In which we camped

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...

...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'

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

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...

...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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.