Multitasking

Ahh...multitasking. An annoying word, a necessary part of mothering, especially for working moms. Since I had darling C. I have learned to balance 6 or 7 tasks at once and can officially say I do none of it well. For example, right now I'm on a conference call that is boring the little bit of life out of me. Earlier, I was on the phone helping a parent while editing an article and eating a paczki (more on that little Fat--and I mean FAT--Tuesday tradition later). Later, I will be doing laundry while holding the girl and trying to scoop out the litterbox while on the phone with my mom, mouthing instructions to Nate, writing long overdue thank-you notes and thinking about what the hell I'm going to wear tomorrow. And that's just while I'm relaxing. Multitasking means I can organize my life and try to make a hair appointment while commuting, eat while working, grocery shop while out for lunch and do any host of things while behind the wheel of a car. It's dangerous, yes, but sometimes it's the only way to get things done.

Nowhere has multitasking been more necessary than in pumping. I know, I know, I was going to stop talking about my wacked-out breastfeeding/pumping thing so much, but can you be silent on a topic that takes up at least an hour and a half of your day? No, I didn't think so. And don't you want to sing a little bit about the things you do well? I thought so. When it comes to pumping while doing other things, I am the queen. I AM THE MASTER. There are very few things in my life as a mom that I think I'm doing well (Clementine woke up every hour last night, which has me rethinking my whole parenting philosophy), so forgive me for this bellicose pronouncement, but I rock.

Here are the things I can do while I'm pumping:

• Shop/surf online
• Email
• Play with darling C.
• Get the damn cat off the couch or my briefcase
• Talk on the phone
• Watch TV
• Eat and drink

You're not impressed yet, are you? Well read on:

• Participate in conference calls (as soon as I'm done posting this and after I press "mute")
• Move about the cabin, get things off shelves
• Sit at my desk with a colleague and pretend things are normal beneath my wrap
• Give C. her bottle
• Get dressed

Yeah, yeah, still not that impressive. I'm just going for build-up here. What I'm really geeked about is that I can pump while:

• While I drive!! I can pump while driving!!

You can't imagine the time this has been saving me. Sure, it's a little awkward, a little odd, and I have to work hard not to flash the other drivers, especially the ones in SUVs and ridiculously large trucks. But it's totally doable, even while driving stick shift.

Now I don't want to hear how dangerous and irresponsible this is. I am safe, I get my stuff all prepped before the car is in motion and I have my hands free the whole time. And I don't do this while reaching back to pop darling C.'s paci back in her face or anything. It's usually on expressways and when I'm alone in the car. I can't tell you how liberating it is, though. I no longer have to sit in my backseat and pump under my coat when I'm away from home for long periods of time, and I don't have to crouch in strange places when I'm at someone else's house. Welcome to multitasking at its best!

OK, what a lame post for Mardi Gras, but what can I say? I've got a one-track mind these days, and now I have to pump while I continue this mind-numbing call.

Baby Vader

Baby Vader, originally uploaded by K.C. Belle.

This is my niece Eleanor. Ever wonder what happens to those single guys in their 20s who collect Star Wars figurines and merchandise with their first real paychecks? That stuff eventually ends up in basement storage when they can find a woman who will marry them DESPITE obvious quirks, and then they go and do shit like this to their babies. I'm strangely not horrified, though. I think it's pretty cute. And you'd never run out of variations on the whole "Luke...I'm your father line."

Punk rock meets preppy: Clementine's hot date

And I didn't get any pictures!

Last night we had dinner with some new friends, and Clementine got to meet their very cute new son Hudson, who was wearing khakis, a Ralph Lauren polo shirt and, yes, loafers. This preppiness was not a harbinger of doom, however--Hudson and his parents were banking on the fact that opposites attract. Clementine was dressed in leopard print and black, but it was hard to tell if there were sparks flying between these two potential lovers. Both babies were way more interested in their own universes to be too excited about hanging with the other. It's just the age, I guess, but Hudson mostly ate and slept (how I miss those early weeks sometimes) and made these very cute little screaming noises, and Clementine, my paper junky, played with all of the tags on Hudson's little jungle gym mat before demanding her place at the adult table for dinner by fussing whenever we put her down. Hudson eventually went down for the night (in his crib no less), but Clementine was determined to show just how punk rock she is by refusing bedtime until we bundled her in the dreaded car seat and fed her all the way home.

The evening overall was a great success. It is so wonderful to leave the house without 85 bags of toys, blankets, the Boppy and all the other diversions that keep the screaming meanies away. There are many reasons it's nice to go to a house that has its own baby, not the least of which is knowing there will be wipes if you forget them and a bunch of toys, familiar and new. And there is the alternate heading to this post:

Babies: the new social lubricant

I am terrible about meeting new people, and I hate owning up to this wild insecurity. I usually handle it by drinking too much wine and offering up inappropriate verbal ejaculations into those common moments of silence when one topic has been exhausted and another hasn't yet been introduced. Nate, on the other hand, just gets quiet and sometimes even tongue-tied. We're like socially retarded polar opposites, though his way of dealing with it is infinitely better as he doesn't suffer my normal morning-after breakdown, where I lie in bed gripping my head (too much wine, remember) asking him over and over again, Did I really say that? Do you think they noticed? Are you sure they were horrified? Will we ever hear from them again? It is soooo not pretty.

But with babies, all my anxiety disappeared! They are the new wine (and, no, I don't mean that in the punny "whine" kind of way). I was too busy getting Clementine ready and out the door with enough milk to try on my usual dozen outfits, watching the kids on the floor gave us something other than keeping a constant stream of conversation to focus on, and over the course of the evening we had a single topic we could come back to again and again without ever exhausting it. Best of all we didn't have to apologize for being so damn myopic--we were among fellow new parents who don't find conversations that return again and again to poop, breastfeeding, parental stress, toys and baby milestones all that bizarre. That's not to say we didn't talk about other things. We talked politics, which I know from first-hand experience can be the kiss of death (we'll leave that frightful story of too much beer, different opinions on the Iraq war and a screaming match for another time), but in this case was the opposite because we all think the president is ridiculous and are still in a deep depression over the election. We talked about theater, about writing, about our jobs, weddings, whatever. It didn't matter because we were just so damn comfortable. And it's probably not just the baby thing--Adam and Courtney are very cool people, involved in all sorts of cool things, related to one of the Pontani Sisters and not into the competitive or judgmental parenting that totally messes me up. The only down side I see is that their house is way too clean and organized and that Courtney cooked--actually used her oven and created an entire meal that included several courses and dessert and didn't trash her kitchen at the same time. Who is this woman, a superhero?

I realize I sound a little school girly here, and it's probably true that I have a bit of a couple-crush on them. I had to hold back my inner St. Bernard as we were leaving and not jump up on them and lick their faces and demand we spend every single second of the rest of our lives together. It was a close call, and I again have to thank darling C. for taking care of my social quirks. She started fussing and demanding immediate departure, so I couldn't quite whip out my calendar and make them commit to hanging out with us once a week for the rest of time. My little punk rock girl was telling me to play it cool for now, to leave 'em wanting more. I think I have a lot to learn from her. But can I call them now, C?

Gonna have to face it

She's addicted to paper.

She could sit in a room full of toys--big toys and little toys, squishy toys and plastic toys, brightly colored toys and pastel toys--and what she wants to play with is my mortgage bill. Every piece of paper in my house is covered in her saliva, which is surprisingly destructive stuff.

Click on the photo to see even more destructive chewing, which is pretty dang cute.

Frankensitter

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Mick Jagger (tall and thin, a little disheveled and wearing dark shades indoors)...no, it's my daycare provider Julie!

When I picked darling C. up yesterday after not seeing Julie since Monday afternoon (no, I didn't just leave Clementine unsupervised in the basement with the raucous toddlers--the helpers were there), I couldn't help but notice her big dark sunglasses. Of course I asked about them, and after hedging the question a few times she finally copped to some surgery. Oh no, I said, are you OK? Yes, it was just cosmetic. And with that she lifted up her glasses and I wanted to scream in fear. Will you be getting a refund? I wanted to ask. What the hell happened? But it turns out it wasn't surgery gone wrong--that's how you look when you let someone slice your eyelids off and sew them back on so you can shave a few years off your looks.

So of course she's wearing glasses because someone who looks like one of the three blind mice is much more comforting to children than someone who looks like the victim of a henious attack. I keep wondering if the sunglasses have slipped yet, if a kid (maybe Sean, the trouble-maker of the group) has made a grab at them, if some child has been emotionally scarred for life at the sight of her mangled, buised eyes all in the name of beauty.

Why am I so weirded out by this? I think cosmetic surgery is pointless at best, vain at worst, but to each her own. She probably thinks my tattoos are weird as shit, so I'm not going to worry about what kind of message plastic surgery sends to her charges. I am curious, though, about why a home daycare provider and avid churchgoer (and a fairly youthful looking one at that)thought she needed an eye lift. I know some of her kids are getting married soon. Is this just a sick case of wanting to look good in the pictures? Or is this one of those you-don't-know-until-you-experience-it things like everything in motherhood has been so far? Before it happened to me, I was always curious and incredulous about things moms did and felt. Will I be bandaging up my latest tuck or lift and saying to the young girls in the grocery Oh, honey, you just don't know about these things until you're old, saggy and lamenting the passing of your youth like me?

Does my right brain know what my left brain has been doing?

I ain't stupid. I know what happens when you blog about your job. But something happened at mine today that has had me thinking every since. My boss, who is leaving at the end of the school year (much to my dismay because I really LOVE working for him, and I'm not just saying that in case he finds this and reads it--I really do love working for him), took me into his office to have yet another "What do you want to be when you grow up?" talk with me. We have these just about once a week, and I find them puzzling and intoxicating at once. On the one hand, it is so nice to have someone believe in me enough that he wants to push me in the right direction, to help me on my career path. I get so excited thinking about all I can do with my life. On the other hand, I wonder why we need to be so strategic, so calculated. I'm happy where I am for now and am not anxious to sacrifice my new little family for a power career.

Today's conversation took the issue one step further when he revealed to me that the big chief, the head honcho, el presidente has her doubts about me. Sure, she hears I'm great and sees the good work I do, but despite proving myself professionally again and again with every task they throw my way, I still seem a little goofy or inscrutable to her (granted, I make as ASS out of myself whenever she's around, but that's because she is so disapproving of me and it makes me NERVOUS). My boss boils the tension between me and Head Honcho down to her discomfort in working with right-brained creative types. Although in my work life I show some strong left-brained tendencies, deep down I'm just as right-brained as can be, and Head Honcho doesn't know what to make of that. I have other theories about what's at work here (gender), but I'm willing to go with this whole right-brain vs. left-brain theory to start to wrap my head around all the implications. From what I gleaned from my boss, I am supposed to prove to Head Honcho that I am left brained enough to win her confidence, earn her trust and assume a more powerful role as an administrator so we can all live happily ever after.

I'm the kind of person who hears something like this and springs into action. How shall I handle this? I wonder. Should I set up a meeting with her and address it head on? What will I say? How can I make her see I'm good and deserving? I drove over to darling C.'s daycare thinking of all the ways I could make this work, and it wasn't until I saw my friend Laura and began to articulate my conversation with my boss that I began to see a whole other side of things. For one, why is the onus on me to make this relationship work? Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's the boss and I have to earn her respect, but I am one of the hardest working people in the whole place. Not to toot my own horn, but I've taken on huge projects well outside the scope of my job and aced them, I have found a way to balance the culture of the place and still push for innovation, I can work with just about anyone at any level of the spectrum, and I am damn good at what I do. Isn't that worth anything to this place? At some point don't I become someone they want to cultivate and keep happy?

But then the real issue that surfaced for me is why must I ascend? My boss isn't telling me stuff about Head Honcho to hurt my feelings (although it does as I'm pathetic in my need to be liked by people who don't know me)--he wants to fire me up to make things work so I can assume a bigger role in the place. He sees potential in me and wants me to realize it by way of an administrative position. He knows I shy away from it for various reasons, but he also knows I can't turn down a challenge. I can't see things undone or done poorly. I have to stick my nose in and right things, I have to take on more responsibility than I should and I always seek out new challenges when I'm bored. It's like a drug, and he can't stop pushing it my way. Sure, I've told him I want to hang back a bit, relax my schedule, collect a paycheck and focus on being a mom for a while, but I don't think he can stand to see it go down like that. He has total respect for moms (his wife has been at home since kid #1), but he's not convinced that's how I want to play it. Sometimes it makes me confused about how I want to play it. There's this success-oriented corporate impulse in me that I sometimes can't beat back.

Of course before I had a kid this was all well and good for the most part. Sure, I missed my writing (did you even know I was a poet? These days it's a well-kept secret because I've all but abandoned that part of me) and my creativity, but I was fulfilled by having a career, for getting validated in ways that writing and teaching never gave me. I liked that I had stumbled into a niche and could see a clear path to the top. But every now and then I remembered my old life, my poet-self. I remembered why I left academia (to find the real world, to interact with it, to write about it) but wasn't always sure how I'd ended up where I was. Just before I found out darling C. was on her way, I had reached a crossroads with my job and life and was considering quitting my job to see if I could rediscover my initial creative path. Having a baby made me feel like that was too much of a luxury, and new challenges at work distracted me until I went home on maternity leave and had my world rocked from top to bottom.

So here I am trying to figure it all out once again. To put it simply (too late after all these paragraphs, I know), I have to decide which should be more dominant: my left brain or my right brain. Do I want to choose the workplace 100%, sucking it all up, impressing head honcho and making a permanent place for me in this industry I've somehow wandered into? Or do I want to let my right brain take over, keep my job at a quiet simmer while I look for fulfillment after working hours? Better yet, do I want to take a total gamble? Throw caution to the wind (or family to the poor house--you decide) and switch gears entirely? I could find something that lets me make a little money without the pressure of ascension and advancement? Something creative, something closer to writing, to my once-and-sometimes passion.

God, I'm blathering. This is the second annoying post of the day, and I've already lost the opportunity to quit while ahead. I feel conflicted, and in my head I'm much more articulate about the hows and whys, the choices, the outcomes. But I still don't have the answers. DOES my right brain know what I've been doing all this time? Would my left brain be happy going back to how the other half lives? I really hate to be as confused as my boss keeps telling me I am ("I told Head Honcho you're not sure what you want to be when you grow up yet"), but I think in a way I'm hoping the decision gets made for me. I'm hoping Nate's interview or my boss' departure will shake things up enough that I have to move on, to take a risk, to redefine my relationship to work.

Or maybe I just need to stop thinking so much about it and get some sleep. I really do tend to overanalyze. Have I told you that story about my friend Travis in college? "You know what your problem is Amanda?" he once asked me. "You look at...at that gum wrapper on the floor there and you think about it. You think about why it's there and what it represents about the person who left it there. You think about why it should be picked up or not, about how it should be handled."

"Well what's wrong with that?" I asked. "What do you think about the gum wrapper that is so much better?"

"I just think 'Oh, that's a gum wrapper,'" he said. "It leaves my mind free for more important things."

I promise I will be lighter tomorrow. I have a camera full of photos of Clementine upload--that always does the trick.

Women who decide to live shoeless

A little giggle. Someone found their way to my blog by entering "women who decide to live shoeless" into a search engine (a welcome change after too many pornographic searches with the words "mother" and "daughter"--yuck yuck yuck). What a funny idea, deciding to live shoeless. Is it possible to undertake such a lifestyle? In Michigan, no less? And what would my motivation to work be if I didn't wear fabulous shoes? And what the hell did I write here that would lead a query on that topic to my little blog? I certainly don't have such a vision...maybe I need to get one. But what would it be?

Hump Day

Today is very sunny, but my disposition is not. I don't know if it's S.A.D. (February can be sooooo gloomy and long in Michigan) or what, but I'm a little down. There are the regular things to bitch about: I hate dropping a smiling, lovely little Clementine at daycare every morning and getting a cranky, irritable thing back come afternoon (it's like the worst bank transaction ever); work is draining; I can never get everything I need to do in a day (errands, laundry, bill paying, cooking, cleaning, planning, writing, thank you notes, etc.) done. But then there is the other stuff. Is motherhood isolating? I feel like it is sometimes--that we're just a little island of a family without much connection to anything or anyone else, especially those who don't know what parenting is like. Maybe it's also our age, our stage in life. There is so much planning and scheduling involved in seeing other people that it rarely happens spontaneously. We can't just drop by people's houses like we used to. I had a whole afternoon free on Monday with Clementine and couldn't find anyone with whom to enjoy it. Don't get me wrong--I loved being with her alone, but it was sunny and bright and Nate was gone until late. I just wanted a little company. And then there is the effort it can take to leave the house with darling C. and all her gear. It feels Herculean at times, and it seems so much easier to just stay home, to burrow into ourselves.

I know I'm whining. It's just that kind of damn day. I know in my heart how lucky I am to have such a great little family with N. and C., and I love our time together more than anything. I think I'm just looking for a little excitement, a little adventure. It must be time to start planning for summer vacation. We were looking online at FloydFest in Virginia, but it's harder to be a spontaneous camper when you're bringing a kid, a breast pump and flushable diapers along. Wow, when I type it all out like that, it doesn't sound like much fun at all...

When I win the Mother of the Year award...

...it won't be for letting darling C. roll herself halfway under the couch and get stuck while I was putting laundry in the dryer. I could hear these little frustrated grunts, then her heels slamming on the floor and then terror in her voice as she began short, staccato screams. When I poked my head around the corener and didn't see her in the center of the room where I left her, my whole body shook. And then there was her little flailing arm sticking out from under the couch. It was easy enough to get her out, but she was freaked out and a little dusty (I swear, we just mopped under there on Saturday--where the hell is all the dust coming from?). It's a good thing she doesn't have a diary in which to record these incidents.

Last night we were women alone in the world, and let me tell you I don't know how single parents do it with little babies, especially when they're cranky. Clementine did not want to be put down at all (perhaps traumatized by the couch?), so I had the joy of trying do laundry and cook with 15 pounds of love strapped to me. It's a miracle I got anything done, but she was much happier doing chores than just playing on the floor with me.

Nate got home from his interviewing adventures after Clementine's bath and bedtime (things went well, but we won't know anything for two weeks or so), and I forced him to watch Olympic ice dancing with me. I don't really care about the event one way or the other, but it's fun just to hear the way he cranks on and on about whether or not it's actually a sport. Darling C. was a sound sleeper, so Nate and I just hung out together on the couch folding laundry, laughing and watching T.V. Sounds boring and lame, and certainly a year ago we would have hit the movies or a show downtown, gone for ice cream or a beer (actually, I was pregnant, so ice cream for sure) or some other such outing instead of sitting at home, but this is our new world. I'm not complaining. In a way it kind of felt like when we were in college trying to study late at night. Instead of the task at hand, we would tease each other, make jokes and dream about the future. When I look at it that way, not much has changed.

Leaving the house this morning was an adventure as always. I have my laptop, my breast pump, the diaper bag, my purse (don't know why I still carry that!) and the baby bucket with a wiggly little C. Usually Nate helps, but from time to time I struggle out the door and to the car with all that shit on my own. The other day the diaper bag slipped down my arm and hit Clementine on the head. A crying baby only completes the experience. This morning, she topped it all off with a tremendous blowout that soaked the outfit it took Nate ten minutes to pick out and get on her. Oh the glamour that is my life.

A play date

I was so busy bitching about missing the roller derby last night, that I didn't say a word about our play date, the first we've ever hosted. Now you may be wondering what the heck a baby can do at a play date, and if I were at all smart about these mommy things I would have wondered as well. As it turns out, not much. At this age, it's basically an excuse for moms to get together and pump each other for gossip or information, whatever they need most, I suppose. Our young guest Maya is a year and a half old and seemed to have had a grand old time playing on Clementine's fabulous swing, chasing Kitty and rolling around in the dust balls and tufts of cat and human hair that I swear we cleaned up last week. How do those things multiply and who was more horrified: Lisa, watching her darling daughter ingest her weight in hair and dust or me, knowing Lisa must have had to bathe her daughter the instant they got home? At one point Maya even seemed to be taunting me for not cleaning enough by licking--literally licking--my stairs. I was happy to report that she was not in danger of ingesting any harmful cleaning products by doing so.

Hanging with Maya gave me a glimpse of things to come: the nightmare that will be darling C.'s mobility. Only if I had a floor made of knife points, bowls of poison in every room and an ignition button inside the walk-in fireplace would our house be less baby friendly than it is now. Sharp corners, multitudes of choking hazards and breakable everything abound in chez Clementine--we'll have to see if she's tough enough to survive. Or...yeah... I guess we could work on the house a little.

C. was in a terrific mood today, and we had a lazy Sunday morning enjoying her new effforts at crawling. We took her to the grocery store where she was the belle of the ball. Nate wore her in the Snugli, and everyone thought it was the cutest thing ever. When they approached to smile at her, she squacked and smiled and laughed. We couldn't have hired a better baby for the outing. Tonight, she worked on her mobility some more and perfected her army crawl, dragging her body behind her super-strong arms. From time to time she can get up on her knees and get those working, but when she tries to work in the hand movements, she lands flat on her face. It's kind of one or the other.

Nate's ironing his clothes for his big job interview tomorrow. Karen and Dave helped him with his wardrobe, and the whole damn world wants to help him with his facial hair. Strangers, my mom and his dad have all weighed in, thinking he should shave his goatee in order to make a better impression. Nate is of the opinion that if the place doesn't like his facial hair then he doesn't really want to work there. While I get it that we sometimes have to do shitty stuff to get jobs, I like that Nate has his limits. Sure, selling out completely could help him climb the ladder, make more money, maybe even let me chill out on my work schedule to focus more on Clementine. But that doesn't mean a lot if he feels compromised or unhappy, and I like that we're of the same mind on this.

I'm off to help him get his shit together. He is getting nervous, and I need to go give him a hug.

Boo hoo hoo

Hear that? No, it's not darling C., still awake at almost midnight. She's happy as a clam rolling on the floor and doing everything she can to stay awake. The tears are mine because I didn't get to see the Roller Derby in Detroit tonight. It was sold out! I think this is a clear indication of how uncool I've become--I never know what will sell out and what won't. I hate being all geeky and getting advance tickets for a show, only to find the show doesn't sell out. And yet when I don't buy in advance, there I am with no tickets to the show. Shit! I've been dreaming of a Detroit derby since well before I got knocked up, and now I'll have to keep dreaming. For a while I was thinking I'd be a great derby girl--I could see myself kick some serious ass on wheels--but the practices are two days a week, and I have to own up to the fact that my life isn't as flexible as it once was. I can't do ALL the cool stuff, and it might be wise to find an activity that takes less time and leaves fewer bruises.

The sold out derby was the second disappointment. The first was not being able to get a table at Slows BBQ, despite showing up at 5:30pm. Who has an hour and a half wait at 5:30? Is the whole world becoming geriatric or something? The last time we were able to get a table there was the night darling C. freaked out and kept me in the bathroom the whole time. Yeah, she puked when we got home, but it hasn't dimmed my memory of the chicken wings.

So there we were with a sitter and a hard time figuring out what the hell to do. We went to the Garden Bowl and then to Motor City Brewing Company, where we had some lager and played a rip-off version of Hungry, Hungry Hippos. It was fun, but am I a huge loser for thinking it wasn't enough fun to be away from my kid? It's like everything these days is a bargain, and things have to be especially cool or different for me to have left Clementine at home. It's not like we were dying for a night out, and it's not like we were with anyone who wouldn't have been just as comfortable at our house or at someone else's. Real punk rock, huh? We had a sitter, no kid, no agenda and a whole city at our feet, and what did we do? We came home to put our kid to bed.

Not-so-perfect end to a perfect day

Know what sucks about using a bottle instead of my breasts to give her the goods? The bottle leaks. I know boobs do too, but there's a shut-off valve eventually. Late at night when she's a little peckish, I can hug her toward me, slip the bottle in her mouth, rest it under my chin and nod off just a bit, but I need to stay conscious enough to feed her well and take the bottle away when she's done. Last night, however, and this has happened before, dammit, I fell soundly asleep while giving her the bottle. When she was done with her snack, she spit the bottle out and it landed (still in my hand, mind you) nipple-side down in the bed. It then slowly leaked, drop by drop, into bed with us. I woke up soaked, with my kid in a huge, sticky puddle of breastmilk. It's worse than a leaky diaper. We did the best we could with a rubber-backed sheet to make ourselves comfortable the rest of the night and woke up this morning to a smiling little love with milk caked all around her mouth and nose. Yuck.

Cute, perfect and shoeless

Today was one of those perfect days where being a mom just kind of clicked...even when things were rocky. Darling C. woke up in the happiest mood, and she and I just laid in bed laughing and rolling around for a while. I decided to take the day off and not try to get anything done from home, and she and I took off for Ann Arbor to see my friend The Judge. This is a trip I imagined I would take all the time during my maternity leave, but Clementine's car terrors kept me on a pretty short leash. Sure, she bitched a little when we first got going this morning, but she was asleep in no time. The drive was heavenly and the day was beautiful.

And despite a fussy night last night while visiting Laura, darling C. was an absolute dream all day today. We hung out in the judge's chambers, and she entertained herself on her blanket before rolling over and over and over across the room. She may not be crawling, but that girl can sure get around. She managed to roll over to my feet and give me some puppy eyes to pick her up. Then she rolled over to the judge's chair and did the same. Seriously, she was cute enough to jumpstart even the hardest ovaries. Who wouldn't want one of these?

We decided to go shopping (notice the "we" that allows me to place blame for my growing credit card addiction on someone else) after hanging out at the courthouse, and I strapped her to me and headed to Sam's, where we both got some new kicks. Good thing, because somehow during our subsequent wanderings, she kicked off one of her totally cool skull and crossbones booties. When I finally noticed, I dashed around downtown like a half-crazed woman, muttering to myself and retracing my steps to find it. I was so pissed--despite going over my exact route, I couldn't find it ANYWHERE. I guess there's hope it will turn up in my car, but I know how these things turn out: that shit is gone.

We left Ann Arbor to meet up with Nate, Karen, Dave and the quest for the right clothes for Nate's interview. They were already done, so we all went out for dinner. Darling C. hung with us for a while, but she got sick of being held and all cooped up. That girl wants to move around! So home again, home again, where she rolled and played. A pretty boring day in all, but it will be one I remember. There just aren't that many times when I feel like I get it, like I'm doing it right. Today, though, I felt it. I was walking down the street with darling C. in her Snugli, and I felt like someone passing by wouldn't wonder if I had stolen the kid or if I was the worst mom ever. It's funny--I passed.

So I laughed at him...a lot

Let me just say this in my defense: Nate is not a man who wears suits. And I like that about him. I like him in his hoodies and torn jeans. I like him in his T-shirts. I like that he considers wrinkled khakis and a work shirt (the kind mechanics wear) dressy enough for work as long as he doesn't wear Chucks. I like that he creates his own jeans day on Fridays. I like that he can wear suits but just doesn't want to. It suits him.

But of course there are times you need to wear a suit, right? And for Nate one of those times is Monday. The one we bought when we lived in England (the year Nate lost 30 pounds and looked like a work camp survivor) is too small, not to mention too Euro. The one he wears to weddings is vintage--a little too funky and cool. And the sports coat my mom bought him from Costco? Well, my MOM bought it for him at COSTCO. What more do I have to say? And, it's too big. But it was our great white hope...until he put it on. That's when I lost it, when I laughed and laughed until it hurt. The shoulders were so big. His head looked so small. It just looked so...strange.

So what are we to do? Why buy a suit to wear it only once? I think menswear is way harder than women's--there's this nebulous world of work clothing that doesn't require a suit, but is it really sweater vests and V-necks? Don't get me wrong--I like a good suit. My dad, when he used to wear suits to work, looked handsome in them. My boss wears one every day and looks quite fetching (seriously, the few times I've seen him without a suit it kind of freaks me out). Nate looks good in a suit, but he just doesn't look like Nate. Or anyone Nate might want to look like. But when Karen suggested a sweater vest and tie as a possibility, that seemed even worse. Is it possible for him to look like Nate only dressy?

But wait a minute...what's with all this hemming and hawing? I'm sitting in front of the Olympics right now, men's figure skating. If Nate manages to show up without sequins or chiffon, he'll do just fine.

Sniffle, sniffle, cough, cough

What's sadder than a sweet little baby coughing and hacking all night long? I daresay it's her tired parents nearly in tears at 2:45 a.m. because they are still walking the floors with her, but it's not true! There is no sadder sound than darling C.'s little lungs trying so hard to expel the yickies. I can't blame this illness on daycare, can I? It's just US--we're a germy family!

Before her all-night party, though, she slept soundly for several hours. Instead of taking advantage of that window to do laundry, clean my messy, messy house or spend quality time with Nate, I watched the Olympics and read blogs, something I haven't had much of a chance to do of late. As such, there are two big things on my mind this morning.

1. Why wasn't I born into a snowboarding family? Or at least a family with a geographic location conducive to skiing, snowboarding, the outdoor life, etc? Why of why oh why? It's not just that I want the cool clothes and hair(though I do, especially the coat with the iPod pocket), I want the whole ATTITUDE, the whole this-is-so-fun-I'm-just-happy-to-be-here thing, the laidback lifestyle. And since it's obviously too late for me (thanks for pointing out that I'm too OLD to snowboard in the Olympics, KC), I want it for Clementine. Seriously, I want to move to California, live a hippy lifestyle and raise a daughter who thinks about the halfpipe more than the SAT because those snowboarding kids seem so much more comfortable, confident, FUN and creative, not to mention happier, than the ones I used to teach at my big fancy Ivy League college. Does that mean I fail yet another parenting test, or have I found the answer?

2. I was reading the blog of a mom who is trying to decide when the right time is to have another kid. Her son is a few months older than darling C., and she wondering if she'll ever be able to love two kids the same, if she'll be cheating them of her attention, etc. etc. I am not even going to weigh in on that, especially after last night and my aggregate three hours of sleep. What did catch my eye is when she mentioned how rough the first few post-baby weeks were on her marriage. YES, I thought, those weeks DO suck, and no one ever talks about them (except maybe my sister who once told me I would never hate or love anyone as much as the person with whom I have my children). Sure, total strangers will talk to you about their nursing boobs, nipple inflammation, flabby ass and stomach and their birth-lacerated vaginas, but no one will tell you about how difficult it is to maintain your happy marriage (hoping it was happy in the first place) over the incessant screaming of a newborn and all the subsequent decisions you have to make together. Sure, books say you have to "set aside special time with your partner." They tell you to go on a dinner date, talk openly, make special time for sex and intimacy etc. etc., but they don't warn you that when you are sleep-deprived, confused, hormonal and out of control, the easiest target is the person you love the most--in my case, Nate. We totally struggled those first few weeks, and I was too fucking embarrassed to admit it to anyone, especially people who seemed to have it so together. I think he and I both wondered if we had made a terrible mistake by having a child together, but I was too chicken to ask any of my other mom friends (and we all know how few I have) if they had those problems too.

So why the silence? Is this the frontier of motherhood that is just too private and personal to discuss? Or am I alone here? Did everyone else easily transition from being two alone to three? From well-rested and secure to sleep-deprived and confused?

Ummm....

Because the day is long and we were running out of distractions, I approached the car again (see initial post below) and couldn't help snapping a picture of the inevitable meltdown. I agree, Dr. S, that it is absurd that her toys come with cell phones. I think a lot of kids' toys are absurd, but I'm picking my battles. That said, I'm off to find my scissors...this cell phone's battery is about to run out forever.


I don't mean to sound naive and all, but isn't my little 5-month-old too young for temper tantrums? I'm used to the whining that comes when something is just out of her reach and she really wants it (I may even encourage it just a bit by pushing things just beyond her plump little fingers--I'm such as ass), but now she's got a new trick. Goes like this:

I put her in her little bouncey car so she can be entertained and I can have a free hand or two. She laughs, honks the horn, tunes the radio, puts on the turn signals, giggles and makes precious little faces at her mama.

But the she sees the damn cell phone.

Does she identify it as the thing always half-glued to her mom's ear, claiming too big a share of her attention? I don't know. What I do know is that she gets it in her grasp and it's a short road to hell after that. She makes it ring and do its funny noises. She laughs. She puts it in her mouth, tries other angles, coos. But then she realizes she can't get it free (its roped to the car so it doesn't end up under my couch, I imagine). She pulls, struggles, jumps up and down, bangs it on the tray and grunts loudly. Then again. Then she starts the whine, which quickly escalates into a shriek. Then she starts to jiggle car, jump up and down and scream all the same time. She looks panicked, angry and then starts to cry with real tears.

I thought I had a little while before this shit.

An almost ordinary day

Today is Valentine's Day, a holiday Nate and I don't really celebrate because, well, we love each other all the time, not just today. I usually make a Valentine CD for all my friends with a mix of off-beat love songs, but I've been a real slacker of late. Last year I was too tired (first trimester of pregnancy gave me a slight case of narcolepsy) and this year...this year I have a kid, dammit. Haven't you been reading? When do I have time to worry about the nuance of a perfect mix? I don't even have time to brush my hair.

Darling C. and I spent the day together, and she is by far the best valentine I've ever had. I let her wear a dress today since I get lots of criticism for not dressing her girly enough, and it has apparently had a great effect: she's had several good naps, and I've been able to get a lot of work done. Of course my house looks like it was sacked by an invading army--every book and toy we own is out, strewn among the still packed suitcases from the weekend and piles of unread newspapers I refuse to part with because I swear I'll get to them soon. I hate to say it but darling C. is seemingly really mellow and relaxed (despite a few freak outs), and I can't help but attribute it to all the good attention she's getting from having me at home (vs. a full day of crazy daycare). I'm not doting or anything (still trying to work, you see), but I am here and responsive and I don't let her cry herself to sleep when I think she needs a nap. I know this horse that I'm flogging is dead, dead, dead, but I continue to dream of ways to spend more time with my kid without conpletely giving up on working. What is the answer, world?

After our lovely morning, we ran out to have lunch with a friend and on the way I stopped to pick up Hamell on Trial's new CD "For Parents Who Enjoy Drugs." Clementine fell asleep on the way to my next errand and instead of waking her up, I drove around aimlessly looking at houses where I'd rather live and listening to some of the funnier tracks over and over again so I can memorize them and repeat them to my friends. They're not all great, but some of my favs include a song about whether or not he'll tell his kid the truth when he's asked about doing drugs, having premarital sex, stealing, etc. and another vulgar one about Ann Coulter's snatch.

While I hammered at my keyboard and sat on a conference call this afternoon, I watched all of darling C.'s new tricks. These include thrashing around when propped in her Boppy until she's looking at the room upside-down, straining to sit up and then doing a face plant as she tries to get on all fours. If the face plant isn't enough to start her wailing, she'll get up in crawling position and rock back and forth like a sprinter in starting blocks but eventually give up and army crawl toward whatever piece of paper has caught her eye. Toys? Puh-lease...this chick only wants the good stuff: paper to gnaw and disintegrate and a phone to make out with. Her new trick is to whine with increasing urgency when she can't quite reach said goals. Sometimes she'll even escalate into mini-meltdown. My solution? Move it just a little bit farther away and then giggle at her. She sure doesn't know what to make of that.

We're off for a very romantic dinner with our friends and their kid. I think parenting is the great valentine equalizer. It's hard to be mushy when there's a thirteen-year-old there to roll his eyes or an infant to bat the food out of your hand.

I got yer valentine right here:

"Working" from home

When I grudgingly returned to work after my maternity leave, I tried to explore a few options that would provide me with flexibility and keep my kid out of daycare 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I'm still pursuing one that would let me have summers and school vacations with her, but isn't my first choice of being able to work from home two days a week. My boss thought that despite my best intentions I wouldn't get much done with darling C. around to distract and need me. I disagreed, but he is my boss and is generally understanding about my new mommy needs, so I've tried it his way so far.

This week, however, Clementine's daycare provider is off skiing and speaking in whole sentences with adults (who can blame her for a little escape?), so we're trying it my way. I am officially working from home a few days this week and taking a few off to reconnect with my little sweetie who is getting so damn big and I feel like I'm missing it all. Today was a work day for me, and at noon I was toally dismayed that I may have to admit my boss was right--one cannot work at home with a baby. I had managed a few work phone calls, a half dozen emails and the beginning of a damn good memo, but darling C. was at sixes and sevens through most of it: playing quietly at my feet one minute, ripping paper off my desk and sticking it her her mouth the next, screaming and trying to slam her head on the floor after that. Obviously she needed me, so I gave the rest of the afternoon to her and didn't feel a bit guilty about it. I checked email now and then and answered a quick phone call, but I hardly got 8 hours in and thought how much it was going to suck to tell me boss he was right. I hate when someone else is right. HATE it.

But then a wonderful thing happened: Nate came home. Sure, he was sick as hell and no doubt germy (I'm already feeling a little dizzy and infected), but he could certainly lie on the floor and entertain darling C. while I raced upstairs and got a chunk of work done. Then I made dinner, ran an errand and settled in again to finish my memo, return all my email, update a few projects and even get started on stuff for tomorrow. All while kind of watching the Olympics. Holy multi-tasking! It's not any different than sitting in my office and listening to my office mate drone on and on about quilting as I continue to type, hoping she'll get the hint (she never does). So I didn't work my day in 8 hours in a row, but I sure as hell got that much work done over the 16 hour period. AND I hung out with darling C., made dinner, got an errand done and fed my steadily increasing appetite for the Olympics.

Of course now I'm dragging ass and need to put my tired self to bed. I couldn't do this every day (especially the pumping--oh how much easier it is to do in my office and not with a baby grabbing at the hoses and fussing), but a couple times a week and everyone's happy. Is it too much to ask?

More tales from the city

Driving late at night may cure darling C.'s car blues, but let me tell you it wipes me out. We drove until 1:30 a.m. last night after a weekend of very little sleep, and there were a few times I was convinced I was going to fall asleep at the wheel and roll the car. Stop the car, you suggest? Right. The one time we stopped for gas my little crier woke and threatened to fuss--I'll take my chances with highway hypnosis over highway psychosis any day. Nate fired up the iPod and after a few misfires (the White Stripes just don't get me going like they used to) loaded some ridiculous old rap that we both somehow know all the words to. What special family time it was as we drove down I94 at 75 mph rappin' together about pimps and hos.

We had a lovely time in Chicago, and I have 113 pictures to prove it. I don't know what happens in these family situations: is Clementine extra cute, or is there some competitive instinct within me to take the most photographs ever? Also, I have come back 113 pounds heavier, I swear. Nate and I made our way back to Detroit like Hansel and Gretel, following the breadcrumbs after being all fattened up and escaping the witch. We enjoyed all types of pizza and junk food, not to mention KC's killer chocolate chip cookies and homemade brownies. And that was all before Sunday, when we really busted out the junk food. I can't tell if this is a tactic to get us to stay forever or never ever come back--both seem entirely possible depending on where I am in my digestive cycle. Today it is all regret.

After arriving late on Friday night, we all enjoyed a wide awake darling C. until about 2 a.m., when she finally gave in to sleep for a whopping 15 minutes. The night progressed like this: awake, smiling and cute for 30 minutes, alseep for 30 minutes, awake and fussy for 20 minutes, asleep for 30 minutes, etc. etc. until finally she was fast asleep and crying her eyes out AT THE SAME TIME. This is a new trick she is perfecting, and although my sister found it quite funny, I really did think about putting her down, walking out the front door and not coming back until the end of the weekend. At 6 I decided to just wake her up--she went from crying her eyes out to wide awake and bubbly. Go figure.

We took my lovely niece Abby with us downtown for breakfast and to see my friend Crystal. Since darling C. was on the edge of breakdown, Nate got to squeeze his little behind between the two car seats in the back to keep the hysteria to a minimum. We usually mock family cars, but it wasn't lost on either of us that having two kids (two car seats) will mean looking at a car in terms of practicality instead of coolness. It's a sobering thought. We picked up Crystal and headed to Lou Mitchell's in the West Loop. As we waited in line outside, a nice lady brought us some donut holes, which Abby double-fisted, getting crumbs and powdered sugar all over. This immediately earned her sweetheart status with everyone around us in line, and they all laughed as they watched her cram fistfuls of cake into her face. I should note here that darling C. has yet to experience food herself. I know nothing of how children relate to food, and it didn't strike me as a bad idea to let Abby have whatever she wanted to eat, even if she had thrown up all night long two nights prior. She looked healthy and it's good to eat, right? So there was no reason for me to deny her the little box of Milk Duds they give you as they seat you (this is now my most favorite breakfast place EVER), or pancakies and sausage. Look how cute she was as we were eating:



Surprisingly, given her lack of sleep, darling C. was in good spirits as well. Must have been just basking in the air of donuts, Milk Duds, the best pancakes in the world and her dad's wacked breakfast that included eggs, potatoes and some apple pie filling. While we chowed, we let her play with a spoon--aren't we nice parents? She liked it so much we gave her another. And another. Who needs fancy toys? The nice thing about spoons is that they're so portable, as we learned when we arrived home to find two of them in her car seat. Being a mom makes you a klepto apparently.


We went to see Crystal's amazing condo on the lake after that, and while darling C. was clearly at home in the urban environs I would do just about anything to inhabit, Abby had different feelings. We spent a little time in the bathroom together and she refused to leave because of the disturbing sculpture Crystal has on her wall named "Harold." Truth told, Harold is creepy, but I'm a total asshole for finding Abby's intense fear of him kind of amusing. I had to cover him with a sheet beore she agreed to come out of the bathroom, and then she avoided that whole side of the living room, looking very suspiciously at him from time to time. I still smile a little when I think of it, and now I know I'm just as bad as my mom, who used take out this creepy backscratcher she had in a drawer just to watch Abby's terrified reaction. It's funny the stuff she fears. In my house, she requests that all busts get put in the closet, and then she talks a lot about how she's not scared of my fire alarms. This means she is.

We left Crystal's to head back to the burbs to see my dad and his wife who were visiting from D.C. I'm not exactly sure what went down when Abby went to see them, but by the time KC and I got there, Abby was hiding under the coffee table and refused to come out. I was afraid it was more Harold-phobia, but the total meltdown that followed KC pulling her out from under the table made it clear there was a lot more going on.

Did you know a kid can cry for a whole hour? Seriously. Abby and KC sat upstairs, and Abby cried and cried, refusing anything and everything my sister offered her: cookies, candy, being naked, a pony, a car, her own house, etc. I don't know if I felt worse for KC or Abby, who could only articulate "I need....SOMETHING!" between her sobs. I"m not sure how it all resolved because a.) I totally couldn't deal with it and b.) my own lovely was a wee bit fussy, what with no sleeping and all. Eventually Abby recovered and dressed up like Fancy Nancy for us:


The weekend continued with ups and downs. Poor Abby just had way too much to deal with--visitors, her little sister, another baby hogging the spotlight (darling C.) and so on., and it didn't help that when she went to bed she had diarrhea. Yup. All over my sister's bed. Being a mom is sooooo glamorous. Who had it worse? KC with shit in her bed or me with a wide awake little girl in mine all night? Hard to say. We had a great time, but by Sunday, we were all happy to see the end of the weekend in sight. First, there was a disasterous attempt at a photo shoot with the grandparents. Ain't nobody looking too good:


Then, we stopped at our family friend Judy's house, where darling C. was given more cute handmade clothes to wear than she will ever be able to, and I made my mom cry within the first 45 minutes by having the audacity to request that she not rifle through my diaper bag. We consumed hundreds of calories in pizza and cake, and then were off in the night like phantoms. Before we left, though, darling C. started to show off with her I'm-almost-crawling routine. And with that, the weekend ended:

Can I get some cheese?

What do you get when you cross visiting grandparents with a sick three year old who has just become a big sister and is feeling a little left out, a hungry newborn, a cranky infant who refuses to sleep and three sleep-deprived parents? A whole lotta whine!

We're having a lovely time on our second consecutive weekend in Chicago, and we've had some fun Windy City adventures. But for now I'm T-I-R-E-D, wondering what the hell is wrong with my sister that she wants to keep having more kids (one feels like more than enough to me right now, thank you) and wishing Nate would get off his ass and invent a teletransport device so we can skip the five hour drive home and just zip ourselves right into our own cozy bed right now.

I can't wait to get the family portraits we just tried to take off the camera. I think between a pantless Abby crying in the middle, zonked out Nora and fussy as hell Clementine, we may have finally captured the essence of parenthood on film.

The silver lining?

If the dark cloud is darling C.'s refusal to latch and enjoy a normal breastfeeding relationship with me, I may have found one part of the silver lining: car rides. When darling C. wakes up screaming in the backseat, the most gymnastics I have to perform is to wiggle into the backseat and locate the bottle to pop in her mouth. As I did this last night, I thought how grateful I was to not have to find a way to position myself over her carseat and dangle my boob down in there to feed her at 70 mph. Especially since Nate's car doesn't have tinted windows.

A night out

Last night, this mama got out of the house and got her some wine and good, good food with the girls. It sounds all Sex in the City when I say it that way, and let me be clear: we are so not the Sex in the City type of group. No cosmos, no talking about fellatio, no ridiculous fashion unless you count my wacked-out, am-I-really-30? wardrobe. We’re just four ladies who don’t all see one another often (weird grammar there because I see Karen just about every day, but the rest us see one another at varying frequency) but get sprung from our houses and lives once a month to eat, drink and chatter. This group was much larger at one time, but people moved away or got busy, and the four of us are the hangers on, which is cool because I don’t think we would have otherwise stayed in touch as well.

I’m still in the motherhood honeymoon stage, and maybe I always will be: I’m not exactly desperate to get away from my kid. I am desperate to get away from my laundry and the black hole that is my TV, however, and I love getting to talk to people with whom I do not work or live and to whom I am not related. Debby and Lisa are some of the only people I roll with socially that fit this bill these days, and they are the only—and I mean ONLY—mothers of young kids I know in the area. Pathetic, no? I feel bad for Karen sometimes because the Great Life of Mommy often dominates the conversation, but she’s a good sport and has a front row seat for the myopic turn one’s life takes when you squeeze out a kid or two. It would be nice, I imagine, to talk about something else, but since I can’t really do current events (no time to read the paper), literature (no time to read period), movies (huh? like in a cinema? if it’s not on HBO I don’t know it), we’re kind of stuck with kids or reality TV (and we sure did talk about Project Runway last night).

One of the reasons I really like the way the four of us groove is that we are all so different. Karen is running around half out of her mind in love, Debby is resourceful and knowledgeful about everything (maybe two kids and a perfect husband help), and Lisa is a fashionista, gorgeous and with a sick, dry sense of humor that absolutely kills me. I am the rogue of the group, I think—totally disorganized and forever unprepared. We all have full lives but somehow manage to come together (and keep wanting to come together) to talk about a little bit of everything. We’re hardly best friends, but their friendship and the regularity of our outings is something I’ve come to depend on. It’s hard to explain. Sometimes people who aren’t all up in your day-to-day can give you needed perspective and humor, I guess.

Friends like this can also be just what you need when you don’t know what the hell you need. I swear, without the four of them I might have fallen apart when Clementine was born. They brought me food when I didn’t realize how hungry I was or how hard it was to cook, gave me advice, listened to me whine and basically gave me permission to stop listening to the parenting machine and just do what I wanted. Sounds simple, but I needed all the help I could get. We’re all pretty different in our parenting styles (yes, Karen too with her cats), but there is no judgment, which I have found is pretty darn unusual with other mommies. It’s just a good group.

But enough gushing. We went out, ate too much, spent too much money on wine and had a lovely time. It was the perfect end to a nice day where I had gotten enough sleep, breezed through a mountain of work, hung out with Nate and C. and felt like everything was clicking. Hooray for nights out.

And from all I can tell, Clementine missed me while I was gone. She woke me up at 5:30 a.m. to tell me so. She’s been soaking her diapers at night lately, so Nate stripped her of her wet jammies, put her in a disposable and plopped her in between us to coo and roll back and forth, stroking our faces and doing her best imitation of kisses. We tried to sleep and play with her at the same time (it’s amazing, this new multitasking), but eventually she was too cute to ignore and we all spent a happy morning rolling around together and laughing. How can we get up that early and still be late to work? I’m blaming it on the traffic (which was totally shitty because there was more than one flake of snow in the sky and everyone turned into a grandma driver), but really it was because you can’t pull yourself out of bed when your sweet little daughter is inches away and smiling her gummy best. I don’t care how important you are at work—some things are just too good to miss.

We’re taking another midnight jaunt to Chicago this evening to hang out with my sis and her brood. I’m sure I’ll have some reports from the road (but hopefully they won’t be about blood C.’s blood-curdling screams).

Rockin' in the free world

Last night we spared darling C. the Grammy Awards and just hung around listening to some of our favorite CDs, hoping to get her addicted to those before she turns to kid's music, a genre which frankly frightens the life out of me. Nate is still working on his children's adaptations to his favorite Beastie Boys songs, and last night I played her Velvet Underground for the umpteenth time, trying to convince myself that they are mellow enough for bedtime.

I've been thinking about music a lot lately, especially since reading Sam Anderson's piece in Slate about his addiction to children's music. Warning in case you read it: don't be an idiot like me and click on the link to listen to "Victor Vito." I spent all weekend with just a few bars of it stuck in my head, and now (just as I had finally replaced it!) it's back again. Dammit! Anderson writes about these kid's songs as "earworms" (some German etymology brings us that term), and I must admit I tremble in fear of one day being unable to get one of the simpering Wiggles songs out of my head for real. I'm highly suggestible, and something of that magnitude could really ruin my life. Wanting to know what all the fuss was about, I had my sister play some Kanye West for me a while ago, and I still can't sit through a meeting about preset calendars (yes my job is that dull) without internally calling out "Holler we want presets! We want presents! Yeah!" with a little Jamie Foxx in the background.

Happily, my preverbal little daughter can't call out requests from the backseat in the same way my niece does: "Mommy, I want to listen to the princess song again." But that's not to say darling C. doesn't make her tastes known. This morning on the way to work I was playing a mix that had the Modern Skirts' "Seventeen Dirty Magazines," and every time it ended she started fussing and moaning loudly. All I had to do to get her to stop was start the song over again. Once, I swear she even hummed along.

So today I am obsessed with making some mixes for her that keep her happy and don't make me crazy, and I'm not talking about the whole Ralph's World or They Might Be Giants gig either. There will be a time when those groups will be the middle ground, the music she likes that doesn't make me crazy, and I'll accept that day when it comes (I read that Manu Chao has a new record for kids, and so I know we'll have some fun at that stage). But for now, before she can talk or ask for things by name, I want to do my best to delay the children's music phase as long as possible. So far my list of songs for mother and daughter includes Goober and the Peas, White Stripes, Golden Smog, Cat Power, The Be Good Tanyas, Hem (thanks to a little reminder of them from Dr. S which also makes me want to track down a version of "Fish Heads"), Beastie Boys (obviously), Blanche, Hole, Elliott Smith, Brazilian Girls, The Hentchmen, The Ramones, The Shins, The Free Design, PJ Harvey, Bjork, Slumber Party , Regina Spektor and a whole bunch of stuff from the Nuggests box set.

But I need more! Any suggestions??

5 months, 3 days

Dear Clementine:

The better mommies of the world have been doing this from the beginning: writing letters to their sweet babies month by month to chart development and capture these fleeting first moments. I always meant to do the same, just as I always meant to keep a baby book for you, to organize all the mementoes of your first weeks with us. What can I say? I've been a little busy, what with raising you and all. So you won't have a letter for the first five months. You won't get to read in detail about the first weeks when you mostly ate or slept, your dad and I hovering over you and willing you to wake up and entertain us. We went on and on about your every twitch and snort and let ourselves get totally lost in the baby bubble, no glimpse of the outside world for days on end. You won't get a letter about the month you first smiled or laughed, your first holidays, all the cute amazing things you did when you were still just a little lump. I'm sorry for that--they were precious times. But on the plus side, you won't get any letters about your car terrors, the way I spent most of my maternity leave trapped at home because the car and Target (pretty much the only destination I was up for) made you scream bloody murder. You won't get a letter about all your poop, with which we were obsessed for a while, the trouble you had latching (and the subsequent formation of my very intimate relationship with my breast pump), the way your dad and I had to jump up and down to get you to sleep. You were an odd little creature at the beginning, and although there won't be letters, you can bet your ass I'll be reminding you about all the ups and downs we had for the rest of your life. I can't wait until you have a kid so I can compare horror stories with you.

And so here we are at 5 months. You are an actual baby now, not the little squeaky rag doll we dragged home from the hospital. You roll over all the time and have been doing these cute little sit ups and crunches for months now. Do you have someplace else you'd rather be? You are the world's most rigid baby--no joke, we can't get you to extend an arm without taking the whole body with it clenched up like a fist. You won't bend in the middle, so getting you in and out of your car seat or Bumbo chair is like trying to fold a thick sheet of ice--there is no nuance. You love to hold things, especially rattles, and your dad and I will be going to a special circle of hell for laughing at you every time you get the rattle going and pop yourself in the head with it. So far no bruises, but you sure do get pissed off.

When you can get something in your hand, it's only a matter of seconds until it ends up in your mouth. This is true even of the cat, even when her tail is covered in caked-on kitty litter. I am so over the cat, but you seem to like to pull her hair, so I'm not pushing her out the door. Of all the things you like to chomp, books are your favorite. For a while I deluded myself into thinking your book fetish showed an early aptitude for reading and learning; now I understand that you are a bookworm in the true sense of the word: you chew through books.

As for sleep...well...you sleep like shit. There's no other way to put it. For a while in the beginning you would go down at midnight and sleep until 6 a.m. We LOVED it and felt it was a payback for the car thing, the breastfeeding thing (have I mentioned the breast pump enough yet? It's beckoning even as I type), the crying. Now, though, you have developed this amazing ability to multitask: you can both cry and sleep at the same damn time. It's amazing. Happily, you can also eat and sleep at the same time, so although you wake up a few times most nights, we can get you back to sleep pretty quickly. You are still sleeping in our bed, and I sometimes wonder if that's what's getting you up all night long, but I ultimately don't care. I don't get enough of you during the day, and you certainly don't get enough of us. What the parenting machine calls "co-sleeping" we call just plain good sense. I love having you next to me. It just works.

This month has been your first in daycare, and I am conflicted about it every single day, every single time I drop you off or am racing to pick you up. I can't stand to think of someone else raising you, of someone else getting the largest part of your day. I also can't stand what it does to our days--I feel like I'm cramming in a whole day's worth of togetherness and love into the few hours we get with you between pick-up and when you drift off to sleep. I could go on and on about the conflict, and I imagine you will see a lot of this month by month. For now, let me just say I'm sorry if daycare is screwing you up.

My favorite part of the day with you has always been bath time, and it just keeps getting better. No, we're not some obsessive compulsive freaks who scrub your skin raw each night in order to purify you and keep you germ free. The whole bedtime routine just kind of depends on a bath in there, and I'm much too selfish to give it up. You'll be horrified to know that we (and by that I mean one of us at a time--we're not living on some commune) are usually in the bath tub with you for now. We tried that whole bath chair thing, but it was way too hard. I felt light-headed after all that time bent over the tub, and you kept slipping off to one side or the other and hitting your head. I could never get you clean on the back side (and it's important, that perfect tush!), and your dad and I kept fighting over who got to be closest to the head. It was so not worth the trouble, especially when your very first bath was so simple and lovely and with your dad just a few minutes after you were born. It's so much easier! Anyway, you are obsessed with your bath book and freak out when you see it. The other night you even cried a bit when I didn't fork it over right away (ah, how I can't wait for the temper tantrum years). You lounge against the back of the tub for as long as we let you, and chew on anything you can put in your mouth, laughing and singing smiling the whole time. It really is the best time of day.

One last hobby of the month: you LOVE to blow raspberries and are very thrilled with yourself for having learned how to do it. I know you probably don't know how well you time them, but we've had fun making a game of asking you questions and laughing when the answer is a raspberry (I wish I could transliterate that sound!). Do you like Daddy's shirt? Raspberry. Doesn't that woman on the TV look pretty? Raspberry. You are just so damn smart.

Even though I tell you every day and do everything I can to show you, you will never really understand how much I love you. I can't even remember my life five months and 4 days ago--who was I then? I know it matters, and I want to find a way for you to know that part of me. But for now what I really want is for you to know that it was all leading up to you, depending on your arrival. I won't go on and on because it's all hyperbole and platitudes: words, words, words. You are my own sweet baby, my silly girl, my kitten, my moonpie, my turtle face, my bug, my beanie, my pumpkin, my spitter, my squirmy wormy, my love, my daughter. Rock on, little girl.

I love you,
Mama

Oh my god, I'm one of them

I made a realization last night as I was doing a presentation to the mother's council of the lower school where I work: I am a mom. I know, it seems a little late to figure that out, what with the pregnancy and all: the excrutiating pain of birth, the weeks of crying and no sleep (the baby wasn't doing so well then either), the breast milk all over everything, the large ass bucket of infant I haul with me wherever I go. It's not that I keep forgetting or that it doesn't seem real, I've just never looked at other moms and felt like I was one of them. Especially at work. In fact, one of the things I like most about my job is that I am so much younger (or seem so much younger) than lots of the people around me--it contributes to my absolute age delusion which lets me pretend I'm still a cool twenty-something up on all the hip bands and happenings.

So as I was warming up my laptop and getting ready to look around the room at all of the things I used to imagine I would never become, I realized holy shit, I have more in common with the women in this room than I do with the kids I imagine to be my peer group. It wasn't a pretty realization, and it's not because I don't respect these women (though certainly that may have been the case in the past). I just really don't understand them. So far every stage of motherhood has grabbed me so completely and taken me so totally off guard that I can't even begin to imagine the next one. When I get a glimpse of it, I tremble. I really do. Will I one day (in the not-so-distant future, I might add) sit on tiny dining chairs in the school cafeteria to learn more about what my kid is doing all day or how I can be a better, more supportive parent? I hadn't even considered that until last night. And even if I never join the Mother's Council, which I totally can't even imagine having time for when I hardly make time to pee during the day, aren't these the people I will sit next to at birthday parties, the people with whom I'll have play dates and the like? Now I'm really trembling! What will I say to them? WIll they know I'm an interloper, that I don't know what I'm doing? Why do they all look so freakin competent?

I don't know what this is all about. I love love love my kid, and I've been totally floored by how much I like being a mom. So why am I always so freaked out by the moments that really drive my new life home to me? Instead of skipping off into the mommy sunset and amassing a huge rolodex of potential playdates, I cower in the corner afraid to connect with anyone. I may complain about not having many friends with young kids, but I think I also like it that way. Sure, less support, fewer resources but a lot less aggressive input, fewer conflicting ideas as well. And is it terrible to say that I love having people close to me who still get to taste the outside world, the midnight-in-a-bar or I-saw-all-the-Oscar-contenders-in-the-theater kind of people? I kind of like being the only one at the party lugging a kid along, especially when it gives me an excuse to cut out early.

Can a girl have it both ways? Can I keep on living in two worlds? I think this is one of the hardest things I'll be doing while trying to make my way as a parent: riding the line. It's like inventing myself while helping darling C. invent herself too.

This'll tide you over

I haven't had a single second to myself since my dinner break last night (I had to work until 9 p.m.!) to answer a non-work email, post photos or blog, and I'm not sure that's going to change any time soon. I hate this pace, but wanted to at least take a second to post some photos from the weekend. Here's Clementine realizing her Auntie Belle's lap is otherwise occupied:


Nora Kate, my new little homegirl (wearing the outfit I found for her at Pscho Baby):

Darling C. and her cool new shoes chillin' with her new favorite friend Nick:

Oh my god that face! She's representing Detroit in her onesie, though I had to explain it to my mom a thousand times before she got it. See if you can figure it out:

More soon!

A hot time in the old town

This past weekend, darling C., Nate and I headed to Chicago to meet my new niece Eleanor, see my family and catch up with my dear, dear, dear friend Nick, who was in town to give a job talk at a university that would be just plain SILLY not to hire him. I think the corny old phrase "to know him is to love him" was coined especially for Nick, who manages to get along with just about everyone, from PhD candidates to Mariah Carey fans and all who manage to exist in between these bizarre poles. He is truly my touchstone, and I would do just about anything, including braving the car with my car-hating baby and staying with my mom who drives me crazy, to see him. I seriously don't know what I'll do when he gets the job (because he will--you can't meet him and not want to do everything in your power to be around him all the time, even if you're on a stuffy hiring committee for an academic job) and moves to Chicago because then so many of the people we love will be living in one city without us! If we could just convince a few of our favorite Detroiters to pack up and move with us, we'd be living it up in Chicago in no time flat. Oh, I guess we'd need jobs, too. You certainly can't live on love alone.

The ride to Chicago was uneventful becasue we left at Clementine's bedtime, crossing our fingers she would sleep most of the way. She did, and Nate and I were both able to sit up front like grown-ups and listen to something other than the static station Clementine usually demands. Of course some evil troll was inside my iPod, making it impossible to return to the menu to select an artisit or playlist, so so we were stuck listening to the thing in alphabetical order by artist (AC/DC followed by Aimee Mann--what a mix!). It kind of sucked, but I'm willing to see the bright side--no one was in the back seat draped over C.'s carseat acting a fool to keep her happy, and we weren't shouting over white noise to be heard. It was a good omen for the trip, but understand there is an element of foreshadowing here--I might not make such a big deal of a good car ride if a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad one weren't in our future.

We got in late and took our now well-rested and wide awake baby up to Grammy's house, where she was innundated with lots of intense "I'm your Grammy! I love you! You know me! You love me!" from my mom, who is apparently afraid that the distance between our two houses will keep Clementine from knowing/liking her. Invariably, darling C. senses the tension, intensity and insanity of these desperate pleas and freaks out, making my mom even more convinced that C. doesn't know/like her. It's a vicious circle, and we all lose, especially Clementine who just wants to chill without all the pressure. We were eventually allowed to sleep, which did not go well because it was a strange place and Clementine had already had the world's longest nap, making her ready to play.

The next day, we started our day with my sweet little niece Eleanor. I remember when C. had visitors in her first few weeks, moms would always exclaim "Mine were never that little!" and I wondered how they could ever forget. Upon first holding Eleanor, I couldn't help but utter the exact same sentiment--she is so tiny! How was darling C. ever that small? Is it like the whole labor/delivery amnesia? Did I forget because those weeks were so traumatizing and sweet at the same time? I dunno, but Nora, as she is called, is one good looking little girl. She's also a dream baby who slept almost the whole time she wasn't clamped to my sister's boob.

We left their house to get Nick and have deep fried hamburgers at Hackney's, a family tradition we had to get him in on because he and I did most of our bonding over blue cheese and bacon burgers at an Ithaca sport's bar we would normally never enter were it not for the food. My sister brought her brood to meet us, and for the first time in my life I was sitting AT the table with two high chairs and a booster seat instead of glaring at it. Yes, we were treating the place like Chuck E. Cheese's, and no, I don't understand how tables with kids always leave wet clumps of paper scraps under the table. There were tons under ours after the meal, and I can't figure out how it happened. Another mystery of parenting. After eating, there must always be shopping, so we headed downtown to what is now my most favorite of haunts, Psycho Baby. Apparently convinced I am rich, I bought some great stuff for Clementine including some skull booties and a little deer dress. Pics forthcoming! I also got this fantastic book called That's Disgusting, which is truly disgusting for a kid's book. I can't wait to read it to her.

We headed back out to the burbs to my sis's place for pizza, cake and much baby fondling until it was time to go to bed. We got up the next day to say our goodbyes and make a quick trip to the Land of Nod's wonderful little outlet, which is FULL of incredible deals. I could never afford to shop at the real store, but I always manage to find cool toys and books at the outlet, and it's even cheaper than the website. God, I sound like a commercial for a weekend getaway. I swear I don't always shop this much! It's as much necessity as pleasure, as ugliness can easily arise between me andmy mom when there aren't structured activities.

Pockets emptied, family visited, we decided stupidly to head home in the middle of the day. I thought we were timing it for one of darling C.'s naps, but I was so sadly mistaken. She totally lost her marbles more than once, and although we tried hard to power through it, we had to stop at a few not-so-great roadside spots to let her out (sounds like a pet) and calm her down. It was a greuling trip home, and we will never make that mistake again. And by again, I mean next weekend. Yup, it's a do-over because we couldn't fit everything in the first time.

I have a gazillion great pictures, which I will resize and post later. For now, I have to get back to the worst work day I've had in a long time, and then go home to look at my daughter, who will already be asleep.

The swing of things

I confess, the power of suggestion is strong with me. I saw this swing in a magazine and couldn't stop thinking about it for days. Yes, I had to order it from Austria; no, it wasn't cheap. My brother-in-law wonders why I can't just buy a Johnny Jump-up from Target, and I have no good reason except that this swing is so cute--a little piece of art hanging in our doorway. Best part about it: no Disney characters and no large warning tags. Also, darling C. like to snack on it.

Is it Friday yet?

Today I am feeling the working mom's rut. My Monday through Friday feels almost like the movie Groundhog Day, each day a carbon copy of the last. Just about every single minute has plan and structure to get us moving toward the next minute, and while this could be a boon for those who like an agenda, my inner free spirit is feeling a bit stifled. Crushed, really. I've been trying to make a game of it--on my commute, I gauge how early or late I am based on my friend David's progress through the Tim Horton's drive-thru on Woodward. Some days he is just turning into the parking lot, other days he's already at the window paying. Or at dinner: how many different meals can I make out of stuff that can live in my fridge for weeks at a time (no fresh veggies or meat because who has time to shop?)? American cheese and mustard sandwiches may soon be in heavy rotation. Seriously, this is as varied as some of my days get. Aren't you jealous?

While I think Clementine has benefitted from structure, I worry about making her too regimented, unable to go with the flow. Also, I hate that this structure robs us of a lot of time together. I know I'm constantly harping on that, but it's really hard to fit in a day's worth of fun, discovery and indoctrination (war=bad; poverty=bad; social reform=good; Elvis Costello=good, etc. etc. etc.) into a few cranky hours before bed. This morning I didn't have those sweet wake-up coos and snuggles because I had to rip darling C. from sleep and rush her off to daycare so I could make it to an early meeting with a parent (who doesn't work) who BLEW ME OFF and then demanded to reschedule same time tomorrow. Sure, breaks up the rut a bit, I guess, but breaks it up with bitterness and vitriol.

On the plus side, tomorrow we leave for a good old fashioned road trip. Yes, I am terrorized at the thought of darling C. screaming from here to Chicago, but I'm placated by the thought of all the fun we'll have once we're there. Can we cram it all in to two days? It doesn't matter! For various reasons--friends, family, obligations, etc.--we are going back the following weekend as well. It just works out that way, and I'm determined to enjoy it. Maybe if we leave at bedtime, she won't holler across three states.

Also, I have just removed a week's worth of pictures from our digital camera and they are some of the cutest yet. I noticed some tall socks on a baby from another blog and have become obsessed with the idea of thigh-highs or legwarmers for darling C. Makes diaper changing easy, shows off her excellent collection of onesies without worrying about coordinating pants and are just plain cool. I found some online, and she's been rockin' em ever since. I'll post some pics tonight.

Holy hormones!

Ah, hormones--such odd little things. I regarded my pregnancy ones with curiosity and amusement for the most part, although it should be said this was AFTER the actual hormonal episodes that ranged from crying at the trailer for Life of Yao, a documentary about a Chinese basketball player, to total rage at Nate for all the ways in which he could some day leave me for someone else. I was totally unpredictable most of the time, but it was also so great to have an excuse for the most erratic behavior, even when it was part of my normal way of doing things.

And then there were the post-partum hormones. Those mostly manifest themselves in tears and bouts of deep, deep insecurity, but I was lucky enough to call mine fleeting. I got the blues, but they moved on quickly.

Now, months out, I find myself mostly even except for the new MONTHLY hormonal attacks, as I have now returned to the leagues of menstruating women despite lactating more than seems necessary with a 5 month old child (I know, more information than most of you needed to know, but I'm providing context here). This new little emotional surge is way more intense than I ever experienced pre-pregnancy, information I'll be placing on my "No one told me" list under the column heading "Ways in which having a kid totally fucks with your body and life." Hormones will be listed right between my rearranged ass (I swear there are now two whole asses back there) and literally bottomless laundry hamper.

Here are things I have cried about today:

1. A story on NPR about the huge party the city of Detroit is throwing for the homeless during Superbowl weekend--not to actually let them get warm and fed, really, but to keep them away from the tourists.

2. The many, many emails alums of the private school I work for have sent to us to pass on to Bob Woodruff, the ABC News anchor who was seriously injured in Iraq over the weekend. I love the high school memories they are sharing as part of their tributes, and the mushy get-well wishes aren't helping either.

3. Working with morons who are passive aggressive and love to ruin people's days.

4. Elliot Smith. I don't know why. I just think it's so sad he died, and I love his music. I've been listening to "Clementine" all day. Now I'm thinking of River Phoenix and how sad it is that he's dead too. I'm not crying, though.

5. The idea that darling C. will one day have her feelings hurt by a friend or peer at school (this was while I was watching some middle school girls freeze out another little girl at the lunch table). Then, the idea that she will be the one doing the hurting.

It's not even that late in the day, and I've gotten weepy 5 whole times. This is like being pregnant all over again. Someone pass the chocolate ice cream!