Diary of a Punk Rock Mama

Duet of my heart

2007-08-13T21:35:00.000-04:00

There are more than a few things I dislike about my house, but most have to do with the crappy white trash neighborhood and not the glorious 1920s structure itself (though I may rue the day I professed this as our ceilings are betraying some insidious leaks here and there). Sure, it's dusty and cluttered and we have to keep a plunger in our shower because sometimes the drain gets slow, and sure we still have lots of work to do, but it's really the perfect place for us and I'm willing to tolerate a lot in order to have a space I like so much. But (and you knew there was a BUT, didn't you?) it drives me absolutely batty that we don't have (and can't accommodate) a dishwasher. One of the things that sold me on the house initially is that the kitchen is all basically original, right down to the great big old cabinets and the ice box (and I'm not talking one with electricity). It's that same charm--and the the super-low and narrow counters that go with it--that prevents us from finding any dishwasher that can be easily installed.

I know I sound lazy, but I think we're all allowed to have our quirks. I HATE manually washing dishes and feel there are about a thousand better things I can be doing with my time than scrubbing each precious little dish and spoon, each rubber stopper for the sippy cup lids, all my pots and pans. I can't get into the zen-like state Nate professes to fall into each time he's up to his elbows in suds (he'd have you believe he enjoys the dishes), and I honestly never do such a good job because ultimately I think I'd rather eat off of somewhat clean plates or cook in almost clean pans than sit with a scouring pad to try to get a little goo off a hidden little corner.

That said, I'm no slacker. As Clementine and I are leaving for Chicago tomorrow, I decided it was my turn to handle the dinner dishes and leave her to play with her dad. I have a method that makes me feel like it's not so bad, so I got started and listened to C's little prattling as she and her dad rolled toy cars down the ramp of her garaged and rifled through her musical instruments. I faded in and out of the conversation but heard that she decided to play the piano and instructed her dad to play the guitar. "OK," he said, "we'll play a duet. A duet it when two people play a song together." Clementine began banging on the keys of her little piano, Nate began strumming and then she began to sing the sweetest little song she's made up this week: "Dooo-ET, dooo-ET, doooooooo-EHHHHHHT! I sing duet, duet." And somehow that's all I needed. It all felt so normal, bucolic even: my small labor in the kitchen, their conversation and music, the cricket chirping through the windows. The moment was all mine, and I wanted to wrap it up in a bit of colored tissue paper to pull out now and then when I need warming: the sound of the two of them together and the feeling of being included even though neither could know for sure I was listening. I stopped and recognized moments like this all the time when Clementine was younger, and I really must remember to stop the rushing and the adventure every now and then and live the moments. They are so sweet.

The summer is really fleeing after these last few weeks, and, case in point, I haven't taken time to stop and reflect on how much Clementine has changed. Hell, I haven't even managed to look at any of the pictures we took up north a week ago or even those from around town this past weekend. It's perfect summer suspended animation, and I haven't answered an email or talked to many people at all in almost 10 days between the travel and the coming home, trips to the pool, nights on the porch. C and I are off to Chicago for a few days with my mom, my sister and all the regulars, and we will wait patiently for Nate to come and fetch us home again this weekend. I think it will be the last official trip of summer, though we'll squeeze in some local adventures before the school year kicks into high gear. How will we ever get back on a schedule after all this lazy fun?

Post-vacation blahs

2007-08-01T14:27:00.000-04:00

I've been cranky since returning from vacation, and it's not solely because we had car trouble on the way home and had to ride in the 90+ degree heat without air conditioning. In fact, the car trouble was kind of a blessing because it landed us in a nice hotel with a pool; we extended the vacation and had a luxurious swim to boot. I'm cranky because it's hot here in Detroit, I am supposed to report to work through Friday although I have NOTHING to do (and there's no way I'm coming back tomorrow or Friday) and I really really want to be back on vacation. We're good at it, and I think Clementine is a good traveler too, which was a very pleasant surprise.

I wasn't quite articulate enough about how much we enjoyed our trip to Virginia because I still can't quite put my finger on it myself. It has been a long time since we've taken a trip outside of the state of Michigan that wasn't to visit family or meet other obligations, and the complete freedom that comes with a half-planned road trip really suits how we do things--go where we want, stop when we want, change routes, be open to what we encounter. Sometimes when I look at the adult life I've built for myself I wonder where all this freedom has gone; how have I given up my gypsy ways to own a house, keep to a schedule, live without much risk? Part of the enchantment of our southern sojourn must come from giving that regularity up, if only temporarily, to feel less like automatons and more like members of a wide and mysterious world waiting for us to discover it.

I have talked before about some of the recklessness and freedom I want to engender in Clementine as she grows up, and certainly this kind of footloose travel has to be a part of it. It's difficult for us to fit it in as a family, though, because our extended family is scattered across the country and has a lot of demands on our travel and free time (though we get few visitors apart from my mom and sister, which gets my ire up more than I can say). We also postpone for convenience and lack of funds, and I think I've just got to put a stop to all that right now and hit the road like we never have before. Nate recently bought a VW bus (yes, FIVE cars--we now have FIVE cars, so please let me know immediately if you are in the market for any kind of vehicle, especially an eco-conscious Mercedes that runs on used veggie oil), and once it's running (did I forget to mention that it barely runs? yeah.) I intend to make good use of it, Little Miss Sunshine allusions be damned.

Some family trips I want to take include hiking some of the Appalachian Trail, floating down the Mississippi, driving out to the west coast over a few weeks and wandering through Canada. I'm also working on a trip to England next spring and a camping trip around Iowa for next summer. I want us to take surfing lessons together some year, go to a yoga retreat and a dude ranch, hang out in upstate New York at a funky hotel we've been eyeing and spend more time in DC and Baltimore. I want to go to Marfa, Texas and see if it's really all that, and I want to get back to New Mexico. We'll do cities: more Chicago but also New York, Toronto, San Francisco, Boston.... I want Clementine to know eastern Pennsylvania, though she'll never have the experiences I did every summer with my grandma, and I want her to be able to pick out her own destinations, even if they are Disneyland. And I think I want to move, too. More than once, put down roots all over the damn place and let her know that "home" is more than the place you grow up--it's the people and experiences that fill your youth, not just where you happened to spend it.

I'm getting excited just thinking about it. And man if that didn't help me spend a good chunk of my last day of work.

Southern Exposure

2007-07-31T08:43:00.000-04:00

Long before there were many performers booked or details available, I bought us some tickets to go to this summer's FloydFest, an annual music festival held along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Floyd, Virginia. When, years ago, Nate and I took our honeymoon road trip across country, driving all the historic and scenic routes we could find, we loved the Blue Ridge Parkway and vowed to come back again and again. I guess that, combined with the fact that we haven't had a vacation just the three of us AND the incredible stationary feeling that comes with December in Michigan, is why it seemed like a good idea to lock in the tickets (besides, they were incredibly cheap back then, and I'm nothing if not a sucker for a good bargain). It didn't matter what the music was--I just liked the idea.

Last week as we were getting to leave, though, we were on the fence. Nate has almost no time off left, and I'm grudgingly going through my last days of work, showing up in body if not in spirit. Besides that, it's easy sometimes to get in a rut and stick with that which seems easy. And don't even get me started on Clementine's unpredictability in the car. We almost called it off, but now almost a week later I'm so very grateful we didn't. Nate and I spent the entire drive home trying to articulate just what it was about FloydFest that was so magical and wonderful. Time alone as a family to be sure, but also the community, the setting, the vibe--things were just so different in a truly significant way. It was just what we wanted from a vacation. In some ways I feel like I've been to a foreign country and am coming back dazzled by the new customs and people, but it's not that it was a foreign experience at all.

At first I was thinking it was the difference between the north and the south that marked this as unusual, and then I was wondering if it was an urban/rural difference. Maybe it was just the vibe of the festival, which attracted such a broad range of people I hardly know how to categorize, from hippies to cowboys, southern belles to punks, all sorts of parents you can't imagine wanting to pitch a tent in the woods and listen to the pounding drums and relentless bass until 3 AM while the smell of pot wafted about the tent. But even that is simplifying the experience.

Clementine had a blast, as pictures will prove when I sort through them tonight. She met all kinds of kids whose parents were just as open and enthusiastic as they were, sharing food, asking about us and where we were from, giving us the inside scoop on the festival and surrounding area. It was such a change from the kid scene in Detroit, which isn't nearly as open and friendly.

C's schedule is all mixed up, so I'm going to go drag her lazy ass out of bed and haul her to daycare so I can put in a few last company hours. UGH.

Meet Chewta

2007-07-23T21:52:00.000-04:00

I do things on a daily basis as a parent that I thought I never would, including things I said I'd never do, things I used to be annoyed by when other people did them and things that are gross. Today I took my daughter to get ice cream with some friends of ours and allowed her to carry with her AT ALL TIMES a potentially dangerous bit of chain which she has proclaimed is the leash for her dog Chewta. People looked at me, and I could see in their minds that they thought I was either totally negligent to allow the darling to play with a rusty "I'm gonna beat your ass at the playground" kind of toy or too poor to buy her something more appropriate like those charming pull-along telephones or wooden animals with flappy feet. I wanted to explain to them that I had begged her to take along her special rocks purse or monkey backpack, her stuffed pony-in-a-purse, her little plastic car, all to no avail. She grabbed hold of one end of the chain that sits coiled beside our back door (because, after all, there are SOME limits), and lovingly dragged the other end behind her, telling me "Chewta get ice cream, too."

It's not that I am embarrassed by our new invisible friend: on the contrary, I LOVE Clementine's little imagination. She does get a little excited with Chewta, however, and that usually involves running around in circles with him until the chain whips her legs into little red welts, the likes of which she shares with anyone in Chewta's path. At an ice cream stand or in the park, I do tend to be a little sensitive to the damage she can do to other children (and, let's be honest, I hate the holier-than-thou glances from parents who were probably wondering what she could catch from being in such close proximity to something not made of primary color plastic). Chewta is welcome anywhere in my world; I just wish his chain would stay at home.

But it is the chain that is the very essence of Chewta. I suspect he was born not solely out of Clementine's obsession with dogs or hidden desire to depose our family cat and install a little puppy, but also of a crafty desire to avoid my wrath when she wouldn't put that damn length of chain down after the 20th time I asked her to the other day. At first it was a necklace and then a hat and then a swing and then a bracelet and then a little star and then "Clementine, if you don't put that down right now you're going to go inside!" followed by "But Mama it is for my tiny little puppy." I had never heard of the tiny little puppy before, so of course I had to know more. And that's how Chewta came to be.

Here's what we know so far (and it's surprising how little the details change): Chewta is a boy, he is green, he likes to travel by leash (damn chain) and also in Clementine's back pocket (I can't even begin to express how difficult it is to dress the child these days for at least ONE article of clothing on her person MUST have a pocket, even if Chewta isn't in the foreground of her mind). At night he sleeps in Daddy's shoe, and he can magically appear in Clementine's hand. He eats only peas, cherries and ice cream and he says only "Woof, woof," not "Bark, bark." He is an interesting specimen to say the least.

I'm at odds to day what the best part of Chewta is for me. I am not a dog lover and can't stand to think of there being one more thing in our house that needs attention and care (plants are long dead, and the laundry is dying a slow death). I like that we can walk the dog when we want but not have its cold nose snuffling at our feet while we eat dinner. We can pet him and roll around with him but still pack ourselves off for a weekend of camping without worrying about who will feed and walk him three times a day. Indeed, he can come with and I don't have to carry his poop around in little plastic bags or worry about whether or not he's allowed in restaurants. But none of this is why I love Chewta so much.

I love Chewta for the way he sprung from Clementine's imagination (or ingenuity) and continues to grow and change based on her understanding of the world. She calls all the shots with him, and I like the little glimpse this provides into what is important to her, what she's noticing about the things that go on around her. It reminds me a little of when my niece would talk to me on the phone about a new toy or short and say "Wanna see it?" holding the phone away from her ear without bothering to think of how that little piece of technology really worked. Chewta is what Clementine wants him to be, chain and all. I don't think he'll be something that stays with us long, but for now I'm happy to walk him and buy him ice cream, pet him and ask questions about what he likes to drink.

2007-07-20T15:20:00.000-04:00

I’ve been working on a long post about all the ways in which we have been enjoying the summer—a million festivals, weekend trips, pools and fountains and music (oh my!), but I’ve had a hard time finishing it. Part of it is because I’ve never ever been so busy just experiencing a summer, trying to fit everything in and taking every single opportunity to get out and do something. Part of it is because work is sucking every last bit of energy out of me as we countdown to my last day in this job. And part of it, today anyway, is because I can’t stop thinking of Clementine and her new vociferous objections to being left at daycare.

In many ways, I feel like I’ve regressed to my first months back to work, when I noted every minute Clementine wasn’t in my care, took note of every small thing that bothered me about the daycare and Julie. I felt guilty at every turn and wondered how anyone manages to feel good about working and leaving his or her child in the care of someone else. Of course that all evened out eventually, and over the last school year I did nothing but beam when I thought of how great daycare was for all of us—I got to go to work everyday (mixed blessing, but it was time on my own, for me) and she got the benefit of even more loving adults in her life, not to mention a group of kids to hang with. And now when we talk about going to Julie’s, Clementine begs to “Stay in my house,” and when I drop her off she clings to me and screams “I need my mama!”

There’s a part of me that knows this is kind of normal kid stuff—along the same lines as wanting one parent when the other has her. But I hate the idea of not listening to her, of not believing that something has changed. A woman I work with reminds me that kids are manipulative and know how to “push your buttons to get anything their hearts desire,” but I’ve always wanted to reject that to some degree. Do I think kids should get everything they want? Of course not—just because Clementine says she needs ice cream doesn’t mean I want to honor her request. But I feel like the rules change a bit when she’s expressing something as complicated as this: a desire not to be somewhere, not to go to Julie’s. And it’s not that I think something is wrong or untoward there. Maybe she’s not getting something she needs. Hell, I can be so neurotic. But this is what’s taking up my time.

Also, cleaning five years’ worth of crap off my desk, resisting the urge to shop on the Internet and trying to look busy. It’s a wonder I can blog at all.

Instead of selling her to gypsies

2007-07-11T10:30:00.000-04:00

I have a new threat for when Clementine gets all whiny or unreasonable: I can feed her to the bears. Too bad she isn't too afraid of them. When we walked into the visitor center at the park where we camped, she was instantly interested in dentistry, which is good since I've been disturbed by recent proclamations of things being scary (especially when she says Mama scary). While it tickled her to meet something she had only read about in books up close and personal, I wondered a little but about what it would like to come across a real bear...or real poison ivy, for that matter. The same visitor center had a display that allowed you to fondle fake poison ivy plants so to better be able to identify them. I think the concept of both was lost on her, but she sure did have fun:

That's right! I finally got my camping pictures off the camera after my mom mentioned for the tenth time that my sister's pictures sure were nice.

Clementine was very excited about a few things while we were camping, all of which you can see in abundance in the whole group of photos (click any photo to see more): Crocs, her cousins, Laura, her hoodie, the beach, the sand and being naked. Oh, and Macaroni and Cheese, which she pronounces "mock-ee cheese" every six or seven seconds whenever anyone is eating in her vicinity. Even after the first few days of blissfully warm water faded to days with cool breezes from the north and even cooler water, Clementine couldn't stay away from the lake:

We biked out the lighthouse, which didn't make much of an impression at the time--after she realized they weren't going to let her go to the top she was much more interested in dancing on the boardwalk and swapping Crocs with cousin Nora. But a few days later as we packed the car up to head home, we asked her where she thought we were going (thinking that of course she'd say "home" since she had been demanding "baby go home" all morning). Nope, she said lighthouse and then cried a good portion of the way out of town that she wanted to go the lighthouse, not home.

Since we hadn't thought to bring along her toy kitchen (or the myriad other outrageous toys she demanded at various points during the trip), we let her use the cook stove to make--you guessed it--Mac-y Cheese. She did such an excellent job that now Nate and I are developing a way for her to safely prepare all our meals while we sit on the couch and watch movies:

On the last day she demanded three ponies (her name for pony tails), gingerbread and pizza. We kept her in the wilderness with the bears too long: the kid has no manners and is very messy.

Somehow we managed to squeeze all the stuff from our luxury camping experience back into Nate's car and get home. Beneath it all, you can just make out the child:

In which we camped

2007-07-06T21:14:00.001-04:00

We've been back in civilization for almost a week now (and what a joke that is--our camping is far from roughing it), and since the rest of the world has this week off, including my daycare, I've been back at work with my little assistant, darling C. After a week of sleeping outdoors and waking to ride bikes or hike or roll around in the sand dunes or sit beside Lake Michigan, the greatest of the Great Lakes if you ask me, it was strange to watch her beneath the fluorescent lights plugged into Pippi Longstocking, her obsession of the moment, so I could get a few things done. What a contrast.

Vacations like these are the things I hope Clementine remembers forever--a great group of families who have been camping together in one form or another for over 20 years (we're the newbies and the only ones with a toddler), days starting slowly with some romping in the tent before emerging to do one of a dozen outdoor activities, campfires at night, bugs and fish to examine, sunsets and ice cream at the beach each night. It was all good. But before I fade into a haze of the remembered paradise, there were, of course, some incidents. Take, for example, the crisis of the Crocs.

I don't resist trends just to resist trends, although Crocs really do bug me solely for the fact that they are so ubiquitous and come in such silly colors. But that's really an adult attitude. For a kid, they are great, and I thank my sister every day for bringing them into our lives--C's Crocs, which she pronounces "cocks," are one of two pairs of shoes that fit, and they are certainly the most acceptable ones for camping in dirt and walking through the sand, wading in the water and playing on the beach. You can imagine, then, my distress when I realized that somewhere along the way, C's Crocs were gone. They weren't in the bike basket. They weren't on the beach. They weren't at the ranger station. Shit. Try shoving Vans on a kid's sandy, sweaty feet so she doesn't just shuffle through the dirt floor of the campsite.

But I wasn't the only one upset. After the novelty of wearing cousin Nora's Crocs wore off, Clementine started getting more and more demanding: "Baby Crocs. Baby wear Baby Crocs. Baby Crocs NOW!" We did what I think anyone would do: drove to town and bought a new pair. In the store I showed her orange Crocs and green ones, purple and white, but she spied the turquoise ones and cried "Baby Crocs!" running toward them with such recognition and relief that I handed them over and paid the lady. This seamless transition from old to new was great...until, oh a whim, I asked the ranger a few days later if the shoes had turned up. Of course they had--a state park is no safe harbor for thieves of expensive little baby shoes. And so now we're the proud owners of two pairs of turquoise Crocs.

It seems strange that little episode stands out, but the rest of the trip was really uneventful. Clementine had such a great time frolicking--and that really is the word for it, marching around and chanting "La la Pippi Longstocking la la la," until I started to miss the oddly dubbed DVDs of the 70s Swedish show that Clementine has become enamored with. It was very fitting she fixated on that while camping because she had the same impish grin, the child's approach to just about everything, especially bedtime. This was the first time I could see the wheels turning for her: "Why do I have to go to bed when everyone else is up and eating sugar?"

Which I guess takes us to the sugar detox program we've been implementing since we've been home. After a few days camping she reverted to an animal state and would walk up to any of our friends who happened to be eating something delicious and would stand there, mouth open, waiting for a bite. Of course everyone always obliged, and I started to sound like the world's worst nag with the say please and say thank you and no, Clementine, you can't have anymore ice cream/cookies/chips/licorice/s'mores.

Of course there are pictures. In many of them she's so covered in dirt and sand and sweat and grime and sunscreen you can barely make out that it's her. In others she's asleep. While camping makes some look earthy and natural, I look sweaty and like I have big pores. I will post them, but for now I'm going to put the finishing touches on my Friday, which included a great little family dinner. When it was over we asked if she wanted to go the park, ride bikes or go to the bookstore. She picked bookstore and stuck with it, no matter what incentive I threw her way to make it an outdoor option. We've had to read her Tikki Tikke Tembo and Strega Nona twice now, and she's finally asleep.

We're back...

2007-07-03T14:25:00.001-04:00

...and I've officially washed all the campfire smoke out of my hair, the last of my tribe to do so. I could write a love letter to Lake Michigan and the Ludington State Park for a beautiful week (albeit a little chilly, if you can imagine) but need to start the epic task of doing all my smoke-infused laundry and washing my dishes (CampSuds and cold well water don't seem quite good enough), putting our life back in order and continuing to adjust to a life not on vacation. And of course I need to get pictures off the camera so you all can see just how dirty a pint-sized camper can get in a day, despite braving the sometimes-freezing lake water to wash off.

Gone campin'

2007-06-25T10:46:00.001-04:00

Not that you'll be missing my prolific blogging or anything. I can tell the temper tantrum tales when I get back.

The job gets in the way

2007-06-14T09:36:00.000-04:00

While the last weeks of high school—prom, awards, graduation, yearbook signing, etc.—are a delight for students, the people who work in a school don’t enjoy the same carefree spring days. It has been a marathon of a couple of weeks, and as soon as the teachers who are still lingering on campus get the heck out of here, the real work of summer can begin for me. Of course the work won’t last long for me because I am cutting out early to prep my classes for next year. I am so happy to be going back to teaching, and it’s not just for summers off.

I have so many funny stories about my chatty little Clementine I don’t even know where or how to start. She is well into her copycat phase, which has eliminated phrases such as “Shut up” and “I’ll kick your ass” from the daily dialogue between Nate and me. Babies don’t understand sarcasm, and as much fun as it is that first or second time to hear the young lass say she’ll kick my ass, it’s clear we have to put an end to that.

What’s amazing me lately is her recall and the way she is able to contextualize things. She is understanding family relationships (especially baby mama and baby dada, two phrases she threw around like confetti at the Detroit Festival of the Arts last weekend), and now can’t mention her beloved Joey without also talking about brother Cammy, mama Yora and dada David.

The last time we traveled to Chicago (mother’s Day weekend, I think), we stopped very briefly in Ann Arbor to swing by the Zingerman’s Airstream, a convenient stop to fill up on there decadent coffee cakes, brownies, cookies, you name it: nothing’s bad. We bought darling C a cookie and let her play in the grass for a while, where she marched, admired motorcycles and chowed the cookie like you’d never believe. Last weekend we went to visit my friends and their new baby and happened to pass by the same Airstream. When Clementine saw it she threw up her hands and cried “Yay! Yay!” Surely that’s not because she remembers it, I thought, and sped by as if nothing were unusual. The next thing from the back of the car was “Guys? I like cookies,” in the most pleading and sweet voice she can muster these days. Just like her mother she has some sort of internal map to the world’s best junk food. Oh, and she now almost exclusively refers to us as “guys.” Guys, I want to go the fountain. Guys I want mac-y cheese. Guys I want to pee in the potty. It’s pretty fun.

And while I’ve been too busy to breathe, I have gotten some great pictures of my growing child. Of course I’ve been too busy to pull them off my camera. I’ll get to it sooner or later, but for now I have to clean my desk off at work. I’ll be prepping The Odyssey for my 9^th graders first, and one must have a clean desk to even begin to think about that. It’s not just blogging that goes out the window when time gets tight—my house and office are in shambles and I’ve spent the only free time I had this week watching the end of The Sopranos, which I loved, and gorging myself on cable before it leaves us forever on Saturday. I think we’re about to get serious!

2007-05-31T12:41:00.001-04:00

I'm slow to recap weekend trips these days because it takes a while to recover from them. Gone are the days when we could take off right after work on Friday and return after midnight on Monday (or Sunday if it isn't a holiday) without skipping a beat. The packing alone--do we have diapers? sunscreen? blankie? will she want Ella or Jack or Pilly or Lammie?--is exhausting, not to mention to burn of re-entry, the thwarted schedule, the general malaise at giving up the vacation mentality for a back-to-work one. The in-between stuff makes it all worth it, even if there is puking and peeing or general crankiness.

For Memorial Day we went up to the thumb of Michigan and, despite icky weather for a few days, had a wonderful time. Clementine, as always, loved looking at "the beach, the beach," and remembered very quickly how much fun it is to gather rocks to throw in the water.

She became completely addicted to her rain boots, which we used as waders to allow her to walk in the cold and unusually murky, slushy water along the shore. I think all kids go through this rain boot affinity, and it definitely helps that hers have eyes.

We took her to some of the cute lakeside towns and through antique and general stores, and I bought her a little bag to keep all her treasures in. We only brought one hoody and one pair of pants with pockets, and she had stuffed them all full of pine cones and rocks and sea glass. She was so enamored of these treasures that I decided to ignore the fact that she is showing the hoarding tendencies that have filled my basement with shit and my grandmother's entire house before me and encourage her to take the bits of the world she loves and wants to hold onto home with her. Besides, the bag is very cute. Cuter still was watching her pick through rocks and pine cones to find just the right one, discarding and rejecting those that don't fit her mysterious criteria.

It got sunny and warm Sunday afternoon and continued through Monday. We played a lot of croquet, and I've decided that since my hopes of being a roller derby queen have may just have to die unrealized, I will become kick ass at croquet.

But in case this sounding too idyllic, too vanilla a weekend away for my clan, let me assure you there was still an appropriate amount of bodily fluid and nudity to make the journey recognizable as a Clementine pilgrimage. For one, Clementine loves to be "nakie," and we allowed her to be more than a few of our fellow travelers probably would have liked. And why oh why oh why does my daughter repeatedly pull her diaper aside to pee in whatever method of conveyance she inhabits? First it was Nora's stroller; on this trip it was her car seat. Not just the once, mind you, when I horrified my friend Karen by putting the pants back on her after allowing them some time in the wind to dry, but twice. The second time I was actually wise to it and jumped across the backseat, thinking I could rip her hands away from the diaper, but it wasn't enough. I actually had to stop the pee, catch it with my hands, and then shove it back into the diaper to be absorbed. It wasn't pretty, although Clementine certainly found it hilarious and on our way to daycare this morning shouted from the back seat "I'm peeing," just to dissolve into giggles at my reaction.

I think Clementine is trying to tell us something with the refusal to pee in the diapers, but it's hard to know to take the next step in terms of toilet training, especially since it still seems so early to me. At home she asks to use the toilet a lot and is pretty successful, though it's hardly regular enough to be counted on. I've mentioned this to Julie at daycare a few times, but she reports that Clementine shows no interest throughout the day. Maybe it's a summer project. For now we're maybe a little too happy to oblige when she asks, as she's started to use it as a stalling tactic at bedtime.

We're home for the next few weekends, though it's amazing to me how quickly summer seems to be filling up with this and that. I think our goal through the month of August should be to get her inappropriately naked in at least 6 different states. Shouldn't be too hard.

Family resemblance

2007-05-25T11:24:00.000-04:00

The other day as I was dropping Clementine off for daycare, she was in the best mood (this week that was rare for mornings, when she was usually busy honing her grumpy I-don't-want-t-be-awake teenager impression). I let her out of her carseat, and she danced around the driveway and shadows in the yard, running and jumping and humming herself a sweet little song--she was a one-girl parade, and I couldn't help trying to capture that moment with my camera.

Of course I couldn't get it quite right; I never seem to be able to get those specific, perfect facial expressions, those hammy or super-serious looks, those moments I think about when I'm not with her: the quintessential Clementine. What I did capture, though, surprised me. Her profile. While I know every inch of her head, I don't think I've ever studied it from this angle before. And I certainly haven't ever seen so much of my family in her as I do in this picture.

People are always saying she looks like me. Or that she looks like Nate. Or that she looks like both of us. I rarely see it; to me, she looks like herself, her own little creation. There are times when she cries that I think she looks like my mom. And sometimes when she laughs she looks like my niece Abby (damn if those two thoughts don't say a word about my family), but as I was examining these driveway photos the other day I began to really see all of us. So I pulled out an envelope of old pictures my mom asked me to scan and got to work. My mom is one of three sisters, so there is no shortage of baby pictures form that side of the family--not that I always can tell who is who. But in these, I see echoes of my darlin' C, the beginnings of a face that she has made her own.

I can only wonder (and fear) what else, what other characteristics, attributes and quirks, she shares with the babies in these pictures (and click any of them if you want to see more). Certainly she will one day know some of their stories, but so much is lost (in my family in particular) from generation to generation. Was I not paying attention when my Grammy Fran, gone for years now, was talking about Herbie and Mamo (who are, I think, her parents)? How is there so much I don't know? When my dad's mom was dying she took me to the town in eastern Pennsylvania where she grew up and told me all sorts of stories. Why didn't I write them down? I can't even remember whose piano shop once stood on the roadside there--her dad's, grandfather's or uncle's? Why didn't I write any of it down, and will I ever be able to find those landmarks while C is the backseat, wondering when we're going to do something fun?

Some of this is the strangeness of family. My mom and her one living sister fight all the time over many things, most of it stemming from the hole in their lives my Grammy left. To bring up our family history is to open old wounds--it's not worth the risk of a blow up, and they do share bits and pieces from time to time. I guess I just need to gather them up. On my dad's side, there is just silence. I know we can go back to those places, my grandmother's house, the Pennsylvania countryside, the attic where our family treasures still are. But I don't know how to do that without seeming greedy, like I'm after things more than just stories and memories.

I wonder how much of being out of touch with who our family is in a historical way comes from distance in addition to the strangeness. From the moment I left for college I haven't lived near any relatives for more than a few months at a time. These family stories, the tales and the memories, tend to be shared slowly, memories brought on by situations, happenings. It's hard to squeeze that into the circus-like, family-gathering atmosphere that marks almost all our visits to relatives. We're so busy greeting and meeting and catching up, who has time for the distant past? And is it really all that important in the scheme of things, when there are stories about Clementine people haven't heard, when I want to hear all about what the people I love are doing?

I didn't mean to wander into the melancholy, especially on a Friday before a holiday weekend. Let me leave you with this, my new favorite picture of my mom (unless it's actually my new favorite picture of one of my aunts--I can't tell):

It's a bird! It's a plane!

2007-05-21T14:48:00.000-04:00

No, it's another giant mystery illness threatening to descend on the Punk Rock household, rendering its occupants listless, whiny and useless. While I can console myself with the fact that Clementine will likely never get sick past the age of five after these immunity-building years of daycare, I sure wish we could shake these germs. But what would I do for entertainment? It's far too much fun to track her symptoms on webMD and try to diagnose her using snippets of information from parenting books, websites and organic health brochures. So far she has the puking of a week ago, a super runny nose and bouts of fever, not to mention diaper rash: I'd say it's an ear infection mixed with teething, but what the hell do I know?

Other than wiping Clementine's nose and taking echinacea every chance I had to ward off my own bout with the sniffles, this weekend was pretty low key. We went to the carnival for a bit, I ran a race and Clementine cheered me on, we played outside and then let her watch the Wizard of Oz while she shivered, all wrapped up, from fever. Yesterday she didn't even want to get dressed, so we went to breakfast and the grocery store with her in her Pee Wee jammies, which came off only at bath time and to put on new jammies, which she is presently wearing at daycare. There are so many fights on Monday mornings as we have to get her up and out the door sooner than on weekends that it's not even worth that conversation just yet. Besides, if she didn't like what we had to say, she'd just say "Nate, Amanda [sounds like Mada], I don't think so." She's pretty bossy lately. And cute.

We're suffering from one last Chicago-induced crisis: Rye. Or Ry. Or Wry. Rye (I like that spelling best) is a stuffed zebra Clementine plucked from her cousin Abby's collection, bestowed with a name and promptly fell in love with. Rye didn't come home with us, but his spectre still haunts Clementine's bedside, apparently. As she was drifting off to sleep last night, she sat up suddenly and demanded Rye. When I explained he lives at Abby's house, she seemed to understand but continued to talk about it: "Rye Abby house. Baby get Rye." I let her go downstairs to her toy box to pick out another friend (perhaps Noo Noo, the little doll we picked up at the carnival), but none quite did it. I even tried to pass a stuffed horse off as Rye, which was met with an annoyed glance and "No Rye," from the discerning little girl. So I guess we're in search of a stuffed zebra.

And the fun continues

2007-05-18T11:16:00.000-04:00

It is Friday, and I am tired. I am tired because Clementine woke up at 4:30 AM this morning, ready to greet the day and start playing. She wakes up at about 4:30 every morning these days (yes, we are backsliding, but I'm usually too tired to do anything about it, especially because putting her down at night keeps getting easier and easier) and we can usually get her right back to sleep in her own bed or nestled between us. A week ago she tried this whole up-before-dawn thing and then fell asleep in the car on the way to daycare, slept almost two hours once she arrived, didn't take an afternoon nap and was a hot mess of tears all night. Determined to avoid a repeat performance today because there's a carnival in town tonight, I hopped in the car on the way to daycare this morning armed with grapes, some toys, a rockin' soundtrack that had her head bobbing the second we pulled out of the driveway and a few tricks up my sleeve (though nothing to do with removing my own fingers). She was asleep before we even hit the mile mark, grapes in hand, foot still twitching to the beat. As my rush-hour stops and starts rocked her around a little and caused her to surface from sleep ever so slightly, she began to pop the grapes into her mouth and chomp on them IN HER SLEEP. She didn't eat them, really, but compacted them and then stuffed them into her cheek where I was convinced she would choke on them mid-nap. At a red light I was eventually able to reach back and try to squeeze them from her mouth, but she woke up enough to clench her jaw and moan "nooooo," pull her head away and sink back to sleep. Willful child:

Last night she was not interested in her bath one little bit. As we were undressing her, she started demanding "Dada bath." Yes, in what my brother-in-law would call our hippie parenting style, one of us is never above hopping in with Clementine (usually to make it less of a screaming match but sometimes just because). I'm sure there are some people who frown on family bathing (I remember a disturbing conversation in college about Gary Snyder's poem "The Bath" when one classmate suggested we turn Snyder over to the FBI for child molestation), but I frown on a wet, slippery, pissed off kid flailing around in a big iron tub. It's much better to just hop in. Last night Nate wasn't in the mood to bathe, though, so he kept saying no until she gathered up all her strength, doubled herself over and clenched her fists before yelling "NAAATE! Bath." I ask you: how does one not laugh, especially when she started shaking from the effort? Laughing, of course, just encourages her, so she began to sing "Nate bath, Nate bath" until I gave her a washcloth, told her it was her cousin Abby's and she trotted off to lovingly submerge it in the tub, oblivious to the fact that she was bathing alone. As she picked the washcloth out of the water again and again, she continued her "Nate bath" song, eventually interjecting an "Amanda." Yep, that's my girl.

I finally pulled some pics off my camera from our infamous weekend in Chicago. Here are the younger ladies lunching:

A post-pee, pre-puke picture with her dad (and looking at it, how could I have not predicted the puke?):

The always-elusive picture with Grampy. Will we ever get one where no one is crying, everyone is looking at the camera and everyone is looking good? Happily we have years to try.

And the aftermath on the way home"

Age-inappropriate humor

2007-05-17T14:30:00.000-04:00

Now that we've covered all the bodily fluid stories about our trip to Chicago, can I tell you how funny my kid can be? Sure, some of it is funny in an uncomfortable way and some of it is funny in a that's-so-sad/mean-it's-funny way and some of it's funny in a you-guys-are-so-screwed-as-parents way, but it's all funny in the end. Like when we stripped my pee-soaked daughter down to her skivvies in the middle of downtown Chicago and she cried "Nakie!" and did her little nakie dance. She then said "Daddy nakie" and pointed to Nate, demanding he disrobe. And then "Nakie Mama, nakie auntie. Funny!" When we wouldn't do it, she was not a happy girl.

OK, maybe that wasn't so funny, but she thinks it is. I know this because she says "funny" after things that amuse her. Yesterday when a jerk cut me off and then gave me a snotty little backward mocking wave so that I was forced to flip him off, for example, Clementine declared it "funny. Mama funny." And when I dropped my water bottle trying to get her out of the car this morning and the cold water splashed all over my already-cold legs, "Funny!" She also thinks it's funny to point to my crotch and say penis, a word she learned shortly after starting to ask "Zat? (what's that?)" when Nate would get out of the shower. She seems too young for a physiology lesson, but I'm also scared to death of the day Julie at daycare has to sit me down to talk about how Clementine is pointing to all the boys' crotches and saying penis. Funny!

A lot of her humor is the geeky stuff that parents share with friends at dinner parties and for which they often receive blank stares. Clementine dancing, with her gyrations and "Oh yah!" at appropriate parts of the songs, makes me laugh for hours, but it's not like the humor shines through when I share the love by telling others. And most people don't understand the way I can hardly keep from laughing when she pitches a total fit over something small like me taking away a pencil. "Baby need," she'll cry pathetically. Baby needs water, food, shelter and love, lady. Not writing implements--let's work on your vocab a bit.

When we were on our way home from Chicago on Monday and she started getting fussy, I amused her with a game in which I pretended to remove my fingers (aren't mamas magic?) and put them back on. I was very impressed with how easily I calmed her down and got her to focus, interacting with me from time to time by picking out which fingers to remove and replace. But then. But then she started pulling at her own fingers and demanding "Baby fingers off." She kept pulling and demanding, all the while escalating her volume and frustration. "Baby fingers off!" And she was just about successful in ripping them from her hand. We explained to her that mama was pretending and I thought we eventually got over it, but twice over the last two days I've seen her start to grab at her hands again, demanding we help her pull her own fingers off.

Her other form of humor lately comes in the form of telling me the opposite of what I want to hear. She was telling me the other day that daddy is her buddy, and when I asked if mama was her buddy too she said no emphatically and then worked to repress a smile. "Well, who else is your buddy?" I asked, and she proceeded to go through everyone's name she knows: Yora buddy, Aunt K buddy, Tommy buddy, Abby buddy...and on and on. It's the same list I get when I ask her who loves her. Everyone but Mama. Isn't that funny?

We may not be invited back to Chicago...

2007-05-16T10:51:00.000-04:00

...or how I got my brother-in-law to detail my car. Again.

Were there more hours to squander in a work day, I could turn our trip to Chicago this past weekend into an epic. My sister calls it an extravaganza. I say we trashed her house. Between the high highs (my kid and her cousins racing down halls, laughing, laughing and then hopping into the bath together) and the low lows (see below), it's hard to know what to make of it. Let me just say I never have enough time to actually enjoy the city when I head home because after we've dispensed with all the stuff we have to do, the people we have to see (sister and nieces excluded--they're the best part), something always happens that consumes the time we have left.

This weekend that something was my daughter.

I'm going to skip over the details of the horrible wedding on Saturday which brought my dad and his wife to town, thus precipitating the command performance, even though skipping ahead deprives me the right to be snarky about the pissy bride, her lack of gratitude toward one whole side of her family and the worst timed wedding I have ever been to (seriously, music didn't start until 10:15, when we had already been there for 5 hours). Weddings can bring out the best in people, but more often I think they bring out the worst. In the end, it was good that they had insisted I not being Clementine (although anyone else with a toddler was certainly encouraged to bring them along) because having her there would have deprived me of the evening's one pleasure: the open bar. But didn't I say I was skipping ahead?

Since my mom was up to her eyeballs running the church rummage sale and couldn't make herself available on Mother's Day until the afternoon, we headed to the city in the morning to check in at the post-wedding brunch and then to see some sites and meet up with my wonderful poet friend Crystal. The last time we all hooked up with Crystal, my nieces were charming, funny and extroverted loves, and Clementine was a fussy crank who bitched the whole time we were together. This is how kids are, but I'm not sure Crystal knows that and, to be honest, it irks me that she talks all the time about how great my sister's kids are and how "challenging" and "independent" Clementine is. She doesn't say it like it's a good thing, and neither does my mom (but that's another story). So I was looking forward to Crystal spending some time with the Clementine I know: spunky, funny and truly sweet. Well, we all know what happens when a mom hopes for a certain outcome: Clementine was having nothing of it. She was tired. She was sick of strangers. She just wanted to go home and play with her own things. Even Crystal's gorgeous dog did little to keep her from burrowing into her dad's arms before insisting on booting Nora from her stroller so she could sit down.

And this is where the fun begins. I've been quiet on this subject because, although I know it's natural to explore one's body, it freaks me out a little: Clementine loves, loves, loves to have her hand in her girly parts whenever possible. Usually this is just during bath time, but now that we're into short and skirt weather, she's able to get her digits in the diaper much easier when in the car seat. I don't want to freak her out by saying it's yucky, scarring her and damaging her relationship to her own sexuality forever, but I have been trying to tell her "Not now," whenever I notice her doing it in public. This is what I thought was happening minutes after she claimed Nora's stroller, and I went over to ask that she wait until later to explore. But I had misread the situation entirely: she was actually pulling her diaper to the side so she could pee on Nora's stroller, marking her territory or accomplishing heaven knows what devious little plan. She laughed when she was done and I stood there realizing she was covered in pee and we didn't have a change of clothes with us. What the hell do we do?

So there, in front of the Chagall in the middle of the Loop, we stripped the little lass down to her Baby Legs, a diaper and a hoody we had borrowed from Abby and then quickly said our goodbyes to Crystal so we could head back to the burbs and my mother.

As we made our way out of the loop and onto the freeway, we got into a huge traffic jam, typical for Chicago these days. I guess every city dweller has a mama in the suburbs, and we were stuck with all of them trying to get out. Clementine started fussing but my niece Abby was in the backseat with her and doing her best to keep the girl calm. [Aside: it was surprisingly pleasant to travel with two kids in the car--they entertained one another and I loved the vibe. I'm not saying anything significant here, but it was the first time having another child didn't seem like the worst idea I've ever had]. And then it happened: I looked back at Clementine in time to watch her puke. "Holy shit!" I said and turned around quickly to watch her puke again, this time projectile and with a bubble of snot coming out her nose. By this time Nate had turned around in the passenger seat and was able to (or stupid enough to) catch the final round of vomit, and in the still, disgusted, silent aftermath Abby said "Wow. This time it is pink, and the last time she threw up it was red."

I should note that the only two times my daughter has thrown up in the car have been in Chicago. I would also like to note that both times have involved my stepmother's family, but I suppose I'm just grabbing at straws here. These are the funny moments of parenting I'll love to tell stories about one day. Nate in his one sports jacket, hand covered in pink puke and me with only three diaper wipes to my name. He used the pee-soaked dress to wash the puke off and managed to get her down to her diaper in the car seat as we inched along the freeway ramp and tried not to gag at the smell. Every once in a while Abby would crack us up, like when she said in her tiny voice reserved for talking with babies: "Don't worry Clementine, my daddy can get puke out of anything." Nate spent the rest of mother's day with a steam cleaner and my brother-in-law detailing the car while I tried to get the puke out of her clothes, off her Vans, off Lammie and Ana, her two pals, and out of blankie. And my mom eventually came over to drink beer (which she doesn't do often and can't really handle) and eat dinner. Clementine recovered quickly and was able to tear my sister's house to shreds with the help of her cousins. I think KC went to bed that night dreaming we were already gone. And that she had a maid. Or some kind of amazing insurance.

We thought after all the commotion it would be easy to get out of town, and we thought we were smart to stay and extra day so we could wind our way home slowly on Monday, stopping on the western side of the state to enjoy beaches and tulips. But of course it's never that easy. My mom had a thousand plans she didn't tell us about, which made the morning a minefield. We tried to squeeze everyone in but eventually tucked our tired girl in the car seat, said fuck it and drove home.

We've gotta get better about this road trip thing. Here's my sister's take.

2007-05-07T13:36:00.000-04:00

Although it is literally killing me to sit at my desk and sift through my to-do list (sunny and beautiful outside and I am DONE with this job), sometimes going back to work and putting Clementine back in daycare for a few hours is just what we all need. Our weekend was full and fun and full, and I think we're all happy for a little time to ourselves. Clementine is hopefully having the world's longest nap, and I'm trying to get my head back on straight after a rare night (two nights ago!) of carousing. Lunch time errands, backlog emails and trying to pretend like I'm awake as I try to read through the world's most boring report. Mondays sure are joyous.

Saturday was our annual Kentucky Derby bash, altered a bit this year with the Cinco de Mayo factor. Hats were in fine form this year, even if I wasn't by the end of the night. Mint juleps hurt. We didn't get our group shots this year because...well...we were busy drinking. And gambling. But here's the best shot from the whole fiesta.

Clementine was all about the Mexican theme (guacamole AND fresh lime wedges?!), though she did put in a call to her bookie last minute and made some fat cash on Street Sense.

Parenting with a hangover is tough--I have nothing new to add to the subject except that I am clearly not mature enough to keep having either children or parties if I can't learn from each year's mistakes. Seriously, I will not ever do this again. At least until next year. We pulled it together to go get some breakfast the morning after and soak in the sun a bit before nap time, and by the time we all woke up we were ready to conquer the Strawberry Festival in Hamtramck. My friends Laura and David remember this festival from its heyday of thousands of people liquored up on strawberry daiquiris jamming to some fine music in the sun. I've seen the pictures, and it looks amazing if not quite what it is today. I remember it only from a few years ago when my friend Heidi and I polka danced with a bunch of neat old Polish men in suits before watching a dance-off between two teenagers in the gym.

Clementine in tow, the festival took on new life. We got there too late to enjoy the traditional Polish dancing, but there was still plenty of legal gambling and raffle action in the gym and basement of St. Florian's , a beautiful Polish church. The polka is always my favorite, with all the old Polish grandmas and grandpas dressed up and dancing between bites of pirogi. But I also enjoy all the games in the gym. For 50 cents Clementine picked out lollipops, looking for a winner with marker on the bottom--of course she found one. We now have a beautiful Latina doll with a hand-crocheted dress, hat and purse. We skipped the strawberry pie and baked goods but had a Jello shot (strawberry of course) while listening to the Polish Muslims. Clementine was a little cranky and not her usual dancing self, but the world's largest pickle solved that problem.

The weekend excitement put her over an ugly edge, however, especially since we followed the Strawberry Festival with an evening at the Lamberti's, where she can jump on their trampoline, torture their dog and be the center of everyone's attention for hours on end. By the time we got her home she was whimpering tired and kept waking up to moan and whine all night long. Poor girl. I'm sure she'll recover in time for next weekend.

Independence

2007-05-02T12:40:00.000-04:00

This morning I woke up to a very serious Clementine telling me "Baby drive boat." "Huh?" I asked, still full of sleep. "Baby drive boat, mama. Baby drive pretend boat." And then she hopped in the laundry basket and sped away. This is my little girl these days: she only refers to herself as baby, she is free with her imagination and interested in describing each and every thing she does in a day as she does it. "Huggie," she says as she hugs me. "Baby eat trawberries." "Ride. Baby ride car. Baby ride mama car. Baby ride dada white car." I'm loving it.

After I hauled my carcass through the shower and was attempting to pull a brush through my gnarled hair, I laughed to hear Nate trying to get her dressed. I can't actually transliterate the sound she makes for "I want" (the only time she doesn't refer to herself as baby is when she is demanding something), but it's something along the same lines as "Ow," only longer. "Ow dis" while holding or pointing to anything is "I want this." And apparently that was what she was doing to her turtleneck with mittens and hats and scarves on it. "No, no," Nate was trying to tell her," it's too hot today to wear that. How about this one?"

Dressing herself has become Clementine's new way to control her environment, not unlike "Go away," which she has totally mastered. We usually give her a few options for tops and bottoms and let her put together an outfit, no matter how wacky. I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes try to influence her decisions by promoting an Abby hand-me-down (all things Abby = FABulous), but for the most part her decisions stand. This isn't challenging--I like that she's independent. I try my hardest not to make excuses when someone looks at us askance in the grocery store or remarks "My, what a colorful outfit" or "What's his name?" I don't want to make her self-conscious by saying "Oh, she dressed herself this morning," and when I find myself doing that or emphasizing the fact that she insisted we wear matching Vans ("Mama wear shoe. Baby wear shoe. Mama baby shoes.") I feel bad. I'm not going to do that.

But everything has limits, right? Like the fact that all she wants in life right now is to wear the Pee Wee Herman jammies that my lovely, wonderful friend Laura saved from her boys (now 19 and 13) and is letting us borrow. "Pee Wee jammies," Clementine says over and over again as we get her dressed after bath. "Pee Wee jammies." And when we try to get her dressed in clothes in the morning, it's a fit of "No! No! Baby wear Pee Wee jammies." She grabs them as we try to work them over her head, she throws herself on the floor, demanding. She refuses to pick out a shirt or cooperate in any way, and then she whimpers the rest of the time we're upstairs and she's not wearing them. This is the battle I pick, and so far I'm winning. She's cute in the jammies, but they're down the laundry chute now and will never be something she can wear to daycare.

Cleaning house

2007-05-01T09:57:00.000-04:00

I am pouring all my spare typing time into reconnecting with some old friends via email and have little left to blog. But the pictures! I need to get better about getting them off the camera earlier so there isn't just one big batch. We go to the zoo every Sunday after breakfast, though it's getting harder and harder to beat back the crowds now that the weather is nice. Clementine is obsessed with the frogs there--not the real ones, of course, but the sculpted ones that sit outside Amphibiville and in the playground. In the early spring when it's still pretty cool she can be as up-close and intimate with the bronze sculptures as she wants. Now that the sun is out they're getting a little too warm for fondling and mounting, so she just points and says "Hot frog, hot frog." Or she tries to kiss them:

At some point I will have to explain the impossibility of their love, but why crush her dreams now?

We're outside every second it's nice these days. I resisted the backyard landscape of brightly colored plastic last year, but it was a fool's goal. C loves her slide and picnic table, and she'll hardly let anything touch her lips these days unless it's "Eat table outside." Outside the only way we can get through dinner is bite, slide, bite, slide. It's all a compromise. And she's always messy. I remember once having a notion that kids of a certain age always feel sticky and moist, like they keep their hands in jam jars all day. I wondered how the hell parents couldn't keep them clean, and now I know. Now I know.

We're cleaning like mad this week to get ready for our annual Kentucky Derby party this weekend. The tradition started as an excuse to get dressed up and drunk in the early evening while gambling in our living room with friends (I was thinking old school bridge parties like my grandma had), but things have evolved now that we are proper grown up parents. OK, that's not entirely true. I didn't realize until we started menu planning just what a hell hole my house has steadily become over the last year and a half. I'm just a few weeks away from warranting reality TV show intervention and need to follow my sister's lead and declare a war on stuff. Stay tuned for details, Detroit. I have a basement full of vintage treasures I need to cull. Maybe it's spring fever, but I want to simplify my life, think sleek, clean, pared down. And then of course I remember it's the world's best week to rummage sale at the churches up by work (and I've got a method to hitting them hard), so my lunch hours will likely go to working in direct opposition to my war on stuff. I justify by saying it's always better stuff, cooler projects, but in the end I think I have a problem. Not that I want to solve it or anything--I just recognize there MIGHT be a problem. I can hardly ever show you the cute pictures of my gal hard at work in my office because it's the most embarrassing room in the house these days (and such a shame because I want to show off the collection of vintage typewriters Nate installed on the walls!), but here are a few with the mess in perspective (i.e., hidden):

Evolution of Language

2007-04-27T14:41:00.001-04:00

On our drive home from daycare each day, Clementine likes to go on a puppy safari, peeking out her window to spot people walking their dogs. “Puppy!” she’ll cry with glee before fixing her eyes on me to demand “More. More puppy,” as if I have the power to make them appear in front of us at will. She is equally excited at spotting a bike (she prefers the Spanish “bici” (bee-cee)), but puppies are really her thing. Lately she’s been eager to figure out how these puppies relate to the people walking them, and putting it in the only terms she has, she’ll now point to the walker and say “Puppy Mama” or “Puppy Dada,” happy to have figured things out.

You see where this is leading, right? Since she will still not refer to herself as anything other than Baby, she now recognizes me as “Baby Mama,” and Nate as “Baby Dada.” Her language has evolved to that of a rapper! While it’s true that she doesn’t use these names exclusively (she is far too eager to use Amanda and Nate now that she has figured out everyone has at least two names they’ll answer to), I love it when we’re in public and she loudly recites our relationships to one another: baby, baby mama, baby dada. I especially love it when she points a finger in some other family’s direction, squints her eyes a little and shouts “Baby Mama! Baby Mama!” That’s just us keepin’ it real.

And we're back

2007-04-24T20:45:00.003-04:00

Yea though we have passed through the valley of the shadow of pneumonia, we have somehow survived. C’s drippy cough means she’s up a few times a night, sometimes wired and unable to get back to sleep, so I’ve been enjoying life jammed in her very small bed with her. I tell myself we’ll laugh about at this when she’s 20.

Despite the illness, Nate and I did sneak away for a few rare nights out last week: once to celebrate my birthday and once to enjoy our annual outing with the judge and Julie, who invite us to attend a reading at a local college to which Julie is very connected. This year Marilyn Nelson read, and I was pleased with how enjoyable the reading was (very little of the poetry lilt which always drives me nuts by the third or fourth poem). I left all charged up and ready to face the page—hopefully it will stick. I love going to the event with the judge and Julie because she knows EVERYONE there, Detroit literati to all the big players, and he has the most amazing sense of humor. I spend a lot of the evening wishing he and I could communicate telepathically because I know he has a thousand stories (candid, funny and sometimes surprising stories) about everyone who walks by.

I was only a little familiar with Nelson’s work before the reading, but I had heard she writes poetry for young people as well as adults. “Poetry for young people” has such a pleasing ring to it that I immediately thought I’d be a very literary mama and snag a signed copy for Clementine, who is wearing me out on the heavy rotation books. When I got to the book table, I saw A Wreath for Emmett Till, one of her “young people” books and didn’t end up buying it. Till, you see, is a young boy who was lynched for once whistling at a white woman, and while I am really behind the notion of the book, I just couldn’t see tucking C in with a rhythmic crown of sonnets about lynching, no matter how beautiful or educational, touching or necessary they really are. What can I say? Even I have limits, though I hope I remember to buy it for her when she’s in sixth grade and so embarrassed I’m her mom she can hardly walk straight.

Spring has sprung in our neighborhood, which is always such a relief because we feel so trapped. It’s also horrible because for the first few weeks of the spring our neighborhood turns especially wild. Maybe it’s because NASCAR isn’t racing as much yet, or perhaps there’s nothing for our neighbors to watch on their ridiculous Rent-a-Center GIANT televisions (I can see nostril hairs on the picture from the street, I swear), or maybe even they get a whiff of the outdoor air and get giddy with all the possibilities. Every year Nate and I swear this is the year we’ll give up on the place after nights of drunken carousing around a fire pit on one side of us or hours of six unsupervised sibling screaming on the other side, but we remember that it always dies down eventually. I used to be good at loving this place, this salt-of-the-earth, trying-to-better-itself place, but I struggle. I long for gentrification. I case newly-bought homes for signs of…well…signs that they won’t move a couch on their front lawn or be involved in domestic disputes. I never thought I’d say it, but I miss the people with the wrestling ring in their backyard—now that they’ve moved it’s just trampolines, broken down 4X4s and large, loud, untrained dogs purchased in lieu of security systems.

Better little by little

2007-04-20T13:14:00.000-04:00

This picture was taken before the pneumonia, but it captures her pretty well right now. She's not as pathetic as yesterday, barely able to pick her head off my chest, but she's not back to her happy, dancing self either. The coughing is terrible! Since she's napping quite a bit I uploaded lots of Easter pics finally, but they don't seem as mood-specific. Click for more.

Under the weather

2007-04-19T20:48:00.000-04:00

Excuse the silence. Clementine has pneumonia. Not unlike when I unknowingly sent her to daycare with a broken arm, this time I sent her to a day of daycare and exposed her to two days of working in the office with me as her condition worsened. I'm not self-flagellating, just realizing that it is possible to feel like you're following good instincts only to have that all shot to hell down the road. When C puked on my on Sunday and Nate decided to skip the concert and stay home I worried that she would end up being fine and we wasted a night out and a sitter on nothing. On the other hand, if we had both gone we would have been wrecks the whole time. It's a gamble either way.

She seemed to be perking up yesterday, but last night was an endless battle again the flames of fever and today sure enough a rattle on the left side. After we got her medicine she slept on top of me (and only on top of me) for four and a half hours. So much for working the rest of the day from home. She is really suffering but still manages to be cute. In her sleep she called mostly for her socks but also sometimes for Yora, Hudsie, Hudsie mama, PeeWee (as in the playhouse) and the socks again. When she woke up from her marathon nap she told me that Floyd the cat was in the bathtub and then laughed her ass off. Fever dreams must be the best.

Fever 103

2007-04-17T01:01:00.000-04:00

It's later than I like to stay up these days, but I can't sleep, floating from my bed to the computer or the bookshelf while Clementine sleeps fevered in her bed. I'm remembering symptoms, quelling new worries (was she pointing to her right side when she said "Owie," and does that indicate appendix?) and realizing I can be a little histrionic. I know she just has a fever, but she seems so unlike herself, so uncomfortable, and I feel like I need to be awake, hovering, waiting for her to wake and need me. I want to comfort her, to soothe her.

This trip up is because I can't stop reciting a line from "Fever 103" by Sylvia Plath: "I have been flickering, off, on, off, on." I need to find the rest of the poem to read it, and I'm taking that as a good sign. When we brought Clementine home I kept Plath's Ariel beside the bed and read it constantly with new eyes as I pumped or when I would wake in the middle of the night to rock her back to sleep. I'd like to say I was learning something about poetry or motherhood from the experience, and I suppose I wouldn't be lying if I did. But mostly I was looking to the book to reassure me that motherhood didn't mean the end of my poetry, that I could still write in the face of such a consumption. Perhaps Plath wasn't the best place to look for that, but the blame is all mine: I have written only a few poems since Clementine, and not one is something I'd show anyone. I tell myself it's hard to write from a place of such contentment, but that's as big a lie as any (for if we are going to get into the argument that poetry is inspired by isolation, fear, anger, etc., what better inspiration than motherhood?). I just don't have anything left for the page right now. I hope it will change, that I will change it. I hope needing to read Plath in the middle of the night is a start, but I don't know how one can balance this much: work, parenting, social connections, an artistic life.

I was thinking about this last night at a Lucinda Williams concert that is worth it's own post (along with a post about the talent show the night before held in my working class/redneck town in conjunction with the contemporary arts museum downtown--a whole post I hope I'll make time to write). Lucinda was singing about making a little something to eat; it was a solitary, searching activity in the song and isn't even the refrain, but I felt the world screech to a halt a little while she sang about it. I can't remember a time I put that much thought (and really it was just a few lines of the song) into what to eat myself. I certainly can't remember a time when that deliberation, that act could then be a part of a mood, a feeling I wanted to communicate in a poem. I can't accurately describe what the hell I'm actually thinking about, but as I listened to her I realized I will not be on my own that way again for a long time, if ever. That restlessness, that attention to every whim and mood, that ability to connect small decisions to larger existential struggles is something I don't have time for anymore. What the hell kind of poet am I, I wondered to myself, that I can't make it the center of my world? That's the only way to be successful, right? Marie Howe, Sharon Olds, even my friend Crystal: poetry comes first. Lucinda too.

But then I remembered Clementine, the things that are the center of my world, and I was OK. Better than OK. Sure, Nate would have been with me at the concert had C. not puked her guts out as we were leaving (is that parenting or what?). Sure, I wilt a little when a writer friend of mine gets a prize, publishes another book. I didn't know this would be my path, my happiness. I didn't know I would stray from writing, but I have. I don't know when I'll go back, but the hope is alive. Ultimately this is the life I want, the life I choose every day. Clementine is wheezing in the next room, her hot little body restless and wandering under the covers, and in a few hours she will nestle between me and Nate in bed. But I know she'll be OK. I'm going to read one more poem (which was one I obsessed over when we were first home with her and the one I read at her faux baptism) and then go get ready for her. This is what I want to be doing.

Lurking

2007-04-16T13:54:00.000-04:00

Long ago (last year) I blogged just about every day...sometimes more than that. I've fallen off a lot lately, and I'm not exactly sure why. I'm busy, yes, with work and a daughter with whom I want to spend just about every free minute I have. But there might be more to it than that. I'm having a hard time keeping up with my end of the conversation. I may even have forgotten what I'm talking about midstride. This started as a way to record Clementine's life and mine as we struggled to know one another, and it quickly became a way for me to reach a small community of like-minded or curious parents who happened by. I have no aims to be a superblogger like the tiresome parent who once told he was working hard "to build the readership" of his blog, and sometimes I wonder why I keep it up.

Why am I thinking about blogging like this? Nate might say it's my nature to overanalyze, but in fact I have been lurking on a blog kept by a senior at the high school where I work and it consumes a great deal of my attention and energy. Out of context that sounds creepy, but everyone on campus is as obsessed or more than I am, whether she is his English teacher or a student who has never met him. He is dying--and I think at this point that's a fair statement--of an agressive form of pediatric cancer. He and his family started his "Care Page," a blog program for cancer patients, at the beginning of his struggle with cancer as a way of keeping people updated on treatments, outcomes, tests. It has now become a way for the family to keep a public record of the day-to-day life of a cancer patient nearing the end of the battle, but it's so much more. It's a mediatation of life and death; it is the most eloquent account I've read of someone so young looking right into the face of death and having presence of mind enough to talk about it. A lot. To say the things he wants to the world before he goes. And as the bulletin boards on the page grow by the hour with comments from fellow students, teachers, strangers, it also becomes a testament to how a community can care, how it can learn from the people within it. I'm not nearly as eloquent as the 18-year-old in the center of the Care Page when talking about it, and I can hardly even log on these days without dissolving into tears.

And with those cheerful thoughts I leave you. Clementine is just up from her nap and is shaking like a leaf. She has been fevered, freezing and puking in the last 24 hours, and I'm going to go cuddle her and maybe give in to her relentless demands for dancey dancing (see below) and Oz.

Dancey dancing

2007-04-10T09:57:00.000-04:00

There is a new obsession at our house, and it has nothing to do with Easter. Two weeks ago I attended a very cool, very laid-back tap dance class downtown with my friend Laura. I’ve long known one of her dreams in life is to tap dance (and she has long known that I’m usually up for anything), so I was happy to accompany her as she took a step closer to realizing her dream of being Shirley Temple or Ginger Rogers or whatever dancer is responsible for her yearning. Following others people’s dreams or desires can be a real treat because they can take you where you didn’t ever think to go: a tap dancing class, a part of the world about which you weren’t ever curious before, through a book or movie that hadn’t interested you. With little invested, you can experience just about anything without the fear of it falling short of expectations or being harder than you imagined. I went to tap class thinking, sure, this could be fun and left pretty darn pleased with myself, ready to sign up for a little while (though not yet ready to take over Laura’s passionate dream).

As it happened, Singin’ in the Rain was on Turner Classic Movies that night, so I recorded it and watched at it between rounds of domesticity after Clementine went to bed. The next day after work/pre-dinner, when Clementine often clamors for some form of TV or movie and we resist because we just aren’t going to raise a TV-starved kid, I thought of putting the movie on and was delighted with how excited she was to watch it. She chanted “Dancey dancing,” or something along those lines as she watched, trying to imitate some of the movements but not wanting to put too much effort into it when watching was taking so much of her energy. When a dance number would die down, she’d ask for more, more, and I’d fast forward to the next one, anxious to hear her proclamation of “Dancey dancing” and to watch her wiggly little hips and crazy arm gestures.

For the last week we’ve been eking dance numbers out of anything we have in the house (Wizard of Oz and exercise tapes so far) and recording anything on TCM that might have even one such number. On Easter, after the bunny, after our weekly brunch at Club Bart, after a few errands, we found ourselves perched on the doorstep of Thomas Video waiting for them to open so we could rent more. The pickings were slim since our VCR is broken, but we made away with Brigadoon, An American in Paris, Take Me Out to the Ballgame and The Busby Berkeley Collection, which is the real gem. Not troubled with the plots of the actual movies themselves, the DVD is just the old black-and-white dance numbers from the 30s, many of which darling C has made nicknames for so we can be sure exactly what she means when she says “Meow dancey.”

For my part, I’m encouraging this, and not just because I have some tap shoes on the way. There are many things I’m passionate about in life (poetry/writing, art and travel to name only a few), and there are many things about which I have been passionate at some time. It’s the latter in which I’m totally willing to indulge Clementine. I have been a beekeeper, a bookmaker, a chef, a welder, a translator, a farmer, a vulcanologist, a jewelry maker, a clothing designer and, now, a tap dancer, among many other things. I haven’t done any of them extremely well or for very long, but I gave each one my interest and my best shot until I felt I learned what I wanted. I wish that for her as well, to look at something—anything—and be interested, to immerse herself in just about anything in order to figure out the depth of her interest/passion. OK, maybe I’m over thinking her current obsession with all things dancing. It could just be that she wants the damn TV on has learned this is how we will allow it. We’ll see. All I know for sure is that dancey dancing sure beats the hell out of Elmo. At least until she demands ballet lessons.

Hoppity hop hop

2007-04-05T16:03:00.000-04:00

Last Easter (worth the click if only for the world’s best family portrait) we were at my dad’s in Washington D.C. with my sister and her kids and didn’t have to think about how to celebrate the day. Because my niece was older, we of course did an egg hunt and everyone got baskets with all sorts of goodies. We were along for the ride, so it didn’t matter that my 6-month old baby didn’t understand, didn’t walk and could have cared less about chocolate (and bonus for me: I got to eat all the candy in her basket). I thought I might get away with a low-key (as in, not really celebrating) Easter this year, too, but how wrong I was.

The other day at the store, we passed some simple baskets—no bunnies, no eggs, no grass or decorations. Clementine reached for them and said “Da bunny! Da bunny!”

“The bunny?” I asked.

“Yes, da bunny,” she said, nodding. “Hop, hop, hop. Bye bye.”

This is how lots of our conversation go these days, so while you may be scratching your head in bewilderment, I totally got what was going on. But how did she learn about the Easter Bunny who hop, hop, hops with a basket and then goes away? Of course: day care.

The next day I asked Julie if they had been talking about the Easter Bunny lately, and the whole mess of the kids fell in line as if on cue and started singing parts of “Peter Cottontail,” all in different keys and at different points in the verses. They put their little hands out in front of them, curved over as if in simulation of paws, and began to hop all over the place shouting, then screaming, “Hop! Hop! Hop!” until the song faded away, the hoping became a pogo-like jumping, and the place descended into madness.

Well, hell. I guess we’re celebrating Easter this year.

But here’s the thing: I don’t really remember much about the myth of Easter. Yeah, it involves baskets and dying eggs and plastic eggs and candy and looking for eggs and (in my house) making Easter hats out of Peeps and an upside-down basket, but the actual beginning-to-end story evades me. We dye the eggs in advance, but how does the Easter Bunny find them and why does he hide them? How do the plastic eggs filled with pennies and jelly beans come into play? If the Easter Bunny fills your basket with chocolate and goodies (or, as the Peter Cottontail song would suggest, “Easter joys”), what do you carry around with you to find all the plastic and hard-boiled eggs? And why, oh why, do people make egg salad out of the hard-boiled eggs that are stained with who know what kind of food dye and have been unrefrigerated for who knows how long? I have philosophical questions, too, about what the Easter Bunny brings (do we really need another mysterious character bringing us heaps of gifts?), why he or she wants to do this and how we explain the bunny getting around, picking up baskets, hiding eggs, etc. This is much better fleshed out in the Santa story.

Nevertheless, I’m a sucker for my kid and am happy to jump on the bandwagon of any holiday if I can revamp it just a bit for our purposes. For instance, all the Easter candy is really just for me and Nate. We’ll give her dried fruit and yogurt-covered raisins, right? And books, books will be a big part. And we’ll take a trip to the zoo that day to look at bunnies. See, we have ideas. But there is a basic formula, so in search of the essentials (plastic eggs, day-glo grass) we headed to Target the other day and were totally amazed by the throng of people wandering dazed or angrily through the aisles, stuffing their carts with all kinds of stuff they hadn’t really come in for but felt obligated to supply their children (here I blame the underdeveloped story of the E.B.; parents are shooting in the dark here!). It was amazing. And angry…did I mention how angry everyone was in the face of all that sugar?

We came away with a few things but were pretty disappointed. For one thing, it was impossible to find just plain jelly beans. There were spiced and speckled, LifeSaver, Mike and Ike and all sorts of wack-o kinds, but no just plain jelly beans. And the eggs—there were bugs and dots and pool balls, but we really had to dig around for the just plain crazy colored ones. I guess Target isn’t the place you go when you want to keep in non-commercial, pretty simple, semi-homemade, super kitschy or whatever, but what’s a wanna-be Easter Bunny/ workin’ mama to do on her lunch hour just days before the big event?

So here’s what I wanna know. What are your Easter traditions? Anything you can pass along?

Kissin' Cousins

2007-04-03T09:37:00.000-04:00

The whole cousin relationship is an odd one, isn't it? Dependent initially on one's parents' relationships with their siblings, the cousin thing varies from family to family and doesn't mean the same thing to any two people. I have five cousins--two who lived in Alaska while we were growing up and with whom we had pretty much no contact (yet I do remember one at my grandma's funeral who was clearly on acid or some other combo of drugs because he told my little sister that lizards were crawling out from beneath the casket), two who lived nearby and with whom we had sporadic, emotionally-charged contact that changed as my mom and aunt got along or didn't (as adults they're more dysfunctional than most, so I stay away), and one we saw every summer and with whom we were reasonably close for a while; a lot of that has faded away with the passing of my other grandma, though--we hardly hear anything from Pennsylvania these days. In contrast, my college roommate grew up right alongside her cousins and considers them more like siblings than anything else.

My sister and I had a rocky relationship growing up, one which I am still made to feel guilty about from time to time because I wasn't the loving, inclusive big sister that, in retrospect, I wish I had been. As a teenager, I would have predicted that my sis and I would barely speak as adults, that our children would see each other only on major holidays and at funerals. I would have been so very wrong. Happily, my sister and I speak almost daily, and having kids around the same time as one another has meant that we can provide them with a new version of the cousin relationship. Vacationing together was great because the girls played together and entertained themselves, formed little bonds and shared secrets--it was the stuff of childhood, the kind of relationships I wish for them to always have.

The only problem is that Clementine has developed a serious Abby jones, one that can't be easily satisfied now that vacay is over and we're living a five-hour drive away from the beloved object of her obsession. On vacation, each morning darling C would wake up, lift her sleep-heavy head with her crazy, matted bed head, look to the door and say "Abby?" OK, one morning she said "cheese," but the rest of the time it was all Abby. Closer to nap time, this would become more of a whine, "Aaaabyyyy," and often ended with her collapsed in front of the door alternating Abby with "out! out!" I was afraid of what it would be like at home: temper tantrums and fits that couldn't be assuaged with promises of Abby sightings later in the day, meals when C would demand to sit next to an Abby we couldn't produce. But it hasn't been like that. Well, not exactly.

Instead of begging for Abby, Clementine has turned Abby into a word that serves many purposes. Sure, she's still Abby the person we talk to on any phone or phone-like toy or device, we still walk around and identify her in all the pictures (and the younger Nora, which Clementine pronounces "No-la," as well--Nora's not forgotten but is rather a follow-up like "Abby, Abby, Abby, No-la") and conjure her when I ask silly questions like "Do you know who we're going to see today?" But she has also become a strange noun that refers to the things C associates with Abby: the two hand-me-down hoodies from Abby, for example, one of which I found wrapped around C in her sleep last night. When she wants to wear one, she points and says "Abby" so definitively I start to believe that all hoodies should be called Abbies; "Do you want to wear your Abby?" I ask. Clementine has boots that she calls Abby (thank heavens for spring and the retirement of the boots), and she has books and toys that are Abby as well, though I'm not always sure why. She launches into long diatribes full of words that I don't yet understand and peppers her sentences with Abby. Sometimes she'll answer a question like "Do you want pasta or meat for dinner?" with a simple "Abby," nodding her head and sporting a very earnest look. One of her kitchen utensils is sometimes Abby, and I'm just counting the days until we rechristen all the stuffed animals Abby as well. Incidentally, the laptop computer is called No-la mostly because C remembers looking at pictures of Nora on it, and the upstairs computer is "dancey ducky" for the little beat bot I found one day while reading another blog.

Let's be clear that I'm not complaining. I think this Abby obsession is sweet, and I'm trying very hard not to abuse it and make it lose its magic. I'll cop to flexing it once or twice as an "Abby doesn't scream in her bath, so why are you?" or "Do you think Abby would be happy that you aren't going to bed?" But I'm not proud and don't intend to do that again. I love this little cousin relationship and wish someone would invent a super-speed transport between Chicago and Detroit so we didn't feel so damn far away.

Did I promise you a story?

2007-03-30T15:26:00.000-04:00

OK, I know, I know. I promised DETAILS about my trip, but we've had a hard time readjusting to life not on vacation. What can I say? There was sun, there was fun, there was an unlimited open bar at all waking hours and Clementine could have "peet-zee," her way of saying pizza, every day at 4 pm. She wouldn't sit in her high chair or sleep in the portable crib, but the super comfy king-sized bed made me long for our family bed days once again.

I didn't know what to expect of a Club Med vacation (didn't I mention that it was Club Med). We're kind of the adventurous, backpacking, let's-see-the-remotest-part-of-Thailand and how-many-museums-can-we-hit-per-day travelers, so we were a little wary. I even researched cultural events and places in Cancun (I know, beyond body shots and foam parties there isn't much) so I'd be prepared. What a waste of time! Club Med is the way to go, once you can get past the competitive vacationers who wake at 5 AM every day to scope out the best spots by the pool and reserve them with towels and cheap paperbacks. We got to go boating and snorkeling whenever we wanted, the beaches were amazing and I even tried the trapeze. We surprised the heck out of my dad and had an amazing time with the whole gang together. Clementine is now obsessed with her cousins and starts every day talking about Abby, Nora and cheese (yeah, the pizza thing).

If there was a sour note it was darling C's less-than-positive reaction to my dad, her grampy. She shook her finger at him and cried "No!" whenever he came near here, sometimes switching it up with a "don't." He took it in stride and answered with a finger-wagging no of his own, but I think all that did was cement that as their thing. Even now when she mentions everyone she sat on the beach with, she'll say something that sounds like "dampy" and shake her finger, say no and smile. I don't think it's an actual no at this point or even something negative. But I'm creating a super-fun photo book of our amazing trip together just to be sure.

I took, of course, nine million pics. Here are some of the best. We stayed over in the Westin at the Detroit airport the night before our flight out, and let me say it was the best idea I've ever had. We had a really early check-in time for the flight and the hotel leads you right out to the gate area. The cost of the room came with 8 days valet parking, so all the better. AND our room looked out onto airplanes, Clementine's first obsession of the trip.

The camera didn't come to the beach with us often, and when it did it didn't come into the water, which was an amzing color blue and a source of a lot of fun. Other beach activities like iguana spotting and sand sorting were a big hit:

Our one trip to town included the wonderful "Casa de Arte Popular Mexicano," a folk art museum with a very detailed audio tour in English that I couldn't enjoy because keeping Clementine's hand off all the precious art objects at child-height was more like a work out than anything.

The last shot is from the little church they set up in one corner of the museum where my neice Abby performed several weddings. We literally had to drag her away. C wasn't interested.

Much can be said of how wonderful all the little girlies got along. I'm excited to see them all grow up together. Actually, I'm more excited to see them photographed together, which we have a difficult time doing. That is, unless one is crying or dirty or looking the wrong way or, in C's case, eating pizza.

Much can also be said of the dancing, which all girls took to rather swimmingly, none so eagerly as my little Clementine. If there was a band or a lone guitar or even a speaker, my girl would find it and dance in front. We came out of dinner one night to find a salsa lesson in progress, so Clementine grabbed Ba and took a spin with him:

First to arrive and last to leave, we spent our last afternoon enjoying hte surf, tracking down Clementine's beloved bartender Charly, who kept her well supplied with ice and cookies and taking a few last shots.

I wish being on vacation were a career option because we're really good at it.

I had a secret

2007-03-25T09:55:00.000-04:00

We just returned from a secret week in Mexico that I couldn't write about because it was to surprise my father. We had a wonderful time and have returned sunned, relaxed and totally off any sort of eating or sleeping schedule that is compatible with real life. Once we unpack the suitcase full of stinky laundry and begin our vacation detox diet I'll post some pictures and give a full report.

DST

2007-03-16T14:39:00.000-04:00

Is Daylight Savings Time kicking anyone's ass out there as hard as it's kicking ours? I've had moments of wit and clarity this past week when I should have blogged, but they were few and far between as we have returned to darling C's noctural wakings. I think I'm averaging about 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Not only does she wake a few times, she has now learned that she can actually get out of her own bed and pad down the hall into our room. The first time it happened, I thought it was so cute, listening to her footsteps and then seeing her head round the corner with a curious "Mama?" Last night I waited until she got all the way up to my face becfore asking her if this was soome kind of joke. "Yeah," she said, clearly not understanding my sarcasm.

So in lieu of observations and anecdotes about my ever-quirky, hilarious little girl, I'm relying on photojournalism. The week in review starts with a lazy Sunday afternoon reading. Does she want us to read to her? No, no, no. She'll do the reading, thank you very much:

In fact, she's so eager to read that she'll make a seat out of anything and take a book. I've found her in the closet, on a box, in a suitcase and on a bouncing ball (starting to sound like Dr. Seuss). Oh, and she's also not above cleaning off my bedside table and making a perfect little seat right there:

At the zoo, she was excited to be a frog on a lily pad. She's never content to do anything silly alone, however, and we're happy to oblige. Whether it's walking like a flamingo, neighing like a horse, or hopping like a frog. I love Nate. Click on this picture to see more frogs.

Even when the seals and polar bears are too busy sunning themselves, the underwater viewing area is her favorite place of all.

And as the weekend winds down, there's nothing quite like some coloring.

I'm going to take a nap now.

Artist

2007-03-13T16:10:00.000-04:00

From the time C could just barely coordinate herself enough to limply hold a wedge of avocado (her first food because she wasn't about to actually let us feed her anything on a spoon--very willful, this one) I tried to get her excited about crayons and chalk and paint and markers and the myriad crafting supplies to which she will have ready access her whole life because it is piled up so high in my basement. It took a while for her to get the hang of it, but she's made leaps and bounds with our kitchen chalk board and the crayons. We got our first picture sent home from day care the other day, and I was so excited I could hardly stand it.

While we were waiting for her motor skills to catch up with what I naturally assumed was her heart's true desire (artist expression), I bought her finger paints in the hopes that it would be easier for her to get busy on the canvas. Try as I did, she never ever liked to use them. Sure, she liked to get set up to finger paint. She enjoyed watching me lay out the newspaper and then the paper to paint on. She liked getting down to her skivvies, and she liked watching me squirt the paints out onto the paper plate I was using as a palette. What she didn't like was actually touching the paints, and she certainly didn't like using them, declaring "Messy," after dipping just the tiniest portion of one finger in.

Until last week, that is, when she finally figured out what fun it was. We made a card for my dad's 60th birthday, but we still haven't mailed it because I just can't part with these early artistic expressions.

Ambulatory

2007-03-08T14:23:00.000-05:00

There was a time when C was first born that I would have done anything to be at home with her. My mind on that front has never really been made up completely--it ebbs and flows as my love for my job shifts around--but I'm pleased with her life at daycare and the example I'm setting for her by doing my own thing, having a job, even if it is way more traditional than I'd like (remember I'm trying to breed some bohemian tendencies in her from the beginning!). With all the time I've been spending at home these days, I realize I would go stark raving mad if I stayed home with her full time, and it makes it that much easier to go back to work. Sure, I miss her like hell, but I'm reminded what a good situation this is for all of us. Nevertheless, I like being out in the world in the middle of the week day. Grannies in the left lane going 20 MPH, kids having meltdowns in the Trader Joe's parking lot, very little traffic. It's like a totally different universe.

I'm at home today with a ton of electrical leads sticking out of my head for an ambulatory EEG. I've wrapped a scarf around my head and like to think I'm looking a little like Little Steven of Underground Garage and E Street fame as I diligently record everything I do. I have guests on their way tonight who can't wait to get a look at my Medusa-like appearance, and I'm trying to resist the pull of back-to-back Law and Order so that my brain waves look extra-smart when they study them; in fact, I'm going to go start a crossword puzzle in a minute. I think there is little reason for this test besides getting me back on the road. Not being able to drive myself around is driving me crazy, especially because public transportation in and around Detroit is pretty shoddy.

It's ironic that the EEG is called ambulatory when, for me, it's anything but. Nate has been saddled with two extra responsibilities since all this happened: pick-up and drop-off for Clementine AND pick-up and drop-off for me, whether it's work or doctor's appointments. For some strange reason this has me feeling guilty; I tend to shoulder more of the logistics on a day-to-day basis, but it's hardly because he asks me to. I think I'm still struggling to come to terms with the way that we tend to fall into certain roles. I don't want to say it's gender--I think it's much more a control-freak tendency on my part than my inner homemaker--but I wish it were easier to nail down. My Donna Reed plan that was working so well for us for a while has totally fallen apart in the last few weeks, and I'm pretty happy with that. It felt good to know who was doing what, who was responsible, but it's more fun to share, to work together now that Clementine can almost lend a hand (we're not trusting her with a knife just yet, but she's really great at organizing the cherry tomatoes!).

It's time for one of my scheduled rest periods, so I'm going to go look as calm and restful as I can so they'll let me have my damn keys back.

Before trauma, fun

2007-03-07T16:23:00.000-05:00

I can't let our great time up north be overshadowed by its unfortunate ending. Clementine is blending right in with our nomadic ways, and I think she was psyched to hit the road with Laura and Joey after her few days at work with me. We started by visiting a friend in Interlochen, where Clementine was able to realize her lifelong dream of encountering a real snowman. She has been obsessed with snowmen since their proliferation at Christmas and in one of her books, but seeing one--two, in fact, if you count the baby--in real life was almost just too much, especially since Joey built them.

This was also the first time Clementine got to play in the snow at any length, which she loved until she couldn't her boots on anymore. She especially loved throwing snowballs.

Joey and I hit Crystal Mountain before we headed up to Petoskey to meet the guys. We checked into a fabulous hotel that had very comfortable bed. The only evidence of my head trauma might just be that I have hardly any pictures of Clementine in the hotel or around the slopes at Nub's Nob except for some pics of her very cute pony tails. Holy hell is that girl is sweet.

On the way home we decided we couldn't possible pass up The World's Largest Crucifix in Indian River. My double vision was just getting started as we pulled up, so I didn't perhaps enjoy the oddness of it as much as I normally might have, but I did find the fabulous nun doll museum that was beyond strange. Hundreds of nun dolls in the garb of convents all over the world, strange dioramas of nuns in action, a hall of life-size nuns. Sadly, the gift shop was closed, but I have a feeling I'll be back.

For now, my cool little girl is just happy to be back. But we are maybe a little curious about the Sock Monkey Festival in Rockford, Illinois this weekend....

Double Vision: not just a cheesy Foreigner song

2007-03-06T15:37:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, as we were driving back from a fabulous weekend up north hanging out with some of our favorite people and snowboarding, my vision was a little off. At first I just felt funny, but as the day progressed, things went from blurry to split in two—totally in two. I was trying to keep up a brave front, catching up with phone calls, making plans for the week. But when we stopped for a bite to eat, I realized I could hardly walk and felt absolutely drunk (the kind of drunk where you have to close one eye to see). I nevertheless got myself to the bathroom to change Clementine’s leaky diaper (yuck) but realized we needed to get to the hospital to be sure I didn’t have brain damage.

I wasn’t really sure what had happened, but I got to tell the story so many times over the last week or so I can recite it by heart. On Friday I took a pretty serious tumble while snowboarding, smacked my head but bounced back immediately (I wear a helmet, after all). There were no signs of concussion beyond a little dizziness that night. We spent the next day hanging out, seeing sights, shopping. I was fine. We went out for some night skiing and had a great time for a while—Nate and I were on our own and really enjoying it. We wanted to hit every hill before we took a break to visit Clementine and Laura in the lodge, so we headed over to an easy hill on the far side of the slope. I remember strapping in and following Nate down and around a bend, but then the next thing I remember is waking up on my back much further down the hill. I don’t think I fell because it was very flat there, very gentle and easy and I had no snow on me, no aches and pains that might lead me to think something had happened. I got up slowly and headed down the hill dizzy and disoriented. Nate was waiting for me at the bottom and told me he had been there for five minutes and was beginning to get worried. Needless to say I cut the night short and went back to our hotel. I felt kind of dizzy but still very functional. My vision didn’t start to split until we were on our way home—I thought it was something mild or, at worst, a dramatic overreaction to the end of a fabulous vacation.

Once we reached Detroit, Nate and Clementine dropped me off at the ER at my insistence—the last thing I wanted was my girl hanging around the hospital again, and I was pretty sure I’d be fine or that Nate could find someone to watch her while the doctors patted me on the head and told me to take some Motrin and promise never to snowboard again. I wasn’t at the ER long, however, before a negative CAT scan got the doctor thinking I had a ruptured brain aneurysm—he prepared to do a spinal tap and I freaked out, called Nate who had taken refuge at the home of the people with whom we were traveling (as if they hadn’t had enough of me) and started cursing myself for not having a will. The spinal tap was as awful as it sounds—worse, actually, as there is not so much a tap as an invasive injection that involves the needle scraping along one’s vertebrae (I made quite a few jokes about the lengths I had gone to in order to avoid an epidural only to end up with something pretty similar, but the doctor had zero sense of humor). Without my asking, both Karen and Laura showed up to keep me company as we waited for results, more tests and some kind of news. I’d be embarrassed remembering all of the compromising situations in which they saw me (at one point I remember Karen holding my IV bag while I peed), but the good thing about head trauma is that the memory is the first to go.

Eventually they had no answers and it was almost midnight. They decided to admit me and schedule me for an angiogram in the morning, but I had to wait two hours to get a bed in the ICU step-down unit. Nate went to get some sleep at our friends’ house with Clementine, and I spent the hours until dawn drifting off to sleep and then waking myself up immediately anytime I saw any sort of light in my dreams. It sounds ridiculous, but I was trying not to go into the light. I called my dad at 5:30 AM because I just felt so lonely and scared, but by about 7 AM things started looking up. My vision was slowly improving, my head didn’t hurt too much and a wonderful nurse practitioner told me that other than the spinal tap I had no signs of aneurysm. The neurosurgeons agreed, so then the great witch hunt of what the hell had happened to me began in full. Tests, results, theories, disagreements and an endless parade of doctors ensued.

There are days and days of details that follow and they are all pretty much the same. I was frustrated because I couldn’t leave or see my daughter, doctors stopped by and ordered more tests, everyone had different answers. In the end it turns out that I am OK—probably just suffering from a severe concussion, the effects of which I may feel for 6 to 12 months. I’m still banned from driving, however, until I have this crazy test done later this week to look for seizures. They think that may have been what grounded me on my last snowboard run.

I am back at work today and feeling good, despite the headache. I’m trying hard not to dwell on all this. I will be back on the slopes again next year, I will be fine and I can’t wait to start my yoga again because man, my muscles are sore.

Thanks for all the emails and notes and comments and good wishes. Now let’s talk about something happy.

Helmets may not be punk rock...

2007-03-01T19:21:00.000-05:00

...but mine sure did save my life. I was released from the hospital yesterday after three long days of tests, poking, prodding and wondering what the hell happened, and it appears everything is on the mend and there is no lasting damage. I'm NOT giving up snowboarding, and let me be clear: this is not an indication of how much I suck. I was rather awesome and ripped it up pretty well--I just caught a bad break (no pun there since nothing is really broken).

Looking at the computer for more than a few minutes gives me a pretty huge headache, especially since I had my eyes dilated AGAIN today for a never ending series of tests. But more on my experiences soon.

Take your daughter to work...and have a nervous breakdown

2007-02-21T07:03:00.000-05:00

At home, Clementine can be very independent. She'll get involved in her kitchen or in reading herself a book or in arranging something (the kid may have a little OCD--I once occupied her for an hour by giving her a box of coins to put in her piggy bank piece by lovin' piece) and wouldn't even notice if I ran out for groceries. Not that I do. But I have thought to myself how easy it would be to work from home or have her with me at work when she plays so independently for hours at a time. That, of course, is a foolish statement born of naivety and silly hopes for the best.

We have no day care this week. Public schools are closed and Julie and her family go south for family vacation--it's one of only two weeks she takes off a year and she totally deserves them, so I never complain. At least not about her. I may have complained this time about how this interruption in normal day care has been all my problem to deal with, as if I don't have a husband with resources of his own, but that's a tired subject that has already been beaten to death in our house. Let's just leave it that I never complain...at least not much.

Since I am one of three dozen people in the free world that apparently had to work on Monday, I knew bringing Clementine with me would be pretty easy, especially since my friends Karen and Dave live in the boys' dormitory across the walk from my office (oh, the glamorous life). While I started the day forcing crayons in Clementine's hand and teaching her not to move around too much in the rolly office chairs lest she fall down and break another bone (my biggest fear is another trip to the ER and all the questions from the doctors), it wasn't long before Aunt K came and swept darling C away for a day of house or, as I like to call it, the best form of birth control there is for a newly married couple: a day with a toddler.

Yesterday was another story. I brought Clementine in with me but hired a sitter for part of the day to hang out at Karen and Dave's. Sitters are expensive, so I tried to be judicious about how long I used her, but I didn't factor in how she might be a little weirded out to sit at a stranger's house for a long day. I ended up having to make several trips over to reassure, coordinate meals, double check and assist. I let her leave during nap time thinking it would be easy to end my day with C in the office with me, but I hadn't anticipated my boss wanting to have a huge spontaneous meeting at 4:00. He was extraordinarily patient with me as I interrupted sentences to ask Clementine not to eat paper clips, rip apart the 60th sticky note pad, throw business cars or touch the thousands of dollars worth of video equipment or as she demanded to watch "Shoe" (a great old cartoon from the 40s), which I had left in Karen's living room. By the time it was all over, we were all exhausted and every last illusion I have at combining work and Clementine at this age is shattered.

Let me be clear: I don't put the blame on her at all. She is such an interesting, chatty, interactive little girl these days that I find myself frequently mired in some trite "Where did the time go?" musings. Seriously. Wasn't she just a baby? I just can't juggle her and the demands of a job at the same time if the ebb and flow doesn't align and make it so that I'm not neglecting one completely to engage with the other. Best not tread there for now, and that's cool with me.

I've solved the rest of the week's day care problems by taking the time off. My lovely friend Laura and I are headed up north today and the menfolk will join us tomorrow evening. There will be snowboarding, shopping, perhaps snowshoeing, an inn on a lake and other fabulousness that is so much better than work I can't even begin to describe it. AND I've got my camera back so I may even have photographic evidence of our journey. I think I heard Clementine sigh when I opened the box last night. Let the excessive picture-taking commence.

Books for snowy days

2007-02-17T22:25:00.000-05:00

You're never too old for a snow day, and when we had ours last week I had a million ideas about what to do. Sledding, hot chocolate, a family of snow people.... All Clementine wanted to do was hang out in jammies and read, and that ended up being the best idea of all. Here are the books we hit hard then and every day. I've been meaning to post reading lists for a while because I strive to find books that are as entertaining to the reader as the audience (in other words, books that don't make me puke). Clementine has some damn good taste.

Punk Farm by Jarret J. Krosoczka

Definitely one of our all time favorites. It lets us practice animal sounds, talk about musical instruments and SING! Visit the website to download your copy of the song and you too might be Eee-Iii-Eee-Iii-Ooo-ing your way through the day.

The Wuggie Norple Story by Daniel M. Pinkwater; Tomie dePaola illustrator

This book was originally published in 1980 and was a favorite of mine and my sister’s while we were young. It is a book about Lunchbox Louie, a totally hippy whistle fixer whose wife is Bigfoot the Chipmunk and whose son is King Waffle. Louie buys them a cat, Wuggie Norple, who gets so ridiculously large, Louie brings home a menagerie of animals as a comparison. The animals include Exploding Poptart, Laughing Gas Alligator (not an alligator at all) and Papercup Mixmaster. It’s a riot to read, with lots of great repetition. Want to get it? Hope you’ve got $100 bucks or more to shell out for a paperback copy. The thing is out of print and impossible to get. My mom bought me a copy off aLibris.com for my baby shower because she is fabulous.

Honky-tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country and Western Music by Holly George Warren; Laura Levine illustrator
also by the same duo: Shake, Rattle and Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll

When I first bought these, they were way more for me than Clementine—each featured musician or group has a folksy painting and a thorough history. Waaaay too many words for Clementine, but she’s fascinated by both books and likes to page through them and point out all their shoes and guitars. I usually just read the first paragraph or make up a quick story based on the pictures. When we get to the end, she always asks to read it again right away.

In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

I remember checking this out from the library when I was a little kid, mostly because I was fascinated by the fact that Mickey is NAKED at parts in the story. It’s hardly a detailed drawing, but for a curious young mind it was enough. Apparently, as I learned from my Google search just now, the book has been/is controversial and occasionally banned due to the nudity. That’s just silly. It’s a great book about a little boy who wanders into a nocturnal fantasy city which looks an awful lot like a basic cupboard from the 30s. C likes to read this over and over and over again, and I have no objections.

Anything at all by Mo Willems

We would be lost, lost, lost without Mo Willems. And while part of me wants to say his stuff is too precious, too cute, the fact is that Clementine can’t get enough of it and neither can we. I thought I had a big collection, but this guy is prolific—it would be hard to have an entire library. Our favorites include:

Time to Pee!

At first Clementine’s interest in this book was just curiosity, and then she took an extreme interest in what we adults do in the bathroom. She will be across the house downstairs and hear Nate in the bathroom and race as fast as she can to the door crying “Pee! Pee!” Yep. It happens in public too. But the book is having a very serious effect on her, as today she discovered the hand-me-down kid’s potty (is that a gross thing to have second-hand?) and insisted she use it. I thought I was just humoring her, but she really did take her pants off, sit down and pee. I’m not letting it get to my head, but you know I’m gonna brag a lot if my kid learned to pee at 17 months old from a book.

Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus!

Enjoyable and educational…if you consider learning to say “No No!” over and over again in response to various questions educational. The reader is instructed by the bus driver not to let the pigeon drive the bus in his absence. Of course the pigeon puts on the pressure and the charm, much to the delight of Clementine, who is all too happy to enforce the rules. She now refers to all trucks and buses as No No, to which I respond yes, that’s a bus. Everyone around us is always baffled.

Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late!

Similar premise to the bus story. She gets to say no over and over again as the pigeon begs to stay up late and refuses to admit he’s tired. Clementine doesn’t yet understand this as a lesson in irony.

Leonardo The Terrible Monster

Not my favorite story, but Clementine loves it. Maybe because she has a friend named Sam, same as the boy in the book. Maybe because she gets to make all sorts of silly noises like Blaggle and Roar along with Leonardo.

Pumkinhead by Eric Rohmann

An odd tale about a boy whose head is a pumpkin that is snatched away by a bat and begins a journey than ends happily. Very beautiful illustrations and just off-beat enough that I love to read it.

Alphabet Poem by Michael Rosen; Herve Tullet illustrator

This book is perhaps the most heavily rotated right now—we even have an upstairs copy and a downstairs copy. It’s your basic ABC book, but you won’t find no A is for Alligator, D is for Drum here. Instead, it’s Computers Cooking Cakes, Noses Need Nets, Fish Find Fans and, Clementine’s favorite, Teddies Tap. She insists we all tap our feet and say “Dapa Dapa,” which is also how she asks for the book…morning, noon and night. Seriously. At 3 AM the other night I heard her saying “Dapa Dapa” to herself.

Bad Cat by Tracy-Lee McGuinness-Kelly

Another big favorite for all of us, Bad Cat wanders through the Big Stinky causing all sorts of trouble…that is, until you look closer. It turns out that people may just be misjudging poor old Bad Cat. Pictures are amazing, and even when we’ve read the text 20 times in a row I can distract C by asking her to point out all kinds of cool details. Not surprisingly she likes the tattoo on the sailor most of all.

Clementine in the City by Jessie Hartland

We like to give this book as a gift because…well…it’s about a dog named Clementine (which, incidentally, C still hasn’t tried to say). The name isn’t the only draw—Clementine is a poodle who goes to the big city to have adventures. She also buys shoes, which is my little Imelda’s favorite thing about most books. Shoes, shoes, shoes.

That’s Disgusting by Francesco Pittau; Bernadette Gervais illustrator
also by the duo: That's Dangerous, That's Mean and Elephant Elephant, a Book of Opposites

These books aren’t for everyone, but they sure are fun. We like That’s Disgusting best of all, but That’s Mean will probably be great if Clementine ever has siblings. A lot of my non-parent friends really like the scatological inappropriateness of That’s Disgusting because they’re happy to know all kids books aren’t just talking rabbits and horses. The book is a sing-songy list of things that are gross, each followed by the refrain “That’s Disgusting.” Topics range from sticking your finger in the cat’s behind to pooping in the bathtub to blowing your nose in the curtains. They’re all disgusting. Elephant Elephant is a fun, usual book of opposites that Clementine probably won’t understand for a few years now. Each spread in the book has two elephants that represent opposites. Some are pretty straightforward, like big and small; others are interesting/off like inside and outside (one elephant is exposed beneath the skin) and boy and girl (no genitals—it’s all about where the pee comes out).

Frida by Jonah Winter; Ana Juan illustrator

There are lots of draws to this book. Beneath the dust jacket (we pull those off immediately lest they get ripped into a thousand little pieces to be distributed throughout the house by both Clementine AND cat), there are lots of interesting faces that we have created different sounds for—this is how C asks for the book: “Oooo! Oooo! Ah!” while pointing to it. Inside, the illustrations are amazing and very much influenced by Frida Kahlo’s work. C is less interested in the story than the pictures, most especially the skeleton, which makes her dance.

This really is just scratching the surface. Let’s do this again sometime, huh? Also, what are your favorites? I have a list of book I covet…add to it, will you?

Valentine's Day: the new Christmas?

2007-02-15T16:24:00.000-05:00

I'm not gonna hate on V-Day even though Nate and I really don't celebrate it apart from hand-made cards. And I'm not gonna be all predictable and decry the media-induced frenzy, the Hallmark guilt machine, the ridiculous expectations that lead to long lines of men shifting their weight back and forth in the line at the flower shop and throngs of women feeling short-changed or, worse, lame because there is no one to call them Valentine. Nope. I'm far too excited for the first hand-made card darling C brings home from school for us, the first chance we have to surprise her with a little Valentine of our own. Celebrating holidays as parents is all about making it our own, starting our own traditions, doing it our way, so I'm just not gonna bitch about how you all do it.

But.

I got lots of strange mail that made me feel like I was reliving another recent holiday. Is Valentine's Day the new Christmas? Three bits of evidence to support:

1. A card with a long, newsy hand-written note from my stepmother's sister-in-law (how do you get further removed than that?). It mentioned my Christmas card, so I imagine she's feeling guilty that I sent her one but didn't receive one in return (at least I think I didn't--I SO don't keep track). My sister got one too but hers came with pictures. It was a lovely sentiment, but it hardly screamed VALENTINE! Be Mine! It just didn't jive with the holiday...at least not what I think of as the holiday.

2. A Christmas letter (or a Valentine's letter?!) which detailed a family friend's year in review, including updates on their travels, medical histories, children's lives and the chorus of "We're going to be grandparents!" Again, lovely, I'm glad to be included--I love gossip and talk about hip replacements as much as anyone and am happy to see such talk liberated from the Christmas season. But for Valentine's Day?

3. An actual Christmas card with no explanation whatsoever. Hardly a signature beyond "Warm wishes." Dude, I'm a mom so I get it that the post office sometimes seems like a luxury vacation destination you can never quite get to. I sent most of my Christmas cards on December 21st and just knew people would understand. But February? It would actually be kind of funny, one of the stories you tell other moms and get in return a knowing nod IF there had been any kind of explanation on the card. "A little late this year but just as sincere!" "Hope your holidays were good--our were obviously hectic!" "You think you're confused? You should see our kids under the tree as I write this!" But there was nothing. I checked the postmark to see if maybe it had been lost, misplaced. I checked the envelope for a note about how she found the card under her front seat just the other day and thought she'd mail it anyway. Nothing. Could it be the guilt factor again? Am I just so low on the list that I'm lucky I get one at all?

Maybe Valentine's Day is the slacker Christmas. In a way it makes sense that a holiday dedicated to exchanging cards would be the time you send out your family photos, your Merry Medical family updates, your letters. Hell, it would make those weeks I'm wheeling around the crazy malls just a little bit less hectic and god knows there's nothing on TV worth a shit at the end of January--a perfect time to address the envelopes.

Now I'm just wondering what St. Patty's day will bring.

Cast party

2007-02-12T23:11:00.000-05:00

Today, after five weeks of life in a cast, five weeks of watching her struggle to get food in her mouth with her right hand, five weeks of baths with one arm wrapped in Saran Wrap, of banging her cast on the dining room table in order to make her dad mad, of smacking herself in the head accidentally and waking herself up all night long, Clementine had her cast removed. In typical working mama fashion, I was late and harried (I left my lights on and had to get my car jumped), but I did manage to grab the work camera for some shots of the cast party:

And although C spent five weeks picking at the cast and asking that we get it off her, when the time finally came, she had this to say about it: "No! Da-too! Mine."

Her one bone (the ulna, I think) remains angulated, which isn't a problem for young bones and will probably straighten out as she grown, but it is a bit noticeable. Her skin is dry and flaky, but she sure is happy to have both arms back again.

Despite her early protestations (she spent the ride to the doctor's office telling me "Doctor bye-bye!"), this trip saw fewer tears and anxiety than before, and she even seemed interested in what was going on with her arm. We've turned a corner on doctor fear! And that's good, since I will be returning to the doctor on Thursday for my own set of X-rays. Like daughter, like mother?

Bad luck be gone

2007-02-09T14:44:00.000-05:00

Our little family of three just can’t seem to get a break these days: colds, flu, pink eye, broken limbs, a sprained ankle (Nate’s latest contribution to our health crisis). I was calling it the hat trick of motherhood for a while, then the triple threat, but now I’m starting to run out of my pitiful sense of humor. Clementine is backsliding on her sleep habits, and although I was sympathetic at the height of her illness, now she just seems willful and even a little spiteful. She screamed “Mama!” for more than an hour last night, no matter what I did to calm her, so I just left her in her room until she eventually fell asleep. When I went up to check on her, she was practically still sitting up: her legs were crossed and she had piled blankie in her lap to rest her head on it. Of course this wasn’t going to last all night, so I wasn’t surprised to hear her at 3. I went in and quickly comforted her, but she was up again at 3:45. I let her yell her Mamas for 45 minutes before I just gave up and went in. Know what I found? She was standing up in bed the whole time! Just standing there, not falling asleep, not getting tired. I thought I was going to have a mental breakdown. Instead I took her into our bed (my bed, really, since Nate and his injury were parked downstairs on the couch), where she relegated me to one small corner. I must have been one bad ass in another life because I’m paying back my karmic demerits in triple lately.

I’m not letting this become part of the February blues, though—we are determined to get some joy out of Detroit’s annual Winterblast downtown this weekend, even if it is brief, even if we’re helping Nate hobble around on his one good leg, even if the snot that has been running out of my nose for the last few days freezes on my face. We WILL have fun, dammit.

And I will return to my poor, neglected blog this weekend as well. I have stories to tell of the politics of pick-up and drop-off (Nate experienced the strangeness of this ritual the other day, so I have proof), and perhaps we will once again have a digital camera on hand so you can see how much cuter Clementine has gotten with all this illness and lack of sleep.

Sick. So sick.

2007-02-07T12:48:00.000-05:00

We have not been swallowed by a giant black hole, but at this point that's seeming like something I'd rather be doing. We are the house of sick and have been nursing various fevers, sniffles, infections and the likes since Saturday. I'm back at work today but wish I wasn't. The joy of falling into this pit of germs is that between the three of us we may never escape, each of us bringing home germs from school or day care or work and passing them back and forth like an illicit smoke. Nate got a little better from her bronchitis, but then C went down with the flu and ear infection. She turned a corner, but then I got sidelined with my annual winter cold. We're not sleeping. We're cranky. Oh, and we're using lots and lots and lots and lots of Kleenex.

On my mind: snowboarding and babysitting

2007-01-31T10:37:00.000-05:00

Honestly, skip this post if you are unprepared for rambling irrelevance. I apparently needed to exercise some demons today. Oh, and find a friggin' babysitter.

It would be a total lie to say that I took to snowboarding as easily as I thought I would. I knew it would be hard and that I would fall, but I imagined by the end of the day I’d be pretty proficient, able to at least handle the small hills without many wipeouts. And I might have been had it not been for the thousands of pint-sized skiers and shredders who hit the hill Sunday afternoon and totally freaked me out by either going really fast around me, really slow in front of me or by wiping out as many times as I did and lying in the snow dramatically after each fall, a little hazardous slalom course, the likes of which I certainly wasn’t ready to handle.

But all in all it was as fun as I thought and I did eventually feel like I got the hang of it. Had I not been so worried about taking the children out and having to face off against their eager parents watching from the bottom of the tow rope (and by worried I mean if I hadn’t thrown myself eagerly into the powder every time I saw anyone in front of me in order to avoid collision), I’m pretty sure I would have spent a little more time upright. I can’t even talk about Nate, who looks like he was born on a snowboard after only two times out. He was up on the chair lifts and down parts of the hill I didn’t even get near enough to look at, but he was also patient and supportive of me wiping out on the seedling hill through the best of the morning. This is huge for me: I usually HATE when he’s better at something than I am and can’t stand to have him instruct me, but this time it really worked for us and I didn’t call him condescending once.

The full injury count is hard to assess at this time because I stupidly went to an insanely tough conditioning class at the gym on Monday, so I’m not sure if the sore muscles are due entirely to one of the other. But I did knock over Cameron, my faithful and wonderful 18-year-old teacher who wondered several times if I was deaf or just unable to follow instruction. I hit my head a lot (next time a helmet for sure), overworked my legs, bruised my knees, knocked my shoulder hard and overworked my quads, and Nate either pulled a muscle or worsened a very small hernia he has had most his life. Who the heck cares? I can’t wait to back on Thursday night. I watched the X Games for inspiration and find myself standing in my snowboard stance while doing dishes or just hanging out, and I’ve been dreaming about weaving down the hills—toe - heel, toe - heel—the last few nights.

Nate and I were lucky on Sunday to be able to go boarding together because Laura (pronounced Yo-ra by darling C) was kind enough to offer to spend the whole morning with Clementine, a morning which must have been a hell of a lot of fun because C now asks for Yora morning, noon and night. Having Laura and her clan so close and so involved in our lives is a saving grace—they are the closest thing to family we have in Detroit, and that is something I’m really missing as my life with a kid gets more and more back to normal. It’s not just that I miss hanging out with my family…although I really do…it’s that I’m finding it hard to find a sitter for those still-rare nights (or days) that Nate and I actually want to leave the house together. Alone. Just the two of us. No Clementine.

I do work in a high school, so it’s not like there is a shortage of kids around. And it’s not like I’m still the neurotic new mother who won’t leave her kid with anyone. Sure, I would like to leave C with someone she knows or can come to know (we’ve had a few one-hit wonders), but the real problem is the extra expense of a sitter. It’s hard to justify a $20 movie night that ultimately costs $40 and is replete with constant cell phone checking, the possibility of interruption and the nagging sense that we’re on a schedule, that we MUST be back when we say we will. I have Laura, but anyone who has someone like that in her life will tell you it’s a careful balance—you never want to take advantage, to overuse that go-to person to the point of fatigue. I feel like I need to protect Laura for the important stuff, the big stuff, not just the dinners out and little errands. I know she’d balk and say whenever, whatever, but I just can’t abuse that.

The real issue, I think, is that when I’m looking for a sitter I feel the same pit-of-the-stomach dread I felt when I was in a doctor’s office recently and read some common-sense article about how all parents should have a will in case of disaster and an emergency bank account with 6 months of expenses in it. Holy shit, I thought, we are totally unprepared for anything out of the ordinary—job loss, death, anything.. And although not being able to find a sitter so we can go out Friday night is hardly on par with this, it does make me feel totally vulnerable, at the whims of another person, a little bit out of control. It’s hard for me to ask for help—I’m always worried I’m inconveniencing someone or asking too much—and even when I do ask, it’s hard for me to trust that it will all work out in the end. Hiring someone is easier than asking a friend to help out, but even that isn’t foolproof. How many times as a teenager did I flake out on a job? Karma is a bitch, baby.

Let me remove my wrist from my forehead a minute: I do realize the sitter conundrum isn’t dire. I realize that if we did run into some emergency, something unexpected, the people we know are awesome. I have no doubt that we’d be covered in the face of a catastrophe. But what about when we had theater tickets (with Laura) and our babysitter backed out that morning? Who do you call then without feeling like you’ve abandoned your kid with the first warm body you can find? More importantly, how do you justify leaving your kid with a series of strangers all the time? And how do you ask your friends with kids of their own or busy lives to rearrange everything so you can go out and be footloose? All of our friends around here who have kids also have grandparents and families that sit for them, so it’s not like we can trade a night for a night. Our friends who don’t have kids are either too busy or just not interested in kids and would be totally traumatized by a night alone with my picky, lovely little girl. If we lived in a neighborhood that wasn’t the white trash hole ours is, I imagine I could have some sort of bohemian co-parenting arrangement with the great family down the street or next door, an open door kind of thing that made life a constant sleepover, an easy give and take. These utopias surely exist somewhere, right?

This would be so much easier if we lived near our families (even though they are scattered all over). I’d feel so much more relaxed, so pleased knowing she was hanging out with her grandparents, her cousins, her aunts and uncles. Even if we didn’t do it a lot, it would be so nice to know that the option was there in case we ever did get a whim. Nate and I are doing a tremendous job dividing labor and splitting the work up—I get out as often as I like while he stays home with C (and vice-versa, though he is such a hermit I have to force him out). The problem with all this splitting and dividing is that we’re doing very little together these days beside pass out on the couch after a long day and let insipid TV shows decay our brain and once lively conversation. Of course there are no easy solutions—my sister lives close to my mom and has more than once admired my life as a pioneer in family-free lands. I guess I should just quit my bitching and get back to the constant phone calls in search of SOMEONE to sit.

Again, sorry for rambling.

What's a weekend without a medical emergency?

2007-01-29T12:17:00.000-05:00

I wish doctors offered frequent flyer miles or a rewards system because we sure have had to see a lot of them in the last few weeks. Yes, the arm fracture and subsequent dozen trips to the doctor but also Nate's asthmatic bronchitis and this weekend's pink eye, courtesy, of course, of day care. Clementine woke up Saturday morning with her eye sealed shut with junk, so we hightailed it to the urgent care office, got some drugs and put her under quarantine for the rest of the weekend. She's actually here with me at work for the day, behaving beautifully because I've plugged her into the beloved "Mah Na Mah Na" and her Aunt K has been spoiling her with cake.

But there is much to tell of our weekend snowboarding adventures (you won't be reading it on my corporate sponsor's website just yet). After work. After the laundry. After, after, after.

In training for life as an exotic dancer

2007-01-26T14:28:00.000-05:00

My sister and I joke about our kids' dance moves sometimes. Whether it's Clementine cozying up to the pole lamp in our bedroom, Nora doing some bump and grind on the floor or Abby in her flamboyant costumes doing her best rendition of the dance in Little Miss Sunshine (yes, I have seen a movie released since Brokeback Mountain--one single movie to which I will refer whenever appropriate), they all have what it takes to be exotic dancers and love to flaunt it. We choose to view it as cute and funny at this point but reserve the right to become total hypocrites when this behavior continues in, say, middle school. Parenting is all about boundaries, you know?

Clementine is upping the ante on her exotic dancer training a little lately in her Muppet-obsessed frenzy. [Aside that may just be repetition, but I'm constantly trying to justify: it's true that I have lightened my stance on TV and don't feel any shame. We bought her the first season of the Muppets on DVD, and while they have indeed afforded me some quiet moments to be more than three feet from my daughter, they have also proved all my suspicions about TV to be pretty dead-on. Now that she knows what's in the magic box, she wants it on ALL the time and wanders around calling "Ma Nah Ma Nah" and "Da-too" for the Muppets, she slaps her kneee for "Drummer Hoff," and she creis "Shoe, shoe!" for this great 40s cartoon called "The Kids in the Shoe." It's like crack--now that she's had a little, she wants more and more.] She calls out for the number "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," and then stands in front of the TV trying to writhe around like the bikini-clad stuffed pig. It's pretty cute, but it also involves sticking her butt way out toward the audience and bumping it around a lot, which Clementine follows by turning around and lifting up her shirt. I suppose this is so we can admire her tattoos, but of course she isn't Lydia and can't jiggle just so to get Andrew Jackson to climb up the hill of her stomach.

I can't capture her best moves on camera, so I'll need to grab some video because I think this kid has the stuff, which of course has me and Nate totally relieved--as a successful exotic dancer, darling C won't need us to put her through college and we don't have to worry if we don't put a penny away for retirement. Our little Gypsy Rose will support us.

In other news, she alternately loves and hates her barettes. Since she is nothing but an extremist these days, love means she absolutely, positively cannot go another minute without having it in her hair RIGHT NOW, I don't care if you are changing my diaper and have poop on your hand because I'm turning over and pointing at that damn barette NOW NOW NOW! And hate means get it the fuck out of my hair now or I will rip ever strand of my hair from my head angrily and throw it on the floor in front of me and why aren't you listening to me I'm gong to start screaming....AHHHHHH! Here she is somewhere in between, either on her way to hate or just getting back from love:

And still other news: only Nate got to realize his dreams of snowboarding last night because I couldn't get a sitter. I'll hopefully get my chance on Sunday and will probably be so busy nursing my sore ass OR fielding offers from thousands of would-be sponsors that I won't be able to blog about it. Luckily my manager is on the case, prepping my gear and planning for a life following her famous parents around:

I think I'm slappy because it's Friday. One last thing. Clementine wants to give you something because she just loves you all so much:

Back in blue

2007-01-24T20:18:00.000-05:00

I have returned from Texas, a state which is very proud of its Texas-ness. Everywhere I looked there were state flags, single stars, references to the "Lone Star," and lots of other reminders of where in the world I was. I don't say this in a pejorative sense at all--it is just fascinating and for me, a true Yankee, kind of daunting because I don't know exactly what Texas stands for and so I don't know what it means to be so surrounded by it. In my ignorance I think of Texas as a red state, home of Bush, a state with big, silly fence to keep Mexicans out, a state about which I'm honestly not very curious. Nevertheless, when I was able to get over myself and quiet my suspicions that everyone was going to find out I was a Yankee and chase me to the city gates with flaming brooms, I had a good time exploring San Antonio (which many people call "San Antone," and I don't know if it's a Johnny Cash reference or what). We saw the Alamo, which isn't nearly as big or impressive as you think it will be but is still worth the visit both for the beautiful grounds (home to the biggest, most beautiful oak tree I've ever seen) and for the cute retired guys in red jackets who staff it and are eager to leap on each and every tourist and explain the significance of the handle of a single sword, the dust from the walls, the trajectory of the sunlight across the floor, whatever. They were so serious I was afraid to ask about the basement and instead listened to a ridiculously long explanation of the taking of the Alamo.

Tacky souvenir shopping is always really high on my list whenever I'm away, and I like the idea of bringing something home for darling C when I'm away. I was pretty close to buying a mounted jackalope (made from a real rabbit) because it was truly, truly tacky, but it was stupid expensive and the fake stuffed one seemed so much more appropriate (did I ever think I'd use a word like that?@!). I also got her a creepy Mexican puppet she and the cat love to fight over, and a few other tacky knick knacks I got along the Riverwalk before heading to some very chic restaurant for the conference dinner. It was strange to sit on the low banquettes in the dim lighting, sipping some ultra-cool cocktail while screaming to be heard over the pulsing electronica--it was like revisiting another life. But soon enough the women migrated to one table, and we all started talking about our kids because it is just SO much easier than trying to find some other common ground with such temporary acquaintances. As mortifying as it is to admit, I took the first bus back to the spa after dinner and left the carousing to everyone else--even though I was the youngest person in the whole group. Lame, yes, but I had a full night's sleep in a comfortable bed to claim.

It was otherwise an uneventful trip except that I got to spend a lot of time by myself (such a luxury), thinking about what my next step might be career-wise. I totally fell into this job some years ago, and while it does afford me some flexibility and even a little power, it interests me less and less as time marches on. Part of it is my amazing boss leaving last June and part of it is the growing realization that I won't be able to keep calling myself a poet much longer if I don't get out there and do something about it. I miss literature. I miss language. I think it's time to get back to teaching. Duh! some of you are thinking. It's true I came to that conclusion this same time last year and allowed them to convince me to stay in my current job, but I can't get jazzed about it anymore. And I have to stop whining.

We're going on the first whole week of Clementine's life I haven't had a camera in her face at least once, and it's not all that bad. I did miss her first trip in the sled, some general cuteness as she has started loving looking at picture albums to recite everyone's name and lots of great candids, but I think we'll all survive. Hopefully my damaged goods will be fixed and returned soon, though, because there are some triumphant moments on the horizon: Clementine will have her cast removed in three weeks AND her father and I are going to learn to become world-class snowboarders. It's true we haven't skied since high school and have only practiced snowboarding in our minds and living room, but I'm fairly certain it's my sport.

From the road: my first working mama business trip

2007-01-19T16:56:00.000-05:00

This time last year it was unfathomable to me that I would ever be ready for a business trip that took me away from darling C for more than a night at the very most. File that under What the fuck did I know? I’m in San Antonio for a business conference at a spa that has beautiful grounds, tons of amenities and the most comfortable beds EVER—they could sleep six without touching and are like sleeping on clouds. Last night I went to bed calm and relaxed and didn’t wake up until the morning. I wasn’t even listening for my name from the depths of dreams.

I did, of course, have pangs of longing when Nate wrote me an email about how she’s asking for “Mama” every ten minutes and then saying “yeah” in her honey-sweet voice when he reminds her that I’m working. But I think I’ll survive. We’re home tomorrow night, and I’ll be there first thing when she wakes up Sunday morning.

The conference itself is a butt crusher, and hanging with my boss lacks a certain element of fun and excitement as far as travel, but how can I complain? I got to see some old friends and their new baby, I’ve had lots of margaritas, I’ve done yoga in the sagebrush and I’m off to see the Alamo! I wonder if they’ll let me see the basement (and if you don’t get that reference, you might need to consult Conky 2000).

Cast art

2007-01-16T14:57:00.000-05:00

Since Clementine is obsessed with tattoos, which she pronounces "dat-too," constantly scanning the bodies of everyone she meets looking for them: dattoo? dattoo?, I knew she'd be psyched to get her own ink, albeit not nearly as permanent as mine. We started with a few pieces but are now trying to get our friends involved by carrying Sharpies around in the diaper bag. So far we've only gotten flames, though a dinner date tonight Laura ("Lola" to darling C) might fill it out a bit more.

It has gone from totally white:

to some bits and pieces from her mama and dad:

to flamingly fabulous:

She likes showing it off, but she also gets a big kick out of wearing her BabyLegs on her arms:

We visited the doctor yesterday and had to endure a whole new round of X-rays, this time without me even in the room. Needless to say, she screamed and yelled the whole time but was pleased to learn that this lovely type of behavior earned her stickers and an endless supply of lollipops, which her mean-ass mom confiscated after our first and last lollipop experience which had her sticky from head to toe. We learned that her bone is "angulated" a bit. In the ER they saw it and thought they would have to sedate her to straighten it out (IV and drugs...no thanks). This guy yesterday thought they could use a wedge in her cast or some manipulation in the office and the resetting the cast, both of which sound infinitely better than drugging her, though I'm sure it will do NOTHING to allay her increasing fear of doctors. Sadly, her pronunciation has improved and she's no longer calling them "cocktors" like in the ER, even though the guy yesterday was kind of an ass. He had the bedside manner of a jellyfish and reacted really poorly to her objections when he abruptly walked into the office and grabbed at her arm with nary a greeting. He also tried to give her a sling, although the smallest they had was for a 4-year-old and it's not like she's going to keep it on. Maybe I'll fashion one out of an old necktie or something...

All of this and she refuses to slow down even a second. She's still very busy in her kitchen (mostly cooking eggs, though she has every other kind of wooden fruit in the universe) and getting into whatever she can. She has become addicted to the same three or four books and has funny ways of DEMANDING you put down the book you are trying to read her and get her the one she wants. For example, making an ugly throat-cleaning sound means she wants you to read Yummy Yucky (I guess the Yucky sound is the throat cleaning), saying "No no!" means she wants to ready Mo Willem's Don't Let the Pigenon Drive the Bus (because you say "No" whenever he asks), and "No mah" means snowman or The Truth About Snowpeople. There are a few others, but I think I've blocked them out. It's funny, but I swear to god if I have to read Yummy Yucky again I may lose my mind, especially because there are so many other great books I want to read with her. She'll tolerate a good dozen, but there are some she won't even let me pull off the shelf.

And, um, can we talk about this face?

Thank you, Internet. Now can I have a nap?

2007-01-12T14:29:00.000-05:00

If any good has come from our exciting new lives as parents of a child in a cast, it is that I've made so many new friends (and reconnected with so many old ones) in the last two days. I've gotten lots of calls and emails and a few comments reassuring me there will be no lasting mental scars for any of us and, more importantly, that I'm not alone. Apparently not realizing your child has a broken bone OR realizing it but just not having time to deal with it until after dinner is a part of parenting, and I'm getting very zen about the whole thing. I know feeling guilty is useless, but I feel my heart break a little every time I look at her or imagine breaking a bone and not being able to tell anyone--look, it really hurts. I would so much rather have broken my own bone!

Then, when I've had my maternal moment, I can't help but laugh at the stories I will one day tell about the whole ordeal, including last night when I watched her try to pick up a pretzel with the stubs of fingers that poke out of her cast. It was frustrating, but she wouldn't give up and even grunted a little for good measure. When she finally grabbed hold of it and began to lift it to her mouth (her other hand was occupied with her sippy cup), the 90 degree angle of her cast made it impossible for it to get it to her lips, and instead of readjusting she craned her head left, left, left even more, trying to find a way for finger and lips to meet. It was sad. But also kind of funny.

So thank you all for your kind words and your advice. Now can you do something about our shitty sleeping? We were right in the middle of a pretty smooth transition to her own room, her own bed, and now no one's sleeping well AT ALL. Clementine can't get comfortable, which means she's wide awake and needing lots of comfort. We're committed to the bed and refuse to backslide, which means we aren't just doing what's easiest and hauling her in bed with us. What that means is that one of us is in there with her most of the night (last night it was me and it was ALL night), trying to help her get comfortable and avoiding the giant clunk of cast into our foreheads every time she moves around. Let me tell you, the damn thing isn't smooth--I have scratch marks all over my face, which isn't nearly as bad as the huge bags under my eyes from getting only about two hours of sleep. It's like having a newborn, and I think I can only take another night of it before I try to figure out a new plan. Like sedation. Or soundproofing.

I am still managing to get some pictures, though my camera isn't fixed. I have been dragging home a camera from work that has a broken lens, but it still works with the zoom lens which is why I have such odd close-up perspective on all the shots. It may look like I'm right up in her face, but I'm actually a half a room away calling "Clementine, Clementine!" like a moron. From far away it's hard to see she even HAS a cast:

But she has a great sense of humor about it. She would forget her arm was there at all for a while, but then she'd try to use it only to find it was stuck under the table. Nevertheless, she laughs AND is still very excited to me five:

I can't get the monkey hat off her sometimes. She is obsessed with all things monkey.

Lest you think she's gettin a free ride and all kinds of spoiling just because she's hurt and we feel guilty, she's still doing her chores. Again, it's a tight shot so you really can't see how cute it is, but every night we tell her to "do her laundry" and she scours the hallway, picking up anything in her path and takes it, piece by piece, to the laundry chute to throw it down. It's harder now with one hand, but she's not slacking:

I can't put any of her bath shots with my ingenious saran wrap water shield up here because they all show her parts and I'm a little leery of bath pictures on the internet after hearing some bizarre Flickr stories, but here is one of my favorite new pictures of darling C and her dad. She almost never gets out of the bath happy, but I think now that the cast makes baths so miserable we have more of this to look forward to:

Further adventures in parenting: the hospital edition

2007-01-10T22:21:00.000-05:00

That I didn’t title this post “Why I’m the worst mother ever” shows only that I’ve come a long way since crying like a baby when the pediatric orthopedic doctor told me Clementine’s arm was fractured in two places and that he might have to sedate her in order to set it. It’s not that I feel guilty for letting her fall off the couch (OK, I do feel guilty about that, but kids fall, right?). It’s that I SENT HER TO DAY CARE this morning with a fractured arm. After she fell last night and cried a while, she seemed just fine. Well, she seemed like she was in pain at first, but there was no swelling, she was still using the arm and I just didn’t sense in my gut that there was something broken. We read the books, checked the internet, called my sister, but it seemed like it would be crazy to rush her to the emergency room like insane, overprotective parents. Why not give it a night, see how she was doing in the morning and call the pediatrician? Nice gut instincts, huh? I feel terrible and have been replaying every second between her falling off hte couch and finally calling the doctor to see if I really did miss a big sign. The doctors were all very nice in telling me that it's hard to tell with kids, especially if they can't talk and seem as happy as she did. This did not make me feel all that better, but I did talk to another mom whose daughter had fractures for three days before they got an x-ray. It made me feel a little better. But not really.

When I neglectfully dropped darling C. off this morning I asked Julie to keep a close eye on her and she called me within 3 hours to say something wasn’t right. At that point I hadn't seen CLementine awake for three hours since the fall, so that's what I keep telling myself. Julie isn't more caring or more attentive than I. Is she? Her call is how we ended up calling to Dr. and then getting x-rays and then being shuttled to the ER where we got MORE x-rays before they put a cast on her. With hindsight I see thiswhole event is not such a big deal (her life was never in danger), part of being a parent and all that, but it breaks my heart that my tiny, lovely little daughter who is not even 1 ½ years old has a broken bone. I cringe even more when I think that she went almost 24 hours before someone put a cast on it so it would stop hurting her.

Other than a total freak-out both times she was x-rayed and constant crying while the doctor (whom she called “cocktor”) put on the cast, the girl was a trooper. She handled the waiting with a sweet sense of humor, and she charmed all the patients waiting in the ER. The kid went hours without food but was still sweet as a peach. What did I ever do to deserve such a love? We let her eat Mac and Cheese and didn’t force the veggies when we finally made it home for dinner, we read her all the books she wanted and eventually left her asleep (uncomfortably) in her own bed. See? We’re still committed to her own bed. Of course in retrospect all the bitching I did this morning about what a shitty night’s sleep we had last night seems exceptionally cruel when I see now that she was probably calling out to idiot parents that she was IN PAIN, not just that she missed them.

I feel like I’ve been initiated into a new circle of the parenting club—more than half the other people in the ER were parents with kids in various splints, casts, slings and band aids. And we all survived. But know what my sister said to me on the way home? “Oh my god, you’re totally that mother with her kid in the cast.” Hmmm. I guess am. Poor little monkey. Time to break out the summer clothes!

Can it be this easy?

2007-01-08T13:33:00.000-05:00

I do not want to be smote by the sleeping gods by bragging, but I can hold it in no longer: Clementine has her own bed and has been sleeping (mostly alone) in it for the past three nights. We have been kicking this around for a little while, and although I think co-sleeping, accidental as it was at first, was a great choice for us for a long time, we had all outgrown it before Christmas. She was waking us up in the middle of the night and we were waking her up when we came to bed, and although I loved being able to hold her close and smell that sweet little head, I think the negatives were outweighing the positives. We went to IKEA some Saturday right before Christmas, and as we were wandering through the labyrinth of fiber-board furniture, we came across a low bed that was so inviting and enticing to Clementine, that she lept up in it, put her head down on the pillow and said “Shhhhhhh,” pretending to go to sleep. Sure, Nate and I hemmed and hawed about whether we could afford it, whether we should find something used or smaller, whether it was the right time, but in the end, how could we argue? We bought it (realizing immediately we had brought the wrong car to the store, meaning I was pinned beneath it the entire ride home and risked beheading), took it home and promptly…did nothing. We had so much to do for Christmas and so little time to do it that we waited until we returned from our epic travels to find a mattress, take down the crib and set up the bed.

But sure enough it did get done. I bought some sock monkey sheets (which are her new obsession since her grandma made her one we call Coco), gathered her stuffed animals to give her some company and braced ourselves for the struggle of our lives. While it hasn’t been a walk in the park, it has been pretty dang easy, with none of the bumps, bruises, marathon crying sessions or other trauma I imagined. It’s true that I did sleep most of the first night in there with her (and “sleep” is a strong term for lying next to her and shushing her while she said “Coco,” “ball” and “vroom” while pointing to the monkeys, bowling balls and cars on her sheets), but the second night was gang busters. Oh, yeah, and last night I was in there again, but it was my fault I stayed so long—I fell asleep. OK, so maybe it doesn’t sound all that great, but I can’t tell you how nice it is to feel like I have my bed and my sleep back. We will have to continue to adjust, and I’m not going to play hardball just yet with the midnight wakings until we’ve given her a little more time to adjust.

I’m pretty proud of this move, but I feel like I can’t quite shout it from the rooftops. It’s a big deal to me, but most other people can’t believe we still had her in our bed anyway. I wanted to tell my dad last night on the phone, but then I remembered my sister telling me that he grumbles about how useless the crib he got us was. I told my friends at work today, but then one accidentally outed me as a cosleeper at the lunch table and my boss, who already thinks I’m an insane doting mother, was visibly horrified and disturbed, citing how dangerous a practice it is. Will the shame never end? I need a meeting to attend—Cosleepers Anonymous, but even that implies that it’s something I want to get over. Sure, it’s done for us now and it’s the right thing at the right time, but I tell you one thing for sure—if we ever have another kid, we’re going to do it the same way. And I’m not just speaking out of my ass here: Nate totally agrees. One of my only mom friends (who has been mystified by my cosleeping) called me last night, and when I said “I have some very exciting news to share with you,” she immediately countered with “Oh my gosh! You’re pregnant.” Heck, lady. I just got my bed back—how do you think something like that would happen so soon?

Knowing me, you are no dount wondering where the heck the pictures of the new bed are. Shouldn't I have taken about a hundred by now, including some fancy night shots of her sleeping soundly in it? The truth is that my camera is BROKEN. And I have to send it in to have it fixed, and it might take a few months and I have to send a check with the camera, which I couldn't do until after Christmas so I didn't accidentally bounce ANOTHER check. Yikes. So I'm going to have to find a way to borrow a camera from school or something because I really feel like I'm missing an arm without my camera. As it happens my awesome school camera is also having trouble and only the zoom lens works. Maybe I can take some very close up shots of the bed. Or maybe I can stand very far away and shoot it. Hmm.

Before I dash off to a very important meeting (voice dripping with sarcasm here), I want to say to my cousin and sister who have included me in a little meme thing that I’m not ignoring you. Seeing as I write a heck of a lot down here on this blog, there’s not a lot people don’t know about me. Especially you, sissy. But here are some things I’m thinking not everyone remembers about me. Or maybe they never knew them. Or maybe they don’t care. Whatever. And I’m not putting “I’m a cosleeper” here because…guess what?...I’m not! Well, not really anyway. I took my cousin's lead (because, even though I hardly know her, we LOVE the same book--I can't stop rereading Special Topics in Calamity Physics) and put a lie in here. See if you can spot it.

I am a published poet who has seriously fallen off the wagon. There are very few people in my life these days that remember the time when I was a poet first and everything else second. That makes me sad, especially because I was surrounded by poets and poetry less than five years ago. I fear not being able to get back into poetry and then spending my life regretting it.
I feel very comfortable with most of my musical tastes, but I secretly can’t stop listening to or singing “Fergalicious.” Or “Sexy Back.” If you don’t know who sings these songs that you are much hipper than I.
I am poised to become a totally amazing snowboarder (even though I’ve never done it before) if we ever get some snow. Seriously, I feel drawn to it and think I’m going to kick some serious ass. I’ve been practicing in my living room.
I have always dreamed about living in Texas, a state that celebrates the big and tacky in everything. My business trip there next week is exciting because I have a chance to see some friends but also chill out and imagine moving there.
I’ve put on quite a bit of weight since I stopped breastfeeding, which is one of the reasons I was able to last so long—I KNEW this would happen and would have gone on pumping forever so I could keep eating ice cream if only it were a little easier.
I always paint my toenails blue. When I remember to paint them. Which isn’t so frequent these days.

We have officially survived

2007-01-02T14:32:00.000-05:00

Much can be said of what a trial Christmas can be between the shopping and the wrapping and the parties and the obligations and the travel and the headaches. Sure, it's a great holiday, but it's also a hell of a lot of work. This year it happened to be a hell of a lot of fun with a wild child very into the spirit of it all, which is why I've been MIA for a few weeks. I'm now sitting in my living room enjoying the first bit of peace I've had since the 12th of December, and I'm trying as hard as I can to ignore the stacks of presents I have to find a home for, the scraps of wrapping paper my very lonely cat left as reminders of being left behind and the bunch of bills I can't even being to think about how to cover.

I've only managed to deal with pictures from Christmas Eve, since we hit the road after Christmas day for an epic journey across several states, into at least a half dozen houses and with a baby that was alternately the sweetest, most lovable little creature and a small demon sent to terrorize my mortal soul. I think we can say for now that Clementine does not travel well, or at least she doesn't like to sleep in strange beds night after night after spending days with people she doesn't know and not being allowed to stick to any sort of sleep schedule. But those tales will come later. For today, pictures of Chirstmas Eve, when I convinced Nate we should *gasp* try to go to church so Clementine could hear some Christmas carols and maybe even see the nativity play (OK, and maybe I wanted her to be seen in the cutest dress ever). She certainly let us know what she thought of all that by squirming, fussing and crying for the first five minutes of the service so that I spent the remainder of it in the bowels of a very stately church chasing my little devil around. I think it's safe to say that will be our last attempt for a while. We went immediately out for Chinese, where she revived, gorged herself and passed around tons of good cheer:

When we got home, I decided I could wait no longer to open the 7-foot tall box that my mother-in-law had sent. I was nervous it would be some god-awful thing that was important for her to buy, despite our tastes or desires, but we were all very pleasantly surprised to see that she had made the most amazing tee pee, which Clementine fell in love with immediately and now must play in at all times. And, yes, Floyd likes it too...maybe a little too much.

Nate and I killed a bottle of wine while playing Santa. It was more fun than I had imagined to set up the kitchen set we bought her and to arrange presents under the tree, stuff the stocking, etc. Clementine appreciated every effort, and it took us until almost 2 p.m. the next day to open all the carefully wrapped presents. That isn't a sign of wretched excess, just the first hints at what I suppose will be her ultimate rebellion: tidiness. She picked the wrapping paper off a piece at a time and ran back and forth to the garbage can with all the scraps. One present took about 5 minutes, and then of course we had to take it out to play with it.

The excitement I got to see on her face that day was repeated last night when we finally returned home--it was like Christmas all over again as she was reunited with her toys, her tree, her cat, her high chair. She screamed with delight as she ran around and touched everything in the house. And then she was wide awake until after midnight because her schedule is officially fucked, out the window, done. I say it every year and this one is no exception: next year we are totally staying home.

While reassuring...

2006-12-15T15:08:00.000-05:00

My mother is coming this weekend, but I'm not stressed. I convinced her to bring her boyfriend who has a very calming effect on her. He is very sweet, but I just received an email from him that is reassuring and alarming at the same time. He went to great lengths telling me not to worry about cleaning for them or tidying or straightening...that for family we should just be ourselves and let it all hang out. I'm looking at this thinking on the one hand that it is such a lovely sentiment. On the other hand, is my house that much of a shithole that he feels he needs to make me feel better about it??

Officially dating

2006-12-14T14:10:00.000-05:00

Work sucks, but it's easy to plug away when Christmas break is so close. Oh, and not caring a whole hell of a lot helps too.

On the home front, sleep is also sucking big time, and I think we're ready to end this wonderful co-sleeping experience. I believe in it and have loved having Clementine in our bed, but know what? I love sleep more. Way more. And none of us is sleeping well with things as they are now. I was feeling guilty about kicking her out of bed (because I'm apparently twisted beyond belief), but it is totally time. Now if only we weren't so broke from Christmas that buying a bed is near impossible. Oh, and if only we weren't getting ready for holiday travels that will see us sharing beds for convenience. It just seems like there's not time to really dedicate to making this a good transition for all of us, and yet if we don't do it soon I fear the result of all this lack of sleep for all of us. Nate and I really need to sit down and talk about all this, but it's hard to find the time when we're ready to collapse at 9 because we didn't get any sleep the night before.

Clementine's vocabulary continues to expand, and I've practically lost count of all her words. In addition to those we understand, there are several that are consistently associated with things like the Christmas tree and certain toys that sound nothing like what we are calling them. We haven't had any slip-ups with her repeating our transgressions, but it is interesting to watch her mimic our behavior. She has taken to disciplining the cat, for example, and that has gone from just saying "No" and "Down" in an angry voice while pointing (do I really look like that?) to hitting Floyd. As you can see, he's ready to fight back, which has me a little more than nervous:

She's into just about everything these days, and I love to watch her attention flit from thing to thing. We let her watch a few old Christmas cartoons, but she can't just sit still and enjoy--she must multi-task by talking on the phone AND playing on her rocking horse. After about five minutes, it's just too much and she needs to take a break to play. I think if I were home with her all day, I'd be exhausted all the time.

I think it is safe to say that I officially have a new mom friend (we've had two "dates" now in rapid succession), and although I feel totally lame boasting about that, you can't imagine how nice it is to find someone who lives close to us, is easy to hang out with and who has a great kid. My friends without kids don't really understand how isolating motherhood can be, especially during week nights when I'm used to a little company, dinner out, some conversation with people to whom I am not related (not that Nate isn't the best conversationalist ever). Last night we arranged a last-minute get-together because Nate was cooking and I felt like that was something worth sharing. She and her daughter came over to play and eat and go home early for bed, and it was easy and fun. Sure, my expectations for social encounters are totally different than they were a year and a half ago, but what of it? More than artists and rockers, poets and thinkers, I need parent friends who get where I am in my life, who don't get offended if I cut their kids' meat for them or remind them to be gentle with the cat and who, in turn, will pick my kid up if she falls down or give her a great big hug for no reason. In this case, it's a little of both (good parent friend but also a cool woman who has a little of the rocker/thinker thing going on), and I'm going to stop mooning because this may sound like a creepy crush instead of just a thank-god-I'm-meeting-cool-moms-to-hang-with thing.

It's strange to be in my 30s and this obsessed with finding friends. I sound like a Middle Schooler, but I'm only a little embarrassed. There are all sorts of things they don't tell you about how your life is going to change when you have a kid, and connecting with parents is, for me, one of the harder omissions, especially since I work and don't have time during the day to cultivate that. And it's not like I'm desperate to escape the comfort of my cozy little three-person family--I love that Nate and I get tons of time with each other and our awesome little girl. I just want to make her world as big and wide as possible, and I want her to see her parents out there having a life instead of turning it all over to her. But enough justification. I also just want to be able to go to someone's house after our kids are in bed, crack open a beer and talk about all the weird shit kids do. I woke up with Clementine literally sitting on my head last night while cooing "Mama." If I don't find someone to laugh about that with I may just end up crying.

Superlatives

2006-12-12T13:18:00.000-05:00

When we've had a fun weekend (and really what weekend isn't fun?), I sometimes have to restrain myself from giving into hyperbole and superlatives to declare it the best weekend ever. Maybe it's just Mondays and my ambivalence about my job, but when I sit back at my desk at work and remember all we were able to cram into 48 hours, I feel like we will never again experience so many highs, so many great things in a single weekend. But that's of course never the case, and when I manage to trudge through a work week I'm always rewarded with another best weekend ever. I can't decide if this is an optomistic thought or a pessimistic one (because maybe they all just feel so great because my weeks are so crappy...?), and before my head starts to hurt I'm just going to revel in the weekend past while working on my plans for the weekend future when my mother, who wrote me a very formal businessy letter announcing the plans for her visit, will be here.

On Friday we went down to the Detroit Institute of Art to see Mexican Elvis impersonator El Vez and his Merry Mex-Mas show. It was fabulous, most especially because Clementine was just tired enough to go totally crazy, dancing all over the place and running through the precious gems of the art museum like she was at a demolition derby and needed only focus on taking that guy waaay over there out. We were supposed to have pictures taken with El Vez, but instead we ended up in the basement portrait studio taking very fun pics of our blended bizarro family with the Lambertis. Clementine looked elfin, and she tried out to be the new got milk? spokeschild.

We've decided to become members of the DIA again since the winter is definitely here and our daily trips have been put on ice (excuse the pun). It's great for her to have a place to run free, though I swear we aren't those obnoxious parents who leave their children running through the galleries while they swill wine in the great hall. Clementine did get a little crazy and kept falling down to lick the shiny floor, so we bundled her up pretty quickly and headed home.

On Saturday we braved weekend holiday shopping traffic and all the mom jeans an madness that come with a kids concert to see Ralph's World in Ann Arbor. We've been pretty lucky with kids music so far (meaning Clementine is happy listening to lots of our tunes and doesn't require insipid baby music that gets stuck in my head until I'm in a work meeting humming "My mom has got a pig on her head, my mom has got a pig on her head..." for hours at a time), and Ralph's World is about as close to it as we get. He is a very cool rocker who still plays with the Bad Examples but is enjoying a lucrative career as a kids performer. I was worried about the show since he recently sold out to Disney, but it was very fun and friendly and not commercial like the terrible Radio Disney fiasco we stumbled into after Thanksgiving. Clementine had a blast, though she was a shell of the dancing queen she was the night before. She inched her way, song by song, closer to the kiddie mosh pit and just stood looking at other kids. There were lots of cute moments where the kids were a wriggling mass of dancing bodies and she a lone, still figure watching in amazement. Then, she discovered the stage and stood riveted in front of each band member in turn. I hope that doesn't mean she's thinking about her life as a future groupie. That's her in the middle:

Nate was a trooper at the show because I think kiddie rock offends his sensibilities even more than mine. He wore my favorite T-shirt ever, which took guts in the crown od mom jeans. I actually tried to photograph a pair of them that were especially bad, but the woman caught me doing it and I had to pretend I was trying to take a picture of a kid behind her. It was awkward to say the least. Luckily I didn't have to worry that Nate was going to make off with some other mama.

We made a dumbass novice mistake on the way home from Ann Arbor and let Clementine have a bite of the yummy chocolate we bought there. The girl screamed "More! More! More!" for 30 minutes straight until in desperation I pulled off the highway to find a place for dinner. As it turns out we ended up near Marvelous Marvin's Mechanical Museum, a very cool little arcade that hosts a huge collection of vintage video games and machines in addition to the cutting edge Japanese video games that make you feel like you're a rock star or on a roller coaster. How could we not further overstimulate our child by a quick run through there? Although she loved most of it, some of it was a bit too much:

On Sunday we decorated the Christmas tree, which was as fun as I secretly always thought it would be when I was very busy being dark and too cynical to enjoy traditional holidays. Clementine was very eager to help, and she's so damn in love with the finished product that she stops whatever she's doing every once ina while and runs over to marvel at it and the Christmas stockings.

And as if that isn't enough, I went on a blind mom date with a woman who lives very close to us and has a very sweet and funny daughter who is a little older than Clementine (nevertheless, I think they hit it off...as much as you can say two small children can do so). Because I was involved and it was social, it was a little awkward and I was far to obsessed with not being cool enough, but below all of that was a real sense of relief at knowing it's not that hard to make friends when you meet the right kind of people.

I got to talk to some old friends this weekend as well, one of whom accused me of trying to get fired by blogging about my troubles at work, so I'm going to be a bit more circumspect this week as I just try to make it to the holidays and a much-needed break.

Phew!

Donna Reed, week 4

2006-12-07T19:36:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, Nate and I came up with a solution to equitably divide many of the chores around the house, most importantly the menu planning and cooking of each night's family dinner. We call it being Donna Reed, and the basic premise is that one person is Donna Reed for an entire work week, meaning he or she is responsible for the planning, shopping, cooking and cleaning up after four or five meals a week (weekends are a free-for-all). We figured it would be better to rotate by week as opposed to date so that each person can get into her groove, whether it is the groove of freedom (Alex) or servitude (Donna).

Had I written about our progress last week, I might have done a little bitching. We got off to a rough start on both sides: Nate was the first Donna, and on his very first Monday of being in charge he called me at work to ask me if I thought we had a particular ingredient on hand. One of my complaints about the division of labor before we introduced Donna into our lives was that even if Nate cooked the meal, I had talked to him and counseled him and answered his questions so many times before the food hit the table I might as well have cooked it myself. This wasn't an entirely fair analysis, but it was how I felt and when he called me to ask an innocent question I was a total bitch and refused to answer. Boo on me. But as we got into the swing of things, I was wowed by how well the system worked. Nate would be in the kitchen cooking up some wonderful, healthy dinner like whole wheat penne with kale and mushrooms (note: we can now say mushrooms are not on darling C's favorite food list), and I could calmly play with Clementine until we were called to the table. Heaven. When it was my turn to be Donna, I could cook in peace and quiet, knowing the people I love were safely enjoying each other's company and not under foot and knife while I was making them a nice meal. Cleaning up still sucked, but it's easy to power through it while imagining not doing a single dish the following week.

Our second Donna rotation was a little more difficult since Nate hasn't really gotten menu planning and shopping down. I frankly think the notion scheduling is overwhelming to his bohemian self, and he doesn't like to be fenced in by things like plans and menus. It's what I love about him--he's very laid back. He ended up having to grocery shop every time he cooked a meal, which was only twice as we had leftovers once and pizza once. I set out this week to moel what I think a good Donna week is--grocery shopping and some prep on Sunday and five fabulous, home-cooked meals the rest of the week. It seems pretty easy in concept, but I must admit I almost cried tears of joy when my lovely friend Laura called on Tuesday to say she had made a giant roast and would like us all to come over. That many home-cooked meals in a row is hard.

All in all, the Donna concept is working for us, but I'm starting to think even more radical...like living on a commune. OK, maybe not that extreme (although it does appeal to my socially retarded side because I wouldn't have to keep trying to akwardly make friends), but I do wish I had better neighbors. The drive home from Laura's is just long enough that Clementine can sneak in one of those awful I-closed-my-eyes-for-five-minutes-and-now-bed-time-is-fucked naps, and almost all my other friends with whom we could enjoy an easy, brief, midweek dinner live just as far if not farther. If only the white trash I live among could be the kind of people I want to call up on a Tuesday and say, "Hey, I made way too much lasagna. Come over and eat with us." Nah. If only Laura had a few extra bedrooms. I want to move in and let her be Donna.

Things we love: the winter coat edition

2006-12-06T14:19:00.000-05:00

Any parent will tell you that no matter how cool the toys you buy your kid are, said child will prefer the remote control, a cell phone, a stinky old blanket or the silly plush toy someone you hardly know gave her, even if it isn't clever or unusual like the stuffed roast beef from Mr. Pickles. I've come to accept this truth and happily hand over my cooking utensils and car keys as toys when darling C. whines for them. Sure, I'm giving in, but it's so much easier than watching her have a fit on the floor, especially because she loses interest quickly if I readily hand them over; resist and she will cradle the treasure for hours after I finally give in and I never get it back.

All of this said, I don't understand the deep love Clementine has for the winter jacket my dad gave her. Sure, it's cool and all, reversible and with a zip-out liner/rain coat/3-in-one do-all thingy, but it's not so cool that I can't imagine a world without it. C feels otherwise and will bend over howling in frustration or shriek loudly while huge tears roll down her reddening cheeks if you try to make her experience a world like that. I'm not kidding: take this kid's coat off and she totally loses her shit. She can be somewhat ameliorated if you let her carry it around, but really she wants that thing on and will go to great lengths (read: scream on the floor for more than 10 minutes) to get it.

At first I saw this as not wanting to be indoors or fenced in, but it isn't that. Then I wondered if maybe she wasn't handling transitions well--that not taking the jacket off meant she wasn't ready to be at day care or home yet. Maybe she is trying to keep something safe and consistent with her. But it isn't that either. I've decided it's time to stop analyzing: Clementine just loves her coat. A lot. And I'm going to stop fighting it. If she wants to eat in it, fine. If she wants to wear it to bed (the other night I let her cuddle with it but removed it once she'd nodded off), fine. I might draw the line at bath time, but if she wants to wear it all day at day care, that's fine too. I wish I could find a coat I like this much.

Let it snow!

2006-12-04T22:40:00.000-05:00

Although Clementine was with us and free of the womb this time last year, she was just a little precious lump of a baby, hardly a sentient being. She had her first Christmas and saw her first snowfall, but these firsts were not much different in terms of leaving an impression than hearing a bell ring or wiggling her fingers--everything was new, so there wasn't really any distinction. This year it has been a delight to see all the changes of the season through her eyes, watching as she discovers with wonder things like Christmas lights and cold wind. A few weeks ago the white trash decorating contest began in my neighborhood as a few of my neighbors dragged every light-up invention they owned out onto their lawns in the 60 degree weather and set up competing winter wonderlands. Clementine was very impressed.

On the last warm day of the fall we took her in her wagon around the block to look at the various light displays, and with each one she shouted "Yay!" and began to clap (this is the same reaction we get when we pull in the driveway at the end of the day, when we arrive at a store or when she sees her dad). When we got back to our house, she got out of the wagon and decided to go for a closer inspection of our neighbor's displays. This naturally lead to dancing with the inflated animals to the tune of their generaters humming in the night. She is especially fond of all the little penguins, although Santa in the Nascar (I kid you not--they just keep getting tackier and more cliche) is also very popular.

Her enthusiasm is infectious and exacerbating the surge I felt in Christmas spirit last year when I was shocked to discover how into the holiday I was for the first time since I still believed in Santa Claus and really wanted him to bring me a Miss Piggy tiara and a purple bicycle (I got the bike). After years of cynically eschewing Christmas trees, holiday music and decorations, I found myself excited to start our own family traditions, especially since I could add to them a twist or two that would make the holiday more our own. We put up a red tinsel tree with black trim and loaded it with ornaments (none of the proliferation of cheesy “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments we received), went out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve, danced in our jammies to bad ass Christmas tunes instead of the churchy ones and hung out just the three of us. This year I've been eyeing an even bigger tree (last year's is falling apart) and can't wait to hang the stockings I've made. We put up our own lights outside (alas, nothing inflatable but I think C will live) and even put some decorations on our mantle.

But before the holiday comes the snow, and while the rest of the midwest was getting buried early in the weekend, I was bummed we saw hardly a flake. Early Sunday morning on our way home from our weekly breakfast at Club Bart's, however, there were great big flakes falling from the sky, and Clementine let out her heartiest "Yay," clapping in such total delight it seemed her face might beam right off her head. She had to bend over a little from such excitement, and it was truly amazing to watch her literally discover and understand what the snow is, where it comes from, what it feels like and how quickly it melts. We sat in the parking lot for 10 minutes watching her try to catch the flakes as she repeated to herself snow, snow, snow (it sounded a little like "no" but sweeter), and it was one of the most sublime and happy moments I've had as a mother. I can't quite put it into words.

The whole weekend was full of stuff like that--she is growing by leaps and bounds by the minute it seems, moving in such unexpected and interesting directions that she sometimes catches us completely off guard. Like at dinner last night when she held her sippy cup out to me again and again saying something that sounded like shoes or even juice. Where did she learn that? we wondered. We don't give her juice. But C shook her head at us and became even more emphatic until she reached over and hit her cup against mine and said it again. Cheers? I asked. Yup, cheers. What can you say in the face of that?

I'm crafty (or I used to be) and just your type

2006-12-01T12:34:00.000-05:00

A long, long time ago in a land far, far away (OK, just a year ago and no real physical distance), I was quite the crafty gal and loved to make all sorts of things. Part of it was a release for all the creative energy I previously spent on writing (I've been on a little hiatus from my poetry career and am now aching to get back to it), and part of it was just the challenge, but I was really into it for a while. I sewed all manner of cool stuff for my house and person, made art for our walls, learned to make tiles at Pewabic Pottery, developed photos, rehabbed vintage jewelry, made silver charms, silkscreened, made lamps, painted and sketched poorly and even made some crafty baby clothes and goods. Eventually, Clementine arrived and I lost a lot of my steam. I kept going for a while, but who has time to craft when she can't even shave her legs, balance her checkbook or keep up on laundry until the third consecutive day of inside-out underwear? Not only did parenting get in the way, but my writerly self started to reawaken of late, and I can't see finding time to nurture that and still string together beads.

At my craftiest I was lucky enough to participate in a cool show at my friend Laura's house. It's a wacky mix of art and jewelry, gifts and kids stuff (cool kids stuff like "George Bush Hates You onesies and a line of capes, tuts and dress-up duds you'd die for), and you never know what you are going to find there. Overall it's not as bizarre as the Bizarre Bazaar, as hip as the Renegade Craft Fair or as traditional as that crap they host at the local high schools every weekend, but it's a mix of all of those and you can find something for just about anyone. Despite my lack of craftiness of late, I even have a few things for sale (including my silver "punk" necklaces). As if that's not enough of a draw, there are snacks and wine at the sale tonight and a whole Christmas festival (complete with sales, sleigh rides, a parade and Santa) just blocks away tomorrow. If you live in the Metro Detroit area, pop up to Berkley and check it out if you can. My little fam will be there along side Laura and her crew (her 13-year old makes these very cool and crazy stuffed animals, her husband amazing paintings and tiles), and we'd love to see you. It's a family affair! Here's the invite (click to make it larger and to print):

When the sweetest word sounds foul

2006-11-29T13:00:00.000-05:00

These days we can get Clementine to attempt to say just about anything, even if she doesn't understand how the sound she is making relates directly to the object or action. This works mostly with people's names and the occasional please and thank you, but I've also tried it with a few oddball phrases like kick ass (ill advised) and rampant consumerism (I got a blank stare in return). Isn't it fun to make your kid a puppet? Next I'm going to take her to the bookstore to request the new Thomas Pynchon novel for her dad's Christmas present--we practiced in the car this morning, but all she could really get out was pin over and over again, and then she started pointing to the radio while chanting pin, pin and I realized I have now probably fucked her verbal development by just trying to have a little fun.

One thing she definitely has down, though, is Mama. I think it's her favorite word apart from all done, which is almost as good as no for expressing her general displeasure with an activity. She says Mama first thing when she wakes up, Mama in the car, Mama at breakfast, Mama when I drop her off and pick her up. She does a lot of Dada reciting in the car on the way home, but once we're home again it's all Mama. Her voice is a little crystal chime with a perfect baby doll lilt as she says it with such satisfaction, and I'm still trying to find a way to record it so I can play it over and over again while I'm at work and missing her. It may be my favorite sound in the world.

Except when it isn't. And sometimes it's not. Like last night, for instance, when she was awake from 11 PM to 2:30 AM for no apparent reason. She spent some of this time crying, some of it singing and playing quietly with her blanket and Lammie, some of it snuggled between us and trying to fall asleep. Most of that time, however, she spent repeating Mama Mama Mama while climbing over me, kicking me, pulling my hair and trying to knead me into the perfect position for her general use. It didn't take long before I caught myself longing for the pre-Mama days, a time when she could grunt and gurgle and not vocalize. How could such a sweet sound turn into such an ugly one?

The other downside of all this Mama talk is that Nate is starting to feel a little marginalized. I think rationally he understands that the fickle affections of a toddler ebb and flow depending on the day and her mood, but how can he not take it personally that she spends half her time with him crying Mama Mama? It breaks my heart, and I know he is struggling to not let it get to him. We're trying everything to make it better, too, like letting him do the whole bed and bath routine, Mama totally absent. He gets to dance with her and hang out with her by himself, but it's not having any dramatic effect. Do other families have this preference problem? What's a good way to solve it? You know I'm loathe to actually go look at a parenting book, but Nate is such a fantastic and affectionate dad I hate to see him spend a single second not knowing it. Perhaps while I'm leafing through the pages it's time to look for strategies for getting Clementine happily and securely into her own bed so she can party all night long if she wants to and not wake her sweet Mama up.

It could be an ugly couple a weeks at our house.

Doting...the conversation continues

2006-11-28T14:05:00.000-05:00

About a month ago, I was shocked when my boss told me to beware my "doting" on Clementine, which I think we can all agree was a stupid comment to make, especially since the connotation was that I am ruining her life by caring too much. I will cop to being very interested in my child, my TODDLER, very involved in her life and doing anything I can to make more time for her, and if that makes me doting, then lay it on me, brother. I'm not sure what kind of parenting he would support, but I'm pretty sure it's the kind that leaves all things child at home waiting for me like a sad, abandoned pet. He is the typical workaholic who gets way too much of his identity from his job, stays late, arrives early and thinks anyone who sticks to a normal schedule lacks dedication. He thinks you need to work at a place for years before you enjoy any perks and is all about putting in one's time. I wouldn't be picking on him too much if he weren't continuing to pick on me...and not even to my face.

I heard from a coworker that he is now espousing opinions about how I should have another kid soon, lest I smother Clementine with too much doting and attention. Because at heart I tend to be insecure, when I first heard this I felt a twinge of embarassment before the red hot anger. Am I doting? Am I not being professional enough? Though this workplace calls itself "family friendly," it's a complicated friendliness that is really about being friendly to families that have one working parent and one that stays at home. Many jobs here provide free housing and food, which allows one parent to stay home and care for the child(ren) while the other works. See, family friendly. Of course nothing is really free, so the housing means the employee has to do dorm duty weekly and chaperone dances, attend open houses, etc., but it's a pretty good deal, especially if it frees one's spouse to pursue a career with less rigid hours or stay home entirely to support. Sure, there are a few families who manage to pull off having two full-time working parents, but those are teachers, which means summers and vacations for at least one parent completely off. There is not a single year-round administrator here who has young children (or children at all in most cases) AND a working partner. Oh, except me. I am the only one trying to balance the enormous responsibilities of my job with the important responsibilities of raising a young child with my working spouse, and I'm not asking for special treatment (OK, I did, but since that was denied I'm sucking it up). I'm asking that they stop this sniping, this shitty commentary that makes me feel insecure or guilty for the few ounces of love I squeeze out of my work day and spend on darling C.

Vitriol aside, what I'm starting to see clearly about this workplace is that ANY evidence of parenting aside from one or two photos or quick, amusing stories could be seen as doting by people like my boss. Struggles with parenting or balancing a job and a family life need to remain invisible, as should any anecdote that is more involved than "Clementine really likes grapes, too." If it's more than a sentence, I'm doting for some of these old schoolers, and it's making it hard for me to sit with them at the lunch table and not feel like I'm being picked apart. It's one thing to be chastised for caring for one's child...I can't even begin to address the fact that my boss also feels like he should have input on my rate of reproduction.

When I posted on doting before, I got an email from a friend with a list of all the things I should start saying back to my dippy boss whenever he makes stupid comments like this. It's fun to imagine the witty and childish retorts I could silence and embarass him with, but I'm starting to think of an offensive strategy instead of just defense--and not a righteous, empowered, I-am-mother-hear-me-roar kind of offensive strategy. I'm thinking instead of making those obnoxious photo buttons with pictures of darling C and pinning them to every shirt, coat, jacket, sweater, bag and briefcase I carry. I will paper my office with pictures of her. I will create an email list with a cloyingly cute Clementine story of the day and send it to everyone who has tried to make me feel guilty for bowing out of a late meeting or leaving early on a nice day so we can get to the park or doting on her. I will answer every personal anecdote my boss tells me with one about Clementine. I will even use her as an example or analogy in work discussions. If he wants to know what doting is, I will aim to become the text book example.

Oh shit. I just realized he and I are going on a business trip together in February. I bet he's going to be really sympathetic to any of my feelings about leaving my child alone for the first time in her life as I fly across the country.

I'm buying a lottery ticket on the way home.

Hiatus over

2006-11-27T12:50:00.000-05:00

Know how hard it is to exercise when you haven’t exercised in a long time? How it just gets harder and harder to get motivated the more you put it off, and then it becomes this vicious circle that you can’t break. A long break from blogging is the same kind of thing—the more I didn’t do it, the easier it was to forget about it. And to tell the truth I was getting a little disenchanted with blogging and especially blogging parents who use their blogs as soapboxes or adult popularity contests. I was writing, but I sure wasn’t reading (who has time?) because when I did I started to feel the same insecurity I do when I see some mom whip out those crazy anti-germ shopping cart/high chair activity bags at Target: should I have one of those? No, of course not, that’s crazy. But what if she’s right? No, she’s crazy and overconcerned with minutia—you aren’t that parent. But maybe she knows something I don’t. No, it’s OK to make different choices. But…. OK, maybe it was just the impending holiday and accompanying insanity. Work was crazy the week before Turkey Day, and I took the actual holiday week off in its entirety to hang out with my little family unit. We had a blast.

So now I’m back in the saddle at work and trying like hell not to bore my lone employee with all the tales of a week with an almost-15-month-old rascal, whose world and vocabulary I could actually see getting bigger. Here’s what I’ve heard her say in the last week (chime in, Nate, if I’m missing anything):

Mama
Dada
shoes
duck
tattoo (I’m so proud!)
yogurt
Baxter (her favorite dog)
Dizzle (as in Uncle Dizzle—she’s not confused about whether or not she’s Snoop Dog)
K (as in Aunt K)
Hudson (her best pal)
fish
more
milk
yoga
yay!
yeah
Santa
vroom vroom
all done

She’s also signing like crazy, and I’d worry that she seems to sign for “eat” constantly, except that she’s such a skinny Minnie I’m happy to do anything to plump her up.

Since I’ve been an off duty blogger forever, there’s no way to catch up on all we’ve been doing. We survived our first kiddie music concert (Dan Zanes) and had a blast with Clementine’s friends Maya and Hudson, we hosted my sister and her family for a weekend of chaos (four adults, three kids and no sleep), and we had a week of amazing late-November weather. We went to all kinds of parks, including one on Belle Isle that might be my all-time favorite in Detroit, visited a nature center, saw the floats from the Thanksgiving parade, ate a lot of turkey, took great family naps, colored, hung out at Cranbrook and did yoga. We didn’t shop or go to a mall at all. We also didn’t have any family in town to plan around, but we didn’t get too lonely or stir-crazy—I think that’s mostly thanks to the weather. Last year it was miserable and by Sunday we were ready to crawl through the walls of the house in desperate escape.

Some pics:

At one of the dozen parks we hit:

Doing yoga (which she apparently loves to do)

Setting up her Christmas tree:

Checking out the floats:

Oh, and of course, visiting the world's largest cast iron stove at the Michigan State Fairgrounds:

But really what's better than rocks?

I took an offensive number of photos over the course of the week, so click away if you want to see the many faces of Clementine. I can't figure out which is more addictive--leftover stuffing or taking pictures of her sweet, sweet face.

What's for dinner?

2006-11-09T21:21:00.000-05:00

I know I bitch a lot about how hard it is to work all damn day, rush home to spend time with my family, maintain a clean house and still feel like I have time for myself--I'm not apologizing for adding to the whining here. Although I hate that my house looks like wolves have torn through it ripping apart well-organized bins of toys and leaving bits of chewed up food all over my kitchen floor before grinding it in with their heels, our home's constant state of dishevelment doesn't bother me nearly as much as the great struggle that is dinner. When Nate and I lived alone, we didn't have to think about dinner at all (or at least nearly as much as we do now). We could spend all night cooking a fantastic four course meal, eat at 10 and not do the dishes for a week. We could eat potato chips and ice cream if we wanted or just bread or just peas. Better yet, if we didn't want to deal with it, we didn't have to eat at all.

But dinner now that we are providing a home for a growing toddler is frankly a pain in the ass that seems to require four or five phone calls between us a day, seemingly endless trips to the grocery store (I should have my own parking place by now) and strange experimentation to find meals that are easy and quick to make and provide a pretty balanced variety of veggies, proteins, tastes, etc. without having so many ingredients that I spend time whirling around the kitchen saying stupid things like, "Now where is that smoked paprika again? I can only seem to find the sweet" instead of playing with darling C or at least making sure she doesn't cause herself major head trauma by standing up on the sit-n-spin. Again.

About a week ago I had a total meltdown at Nate when he called to ask me what I wanted for dinner. I know this sounds crazy because I listen to so many women at work bitch about how their husbands don't cook. Mine does, and he's more than willing to when I ask (though I still somehow end up doing more of it which is either my inner control freak, some gender preprogramming we can't seem to shake or my inability to ask for help when I need it), for which I know I should be grateful. But maybe what irks me is that I have to ask. Or, if he takes the initiative, I still have to answer a 20-question survey on what I feel like eating and what else he can get for the girl. Yes, I know this is very considerate and I'm a world class bitch for complaining about it (he's just trying to make me happy, right?), but what I really want on the nights Nate cooks is to not think about it AT ALL. I don't want to plan the shopping list, think about what pan to use or how to modify it for toddler tastes. I don't want to tell him which I like better or what I've been craving because really all I want is to not think about food and still have it appear. He could make tripe with sour cream for all I care, as long as I don't have to think about it or discuss it before it magically appears in front of me.

The upshot of my meltdown (once the smoke cleared and Nate saw I maybe had a point) is that we're working on a system to divide household labor in a way that is fair and equal. We're not doing this because one of us is bad at pulling his or her weight. On the contrary, I think we both pull more than our weight most of the time in order to keep up with the ebb and flow of parent energy. We run into problems, though, when we're both ebbing (or is it flowing?) and neither of us wants to pull any weight. When that happens on the same day we end up eating lord-knows-what for dinner, secretly tabulating how much more work we do than the other and glowering at each other while trying to get C to stop throwing the food over her high chair. It's not pretty. But neither are the conversations on the need to divide labor better because Nate feels like we're only talking about it because he isn't doing something right. Talk about frustration! The way I see it we need a system because my only everyday parenting role model was my mom--a single working woman who brought home the bacon and fried it up in a pan. I have a serious need to be able to do everything and I feel guilty about asking for help. We clearly both have issues.

I feel like a system, a division of labor with clear expectations, will really help us navigate the nights when we're just too tired to think about anything but lying on the couch and watching shitty TV. I hate to say it because I loathe this much forethought and organization (next we'll be scheduling sex), but I was briefly considering a chart or calendar to help us keep straight whose turn it is to do what. This way someone will know that even if she wants to eat peanut butter out of the jar and call it a night she can't because it's her turn and no one else's to think about, shop and plan for dinner. And do laundry. It sounded OK in theory, but we just couldn't figure out a system to equally divide the seven nights of a week--if we go on a routine (every Monday and Wednesday = me, Tuesday and Thursday = Nate) it seems too structured (will I ever get to spontaneously eat with a friend on a Wednesday?). If we flip-flop every other day, no one really gets a break.

Calling Donna Reed! We need a housewife, someone who will wear an apron and vaccuum and pack lunches and bake cookies and make dinner and change the sheets more than once a month (who am I kidding?) and have dinner in the oven when we come home and organize our bookshelves and pay our bills and file our mail and dust, yes, dust and have perfect hair all the time.

But seeing as we can't afford a polygamous lifestyle (or at least a housekeeper), we're going to settle on switching weeks. One week Nate will be Donna Reed (apron and all), doing all shopping, meal planning and cooking and even laundry, and the next I will take over. We have agreed this will work and are anxious to put our plan in motion and talk about it pompously at dinner parties when our friends ask "How do you do it all?" The only problem so far is that we haven't had actual time to sit down and say "Ready? Go!" to get the ball rolling. This means that dinner this week (up until tonight and Nate's fabulous chicken soup, that is) has bordered on the fend-for-yourself potluck side, not the healthiest for a child. I feel like I discovered a whole new universe last night when I decided we should have pancakes for dinner. It alwasy seemed like such a treat when we would get this as children, but as an adult I now see that pancakes for dinner is what you do when you need something easy, fast and predictable so your kids will just shut up and eat while you try to shake the cobwebs from your brain.

Yep, we vote

2006-11-07T07:37:00.000-05:00

There will be hundreds of conversations today about why voting matters or doesn't--those of us who have reasons for voting or consciously not voting have our own compelling arguments (I'm not even acknowledging the apathetic masses who are too busy watching TV to have an opinoin or take any action whatsoever), and I'm sure many can state their cases in a more articulate fashion than I can. I believe 100% in voting and don't miss any elections, even midterms and local ones, and Nate is impressive in his insistence on voting his conscience (meaning mostly third party voting no matter how tight the races are--take that, Dems!) . This election promises to be a better voting experience for us because it looks like I won't end up too depressed and thus inscreasingly drunk as I watch the returns tonight AND we get to take Clementine for the very first time to the polls. You better believe there will be pictures.

On my way to work this morning, I was thinking about why I vote and how I can teach Clementine the importance of it, apart from dragging her to the sleazy Masonic Temple in our neighborhood where I'm pretty sure the poll workers are drunk and not trustworthy. I was thinking about my first voting experience, just 18 and happy to be standing in the lobby of my junior high. My mother, who worked for a Republican Congressman for 12 years (he was pretty moderate, so I didn't have a problem voting for him--I saw it as ultimately voting for myself since he helped my mom pay the bills), sent me to the polls with notes on which judges to vote for. Although my political conscience was still a bit nascent, I knew Mom and I weren't in step politically and used the list she sent me as a DO NOT vote list, adding the rush of outright rebellion against one of my parents to the rush of voting. It was a potent cocktail, made better only by my mother's rage when I told her what I'd done. OK, so it was immature and maybe not the most informed way to vote, but it was my first time and I had a thing or two to learn.

These days, my mom's opinion doesn't hold the same power for me--I'd even be happy to know we lined up on some issues or candidates. I find it incredibly frustrating to talk to her about politics because she goes into insta-rage at even the slightest disagreement. I like political discourse and love having reasoned debate (there's a limit, I know, but a little can be very stimulating), but my mom can't even handle a 4-second conversation on what it means to Hillary if Barak runs. She dissolves into a litany of cussing and spitting at the merest mention of Hillary's name and retreats, as so many Republican hardcores I talk to seem to, behind a screen of soundbytes and knee-jerk reactions.

What worries me about all this is that all the teasing I take from my family about raising an Alex P. Keaton-esque child could actually come true. If my political consciousness was somehow shaped in opposition to my mom, does that mean darling C today will learn the fastest way to get a rise out of me is to point to the conservatives on the ballot and beg me to choose that? Will her teenage rebellion take the shape of supporting big business and anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-minority legislation? Pierce and tattoo away, little love, just don't ever vote for another Bush.

Goodnight and good luck

2006-11-02T15:27:00.000-05:00

Last night Clementine had her last sip of breast milk from the last bag of the ridiculously huge supply I stored away in our freezer (bought this time last year when I realized this whole breastfeeding things isn't always the most intuitive). Normally I would have found this occasion momentous, heartbreaking or somehow significant in terms of the kind of mother I am or want to be. How many hours of my life did I spend lamenting that Clementine wouldn't latch, that she wouldn't get the year of breast milk I wanted for her? Seriously, how much time did I waste? While I'm proud that I was able to pump for just about a year and give her 14 months of breast milk, it is only now that I'm looking back and wondering if I made a martyr of myself because I'm just that fucking stubborn. Is formula really that bad when you've exhausted every other possibility? I was raised on it. So many people told me it was OK to stop, but I just couldn't hear them--i really believed in what I was doing (and, truth be told, I was too cheap to buy formula). Even when I was crouched in a tent, Clementine sitting next to me and signing for milk as I pumped and pumped and then handed a bottle over to her it seemed like a good idea. What in the hell was I thinking?

There are moments, though, that I think it wasn't that bad. If I can't give my kid a year of inconvenience, what does that say? But then again, what does it say if, as a mother, I put all other needs above my own? How does that teach her to be her own person?

See, 14 months into it and I still have more questions than answers.

But last night I was proud of myself. No drama, no ceremony, no staged goodbye to the milk--I handed the bottle to Nate and went downstairs while he fed it to her. Another era gone by.

Say hey to my sis--it's her day!

2006-11-01T18:35:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting all day to find a good chunk of time to write out a birthday hello for my lovely sister. We apparently grew up in separate households and have almost none of the same childhood memories (except that we fought ALL the time like rabid animals), but we have the most amazing adult friendship. Our lives are completely opposite, but we understand each other perfectly. I don't feel like anything has ever really happened in my life until AFTER I've talked it over with her, which is thankfully just about every single day in a number of short conversations, most of which end with a loud shriek from one of our respective children and a "Shit, I have to go."

Belle, you are an amazing woman, mama and friend, and no in the world makes me laugh like you do. You are wildly inappropriate and yet the most normal person in our family (which is admittedly not saying ANYTHING since we live among so many wackos, and I know you get the brunt of that since you live so close to them). Since I'm typing this at the end of the day, sitting just beside the bathtub as Clementine bathes, I can't take the time to write much more than that, but I'm here in the Motor City wishing I could come sit with you and take slugs from the same beer, cleaning out your Tivo, crafting and gossiping all at the same time. Instead of that fun, I'm going to try to get your neice out of the tub before she has her third major meltdown of the evening. It's about to get ugly, and....well...shit, I have to go.

Happy Birthday!

Is it over yet?

2006-11-01T10:52:00.000-05:00

Halloween, with its pre-parties and weekend celebrations and day care parties and school parties, is getting to be one long-ass holiday. It's still my all time favorite, but I'm glad it's over for this year. Clementine was still just a little too young to toally understand what was going on, and she didn't dig the whole trick-or-treating nearly as much as giving out the candy. I think she thought of herself as some amazing celebrity or Christ child that costumed masses made pilgrimages to see, and she stood at the door for a full hour, candy in hand, waiting to see who would come next. She carefully examined all the costumes before dropping candy into the pillow cases and pumpkins, and when the trick-or-treaters slowed to a trickle, she started handing out candy to all the people-like decorations in the house.

Eventually, there were no more kids around, though Clementine didn't give up until we dragged her upstairs and put her, crying, in the bath.

I'm glad she was into the giving out candy thing because hardly anyone in my neighborhood was giving out candy. It's a big issue in my neighborhood because the objection is that too many people come over from Detroit (we live two blocks north of 8 Mile, the well-known literal and metaphorical dividing line between city and suburbs). The issue, simply put, is racial, though I think my neighbors would say it's more about the haves and the have-nots. I don't want to make a bigger deal out of Halloween than it is--give out candy if you want to, and it's really none of my business. I get it that times are tough and not everyone has disposable income with which to buy candy to give to total strangers. I do think if you are taking your kids out to get goodies you should probably put that same goodwill back into the universe by doing the same, but I'm not the Halloween police.

What disturbs me most about my neighborhood is the general attitude about how the traffic from Detroit has ruined the neighborhood feel of the holiday. A neighbor last night said to me she had to take her kids to another neighborhood to trick-or-treat because all the "Detroiters" (and anyone living in Michigan duing election season knows this is a code word, but at least they aren't using the language they normally do to discribe people of color) have ruined the celebration here. She must not be the only one who feels that way because I could only see 4 houses with lights on anywhere near our house, and I know many of the people in darkened houses were home and hiding. And it's not that I don't get their frustration--mini-vans full of kids (and no kidding on the full--they take the seats out and cram as many kids as possible in, which is a recipe for disaster) swarm the streets of our white trash suburb, and the parents are sometimes there trick-or-treating with their own bags or bags for someone "in the car." But, really, who can blame them? They come from neighborhoods where even fewer people give out candy, and it may not even be that safe to begin with. The spirit of the holiday demands that any goblin or witch or Spiderman who comes to your door get a little treat, and I feel strongly about honoring that no matter what. These issues of territory and race aren't children's issues, so why should they pay the price?

But I wonder how I'll feel next year when staying in the neighborhood means Clementine won't get to do as much door-to-door trick-or-treating? I want to be sure one of us is at home to give out candy, but I want to be sure Clementine can enjoy the holiday as well. Guess we'll have a year to think about it.

Today is Dia de los Muertos, and we're going to head down to Mexicantown to see the oferendas and other celebrations. I'm pumped for this but wish there was going to be a parade...

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-31T07:29:00.000-05:00

Up north, one week later

2006-10-30T20:34:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's because Mondays are so shitty, but I'm dreamin' of vacation here and wondering why it always takes me so long to pull pictures off the damn digital camera to enjoy. Our trip up north last weekend may have been rainy and cold, but it was very fun. There's not a ton to do in the small Michigan thumb towns, but we managed to entertain ourselves in both a child-friendly and adult way. Wow, that sounds like we had strippers, but I assure you there was no such nonsense. Instead, we rollicked across the countryside with the kids, visitng apple orchards and country stores, holiday festivals and antiques stores. We did also manage to put our kids down from time to time and found something to talk about other than how cute they are, how much they sleep or eat and how smart they are getting. Oh, and we drank some beer.

Our traveling companions:

A fine retail experience at the Dollar Store/Ice Cream Parlor/Thrift Store (Courtney still can't believe the dress I got for Clementine for a mere 50 cents, and I don't think the disbelief is the good kind):

Searching for a good family shot that we never can seem to get:

Some bedtime reading that is apparently very disturbing...you can just see it in her eyes (no joke: I'm across the room reading a Nancy Drew book):

And lots and lots of fall:

It's an amazing place, and we're so lucky the judge and his wife let us use it whenever we want. While my heart belongs to Lake Michigan, it's nice to hop in the car and be on Lake Huron in just a few short hours.

On an unrelated, non-vacation topic, I was just sorting through old and new photos and found these two taken in the same chair almost exactly one year (to the day) apart. I know I used to want to sock people really hard in the shoulder every time I had to hear a comment like "Enjoy these times, they go so fast," but I am speechless in the face of such tangible proof of just how true that is.

Doting? Really?

2006-10-26T13:56:00.000-04:00

I really have gotten a thick skin as far as this whole mothering thing goes. People all the time provide unsolicited advice and "help," admonishing me to put Clementine's hood on or let her cry herself to sleep or put her down lest she get spoiled, and I've learned to smile and blow it off, all the while cursing these fine citizens in my head. This morning at work I was showing a co-worker who is kind of like a boss a picture of my lovely child, and his comment was, "You better hurry up and have another so you can disperse some of this attention around. I've never known such a doting mother." My first reaction was to defensively point out that I see my kid for 3 or 4 awake hours 5 days a week, which can hardly provide ample time for doting. Yes, I actually jumped to my own defense instead of leaping on the offense and asking him what the hell business of his my parenting is. Why can't people who are so wholly unconnected with my life just say, "Yes, that is a nice picture. Her eyes are beautiful," and move the fuck on?

I've met the enemy

2006-10-25T15:26:00.000-04:00

We’re pretty certain at my house that as far as Clementine is concerned, TV is the devil (my relationship with TV is another story, as I’m experiencing the joys that Tivo can bring to your life and I’m not ashamed of my serious addictions to Project Runway and Heroes). Because she is in day care all day (and exposed to heaven knows what), I just can’t get behind the few precious hours we have with her being spent in front of the idiot box being sucked into consumer culture. My sister has a different approach to her kids’ relationship with TV, and I applaud her. I know if I was home all day with C I’d probably be singing a different song if Calliou bought me a little extra blogging time. Do what you will with your kids and I respect it—I’m just not playing that game in the Punk Rock House.

Truth be told, it’s not just the advertising, the giant mechanism that is TV, the propaganda or the bullshit that I object to—it’s how insipid most programming is, especially for kids. I would rather have C listen to black metal on the stereo all day long than show her five minutes of Teletubbies or that weird show where the characters are all people’s painted hands. I have heard horror stories from other parents about the sick fascination their children have with all things Elmo, and that’s just not for us, thank you very much.

Despite all these objections, I recently recorded The Doodlebops because a friend of mine kept telling me how much it reminded her of me. So I pose this question to the Internet at large: what’s worse…that The Doodlebops exist at all, or that someone who knows me thinks I would enjoy it? Maybe she knew I would enjoy mocking them? Or maybe because she knew in my life I’ve dyed my hair all the colors that the Doodlebops sport? OK, maybe because I like music and dream of fronting a great punk mama band there’s a connection, but even that’s a stretch. I mean, look at them...they don't even have real hands...they aren't even playinig their own music...they're worse than Milli Vanilli...

And if that’s not bad enough, when I watched the 11 minutes I could stand, Clementine stood 1 foot in front of the TV, totally and utterly transfixed. I haven’t seen her focus on anything for that long ever, not even her favorite bedtime books. She wasn’t just passively watching either—she danced, she swooped, she frolicked, and when Dee Dee Doodlebop started talking about her fabulous pink hair, Clementine grabbed her own hair as if to say, “Me too, Dee Dee!” When I stopped thinking about how brilliant my little love is, I grabbed her from in front of the horror and deleted it from my Tivo forever. Why such a visceral reaction? The program was terrible, and I wanted to punch the lights of each one of the Doodlebops out repeatedly every time they said anything. As far as a review, i know that doesn't give you much, but I can't be coherent in the face of such utter crap.

I’m not trying to be one of those holier-than-thou anti-TV mamas here. But seriously…who is allowing their kids to watch this crap? And is this going to be like the Cheerios thing for me—will I resist at first but eventually become glazed-over and dependent like a zombie? Please say no. The very thought makes me shudder.

Back in the saddle

2006-10-24T13:01:00.000-04:00

I'm back at work today after several days off with my girl and a wonderful trip up north with friends. I juiced up with way too much coffee to get going this morning, and I've been unable to type due to the excessive shaking that much caffeine causes. I also can't hold a single thought in my head for very long. I am already missing the time I got to spend with darling C while I was off, especially because I feel like we were just starting to get in the routine of being together all day. That said, I think many of my fantasies of being at home with her full time have been based on a notion of what our days would be like that is simply not real or possible.

So what is the solution? If working full time while Nate does the same isn't right and staying home full time while Nate shoulders the load isn't right, then what is? It should be easier to navigate these tricky waters of working parenthood, and I'm frankly a little bit shocked that it's as difficult as it is since so many working parents have gone before me. Why aren't we demanding more (and in turn, I might argue, giving more back to the workplaces that support us)? If I wasn't trying so hard to balance these precious 9-5 hours every day I would feel like a much better parent, and I know I would be a better worker. This seems like such a no-brainer, and I know I'm not inventing the argument when I say half the at-home moms I meet stay home because they were unable to find the flexibility they need between work and parenting. The "opt-out revolution" has been talked to death, but even though we're able to study the problem from all angles, I don't see many solutions for those of us who can't opt out, who need two incomes, who want to try to make a go of doing both. This system seems so very broken, but I'm not sure it's on anyone's list to fix it, especially when no one's making any noise.

I have no easy answers, but I sure as hell am going to start making some noise at my workplace. I loved my time home with Clementine, but I was happy when work called or I got to get on my email a little and turn on my work brain. For me, it's important to do both, but I want to be able to reap the benefits of both (meaning, I don't want to take a "part time" 30-hour job that is really just as much work but with less pay and no benefits). There are more than enough hours in the day and days in the week for me to do both, and I think if I could have some power in deciding what I do when I would be a much better worker. If nothing else, I think I'd be so damn grateful for the consideration and respect I wouldn't spend part of my work day blogging or running errands I can't find time to run at night. And it goes without saying (right?) that just because I want to do both doesn't mean I don't have a ton of respect for those who choose to do one. I totally made an ass of myself in some of the at-home parenting environments I visited during my work furlough by asking my new friends questions like, "So what do you do?" I swear it was my social awkwardness and not by inability to relate!!

If all else fails in my pursuit to balance parenting and this job, I am coming to realize I'll have to move on and look for a job somewhere else. The people I've met who are making this whole balancing act work are people who either have enough time off through a school schedule, some flex time or just plain not going in until 10 a.m. (ahem--yes, I'm talking about you) or those who work with a non-traditional schedule like adjunct teaching or freelance. I've been afraid to take a leap and leave the security of this job behind, but the trade-off seems especially worth it when I've been reminded what I'm missing. Look at that face when she first saw the polar bear close-up:

My life as an at-home mama

2006-10-19T13:17:00.000-04:00

I have taken a few days off in celebration of day care being closed and my being too lazy to think about where else I could take Clementine so I could go to work. Really, though, it seemed a nice excuse to get some good time in with my kid. We weren't a few hours into our time together yesterday, though, before all my happy illusions of how much cleaner my house would be, how much saner I would be, how much happier we would all be together if I just didn't work were totally shattered. As I stood in the living room talking to the cable guy, Clementine got her hands on an open box of Cheerios in the kitchen (still on the counter because you can't CLEAN just because you're home--you're too busy chasing your kid around) and ran around the room shaking it, spilling out streams of cereal all over the floor. Of course the cat was delighted, and Clementine was very proud of herself, especially when she learned what a great noise the cereal makes when you crunch it beneath your feet. The cable guy made a quick exit in horror as I began to clean up the cereal, giving darling C a chance to make a break for it and run up the stairs. Knowing she was in for it as I lumbered over to get her, she hurled a bottle of nail polish (yes, I know, why was it on the stairs? I was trying to straighten, dammit), which broke at the base of our stairs and spilled a lovely blue all over the hard wood. Oh, glory glory.

We hit the zoo yesterday afternoon, which is our favorite place to walk around. I've never been on a weekday, though, and I was a little taken aback at how empty it was. We had fun walking around and having the place almost to ourselves, but it was a little lonely. I am doing my best to make friends with other parents, but I still find it's hard to assume that just because our children are the same age we have something to talk about. And I haven't gotten the groove of WHAT you talk to other parents about--sure, there are kids, but it has been so long since I've made friends with people outside an obvious common interest (grad school, work, etc.) that I don't know how to hit the other elements of conversation and being to wish I had my mom's talent for asking insipid weather-related questions. I realize I sound like an insecure 8th grader, but the mommy world can be a scary one, full of women giving you once-overs or talking loudly and passive-aggressively to their kids as a means of communication with other adults (i.e., "Jared, you'll just have to wait your turn to see the polar bear until that little girl is done hogging the ledge."). I want to give Clementine a peer group (and I'd love to find some people who understand that a 5:30 dinner with high chairs is a rockin' good time), but I also like keeping her to myself and not having to worry about socializing.

This morning we hit some rummage sales, which I've learned is impossible with a child in tow. There is just no way to keep her with me as I sort through old T-shirts or kids clothes, and the toy section was a mess. I could hardly get through housewares without her threatening to break every fragile thing in the room, so we stuck to furniture and linens. I managed to make a few good scores, but we were both happy to get the hell out of there and head down to a play time at a local community center. I know from my sister that things like this exist--places where you can let your kid loose in a gym with lots of toys and other kids, but I hadn't braved it myself. Clementine spent the first twenty minutes just staring at other kids and not really playing or interacting. Then a family we've met just once before showed up, and although she didn't really play with girl, she got a lot more animated. By the time is well past nap time, she refused to put her coat on and cried all the way home. Thank heavens she is now fast asleep.

Truth be told, I could use a nap too. Being at work is a hundred times less work, but it's not nearly as satisfying. I've got to take advantage of her down time to get some stuff done and prepare for what I can only imagine will be a wild afternoon.

At the hop

2006-10-16T21:33:00.000-04:00

On Saturday we went to a sock hop to celebrate some friends' wedding. They held it in an old gymnasium with lots of pennants and long, low tables, and we had a great time getting all gussied up 50s style. I don't know what gets into us, but we are suckers for an opportunity to dress up, which is odd because I think of us as rather introverted. I got so excited I even sewed Clementine some fabulous duds using this retro rocket kid fabric, and she looked cute as a button--too bad most of the dress isn't visible in any of the pics. Her dad the beatnik and her mom the chaperone/housewife looked damn fine if I can say so myself, as did David, who got himself a pompdor for the occasion, and Laura who might have missed the decade her hair was made for.

(that's my bike they were using for the decorations!)

Don't we look like terrible old biddies there? I think we (I) were talking about the youngsters in the swing band.

And how cool is a wedding to which you are encouraged to bring kids? I know it's not everyone's ideal, but I loved watching Clementine go nuts on the dance floor (she had more fun than anyone there). I'm being forced to go to a family wedding out of town in November that isn't welcoming of kids, and it's a pain in the ass to travel there and then find a sitter. Nate's mom is coming in to do it, which is great because she hasn't seen Clementine in almost a year. But I'd really like to have Clementine with us, especially since she has the best moves on the dance floor.

A glut of fall photos

2006-10-16T07:37:00.000-04:00

I spent last night sorting through the million or so pictures I've taken of Clementine in the past few weeks, and in lieu of a more substantial post about the weekend (a not-so-hot burlesque show, lots of cake, a 50s-style wedding and a visit from my mom that didn't make me want to shoot myself or her) I thought I'd put a few up. That should buy me some time to do actual work at work today since I'm making this a two-day week. Clementine's day care provider's daughter is getting married this weekend and she is closing shop for a few days. Instead of finding an alternative, I'm taking a vacation and finding some cool stuff to do, daughter in tow, for a while. What we won't need to do is find a pumpkin patch because we've got that covered in spades:

Isn't that last one ridiculously suggestive? She held those gourds there all afternoon.

And my new favorite shot of the three of us:

Happy Happy Happy

2006-10-13T10:13:00.000-04:00

Today, 31 years after the Friday the 13th on which is was born, we are celebrating Nate’s birthday. A year ago we celebrated with bags under our eyes and a sweet little one-month-old baby in our arms, and truth be told I hardly remember what we did to mark the occasion. He sure as hell didn’t get lucky, and if we managed to stay up past 9, it was only because we were up again every two hours the rest of the night to tend to the bundle of screams we were starting to wonder why we had brought home with us. Don't we look shell-shocked:

What a difference a year makes.

There are a few things I’ve learned about parenting with someone in the last year. One is an affirmation of something my sister said: you never love or hate anyone quite as much as the person you have a kid with. Amen. There are no words for what I feel when I see the tenderness and love and goofiness with which Nate approaches every interaction with Clementine. He is a wonderful dad, and my heart melts (I swear, I have never grasped at my chest so many times in my whole live as I have in the last 13 months) about a hundred times a day as he chases her around the house, sings her to bed with his goofy lyrics to Beastie Boys songs or comforts her in the middle of the night with the patience of a saint. Sure, there is the flip side, usually at 2 a.m. when I can hardly function and he offers me some advice on how to handle her (I don’t take suggestions well) or doesn’t react fast enough when Clementine spits up in bed or pees on the floor. I hardly dwell on these, so let’s move on. The second thing I’ve learned is that kids can bring out the very best in people, and in Nate’s case I’ve seen not only his very best but some parts of him I would never have guessed could exist. He often surprises me with just how well he understands his daughter, just how connected to her and committed to her he is. It’s not that I thought he’d be a cold-hearted schlock, but when I look around at other dads I know Nate is a cut above. Every step of the way he is teaching me about parenthood and fatherhood, what true involvement is, and I’m almost always in awe.

But celebrating Nate is about more than just his finer attributes as a parent. He is a wonderful partner, one who puts up with my crazies and neuroses, one who supports me (even when no one else does), one who sometimes lives on the scraps of love and attention I have left at the end of the day and doesn’t bitch. This is starting to sound like a yearbook inscription, and I don’t want to reduce how amazing he is to a few lines of superlatives. Instead I have been looking for a quote of Karl Marx’s I once read about how he and his wife had been together for so long he knew every mark on her face and where it came from, but of course I can’t find it and can’t quite seem to get the sentiment right. I know where every mark on Nate’s face has come from (hell, I put some of them there). We have grown up together, we have seen the world together, bought a house, made a life and a baby together, and we somehow are still as in love as we were in college—more so. Sure, it’s not crazy in-bed-all-day love, my-heart-beats-fast-every-time-I-think-of-you love (thought it does beat fast when I see him). It’s better. It’s you-are-the-one-for-me love, I-love-you-even-though-I’ve-seen-you-at-your-worst love, I’ll-love-you-when-you’re-old-wrinkled-and-incontinent love. Even those words don’t cut it.

So today I celebrate Nate and his birthday. Nate, my bizarre and wonderful husband who has a Mercedes that runs of vegetable oil, a ’65 Impala he built as a teenager, a hundred odd bicycles and a million unfinished projects in the garage. Nate, who is good at math and yet reads Yeats and will talk to you all day about how amazing Victorian novels are (especially Thomas Hardy) before going downstairs to play with his remote control cars. Nate, who will let his daughter and his nieces dress him up in anything frilly, and will play doll house and tea party all day long if we let him. Nate, who is shy and likes to stay home but who transforms himself into this incredible extrovert every Halloween when we dress him up and take him out to terrorize or entertain the masses. Nate, who is the only one in our house cleans the floor and the dishes and tries to keep my clutter at bay. Nate, who takes things apart and can’t always put them back together, who will embark on any fool’s errand if we ask him to, who loves to travel, who will try anything, who eats hot peppers raw….Nate. Happy Birthday, enough said.

Our new vocabulary

2006-10-11T20:38:00.000-04:00

Tonight in the rush of coming in the door, putting down bags, tugging off coats, greeting the cat, hugging parents and children, Nate said very casually to me, "I think I figured out that pumping three times a day is really the best way to do it." At first I let these words slide right over me, hardly listening. How many times have I prattled on about how many times a day I need to pump or how many times I was able to pump or how many times I didn't get to pump because I was stuck in an awful meeting. But then my ear caught on the fact that he was saying "pumping," and I instantly got a little enraged, thinking how dare he tell me when I should be pumping--they aren't his boobs. But THEN I remembered I don't pump anymore, and I started to look at him as you would look at one who has totally lost his mind, one who thinks he can lactate in the face of our ever-diminishing, almost-out frozen breast milk supply. What the fuck? I started to wonder. Have I slipped into some wormhole? Did I forget I actually have kept pumping? Do I have amnesia?

And that's when it clicked: pumping doesn't always HAVE to refer to breast milk. Not all conversations have to do with feeding a child and there actually ARE other ways to use the verb "to pump" in a sentence that has nothing to do with hooking a bizarre machine up to your boobs and extending the reach of your nipple beyond what is normal to extract little squirts of milk. What a revelation. Nate was actually talking about pumping the waste vegetable oil into his filtering system in order to put it into our car. So, it's still a little weird, and people at dinner parties will probably still look at us a little differently when we talk about our pumping project, but I'm pretty sure they will be much less horrified from now on when we talk about how many times a day we pump.

WARNING: Chicago may cause projectile vomiting OR How I got my brother-in-law to detail my car

2006-10-09T22:19:00.000-04:00

My Grandma Fran would say we have wheels on our butts--we were home only four days from up north (four days full of work and laundry and work and cleaning and work and packing and work) before trekking off to Chicago for a weekend of family.

And maybe it was all that commotion. Or maybe it was the candy corn (just one) we let her eat, the thrill of hanging out with her cousins or going to the pumpkin farm, the total lack of sleep (what's new?), the overwhelming number of new faces orbiting around hers, the strangeness of a new place. Who knows WHY Clementine hurled all over the back seat of my new car--all I know is that I saw it coming in the rear view mirror and could do nothing to stop her from opening her mouth like a kettle and pouring out the entire contects of her stomach (which included pizza and curdled milk--yuck). What's better than that? We were minutes away from a fancy anniversary party, all of us gussied up and ready for a big night.

These are the moments of parenting that no one prepares you for, just as no one prepared Clementine for the horror of being stripped down in a public parking lot and wiped down with diaper wipes while wondering why she feels so crappy. The girl took it all like a champ, but I felt horrible sending her home while I went to a big kids party. I deserved the martinis, though, for I was the one who had to lift her out of her vomit-soaked car seat and peel her clothes off her. I wasn't the only one tested--Nate and had clean the car seat and do all the laundry after caryring her home and bathing her.

By the next morning she seemed fine, but the whole experience took its toll and we waited until today to slowly make our way home via the beach. Details to follow. It was grand.

Here comes the sun

2006-10-02T21:32:00.000-04:00

We're back from a quick adventure up north all tuckered out and dreading the start of a new week. I do a lot of bitching about the lack of sleep in this house, but there are benefits I don't often think of. This morning, for instance, Clementine woke me up at 7 by kissing me a dozen times all over my face (kissing=putting her mouth on me, lifting it up and THEN making a big smack noise...it was especially delightful this morning with a night's worth of snot all over her face). It was still mostly dark outside, and the windows of the cabin were streaked with dew. I bundled us up and headed down to the beach where we watched the day begin together. The sun rose slowly at first, but was egged on, I think, by Clementine's shrieks of joy as she watched the glow get bigger and brighter. We don't often get a moment like that at the beginning of a day, and I wanted to stop time and hold that instant in my hands like a warm cup of tea (which I sorely needed on that chilly beach). I took dozens of pictures trying to capture that feeling of being alone in the world with my daughter, but I eventually just had to put that damn camera down and hold her on my lap to watch the waves meet the sand over and over again.

Here we go again

2006-09-30T20:32:00.000-04:00

I have been very good about the whole day care situation lately if I do say so myself. 6 months ago I was a neurotic mess, but I've lived through those days of hand wringing, the great bottle propping incident and those few weeks Julie walked around like some strange Frankenstein in dark glasses after an eye lift because I have seen how social day care has made Clementine, how good with other kids. I've also seen how much she really likes Julie and how sweet Julie is with her. Yes, there is some denial on my part in order to make it out the door each day--I have to just let go of the things that they do differently and try to focus on how good this is for all of us, even when it doesn't feel that way.

And then on Friday (why is it always on a Friday?), I popped in early and found a scene so disturbing that I'm not sure how to handle going back. When I pulled up, Julie was hanging some silk flowers on her door. No big deal--I often find her upstairs when I come in because she has some helpers to give her a break now and then. But when she looked at me askance and said "I just popped up to hang this very quickly," I knew I would find the kids in the basement unsupervised. No big deal, I know--I leave Clementine in a room by herself all the time. When I got downstairs, though, I found Clementine in the high chair with Cheerios. OK, you can call me overprotective or neurotic here, but she is 1 year old--I never ever ever walk away from her when she's eating, especially to go to another room where I wouldn't be able to hear the quiet sounds of struggle she makes when she chokes on something.

As if that's not bad enough, the high chair is positioned right across from the giant (and I mean GIANT, as tall as me) television, which is on. I know they watch some Sesame Street from time to time, and I've even stomached some Clifford. We don't do TV ever in our house, but this is one of the things I've made peace with at day care--they watch the tube a bit every day. But Clementine right across from it really bothered me, especially when I noticed it was on the country music channel. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, old school Flatt & Scruggs, and I'll even stomach the Dixie Chicks since they ripped their careers apart standing up against ~~the devil~~ George Bush. But this is not what gets played on the country music station any more than Bloc Party or Sufjan Stevens get played on MTV. No, it is burly men in hats waving the American flag and telling you to leave if you don't like it. And at that particular moment, the video was one about the tough life of soldiers. How do I know? Because there was a montage of injured and bleeding people, soldiers crouched down with weapons, explosions and then rows and rows of gravestones at Arlington. There sat my sweet little girl calmly eating Cheerios and slugging at her bottle, watchin death and destruction on the TV.

Leaving beside my horror at this as a day care environment (but only for a minute), this is why I most object to TV. Sure, part of it is that I think kids shows are insipid, awful brain rot that make kids whine about having a Dora party or shriek in order to have an Elmo doll. But part of it is really how little control you have over what your kid sees when you turn her over to TV. It's not just the advertising, which is awful and can expose kids to all sorts of materialism, not to mention unpredictable and often inappropriate themes. It's the programs as well that can forward all sorts of stuff you may not want your kids exposed to yet. And I'm not talking about Buster having two dads, though I do have the tiniest bit of understanding for those parents who objected to that--not because it's OK to be a bigot but because you should get to have those conversations with your kids on your time). And before I sound even more sanctimonious, it's not that I object to all things you can do with a TV--I object to the live feed and the way it interferes with family time. We are more than happy to know a frazzled sitter can pop in a pre-approved movie (some excerpts of Yellow Submarine, for example), and we love that she watched Pee Wee's Playhouse when she stays with my friend Laura.

To get on to the more pressing issue of my unsupervised and eating child watching the world blow up and all the bloody casualties, I was clearly horrified and have no idea what I said beyond "Oh my goodness, I can't believe you're letting them watch this." There was some exchange I can't quite remember now, but I think I wasn't as strong as I wanted to be. She said she just likes for there to music for the kids, especially because Clementine likes to dance so much (yes, I think she tried to make it C's fault). I was so paralyzed with anger I got the hell out of there and have been freaking out from time to time ever since. I know it wasn't intentional, but this adds up to something that feels less than good. Maybe I was willing to overlook some of this before because Clementine was younger and I wanted to be sure she was somewhere that she would be held and paid attention to. Now I'm starting to change my tune on the whole objection to the day care center. Certainly they don't have TVs, right? But then they have other evils, I'm sure.

I could launch into yet another tirade about how this whole thing just isn't working for me, for us. Both of us working full time jobs is not helping us be the parents we want to be, much less helping us keep up a house, eat nutritious meals and have clean clothes. But I can't focus on that because I fall apart a little every time I do. Instead. I've decided to embrace my non-existent Jewish roots and head out of town tomorrow with my fabulous friend Laura and her son. We're going to celebrate Yom Kippur up north and put off thinking about work, about day care one more day.

Your (cat) name here

2006-09-26T13:37:00.000-04:00

We did a lot of stuff this weekend, much of it very fun. [Big aside here: the Ferndale Art Fair, which was very cool. But what is it with hip parents and their slippery aloofness? I was so happy to see all these people out with their kids, listening to music, perusing art, letting their tattoos and wild side of parenting hang out, but they were such islands! It's like when I was living in Thailand, going days sometimes without seeing another foreigner and would catch a glimpse of one across the market and want to run up and say "Hi, how are you? Isn't this amazing or weird or wonderful or awful and can't we just say some words to each other in English and be happy for one minute before I go back to eating pumpkin curry and fish paste and trying to understand the difference between 'Glai mai ka and gleye mai ka'?" But invariably they would diss me, allow their eyes to skid past as if seeing another white person in a small town on the border or Thailand and Burma was about as orginary as seeing a gecko or a rat. Maybe I'm wholly ignorable no matter what the context, but I was so bummed to be near so many hip parents this weekend and exchange not even a knowing glance. Honestly, the mom-jeans moms were more friendly and encouraging of my own sweet Clementine who wanted to desperately just to dance and frollick with other kids. I guess I'm just a loser, but why oh why oh why is it so hard to get to chatting with other parents?]

Anyway, in all the hubub of hanging out, doing our weekend shopping, catching up with friends here and in Ann Arbor and just generally enjoying each other, we decided to adopt a cat from the litter next door, which is quickly heading to the Humane Society if no one steps up. We have been sad without Kitty since we had to put her down, and since Clementine LOVES cats and sits at the window saying "Hi!" to all the strays, it just seemed like a good idea. Isn't he cute?

But as we are trying to name him ('cuz "Lion," the name he came with, just isn't cutting it for me), I'm realizing I may not be a pet person. I mean, I loved Kitty, but now that she is gone I feel more guilt about her than true honest-to-goodness missing her. I feel like we didn't take care of her, that she was suffering from lack of affection, that we could have helped her prolong her life. All of this is silly--it was her time to go--but now that I've got a new cat in my life, I'm starting to see some patterns. For one, I can't give the damn thing a name and can't bring myself to call him anything but Kitty. We've tested out lots of names, but none of them seem right, or, if they do, I forget about them right away. It's odd. I even called my niece last night to get her help (she names all Clementine's dolls, which is how we've ended up with Whatti and Clyde and Zach), and after conferencing briefly with what I can only assume are the spirits, she whispered to me, "Auntie, I think his name is Maygo or Taygo or Raygo...maybe Shaygo." She could not be swayed, and neither could I. I tried Maygo, but really it just came back to Kitty. My sister called back with another Abby selection: Manny Maygo, but I am still not able to just pick something and move on.

Am I are creeping, feelingless pet owner? Am I unable to form attachments to animals? What's going on?

I should report that Clementine is over the moon with her latest friend, and they have great fun dining together and playing on the floor. He even likes to supervise her bath time:

But, Internet, let me get to the point: what should I name my new cat? Can someone help me find a name that sticks?

Sweet, sweet sleep

2006-09-25T22:37:00.000-04:00

It should concern you that it has been a week since I last posted, especially since the last post clearly indicated that we were suffering from some profound retribution (for what I'm still unclear) in the form of lack-of-sleep torture. It should concern you because it is not that I didn't want to post, to say hi, how are you, we're peachy. I did, really. I wanted to do lots of things, but instead I got very little sleep AND had the flu (and still had to go to work one day) AND...did I mention the not sleeping? OK, I guess we just had the flu and NO SLEEP, which doesn't sound very dramatic, but I just didn't have time to do anything else except work when forced to and apologize to Nate for calling him a lazy motherfucker the night before when we were not sleeping. See, we are very preoccupied these days with sleep.

But things are looking up.

I don't dare once more put it out on the internet that a certain darling little girl slept all the way through the night last night for fear of being smote, but as we work out the teething, the elimination of overnight feeding and the rest of the kinks, I do feel like there's an end in sight. She's not going to get it right away for now and ever, but in the same way that we are asking her to at times be flexible (weekends when we keep her out just a bit past her bedtime and hope she doesn't totally melt down in a bar or restaurant where we're trying to pretend that nothing has to change about our lives just because we're parents), we have to be a little flexible with her. Aren't I little Susie Sunshine? It's either that last night's marathon 8 hours has gone to my head or I'm feeling guilt for one of the many times in the middle of the night last week I thought to myself that I could almost (ALMOST) understand where people who shake their babies go wrong. You can only spend so much time on the very edge like that before you really start to lose it.

Hubris

2006-09-18T21:06:00.000-04:00

hu·bris [hyoo-bris, hoo-]
n.
excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.

I asked people at work today to think of great acts of hubris. Some mentioned Ulysses and other Greek mythological characters, my friend Dave had some very specific football reference that involves 1993 (I think), the Superbowl and someone who thought he'd made a touchdown celebrating a little too soon, and of course there is George Bush, the WMDs and all the subsequent nonsense that has us at war in Iraq. Know what no one mentioned (and now it seems a little petty since I've brought up the WAR and all)? The great hubris of telling the internet your baby sleeps through the night when it was clearly ALL A FLUKE.

And how is hubris punished? Usually by great acts of retribution. Clementine slept perhaps two hours last night, and no matter how hard we tried she would not be comforted. She didn't want to be held, she didn't want to be snuggled or rocked or walked or left to cry or anything. She would occasionally sleep if Nate were sitting ramrod straight up on the couch, but that was it. Today we looked like zombie parents and could hardly get out the door. I never did find my wallet and take it with me, and I certainly didn't manage to get shoes on Clementine. It is never a good thing when I leave her at day care, and I have never for a moment believed that being at Julie's is better or as good as being at home. Today was a close call, though--I don't know if I would have stayed awake long enough to care for her today, or if I might have totally lost my shit if she didn't take a nap.

She is fast asleep tonight, though, and I'm not taking my chances and making any predictions. I just had a peek, and she looked so perfect all curled up in that big old bed, her face totally relaxed and the tiniest bit of spit gleaming at the corner of her mouth. It looked like bliss. While I have become very good at embracing the comical, stressed-out, what-the-hell-happened-to-my-life side of working motherhood, I started thinking tonight that I might be forgetting the slack-jawed awe with which I started this whole thing. Our first weeks home I was a tender, emotional, hormal mess more in love than I had ever been able to understand, more vulnerable to the world and its whims, more open to the possibilities. I was a gushing, sappy, adoring jumble of words and feelings, and I hate to think for a moment that I've let the difficulties, the hustle, the voices of reason, the predictable parent blinders or anything else dampen for a single moment the total wonder I feel when I'm in her presence. I need to remember to put the jokes aside from time to time and reconnect with that feeling. Sure, when I'm still putting on my shoes while tossing Cheerios into the backseat and answering work calls as if I'm already at my desk I have to laugh if for no other reason than to keep from screaming my bloody head off. But there are also the moments when I look back at her reflection in the rearview mirror and feel such a wave of familiarity and comfort. There's nothing funny about that moment.

Now with less kitchen sink!

2006-09-17T22:53:00.000-04:00

It has been a very exciting day for us at the punk rock household--nay, it has been an exciting weekend. Today, after lots of hard work (all of which was done by Nate, although I did promise at one point that if we did this I would TOTALLY HELP; I suck), a big and wonderful breakfast at Club Bart, a long bike ride and a trip to the park, we drove the Mercedes around the neighborhood on straight vegetable oil for the first time ever. It was rocky at first as the system "burped," but it was shortly smooth and very tasty smelling sailing.

I daresay even Miss Clementine enjoyed tooling around on the inaugural ride, and we all know how she feels about the car (though that has kind of changed now that she has turned around and can face the world). She was either ecstatic at the idea of being the most ecologically conscious child on the block, smacking her head as if to say "My crazy parents," or she was practicing pulling a blanket up over her head when riding in the back seat of the french fry mobile on her way to school:

But mere mechanics is not all the weekend had to offer. Clementine and I enjoyed a great morning downtown with Hudson, despite the tomfoolery of social awkwardness near other parents I detailed below (and yes, in case you are wondering, I am totally ignoring the fact that I am such a loser an internet shrink sought out MY BLOG to give me tips on social interactions via the comments section. As far as I'm concerned, it just didn't happen). We saw a parade, went to Eastern Market to get all sorts of goodies (thank heavens that for once I had the stroller), played in the park, had yet another long bike ride and, much to my family's shock and amazement, took almost NO pictures. I don't think I'm cured or anything (I just uploaded three dozen more photos to Flickr--I have a PROBLEM, people, and I need HELP) and I certainly don't think Clementine had a single second when she was less than photogenic, but I managed to only photograph a very serious looking Hudson and a very serious spelling error all day long.

I like to think it was the spelling that had Hudson so worried, but I think it was really that he was horrified his parents seemed to be paying no attention to him as he ate grass--I swear, he practically mowed the whole park with his teeth. Were I not there to shirk social niceties in order to care for him, who knows what his fate would have been. Who knows??

But the really cherry on the top of our weekend cherry was a rousing trip to Target Friday night after discovering that the best Mexican food we've been able to find in Detroit is sadly not in the city. We've done Mexican Village and we love us some authentic ambiance, but the food at this place near the *gasp* mall was really the closest we've come to tolerable since Agave shut down, no doubt for having the biggest asshole greet people at the door and scoff at them if they ask for a high chair. But I digress. I think my Friday evening can only be described in song, so channel some Madonna channeling Eva Perrone and sing this to the tune of "Evita:" "Don't cry for me De-troit hipsters, the truth is I hardly miss you! There were my wild days, my bars and galleries, but now there are errands...on Friday evenings." OK, that didn't really work and I think it is now obvious that I'm losing my mind, but I had a great time getting lots of shopping done while the whole world was out having fun and living interesting lives. We're taking Karen (she of the shuffle board and booze and karaoke) down on this one, too--I think she had more fun with us in Target than she normally does when she's out with adults who stay up past 10 p.m. and can't tell you everything there is about breastfeeding and infant bowel movements. Proof that Target rocks just as hard as any youthful night out: costumes.

Yes, we are losers. But we're losers who all have new toys from Target and got a good night's sleep on Friday. How many hipsters can say the same?

We capped the weekend off with a quick trip to Ann Arbor for the judge's wife's birthday party. I haven't had many moments like this as a parent (or really in my life at all), but the second we walked in the door of the restaurant, I knew it wasn't the best place for us. We love Julie and were happy to celebrate with her, but no one (NO ONE) had brought their kids, and everyone was dressed to the nines. We weren't out of place--everyone was super nice to us because we have the cutest baby in the world, after all--but it was hardly the family gathering we had thought it might be. There were politicos there and lots of social connections to be made, and we were absolutely blindsided by it. We copped a seat in a corner booth and let Clementine try her hand at the very chic vegetarian finger foods all around, and then we very quietly and quickly made our exit--happy we could have been there to celebrate but happy also that a kid is always the perfect excuse to leave a party even without much social grace. The old me would have been a little mental over misreading things, over not "doing it right" or talking to the right people, dressing the right way. But here's a way motherhood has really strengthened and improved me: I simply didn't care. We are who are: flip flops and dress skirts, longish beards and babies at birthdays, and I'm fine with it. I'm actually a little proud of it. As we left, I called my friend Laura and invited my little family over for pizza and fun in their backyard. That's the kind of Sunday that never blindsides me.

And speaking of proud, I don't want to brag or anything, but Clementine slept through the night last night. Yes, from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. with only a whimper early on in the evening. I realize this is something most moms say about their 6-month-old babies, but I'm taking rejoicing where I can find it. Sadly Nate and I were too stupid to hightail it to bed ourselves to enjoy deep, uninterrupted sleep. No, we stayed up until 2 and thus didn't get any more sleep than we usually do. I've got my fingers crossed for tonight, though.

And STILL speaking of proud, did I tell you I discovered the secret of parenting?

Let her inherit my bad skin

2006-09-17T08:52:00.000-04:00

Or my wonky eye. Or my propensity to cheat at cards. Let her inherit my good teeth or even my height (a little on the short side), but please oh please oh please do NOT let her inherit my social awkwardness. It will cause her enough distress to have a socially awkward mother who cannot make or maintain normal friendships with the parents of her playmates, so please don't make things worse by making her socially awkward as well.Please.

I was really thinking I had this licked--in fact, I went out this week with my friend Courtney and hung out with her friend Liz and had a great time. I even talked. I had things to say! I wasn't a freak show, and I totally made a new friend. So I know it can be done.

But then I went to this neighborhood celebration downtown and encountered a bunch of parents my age who had kids close to Clementine's age, and I was once again the quiet, unable to connect type who just gazes upon her child and follows her around in order to avoid social contact. It's not that I didn't try--I did. But I did some awkward shit in trying to connect with other parents (and I think therein truly lies the problem: my experiences with parenting are what I'm least confident about, so forming acquaintances based on this one common idea, that we are all parents, is toughest for me because I'm so insecure about what the hell I'm doing). One mom said, "I work for a judge," and I, desperate to connect on some level, said "I am best friends with a judge!" Leaving aside the fact that I was totally the girl in the front row of class screaming "Pick me! Pick me!" it's not like I lied--it's just that using the word "best friend" to describe important people in your life who are over 60 is totally weird and not quite right. If I'm not the "Pick me!" girl, then I sound like one of those girls in high school who calls her mom her "best friend"--even if it's true, it implies an inability to connect with people your age. Duh! I have that in spades.

To complicate matters even further, a few of these parents are bloggers, and I still haven't figured out how to handle that in social situations. Do I walk up to the woman I recognize from her photos and say, "Hey! You always write about how socially awkward you are...I'm socially awkward, too! Let's be friends!" Do I have to fess up right away: "I read your blog," so she knows I know? Instead, I handled it by NOT talking to her at all, by not introducing myself (Courtney did, but she's going to be mayor of friggin' Detroit some day because she knows people EVERYWHERE we go--we're friends because she has enough social skills to make up for my complete lack of them). I was better at talking to the parents of a little girl who is very close to Clementine's age. They blog too, but I only discovered theirs a few days ago and am not as steeped in their life and exploits. I did want to make out with the mom when she explained that her daughter didn't sleep through the night until she was 14 months--a kindred spirit! No, I didn't actually TRY to make out with her, but I did have to resist the urge to desperately clutch at her and her husband and say, "Please let us skip over these awkward first encounters--I am not good at these things. I am better with time. I am funny. My husband makes odd stuff and we are good for a laugh and our house is very fun to visit. It doesn't matter if you never really like me--we have kids, and I want my kid to play with your kid, who doesn't live in the hillbilly heaven where our house is, who wears Chucks and BabyLegs and is very cute, who won't teach Clementine to use racial slurs. Please, for the love of all that is holy, let us be parent friends and go to the zoo and eat dinner in restaurants at 5:30 so we can still do our bath and bed routine." Or something like that. Instead, I said "Nice meeting you" and followed Clementine around as she wandered through the park aimlessly after the dogs who were all there dressed up for the dog parade.

I feel bad that I'm not able to make friends who have kids because Clementine LOVES being with babies and toddlers and kids of all ages. Within a 10 minute drive of my house, I hang out with exactly 1 family with child. There are a few more kids in our life if I'm willing to drive further, and I don't want to denigrate the amazing friends I have with older kids or no kids at all--they are the light and love of our small, biological family-less Detroit lives. But who do I call on a beautiful morning to go to the park with us? Who has a kid that Clementine can tickle and hug (her favorite bonding activities)? Hudson is going to get sick of us if we're not careful.

I'm being pulled out the door to go ride over to our breakfast place. Nate is almost done converting our '83 Mercedes to run on veggie oil--if he works enough today, we'll have our inaugural ride by sunset. We're heading out to the a party with The Judge (see, I told you we're best friends) and his wife tonight--it's a surprise birthday, and SURPRISE! we don't have a gift yet. To do, to do. Happily it's distracting me from the fact I'm back to work tomorrow. Yes, we're back to that: I just don't want to go. Ever.

The goods

2006-09-15T11:37:00.000-04:00

As evidence of the often hidden side of my truly bifurcated personality--one part goody goody corporate raider, one part independent writer/artist/rocker/wild child--my very belated Mother's Day tattoo, belated because apparently injecting dye into your skin while breastfeeding isn't recommended behavior. I think the reactions of the people I'm closest to also serve to illustrate my divided nature. People either love it and oooh and aaah when I show it to them, or they are horrified by how BIG, how permanent. Whatever. It's not quite finished yet--the stars need to be colored, and there's a background we didn't get done, but the general idea and Clementine-inspired nature of it are pretty clear.

And despite the fact that this is numero 5, I'm still not looking forward to the stern disapproval of my dad when he either reads this or has occasion to see me in a t-shirt. I'm embarrassed that as a 31-year-old grown woman I still let him have this much of an effect on me, but I guess it's just how it is. It doesn't matter in the end because I LOVE LOVE LOVE it, right down to the cat-eye shades on the sparrows and the itchy itchy scabs that I'm trying to keep at bay so it heals correctly.

Playin' Hooky

2006-09-15T09:35:00.000-04:00

Blessed be the day care provider for taking off today for West Virginia, leaving me no other option than staying home with Clementine. As it turns out, I would have been off anyway as my boss turned to me this week in a particularly mind-numbing meeting to say, "You've had a rough go of it these last two weeks. Why don't you take Friday off to spend with your daughter." Did I say "Look at my calendar, bozo, I'm already outta here?" No way! A simple, "Well, if you insist" will suffice.

So here it is 9:30 a.m. after a miserable night's sleep (she snuffled like a woodland creature seeking out food all night long when she wasn't shrieking) and we've already had a wonderful time. The best part about it is that all the mistakes are mine today--she won't see a lick of TV, not even the "educational shows" that Julie justifies at day care, but I can't guarantee she won't hear the word "fuck"thousand times if we go anywhere in the car. Hooray for parenting. We tried some new foods for breakfast, but my little gal wouldn't even look at a scrambled egg and totally turned her nose up at peanut better. If I hadn't watched her emerge from own body, I would doubt she was my child on that alone. Peanut butter is my stranded-on-a-desert-island food, my comfort food, my go-to food, and I can't imagine my life without it. Sure, it means I've probably exposed her to allergies and will spend my whole life rabidly avoiding foods with traces of peanuts so she doesn't blow up like a balloon, but I love me some PB.

We've also already had a jammin' dance party downstairs. She picked out her record du jour, The Pretenders, and we did a host of dancing, including the Flashdance stutter step, some general body jerking, a cool head roll that looks a little like she's trying to learn to break dance and then some couples dancing, which involves her trying to throw herself out of my arms for a dip or a lift. She grabbed the maraca, gave me a tambourine and then we shook it with all we've got. I think this means no gym necessary today.

But what is necessary? I have one inclination to fill the day up doing all the stuff we never can together. It's too yucky for finding a good park now, but we can touch every single toy in the house before too long (even the annoying plastic ones), maybe go to Ikea to get some bookshelves, poke around the Book Beat for some new reads..who knows. At some point I guess she will be tired of me staring at her and petting her hair, so we'll have to find an adventure after napping. Oh, sweet napping. I've spent that time a thousand times over already--I will read, read, read, I will write to Dr. S about the sheath of poems she sent me so long ago, I will clean my office, I will write, I will blog, I will not check my work email, I will not preen in the mirror, staring at my tattoo for hours. Surely Clementine cannot sleep for the thousand lives I want to live during nap today.

A girl could get used to this, especially when she's had a week where she feels like her job is eating her soul and that she doesn't see her kid enough. I'm resisting the urge to whine, the existential crisis that comes over me in cycles now, but I love being home--not just to be with Clementine. I feel like my brain got turned back on this morning when, instead of getting in my car and autopiloting to work, I looked at a whole, blank day, just me and my daughter and started wondering how we could spend it. Free will!

OK, she's using the optical mouse as a telephone, crying "Hi! Hi!" into again and again. I'm off for something a little more imaginative.

Flashdance

2006-09-14T06:20:00.000-04:00

First of all, I don't know why the hell I was bitching about being the mom tossing Cheerios into the backseat on the way to work. Sure, it's not the healthy let's-sit-down-and-eat-as-a-family breakfast Donna Reed had for her kids every morning, but what a boon to discover a box of not totally unhealthy snacks in your car when you're so hungry you could eat your own hand and have to get to a meeting in front of 100 parents and don't want your tummy to rumble. Once again, I bow in humility before the great parenting god who laughed at my Cheerio-to-go resistance. Will I ever not have SO MUCH to learn.

And speaking of learning, Clementine is picking up some cute and crazy things every day. When I got home last night she was so excited to see me that she did this crazy little foot stomping dance like the one in Flashdance. OK, so she didn't have the one-shoulder sweatshirt and legwarmers, but she had that little flutter step down. I was very flattered that the sight of her mother brought that out in her, but then her do it when she tossed a magnet into the kitchen garbage can and again when she saw her doll Whatti (named by my niece and I still don't have a spelling) and yet again after she tried to crawl fully clothed into the bath tub. So maybe it's not all about me, but it sure is damn cute.

What's not cute is this ugly sleep phase we're going through. Nate and I have been wimps up until recently, feeding her all night long whenever she fusses just to buy us some extra Zs. Not only do I think she uses the bottle for comfort she prolly doesn't truly need, but I'm so damn tired lately that I end up spilling milk all over me and the bed, meaning if I don't change the sheets right away the whole room spells (this whole cow's milk thing is soooo different than breastmilk). So we've stopped bringing a bottle to bed, which last night meant about two hours of whining and tossing. She rarely wakes up all the way, but she tossed and turns and kicks and screams and whines, and I can't believe any of us an get up and walk the next day. I'm seeing it as a duty to get through, though, because I think we all deserve a night's sleep. No, I'm not sleep training her or letting her cry it out hard core (she's still in our bed, after all, and I'm done apologizing for that), but I'm going to see if a few more days of bad sleep might take us to a new level of good sleep. I'm holding out for a hero here.

I gave myself a little post-nursing, your-kid-turned-one, express yourself present yesterday and have a whole new trick up my sleeve (literally). I'm pretty psyched, but I have to go back for another sitting to finish the whole thing off. I can't decide if I'll post pics when it heals up or if I'll wait until I finish it. For now, I'm going back to bed to see if I can't squeeze in another 30 minutes before the get-to-work rush sets in.

Some days a working mom can't win

2006-09-11T20:25:00.000-04:00

I swear I'm not trying to be the world's biggest whiner, but I have had one of those days. You know the kind. I woke up late, the baby woke up even later. I ran through the morning feeling like I was forgetting something, couldn't dress myself, choked down some coffee (yes, back on the caffeine), thank heavens Nate dressed C and somehow scooted us out the door. But I had to write a check for the day care lady at the first traffic light. That made me remember she was totally out of Clementine's diapers, so I pulled over at the nearest Rite-Aid where I realized Clementine hadn't had breakfast (she was going nuts at the candy bars), so I threw in a box of Cheerios and spent the remainder of our drive tossing them back to her and damning my stick shift for making morning multi-tasking so hard.

I threw her in the door at day care because I was so late for work and then realized I didn't have my camera for morning convocation. Damn. Luckily, Karen had left hers at my house and it was rolling around in my backseat for a week waiting to be returned. So I grabbed it, made it to the ceremony, couldn't get anything to work right and eventually made it to my office to find 445 emails in my account--so much for even using the photos to write a story. Granted 100 of the emails were from a few weeks ago, 150 from last week, so it's not like they cropped up over night, but I had to get serious about answering them. But then there is the generic email I have to answer, another account with 60 emails. Writing? Photos? My actual job? Who has time? I'm tech support now.

I spent the rest of the day frantic, a to-do list spiraling out of control and my perspective waning. How would I ever get it all done? I hate when it gets like that, my fingers madly typing, my whole self overwhelmed. My friends pop by my office and I can't even look at them except with these crazy eyes that scream "Stay away! I'm MAD! A lunatic!" And then I get so wound up I think I have to quit my job immediately because nothing is worth this kind of stress, not to mention being the last mommy to day care to get her love, with whom I have spent a whole 20 minutes of time today. This is where things get dangerous and I think of all the things I haven't done with my life (a book, my writing, more travel) and will now never do. Not because of my kid but because of my job. And then, there you go--I'm whining again. I feel trapped, overwhelmed. These are not new feelings--they are at the heart of my struggle as a working mom.

But then I go get darling C. from day care, and she runs over to give me a hug and a goofy grin. Today she has learned where her tongue is, so when you ask her she opens her mouth and is so damn proud of herself she can't keep from laughing. The whole day melts away, and I'm sane and happy and myself. OK, not entirely true. I took a brief detour into the garage when I got home to sit by myself in Nate's convertible and *gasp* smoke a cigarette. I don't smoke (and neither does Nate anymore, yet there were emergency cigs tucked away in a glove compartment), but it seemed like the right thing to do. Very dramatic. I was very proud of myself.

But THEN things were better and I put on my sweat pants and took care of my family and was just so grateful and happy to be home. So today sucked more than most, but because of it the evening was better than most. I have to call it even, huh?

My loverly sister posted some fabulous pictures of her brood today. Don't you want o go take a peek?

The Birthday Bash

2006-09-09T13:16:00.000-04:00

Almost a week later, I have cleaned the cake frosting off the baby monitor, thrown away the wrapping paper (though the toys are still all over), organized the cards and finally sorted through all the pictures I took of the big day. It was more than I could have ever hoped for in a birthday party and faux baptism (which I've taken to calling a blessing because it makes my mom happier).

Last Sunday, the weather was perfect and we set up for the event by dragging all of the bicycles from our garage and getting them spiffied up for the bike parade. Clementine, whose obsession with bicycles grows stronger every day (when we get home at night she runs over the garage, bangs on the door and says "bi-bi-bi"), was thrilled to see some of her friends even brought their own bikes. She was checking them all out before we took off:

People rode tall bikes and long bikes, folding bikes, Taxi bikes, Stingrays, trikes and all sorts of different contraptions. Even my mom rode one, ever in the spirit (maybe because her new boyfriend was along?):

After our parade, Clementine donned her Tiger hat, which is a Chinese folkloric tradition--apparently babies wear this hat on their one year birthday to catch all the heavenly goodness falling from the sky between the tiger's ears. Thankfully it had a tie, so it stayed on her head for the duration of the faux baptism ceremony despite her best efforts to remove it. Clementine, you want that heavenly goodness, don't you? Good. Put it on.

I knew I wanted to do some sort of blessing for our girl because, although we have no intention of baptising her, I do want to provide some sort of foundation for spirituality and divinity, for asking questions and believing in things. I asked guests to being a small symbol of a wish they have for her future, and I also asked them to write in a little book what they might be willing to teach her as she grows older. I started the ceremony by reading Sylvia Plath's "Morning Song," a poem I read again and again when I came home from the hospital with C., and I somehow managed NOT to cry, not even when I read the last line, which always gets me. On cue, Clementine started to sing a little as I read about her clear vowels. It was very sweet.

Then we went around the circle and presented her with our symbols. I gave her an unpolished Petosky stone so she would always remember where she came from, what her earliest adventures were and to look for beauty everywhere, even in an unpolished stone. He dad gave her a tiny old wrench, which she popped into her mouth right away, so she would always be able to solve her problems. She got a Buddy Christ from my sister and her family, a Bible from my mom, a Tiffany luggage tag from Aunt K., a rock in the shape of a C and some dream coins from the Lamberti's, flowers, a Virgin Mary nightlight, some funny glasses and a picture from her boyfriend Hudson, and she got inspirational books, a collage, poems, a special chair for contemplating, lovely little toys, some poems and stories, a promise for fishing lessons from Uncle Dizzle and lots of wonderful goodies I'm sure I'm forgetting. Even her Nonny and Grandpa sent something from Arizona to wish her good reading. After the presentation, I read Margaret Atwood's "You Begin," another great poem, and our Clementine was blessed, baptised, welcomed and ready for cake.

She wasn't sure what to make of the cake at first, but she took to it pretty quickly and managed to get frosting EVERYWHERE.

I know that's part of the fun, but she's not real fond of being cleaned up, so her head was all sticky for the rest of the party until the sugar rush faded and left her crazy tired, the kind that makes it seems like she's having more fun than she's ever had before, but then in the blink of an eye is crying and screaming and just so ready for bed, guests be damned.

My family took off after the party came to an end, which meant we three had Labor Day to spend together not doing much. You would think I could have sorted pictures then, but there were SO many. Click on any below to go see the overindulgance than is a first-time mom with a digital camera.

Another series

2006-09-08T12:36:00.000-04:00

Cousins once again together, once again we parents search for a shot of the three of them. This is the third attempt. First there was Washington D.C., then there was the park and now the pre-birthday celebration:

I'm starting to think this is the Holy Grail of family photography. Three children, one camera, all of them looking in the same direction, all of them eyes open and maybe even smiling--it shouldn't be this hard. I'm wondering if we're going to have to involve medication or television if we ever want this to work. I kind of like the foibles better than I would a real shot, though.

A day at the zoo

2006-09-06T21:22:00.000-04:00

I'm a such a nerdy first-time mom. I took over 200 pictures of Clementine's birthday party and faux baptism!! By the time I can post them all and write about it, she will be graduating from college. It's either that or I'll post from work. What am I thinking? I can't even remember to eat and pee at work these days, so maybe I'll have to pull an all-nighter. I had a dreadful day at work--more than any one person can do in a week, much less a day. Plus the assistant I was about to hire took a job somewhere else. PLUS I hit a dumpster with my car trying to get out of a parking place. Hell's Belles I need a drink.

But before that, let me extoll the virtues of the zoo. We are fond of it, even if Clementine could care less about the camels (though she is starting to take an interest in the penguins and makes the baby sign for dog whenever she sees anything with fur). If nothing else, it is a great place to go for a long walk far, far away from my white-trash ghetto of a neighborhood (did I tell you about the bullet in the roof of my car yet?? Yeah.). Before the birthday bash, we took the whole gang there for a little stroll.

Not only did we walk with the roos and spot the mountain lions, we also got to hang with the tragically hip playgroup, a group of parents with Bugaboos, rock-n-roll hair and more black clothing than an undertaker's convention. While normally I would look at those kinds of people with recognition and longing, watching them talk on their cell phones while they pushed their $900 strollers and fluffed their hair made me loathe them. See? I can competitive mother like the rest of them. It should be an Olympic sport.

I should get back to the hundreds of birthday pics calling my name, but I can't stand the thought of being in front of the computer another minute. Check back soon for party pics. They're really effing cute if I do say so myself.

2006-09-05T23:58:00.000-04:00