the bacillus that causes the mind-wasting illness, Cabin Fever.
Eventually I end up grateful she’s not the outdoors type. By February's end the idea of corralling two kids in the muck and slop for a wintry beverage she won't drink anyway, not to mention having to keep track of hats and gloves and boots on the trek over to the shop, makes me an immovable object, staking claim to my favorite end of the couch nearest the woodstove.
I am grateful, yet guilty.
While others are getting out into the world - breathing in really cold air and exercising their minds and bodies - we are listening to bad television and trashing the house. The most exercise I get in any given week is from climbing the stairs to wash the previous week’s worth of laundry.
It's pathetic.
That's why I decided this was the weekend to turn off the TV, forget the linens and head for the slopes.
That's right, folks. We're going skiing.
(OK ... You can stop laughing now.)
They have cabins on the mountain right? I bet they have fireplaces, too.
Usually it was someone trying to describe why the Kool-Aid mom was in a funk.
I always wondered why they called it that: CABIN FEVER. It sounded so ... rustic; so quaint.
I suppose it must have something to do with a simpler time when log homes dotted the landscape and a quick trip to the corner store took four days and a team of horses (uphill, both ways of course). Once the snow came, going out into the world just wasn’t an option.
But how, one might wonder, has such a quaint term survived as equine ingenuity evolved into combustion engines, and cabins in the woods became a horseshoe drive of split-level ranches tucked neatly into bedroom communities?
We have all manner of technologically-enhanced gadgets that make withstanding winter's worst effortless. Aside from the elemental snow, ice and cold, there's really nothing that society hasn't tamed in winter.
For example, there's really no such thing as seasonal produce. Want fresh strawberries in the dead of winter? Someone's growing them somewhere. They're never more than a truck ride away.
There's so much to do out in the world during all seasons, especially with our modern all-wheel-drive and all-hours-merchants, and yet Cabin Fever persists. How is that possible you ask?
You might try and get scientific; point to the sky and start talking about the length of the day or the angle of the sun. You might say it's the light we lack.
But you'd be wrong.
Because as sure as I am about the ennui of winter, I am also positively positive I know what REALLY causes cabin fever.
Children.
Children cause cabin fever.
You thought their germy little mitts spread only the common cold and minor cases of typhoid, didn't you?
As I look at my firstborn, dressed in a tutu and cleats as she dusts the house with her cache of tiny toys, it becomes apparent how my sloth has settled in firmer with each passing year since her arrival.
"Let's go for a walk," I say, amplifying manufactured excitement. "We'll get all dressed up, put The Champ into your old bear suit, and we'll walk into the village for some cocoa!"
"No. It's too cold. We can do that when it's spring," she answers.
Children, with their slow-motivating natures and their inability to withstand any one activity for more than the time it takes the commercial to change – not to mention the inevitable happenstance that once you get them dressed in their infinite layers of socks and thermals and snow pants and winter jackets and five-fingered mittens and hats and scarves, someone is going to have to PEE - are festering Petri dishes of the bacillus that causes the mind-wasting illness, Cabin Fever.
Eventually I end up grateful she’s not the outdoors type. By February's end the idea of corralling two kids in the muck and slop for a wintry beverage she won't drink anyway, not to mention having to keep track of hats and gloves and boots on the trek over to the shop, makes me an immovable object, staking claim to my favorite end of the couch nearest the woodstove.
I am grateful, yet guilty.
While others are getting out into the world - breathing in really cold air and exercising their minds and bodies - we are listening to bad television and trashing the house. The most exercise I get in any given week is from climbing the stairs to wash the previous week’s worth of laundry.
It's pathetic.
That's why I decided this was the weekend to turn off the TV, forget the linens and head for the slopes.
That's right, folks. We're going skiing.
(OK ... You can stop laughing now.)
They have cabins on the mountain right? I bet they have fireplaces, too.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Take the ‘sex’ out of it and there’s nothing
I might as well title this one "Many words strung together in a way that will one day — if they ever read this — turn my children a deep shade of red."
This one's all about s-e-x.
I'll wait if you want to turn the page to some place nice, with cute pictures of kids or cuddly puppies. Might I suggest Page 2? There's always good news there.
Any stragglers? Last chance. OK. Moving on.
As I was driving to work recently the local public radio station was airing an interview with Laura Sessions Stepp, a journalist with The Washington Post and author of "Unhooked," a new book characterizing a "new trend" of casual sex and its impact – mostly negative – on women.
Apparently, the new sex trend is called "HOOKING UP," and is a term defined as any type of sexual encounter – from kissing to intercourse – between uncommitted partners.
Young people move in posses and engage in trysts with whomever strikes their fancy. And then they move along to someone else. No strings attached. Dating is passé.
I listened with interest to the author's musings about how dating has gone by the wayside. How some sex acts are so casual as to be considered no more intimate than a handshake. And while she acknowledged that not everything about causal sex spelled doom for the women engaging in the practice, there wasn’t a lot to redeem it as a long-term solution to our country’s seemingly collective inability to live in co-habitation harmony.
It seemed relatively straightforward stuff. Parents are going to be horrified that their daughters are willy-nilly engaging in the unthinkable with someone unspeakable and caring nothing of the consequences. We can all collectively wring our hands and bemoan the sliding of society further into the cesspool.
But I was kind of surprised to learn she was getting some flack for coming to the conclusion — ultimately — that casual sex is damaging to women.
Some critics are castigating the author for trying to reintroduce sexual shame into the feminine perspective, and returning young women to the old "Who'd want to buy the cow ..." life and love philosophy.
An argument to be made for "hooking up," claims that it allows women to be in greater control of their sexual encounters without the pitfalls of having to extract themselves from damaging or abusive relationships. If there are no relationships there are just two ships passing in the night.
But as all this is rattling around in my sleep-deprived head is a flash of momentary understanding: Take the S-E-X out of the equation and there is nothing.
Maybe this is why our social-political landscape seems in such turmoil. We NEVER have to connect our minds with anyone else's — ever.
Eventually we will never have to even SPEAK to another human being.
Currently we don't have to talk to them peripherally as we get our groceries or complain about errors on our bills. Soon, it would seem, we won't have to deal with these pesky people in our personal lives either. We don't have to make concessions and we don't learn how to compromise. In fact compromise has become a dirty word.
Maybe that's too harsh. It's not as if unfettered carnal pleasures are the ONLY things going on the mind of today's young women. There are all sorts of strong women looking to do some greater good.
They are also looking for true love; a phenomenon that turns every parent — even the most conservative — into the proverbial, somewhat maligned "feminist."
In the interview Sessions Stepp spoke about a commencement speech by a high school principal, where she told the young women in the graduating class to focus on their educations, focus on their careers and then (and only then) focus on finding "Mr. Right."
The author said she found the statement one of the "saddest," because she feels it's only natural for people to want love and companionship. To deny such is denying a huge part of the human experience.
It is here I think I most agree. Keeping our children from getting hurt only prevents our children from learning how to recover.
When you have children – daughters especially – I think you have to come to terms with not only human sexuality's moral code but also its physical eventuality as certain as death and taxes.
Sex is, after all, how we get more little people populating the planet, and the activity continues before and beyond its biological purpose.
Yet the idea that women should be on equal terms with men by way of promiscuity seems just as ridiculous to me as advocating abstinence at all costs.
I suppose there's not much to worry about, though. Because if the abstinence-only philosophy doesn't really work past the age of 20, my guess is the play-the-field philosophy gets old, too. Once the barn door opens, that horse is running in the direction of out, right?
Oh, what do I know? After all, 60 is supposed to the new 40 ... and 40 is the new 25 ... There’s no rush right?
This one's all about s-e-x.
I'll wait if you want to turn the page to some place nice, with cute pictures of kids or cuddly puppies. Might I suggest Page 2? There's always good news there.
Any stragglers? Last chance. OK. Moving on.
As I was driving to work recently the local public radio station was airing an interview with Laura Sessions Stepp, a journalist with The Washington Post and author of "Unhooked," a new book characterizing a "new trend" of casual sex and its impact – mostly negative – on women.
Apparently, the new sex trend is called "HOOKING UP," and is a term defined as any type of sexual encounter – from kissing to intercourse – between uncommitted partners.
Young people move in posses and engage in trysts with whomever strikes their fancy. And then they move along to someone else. No strings attached. Dating is passé.
I listened with interest to the author's musings about how dating has gone by the wayside. How some sex acts are so casual as to be considered no more intimate than a handshake. And while she acknowledged that not everything about causal sex spelled doom for the women engaging in the practice, there wasn’t a lot to redeem it as a long-term solution to our country’s seemingly collective inability to live in co-habitation harmony.
It seemed relatively straightforward stuff. Parents are going to be horrified that their daughters are willy-nilly engaging in the unthinkable with someone unspeakable and caring nothing of the consequences. We can all collectively wring our hands and bemoan the sliding of society further into the cesspool.
But I was kind of surprised to learn she was getting some flack for coming to the conclusion — ultimately — that casual sex is damaging to women.
Some critics are castigating the author for trying to reintroduce sexual shame into the feminine perspective, and returning young women to the old "Who'd want to buy the cow ..." life and love philosophy.
An argument to be made for "hooking up," claims that it allows women to be in greater control of their sexual encounters without the pitfalls of having to extract themselves from damaging or abusive relationships. If there are no relationships there are just two ships passing in the night.
But as all this is rattling around in my sleep-deprived head is a flash of momentary understanding: Take the S-E-X out of the equation and there is nothing.
Maybe this is why our social-political landscape seems in such turmoil. We NEVER have to connect our minds with anyone else's — ever.
Eventually we will never have to even SPEAK to another human being.
Currently we don't have to talk to them peripherally as we get our groceries or complain about errors on our bills. Soon, it would seem, we won't have to deal with these pesky people in our personal lives either. We don't have to make concessions and we don't learn how to compromise. In fact compromise has become a dirty word.
Maybe that's too harsh. It's not as if unfettered carnal pleasures are the ONLY things going on the mind of today's young women. There are all sorts of strong women looking to do some greater good.
They are also looking for true love; a phenomenon that turns every parent — even the most conservative — into the proverbial, somewhat maligned "feminist."
In the interview Sessions Stepp spoke about a commencement speech by a high school principal, where she told the young women in the graduating class to focus on their educations, focus on their careers and then (and only then) focus on finding "Mr. Right."
The author said she found the statement one of the "saddest," because she feels it's only natural for people to want love and companionship. To deny such is denying a huge part of the human experience.
It is here I think I most agree. Keeping our children from getting hurt only prevents our children from learning how to recover.
When you have children – daughters especially – I think you have to come to terms with not only human sexuality's moral code but also its physical eventuality as certain as death and taxes.
Sex is, after all, how we get more little people populating the planet, and the activity continues before and beyond its biological purpose.
Yet the idea that women should be on equal terms with men by way of promiscuity seems just as ridiculous to me as advocating abstinence at all costs.
I suppose there's not much to worry about, though. Because if the abstinence-only philosophy doesn't really work past the age of 20, my guess is the play-the-field philosophy gets old, too. Once the barn door opens, that horse is running in the direction of out, right?
Oh, what do I know? After all, 60 is supposed to the new 40 ... and 40 is the new 25 ... There’s no rush right?
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Laughing in the face of fear
We now refer to our son as 'Our glowing boy.'
We mean it literally.
There's something darkly humorous about taking something really scary – something called a nuclear test – and stripping it down to its essential form.
This is the gist: The kind people with name tags clipped to their scrubs at a local hospital strapped my youngest (the boy with the previously-mentioned wonky kidney) down in a little boat that floats underneath a table-sized camera and injected him with a radioactive drug to watch how his innards work.
The only thing I can do is laugh. I mean what else is a parent to do?
I could cry and wring my hands and carry on … and I’m not ashamed to admit that in the weeks leading up to this relatively routine (albeit somewhat invasive) examination I did a little of each. But I know that's not going to help a situation we can't avoid.
Everything that makes you a human – not just a mother – kicks in when you watch your kids endure hardships.
Here’s this person you love — arguably looking a bit silly because he has NO IDEA how much unpleasantness awaits him — and there you are, powerless.
As we wait for our test, every passerby mentions how handsome the Champ is; how smiley and expressive. They practically hurt themselves rubbernecking in the hallways to get a better look at his sweet face.
You wonder how, with all this reassurance there can be any doubt of his health.
He babbles and laughs in their direction; even tries to hold hands with the nurse who in just a minute will install an intravenous line. But then comes the pressure, and the restrictive holding and the distress of knowing something has changed: It’s not all that comfortable anymore. Even before the prick of the needle the happy, smiling, giggling boy is gone.
This is the hard part for mothers.
And yet, we hear our babies cry all the time. I know the Tired Cry and the Hungry Cry and the Pain Cry. I’ve even had copious amounts of experience ignoring the shrieks of my Unhappy Traveler Cry all the way to Maine and back.
Standing there in that clinical setting I knew his burst of wet emotion was heading out of the “This Hurts” neighborhood and into the wide open spaces of "I Don't Like Being Held Here Like This ... You Better Stop This Nonsense RIGHT NOW!"
The technician plays a lullaby loudly enough to catch his attention over all the noise he’s already making. Before long he's sound asleep, tucked inside the scanner as we watch, transfixed, while his organs glow yellow on a computer screen.
We cock our heads as the blobs on the screen "light up."
I note how freakishly large one kidney looks compared with the other, and the technician breaks her silence to tell me you can’t really go by that ... most folks aren't symmetrical.
"You'd be surprised how different normal kidneys can seem," she tells me.
My husband wonders what the strange blob to the left of his arm is as he looks at the screen ... he's afraid maybe his son has miraculously grown another organ in his upper thigh.
"Oh, that's just the tubing and such," replies the technician. "It's just lighting up as the radioactive materials pass through."
Suddenly, I feel a little like Homer Simpson: 'Mmmmmm, radioactive' ... tossing the word about in my head as if it were cotton candy. 'Mmmmm, toxic.'
Sure, I witnessed the technician carry the lead box in gloved hands and place it on the table; I saw the lead-lined syringe that contained the dose of nuclear substance, but I never really let the reality that THEY ARE PUTTING THAT STUFF DIRECTLY INTO MY KID really sink in.
For the rest of the test, a tiring 50 minutes, I made light of the situation. I joked about my "glowing boy" — complete with wink, wink, nod, nod sound effects — and tried to force my fear into its own little cylinder in hopes of flushing it away.
Finally it was over."That's it," the technician told our son. "You're all done."
And as I picked him up and put on a fresh diaper she reassured me of the safety of the isotope.
"It will be completely gone from his body by tomorrow this time."
"That's great," I say, turning to my husband. "Maybe this weekend we can take a little road trip to Nevada; that way we can bury his diapers from the next 24 hours in the desert."
We mean it literally.
There's something darkly humorous about taking something really scary – something called a nuclear test – and stripping it down to its essential form.
This is the gist: The kind people with name tags clipped to their scrubs at a local hospital strapped my youngest (the boy with the previously-mentioned wonky kidney) down in a little boat that floats underneath a table-sized camera and injected him with a radioactive drug to watch how his innards work.
The only thing I can do is laugh. I mean what else is a parent to do?
I could cry and wring my hands and carry on … and I’m not ashamed to admit that in the weeks leading up to this relatively routine (albeit somewhat invasive) examination I did a little of each. But I know that's not going to help a situation we can't avoid.
Everything that makes you a human – not just a mother – kicks in when you watch your kids endure hardships.
Here’s this person you love — arguably looking a bit silly because he has NO IDEA how much unpleasantness awaits him — and there you are, powerless.
As we wait for our test, every passerby mentions how handsome the Champ is; how smiley and expressive. They practically hurt themselves rubbernecking in the hallways to get a better look at his sweet face.
You wonder how, with all this reassurance there can be any doubt of his health.
He babbles and laughs in their direction; even tries to hold hands with the nurse who in just a minute will install an intravenous line. But then comes the pressure, and the restrictive holding and the distress of knowing something has changed: It’s not all that comfortable anymore. Even before the prick of the needle the happy, smiling, giggling boy is gone.
This is the hard part for mothers.
And yet, we hear our babies cry all the time. I know the Tired Cry and the Hungry Cry and the Pain Cry. I’ve even had copious amounts of experience ignoring the shrieks of my Unhappy Traveler Cry all the way to Maine and back.
Standing there in that clinical setting I knew his burst of wet emotion was heading out of the “This Hurts” neighborhood and into the wide open spaces of "I Don't Like Being Held Here Like This ... You Better Stop This Nonsense RIGHT NOW!"
The technician plays a lullaby loudly enough to catch his attention over all the noise he’s already making. Before long he's sound asleep, tucked inside the scanner as we watch, transfixed, while his organs glow yellow on a computer screen.
We cock our heads as the blobs on the screen "light up."
I note how freakishly large one kidney looks compared with the other, and the technician breaks her silence to tell me you can’t really go by that ... most folks aren't symmetrical.
"You'd be surprised how different normal kidneys can seem," she tells me.
My husband wonders what the strange blob to the left of his arm is as he looks at the screen ... he's afraid maybe his son has miraculously grown another organ in his upper thigh.
"Oh, that's just the tubing and such," replies the technician. "It's just lighting up as the radioactive materials pass through."
Suddenly, I feel a little like Homer Simpson: 'Mmmmmm, radioactive' ... tossing the word about in my head as if it were cotton candy. 'Mmmmm, toxic.'
Sure, I witnessed the technician carry the lead box in gloved hands and place it on the table; I saw the lead-lined syringe that contained the dose of nuclear substance, but I never really let the reality that THEY ARE PUTTING THAT STUFF DIRECTLY INTO MY KID really sink in.
For the rest of the test, a tiring 50 minutes, I made light of the situation. I joked about my "glowing boy" — complete with wink, wink, nod, nod sound effects — and tried to force my fear into its own little cylinder in hopes of flushing it away.
Finally it was over."That's it," the technician told our son. "You're all done."
And as I picked him up and put on a fresh diaper she reassured me of the safety of the isotope.
"It will be completely gone from his body by tomorrow this time."
"That's great," I say, turning to my husband. "Maybe this weekend we can take a little road trip to Nevada; that way we can bury his diapers from the next 24 hours in the desert."
Sunday, February 03, 2008
When the cat's away the mice get even
It's that time of year again: I become a widow for a very long weekend.
As the husband packs a bag with a toothbrush, some toothpaste, all of his thermal underclothes and six different blends of whiskey and heads "home" to Maine and his three best boyfriends, I get ready to break all the rules of parenting we have so carefully mapped out.
As he gets ready to sail down the slopes of Sunday River, I plan on feeding Ittybit cake and cookies for her Sunday breakfast and letting her camp out on his side of the bed for the full four days, leaving snack crumbs and tiny toys behind as souvenirs.
Bedtime this weekend will be whenever, bath time will include 20 extra minutes of soap-wasting fun and she will have full and unfettered control of the remote for her Saturday morning cartoons. "This Old House" can fall into the basement for all I care, we will be checking out what's new at the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, thank-you-very-much.
If I have any energy leftover all of the clothes he hordes but never wears will be heading to Good Will or the landfill.
This is payback.
For the longest time I fought tooth and nail against the husband’s old-boy network.
It's not that I don't adore his friends. They are possibly the most fun folks I've ever had the pleasure to meet. But that's not to say I want to be left alone to twiddle my thumbs, divert temper tantrums and clean the house for 52 hours while he gets four restaurant meals, three lift tickets and all the banter he wants unrelated to Barney.
Let's face it, no matter whether their plans are to hike in the White Mountains, kayak down the Saco River or ski downhill at Mount Abrams, the reality is the weekend always winds up being four days of sitting around a fire of some sort, drinking single malts and making all manner of revolting sounds.
I used to rail against the boys-only weekend because it seemed so antiquated, not to mention unfair.
Women hardly ever hand their kids off to their husbands and disappear for four days of drunken debauchery (let alone sober shopping). The ‘boys will be boys’ response he gave me just made me want to hurl boiling oil in his direction.
Oh, I could wax moral on all the ills of this gender segregation. I could lay down a trowel full of "What is this teaching our daughter?" as I build a wall of jealousy around this yearly ritual. But I'd be missing the forest for all the trees.
Because the truth is I get it.
This men-will-be-boys stuff is as simple as falling off a log (and I'm sure they've each done that in their otherwise harmlessly inebriate states): They enjoy each other’s company and they can't really be themselves – in all their vapidness – with the wives watching.
A part of me is envious that he has that ability that his friends have stayed close enough and interested enough to plan such elaborate ways to drink themselves silly and talk about nothing in person. But such antics are not likely going to satisfy friends I know.
Oh, sure, we pretend to be the sad put-upon wives who are holding down the fort while our clueless housemates — the ones with the Y chromosome — plod along forgetting to wring out the kitchen sponge or replace the toilet paper roll. But I think in reality we are just happy to plod along after them and kvetch.
Seriously, sitting out in the cold, around a campfire, having spitting competitions really doesn't sound like something I could do for four minutes, let alone four days.
But throwing away all of his torn up shirts (he claims he will use for rags when they are no longer good) and NOT having to be the mediator of television viewing wars fought between a 38-year-old and a 4-year-old is my own little reward.
As the husband packs a bag with a toothbrush, some toothpaste, all of his thermal underclothes and six different blends of whiskey and heads "home" to Maine and his three best boyfriends, I get ready to break all the rules of parenting we have so carefully mapped out.
As he gets ready to sail down the slopes of Sunday River, I plan on feeding Ittybit cake and cookies for her Sunday breakfast and letting her camp out on his side of the bed for the full four days, leaving snack crumbs and tiny toys behind as souvenirs.
Bedtime this weekend will be whenever, bath time will include 20 extra minutes of soap-wasting fun and she will have full and unfettered control of the remote for her Saturday morning cartoons. "This Old House" can fall into the basement for all I care, we will be checking out what's new at the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, thank-you-very-much.
If I have any energy leftover all of the clothes he hordes but never wears will be heading to Good Will or the landfill.
This is payback.
For the longest time I fought tooth and nail against the husband’s old-boy network.
It's not that I don't adore his friends. They are possibly the most fun folks I've ever had the pleasure to meet. But that's not to say I want to be left alone to twiddle my thumbs, divert temper tantrums and clean the house for 52 hours while he gets four restaurant meals, three lift tickets and all the banter he wants unrelated to Barney.
Let's face it, no matter whether their plans are to hike in the White Mountains, kayak down the Saco River or ski downhill at Mount Abrams, the reality is the weekend always winds up being four days of sitting around a fire of some sort, drinking single malts and making all manner of revolting sounds.
I used to rail against the boys-only weekend because it seemed so antiquated, not to mention unfair.
Women hardly ever hand their kids off to their husbands and disappear for four days of drunken debauchery (let alone sober shopping). The ‘boys will be boys’ response he gave me just made me want to hurl boiling oil in his direction.
Oh, I could wax moral on all the ills of this gender segregation. I could lay down a trowel full of "What is this teaching our daughter?" as I build a wall of jealousy around this yearly ritual. But I'd be missing the forest for all the trees.
Because the truth is I get it.
This men-will-be-boys stuff is as simple as falling off a log (and I'm sure they've each done that in their otherwise harmlessly inebriate states): They enjoy each other’s company and they can't really be themselves – in all their vapidness – with the wives watching.
A part of me is envious that he has that ability that his friends have stayed close enough and interested enough to plan such elaborate ways to drink themselves silly and talk about nothing in person. But such antics are not likely going to satisfy friends I know.
Oh, sure, we pretend to be the sad put-upon wives who are holding down the fort while our clueless housemates — the ones with the Y chromosome — plod along forgetting to wring out the kitchen sponge or replace the toilet paper roll. But I think in reality we are just happy to plod along after them and kvetch.
Seriously, sitting out in the cold, around a campfire, having spitting competitions really doesn't sound like something I could do for four minutes, let alone four days.
But throwing away all of his torn up shirts (he claims he will use for rags when they are no longer good) and NOT having to be the mediator of television viewing wars fought between a 38-year-old and a 4-year-old is my own little reward.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Electing new Mayor of Toyland proves toxic
I couldn't contain my excitement. The birthday present was perfect: a feat of modern engineering; juvenile genius. Any child worth their weight in Hershey's Kisses would love it. The kid's parents were going to erect a shrine in my honor, to be sure. We would have dinner invitations for months.
That's what I tell myself, anyway.
And yet, somehow, amid the chaos of the day's events, the gift gets glossed over. Sure its wrapping paper is ripped away with rapt glee, but the present itself, tossed onto a pile with all the others, seems just another flop.
Am I alone in thinking picking presents for other people is more torturous than deciding on a candidate for a presidential election?
I mean, you can’t just stop in a drugstore on your way to the party, pick out some little novelty item and be on your way. It takes planning. And research. And, sometimes, shipping and handling.
Oh sure, my sister can get OUR kid a battery-operated cheerleading doll that sounds off her inane cheer, mysteriously unaided, in the middle of the night. That’s her job as a sister and aunt: to annoy the bejeepers out of her only sibling while truly engaging the inner wonderment of her niece. After all, what child actually likes the least annoying toy in their collections?
But getting a toy for your kids’ friends is nothing short of a complicated political undertaking.
In fact, the entire parent-parent RELATIONSHIP can come to a grinding halt the moment one shopper lets down their guard and buys the other’s kid a Bratz doll or a Tease-My-Hair Barbie or any other popular plaything one might rather see filling landfills than inhabiting their child’s toy box.
See, when I'm buying a birthday present for Ittybit's playmates, I try and think the way I would if I were electing a new mayor of Toyland. I don't want some creepy-looking plastic talking doll to wreck the party with its battery-guzzling accessories.
No, I try to make sure I'm getting a socially-responsible toy that looks fun and is fun to play with, but that also just screams "Educated Voter!" You know: "Such class, such good taste. ... Such knowledge of what a four-year-old not only really wants in life."
Yet, inevitably, the exercise is like pulling the lever for Nader. No one really gets it, especially the kid who is supposed to play with it.
I might have eschewed China this year and given my nod to Germany and its Playmobile figurines, but parents still scratched their heads: "You gave my child a pirate set? You chose a genre of criminal known for raping and pillaging, not to mention scurvy and drunkenness? And oh, look, it even comes with a bottle of RUM! Niiiiiiiiice."
Not to mention: "You gave my child a Haz-mat set? They are cleaning up NUCLEAR WASTE? How is that fun?"
Not even cute little smiley faces, it seems, can undo the damage of unlike minds.
My husband tries to make me feel better about my blown chances at new coalitions. "Well, you're better off. This just wasn't a coalition of the willing, is all."
He even tries to lighten the load. When he reminds me of a last-minute birthday party we'll have to attend separately – him with the kids, me after work -- he also tries his hand at retail reassurance: "Don’t worry, I’ll get the gift.”
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me in the least when I get to the party, scoop up my children and find out he's managed to top my faux pas in the gift-giving department.
"Mother," Ittybit informs me, "daddy got Luke a Fart Machine at the drugstore. It's gross. I told him you wouldn't like it."
"No, but at least we’re both on the same wavelength, kiddo. We're both giving out toxic waste.”
That's what I tell myself, anyway.
And yet, somehow, amid the chaos of the day's events, the gift gets glossed over. Sure its wrapping paper is ripped away with rapt glee, but the present itself, tossed onto a pile with all the others, seems just another flop.
Am I alone in thinking picking presents for other people is more torturous than deciding on a candidate for a presidential election?
I mean, you can’t just stop in a drugstore on your way to the party, pick out some little novelty item and be on your way. It takes planning. And research. And, sometimes, shipping and handling.
Oh sure, my sister can get OUR kid a battery-operated cheerleading doll that sounds off her inane cheer, mysteriously unaided, in the middle of the night. That’s her job as a sister and aunt: to annoy the bejeepers out of her only sibling while truly engaging the inner wonderment of her niece. After all, what child actually likes the least annoying toy in their collections?
But getting a toy for your kids’ friends is nothing short of a complicated political undertaking.
In fact, the entire parent-parent RELATIONSHIP can come to a grinding halt the moment one shopper lets down their guard and buys the other’s kid a Bratz doll or a Tease-My-Hair Barbie or any other popular plaything one might rather see filling landfills than inhabiting their child’s toy box.
See, when I'm buying a birthday present for Ittybit's playmates, I try and think the way I would if I were electing a new mayor of Toyland. I don't want some creepy-looking plastic talking doll to wreck the party with its battery-guzzling accessories.
No, I try to make sure I'm getting a socially-responsible toy that looks fun and is fun to play with, but that also just screams "Educated Voter!" You know: "Such class, such good taste. ... Such knowledge of what a four-year-old not only really wants in life."
Yet, inevitably, the exercise is like pulling the lever for Nader. No one really gets it, especially the kid who is supposed to play with it.
I might have eschewed China this year and given my nod to Germany and its Playmobile figurines, but parents still scratched their heads: "You gave my child a pirate set? You chose a genre of criminal known for raping and pillaging, not to mention scurvy and drunkenness? And oh, look, it even comes with a bottle of RUM! Niiiiiiiiice."
Not to mention: "You gave my child a Haz-mat set? They are cleaning up NUCLEAR WASTE? How is that fun?"
Not even cute little smiley faces, it seems, can undo the damage of unlike minds.
My husband tries to make me feel better about my blown chances at new coalitions. "Well, you're better off. This just wasn't a coalition of the willing, is all."
He even tries to lighten the load. When he reminds me of a last-minute birthday party we'll have to attend separately – him with the kids, me after work -- he also tries his hand at retail reassurance: "Don’t worry, I’ll get the gift.”
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me in the least when I get to the party, scoop up my children and find out he's managed to top my faux pas in the gift-giving department.
"Mother," Ittybit informs me, "daddy got Luke a Fart Machine at the drugstore. It's gross. I told him you wouldn't like it."
"No, but at least we’re both on the same wavelength, kiddo. We're both giving out toxic waste.”
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Losing the plot as the play progresses
I'm not sure when it happened. I’m not sure when I gazed at my oldest child and wondered how she would eventually look back on her childhood.
Here we are wading in the thick of it -- immortalizing it all in pictures and prose, even -- and I start wondering if this "you-won't-let-me-do" thing or that "I-don't-wanna-do" thing will be one of the many things sending her off to therapy some day.
There are scads of things I'm doing right now, and next week, and next year that will influence her future self.
Perhaps she will tell her currently nameless, faceless counselor that it all felt like a theater performance. One in which, at some point during an intermission, all the players changed and she became second fiddle?
It's not really the daily mom job that’s so hard. Sure logistics have to be mastered; there’s getting to school, and work, figuring out how to get from Point A to Slot B without folding, spindling or mutilating anything in the process. In this role of parent, one finds an infinite number of things that will never get done or will always need doing. Sleep gets stolen and with it disappears a fair chunk our patience and what’s left of our youth. And yet it is, the daily being -- mom or dad – is what shapes their childhood.
It is here that size matters.
Like many people in my generation, I accepted the Schoolhouse Rock-themed family, and for a few years three was a "Magic Number." But then baby-itis takes hold. And you think … just one more would be nice.
The guilt of leaving an only child to fend for itself after your gone gnaws at you. Until you give in. And then when the deed is done and you are incubating a sibling the guilt of ending that special time gnaws on the part of you that was, and still may be, a little unsure of its decision-making abilities.
I know during most of my pregnancy with The Champ, especially at the end when I thought he may have special needs, I worried about the implication it would have for Ittybit. How would another child affect our relationship as mother and daughter? How would her life change now that she had to share.
After he was born and one day led into another just trying to juggle a new act with an expanded cast of characters, I nearly forgot about the anxiety that had led me to worry.
Ittybit was so good with The Champ, and so generous in sharing OUR time, I was able to push any guilt of splitting my affections aside.
As the baby grows into his personality, however, there are tiny clashes -- storm clouds erupt over who sits where at the dinner table, or who’s playing with whose toys and who sits on my lap when they’re too big or squirmy to share.
When my anger builds and the "you should know betters" and the "why are you being so means" stream from my mouth aimed at the big kid, slowly the guilt comes back.
Perhaps the thing that makes me feel the worst is that, as a parent, I am more relaxed with The Champ than I was with her. I feel as if I'm enjoying his baby days a more than I enjoyed hers. And in the figuring out of that equation I can only conclude that it shouldn't be right to enjoy one baby more than another.
I know I love them both the same. It is strange how that works: Like an elastic bubble opening up and letting them both fit snugly inside.
Only one will always be first; the experiences new and worrisome while the other will always be second, familiar and comfortable.
I can tell you The BEST thing that's happened, though, is that it HAS happened and now it IS.
Ittybit is still happy to have a brother. Happy not to be alone. And when I see The Champ watching her with rapt joy, I know that she needed someone to look up to her. She needed someone who is smaller. But I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if she had a sibling to look up to when she was just a wee thing.
It's so easy to lose the plot as the players change. I suppose I need to remember that she may yet have that experience. After all, while he'll always be younger he won’t always be smaller.
Here we are wading in the thick of it -- immortalizing it all in pictures and prose, even -- and I start wondering if this "you-won't-let-me-do" thing or that "I-don't-wanna-do" thing will be one of the many things sending her off to therapy some day.
There are scads of things I'm doing right now, and next week, and next year that will influence her future self.
Perhaps she will tell her currently nameless, faceless counselor that it all felt like a theater performance. One in which, at some point during an intermission, all the players changed and she became second fiddle?
It's not really the daily mom job that’s so hard. Sure logistics have to be mastered; there’s getting to school, and work, figuring out how to get from Point A to Slot B without folding, spindling or mutilating anything in the process. In this role of parent, one finds an infinite number of things that will never get done or will always need doing. Sleep gets stolen and with it disappears a fair chunk our patience and what’s left of our youth. And yet it is, the daily being -- mom or dad – is what shapes their childhood.
It is here that size matters.
Like many people in my generation, I accepted the Schoolhouse Rock-themed family, and for a few years three was a "Magic Number." But then baby-itis takes hold. And you think … just one more would be nice.
The guilt of leaving an only child to fend for itself after your gone gnaws at you. Until you give in. And then when the deed is done and you are incubating a sibling the guilt of ending that special time gnaws on the part of you that was, and still may be, a little unsure of its decision-making abilities.
I know during most of my pregnancy with The Champ, especially at the end when I thought he may have special needs, I worried about the implication it would have for Ittybit. How would another child affect our relationship as mother and daughter? How would her life change now that she had to share.
After he was born and one day led into another just trying to juggle a new act with an expanded cast of characters, I nearly forgot about the anxiety that had led me to worry.
Ittybit was so good with The Champ, and so generous in sharing OUR time, I was able to push any guilt of splitting my affections aside.
As the baby grows into his personality, however, there are tiny clashes -- storm clouds erupt over who sits where at the dinner table, or who’s playing with whose toys and who sits on my lap when they’re too big or squirmy to share.
When my anger builds and the "you should know betters" and the "why are you being so means" stream from my mouth aimed at the big kid, slowly the guilt comes back.
Perhaps the thing that makes me feel the worst is that, as a parent, I am more relaxed with The Champ than I was with her. I feel as if I'm enjoying his baby days a more than I enjoyed hers. And in the figuring out of that equation I can only conclude that it shouldn't be right to enjoy one baby more than another.
I know I love them both the same. It is strange how that works: Like an elastic bubble opening up and letting them both fit snugly inside.
Only one will always be first; the experiences new and worrisome while the other will always be second, familiar and comfortable.
I can tell you The BEST thing that's happened, though, is that it HAS happened and now it IS.
Ittybit is still happy to have a brother. Happy not to be alone. And when I see The Champ watching her with rapt joy, I know that she needed someone to look up to her. She needed someone who is smaller. But I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if she had a sibling to look up to when she was just a wee thing.
It's so easy to lose the plot as the players change. I suppose I need to remember that she may yet have that experience. After all, while he'll always be younger he won’t always be smaller.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Can't dress 'em yet must take 'em out
Recently, I presented Ittybit with a timely gift: A flouncy dress and matching tights. Timely because not only was it nearing her birthday but the laundry doesn't get a second thought, let alone a chance to suds up, when all the preceding weeks are filled with parties and other holiday merriment.
She didn’t remember that she'd picked it out last fall by tearing a picture from the Hanna Andersson catalogue and presenting it to me as a dress she would most definitely wear when she reached the ultimate milestone a three-year-old could reach: Turning Four.
There have been a lot of missteps on my part in the clothing department, I'm afraid. As she and her tastes "matured" to scoopnecks and soft pinks, I continued to buy purple things with turtlenecks and loud prints.
You see she has extremely particular taste in clothes. So particular, in fact, that it's hard for even the initiated to make successful purchases on her behalf.
She is partial to pants made of soft, jersey material. She likes them best if they have pockets. She also likes T-shirts made of brushed cotton. She won’t wear wool or pullover sweaters ever, and she's not a fan of jeans. Except on one day two weeks ago when she pulled on a pair of embroidered blue jeans, wore them all day and threw them in the trash at bath time.
Regardless of her stated preferences, however, the design, color or button-count could be a lets-get-dressed-by-ourselves deal-breaker on any given day.
"No stripes on the fourth Monday of August, but no solids if it snows," is pretty much how I've come to understand the selection process.
I used to pull my hair out trying to discern her preferences. I'd hunt and peck through her dresser drawers for things I’d know she'd wear, and then wash them the second she swapped them for pajamas. I started buying the favorites in multiples of four so I'd have a few days leeway.
And just when I think I'm catching on she throws me curveballs.
"Mother," she’ll tell me (she calls me that because she's decided she likes the way MOTHER sounds) "I don't want to wear what I don’t want to wear, but I want you to pick out something for me that I don’t want to wear. And I'll know it when I see it. Okay?"
See my dilemma?
A year ago, I would also have gladly given up a week's wages to get her to wear some kind of matching bit of designer fashion so I could pretend I was a skilled and talented shopper. So I could see myself as a hip mom whose child looks clean and impeccably clad at all times.
Instead she insisted on wearing stripes with dots of non-matching hues to her first day of school. She wore purple snow boots with a swimsuit and pajama bottoms to the museum. She wore a purple tutu with a red, three-button Henley t-shirt to the ballet.
And each time she insisted, I became that much less worried about how others perceived me. After all, it wasn't about me, now, was it?
So now, when she puts on the dress I bought at her bidding - a dress two sizes too large (thanks to my skin-flintyness and inability to translate European sizes) – her skepticism comes brimming up.
"Mother, I think it's too big."
"Well it's a little big, that's true, but it just has more room to grow and more room to flutter when you twirl."
"Ok ... but are you sure I'm four?"
"You are four, Ittybit. I can hardly believe it myself."
She didn’t remember that she'd picked it out last fall by tearing a picture from the Hanna Andersson catalogue and presenting it to me as a dress she would most definitely wear when she reached the ultimate milestone a three-year-old could reach: Turning Four.
There have been a lot of missteps on my part in the clothing department, I'm afraid. As she and her tastes "matured" to scoopnecks and soft pinks, I continued to buy purple things with turtlenecks and loud prints.
You see she has extremely particular taste in clothes. So particular, in fact, that it's hard for even the initiated to make successful purchases on her behalf.
She is partial to pants made of soft, jersey material. She likes them best if they have pockets. She also likes T-shirts made of brushed cotton. She won’t wear wool or pullover sweaters ever, and she's not a fan of jeans. Except on one day two weeks ago when she pulled on a pair of embroidered blue jeans, wore them all day and threw them in the trash at bath time.
Regardless of her stated preferences, however, the design, color or button-count could be a lets-get-dressed-by-ourselves deal-breaker on any given day.
"No stripes on the fourth Monday of August, but no solids if it snows," is pretty much how I've come to understand the selection process.
I used to pull my hair out trying to discern her preferences. I'd hunt and peck through her dresser drawers for things I’d know she'd wear, and then wash them the second she swapped them for pajamas. I started buying the favorites in multiples of four so I'd have a few days leeway.
And just when I think I'm catching on she throws me curveballs.
"Mother," she’ll tell me (she calls me that because she's decided she likes the way MOTHER sounds) "I don't want to wear what I don’t want to wear, but I want you to pick out something for me that I don’t want to wear. And I'll know it when I see it. Okay?"
See my dilemma?
A year ago, I would also have gladly given up a week's wages to get her to wear some kind of matching bit of designer fashion so I could pretend I was a skilled and talented shopper. So I could see myself as a hip mom whose child looks clean and impeccably clad at all times.
Instead she insisted on wearing stripes with dots of non-matching hues to her first day of school. She wore purple snow boots with a swimsuit and pajama bottoms to the museum. She wore a purple tutu with a red, three-button Henley t-shirt to the ballet.
And each time she insisted, I became that much less worried about how others perceived me. After all, it wasn't about me, now, was it?
So now, when she puts on the dress I bought at her bidding - a dress two sizes too large (thanks to my skin-flintyness and inability to translate European sizes) – her skepticism comes brimming up.
"Mother, I think it's too big."
"Well it's a little big, that's true, but it just has more room to grow and more room to flutter when you twirl."
"Ok ... but are you sure I'm four?"
"You are four, Ittybit. I can hardly believe it myself."
Sunday, January 06, 2008
And this too shall pass ... or so I hope
She was standing in the parking lot of the dental office naked from the waist up, crying.
The wind was blowing cold all around us, and it was snowing.
She had just vomited in the car.
That's right, vomited. All over herself and everything within (pardon me) spitting distance — all from fear of the dentist.
Fifteen minutes earlier we had left a local pizza establishment with a happy, chatty little girl filled to the brim with a deep dish pepperoni and spinach pie.
Perhaps I was a little too heady from a successful trip to the pediatrician earlier in the day. A little too giddy over the girl taking to heart the instructions for drinking more milk ... "You know you can have milk with your cookies," her doctor suggested. … "Everything in moderation."
Perhaps the heavy meal right before the most-agonized over appointment in her whole little life — the dentist — was just too much.
I couldn't believe how fortunate it was that his job ended early and he was able to meet us for the second half of our medical professionals day.
"Whatever made me think I could do this alone," I grumble to myself as my husband wrapped our daughter in his new Thinsulate coat and handed her over to me.
"I'll get The Champ," he says, happy to be handling the boy, who, even with a poopy diaper, smells like flowers compared to the hot, steamy mess of a girl he was handing off to me.
A wave of nausea came over me as I hoofed it toward the warmth of the office. The reality of parenthood was hitting me in the face like a soggy sock.
It was almost the same revelation I had the first time I found a tick on my cute and fuzzy puppy. "Um ... Why did I ever decide to get a dog? This is pretty gross."
But there I was, dragging a crying, stress vomity kid into the swinging doors of a pediatric dental clinic — thinking only about the return visits we'd be making thanks to two cavities and a lifetime of hygiene — and wishing I were the auntie ... not the mommy.
I further occurred to me, as I was searching The Champ's diaper bag for the Ittybit-sized clothes I never packed, that it was entirely possible I had erred on the side of over-preparation, and brought this scourge upon myself.
All those books I read to her about what to expect; all the times I helped her practice opening wide by counting and flossing her teeth; even having her sit in as I got my own teeth cleaned. ... They all converged into one understanding that would haunt me and possibly her forever: "This dentist thing is gonna be BAD!"
Once inside the play-land-like atmosphere she ignored the video games and playhouse and wrapped her skinny little legs tightly around me, sat in my lap and demanded I read to her.
Every book in the place was about going to the dentist. We plowed through one book and she asked for another and another until the hygienist came out and called her name.
The woman led us back through the bright and colorful office into a small room in the back.
There was a television screen hovering overhead playing some delightful little cartoon where a rabbit couldn't get to sleep without his rubber elephant.
It really made me wish my dentist would replace the hot air balloon poster above his chair for a little flat screen wonder.
But I digress.
In a few minutes the dentist arrived with a high five and a surprise: stickers to whet the appetite and the promise of more surprises if she’d cooperate.
In no time she was painlessly examined, discussing verboten foods and she even let the hygienist demonstrate proper flossing techniques. By the time we left she was happy and chatty again, and almost looking forward to the next appointment.
Almost, but not quite.
"OK. Mom! So! If the first doctor said I CAN have milk with cookies, and the second doctor said I CAN'T have lollipops ... maybe I should just go to that first doctor. Would that be good?"
The wind was blowing cold all around us, and it was snowing.
She had just vomited in the car.
That's right, vomited. All over herself and everything within (pardon me) spitting distance — all from fear of the dentist.
Fifteen minutes earlier we had left a local pizza establishment with a happy, chatty little girl filled to the brim with a deep dish pepperoni and spinach pie.
Perhaps I was a little too heady from a successful trip to the pediatrician earlier in the day. A little too giddy over the girl taking to heart the instructions for drinking more milk ... "You know you can have milk with your cookies," her doctor suggested. … "Everything in moderation."
Perhaps the heavy meal right before the most-agonized over appointment in her whole little life — the dentist — was just too much.
I couldn't believe how fortunate it was that his job ended early and he was able to meet us for the second half of our medical professionals day.
"Whatever made me think I could do this alone," I grumble to myself as my husband wrapped our daughter in his new Thinsulate coat and handed her over to me.
"I'll get The Champ," he says, happy to be handling the boy, who, even with a poopy diaper, smells like flowers compared to the hot, steamy mess of a girl he was handing off to me.
A wave of nausea came over me as I hoofed it toward the warmth of the office. The reality of parenthood was hitting me in the face like a soggy sock.
It was almost the same revelation I had the first time I found a tick on my cute and fuzzy puppy. "Um ... Why did I ever decide to get a dog? This is pretty gross."
But there I was, dragging a crying, stress vomity kid into the swinging doors of a pediatric dental clinic — thinking only about the return visits we'd be making thanks to two cavities and a lifetime of hygiene — and wishing I were the auntie ... not the mommy.
I further occurred to me, as I was searching The Champ's diaper bag for the Ittybit-sized clothes I never packed, that it was entirely possible I had erred on the side of over-preparation, and brought this scourge upon myself.
All those books I read to her about what to expect; all the times I helped her practice opening wide by counting and flossing her teeth; even having her sit in as I got my own teeth cleaned. ... They all converged into one understanding that would haunt me and possibly her forever: "This dentist thing is gonna be BAD!"
Once inside the play-land-like atmosphere she ignored the video games and playhouse and wrapped her skinny little legs tightly around me, sat in my lap and demanded I read to her.
Every book in the place was about going to the dentist. We plowed through one book and she asked for another and another until the hygienist came out and called her name.
The woman led us back through the bright and colorful office into a small room in the back.
There was a television screen hovering overhead playing some delightful little cartoon where a rabbit couldn't get to sleep without his rubber elephant.
It really made me wish my dentist would replace the hot air balloon poster above his chair for a little flat screen wonder.
But I digress.
In a few minutes the dentist arrived with a high five and a surprise: stickers to whet the appetite and the promise of more surprises if she’d cooperate.
In no time she was painlessly examined, discussing verboten foods and she even let the hygienist demonstrate proper flossing techniques. By the time we left she was happy and chatty again, and almost looking forward to the next appointment.
Almost, but not quite.
"OK. Mom! So! If the first doctor said I CAN have milk with cookies, and the second doctor said I CAN'T have lollipops ... maybe I should just go to that first doctor. Would that be good?"
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Family visits sometimes feel like a tight squeeze
I've survived another holiday season. Miracle that. Every step of the way I perilously balanced on the brink of insanity. Starting with what to get the kids, then moving on to what to suggest others get the kids, or what not to get the kids and what I forgot to get for anyone who is in fact NOT a kid, it all lead to what I succeeded in getting -- a headache.
Once I put aside all the consumer nonsense that the holidays drag out of me, I dished out a heaping helping of seasonal angst that comes from analyzing powervisits from the in-laws.
They would be the people who had absolutely NO say in who their son would marry.
They would also be the people who have NO say in how their son’s children are raised, and are furthermore not allowed to gasp (or growl) when said children arrive at the dinner table semi-nude on Christmas day.
Also, anything they do or say in relation to the development of said childhood will be misconstrued (by moi) as being critical; not to mention a dig on my ability to parent effectively.
And a powervisit, for those unaware, is when a houseguest -- usually a family member who hasn't seen the kids in a while -- stays for a brief time around the holidays, hoping to take with them some magical memory, however infintessimal, with them when they go.
Usually all they get is a memory of me turning red and steaming from the ears. Sad.
See, I hold onto every raw nerve in my body, and let the resulting wound fester. Like the time my father-in-law told me -- waaaaaay back before marriage to his son was even a possibility -- that the relationship was destined to end badly since I was "just like his mother" and "he was more like his father."
But I'm not bitter. I have no problem passing the potatoes when he asks politely.
And then there was the time the family-in-law decorated the Christmas tree the first year in our new home ... without me. Well, they strung the lights on the tree and decorated the room while I was at work, but then they retired to the kitchen with their glasses of wine and left me to hang the ornaments ... alone.
Again, not bitter. I even saved the ornaments I made that year (after plucking them from the trash).
Somehow all this seems like small potatoes once you add small fries to the mix.
I bristle when my mother-in-law gives her granddaughter stars that glow in the dark to hang in her room.
It angers me not they are plastic eyesores, but because she tells me they are the first step in getting the girl to sleep without lights on. Even thinking about it makes the hairs on my neck stand at attention.
Why am I so put out by a harmless -- inventive even -- approach to behavior modification, which, coincidentally, would also save some kilowatt hours on the energy meter? I just can't help but think grandmothers are supposed to spend their visits doting on the grandkids, filling them with sugar and leaving the parenting to their parents.
Truth is I know the person I have the biggest problem with is me.
Instead of looking at the gift as well-intentioned tool that doubles as a toy, I see only criticism -- of me. And when Ittybit kicks at the dinner table, or takes off her clothes, or interrupts the conversation and I feel the grandparental eyes upon me, I start to squirm in my seat, too.
I project my inner voice over (what I imagine to be) their inner monologue: We didn't allow our children to dress themselves; our children didn’t talk back; they didn't run through the house screaming at the tops of their lungs. We MADE them nap.
I tried to deflect the glaring light of my own failure by intervening on my daughter's behalf. When her Ama told me she was hoping Ittybit would wear the dress with the matching tights — The tights SHE'D asked for specifically -- I gave my only bit of advice:
"I find it's best to embrace the toddler-ness of her clothing choices. She has her whole life to try and fit in."
Of course then it occurred to me, I'm really just talking about myself.
Once I put aside all the consumer nonsense that the holidays drag out of me, I dished out a heaping helping of seasonal angst that comes from analyzing powervisits from the in-laws.
They would be the people who had absolutely NO say in who their son would marry.
They would also be the people who have NO say in how their son’s children are raised, and are furthermore not allowed to gasp (or growl) when said children arrive at the dinner table semi-nude on Christmas day.
Also, anything they do or say in relation to the development of said childhood will be misconstrued (by moi) as being critical; not to mention a dig on my ability to parent effectively.
And a powervisit, for those unaware, is when a houseguest -- usually a family member who hasn't seen the kids in a while -- stays for a brief time around the holidays, hoping to take with them some magical memory, however infintessimal, with them when they go.
Usually all they get is a memory of me turning red and steaming from the ears. Sad.
See, I hold onto every raw nerve in my body, and let the resulting wound fester. Like the time my father-in-law told me -- waaaaaay back before marriage to his son was even a possibility -- that the relationship was destined to end badly since I was "just like his mother" and "he was more like his father."
But I'm not bitter. I have no problem passing the potatoes when he asks politely.
And then there was the time the family-in-law decorated the Christmas tree the first year in our new home ... without me. Well, they strung the lights on the tree and decorated the room while I was at work, but then they retired to the kitchen with their glasses of wine and left me to hang the ornaments ... alone.
Again, not bitter. I even saved the ornaments I made that year (after plucking them from the trash).
Somehow all this seems like small potatoes once you add small fries to the mix.
I bristle when my mother-in-law gives her granddaughter stars that glow in the dark to hang in her room.
It angers me not they are plastic eyesores, but because she tells me they are the first step in getting the girl to sleep without lights on. Even thinking about it makes the hairs on my neck stand at attention.
Why am I so put out by a harmless -- inventive even -- approach to behavior modification, which, coincidentally, would also save some kilowatt hours on the energy meter? I just can't help but think grandmothers are supposed to spend their visits doting on the grandkids, filling them with sugar and leaving the parenting to their parents.
Truth is I know the person I have the biggest problem with is me.
Instead of looking at the gift as well-intentioned tool that doubles as a toy, I see only criticism -- of me. And when Ittybit kicks at the dinner table, or takes off her clothes, or interrupts the conversation and I feel the grandparental eyes upon me, I start to squirm in my seat, too.
I project my inner voice over (what I imagine to be) their inner monologue: We didn't allow our children to dress themselves; our children didn’t talk back; they didn't run through the house screaming at the tops of their lungs. We MADE them nap.
I tried to deflect the glaring light of my own failure by intervening on my daughter's behalf. When her Ama told me she was hoping Ittybit would wear the dress with the matching tights — The tights SHE'D asked for specifically -- I gave my only bit of advice:
"I find it's best to embrace the toddler-ness of her clothing choices. She has her whole life to try and fit in."
Of course then it occurred to me, I'm really just talking about myself.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Sometimes life is just all consuming
American Public Media's Marketplace recently aired a series called "Consumed," in which it asked the question: Is our consumer society sustainable?
The series mainly focused on Americans' insatiable appetite for things: Pretty, pretty, things. Pretty cheap things. Lots and lots of cheap things. Things that once we own them never enter our minds again. Things that come packaged in more things.
Things that can't be repaired. Expensive things that are cheaper to replace. Things we can throw away without looking back.
For ages I've been looking at my buying habits and monthly credit statements, and vowing to make some changes. But now that these pretty, cheap things -- especially for children -- come with a toxic shadow surrounding them, I am trying to reform my ways in earnest.
But boy is it tough.
It's like a drug, these bargains that aren't really bargains. The Christmas-Tree-Shop thinking (Don't You Just LOVE a Bargain for some piece of detritus you don't really need in the first place) combined with a spend-or-the-terrorists-will-have-won mantra, which is apparently keeping the economy afloat, is drowning me.
Just saying 'no' isn't that easy in the wake of total submersion.
My mother reminds me that WE didn't have all these plastic toys when she was raising us. There just wasn't ALL. THIS. STUFF. She talks about how we were happy playing with creations of our own making.
We didn't watch a lot of TV not because she eschewed it but because there just wasn't a lot of children's television. Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Captain Kangaroo ... Saturday morning cartoons were pretty much all the programming there was; and movies for children consisted of the occasional Disney flick in theaters, and Willy Wonka and The Wizard of OZ, played once a year on the boobtube around Christmastime or Halloween.
Yet, I could list all the possible things I could buy, collect, watch, rinse, repeat, and I still would probably miss about 75 percent of the things available to purchase as a way to deplete the college fund for no good reason.
And you know what? No matter how I rail against it, I am guilty of perpetuating it. I pay so little attention that the reality of buying some $1 piece of dreck seems a bargain if it will just stave off whatever potential meltdown is brewing in the background.
"You just lost the battle," my husband scoffs at me as Ittybit leaves Target with a tiny basket of fruit bearing a Made in China emblem.
I try to protest, turn the tables and shine the blinding light of failure elsewhere. I tell him I am too tired to have THAT fight. I don't want to drag her from the store, kicking and screaming over something that is a natural desire: To have something new.
We are both guilty of those types of transgressions. He can't go past a hardware store and I can't get out of a discount store without buying something I don't need just because it was inexpensive-artfully placed-or-otherwise alluring with its shiny "Hey-You-Don't-Have-This" glow.
He looks at me with well placed skepticism.
"The only way to win this war is to leave her home," I say in exasperation.
"Or you could say 'NO,'" he responds.
"Leave me HOME?" Ittybit asks sadly from the backseat. "You’re not going to take me with you to Target anymore?"
"Yes, honey, that's right. I think we are going to have to go without you for a while," I reply.
"But why?"
"Because Mommy can't say 'NO' to you, and I really need to say 'NO'."
The series mainly focused on Americans' insatiable appetite for things: Pretty, pretty, things. Pretty cheap things. Lots and lots of cheap things. Things that once we own them never enter our minds again. Things that come packaged in more things.
Things that can't be repaired. Expensive things that are cheaper to replace. Things we can throw away without looking back.
For ages I've been looking at my buying habits and monthly credit statements, and vowing to make some changes. But now that these pretty, cheap things -- especially for children -- come with a toxic shadow surrounding them, I am trying to reform my ways in earnest.
But boy is it tough.
It's like a drug, these bargains that aren't really bargains. The Christmas-Tree-Shop thinking (Don't You Just LOVE a Bargain for some piece of detritus you don't really need in the first place) combined with a spend-or-the-terrorists-will-have-won mantra, which is apparently keeping the economy afloat, is drowning me.
Just saying 'no' isn't that easy in the wake of total submersion.
My mother reminds me that WE didn't have all these plastic toys when she was raising us. There just wasn't ALL. THIS. STUFF. She talks about how we were happy playing with creations of our own making.
We didn't watch a lot of TV not because she eschewed it but because there just wasn't a lot of children's television. Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Captain Kangaroo ... Saturday morning cartoons were pretty much all the programming there was; and movies for children consisted of the occasional Disney flick in theaters, and Willy Wonka and The Wizard of OZ, played once a year on the boobtube around Christmastime or Halloween.
Yet, I could list all the possible things I could buy, collect, watch, rinse, repeat, and I still would probably miss about 75 percent of the things available to purchase as a way to deplete the college fund for no good reason.
And you know what? No matter how I rail against it, I am guilty of perpetuating it. I pay so little attention that the reality of buying some $1 piece of dreck seems a bargain if it will just stave off whatever potential meltdown is brewing in the background.
"You just lost the battle," my husband scoffs at me as Ittybit leaves Target with a tiny basket of fruit bearing a Made in China emblem.
I try to protest, turn the tables and shine the blinding light of failure elsewhere. I tell him I am too tired to have THAT fight. I don't want to drag her from the store, kicking and screaming over something that is a natural desire: To have something new.
We are both guilty of those types of transgressions. He can't go past a hardware store and I can't get out of a discount store without buying something I don't need just because it was inexpensive-artfully placed-or-otherwise alluring with its shiny "Hey-You-Don't-Have-This" glow.
He looks at me with well placed skepticism.
"The only way to win this war is to leave her home," I say in exasperation.
"Or you could say 'NO,'" he responds.
"Leave me HOME?" Ittybit asks sadly from the backseat. "You’re not going to take me with you to Target anymore?"
"Yes, honey, that's right. I think we are going to have to go without you for a while," I reply.
"But why?"
"Because Mommy can't say 'NO' to you, and I really need to say 'NO'."
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Grocery store often offers up food for the soul
Isn't it strange how life-affirming events almost always happen in the most mundane of all places, or, more specifically, during the pursuit of the bland?
I suppose it shouldn't be surprising. It's not like revelation waits for those RARE moments when you're all gussied up, coiffed and powered, and sets a place card for you at the table.
But the supermarket? The supermarket!
I've spent countless hours in empty rooms, in comfortable clothes, emptying my mind of its negative contents and not only does relaxation elude me, but I gain no insight into any of life's great mysteries.
Yet give me a cart with a wonky wheel, a kid who won't be still and an infant who is as happy as pie to just be attached and you can be sure some little bit of wisdom is going to come my way just as I try and find the aisle where the shopkeepers hid the pancake mix this week. As luck has it, the life lesson hits me right in the face instead of sailing past my head.
I remember the first time it happened: Ittybit was only a few weeks old and I had gone to the market for oranges. I was in the produce section frowning over clementines when the aunt of a friend came up to congratulate me.
I didn't feel worthy of congratulations. I didn’t feel like much of a parent. No experience. No sleep. No ability to see too far into the future. I told her the idea of returning to work frightened me, as did the idea of not returning.
"Don't worry," she told me. "You will make the right decision. And remember, if that decision doesn't work out you'll make ANOTHER decision and it WILL BE the right one!"
Just that little affirmation made me breathe easier. It's crazy but still comforting. You know, like when your mind is mulling over all the things that you can't shut down and some song comes on the radio that seems to fit perfectly. Some little bit of universal wisdom wedged into a couplet that makes you whistle a happy tune again all because it played when you needed it most.
So I guess I have to admit that when I need something spiritual in nature I go to the grocery store. I head right for the make-your-own coffee counter next the Bakery and then I slowly make my way up and down the other aisles, taking my time.
Usually, I'm given some sample of something that changes my outlook.
Just last week I was bagging my groceries with the little one asleep in the pouch. An elderly woman was sitting on a bench by the window and she asked for my attention. Like most people who notice me, she was interested in the being in the bag.
"Boy?
"Why look at him, he's so alert.
"And so handsome.
"My word.
"You know, I predict he will do great things. I can see it in his eyes."
What is it about unsolicited praise from a stranger that makes everything seem so smooth and uncomplicated?
And somehow, with the sweetness of age and concern, even unsolicited advice seems silky soft.
"May I give you a piece of advice? Don't ever mock him. Don't even laugh at him with love. These smart ones catch on even when they don't really know."
It was something I know, sadly, from experience.
"Don't laugh at me," Ittybit tells us now, "You're making me foolish."
It's a shame I don't come to the store more often, I think, because by the time I get back to the car with my purchases and my lukewarm coffee, I've got more than nourishment for the body. I've got some for the soul, too.
I suppose it shouldn't be surprising. It's not like revelation waits for those RARE moments when you're all gussied up, coiffed and powered, and sets a place card for you at the table.
But the supermarket? The supermarket!
I've spent countless hours in empty rooms, in comfortable clothes, emptying my mind of its negative contents and not only does relaxation elude me, but I gain no insight into any of life's great mysteries.
Yet give me a cart with a wonky wheel, a kid who won't be still and an infant who is as happy as pie to just be attached and you can be sure some little bit of wisdom is going to come my way just as I try and find the aisle where the shopkeepers hid the pancake mix this week. As luck has it, the life lesson hits me right in the face instead of sailing past my head.
I remember the first time it happened: Ittybit was only a few weeks old and I had gone to the market for oranges. I was in the produce section frowning over clementines when the aunt of a friend came up to congratulate me.
I didn't feel worthy of congratulations. I didn’t feel like much of a parent. No experience. No sleep. No ability to see too far into the future. I told her the idea of returning to work frightened me, as did the idea of not returning.
"Don't worry," she told me. "You will make the right decision. And remember, if that decision doesn't work out you'll make ANOTHER decision and it WILL BE the right one!"
Just that little affirmation made me breathe easier. It's crazy but still comforting. You know, like when your mind is mulling over all the things that you can't shut down and some song comes on the radio that seems to fit perfectly. Some little bit of universal wisdom wedged into a couplet that makes you whistle a happy tune again all because it played when you needed it most.
So I guess I have to admit that when I need something spiritual in nature I go to the grocery store. I head right for the make-your-own coffee counter next the Bakery and then I slowly make my way up and down the other aisles, taking my time.
Usually, I'm given some sample of something that changes my outlook.
Just last week I was bagging my groceries with the little one asleep in the pouch. An elderly woman was sitting on a bench by the window and she asked for my attention. Like most people who notice me, she was interested in the being in the bag.
"Boy?
"Why look at him, he's so alert.
"And so handsome.
"My word.
"You know, I predict he will do great things. I can see it in his eyes."
What is it about unsolicited praise from a stranger that makes everything seem so smooth and uncomplicated?
And somehow, with the sweetness of age and concern, even unsolicited advice seems silky soft.
"May I give you a piece of advice? Don't ever mock him. Don't even laugh at him with love. These smart ones catch on even when they don't really know."
It was something I know, sadly, from experience.
"Don't laugh at me," Ittybit tells us now, "You're making me foolish."
It's a shame I don't come to the store more often, I think, because by the time I get back to the car with my purchases and my lukewarm coffee, I've got more than nourishment for the body. I've got some for the soul, too.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Christmas exercises my limits
Halloween is but a distant memory, what's left of the turkey is in the soup and Christmas is calling my credit card by its first name and slapping it on the back with a hardy laugh.
I can almost hear its cigar-sawn voice (because in my imagination the personified Christmas smokes stogies and has a distinct Bostonian accent) taunting my little plastic friend into coming out from the warmth of my wallet: "Hey, buddy! You really should stretch those legs and staaaht shawppin'."
"Are you kidding?" is my perennial reply. "The poor tired card's been doing nothing but exercising its limits."
It doesn't matter whose advice I take — I've tried shopping in the summer, making lists, checking twice, searching for sales — will power is what I lack.
I remember one Christmas I had checked off everyone on my list by December 1, but about a week before Christmas I had pretty much double (and in some instances triple) checked with sale items.
"Oh, I see," exclaimed my nearest and dearest friend one year as I was frantically trying to get last-minute gifts for all the folks on my list I'd already covered. "You've gone insane."
And it's all because THAT is what the holiday does to me, folks: Drives me bat-guano insane.
This year, I'm fairly certain I have managed to adopt every possible shopping profile that has ever been studied by a plethora of marketing think tanks, not to mention the learned folks in charge of updating the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The Early Bird: That would be the person who starts shopping for Christmas on December 26th. This person shrewdly figures they will take advantage of the after-holiday sales and who thinks they can remember where they stowed all the Christmasy booty 364 days later. Of course in my case, I will forget where I hid all the stuff, only to find it when I’m wrapping all the replacement gifts on Christmas Eve.
The Vacation Shopper: This person has the same DNA as the Early Bird, only buys gifts for Christmas and other holidays when they’re feeling all warm and fuzzy at resort towns, spending their "mad" money at gloriously posh boutiques. In my case, I'll start wrapping presents a week before the big day and realize no one has any real use for flip-flops that say "MAINE, VACATIONLAND" in December. As a Vacation Shopper I was still out shopping on Christmas Eve.
The Bargain Hunter: OK. No matter how much I’d like to be this person, I know I can't. I just don’t have the will, patience or stamina to weather crowds on Black Friday. I am never going to stand in line overnight to be one of 12 lucky people to acquire a $200 laptop. My brain just tells me the thing will likely implode once plugged into the wall. As a Bargain Hunter I was still out shopping on Christmas Eve.
The Internet Buyer: The polar opposite of The Bargain Hunter. This is the person who makes a conscious decision to buy fewer things at higher prices and pay for shipping. And this, dear readers, is the persona I adopted this year. Let's see how I'm doing, shall we?
I've purchased nothing made in China, which means I have two toys, four books and 130 Christmas cards.
I've purchased nothing under $100, which means I am already above my preset limit. And so far it looks like at least half of my haul is backordered, which means … drum roll, please ... I'll be out shopping on Christmas Eve.
I can almost hear its cigar-sawn voice (because in my imagination the personified Christmas smokes stogies and has a distinct Bostonian accent) taunting my little plastic friend into coming out from the warmth of my wallet: "Hey, buddy! You really should stretch those legs and staaaht shawppin'."
"Are you kidding?" is my perennial reply. "The poor tired card's been doing nothing but exercising its limits."
It doesn't matter whose advice I take — I've tried shopping in the summer, making lists, checking twice, searching for sales — will power is what I lack.
I remember one Christmas I had checked off everyone on my list by December 1, but about a week before Christmas I had pretty much double (and in some instances triple) checked with sale items.
"Oh, I see," exclaimed my nearest and dearest friend one year as I was frantically trying to get last-minute gifts for all the folks on my list I'd already covered. "You've gone insane."
And it's all because THAT is what the holiday does to me, folks: Drives me bat-guano insane.
This year, I'm fairly certain I have managed to adopt every possible shopping profile that has ever been studied by a plethora of marketing think tanks, not to mention the learned folks in charge of updating the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The Early Bird: That would be the person who starts shopping for Christmas on December 26th. This person shrewdly figures they will take advantage of the after-holiday sales and who thinks they can remember where they stowed all the Christmasy booty 364 days later. Of course in my case, I will forget where I hid all the stuff, only to find it when I’m wrapping all the replacement gifts on Christmas Eve.
The Vacation Shopper: This person has the same DNA as the Early Bird, only buys gifts for Christmas and other holidays when they’re feeling all warm and fuzzy at resort towns, spending their "mad" money at gloriously posh boutiques. In my case, I'll start wrapping presents a week before the big day and realize no one has any real use for flip-flops that say "MAINE, VACATIONLAND" in December. As a Vacation Shopper I was still out shopping on Christmas Eve.
The Bargain Hunter: OK. No matter how much I’d like to be this person, I know I can't. I just don’t have the will, patience or stamina to weather crowds on Black Friday. I am never going to stand in line overnight to be one of 12 lucky people to acquire a $200 laptop. My brain just tells me the thing will likely implode once plugged into the wall. As a Bargain Hunter I was still out shopping on Christmas Eve.
The Internet Buyer: The polar opposite of The Bargain Hunter. This is the person who makes a conscious decision to buy fewer things at higher prices and pay for shipping. And this, dear readers, is the persona I adopted this year. Let's see how I'm doing, shall we?
I've purchased nothing made in China, which means I have two toys, four books and 130 Christmas cards.
I've purchased nothing under $100, which means I am already above my preset limit. And so far it looks like at least half of my haul is backordered, which means … drum roll, please ... I'll be out shopping on Christmas Eve.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
All in the family
The conversation seemed straight forward enough.
Christmas is coming, and not only do we need to consider the all-important LIST for Santa we also have to consider making room in Ittybit's room for the things she hopes he'll bring.
In the past I've waited until the dark of night when she's soundly asleep to spirit away all the toys she appears to have abandoned.
The act, in preschooler terms, is eerily similar to an alien abduction. If she notices the disappearance during the next few days, the hapless toy returns. If it goes undetected, the toy disappears forever.
This time, however, I thought I'd make an attempt at including her in the process. Together, I imagined, we’d cull her collection, and she'd get a chance see what how good toy donation philanthropy can feel.
But for one little notation — the potential of sending the toys in the best condition to children in Iraq, children with nothing not even mommies and daddies — the exercise might have ended in buckets of tears over having to relinquish so many never-loved trinkets in order get The Jolly Old Elf to procure some new baubles, which will undoubtedly face the very same fate.
"What do you mean 'NO mommies?'," she asked with alarm.
"Well, honey. There are all different kinds of families," taking a deep breath and preparing to list all the types of families there are in the world.
I didn't expect her to be terribly surprised. She's got friends who don't have daddies. She knows others who have two mommies. She has dipped a toe in discussions of divorce and death, and, though she doesn’t have an adult's understanding of either concept, she seems comfortable with our repeated explanations.
But what she wasn't prepared to discuss was an inevitability most all families face — a time in the foreseeable future when our kids move out.
"What do you mean, Move Away?"
"One day, when you’re all grown, you will probably move away and want to start a family of your own."
"But you are my family. I want to stay with you."
How do you explain to a tiny tot that there will come a time when they will fight tooth and nail to get away? That there will come a time when they will load that 'stupid chest of drawers' — the one that pinched their fingers when they were trying to get at their jammies — onto a truck and haul it away to a new apartment? The day is coming when they will beg to take the small TV, or a pot and pan, or maybe we’ll go shopping for a set they can call their own. How do you explain to a tot that all this parenting stuff is supposed to lead just that, an empty nest?
"But I don't want to go to another family. I. Want. To. Stay. With. You."
How do I explain that what she loves and can't be separated from today will drive her crazy and require gaining freedom from only a few years down the road?
I suppose I can't.
"You are not going anywhere for a long time. You are stuck with us until you don't want to be. ... How's that?"
"Good! I want to stay with you and daddy and baby Champ forever and ever and ever. ... Now can you ask Santa to bring me a REAL KITTY?"
Christmas is coming, and not only do we need to consider the all-important LIST for Santa we also have to consider making room in Ittybit's room for the things she hopes he'll bring.
In the past I've waited until the dark of night when she's soundly asleep to spirit away all the toys she appears to have abandoned.
The act, in preschooler terms, is eerily similar to an alien abduction. If she notices the disappearance during the next few days, the hapless toy returns. If it goes undetected, the toy disappears forever.
This time, however, I thought I'd make an attempt at including her in the process. Together, I imagined, we’d cull her collection, and she'd get a chance see what how good toy donation philanthropy can feel.
But for one little notation — the potential of sending the toys in the best condition to children in Iraq, children with nothing not even mommies and daddies — the exercise might have ended in buckets of tears over having to relinquish so many never-loved trinkets in order get The Jolly Old Elf to procure some new baubles, which will undoubtedly face the very same fate.
"What do you mean 'NO mommies?'," she asked with alarm.
"Well, honey. There are all different kinds of families," taking a deep breath and preparing to list all the types of families there are in the world.
I didn't expect her to be terribly surprised. She's got friends who don't have daddies. She knows others who have two mommies. She has dipped a toe in discussions of divorce and death, and, though she doesn’t have an adult's understanding of either concept, she seems comfortable with our repeated explanations.
But what she wasn't prepared to discuss was an inevitability most all families face — a time in the foreseeable future when our kids move out.
"What do you mean, Move Away?"
"One day, when you’re all grown, you will probably move away and want to start a family of your own."
"But you are my family. I want to stay with you."
How do you explain to a tiny tot that there will come a time when they will fight tooth and nail to get away? That there will come a time when they will load that 'stupid chest of drawers' — the one that pinched their fingers when they were trying to get at their jammies — onto a truck and haul it away to a new apartment? The day is coming when they will beg to take the small TV, or a pot and pan, or maybe we’ll go shopping for a set they can call their own. How do you explain to a tot that all this parenting stuff is supposed to lead just that, an empty nest?
"But I don't want to go to another family. I. Want. To. Stay. With. You."
How do I explain that what she loves and can't be separated from today will drive her crazy and require gaining freedom from only a few years down the road?
I suppose I can't.
"You are not going anywhere for a long time. You are stuck with us until you don't want to be. ... How's that?"
"Good! I want to stay with you and daddy and baby Champ forever and ever and ever. ... Now can you ask Santa to bring me a REAL KITTY?"
Sunday, November 25, 2007
psycho-homatic cures all
I love enthusiastic people. I have to. We're related.
I am surrounded by people who are happy to extol the virtues of all manner of natural remedies, tinctures and tonics that they believe will cure anything that ails you.
In fact, they SWEAR by them.
Sometimes it can be awkward. I try to look into their eyes and keep my smile sedate as they report on how their lives were changed forever by simply ingesting some revolutionary product found in nature and distilled into its purest, pharmaceutically potent essences, and all for the bargain price of more than my car payment.
It's sweet, really. All these people still carrying the torch of hope that they can turn back the clock and can stop the ravage of time with some product they get from their friendly neighborhood herbalist after the AARP magazine cracked the code to some ancient curative in its January edition.
In some ways I'd like to share such enthusiasm but I know my eyes are fixed in their usual upright, 'are you kidding me' position. And the only swearing I'm ever going to do is the four-letter kind when my husband comes home bearing one of the latest recommended remedies:
Apple Cider Vinegar.
Apparently the venerable magazine for aging Americans ran a story touting the miracle drug science has so brazenly overlooked, and my husband’s mom conveyed the news.
To hear her talk about it you'd be convinced a dinner spoon of stuff will cure ailments from one end of the alimentary canal to the other: Acne, acid reflux, arthritis, cancer, chronic fatigue, contact dermatitis, flu, gout, goiter, gastric disturbance, sore throat and weight gain.
For those of you planning on Googling, all you need to know is ACV. That's the lingo. And when you consult Dr. Google, you'll likely find a host of online pharmacies willing to sell you a souped-up holistic version of the bottle store-bought stuff, which the price tag alone is proof that the tonic is at least 75 percent more effective than anything you'd normally put in a salad dressing.
Apparently she convinced her son, who explained to me that in his extensive research into the vast benefits of this wonderdrug he discovered it all hinges on balancing the body's ph. And after only two days on the stuff he's a convert, insisting he's noticed a decrease in acne breakouts, he's more regular and he's not finishing meals.
(Cue harps and angels singing on high).
But that's not why I tried it.
I tried it because I've been experiencing a little stiffness in my joints. Something I SWEAR (with real four-letter words) is related to breastfeeding and not A-R-T-H-R-I-T-I-S.
Now, I didn't have any AH-HA moments. I didn't notice anything get better immediately, but after a few days the aches seemed to diminish. Cure all? Probably not.
When checked with Dr. Google about the nature of such ailments creaky joints, I learned that there's a natural remission process; times when one's symptoms seem to lessen or go away altogether. Perhaps that's what's happening a little here. When my husband tells me he feels like a teenager again … a teen without the acne ... I remember how cyclical the little pustules are, too.
Despite my cynicism, I wake up each morning and knock back a shot of the vinegar, thinking it can’t hurt. But then I wonder 'Could it hurt?'
Back to Dr. Google.
DR. GOOGLE: Seems there's some little controversy over the effect of vinegar on tooth enamel.
ME: Hmmm. Maybe I'll just go brush my teeth.
DR. GOOGLE: No! Don't do that, it may grind it into your teeth.
ME: Oh my, this is getting complicated. Maybe I'll just drink it through a straw.
DR. GOOGLE: Why not try diluting it with water?
ME: Well doesn't that just prolong the pain of the taste? You know, I'll have to just drink more at one time?
DR. GOOGLE: What are you a pansy?
ME: **Blank. Stare.** I tell you what? I much prefer the Red Wine and Dark Chocolate remedies. Maybe I'll just stick with those.
DR. GOOGLE: I knew it. Pansy!
ME: Well, at least I'm not psycho-homatic!
I am surrounded by people who are happy to extol the virtues of all manner of natural remedies, tinctures and tonics that they believe will cure anything that ails you.
In fact, they SWEAR by them.
Sometimes it can be awkward. I try to look into their eyes and keep my smile sedate as they report on how their lives were changed forever by simply ingesting some revolutionary product found in nature and distilled into its purest, pharmaceutically potent essences, and all for the bargain price of more than my car payment.
It's sweet, really. All these people still carrying the torch of hope that they can turn back the clock and can stop the ravage of time with some product they get from their friendly neighborhood herbalist after the AARP magazine cracked the code to some ancient curative in its January edition.
In some ways I'd like to share such enthusiasm but I know my eyes are fixed in their usual upright, 'are you kidding me' position. And the only swearing I'm ever going to do is the four-letter kind when my husband comes home bearing one of the latest recommended remedies:
Apple Cider Vinegar.
Apparently the venerable magazine for aging Americans ran a story touting the miracle drug science has so brazenly overlooked, and my husband’s mom conveyed the news.
To hear her talk about it you'd be convinced a dinner spoon of stuff will cure ailments from one end of the alimentary canal to the other: Acne, acid reflux, arthritis, cancer, chronic fatigue, contact dermatitis, flu, gout, goiter, gastric disturbance, sore throat and weight gain.
For those of you planning on Googling, all you need to know is ACV. That's the lingo. And when you consult Dr. Google, you'll likely find a host of online pharmacies willing to sell you a souped-up holistic version of the bottle store-bought stuff, which the price tag alone is proof that the tonic is at least 75 percent more effective than anything you'd normally put in a salad dressing.
Apparently she convinced her son, who explained to me that in his extensive research into the vast benefits of this wonderdrug he discovered it all hinges on balancing the body's ph. And after only two days on the stuff he's a convert, insisting he's noticed a decrease in acne breakouts, he's more regular and he's not finishing meals.
(Cue harps and angels singing on high).
But that's not why I tried it.
I tried it because I've been experiencing a little stiffness in my joints. Something I SWEAR (with real four-letter words) is related to breastfeeding and not A-R-T-H-R-I-T-I-S.
Now, I didn't have any AH-HA moments. I didn't notice anything get better immediately, but after a few days the aches seemed to diminish. Cure all? Probably not.
When checked with Dr. Google about the nature of such ailments creaky joints, I learned that there's a natural remission process; times when one's symptoms seem to lessen or go away altogether. Perhaps that's what's happening a little here. When my husband tells me he feels like a teenager again … a teen without the acne ... I remember how cyclical the little pustules are, too.
Despite my cynicism, I wake up each morning and knock back a shot of the vinegar, thinking it can’t hurt. But then I wonder 'Could it hurt?'
Back to Dr. Google.
DR. GOOGLE: Seems there's some little controversy over the effect of vinegar on tooth enamel.
ME: Hmmm. Maybe I'll just go brush my teeth.
DR. GOOGLE: No! Don't do that, it may grind it into your teeth.
ME: Oh my, this is getting complicated. Maybe I'll just drink it through a straw.
DR. GOOGLE: Why not try diluting it with water?
ME: Well doesn't that just prolong the pain of the taste? You know, I'll have to just drink more at one time?
DR. GOOGLE: What are you a pansy?
ME: **Blank. Stare.** I tell you what? I much prefer the Red Wine and Dark Chocolate remedies. Maybe I'll just stick with those.
DR. GOOGLE: I knew it. Pansy!
ME: Well, at least I'm not psycho-homatic!
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Pumping 9 to 5
I’m sleeping two hours at a time throughout the night and still I’m like a well-oiled machine.
A milking machine, that is.
Friday at the newspaper is a day we refer to as "Page Fest" — a single day in which we produce the guts of at least three days’ worth of newspapers. We call the act of production on this day "pumping."
Since returning to work, however, my work station at 10:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 and sometimes 5 p.m. is in the ladies' lounge.
Here’s even more information that you’d probably just as soon not have: sometimes the place smells like the monkey cage at the Bronx Zoo. I wish I were kidding.
I'm lucky, though. I've got a somewhat comfortable chair and handy table, décor circa 1972, as well as the use of a small refrigerator in the newsroom. It also helps that I have coworkers who pretend there's nothing out of the ordinary about a woman returning from the bathroom four times a day clutching a bottle of human milk. They even keep the jokes about running out of cream for the coffee (and dipping into my stash) to a minimum.
I know there are many, many women who make a commitment to feeding their children breast milk when they return to work who have to lock themselves into washroom stalls and hover above toilets to squeeze out the medically preferred substance for infants.
I can totally understand how they often give up, because even in my more opulent surroundings, this part-time pumping gig feels like a full-time job.
When I first returned from maternity leave I was absolutely frantic thinking I wasn't getting enough to replace what The Champ ate while he was with the sitter. It was a struggle that first week to get a few ounces. Lots of people I consulted say that’s the result of stress hormones.
"Relax. Breathe. Don't get all tense."
"Yeah, it's that old oxymoron again: 'Don’t Worry, Mom'."
But the volume confounds me. I'm not a complete novice. I’ve done this before, and successfully, too.
When I sat in the same lounge, listening to the whirr of the mechanical suction for Ittybit three years ago I seemed to have an abundant supply, and only required two brief sessions in the ladies loo. If I ever worried about not being able to keep up with demand, time and distance (and perhaps lack of decent sleep) has stricken it from my memory.
This time, apparently over confident from past experience, I selected a manual pump from the beginning. I knew it was just as good as the electric, but without the motorized racket. But my milk production hasn't been predictable. Some days I get a few vats other days a couple of shot glasses.
Of course the kid’s been a bit unpredictable, too. Some days he eats like a bird and other’s he eats like a goat.
"Don't panic," I tell myself. Just keep at it.
So what if the door opens every four minutes?
So what if the automatic toilets flush mysteriously when the place is empty?
So what if you feel a little like a cow hooked up to an antique milking machine?
So what if you want to run amok, or at the very least sending a strongly worded letter to the Avent people, every time the equipment you dropped $100 on throws a valve and you have to stop everything twice a session, reset the system and start again. No. Big. Deal.
"Just keep your nose to the grindstone," I think to myself. And, so I am keeping at it — pumping 9 to 5.
A milking machine, that is.
Friday at the newspaper is a day we refer to as "Page Fest" — a single day in which we produce the guts of at least three days’ worth of newspapers. We call the act of production on this day "pumping."
Since returning to work, however, my work station at 10:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 and sometimes 5 p.m. is in the ladies' lounge.
Here’s even more information that you’d probably just as soon not have: sometimes the place smells like the monkey cage at the Bronx Zoo. I wish I were kidding.
I'm lucky, though. I've got a somewhat comfortable chair and handy table, décor circa 1972, as well as the use of a small refrigerator in the newsroom. It also helps that I have coworkers who pretend there's nothing out of the ordinary about a woman returning from the bathroom four times a day clutching a bottle of human milk. They even keep the jokes about running out of cream for the coffee (and dipping into my stash) to a minimum.
I know there are many, many women who make a commitment to feeding their children breast milk when they return to work who have to lock themselves into washroom stalls and hover above toilets to squeeze out the medically preferred substance for infants.
I can totally understand how they often give up, because even in my more opulent surroundings, this part-time pumping gig feels like a full-time job.
When I first returned from maternity leave I was absolutely frantic thinking I wasn't getting enough to replace what The Champ ate while he was with the sitter. It was a struggle that first week to get a few ounces. Lots of people I consulted say that’s the result of stress hormones.
"Relax. Breathe. Don't get all tense."
"Yeah, it's that old oxymoron again: 'Don’t Worry, Mom'."
But the volume confounds me. I'm not a complete novice. I’ve done this before, and successfully, too.
When I sat in the same lounge, listening to the whirr of the mechanical suction for Ittybit three years ago I seemed to have an abundant supply, and only required two brief sessions in the ladies loo. If I ever worried about not being able to keep up with demand, time and distance (and perhaps lack of decent sleep) has stricken it from my memory.
This time, apparently over confident from past experience, I selected a manual pump from the beginning. I knew it was just as good as the electric, but without the motorized racket. But my milk production hasn't been predictable. Some days I get a few vats other days a couple of shot glasses.
Of course the kid’s been a bit unpredictable, too. Some days he eats like a bird and other’s he eats like a goat.
"Don't panic," I tell myself. Just keep at it.
So what if the door opens every four minutes?
So what if the automatic toilets flush mysteriously when the place is empty?
So what if you feel a little like a cow hooked up to an antique milking machine?
So what if you want to run amok, or at the very least sending a strongly worded letter to the Avent people, every time the equipment you dropped $100 on throws a valve and you have to stop everything twice a session, reset the system and start again. No. Big. Deal.
"Just keep your nose to the grindstone," I think to myself. And, so I am keeping at it — pumping 9 to 5.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Move two steps back over time change
For the past five years, my husband and I have had the same argument starting around about the week before Eastern Standard Time comes calling.
"'Fall Back' means we lose an hour."
"No 'Fall Back' means you turn the clocks back one hour, therefore you gain an extra hour of sleep."
"I don’t think so."
"When you go to bed at midnight you turn the clock back ONE HOUR. Then it's 11 p.m. See? Gain an hour."
"I don’t think that's exactly how it works. Sure we set the clocks back, but I think that means we lose an hour."
After a few more rounds of this He Said, She Said game, I invariably lose my composure over the lost hour and wind up sounding like a teakettle set to boil.
"Listen, buster, you are talking to someone who LIVES for this time of year. Since March or April, when we set the clocks forward and I sleepwalk through a few weeks, I'm thinking only of the time when I get the hour back come October or November. … And that time is finally here!"
He eventually acquiesces, half heartedly, hoping to avoid a full-scale scalding from the steam escaping from my ears.
I’ve won the battle but not the war; I know he doesn’t really believe me. To him it seems ludicrous that one measly little hour can cause so much havoc to a person’s internal clock.
After all, he surmises, it's not like someone has taken away our day like would a pie, devouring a piece and handing it back to us with only 23 slices.
Even if they did make off with a slice of the clock, he thinks, 23 slices can still get you a nice, thick waistline.
This year we didn’t even bother talking about the time change, let alone make the effort to fight its causes. Neither of us is getting much sleep with two little ones in the house. Champ sleeps like a baby (up every two hours) while his sister sleeps like a cyclone (one never can tell where she’ll pop up or when).
Still, I was smiling on the inside waiting for that hour to return. I fully expected to awaken the next morning feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.
Before I went to sleep at my usual (arguably too late to begin with) midnight bedtime, I set the clock back an hour. And though I was up again at midnight an hour later, and two hours after that, and so on and so on until the little cyclone blew in for good at 5:30, I fully expected to reap the benefits of my extra hour of sleep.
Instead of smiling, though, I spent the rest of the day trying to keep my eyes open (or at least afloat) by making several trips unscheduled trips to the coffee maker and keeping myself busy.
The hours ticked forward like weeks, but I tried to make the best of our time: We’d have breakfast, straighten up the house. I’d gather some art supplies to keep Ittybit occupied and not clamoring for the television. I started laundry and a new pot of coffee. I made lunch and plans for dinner.
This isn’t so bad, I thought to myself. I’m not as tired as I expected.
Soon it would be time to squeeze the kids’ into jammies and start the process of sending them off to the Land of Nodd once again.
But when I looked at the clock and saw the hour hand on 10 and the minute hand on 12 I thought I was perhaps a key player in a horror picture:
TEN A.M.?
TEN A.M!
Holy smokes, it’s only 10 a.m.?
The husband just sat at the table with his paper and his coffee cup and smiled.
"'Fall Back' means we lose an hour."
"No 'Fall Back' means you turn the clocks back one hour, therefore you gain an extra hour of sleep."
"I don’t think so."
"When you go to bed at midnight you turn the clock back ONE HOUR. Then it's 11 p.m. See? Gain an hour."
"I don’t think that's exactly how it works. Sure we set the clocks back, but I think that means we lose an hour."
After a few more rounds of this He Said, She Said game, I invariably lose my composure over the lost hour and wind up sounding like a teakettle set to boil.
"Listen, buster, you are talking to someone who LIVES for this time of year. Since March or April, when we set the clocks forward and I sleepwalk through a few weeks, I'm thinking only of the time when I get the hour back come October or November. … And that time is finally here!"
He eventually acquiesces, half heartedly, hoping to avoid a full-scale scalding from the steam escaping from my ears.
I’ve won the battle but not the war; I know he doesn’t really believe me. To him it seems ludicrous that one measly little hour can cause so much havoc to a person’s internal clock.
After all, he surmises, it's not like someone has taken away our day like would a pie, devouring a piece and handing it back to us with only 23 slices.
Even if they did make off with a slice of the clock, he thinks, 23 slices can still get you a nice, thick waistline.
This year we didn’t even bother talking about the time change, let alone make the effort to fight its causes. Neither of us is getting much sleep with two little ones in the house. Champ sleeps like a baby (up every two hours) while his sister sleeps like a cyclone (one never can tell where she’ll pop up or when).
Still, I was smiling on the inside waiting for that hour to return. I fully expected to awaken the next morning feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.
Before I went to sleep at my usual (arguably too late to begin with) midnight bedtime, I set the clock back an hour. And though I was up again at midnight an hour later, and two hours after that, and so on and so on until the little cyclone blew in for good at 5:30, I fully expected to reap the benefits of my extra hour of sleep.
Instead of smiling, though, I spent the rest of the day trying to keep my eyes open (or at least afloat) by making several trips unscheduled trips to the coffee maker and keeping myself busy.
The hours ticked forward like weeks, but I tried to make the best of our time: We’d have breakfast, straighten up the house. I’d gather some art supplies to keep Ittybit occupied and not clamoring for the television. I started laundry and a new pot of coffee. I made lunch and plans for dinner.
This isn’t so bad, I thought to myself. I’m not as tired as I expected.
Soon it would be time to squeeze the kids’ into jammies and start the process of sending them off to the Land of Nodd once again.
But when I looked at the clock and saw the hour hand on 10 and the minute hand on 12 I thought I was perhaps a key player in a horror picture:
TEN A.M.?
TEN A.M!
Holy smokes, it’s only 10 a.m.?
The husband just sat at the table with his paper and his coffee cup and smiled.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Hey, Bumbo!
When the phone rang at 7:30 a.m. I knew it was my mother.
"I was just watching the morning show, and that purple baby seat thing has been recalled."
I had been on my way out the house but that doesn't mean I was alert by any means.
"The carseat? What?"
"No, that purple dumbo thing your friend lent you for the baby."
"Oh ... the Bumbo," I said, laughing because none of us can remember colors with any degree of accuracy, so names are a lost cause.
The seat to which she was referring, a curious-looking foam circle that was designed for babies who don’t sit up on their own, was at the time of the call sitting smack dab on the counter, where it shouldn’t be sitting.
"It is blue, mom. No, Green. Whatever ... what's the problem?"
"They can overturn causing serious head injuries."
Can't say I didn't see it coming, though. As someone who generally carries the little man wherever I go, I had to be convinced that the Bumbo — a $40 item designed for kids between the ages of three and 14 months — was one of the 'must have' baby belongings.
Seeing it in action didn't really convince me, either. Not only was my husband partial to putting it on his head and wearing it as a hat, any kid who arched their back (which in practical terms is every kid) has the potential to pitch themselves right out of the contraption.
Ittybit must have seen it coming, too, since she’d always complain the baby was sitting in her dad's hat.
Common sense would tell you to watch the kids while they're in it, and keep it on the ground and away from the stairs. Don’t use it as a floatation device, a car seat or a highchair, and remember never ever take it to Old Man Potter's super steep sledding hill come January.
And yet common sense doesn’t have a job anymore, not in my brain anyway now that I'm sleeping like a baby (waking up every two to three hours).
It's just another recall where the manufacturer promises to update the warning labels on the item to include wording to the effect: "Don't treat this strapless, roly-poly item as if it were bolted to the table. It's not. Seriously — don't do it. We know you're tired and just leaving the kid alone for a second. We KNOW you've probably done it before with no incidents, but you were lucky. A second is all it takes."
But I'm so very tired of the recalls that are reported daily. Lead paint, magnets, tiny parts, unnatural ingredients that are causing lung disease in plants ... It's enough to make a parent (and grandparent) crazy. I suppose there's the moment of overload when you wonder if it's all just overblown — a slow news day — until you remember they’re talking about toys. Toys! Things we give to our children to make them happy; things that are supposed to make them smile.
Four years ago I used to think my mom was a little nuts for being worried about giving things made in China to Ittybit. I thought imports were inspected and safe, while she saw stories that showed Chinese infants dying from starvation after their parents fed them counterfeit baby formula that had no nutrients what-so-ever and wondered: ‘how do we know for sure those same greedy companies aren’t shipping their wares over here?’
Crazy like a fox.
Safety inspections, it would seem, would coordinate well with the Emperor's New Clothes.
So now I check labels when I buy toys. I look for things made in America and not just designed here.
It's a challenge, for sure, but I can honestly say it's been fun: The play dough we cooked on the stove in our kitchen was definitely made in the U.S.A., and the plain popcorn I put in a brown paper bag and shoved in the microwave tasted better than Orville's ... and it had real butter.
I just hope no one chokes on any kernels while I'm moving the Bumbo to the carpeted floor.
"I was just watching the morning show, and that purple baby seat thing has been recalled."
I had been on my way out the house but that doesn't mean I was alert by any means.
"The carseat? What?"
"No, that purple dumbo thing your friend lent you for the baby."
"Oh ... the Bumbo," I said, laughing because none of us can remember colors with any degree of accuracy, so names are a lost cause.
The seat to which she was referring, a curious-looking foam circle that was designed for babies who don’t sit up on their own, was at the time of the call sitting smack dab on the counter, where it shouldn’t be sitting.
"It is blue, mom. No, Green. Whatever ... what's the problem?"
"They can overturn causing serious head injuries."
Can't say I didn't see it coming, though. As someone who generally carries the little man wherever I go, I had to be convinced that the Bumbo — a $40 item designed for kids between the ages of three and 14 months — was one of the 'must have' baby belongings.
Seeing it in action didn't really convince me, either. Not only was my husband partial to putting it on his head and wearing it as a hat, any kid who arched their back (which in practical terms is every kid) has the potential to pitch themselves right out of the contraption.
Ittybit must have seen it coming, too, since she’d always complain the baby was sitting in her dad's hat.
Common sense would tell you to watch the kids while they're in it, and keep it on the ground and away from the stairs. Don’t use it as a floatation device, a car seat or a highchair, and remember never ever take it to Old Man Potter's super steep sledding hill come January.
And yet common sense doesn’t have a job anymore, not in my brain anyway now that I'm sleeping like a baby (waking up every two to three hours).
It's just another recall where the manufacturer promises to update the warning labels on the item to include wording to the effect: "Don't treat this strapless, roly-poly item as if it were bolted to the table. It's not. Seriously — don't do it. We know you're tired and just leaving the kid alone for a second. We KNOW you've probably done it before with no incidents, but you were lucky. A second is all it takes."
But I'm so very tired of the recalls that are reported daily. Lead paint, magnets, tiny parts, unnatural ingredients that are causing lung disease in plants ... It's enough to make a parent (and grandparent) crazy. I suppose there's the moment of overload when you wonder if it's all just overblown — a slow news day — until you remember they’re talking about toys. Toys! Things we give to our children to make them happy; things that are supposed to make them smile.
Four years ago I used to think my mom was a little nuts for being worried about giving things made in China to Ittybit. I thought imports were inspected and safe, while she saw stories that showed Chinese infants dying from starvation after their parents fed them counterfeit baby formula that had no nutrients what-so-ever and wondered: ‘how do we know for sure those same greedy companies aren’t shipping their wares over here?’
Crazy like a fox.
Safety inspections, it would seem, would coordinate well with the Emperor's New Clothes.
So now I check labels when I buy toys. I look for things made in America and not just designed here.
It's a challenge, for sure, but I can honestly say it's been fun: The play dough we cooked on the stove in our kitchen was definitely made in the U.S.A., and the plain popcorn I put in a brown paper bag and shoved in the microwave tasted better than Orville's ... and it had real butter.
I just hope no one chokes on any kernels while I'm moving the Bumbo to the carpeted floor.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Halloween gets caught in the Web
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. What's not to love? It's got candy. It's got costumes. It's got you out after dark ringing the bells of the neighbors’ houses without having to tell them that you accidentally ran over their trash cans or backed into their mailbox (but I digress). It's almost perfect.
Yet, up until this year, it hasn't even been on Ittybit's radar.
Oh sure, as an infant she had no choice but to portray an incarcerated cat burglar after I rummaged through a bag of hand-me-down clothes and found a black and white striped jacket and a black hat with pointy ears. The following year she wore her dad’s old fedora, a mock shearling coat, faux Uggs and corduroy overalls, and we called her an Australian cowgirl.
Back then I was all into the cleverness rather than the shelling out of cash. And seeing as how I have no talent with the needle and thread, our costumes up until now have been mostly that of an assembly of Good Will gallantry.
Yet this year, I'm afraid, all my excess creativity went to making a baby. So instead of wracking my brain for something we could make out of tape and old trousers, I fired up the computer and went surfing with the kiddo sitting next to me on the couch.
"How about a fairy?"
"No."
"A princess?"
"Nope."
"How about a witch?"
"No, too scary."
"How about a pirate? That's very big this year ... "
"MOM! That's for BOYS!!!"
"Sorry," I mutter as I click through page after page of ready-made costumes.
"Here it is. This is what I want," she hollers, slapping her hand against the computer screen.
And underneath the greasy handprint is a tiny Superhero I’ve never heard of. One who apparently had been dipped in Pepto-Bismol.
Pink Batgirl.
It had all the things a costume your mother would hate should have: It's got your form-fitting leotard and your thigh-high go-go boots. It’s even got a festive looking mask and cape in a shimmering plastic.
"That's the one I want. That's the ONLY one. Will you order it? Will it come in the mail addressed to me?"
How could I say no?
So I fill in the blanks and hit the button that says "Submit." While I'm at it I figure I might as well get something for the Champ, and like the spider to a fly I indulge my photographer's eye on a little peacock bunting I find on sale at a trendy baby boutique.
"Eww. What is that," snorts the girl child when I show her the puffy plumage. "I don't think that's so good," she says laughing. "They’re going to think he's a gurrell," she sneers.
"She's right," said the husband, looking up from his tool catalogue across the couch, "people are going to think he's a girl."
"I'm not going to hold it against you, because you've not yet turned four, but your father should know is usually the MALE of the bird species that has the colorful and ornate plumage. The female birds, sadly, are dull. ... And EVERYONE knows that."
When the package containing the costume for our fine feathered friend got plunked down on our front porch before the cotton-candy colored confection for the little miss, I wasn't worried. Hers will take just a bit longer.
Weeks go by and nothing. I contact the company. Nothing.
Every day she'd ask if her package came in the mail. And every day I told her no, but not to worry. It will come.
But I was worried. What if it didn't come? What if there were no Pink Batgirls to be had? Would she be upset? Would she be disappointed?
I started laying the groundwork two weeks before the big night.
"I think we should have a backup plan in case your superhero costume doesn't come in the mail."
"What's a backup plan?"
"Well in this case, it's another costume you will wear instead of Pink Batgirl."
And off we go to Target.
"How about a fairy?"
"No."
"A princess?"
"Nope."
"How about a witch?"
"No, too scary."
"How about a pirate? That's very big this year ..."
"MOM! That's for BOYS!!!"
"Sorry," I mutter as I click through a dozen more hangers.
"Here it is. This is what I want," she hollers, clutching at another Pepto-Bismol-colored costume that has everything a mother would hate — Barbie Cheerleader.
"Let's show your dad. He's saving for everyone's therapy bills."
Yet, up until this year, it hasn't even been on Ittybit's radar.
Oh sure, as an infant she had no choice but to portray an incarcerated cat burglar after I rummaged through a bag of hand-me-down clothes and found a black and white striped jacket and a black hat with pointy ears. The following year she wore her dad’s old fedora, a mock shearling coat, faux Uggs and corduroy overalls, and we called her an Australian cowgirl.
Back then I was all into the cleverness rather than the shelling out of cash. And seeing as how I have no talent with the needle and thread, our costumes up until now have been mostly that of an assembly of Good Will gallantry.
Yet this year, I'm afraid, all my excess creativity went to making a baby. So instead of wracking my brain for something we could make out of tape and old trousers, I fired up the computer and went surfing with the kiddo sitting next to me on the couch.
"How about a fairy?"
"No."
"A princess?"
"Nope."
"How about a witch?"
"No, too scary."
"How about a pirate? That's very big this year ... "
"MOM! That's for BOYS!!!"
"Sorry," I mutter as I click through page after page of ready-made costumes.
"Here it is. This is what I want," she hollers, slapping her hand against the computer screen.
And underneath the greasy handprint is a tiny Superhero I’ve never heard of. One who apparently had been dipped in Pepto-Bismol.
Pink Batgirl.
It had all the things a costume your mother would hate should have: It's got your form-fitting leotard and your thigh-high go-go boots. It’s even got a festive looking mask and cape in a shimmering plastic.
"That's the one I want. That's the ONLY one. Will you order it? Will it come in the mail addressed to me?"
How could I say no?
So I fill in the blanks and hit the button that says "Submit." While I'm at it I figure I might as well get something for the Champ, and like the spider to a fly I indulge my photographer's eye on a little peacock bunting I find on sale at a trendy baby boutique.
"Eww. What is that," snorts the girl child when I show her the puffy plumage. "I don't think that's so good," she says laughing. "They’re going to think he's a gurrell," she sneers.
"She's right," said the husband, looking up from his tool catalogue across the couch, "people are going to think he's a girl."
"I'm not going to hold it against you, because you've not yet turned four, but your father should know is usually the MALE of the bird species that has the colorful and ornate plumage. The female birds, sadly, are dull. ... And EVERYONE knows that."
When the package containing the costume for our fine feathered friend got plunked down on our front porch before the cotton-candy colored confection for the little miss, I wasn't worried. Hers will take just a bit longer.
Weeks go by and nothing. I contact the company. Nothing.
Every day she'd ask if her package came in the mail. And every day I told her no, but not to worry. It will come.
But I was worried. What if it didn't come? What if there were no Pink Batgirls to be had? Would she be upset? Would she be disappointed?
I started laying the groundwork two weeks before the big night.
"I think we should have a backup plan in case your superhero costume doesn't come in the mail."
"What's a backup plan?"
"Well in this case, it's another costume you will wear instead of Pink Batgirl."
And off we go to Target.
"How about a fairy?"
"No."
"A princess?"
"Nope."
"How about a witch?"
"No, too scary."
"How about a pirate? That's very big this year ..."
"MOM! That's for BOYS!!!"
"Sorry," I mutter as I click through a dozen more hangers.
"Here it is. This is what I want," she hollers, clutching at another Pepto-Bismol-colored costume that has everything a mother would hate — Barbie Cheerleader.
"Let's show your dad. He's saving for everyone's therapy bills."
Sunday, October 21, 2007
The secret life of toys
The house is finally asleep. It's late. I am tired. And the shower is calling to me with the whistle of hot water and pulsating jets.
All I want to do is stand under the warm spray and let my mind go blank.
But then my mouth goes "blankety-blank-blank" as a hard plastic shark defends itself from being stepped on.
Over the course of the last few months the toys have taken over every spare inch of the tub. They seem to multiply at night when we sleep. The shifting around of things has become a nightly routine: Before I can fit into the narrow stall, I collect all the bath time trinkets and balance them precariously on top of each other in a too-small plastic bucket. The receptacle was intended to police a precise amount of toys but has long since been overrun with smiling scofflaws.
I swear it seems as if I went to bed one night and the yellow Rubber Duckie hooked up with the purple Temperature Gauge Hippo and, within the blink of an eye, gestated a family of Hipster Ducks in every color of the rainbow.
Hours ago, fresh from her own shower, Ittybit had carefully lined them up along the edge of the blue bathmat, naming each one as she went: Fluffy, Floofy, Rattle, Cagey, Dopey and Doc. ... "Now stay right there," she instructed sternly before bouncing off to bed. "Don’t go swimming away."
I love watching her play, especially now that her "little" voice and all her sweet little light-as-air expressions are being slowly taken over by all the experiences of growing up. It's bittersweet.
She sings a song about her day to the family of ducks: "I was coloring, and the window was open, but it rained and nobody ate the green peas or the corn. Green peas and corn."
Smiling, I step over the ducks and step through the curtain.
As I lather, rinse and repeat, I think about the play. The careful screening of toy audiences to watch as she juggles balls: throwing three up into the air and bowing deeply as they clatter off the walls in opposite directions.
The ringmaster tones she's adopted since her visit to the circus months ago: "Ladies and Gentlemen … you won’t believe anything you see ever!"
I get soap in my eyes, but it doesn't sting. I haven't bought anything besides baby shampoo in an eternity.
She talks about how she'd really like it if her ducks were real. If they’d talk back to her, and tell her their secrets. Remembering all this in the silence of the bathroom as the house sleeps, makes me feel full and warm even as the water cools.
I turn the faucet off and grab a towel to dry off. As I pull back the curtain, looking down I see that the ducks have all turned tail to each other and “swum” to opposite sides of the blue bathmat "pond."
I stare a little flummoxed at the sight, and listen for a little giggle from the darkened hallway. Nothing. I sneak into her room and find her fast asleep.
All I want to do is stand under the warm spray and let my mind go blank.
But then my mouth goes "blankety-blank-blank" as a hard plastic shark defends itself from being stepped on.
Over the course of the last few months the toys have taken over every spare inch of the tub. They seem to multiply at night when we sleep. The shifting around of things has become a nightly routine: Before I can fit into the narrow stall, I collect all the bath time trinkets and balance them precariously on top of each other in a too-small plastic bucket. The receptacle was intended to police a precise amount of toys but has long since been overrun with smiling scofflaws.
I swear it seems as if I went to bed one night and the yellow Rubber Duckie hooked up with the purple Temperature Gauge Hippo and, within the blink of an eye, gestated a family of Hipster Ducks in every color of the rainbow.
Hours ago, fresh from her own shower, Ittybit had carefully lined them up along the edge of the blue bathmat, naming each one as she went: Fluffy, Floofy, Rattle, Cagey, Dopey and Doc. ... "Now stay right there," she instructed sternly before bouncing off to bed. "Don’t go swimming away."
I love watching her play, especially now that her "little" voice and all her sweet little light-as-air expressions are being slowly taken over by all the experiences of growing up. It's bittersweet.
She sings a song about her day to the family of ducks: "I was coloring, and the window was open, but it rained and nobody ate the green peas or the corn. Green peas and corn."
Smiling, I step over the ducks and step through the curtain.
As I lather, rinse and repeat, I think about the play. The careful screening of toy audiences to watch as she juggles balls: throwing three up into the air and bowing deeply as they clatter off the walls in opposite directions.
The ringmaster tones she's adopted since her visit to the circus months ago: "Ladies and Gentlemen … you won’t believe anything you see ever!"
I get soap in my eyes, but it doesn't sting. I haven't bought anything besides baby shampoo in an eternity.
She talks about how she'd really like it if her ducks were real. If they’d talk back to her, and tell her their secrets. Remembering all this in the silence of the bathroom as the house sleeps, makes me feel full and warm even as the water cools.
I turn the faucet off and grab a towel to dry off. As I pull back the curtain, looking down I see that the ducks have all turned tail to each other and “swum” to opposite sides of the blue bathmat "pond."
I stare a little flummoxed at the sight, and listen for a little giggle from the darkened hallway. Nothing. I sneak into her room and find her fast asleep.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
phoning it in
All those sugary treats are haunting me. The fruit juices are laughing and the fluoride drops, sitting abandoned in the house somewhere, are calling me "Drip."
I may not be able to find my cell phone five out of seven days a week, but by-gum it, I insist all beings in the house whose fur covers fewer than 70 percent of their bodies have to brush their teeth. I even keep floss handy throughout the house at all height levels.
So it is with heavy heart that I must note Ittybit is no longer perfect.
Oh sure, she's still a sweet little thing with a quick little smile but now she's got a bit of a blemish smack-dab in the middle of her pearly whites.
A cavity.
I never gave tooth decay much thought, to be honest. I have had a total of three cavities: one in a baby tooth and two while I was in college, caused by over indulgence of seltzer water no less — since then nothing: Pass GO! Collect $200, thank-you-very-much.
So when I made the appointment with my dentist to look at her choppers for the first time, I just assumed she’d take after me.
For weeks we prepped for the big day. We read books, we pretended to look in each other’s mouths. We discussed what it was going to be like under the bright light in the big chair.
But when the big day came, she wasn't feeling up to it.
"No thank you. I'm not wanting to do that today," she announced to everyone in the office.
So I asked them if they might have time to clean my teeth so she could see the drill in action.
Oh, how exciting.
I had such a difficult time keeping a straight face as the masked hygenist chipped away at the tarter and plaque, polished my pearly whites with something suspiciously strawberry in flavor and sucked up saliva with the "slurping straw." Each time a new implement was introduced, Ittybit’s eyes and nose came squarely into view, even blocking out the overhead light.
The dentist pronounced me a perfect patient and the spotlight turned to the girl. She bristled, bunched up in my arms and tried to hide. She eventually agreed to lie on top of me while the dentist counted her teeth (20) and took a look around.
Not good.
He found the little cavity smack dab in the center of her front teeth.
For the rest of the day I felt like someone had taken all the air out of my lungs. Not only was Ittybit sad that her smile had a flaw, but we also were referred to a specialist whose first available appointment wasn’t going to be until the beginning of the New Year. ... "But we are happy to put you on our short call list if there's a cancellation."
"Short call? How much notice do you give?"
"Oh, I'd say at least 24 hours?"
"Ok. Let me give you my cell phone number."
Not only have we entered a new phase of healthcare, but we've also apparently entered a new phase of aversion, because during the next few days Ittybit brought up her little problem no fewer than a dozen times.
"I don't want to go to the DENTist," she protested, looking at me with arms firmly crossed against her chest while I explained why we sometimes have to do things that are unpleasant for our own good.
"Well, I'm not going. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME."
Of course with my 'Mommy Brain' the possibility exists that she's right. A short while later I misplaced my cell phone. Since I mislay my keys, my wallet, pocket money and any other small object that one needs to navigate through daily life on a daily basis, it never occurred to me to look in the place where it turned up; in Ittybit's dresser drawer.
And wouldn't you know there were two "short calls" in the voicemail.
"Hey, kiddo. How'd my phone get in there?"
"I was just keeping it safe."
"I bet you were. I bet you were."
I may not be able to find my cell phone five out of seven days a week, but by-gum it, I insist all beings in the house whose fur covers fewer than 70 percent of their bodies have to brush their teeth. I even keep floss handy throughout the house at all height levels.
So it is with heavy heart that I must note Ittybit is no longer perfect.
Oh sure, she's still a sweet little thing with a quick little smile but now she's got a bit of a blemish smack-dab in the middle of her pearly whites.
A cavity.
I never gave tooth decay much thought, to be honest. I have had a total of three cavities: one in a baby tooth and two while I was in college, caused by over indulgence of seltzer water no less — since then nothing: Pass GO! Collect $200, thank-you-very-much.
So when I made the appointment with my dentist to look at her choppers for the first time, I just assumed she’d take after me.
For weeks we prepped for the big day. We read books, we pretended to look in each other’s mouths. We discussed what it was going to be like under the bright light in the big chair.
But when the big day came, she wasn't feeling up to it.
"No thank you. I'm not wanting to do that today," she announced to everyone in the office.
So I asked them if they might have time to clean my teeth so she could see the drill in action.
Oh, how exciting.
I had such a difficult time keeping a straight face as the masked hygenist chipped away at the tarter and plaque, polished my pearly whites with something suspiciously strawberry in flavor and sucked up saliva with the "slurping straw." Each time a new implement was introduced, Ittybit’s eyes and nose came squarely into view, even blocking out the overhead light.
The dentist pronounced me a perfect patient and the spotlight turned to the girl. She bristled, bunched up in my arms and tried to hide. She eventually agreed to lie on top of me while the dentist counted her teeth (20) and took a look around.
Not good.
He found the little cavity smack dab in the center of her front teeth.
For the rest of the day I felt like someone had taken all the air out of my lungs. Not only was Ittybit sad that her smile had a flaw, but we also were referred to a specialist whose first available appointment wasn’t going to be until the beginning of the New Year. ... "But we are happy to put you on our short call list if there's a cancellation."
"Short call? How much notice do you give?"
"Oh, I'd say at least 24 hours?"
"Ok. Let me give you my cell phone number."
Not only have we entered a new phase of healthcare, but we've also apparently entered a new phase of aversion, because during the next few days Ittybit brought up her little problem no fewer than a dozen times.
"I don't want to go to the DENTist," she protested, looking at me with arms firmly crossed against her chest while I explained why we sometimes have to do things that are unpleasant for our own good.
"Well, I'm not going. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME."
Of course with my 'Mommy Brain' the possibility exists that she's right. A short while later I misplaced my cell phone. Since I mislay my keys, my wallet, pocket money and any other small object that one needs to navigate through daily life on a daily basis, it never occurred to me to look in the place where it turned up; in Ittybit's dresser drawer.
And wouldn't you know there were two "short calls" in the voicemail.
"Hey, kiddo. How'd my phone get in there?"
"I was just keeping it safe."
"I bet you were. I bet you were."
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Back-to-work blues
The last thing I ever want to do is start a mommy war. Or a daddy war, for that matter. Raising kids isn't the easiest job on the planet no matter which chromosome pair you possess.
Staying at home is HARD, I'll be the first to admit it. Waking up with the sun and having to find fun things to do in 15 minute increments throughout the entire day while washing the laundry, emptying the dishwasher and trying to tidy a house is bone tiring work. Having no one to relieve you at 5 o'clock when the whistle blows on other jobs may very well be the reason.
Seriously, try and tell your sleep stalling kid that your workday is over and they must go to sleep NOW so you can get a coffee break and watch eye rolling at its best.
Working outside the home is HARD, too. Waking up at the crack dawn, before the kids get up on their own, having to wiggle them into clothes, cajole all the "wrong" kinds of food down their gullets before leaving the house eight to 15 minutes late every day doesn’t help either. It also doesn't help that by the end of your day you still have a long commute home with hungry, tired kids, who haven’t seen you for nine hours, NOT TO MENTION that you have exactly a hour and a half to get them fed, bathed and ready for bed just so you can do it all over again in the morning.
A person could need a vacation just thinking about it.
To be honest, during the work week it feels as if the non-parental caretakers are getting the best part of our kids. We get the tantrums and the pouts and the just five more minutes’ and they get all the smiles and hugs.
It just seems as if someone out there should have figured this all out by now, doesn't it? It's not like I am the first (or only) person on the face of the Earth who has experienced such exasperation.
There are tons of books out there ready to find fault with whatever it is you are choosing to do for your family, whether it be going to work or staying at home. There are probably an equal number of tomes dedicated to how wonderful you are for making whatever choice you've made, and "here's why you should be happy. ..."
But who's got time to read them? Even with my gobs of time on maternity leave I managed to read only one, paltry-at-that, book. One. Uno. It's a pathetic showing for someone who, before kids, used to devour three to five books a week.
Instead, the five to 10 picture books I read a day just makes me feel as if I'm doing five to 10. … in San Quentin. ... And I LOVE kids' books; I just don't love them if they are about Strawberry Shortcake or Care Bears or BarbieTM. Somehow the cartoon creatures have usurped the bookshelf space once reserved for Dr. Seuss, Knuffle Bunny and Homemade Love: all books that used to make up for my inability to read the latest Richard Russo or John Irving.
And yet these are the choices we make when we have kids, or at least that's what well-meaning people tell me. "Something's got to give."
I'd like someone to tell me, though, why it is we are choosing two hours of reality TV at the end of the day instead of things that might actually make us feel good? Could it be that we just are too tired to make the effort? Or maybe we're just fresh out of ideas to try.
I know I am.
It's your turn: Send me ideas of how I can combat the back-to-work blues. I'll try some and tell you how it goes. Maybe you’ll try others and tell us know how it goes, too.
Staying at home is HARD, I'll be the first to admit it. Waking up with the sun and having to find fun things to do in 15 minute increments throughout the entire day while washing the laundry, emptying the dishwasher and trying to tidy a house is bone tiring work. Having no one to relieve you at 5 o'clock when the whistle blows on other jobs may very well be the reason.
Seriously, try and tell your sleep stalling kid that your workday is over and they must go to sleep NOW so you can get a coffee break and watch eye rolling at its best.
Working outside the home is HARD, too. Waking up at the crack dawn, before the kids get up on their own, having to wiggle them into clothes, cajole all the "wrong" kinds of food down their gullets before leaving the house eight to 15 minutes late every day doesn’t help either. It also doesn't help that by the end of your day you still have a long commute home with hungry, tired kids, who haven’t seen you for nine hours, NOT TO MENTION that you have exactly a hour and a half to get them fed, bathed and ready for bed just so you can do it all over again in the morning.
A person could need a vacation just thinking about it.
To be honest, during the work week it feels as if the non-parental caretakers are getting the best part of our kids. We get the tantrums and the pouts and the just five more minutes’ and they get all the smiles and hugs.
It just seems as if someone out there should have figured this all out by now, doesn't it? It's not like I am the first (or only) person on the face of the Earth who has experienced such exasperation.
There are tons of books out there ready to find fault with whatever it is you are choosing to do for your family, whether it be going to work or staying at home. There are probably an equal number of tomes dedicated to how wonderful you are for making whatever choice you've made, and "here's why you should be happy. ..."
But who's got time to read them? Even with my gobs of time on maternity leave I managed to read only one, paltry-at-that, book. One. Uno. It's a pathetic showing for someone who, before kids, used to devour three to five books a week.
Instead, the five to 10 picture books I read a day just makes me feel as if I'm doing five to 10. … in San Quentin. ... And I LOVE kids' books; I just don't love them if they are about Strawberry Shortcake or Care Bears or BarbieTM. Somehow the cartoon creatures have usurped the bookshelf space once reserved for Dr. Seuss, Knuffle Bunny and Homemade Love: all books that used to make up for my inability to read the latest Richard Russo or John Irving.
And yet these are the choices we make when we have kids, or at least that's what well-meaning people tell me. "Something's got to give."
I'd like someone to tell me, though, why it is we are choosing two hours of reality TV at the end of the day instead of things that might actually make us feel good? Could it be that we just are too tired to make the effort? Or maybe we're just fresh out of ideas to try.
I know I am.
It's your turn: Send me ideas of how I can combat the back-to-work blues. I'll try some and tell you how it goes. Maybe you’ll try others and tell us know how it goes, too.
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