Just about a year ago...

We were waiting. We were excited. We had no idea what was about to happen to our lives. We even thought that crib would see some action. *Sigh* We had so much to learn. Look, I seem giddy.:

I remember thinking at the time that I hadn't gotten grossly big or anything during my pregnancy. I was clearly crazy or so hormonal that I couldn't register things normally. The picture below makes me want to hurt Nate--not just for taking such an unflattering photo (I swear, I'll never sit down in future pregnancy pics) but for ever ever letting me leave the house in a shirt with horizontal stripes. I mean, really. Why is he so thoughtless?

I've been waiting for the big bloat that I imagine is gunning for me since I stopped breastfeeding. These pictures alone make me want to put down the chalupa for some nuts and berries. All that aside, I did love being pregnant. I miss it sometimes!

We're in high holy countdown for the big birthday. I'm feeling very nostalgic and can't look at too many pictures of the little girl without crying. What will I be like when she goes to college?

The Chicago files

Three weeks late, but I finally got around to sorting through the pictures of our trip to Chicago. There are many gems, but my favorites are certainly when we try to get darling C and her cousins into one shot. These are best viewed as a series. Case in point:



Like trying to herd kittens.

It was a trip of firsts. Clementine's first train ride:

Her first hot dog (she's not a fan):

Her first donut:

And her first family picnic:

Now maybe by next weekend I will post the photos I took of last weekend's camping trip. Click any of the photos above for a gazillion more.

Waking up

And for once I'm not talking about my midnight rendezvous with my sleep-resistant child (although I could be--she was up last night as usual).

Sometimes I think I've spent the last year in a selective coma. Politics? Wha? Huh? Current events? War? Part of it is survival--how much depression can you heap upon a woman who has already been pushed to the very edge of what she thinks is possible? And part of it is just not having time and energy for much more than Project Runway after getting yourself and child ready for the day, out the door, to daycare, to work, through a full day, then put it in reverse to arrive home for dinner, bath, bed and an hour of down time.

Today, though, I attended the Michigan Democratic Convention in support of one of our great friends Julie Donovan Darlow, who is running for regent of the University of Michigan. I started the morning thinking I was going to get a few signatures, cheer for a friend and then get home for a nap, but I was very quickly impressed by this whole world that has been sailing along without my paying attention in the last year. I got to hear politicians speak (including our troubled governor, who reminded me how close I am to living in a red state--a thought that keeps me up nights), I got to be around all the passion and fervor that comes with politics, and I got to feel a little jolt of the real world, the there's-more-to-life-than-diapers-and-the-life-you-eke-out-in-between-them world. I felt so recharged by it all, so committed. And now I am home thinking I need to get way more involved in shaping a world where I want my kid to grow up. Isn't that the ultimate act of mothering? Making the world the place you want for your kids?

Another significant act of mothering, though, has to be the procurement of fun and outrageous adventures, which is what motivated me last night to drag my darling C. and loving husband to the Ukranian Sunflower Festival in a nearby suburb. While not as polka-fabulous as the Sausage Festival we have been to in the past, there was plenty of church-sponsored gambling, ethnic food, crafts and a white elephant sale for all of us (though I missed out on a fabulous vintage hair drier chair that would have been awesome on my front porch). We also got to see the Polish Muslims, a crazy band that brought out the amazing dancer in darling C. She was out on the floor like a madwoman, bouncing up and down, chasing other kids around, trying to catch the lights cast from the disco ball. It was a sight to behold. She wanted nothing to do with us, of course, so I let her careen around the floor, flirting with the whole crowd of clapping, cheering people she thought were there to see her and her alone. It was a fabulous night.

I'm going to take myself and my new political consciousness to the tattoo parlor today to see if I can't work up some little art in honor of Clementine's 1st birthday. That's right--the house is a mess, there's no menu and I have tons to do, so I'm just going to avoid all that and go be frivolous. Isn't America wonderful?

Sick day

We've been battling a mean cold here since our weekend away (I believe we got it from the carrier monkeys--my neices--in Chicago), and although Nate and Clementine seems to be faring fine, I'm flat on my ass. Today I sent them off to work and daycare respectively and spent the whole day on the couch moaning and reading and sleeping and feeling sorry for myself. I felt a little guilty for not keeping C. home with me, but I got over it quickly when I realized I haven't been alone in my house for more than an hour in almost one whole year. I decided to delight in it as much as I could between coughing fits and sneezes, dizzy spells and naps. It was heavenly, and I may just be feeling better. I also started a book, finished another, read three days' worth of newspapers, caught up on the stack of magazines at the base of my stairs and watched Continental Divide with Blair Brown and John Belushi (total cheese). I am so damn productive I can't believe it. Of course I didn't get any work done, I didn't clean my house or do any laundry. I know I'm not supposed to do that shit when I'm sick, but we're bordering on crisis here. I need to get in gear.

Things have been so crazy at work that I forget how important it is to have some time to oneself. Time with Clementine is non-negotiable, so I need to be better about either getting up early or using the evening for more than just vegging out. I need to get back to my writing, despite the odd ways my job keeps pulling at me, and I need to be vigilant about keeping creativity alive in my house. In fact, I need to take more sick days...only not when I'm too sick to enjoy them

Day three of grilled cheese

In which we continue to eat hunks of fatty cheese between huge slices of bread because:

1. I no longer have time for grocery shopping, balanced meals, meal planning or cooking of any kind.
2. I overzealously bought cheese at the Cheese Haven, a huge and yet divey little cheese shop we stopped at on the way home from camping this weekend.
3. We apparently never ever want to poop again.
4. I L-O-V-E my panini maker to an extreme and perhaps troubling degree and will make ANYTHING if it can be cooked on it.
5. I have totally run out of steam and food no longer holds any pleasure or interest for me unless someone else prepares it. And delivers it to my home. And cleans up my dishes when I'm done.

Tonight my goal is to send out long overdue invites to Clementine's birthday bash and faux baptism, a blowout of huge proportions that will happen on Labor Day weekend amidst the chaos of the Michigan State Fair (helllooo Alice Cooper and leagues of carnies), the Detroit Jazz Festival and the arrival of my mother for a weekend that isn't about her. Holy hell, we'll see how it goes.

So I must get to it. Then I'll have to plan a menu. Then maybe start to clean because it may take two weeks to make this place presentable.

Still to come...long overdue Chicago pics and new pics from camping. Hoory!!

Ouch. No, really. Let's talk about my boobs.

What have I done to myself? It took a long time for me to decide to divorce myself from the pump and get little C. off the breast milk, but once I decided I was done, I couldn't get it over with fast enough. Which is why I sit here tonight in pain, my boobs gigantic, hotter than a fresh cup of coffee and hard enough that, could I detatch them from my body, I could easily use them as bowling balls. It ain't pretty over here, especially because my right boob is ridiculously larger than my left. It always had a little more milk, but this is a bit much. I may be prone to exaggeration, but I don't think I'm overstating that my boob is as big as Nate's head. Seriously. And it looks bizarre. I could have probably done this a little less cold turkey, but when I imagined myself hooking up to the pump for another week, month, whatever, I reached a real breaking point. Enough is enough.

I think a lot of my guilt about cutting off C's precious milk supply has subsided, and I feel like things are really going to feel normal again soon. Not that it wasn't normal before, but lugging a breast pump everywhere we went and feeling like I was shackled to it was hardly the breastfeeding experience I thought I'd have. Nevertheless, I'm really sad to see it end because this is the first time since I realized I was preggers that I won't share a physical connection with my little girl. When I was pregnant, I loved feeling like I had this little surprise inside me, this unknown factor that I was incubating until it was ready to emerge and change our lives (the world?) in some measurable way. And all these months feeding her, I felt very much like the connection continued, like I was doing something tangible to support her growth and development. I know I'll continue that in other ways from now on, I just appreciated the obviousness of it.

The other thing that has got me a bit emotional about giving up the pump is that it's such a clear indication of how much my baby is growing up. I was telling a friend the other night that I'm still mystified every second that I'm doing this--I'm a mom, isn't that wild? The change in my feelings and emotions has been profound in me, much more than I ever imagined, and I'm discovering the depths of that every day even now. Pumping (which is so strange to keep typing--I wish I could just say breastfeeding), in an odd way, was a physical manifestation of all of these intangible feelings of maternal change. I don't know how to explain it any more than that, but I felt like it was a badge that marked how different my life is now. Without my little Medela backpack to tote around, what proof do I have that I'm doing this.

I'll tell you. The proof is this amazing little girl who is walking, charming the masses, talking just a bit and becoming more of her own little self every day. She is almost one year old, and as I enjoy every second with her, I also mourn that I will never again hold her as the little newborn I brought home. It's such a psychotic feeling sometimes to be so in love with who she is, so excited for who she will become and at the same time bereft as we pass by who she has been. Sigh. I know I'm getting dramatic here--I think the giant supply of milk welling up in me is making me a little wacked out hormonal again. I'll be glad to be evening out soon.

And I'll be glad to return to blogging more about this wild mama ride when the summer settles into the new school year and I'm not so damn busy. I've been too crazy to make time for a lot of things this summer, but I'm proud of the way we've lived. OK, we're like gypsies that don't do laundry and can't sit still (my mom would say we have wheels on our butts), and we're like whores because we'll go anywhere with anyone if it sounds like it could be an adventure. But I think that's good. Clementine is a great traveler, and I hope I give her a healthy dose of wanderlust so she wants to explore the world as much as we do.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself. Right now I need to get to bed because we're off for a camping trip with newlyweds Karen and Dave. Which tent will be up all night? Hard to tell. Which up-all-night tent will be having more fun? That's easy.

I have a gazillion pics from our fabulous weekend in Chicago, but for now can only direct you to one my sister (much less lazy than I) posted. It is of Clementine passed out on the couch in front of the TV the night my mom babysat her. I was nervous about the endeavor but had little reason to be. My mom was patient with Clementine and did get her to sleep, inconvenient as it was. But then she told me that she never once changed C's diaper, but I'm trying not to think of that. Just look at how sweet she is.

I owe lots of people email (Sarah, Emily, new mama Dawn, etc.) and promise to get to it when I return from what will likely be the last trip of the summer. Internet, I have missed you and it will be good to be back in touch soon.

To pump or not to pump

I've been a very bad blogger. I've been a very hard worker and a pretty good mother while being a bad blogger, though, so I'm not feeling too bad about it. We've enjoyed a fabulous weekend in Chicago, we've survived some turmoil at work and I'm doing my best to squeeze every last drop of fun out of the summer.

But there's just this one thing on my mind today: I think I'm ready to stop pumping. OK, I better be ready to stop pumping, because I've been reducing my milk supply drastically (and enjoying the engorged, porn-star-esque boobs that go with that) and am hoping to be done by the weekend. I didn't last exactly a year (50 weeks, dammit), and I'm having some sort of guilt about that even though I know it is totally irrational. I mean, I pumped for almost a year, but I had nightmares all night about being on a crashing plane that suddenly righted itself when I got my daughter to latch on. Think I'm a little neurotic?

That's what's brewing over here, but I am still manic and trying to escape my desk, so that's all I have time to write.

Friends in high places

So many times this summer I have found myself mid-activity thinking oh my god, this summer sucks so bad. Usually I'm at work. More often, though, I find myself mid-activity thinking best. day. ever., which means I'm prolly a little nutso and need to talk to someone. I'm up, I'm down, I'm all around. I'm coming down from one of those best-weekend-ever feelings and am just about to crash into worst-workday-ever, so before I arrive at the door of the bitter barn, I best recap all that was good and wonderful in my weekend, trying to savor all the details in hopes of making it to the next.

I took a day off on Friday, and after hanging out with my dear little C. all morning, we packed up and headed out to the post Grosse Pointe area, where my friend Courtney's parents live. Grosse Pointe may be all that is evil in a suburb, right down to the fence--literally a fence--constructed in parts of its border with Detroit, but when you have a friend who can help you make that evil work for you, it's all good. GP has these fabulous city parks with pools, rolling hills, boardwalks along Lake St. Clair, barbeques, etc. etc., but you have to have a park pass to enter them. You have to live in the particular Pointe (there are confusingly several--GP Farms, GP, Park, etc.) in order to get the pass. No, you can't even buy your way in for a day--you must be a resident in order to use the facilities. While it's a little country-clubbish, I have now seen the dark side and it is beautiful. Call me a hypocrite, call me white bread, call me a cake eater, call me whatever--the GP parks are amazing, and I will officially do all I can to get there whenever possible. Courtney and I packed up young lovers Clementine and Hudson and set off for the "splash pad" park, a wonder which is hard to explain but so fabulous to experience I can't even begin to describe. It's like a little water wonderland, where kids can run through various water sprays, stand beneath pails of water that dump on their heads, run over water jets. At first Clementine was a little overwhelmed, but eventually she was ready to pitch her crib in the corner and live a homeless lifestyle just to lay claim to the splash pad every day. I think the city would probably frown on that, but it really was fun.

We got home in time to take Nate to our favorite Cuban restaurant and then hit the bookstore in downtown Royal Oak, which is apparently what many parents of young children decide to do when trying to have some semblance of a life. The kids' section was packed with obnoxious kids who were fighting over the Thomas the train set, so we let Clementine tug all the stuffed animals off the shelf before pretending she picked out this book so we could justify buying it. Such cool pictures! Of course the rock n roll one is on its way to my house soon as well.

On Saturday, we went to the Detroit Urban Craft fair, which was pretty fun, although it was not air conditioned and Clementine was like a little heater on my back. I've been to the Bizarre Bazaar in Cleveland, Art vs. Craft in Milwaukee and Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago, so I have seen a lot of the stuff people were selling there before. One can only buy so many wacky stuffed animals, shit made out of records or cool t-shirts before enough is enough. I did, however, purchase a fabulous shirt that has a necktie as a collar, and some shoes made of flooring. Yes, it sounds weird to buy shoes made of flooring, but they are really cute and cool, and I've been wearing them non-stop since I got them. Check them out here, but she sold them at a reduced price at the craft fair, so I'm not sure what her whole pricing scheme is.

Saturday night we went out with our favoritest rocking friends David and Laura to celebrate her birthday (Happy Day, Laura!) and see The Raconteurs. We started with some fine Chinese food and then proceeded to one of the best shows I've been to in a while. Their set was short, but they rocked hard, and I must admit that although I've been over the Jack White phenomenon for a while, I was totally blown away by the way he jammed on his guitar. They all seemed to have a ton of fun playing together, and it felt very spontaneous and fun--not rehearsed, polished and boring. The highlight for me was an ear-splitting cover of Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang," which I must find a bootleg of or I may die. I keep singing it and hearing Jack's rebel yell in the chorus, and it may dive me nuts is I cannot possess it and listen to it at will.

After the concert we had drinks and dessert because it was so painfully early, and by the time we got home, Clementine was fast asleep in her crib. Did you see that? In her crib. She slept there all night, and we didn't' hear a peep from her until 7 the next morning. Glory, glory! Had we managed to go to sleep at a normal hour, we would have had so much more sleep than we have in the 11 months since her birth, but I'm not griping. Not waking in the 2-4 spot is a glorious thing. Are we turning over a new leaf here? Let's not talk about last night and pretend it is thus.

We woke up Sunday and biked into Ferndale for breakfast before an old college friend and her very cool husband brought their daughter over for a day of play. It was all very parent-ish and exhausting but fabulous. I kicked their daughter in the head accidentally, so they'll probably never call us again, but if they do we'll be very psyched to hang out with them.

And now work. I'm scheduled to visit my family in Chicago this weekend since none of them has been here all summer and they won't come meet me at the beach for a weekend of fun. No, instead I'm hauling my cookies there for the third time, and my mom is being a total head case. Every time I talk to her I shorten my trip by a day, so I'll be breezing through once again with a week's worth of things to do and only three days to fit it all in. Clementine and I are taking the train so that Nate can join us later and we can all travel home together. That is, unless we pick up a new used car along the way, which is what we're hoping because, crazy as it sounds, I can't wait to see my new car and get one that can run on veggie oil. Yes, veggie oil. But that's a post for another day.

Further adventures in parenting

Lest you think the silence on this blog is because Nate and I have graduated into super-parents with full lives, lots of rock 'n' roll, a well-behaved child and no problems whatsoever, I present to you the following evidence that we still don't know what the hell is going on:



I don't know what I was thinking. Sure, she has mostly mastered having a bowl on her high chair tray without overturning it a thousand times. Sure, she is ready to start drinking cow's milk. But I don't know why I thought she was ready to drink from an actual cup by herself. In my own defense, I gave her the milk in a sippy cup first, but she didn't seem to be getting much out of it. Since it was full of cow's milk and not icky breast milk, I gave it a few slugs and discovered that gee, it is hard to get milk out of this thing. No wonder she was so pissed of. Like an idiot, I took the top off and thought I could hold the cup to her for a sip or two. Well, my independent little lamb would have none of that, so she grabbed the cup and had a few slugs on her own, much to my surprise. Hmmm, she is advanced, I was still thinking, as she tilted her head back and pour the entire cup over her head.

But that's not the worst of it! She was so shocked and then so instantly upset that I found it very funny and ran for the camera. So now there is photographic evidence of how terrible I am, and she can point to these photos in her therapist's office one day and talk about how all she wanted was a hug.


At least there's no photographic evidence of my smirking face.

Other parenting misadventures to date haven't been nearly as exciting, though I did make a startling realization last night as I was cleaning up dinner. Remember how you never needed to know how much you don't want to sit on my furniture? Well, if I ever try to serve you anything out of Tupperware, don't accept! Clementine loves to play in the kitchen cupboards, so my mom's friend got me bundles of throw-away Tupperware to put in place of the dangerous array of canning jars and other glass shit in my bottom cupboards. As I cook dinner or do stuff downstairs, darling C. pulls the Tupperware out, puts it back and starts over again. This invariably means it gets all over my floor, where it is stepped on my any variety of people, kicked around on all her spit-outs and left-overs and comes into contact with lord knows what kind of germs. And instead of cleaning it out before I use it, I just pick it off the shelf and put food in it, never thinking of what that piece of plastic has touched. I never thought much about it until I was jamming pasta into one of them last night and saw a dainty little footprint on the lid. Umm, yuck.

And in other arenas of yuck, apparently the world's best toy in now the toilet. Nate and I were occupied in the office the other night and let Clementine have the run of the upstairs. She was happily bringing us all her stuffed animals to look at until it grew very quiet. Hmmm, I thought, this is not good. And then I heard the splashing. She was already up to her elbows in the bowl when I got there. One more thing to babyproof, I guess.

Much has been going on in our lives in the last week, not the least of which is the exciting news that Clementine got cuter. Don't believe me? Look:



I KNOW. I can hardly handle it myself. Click on it to see a few more--she really stumbled into some good lighting that day.

My friend Karen tied the knot on Sunday, which was a ton of fun. The night before I spent with her in her bridal suite--the very first time I've slept away from Clementine since she was born. It wasn't so hard after all, especially since I got to see her first thing the next morning because I had accidentally turned the convertible to "Accessory" instead of "Off" (damn old cars!) and needed Nate to come rescue me. Very convenient. The wedding ended up being more work for me than I ever could have imagined, but it was worth it to see Karen so happy. I gave a toast which went over pretty well--most everyone said it was good, except of course the groom who said nothing--but it's not like it was hard to follow the other toaster who started his with this little ditty: What do you do when you're walking in a forest and come upon an elephant? Wipe it off and apologize. After a minute or so while everyone processed the joke (come, did he say? wipe that off? oh heavens!), there were boos and a general upheaval that precluded his finishing thoughts. Much dancing ensued, and although she is loathe to admit it, the bride might have been the tiniest bit overserved. So was my husband (on a work night no less!). For proof, go check out a few of the wedding photos, including this gem of Nate dancing (yes, dancing--a testament to how much he had imbibed) on the stage (yes, they hopped the stage in her J Crew wedding gown) to some wild bump and grind song. What fun!