Mama Duck

In the immortal words of Billy Joel, I'm movin' out

2004-11-28T18:48:00.000-08:00

I'm moving. Virtually, this time. I haven't even unpacked all the boxes in our new old house, but I'm on the move again, this time to a new web address. Updating on two weblogs has been tough. Once I thought I needed to keep pop culture and pregnancy/parenthood separate. Silly Girl Detective. I now understand the wishful thinking of such a false dichotomy. As it says on the Dr. Bronner's bottle, it's All One. And now it's all one weblog at the all new Girl Detective.

Thank you, and good night. I hope to see you there.

Birth lessons learned the hard way

2004-11-26T07:34:00.000-08:00

If you're going to be giving birth soon, I have two pieces of advice.

One, take it easy. Don't plan to work up till your due date; leave a week early. Put your feet up. Rest; take naps. Go to the movies. Watch TV and movies at home. Go out to eat at your favorite restaurants.

Two, keep an open mind once your birth experience begins. I was reluctant to take Pitocin for many reasons. I put it off for 18 hours after my water broke and contractions began. In retrospect, I wish I would have started it as soon as I got to the hospital. I know two women whose birth stories started similarly to mine, but had much easier progressions, probably due to their earlier starts on Pitocin. I know another woman who, like me, put off the Pitocin and had a long, difficult labor. As the midwife told me, contractions are contractions. They're hard whether they're natural or Pitocin-induced. What's important is progressing the labor. If you aren't progressing on your own, then you need help and it's best to get that as soon as you can.

Baby hugs

2004-11-24T07:13:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, I was watching a mom's toddler so she could eat dinner at a party. I was carrying the little girl in my arms when she suddenly threw her arms around my neck and squeezed in an impromptu hug. The sudden wash of joy this caused was shocking. I thought, "This must be why people have kids."

Now, years later, the duck has recently begun to hug. For a very long time--over a year--he was not a very cuddly guy. His personality has not changed, but he had added the hugs to his repertoire, sprinkling them throughout the day like seasoning. If we are holding him, he will sometimes throw his arms around my neck and squeeze, and I am reminded of the lovely moment of that hug from that little girl. He will sometimes begin to wiggle up and down excitedly, as if he's trying to rev up. He will frequently toddle up to one of us and hug our legs. When we're on the floor during naked time, he will make a beeline and come right in for a hug.

They are so spontaneous, his little bursts of affection. And they astonish and gratify me each time they happen.

The nose knows

2004-11-23T07:06:00.000-08:00

We gave up on the diaper genie some time ago. It just couldn't begin to make a dent in the stinkiness of post-solid-food poopy diapers. Instead, we shuttle dirty diapers to the can by the back door, which we empty with some frequency into the bin by our garage.

On Monday, I was upstairs getting ready while the duck was in his "play area" (i.e. his cage) downstairs. I smelled poop and thought, did we forget and leave a diaper up here? Did I forget to flush the toilet? After a quick check, the answers were no and no. By this time, I noticed the smell less, figured I was imagining things, and finished getting ready.

When I went downstairs, though, I was hit by a poopy-smell wave. The duck had gone about the post-breakfast business of filling his diaper. I'd been able to smell it a floor away.

Never again will I doubt myself. When it comes to poopy diapers, at least.

A proud moment in parenthood

2004-11-22T07:22:00.000-08:00

From his shelf of board and other smallish books, the duck selected The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey for me to read to him. My husband thinks this is not appropriate reading for one so young. I think it's just another alphabet book, with better illustrations than most.

My personal favorite is "N is for Neville, who died of ennui."

And he's off

2004-11-19T06:12:00.000-08:00

The other day as we exited the house on our daily morning jaunt to the coffee shop, the duck and I heard noise down the street. There were several trucks parked around the electric pole at the end of our street, across from the park.

Usually, I take the stroller out of the house, strap the duck in and we merrily roll along to the coffee shop. Today, though, he was a baby on a mission. For the first time, he exited our front yard by himself, toddling about at the top, then getting into his backwards stair position to shimmy down the slight hill to the sidewalk. He then took off, bobbling quickly and purposefully down the sidewalk in the direction of the trucks, which was, to my chagrin, in the opposite direction of coffee. I watched him for a few moments, unworried because I'd tried to get him to walk the half-block to the park before without success--he was easily distracted, he sometimes fell, and sometimes started climbing stairs to neighbors' houses. Today, though, he got about halfway between me and the end of the block before I realized I better get moving. He was walking straight, quickly and confidently. Even over the most kitty-wompus bits of sidewalk he kept his balance and his forward momentum, bending his knees, pausing and then shooting off once he reached more level ground. Once we reached the trucks at the end of the street we simply stood and stared, he at the trucks, and me at him. He yelled and yodelled his excitement, and when his interest waned he let me bundle him into the stroller without protest so I could finally get my coffee.

Title trouble

2004-11-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

Hey folks. I am editing the main page here so that the titles appear properly in those blog collector thingies--what are they called, aggregator feeds? In any case, the titles now appear correctly in my feed listing, but not at the blogspot itself. Is it my browser, or does this page no longer have titles for the entries?

I'm not going to futz with this too much, since BIG CHANGES are coming. Cue eerie music and maniacal laughter. Mwah, ha ha.

Charmed, I'm sure

2004-11-18T05:48:00.000-08:00

One of my very favorite things the duck does is something I call the Incredible Hulk Smile. He grins hugely while also (hence the name) holding out his arms and clenching his fists, a la Lou Ferrigno.

So imagine my delight the other day when he was eating lunch in his high chair and I said, "It's been a while since I've seen the Incredible Hulk Smile." And voila, he grinned, stuck out his arms and bunched up his fists.

I've got Incredible Hulk Smile on demand, people. This mother's mind boggles at my good fortune.

A study in contrasts

2004-11-17T18:27:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was great. The duck woke at 7:52 a.m. allowing me a nice cushion of time to myself in the morning so I could do my PT exercises (my right shoulder has been messed up since he was just a few weeks old--I've got curved-in mama shoulders), sit in front of my sun box, meditate with my finger labyrinth and write in my journal. He woke; we played. Then later, after lunch, I tried to convince him to go upstairs, but he wanted to play for a few minutes more, then he started upstairs on his own! Oh, how I love those moments, when he so clearly signals what he wants. Then he went to sleep quickly and slept for nearly two hours, allowing me to write blog entries and read those of other people. He woke; we read books. We also went to Target during which he was awfully screamy, then he refused to eat anything at dinner. But he did go to sleep quickly after a very noisy protest, after which I hammered out my 1700+ words for my Nanowrimo goal, then went to watch TV and got in a chapter of my book before bed.

Today he woke early, screamed often and refused to go down for a nap until 3 p.m after which he slept for a bare forty minutes and woke screaming, unable to be appeased for twenty minutes until I got him out of the house and into the car on the way to the comic book store for new comic day. So no new blog entries till now, after I finally finished my very difficult word goal for the novel. But no meltdowns or crying on my part, so I was able to maintain some balance, perhaps because of the leftover goodwill from yesterday.

It's difficult to have a very hard day after a very good one; it feels especially unfair. But, as my father never hesitated to say, life isn't fair. So I'll just hope that tomorrow unfolds more pleasantly for the duck and me.

Perhaps I'm not a medication moderate

2004-11-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

I noted in a previous entry that I was a medication moderate when it came to the duck. My husband reminded me, though, that when the duck wakes in the middle of the night, any moderation flies out the window. Tylenol, teething tablets and how to get us all back to sleep as soon as possible are about the only things that occur to me. At 3 this morning, though, after I went in but the duck had nearly settled himself already, I did find room for a few additional thoughts: "wow, that was easy", and "well, if I'm up I might as well go to the bathroom."

Maybe it's just me, but

2004-11-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

"Sound and lights" is not a convincing selling feature for a toy.

Opting out of the mom olympics

2004-11-16T13:31:00.000-08:00

The other day at our grocery coop, a woman and her baby were ahead of me and mine at the checkout. We exchanged baby names, but didn't go the extra bit for each others'.

I leaned over the duck and said, "Duck, say hi to baby X," then added, "He doesn't talk yet, actually."

The other mother jumped right in. "Oh, baby X says a lot of words," and proceeded to list them. There may have been a fractional pause as she realized she was trying to one-up me in the mom olympics, and a definite moment of silence as I did not engage by countering with the duck's development milestones.

"Oh," she added, seemingly as apology, "but we really work at it with him."

Two primary responses vied for prominence in my brain: "Are you implying that I'm not trying to help my baby develop?" in an outraged tone, and "I try not to 'work' the baby; I figure he'll do just fine if we play." in a condescending tone. Instead I bade her a good day and left it at that.

When I feel anxious that he's not using words, I remind myself that the duck will do so when he is ready, just as he has done everything else. Outside commentary--from the doctor, from people like baby X's mom, and from the baby books--frays at my tenuous belief in him. Yet I am able to keep coming back to it; he will use words when he's ready. Whenever that is will be just when it should be, for him.

Another new thing

2004-11-16T13:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the duck went back and forth across the bouncy bridge several times, by himself, at the playground. He backed down one side,then turned around, stood up and walked, then stooped, to get up the other. The bouncy bridge is tough--it moves as you walk, and is steep at both ends. Plus it's open on both it's sides, making it rather nerve-wracking to spot him.

How's the baby's rash?

2004-11-16T13:29:00.000-08:00

How's the baby's rash? asked my friend Queenie, when we went out to the movies last night.

"Funny," I replied. "It's not red, it's skin colored, so you can't really tell till you touch him, then he's all bumpy."

"Oh, like a Braille baby."

"Exactly."

He's vocal, just not verbal

2004-11-15T05:17:00.001-08:00

The duck "talks" all the time. He babbles, he croons, he often seems to be singing. But we have yet to identify meaningful patterns to the babble. This may, we fully admit, be a failing on our part. My husband insists that "Ah DEE dah" means "I love you" but I have some doubts.

To me, the duck's language is nearly binary--it consists almost exclusively of the letter D and vowels. He throws in other consonants--K, G, B, M, N--occasionally, but it is D that he is most attached to.

He loves himself so much...

2004-11-15T05:17:00.000-08:00

He drinks his own bathwater. He leans over in the bath to put his face to the surface and comes up with a chin covered in bubbles. He also likes to find the bar of soap and bite it. He is not put off once he does, so we won't be able to use that as a punishment down the line. Not that we'd planned to. Perhaps I should sign us up for a swimming class.

Rash, redux

2004-11-13T18:18:00.000-08:00

Lots of good news at the duck's checkup. His height and weight are good, his head continues to be gigantic but not off the chart. His ears are clear, in spite of recent viruses. His development is good, but the doc was surprised to hear that he's still not even using mama and dada meaningfully. We assured him that the duck understands us, and he asked us for specifics on how the duck communicates his needs to us. Does he point? Well, no. But he does pick a book and bring it over and hold it up. Today, he started pushing his highchair into the kitchen when he got hungry. He started screaming at the children's museum when he got bored. He lets us know.

The doc took a look at the rash. The good news: I didn't cause it by using baby lotion. The better news: it isn't itchy. The best news: it isn't because he is sick, it's because he WAS sick, so it's not contagious. It's called Gianotti-Crosti syndrome, and I had a hard time looking it up on the internet when I got home, because it's not mentioned in any of the baby books I've got. It's a rash that's a reaction to having had a virus. The curious thing is that we think the last virus he had was roseola, and the doc concurred after we described it--high fevers for three days that ended with a flat, red rash over his entire body, then the fever broke and he was fine within 48 hours. But this rash is usually in response to much nastier viruses like hepatitus B and coxsackie, so we're not sure what he had that it's a response to, just that it's now over. The bad news? This unattractive rash is likely to last for at least six weeks. The worse news? He just got his MMR and chicken pox vaccines, both of which can also cause rashes like this one, so in a week or so he may be even more bumpy and crusty.

A quick note about vaccines. There's a lot of liberal scare stuff out there about the danger of vaccines. Before I had the baby I was quite worried about vaccines. Since then, I've done a lot of research and found that both the science and the rhetoric to support the anti-vaccination stance are pretty weak. The link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been disproved many times. While there is data that tied thimerosol to higher levels of autism, no infant vaccines are preserved with thimerosol anymore, so the issue is moot. I had no qualms about the duck receiving both the chicken pox and the MMR vaccines yesterday. I had both chicken pox and the mumps as a child. You know what? They sucked. Thirty years later, my memory of mumps is of intense pain.

I did not, however, get a flu shot for the duck, even though at just 15 months, he is considered to be in the at risk category. If he were still in day care and had increased exposure I would have considered it. According to our doc, the data is not conclusive that the flu shot helps, so we opted against it, even though he told us that different doctors would give different advice. I'm a medication moderate--when it's called for, use it; when in doubt, wait and see. When we took the duck in to see the doc when he was having the up and down high fevers, she commended us on our judicious use of Tylenol. We used it only when he was feverish and acting very sick and unable to sleep, not whenever he felt hot. A lot of time he was feverish and happy, so we wanted to let the fever burn through whatever virus was causing the ruckus.

When I got home after the checkup, I was thinking about the doctor asking us if the duck understood us. So when the duck brought me a book, I told him to go get his monkey so we could all read together; he turned around and got the monkey. When we finished with that book he got down from my lap and I told him to get Moo, Baa, La, La, La. He picked it out of several books. Later when he was playing, I asked if he could hand me a lion. He did. I asked for a zebra. Got that. I then asked for a giraffe, at which he seemed confused. So he doesn't have complete comprehension, but it does look like he's sharper than a sack of hippos. Even if he isn't using English yet.

Some days are harder than others

2004-11-12T11:21:00.000-08:00

Wednesday was a good day, even if my husband did get laid off at work. The duck woke late and happy, and he took a good nap in the afternoon, enabling me to ignore my Nanowrimo novel and instead indulge in some trashy TV on Tivo--part of a Wife Swap and part of a Trinny/Susannah What Not to Wear.

Yesterday was nothing so felicitous. He woke when I did, giving me no cushion of alone time, and only took an hour nap. He did have some happy periods, but screamed and screeched regularly throughout the day, including every single time I went to the bathroom. My husband had plans after work, so I was on my own with him all day (though we lunched with my friend Queenie), from 6:15 a.m. when he woke to 7:00 p.m. when it was time for bed. So all of life had to be crammed in after he went to bed: conversation with husband, email correspondence, blog entries, Nanowrimo goal of 1700 words per day, dinner, TV and a few pages of book.

I think he's fussy and sleeping less well because of imminent teeth. He also seems to have sprouted a strange rash. My alarmist self thinks it's chicken pox (I thought the same thing about the roseola he had two weeks ago). My practical self thinks it's a reaction to the baby lotion I put on him last night after his bath, worried that his skin seemed a little dry. His 15 month checkup is today, though, so we get to ask the doctor instead of trying to figure it out on our own. It would be ironic if it were German Measles or chicken pox, though, since he may be due for those vaccinations today.

Is it any more ironic, though, than that baby products are mostly bad for babies? All those years, and I thought the baby oil, baby lotion, baby bath, baby cream, baby shampoo, baby powder, etc. was made for babies but used by adults. Instead, I get good and stocked on all the stuff before having the baby, only to discover he needs almost nothing. He needs Dove soap. And diaper-rash cream with zinc. That's it. Seriously. Anything else is at best worthless, and potentially even harmful, e.g. rash-inducing. So I've got all these baby products, some of which I use myself in order to use them up, and others of which lie fallow, until I think I've got enough justification to use them, such as a little baby lotion for the dry skin and chapped cheeks, and then wham. Rash. I'm just hoping that this rash is from the lotion, and not some nasty virus. Again with the irony, that I'm hoping that I was the one to cause the baby's rash. If it's a reaction to a product, it will go away, and I'll never use the product again. If it's a virus, though, then he'll be sick again. I just want him to be well and happy. I wish it were easier done than said.

No, really, there's nothing new

2004-11-11T17:41:00.000-08:00

I don't think the duck did anything new yesterday. This morning, though, when I went in to get him up he had bounced the crib a few inches away from the wall. I'm not sure if I should get those wheel stops to prevent it from happening, or just see how far he can get. I'm inclined to the latter.

2004-11-10T05:37:00.000-08:00

New things

My previous thought, which has thus far been disproved for a week, now, is that babies don't in fact do something new every day. I probably thought this about major milestones, like crawling, walking, talking, etc. Big milestones are interesting because they are both gradual and sudden. Gradual, in that I can see him working up to them for quite some time. Sudden, because the first time occurs in a flash, and has often been so quick, so fleeting, that I doubt it has even occurred. Did he really take a step, or did I just imagine it? It is only after he has been doing something for a while that I feel like he is really doing it, at which point it doesn't feel new, because he'd been doing it for a while, building up from those ephemeral, "did he or didn't he" moments to "yep, he'd definitely doing that."

I forgot to note that the other night when he ate pizza for the first time, we also went out to Crema Cafe, and he had Sonny's ice cream for the first time--raspberry chocolate chip, which he loved. He'd had Sonny's sorbet before, but not yet ice cream. Sometimes the new things are just gradations or variations on old things.

One thing he's been doing for at least several days is periodically spitting out what he's drinking from his sippy cup. I began to take away the cup firmly and say "no spitting." Then yesterday, when he spat something out, he promptly held out the cup for me to take away. We went to the playground and he climbed up on the jungle gym, but was using the footholds much better than he has previously. He backed onto the bridge, which he has done before, but began to bounce it himself, which he has not.

It all makes me wonder if perhaps we still do something new every day, which we'd notice if only we paid more attention.

2004-11-09T13:26:00.000-08:00

Cute, but not very bright

Our friend Queenie gave the duck a shape bucket for his birthday--there are four pieces and four holes: circle, square, tria
3.nge
63l

3
+6+

Add.i
tional typing by the duck.

Circle, square, triangle and star.

He gets the circle piece in the circle hole, no problem. But he absolutely cannot get any of the other pieces into their correct spots. In fact, he is so far from doing that that he will try to put them through the circle hole, even when we're doing it like a puzzle, and the circle piece is IN the hole--he will try to put another piece on top of it. Sometimes he doesn't even bother trying the other pieces, and just throws them.

So while other parents are out there teaching++ their kids words, and sending them to swim classes so they walk quicker, and exposing their kids to the entire Baby Einstein oeuvre, I'm just hoping that he hangs onto his looks. /He's looking like he might +++-*******end up sharp *as a sack of hippos.

Again, additional
typing and
line breaks by my writing partner, the duck.

2004-11-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

My son, the contrarian

The duck is now equally skilled at going both up and down stairs. Without fail, though, he will decide to go the opposite way that I want him to. In the morning, after his diaper change, I'll bring him downstairs and he'll climb back up. For later diaper changes, I'll try to take him up and he'll turn around and back down. Just to see if this opposite thing worked, the other night, after I'd been trying to get him to go upstairs for his bath and he was instead backing down the stairs, I stayed at the bottom of the stairs and told him to come on downstairs. Up he went.

So it looks like I'm going to have to perfect the Bizarro method of parenting. As if I'm not confused enough already.

2004-11-08T18:56:00.000-08:00

He almost, but not quite, didn't do something new today

"Hey," I said, after my husband put the duck to bed. "He didn't do anything new today!"

"Have you ever seen him put his finger up his nose, then eat it?"

"Well, um, no."

"He didn't necessarily have a booger that he ate, but the finger did go up the nose and then into the mouth."

"Unpleasant, but definitely new."

Perhaps this is the one I'll tell to a little old lady the next time one says that they do something new every day.

Also, he is sounding very, very close to talking. He babbles constantly, but there are some instances that are beginning to sound deliberate, like a "Dizah" sound when I read Dinosaur's Binkit.

According to the doctor at his last check up, the duck is supposed to have about eight words at his next appointment.

That's this Friday. I keep telling him he'd better get crackin'. He just responds, "Ah DEE dah."

2004-11-07T18:32:00.001-08:00

Awake, 6 a.m., every day last week

Apparently, the duck didn't get the memo about daylight savings time. So he went from going to bed at 7 and waking up at 7 to going to bed at 7 and waking at 6. He's waking up happy, chatting and crooning to his duck and sheep blankie, so this morning I did not get him up till 7 anyway, but I'm desperately hoping his circadian rhythms will catch up. I need a little morning time before getting swept up into the mom-a-whirl.

2004-11-07T18:32:00.000-08:00

I'm still wrong

Welcome to days five and six of my continually failing experiment to disprove the little old ladies small talkism "babies do something new every day".

Yesterday the duck ate pizza for the first time (Pizza Luce, of course) and was mesmerized both by seagulls and an airplane in the sky over Target, pointing insistently and shouting "Ay, ah, Ay, ah." Could he mean airplane? It's a leap, I think.

Today, we noticed that he's taking his little plastic giraffe and tucking it behind his ear and going "ah, ah, ah." We think he's pretending to talk on the phone. Also, he held out toys to me, and when I'd reach to take them, he'd pull them back, psyche!

2004-11-06T09:15:00.000-08:00

Me vs. the old ladies, round 4

Again, yesterday, I got through till five o'clock with the duck not doing anything new. (Aha, but is this because I'm a stay-at-home mom, and am just doing the same things with him every day? I keep thinking I need to start art projects and play more music or something. Sigh. It will _never_ be good enough, I swear.)

Then we went to a Guy Fawkes party at another family's house. We've offered him salmon and tuna before; always he has refused. Last night, though, he was loving the fish and chips. Then, with the other kids he discovered one of my favorite childhood toys, the Hopper Popper, and ran across the floor with it. Finally, we went outside to burn things and he was mesmerized by the fire, and shouted and crooned and was altogether a very excited baby. So three new things: fish, hopper popper and love of things on fire.

When my sisters and I were little, my father hated the Hopper Popper. He took to hiding it in more and more difficult places. He finally gave up when one of us turned up, excited and dusty and smudged, "Daddy, daddy, look what I found in the attic! It's our Hopper Popper!" He could either throw it away or give in, knowing that we'd eventually tire of the toy. He let us keep it. Perhaps soon I will have a Hopper Popper in my own house that I will come to loathe.

2004-11-05T11:46:00.000-08:00

In which I prove--twice!--that I am still able to think fast

I was in the parking lot, waiting for a spot, when I saw two cars pull out at the same time. Neither noticed the other and collision was imminent.

I honked loudly. Perhaps they looked back at me and thought, what the hell's her problem, then got a glance of the looming fender of the other car that was REALLY close to theirs, and felt sheepish. One waved, the other backed out first, then the waver went, I pulled in, and that was that.

Later, the duck was asleep for the night. My husband and I were watching TV in the basement. Our security system was armed. We heard a loud beep from the baby monitor and both jumped up. It wasn't the security system--that would have continued to go off. On the run up the stairs, I first identified the beep: the smoke detector in the duck's room. But why was it going off? Were the batteries low? Before we reached the first floor I'd gotten it: the humidifier we'd put in to help relieve his cold was setting it off. We reached the second floor and removed the humidifier. The beeps subsided, having never woken the duck.

2004-11-05T11:28:00.000-08:00

Is it worth it?

As I may have mentioned here, sometimes this parenting thing is tough. Some people have asked if it's worth it. I'd be lying if I said the answer was always yes. There have been days, sometimes several in a row, during which I long for my old life, going out to dinner, and oh how I miss the movies. But I didn't sign on to this gig because I thought it would be easy. The payoffs are numerous. I'm learning what really matters to me because it's often so hard to make it happen. I have to scramble sometimes to read and write, but I'm doing them, and I value them that much more. I'm also learning to manage my anger, and how to practice acceptance on a basis so frequent that sometimes I swear I have to do it every conscious moment. These are theory, though. Here are some points of practice:

The feeling of success I get when I am able to correctly intuit what the baby needs--food, nap, exercise. It has taken me over 14 months of practice, but it happens more and more often.

The shocking joy of being on the receiving end of a spontaneous baby hug.

The enormous smile with seven visible teeth that I get when I come into the room. (He has a total of ten that have broken through, and at least two more are imminent.)

Listening to him croon and babble happily for over half an hour when he woke this morning.

His soft skin, the downy red-gold hair on his head, the curve of his cheek, his chubby feet and thighs.

My absolute favorite thing that he does is this weird smile, where he grins hugely and tenses up his arms and hands--I call it the Incredible Hulk smile. It makes me laugh and laugh when he does it. Every time he does it, I think, yeah, it is SO worth it.

2004-11-05T11:27:00.000-08:00

Me vs. the old ladies: 0 for 3

Yes, day 3 of my experiment in whether the duck does something new every day. I really thought yesterday was going to be the day. That it was just two days of flukes. Then he fell off the couch. (Not far, and I was right there, and he was easily comforted.) Later, as he was playing on the landing, he reached up for the bannister, grabbed it and either just lifted his feet up to hang, or even might have pulled himself up a bit.

We're in the midst of day 4 of this experiment, and thus far nothing new.

One thing he's been doing for a while now that's very cute is sidling. He's mastered forward motion at top speed, so now he's practicing evasive maneuvers. He's a tricksy little guy.

2004-11-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

I am a reasonably intelligent person

So why can't I figure out the directions for the baby toilet clamp? (For any non-parents, this is so to prevent the baby from playing/drowning in the toilet. Yet doesn't it make sense for them to make friends (under supervision, of course) with the toilet, make it seem like a fun thing? That's the advice we got for the bed when we were encouraging him to nap.)

I feel like I'm in the twilight zone--the pieces in the box do not seem to match the pieces pictured in the instructions. But there are only three--how hard can this be? I read it again and again and it doesn't make sense. And no, it's not written in badly translated English.

2004-11-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

Newsflash: I might be wrong

Yesterday at the coffee shop, a little old lady said, "Oh, babies do new things every time you look." I held my tongue, since I still feel bad about the last time I heard a variation on this nugget, when my 90-year-old grandmother who I don't see very often said "Oh, he does something new ever day."

"No, he doesn't," I snapped, "he sometimes goes days without doing anything new."

I have no idea why I was so cranky and out of sorts that day. The sky is blue... (On a side note, I find it amusing that some people, notably members of my husband's pub quiz team, think he's cranky. Perhaps, but only until he is juxtaposed with me. Then, in order to maintain equilibrium in the universe, he has to be Zen Buddha guy. I never encounter him not juxtaposed with me, thus to me he is almost always calm, not cranky, like me.)

So when I heard the lady in the coffee shop say the same thing, I bit my tongue, did not snap at her, and thought, well, I'll prove her wrong. I bet he doesn't do a new thing every day. I will keep track on the blog. This should be easy.

Yesterday, the duck slithered down the basement stairs all by himself. And he did the same thing on the cement back steps, where just last month he did not one but two face plants. He also rolled a ball back and forth with his dad.

Today, he began to shake his booty to music. I don't just mean he danced--he's been bobbing to music for a while. I mean he literally did a little squat and shake while I sang Mary Had a Little Lamb. Imagine what will happen if I play him something with a strong bass line.

Then, at dinner tonight, just for the usual futility of putting what we eat on his plate (while having a hot dog ready as back up) I flung him a few pad thai noodles. He slurped them up. And to prove it wasn't a fluke, he did it again and again. We've given him mac and cheese and every variation on kid-friendly pasta, and it's pad thai that he gobbles up.

It's only been two days, so it's hardly a representative sample, but I'm going to keep tracking this. You heard it here, folks: babies may in fact do something new EVERY DAY.

2004-11-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

Board books

I've spent a lot of time reading board books lately. The duck will grab one, toddle over and hold it aloft with an expectant look on his face. This moment is repeated throughout the day and it never ceases to be cute. I can, and do, sometimes express displeasure with the book he has chosen, but the fetching and holding are, at least thus far, beyond reproach.

The duck, though, is not satisfied with one read, front to back. Usually he likes to go forward, then backward and will go up and back many times. Most times my husband and I will tire of a book long before the duck does. Also, the duck turns pages at a fast clip, so it's important to read fast and not get too attached to reading everything on one page. He sometimes skips pages, and he doesn't seem to notice, or care. We, on the other hand, do notice and are damn glad, especially during Green Eggs and Ham, which is a very long book, especially if you have to read it several times in a row, front and back, again and again.

I've come to appreciate books that have enough words to read quickly but not so many that reading them is futile. Too few words is deadly boring. Story books that have been converted to board books don't work so well--too many words, not enough rhyme or rhythm to keep his interest. Also some books work well going either forward or backwards.

So if you're looking for a book for a child, you need to consider both the child and the adult. A baby is likely to get bored by too long a story, and adult by one that is too short. Test drive a book by reading it aloud. Some books have terrible rhymes that are difficult and uneven to read. I like most of the Boynton board books, but Dinos to Go is like that--bad rhymes plus too long. Then read it forward and backward. If you can read it 6 times in a row without stumbling, cursing or growing bored, then it might work out.

2004-10-31T18:32:00.000-08:00

Fever

The duck has been feverish for days. It comes and it goes. We've measured it a few times above 103. Sometimes he's crabby, sometimes he's fine. The nights have been terrible. We took him to the pediatrician, who confirmed that his ears and lungs are clear, in spite of a juicy cough. She also said that we were medicating appropriately--only when he was miserable, and not every time his temp spiked.

He woke from his nap today with a fever of 103.5 and a rash. My dad says it
sounds like roseola, so we'll see. The book says that the rash should come after the fever breaks, which obviously it didn't. I hope that it is roseola, which is not serious and passes quickly. I also hope that my husband G. Grod and I can't catch it.

The past 2 nights have been terrible--like back at the newborn stage
where we are "privileged" to get one three hour stretch of sleep at the
end, after wakings anywhere from every 15 minutes to every hour. And
nothing seems to help. He won't accept teething remedies like frozen
washcloths, chilled teethers or even his former fave, metal spoons. And
Tylenol/Motrin are not helping for any long stretch of time.

His gums are bulging with the incoming molars and I see a little peep of white where one of the second set of incisors is finally coming in. His face and torso are covered with a speckly rash and he was screaming and crying at bathtime. My husband and I were in tears too, utterly helpless to do anything to alleviate his misery, except give him some ibuprofen and hope that he sleeps tonight and that tomorrow he'll be fever free.

2004-10-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Best-laid plans

We had planned to leave this morning for a family reunion. My husband and I were trepidatious about the car trip. The duck is not a world-class traveler. That is one reason that we chose to live close in to a city, so car trips would be short and infrequent. He had a cough yesterday, but woke this morning (after sleeping 12 hours without interruption--yay!) feverish and very upset. He was mostly miserable throughout the morning, whimpering frequently. After lunch, he went down for a nap, during which I had to coax him back to sleep 2 or 3 times. He woke from the nap crying inconsolably and blazing hot with a temp of 103.8. We gave Tylenol and Dad carried him till he was in better spirits. An hour later his temp was down a degree, and an hour after that it's down another two. He's been playing happily for most of the afternoon now.

A couple thoughts. One, it's much easier for me to handle his screams when I know what is wrong. It has been easy for me today to sing, to carry, rock, jiggle and try to assure him that even though he feels crappy now it will pass, even though he's gone on some very long crying jags. It is the non-specific, erratic fussiness punctuated with ear-splitting screams, that wreaks havoc on my nerves and balance.

Two, when I was growing up, I frequently got sick as a way of getting attention or getting out of things. When I was younger, I did this subconsciously. It wasn't imaginary illness, though, it was actual vomiting. As a teenager I sought the same results overtly, by acting destructively and faking illness. At 14 months, I hope the duck is too young to have picked up on the illness manipulation trick. It did effectively get him out of a long car ride, though. I'll have to keep an eye on this.

2004-10-27T13:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you get lucky

The duck is napping. After less than an hour, he woke, hooting with displeasure. I leapt up from the computer and sprinted across the upstairs and into his room. I patted his back, gently guiding him to lay back down, and continued to rub his back till he fell asleep again. !!!!

2004-10-27T13:10:00.000-07:00

I am a skilled, capable, intuitive mother

See how quickly things can change, here? During lunch, the duck looked tired, so I quickly got him cleaned up and to his room for a diaper change and the nap ritual. I left the room, he squawked and was quiet. But when I checked after 10 minutes, he was sitting up. At 15, he hollered, so I went in and checked his diaper; he had pooped. I executed a quick, quiet diaper change, sang to him, rubbed his back, then left. He squawked just a bit, but was asleep in five minutes and, after the aforementioned waking and being coaxed back to sleep, has just finished hour 2 of his nap. Woo hoo, ladies and gentlemen. I said, woo hoo.

2004-10-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

"It's so much harder than I ever thought it would be."

This quote from Jennifer Weiner's new book, Little Earthquakes, resonated painfully for me when I read it. In my head, I am a Bad Mother; I am just about every Bad Mother there ever was. Here are things I have done, in my head: shaken the baby; slapped him; punched him; hit him upside the head with his sippy cup; dropped him; screamed at him--to shut up, that I regret having had him, that I'll give him something to cry about. In my head I have committed suicide, gotten drunk, taken pills. I have left my husband and the baby to fend for themselves.

I have only actually done one of these. On some recent bad day, I was gritting my teeth and trying to do something around the new house that I could also do with a fussy, active baby under foot. I settled on watering the plants. As I climbed over the baby gate for the millionth time that day, then tripped over the recycling and spilled the water, the baby let out his Glass-Shattering Shriek of Random Rage. I didn't even turn around, it just poured out of my head, out of my mouth, "Shut up!" Immediate shame washed over me. I wondered if one of the neighbors had heard. I certainly would have earned condemnation from myself in the olden days, something like, "Some people just shouldn't be parents."

Things have been particularly difficult for several days, now. The weather is cold and gray. The baby has gone from waking later in the morning, which gave me some precious, necessary time to myself, to waking before dawn. He screams during the night, needing comfort to get back to sleep. His naps get shorter each day. Yesterday's was barely an hour. The baby is ill-tempered, probably because his molars are coming in. It's only logical that bone punching through flesh would make him irritable, sleepless and out of sorts. Yet there is no logic in my response. Only anger as I feel my stress levels spike as he screams. Frustration as he refuses teething remedies. Aching wrists as I try to comfort him and he attempts to squirm out of my grasp. Annoyance as I fight so he doesn't crack his head against the floor. Disbelief at the irony when he smacks me, hard, in the face with his sippy cup. I have never been so tired for so long. I never knew how angry I was until I had a baby, till I had to keep it in my head and not act on it. This is payback, I think, for every judgmental thought I ever had about mothers back when I was a smug DINK. My husband never hesitates to remind me, to say I told you so.

Today is better than yesterday was, than the day before and before. I got time to myself this morning, and have time to write, now. I talked to some other moms about getting out, getting together, getting help. I need the time not only for me, but also for him, so I can stop reacting on such a visceral, basic level. So I can think, "He's screaming because he hurts, not because he's angry at me." So I can come up with another plan when one fails. Motherhood _is_ so much harder than I ever thought it would be. Some days I wonder if I can survive it.

Here is where a writer would normally finish with a sunny, compensating conclusion, but I'm not going to. I'm writing this because I wanted to to get these thoughts out of my head in a way that isn't hurtful. The only hopeful conclusion I have is that today is better, and that I've been able to respond to him without anger, even when he's been fussy and difficult. I'm the parent. I only wish that this meant that I knew what I was doing.

2004-10-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

A parenting success

We've been in chaos around the move, these past months. One of my fervent hopes was that our family would begin to establish routines. After a month in the new house, things are still chaotic, but we have had some success, most notably at dinnertime. We start cooking dinner early, around 5, then sit down to eat as a family around six. After that, it's bathtime for the duck, then naked time, then bedtime books and bed. Our new routine has worked especially well for the duck, who recognizes his bedtime and even embraces it, chatting happily to his two lovies after we turn out the lights. But it also works well for my husband and me. We now have the rest of the evening for ourselves, separately and together. It takes some planning and focus, but I think everyone's happier for it.

2004-10-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

Newsflash: teeth don't arrive in order

Which I would have known, if I'd consulted the baby book BEFORE I saw the honkin' molar in the middle of the duck's mouth.

In the month since we moved into our new old house, the duck has been sleeping well at night, for a stretch of about 12 hours. During the past week, though, he began waking around midnight, often acting as if in pain. Since he hadn't gotten any teeth since July, I've thought that he's been way past due for some new ones. He's got four on top and two on bottom. I'd been expecting bottom rectangles, or upper vampires. Not random middles. Imagine my surprise when I caught a flash of gigantic molar in the back left middle of his mouth. Turns out you're supposed to get the front rectangles, then the middle molars, then the vampire teeth.

Those are the technical terms, you know.

2004-10-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

Lunch

We bought food books so we could get ideas on what to feed the baby, since I was feeling so inept. Breakfast today went well. I gave him his usual yogurt, plus O's, plus diced peaches. He ate it all; he liked it all. For lunch, I made pasta with tuna and peas. I also re-heated the baked sweet potato with leftover peach juice from the breakfast fruit--clever! The pasta recipe, which said it took 20 minutes, took nearly 45. During that time the duck rampaged about the kitchen, flinging tin foil and ziplock bags hither and yon. I dirtied about a zillion dishes making the meal. Then, when I put him in the chair, he refused it all, together and separately. So I gave him some milk and put him down for a nap. When he woke, I tried again. He refused again. So I got out applesauce, which he ate. I snuck a few peas in it; he ate those, though he spit out some of the skins. I gave him a hunk of baguette. He liked that. I gave him jarred baby food sweet potatoes. He liked those. Then I made a roll up of a slice of turkey bologna and a slice of co-jack cheese. He ate some bologna and all the cheese.

So at the end of the day, I spent a lot of time cooking and cleaning, and he still likes what he likes: fruit, bread, cheese, select meats and pureed, jarred veggies. I may have to keep buying baby food veggies in jars. He is eating some people food, just not solid veg quite yet.

2004-10-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

Food isn't fun

Feeding the duck is driving me crazy. Or, rather, I am driving myself crazy feeding the duck. I finally stopped buying baby food, figuring it was time to make a serious effort to get him to eat people food. All well and good, but he doesn't like real vegetables. I've tried canned and frozen peas and green beans, both of which he liked as purees. One night he liked baked sweet potato slices, one night he didn't. Complicating matters is that he veers between being cranky because he's constipated (because he does love both banana and cheese) or cranky because he has several poops in a day after I've given him prune juice because of the constipation. And every few days he gets a red ring around his anus, indicating that we've given him something that he's allergic or sensitive to. Because he eats a lot of different things each day, and some of those have multiple ingredients, it's very hard to isolate problem foods. The doctor and the book said "Give him what you eat." Easier said than done. We try, and most often he refuses it. We made soup and tried to give him the chunky stuff. He refused. And since we made enough soup for three nights, then we're scrambling for three nights to find something else for him to eat, that he'll agree to eat, that's reasonably nutritious and that won't give him constipation or a red ring on his bum. So far, we're not doing so well. He woke this morning with diaper rash, having been asleep in a very poopy diaper for who knows how long, plus having eaten something that disagreed. His poor little butt is as red as a monkey's. One of the women at the coffee shop recommended Burt's Bees diaper ointment, and I may try to give him extended naked time today, especially since it's rainy and we can't go to the park anyway. And now he's woken after only a 45 minute nap. Sigh.

2004-10-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

Book fiend

We'd read to the duck since before he was born, and he's been turning pages since he was about four months old. Lately, though, he's taken a more active role by getting a book, toddling over and holding it up with a pleading look on his face. It's quite endearing. The other day he had a go at the mass market paperbacks. I turned to find him holding up Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Excited, I thought this meant he was ready to move beyond Baby Faces and Hop on Pop. Alas, he put it right back down and crawled off in another direction. So we're back to reading board books, multiple times. But if he gives me another opening for a more interesting (to me) book, I'm going to take it.

2004-10-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

Watch where you aim that small talk, lady

The duck has been markedly fussy the past few days, letting loose with frequent, high-pitched screeches, and doing his darndest to lay his hands on every single thing in creation that would bug me. I stopped in a deli the other day to pick up a few things. I picked up just enough that I couldn't juggle the things and the duck, so while we were waiting in the VERY SLOW checkout line, I had to do a lot of shifting while I pulled him off the glass soda bottles conveniently located at baby eye level. I kept glancing at the cashier, wondering what the hell was taking so long, then back to the duck, then back to my pile of stuff.

"Oh, you can go ahead of me. I think you were here first," cooed a high-pitched voice to my left.

Surprised, I turned to find a woman with a cart standing where she hadn't been before. Damn straight I'm going ahead of you, lady, I most certainly was here first.

Alas, in the moment she distracted me, the duck managed to get hold of a glass Nantucket Nectar bottle (why not the plastic bottle of Diet Coke? Why?) and I had to wrestle it away. I've lost patience with the substitution game. It never works, and I feel like a sucker for trying it again and again. He's smart enough to know when he's got something I don't want him to, so getting it away quickly seems to be the best solution to a bad situation, like ripping off a Band-Aid. The duck threw his usual "you took something I really, really wanted, you mean mommy" tantrum. I closed my eyes for a moment.

And the lady chimed in again, un-ironically, "It's such a fun age, isn't it, with all the motor skills developing?"

I looked over at her in disbelief. Did I not look as tired, harried and cold-ridden as I felt? Was the duck not gushing snot and wailing as if under torture?

Taking the path of least resistance, i.e., not punching her, I twitched the edges of my lips up in what I'm sure barely resembled a smile, and said, with full-on irony, "Yeah, it's just great."

2004-10-07T11:40:00.000-07:00

Some perspective

I've been feeling a bit down on myself as a mom...

OK, how many moms ever feel like, "I've been feeling I've been doing a GREAT job as a mom lately..."? Gotta say, for me it's pretty rare. Anyhoo.

I've been feeling a bit down on myself because of how ragged I've been at the end of some recent days. Tired, bitchy, and feeling like my major accomplishments were not losing my temper and doing something damaging to either the baby or to myself. The common thread on these days? A short, one-ish hour nap by the duck. It happens more than it doesn't, so I felt I should be better able to handle it.

Yet caring for the duck is a twelve-hour day--about 7 a.m to 7 p.m. How many jobs have you working a twelve-hour shift, full on except for an hour break?

Some certainly, but not ones whose labor practices are on the up and up.

I now feel perfectly justified in feeling tapped out at the end of a day that contained any nap less than two hours. And justified for collapsing in front of the TV rather than unpacking, cleaning or organizing our new house. Though I do fear for our future here if we don't make some progress.

Now, if I can only find the magic formula to get two-hour naps. Or, gasp, something even longer. Sigh. Heaven.

I don't think it's going to happen today. I peeked in on him after he'd finally fallen asleep and there was an unmistakeable whiff of poop to the air. Argh. Why couldn't he have gone before I changed his diaper, before the nap? Now his dirty diaper will all but ensure that he doesn't sleep soundly and long. So many nap variables. Such a short, short window of time to myself.

Again, sigh.

2004-10-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

Last night at our house during the duck's naked time

Me: He's pooped.
My husband: How can you tell?
Me: Because he's got shit hanging out of his ass.

It's a glamourous life.

About the time the duck started to walk, I began to let him have naked time after his bath so he could air dry after being cooped up in diapers all day. I was torn between doing naked time before bath when he was still dirty and after, to allow for the air drying. I've stuck with after, in spite of a fair number of out-of-diaper occurrences. We just clean it up. If we had a diaper on him, we'd have to change it anyway.

2004-10-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

A review of Desperate Housewives, by a desperate housewife

I watched the pilot for ABC's much touted new nighttime soap Desperate Housewives, and it made me realize I've got some work to do.

For anyone under a rock, the show begins when Mary Alice, one of the Stepford-y women of Wisteria Lane offs herself. She is found by the Nosy Neighbor, and the wake is attended by her four friends: Bree (Melrose Place alum Marcia Cross), in major Martha mode; Susan (Teri Hatcher), completely unbelievable as the desperate single mom, and on whom low-rise jeans are strangely unflattering; Gabrielle (Eva Longoria), essentially playing the slutty housewife with the heart of gold; and Lynnie (Felicity Huffman), the former executive ground down by four kids in three years. Lynnie's impregnating husband is played by another MP alum, Doug Savant, in an effort, perhaps, to distance himself from his role as the Gay Guy. Rounding out the neighborhood is the New Single Guy, the potential love interest for Susan who's got a secret, and Nicolette Sheridan, sporting some awful plastic surgery, playing the Nasty Slutty Single Mom. We are shown in the middle that Mary Alice's husband has a Secret. In the end, we learn that Mary Alice had a Secret too. Note to producers: postmarks show when things are sent, NOT when they arrive.

There were fun moments in the pilot, but what struck me mostly was its meanness to the women. Their desperation is played for laughs, and too often, at least for me, what they showed was too sad to be funny. Susan shoving her daughter's project down the sink to create a clog, Lynnie jumping in the pool at a wake--these were too painful to be funny. The husbands are not shown in a more flattering light, though, so perhaps the show is misanthropic, not misogynistic.

Lynnie had my two favorite moments. One, when she was in the grocery store and had to chat with a former co-worker, who asked the inevitable "Don't you love being a mother?" My response to this facile piece of idiotic small talk is to say shortly, "Sometimes," then get away from the insipid questioner as quickly as possible. Lynnie did what she had to; she lied. In my opinion, this is another socially acceptable alternative to what the questioner deserves: to get her lungs ripped out.

My other favorite moment was when Lynnie's husband returns to find her covered in strained peaches and under siege. He bribes the kids to play outside for 20 minutes, then initiates sex. When she tells him she's off the pill and they have to use a condom, he grins and says they should risk it. She, rightfully, punches him. And I laughed. Because that was funny.

Satirizing the suburban lifestyle goes back at least to the original Stepford Wives. This show, like the Stepford remake, doesn't seem quite clear in what it's satirizing. Desperate housewives and hypocritical husbands have been done to death--they're not funny anymore. Perhaps this show is taking a deeper jab, at those of us viewers who are entertained when perfect-seeming people suffer.

What I am left with, though, is the uncomfortable knowledge that I am a cliche. I'm a stay at home mom who quit her executive job to look after the baby full time. I complain about finding time for myself and time to write. I'm frustrated and tired. I'm wearing a sweatshirt of my husband's and spent the morning wiping my son's runny nose, then feeding him cookies while we watched Sesame Street. My adult interaction is at the counter of the local coffee shop.

When I resigned, I cannot count how many people said to me with envy in their voices, "You're so lucky." And I am. I'm glad not to be working in corporate America anymore. I'm glad that my husband makes enough money so that this choice is possible. (NB: it's not luxurious, it's sometimes not even comfortable, it's just possible.) I used to get a salary and benefits for what amounted to quite a lot of busy work and not a lot of valued content; I struggled to find time to write. Now, I'm still struggling to find time to write, but here I am, typing away happily while the baby naps. I am more likely to find time to write now that I am at home. Being a mom and housewife is hard--physically and emotionally. But so was being a corporate drone. I had a choice, I took it, I'm glad and I've got work to do--embrace the stay-at-homeness and quit griping about it. I would like to believe there's a way to be a stay-at-home mom that isn't desperate, and isn't pitiable. I'll let you know as I find it.

2004-10-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

Naptime, naptime, wherefore art thou, naptime?

I have just spend a blissful hour and twenty minute catching up on blogs.

Our past few months have been fraught with upheaval: I resigned my job, we spiffed up our condo, the duck and I left town while we sold it, we looked for a new place, found one, lost it, found another one, then had to wait 25 days between closings, so the duck and I went to a hotel, then out of town again, then back to a hotel, then into the new house, where we've been for 2 weeks plus a weekend. Is it any surprise that we're all feeling a bit discombobulated, here?

The good news is that the duck has been sleeping well at night. I think we have a lock on our bedtime routine, he recognizes it as such and he embraces it: Dinner, Bath, Naked Time, Milk with Dinosaur's Binkit and the Going to Bed Book, then lights out.

The same, alas, is not true for naptime. Most parent books say that a kid will transition from one nap to two, and will usually start to skip the morning nap. The duck, however, is the opposite. He still gets sleepy about 3 hours after he gets up in the morning, but will not go down for a second nap in the afternoon. This was fine in PA when he would wake up at 8 a.m., we'd have lunch at 11:30 and he'd nap right after. Back in MN, things aren't going so smoothly. He's crying every day at naptime, and he's only sleeping for just over an hour. I need his naptime in order to eat lunch and write. His awake time is very active and doesn't allow me much independent time

So I am persevering in trying to establish a nap routine. We wake up, I change his diaper and dress him, then we have breakfast, I get dressed and we go to the coffee shop. We get back, watch Sesame Street (or rather, I watch Sesame Street while he runs to and fro in the basement) I read some books, he acts tired, I give him some milk, read Snoozers, Pajama Time and Sometimes I Like to Curl up in a Ball, pull the shade and listen to him cry. I'm thinking I should add playtime in the park in there, between coffee and Sesame Street. This morning was too cold, though. Plus he and I both have colds, so we stayed inside.

The good news, though, is that he's just passed the hour and half mark, so perhaps things are looking up today. Ah, he hoots. It's been 2 hours. Better. Plus I've blogged. Yay!

2004-10-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

New toy

For months now, the duck has been coveting remote controls, phone handsets and our cell phones--anything with buttons, that lights up and beeps. I put off buying toys until we had moved, not wanting to juggle/pack/remember one more thing. On our first post-move trip to Target, though, new toys were on the list. My sister Sydney and I found a set of metallic keys with noise-making buttons and an Elmo cell phone. I had a moment of quandary as I stared at the Elmo cell phone and compared it to the rolling Fisher-Price rotary phone of my childhood. Shouldn't I get him the classic? Was I being a horrible yuppie parent if I got him the cell phone? Could I still be a yuppie since I'm a stay-at-home mom?

Then, a moment of clarity. The cell phone is like any phone we actually use. The rotary phone is all but extinct. Most people use cell phones or electronic handsets. A cell phone is not a yuppie accoutrement, but rather an artifact of everyday life. I felt no qualms as I placed the Elmo phone in our shopping cart.

The duck has very much enjoyed the Elmo phone. It's portable, so easy to put in the diaper bag. He even sometimes accepts it for a substitute when he has something else in his hands that I want to take away. When he flips open the bottom, it plays the opening bars of Elmo's World. We had a surreal moment, though, when I caught the duck repeatedly pressing the 6 button, with Elmo's cute squeaky voice going "six, six, six."

Elmo is red. He tempts little children. And their moms. Hmm.

2004-10-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

What have we done?

We're back from our extended baby adventure. We went to visit the in-laws for three weeks between closings. The duck had a good time, loved being with his grandparents and even got into some serious naps--from two hours to a record four and forty-five minutes! Sadly, now that we returned to MN and moved into our new old house, he's putting up a serious fuss every nap time. I don't even bother trying for a second nap anymore. And we're lucky if he goes beyond an hour and ten. Just enough time for me to eat. I'm dyin', here.

Plus we both have colds that I think we picked up from our first moms group. I joined in spite of not having a great feel for the group and figured I would give it some time. We'll see. For now, I'm feeling peevish and unwell.

There are a zillion things to do in the new old house, and writing has fallen to the bottom of the list for our first two weeks here. I will try, though, to push it higher. All those cobwebs can wait indefinitely, I'm sure.

2004-08-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

Moving Day

The duck was a champ during moving day. He took a good nap in the morning while the movers took out the stuff from the basement and the front of the apartment. Then he played happily while they moved the rest of the stuff, and was mostly good during lunch and our subsequent clean up and the removal of those many last odds and ends. We took him to his favorite restaurant, the Convention Grill, for dinner. He had cheeseburger and fries, plus his first bites of hot fudge sundae with bananas. It was late and we got lost on the way to the hotel, but he was so happy after that sundae that it was a joy. He laughed, and grinned, and made faces, and giggled. He was so giddy it was almost like he was drunk. And when we finally did get to the hotel, he had his bath and went to sleep without event, even though it was over an hour past his usual bedtime. And then he slept for ten hours straight, with no 3 to 5 a.m. waking. What an adventurous soul.

2004-08-20T07:33:00.000-07:00

A year ago right now the duck and I were getting acquainted.

Happy birthday, little duckie.

2004-08-18T20:06:00.000-07:00

Mom-friendly makeup

As I've navigated nearly a year of new motherhood, I have managed to hone a morning makeup regimen that is straightforward and does what needs to be done to hide lack of sleep and potential lapses in hygiene.

Cleanse: Cetaphil.
Moisturize Face: Olay SPF 15
Moisturize Eyes: whatever eye cream is at hand--they're all the same
Moisturize Body: Vaseline something or other
Conceal: Laura Mercier Secret Concealer around eyes
Brighten: Benefit Eye Bright under lower lashes and corners of eyes
Curl Lashes; Darken: Bobbi Brown Everything mascara (I think I preferred the Thickening formula)
Blush: Nars Portofino on cheeks, nose, chin and forehead
Lips: Zum Kiss Tangerine balm or Laura Mercier Dry Rose

2004-08-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome changes

Of late, the duck has stopped fighting nap time and actually embraces it. As always, when I notice him slowing down and getting fussy, I take him into the bedroom. Now, though, he nearly leaps from my arms into the pack-n-play (his temporary bed till we move) where he snuggles and chats with his duckie and his mouton blankie for a few minutes before falling asleep.

Also, while he still is not a quiet snuggler, he has become quite good at flinging his arms around me in a convincing hug. It's quite endearing.

I'm enjoying this phase.

2004-08-16T07:51:00.000-07:00

We've got a house

After much anxiety, we've found a house. There is a gap of about a month after our closing before we close on the new place, but we're going to manage it with hotel, family and friends. I've written more on my other weblog, Girl Detective about the details of the house hunt.

It's a 2-story 1917 Craftsman bungalow, in mostly good shape but in need of a new kitchen sooner than later. The duck will finally get his own room, stairs to climb up and down, a play area in the basement, plus a really cool treehouse in the backyard. My husband and I will get our own room--hooray--with his and hers closets.

Now we just have to pack and move. Ack.

2004-08-15T18:44:00.000-07:00

One year check up

On Friday, a week before his birthday, the duck weighed 21 pounds 12 oz. (35-40th percentile), didn't even squirm when we measured him at 30 inches long (55-60%) and his head continues to be gigantic, in the 95th percentile.

He is meeting or exceeding nearly all of his development milestones: walking, stacking blocks, climbing up AND down, feeding himself, drinking from a sippy cup, six teeth.

He does not seem, however, to be speaking meaningfully. He says both ma ma and da da, but does not seem to match those sounds to a person. So by his next appointment, at 15 months, he's supposed to do that and have at least six words, the doc said.

I'm afraid we're failures as parents. Sigh.

Just kidding. The doc assured us not to be concerned over the weight. I can't remember him telling us not to worry about the words, though. We didn't admit that we don't play So Big or Pat a Cake. Again, failures.

The doc noted that his ears looked great, with no fluid. He would not, however, attribute this to being gone from daycare. He said it was normal during the summer for ears to clear up. This is the first time, though, that we have not been to the doc in between check-ups since the duck's first cold last November. He's had a three month stretch of good health, which I don't think can be attributed alone to the summer.

We did get the go ahead to give him cow's milk, eat all foods except honey, chokable and highly allergenic ones (peanuts, shellfish) and to turn his car seat forward. He has taken to cow's milk immediately, and I've been able to drop one more nursing session. We're down to just one a day, now--the 3-5 a.m. waking. I'm desperately hoping that when we move and the duck finally has his own room that there will be no more 3-5 a.m. waking. It's been a long, sleepless year.

2004-08-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

Can't moms just get along?

I followed a link from Jen Weiner's blog to a thread at mothering.com. In it, moms come up with slogans that would never be found there, things endorsing Babywise, formula, crying it out, etc. I've written before about my annoyance with Mothering and its knee jerk liberalism that's heavy on judgment and light on fact. This thread of comments felt the same way. Then I followed another link to a mom who was bothered by it, and her entry had twenty comments, 18 of which slammed the mothering moms.

Two, though, did not. One pointed out that the Mothering moms are proponents of attachment parenting, a style that endorses co-sleeping, sling wearing and extended breastfeeding among other things. These parenting choices are not widely accepted, so attachment parent (or AP) moms tend to get a lot of shit, and a forum like that on Mothering would be a good, safe place to blow off steam.

A second mom said that she co-slept and wore her baby in a sling and could she still play with the other moms.

The other eighteen (and more now, I'm sure) seemed oblivious to the two.

I've tried the AP route, and it hasn't worked well for the duck, his dad, or me. I feel I'm more a mom in the middle, one who chose and was able to breastfeed but didn't co-sleep and rarely slinged. I think a lot of the 18 moms are like me: tried it and it didn't work. So to assuage guilt we could attack the AP moms, who kept it up. While the AP moms are attacking moms like us who do let the babes cry it out sometimes, or whatever else.

My one lesson, which I'm itching to shout at the next person who directly questions my mothering (unlike the old lady on the elevator today who asked the duck if he had a good walk, and felt his hands and noted that they were cold--I hadn't put a jacket on him. Hard to respond to her, since she was ostensibly talking to him. Grr.) is this: moms need help and empathy, not judgment. You have no idea what a mom has gone through: what her birth was like, what her recovery was like, how long her child screamed on a given day, how much sleep she did (or more likely, didn't) get last night. My husband makes fun of me because I used to be one of those snotty, judgmental smug marrieds without kids. Now it's payback. The duck is cute, and clever, and exhausting.

Don't get me wrong. I still judge people. But now I check myself, because I know it's way more complicated. And to have moms ganging up on moms, even on message boards and comment chains, is depressing to me. We need each other, ladies. We may not be all the same, but we're not all different either. (I thank Cecile Goyette, an editor who spoke at a writing conference I attended last year, for that fabulous phrase.)

2004-08-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

Duck data

The duck took his first solo steps while we were visiting my parents in Ohio last month. Since then, he's slowly but surely toddling a bit more every day. He is exquisitely cute; he steps with a combination of bravery and uncertainty, yet he's covering a little more ground all the time. He's also into more stuff every day. It's simple, but true. He's more fun as he grows, but more of a challenge to care for.

Friday is his one year checkup, which is a week before his birthday. Weird to think that a year ago, I was pregnant, I was working and I had no idea who this little person was who has become so central to my life.

2004-08-03T10:03:00.000-07:00

No one puts baby in the corner

Instead, we put him in a cage.

Our small condo was impossible to baby proof, so we recently bought the duck a "playzone." It is a plastic contraption--red, blue and yellow--with music and lights and toys. But let's be real. It's a cage. A large cage, since we got extensions. But a cage nonetheless.

This has helped a bit for things like bathroom trips and cooking. He is able to play by himself quite happily for chunks of time. But it has not yet resulted in me being able to write more. For that, I'm using valuable nap time.

2004-07-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

I swear that at some point today I thought of two or three things I could write about here.

Now I'm here, and I got nothin'.

2004-07-24T20:58:00.000-07:00

Fun for the entire family

At 4:15 p.m. yesterday, the baby poked me in the eye. Hard. Hard enough that the soft contact lens that had been sitting on my eyeball suddenly wasn't in the front anymore and felt like it had been shoved back into my brain somewhere. As soon as my husband got home, we bundled our little family into the car and made the trip to Urgent Care. I waited twenty minutes to get signed in, another forty five to be seen. The doctor came in and assured me that I probably had a scratch on my eye and that the contact was on the floor somewhere. I told him we were prepared not to find it, so we were all surprised when he peeled back my eyelid and found the lens. I got the satisfaction of knowing that my contact HAD actually been shoved way around the eyeball and we hadn't just wasted two hours of a Friday night and a co-pay.

As the doctor complimented me on handling the pain as he maneuvered cotton swabs in and around my eye, he said that my husband should take me out to a nice dinner as consolation for such a terrible night, and I had one of my first moments of awareness on how life is much different since I'm staying at home with the baby and not at work. Going out to dinner is a nice idea, but it costs. Instead we came home and I made a very nice salad for dinner: arugula with apple, goat cheese, and toasted pecans in a red-wine vinaigrette.

Then today we finally put an offer down on a house after having looked for three months. Again, I wanted to go out to celebrate. Again we stayed home and made ourselves a very nice dinner: salmon with creamed spinach and grits.

After two months, I have no question that resigning to stay at home has been the best decision for both me and the baby. Till now, though, the financial ramifications haven't been obvious, and these are just two small examples. We've got some adjusting yet to do.

2004-07-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

Rats

I knew it had to happen, and now it has.

I got my period again.

I'd gone twenty months without it. What a glorious benefit of pregnancy and breastfeeding that was.

I suppose I could take drugs to suppress it. My husband kindly offered to knock me up again. But I think I'll pass on both counts, at least for now.

2004-07-19T19:55:00.002-07:00

Whatever

For a while, I was careful about what the duck ate, introducing foods, keeping track of them, watching for signs of distress (corn and blueberries seemed to give him some trouble.) Then when it was past time to be be giving him people food (our doc said it was OK at his 9 month appointment), I wondered what I was doing wrong. He refused all the things that books and other people said he should be eating: sliced lunch meat, canned peas and green beans, baby meat dinners, little bits of banana. Still, I continued to try to limit his diet, keeping out things like berries and dairy and wheat for after a year. Until the other night, when we went out to dinner with my parents and he began to fuss up a storm. My dad held up a bread crust and asked me if it was OK. Weary, defeated, I waved him on. And the duck tore into the bread with gusto and kept a crust clutched in his little fist for the rest of the meal. We fed him sliced tomato, asparagus, and salmon and he did great.

Since then, I've decided to be diligent about avoiding the biggies till the usual dates: cow's milk, peanuts and shellfish. Most anything else is fair game. Today he had baguette, whole wheat crackers, cottage cheese, half an apricot, some bratwurst and sauerkraut. One realization is that he doesn't like things cut up into small, baby-sized, non-chokable pieces. Instead, he prefers big hunks of things that he can tear off bits of as it pleases him. He especially likes round slices of tomato, since their holes provide a sort of handle for easy holding.

2004-07-19T19:55:00.001-07:00

Update

It's been nearly two months since I resigned to stay at home with the duck. He was getting sick about twice a month, and had three ear infections in five months. Since I sprung him, he's been great.

He took his first steps last Tuesday in my parents' living room. He's wobbly, but he's made a good beginning.

2004-07-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

I'm back, and I'm tired

So I got back to MN on Friday, and I miss Ohio. I miss that the duck had a room of his own to sleep in, that he had this great big house to be a free-range baby in, that he had all these other babies and kids and parents to play with. I deeply miss how we both slept better while we were there. Since returning to our small one bedroom condo, neither of us is sleeping as well. My husband and I tried putting him in our bathroom/closet/laundry room (I'm not joking, people. There are only 4 discrete spaces in the condo: half bath, living room, bedroom and b/c/l. It was the only option other than the bedroom.) Now he's back in the bedroom. We'll see how tonight goes. I can't believe we're still living here. There are a slew of boring details why, but being out of the tiny one bedroom made me see that while yes, it can be done, we have been making things like sleep much harder than they had to be.

On a bad mommy note, I forgot his favorite sleep buddy. I packed the backup but forgot his mouton blankie. (It came from France, so I feel it's cute, rather than pretentious, to call it the mouton. For further lack of pretension, I pronounce it AMericanized, so it rhymes with "crouton.") He dropped it while I nursed him and I forgot to pick it up and pack it and then I got back and was thankful that I'd introduced a second sleep buddy a while back or I woulda been up a creek. The mouton arrived safely today, and the duck has both his sleep buddies, so perhaps that will make for a better night's sleep.

2004-07-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

Not a good call on the naps

I’m beginning to have the uneasy suspicion that I can’t have a life if I want the duck to sleep.

Here’s how the reasoning goes: babies who nap well, sleep well. In order for the duck to nap well, I must attend to his sleep signals and create soothing, similar rituals--don’t let him get overtired, don’t put him in bed if not tired enough, and for goddess’ sake, don’t let him fall asleep in the stroller or car. And all the variables change from day to day—when he wakes, when he’s sleepy. So planning things—like going out or seeing friends—becomes a huge gamble, with the cost being lost nap time and later crankiness and possibly even night wakings.

Argh.

Maybe I _should_ read Babywise.

2004-07-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes they’ll surprise you

I’ve been trying to introduce people food to the duck. He’s become a world class expert at O’s and rice checks, but other items are not flying: banana pieces, peach pieces, canned peas and green beans, sliced turkey and chicken. In other words, all the things that are recommended. Then we go to a picnic the other night, and on a whim I hold a fork of sauerkraut up to his mouth. He gobbles it up, and looks quite cute with little strings of it hanging out of his mouth. I give him more, he eats more. I cut up little pieces of bratwurst, and he goes to town. Today, I cut up little pieces of peach on his tray. He ignored them, and reached for the hunk (half of the peach) in my hand. I gave it to him and he consumed it all, tearing off his own little hunks. I tell you, this baby stuff is baffling.

2004-07-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

Nap transition

The duck’s afternoon nap has been getting shorter and shorter while we’ve been visiting in Ohio. At most it’s been 40 minutes, and has been as short as 20, and yesterday he pretty much skipped it entirely. (We were at Buckeye Lake with friends, though, so I think he may have just been too excited to nap.) So after the advice of a friend and some research on the internet, I decided to try to transition him to one afternoon nap. He was quite cranky this morning as I kept him moving and doing through his usual nap time, but we made it to lunch, then some light activity after. He took about fifteen minutes to settle down, though he was not fussing with gusto, and has been asleep now for almost 2 hours, so I think this time is right to make the change.

2004-07-12T13:09:00.000-07:00

Tooth 5, and maybe even 6

After a stellar sleep performance during our visit to my parents in Ohio, the duck had some trouble the other night—he woke at 1:40 a.m., and screamed and squirmed no matter how I walked, sang or jiggled him. My dad got up to help me, and managed to get him quiet, though the duck was then wide awake. I finally nursed him, which calmed him, then put him back to bed at 3 a.m. and was myself up till 4:15. Now that he’s been sleeping through the night so well, I think I’m well rested enough that I can’t just fall back into sleep. The periodic night wakings (like this morning at 2:52 a.m.) keep me up for a while.

The next day I spied that tooth #5 had finally broken through on the top left, and after repeated attempts to view, # 6 is at least close if not through. Funny, he doesn’t like me poking fingers in his mouth. He’s been drooling and chewing on everything for months. Yes, there seems to have been a slight increase lately, but overall, I’ve just assumed that’s how he is. We’ll see if there’s a respite after I confirm #6.

2004-07-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

Where was I?

Or, more actually, where am I?

The duck and I are in central Ohio, staying with my parents. My husband and I put our condo on sale at the end of last month, and I thought it prudent for me and the duck to be gone, so I wouldn't have to juggle feedings and naps with showings.

Interesting things have happened here at my parents' house. The duck is now definitely sleeping through the night--no more 1 a.m. or 3 a.m. wakings--he goes to sleep between 8 and 9 p.m. Eastern time, and wakes between 6:30 and 8 a.m. He is eating lots of baby food. While I know that means it's time for him to be eating people food, he tends to choke on anything other than O's, so we're taking it slow. He's babbling more than ever, and continues to be on the verge of walking. I found out that he likes to climb stairs--something I never knew when we spent all our time in our one bedroom condo. He's getting more activity being in a house that has multiple places to go. We got him a backpack--the Evenflo Snugli Cross Country--and he seems to like it a lot. We spent a weekend at Lake Erie, and he took his first boat ride, during which he slept and fussed. He did not like the life jacket. He also had a tough time with his first fourth of July parade. We finally got him asleep in his stroller despite the heat and after a bare thirty minutes he got woken by the fire engines.

I am out of my writing habit, and working on a borrowed computer, but will try not to be so silent.

I wonder if the change in sleeping is from being in a different place, finally having a room of his own to sleep in, or just that he hit the next stage of development? Whatever, the cause, I am quite grateful for it.

2004-06-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

Three weeks down...

Today is Monday of week 4 of stay-at-home motherhood.

I do not miss my job at all. When I think of it, I'm relieved to be gone and glad I don't have to put up with all the nonsense anymore. Yes, there was good, but by the end it was more than compensated for by shenanigans.

The duck had a cold the Monday after his last Friday in daycare. A remnant of daycare? Don't know. What I do know is that his cold was his mildest ever and was gone in 7 to 10 days, instead of the 2 plus weeks of snot-faucet-age that were his previous colds while in daycare. Since then (so, the last 10+ days) he's been healthy and mostly happy. His naps are good, he's getting quite skilled with the sippy cup, he's standing for longer and longer brief moments.

Even during a very difficult day, like yesterday was, I do not regret my decision to quit and stay at home.

We have not, yet, though, entered into true one-income-hood yet. I still get paid out for vacation, and then we'll see how things go.

2004-06-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

Milestone!

The duck had his first french fry on Saturday. We went to the Convention Grill, which he loves. He can be fussy all day, but take him there and he's suddenly Mr. Personality. He flirts with the waitress, smiles at the ceiling fan, and babbles excitedly the whole time. He is not so approving of other Twin Cities dining establishments. He fussed up a storm at Cafe Brenda last week, though Brenda herself brought him a plateful of goodies. He tolerated the melon all right, but wanted nothing to do with the cornichon. And he would not be appeased while my husband and I tried to enjoy a delicious lunch at Red. I'm afraid the duck doesn't have a sophisticated palate. Given our recent shift to one income, that's probably a good thing.

2004-06-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

Books

I keep telling the duck that the consumption of books is metaphorical, not literal.

But you should see the chunk he's chewed out of the spine of Pat the Bunny. And he was not pleased when I fished it out of his mouth.

2004-06-21T14:52:00.000-07:00

Ack, the pressure

I'm finally able to write again and I don't know where to begin.

First, why I haven't been writing. We are in the process of getting our place ready to put on the market, so the past week has been a whirlwind of home improvement. As part of that, we got our carpets cleaned, so we unhooked the computer and were offline for (again, ack!) 48 hours, though it felt much longer.

The good news: the place looks terrific.

The not so good news--it's less baby-proofed then it was before, which was minimal, so the duck will be spending time in his pack-n-play, or we'll be closely shadowing his every move--exhausting.

Also exhausting was the duck on father's day. As on mother's day, he didn't seem to get that he should be better behaved for the occasion. He fussed all day long. It was one of those days when I thought longingly of my old, pre-baby life, when I could accomplish things like organizing, cleaning, reading and watching movies. Instead, I had to try to appease a screeching infant, who wasn't happy if being held and was no more happy when put down, and then had to be pulled off this, that and the other dangerous object. But then he let me have a six-hour sleep stretch (from 10 to 4) and after that slept till 6:30, and took a two-hour nap later and has been mostly happy all day, allowing for much cleaning and organizing to take place. Some days are no fun, but other days make up for it. It pretty much goes every other day. I think that percentage is better than what it used to be at work.

2004-06-15T06:28:00.000-07:00

Missing you

or, pick another 80's power ballad title of your choice

I always miss my husband when I'm away from him. He's a warm, stabilizing presence that I am the worse for when without. I didn't know, though, how much I'd miss the duck when I took my trip to England. I mean this literally. I knew I'd miss him; I knew it would be a great deal. Yet how could I begin to estimate or quantify such an unknown?

More and more each day I was gone, I felt his absence. I was frustrated at pouring my pumped milk down sinks across England--in midair over the Atlantic, in Gatwick, in London, at a country manor, a castle, a hotel in Newbury.

I'm certain that when I saw other babies and toddlers the longing was naked on my face. When I heard a child crying I smiled or sometimes teared up myself and offered the parent help instead of wincing, as I might've done in my pre-mom days. At the wedding I watched fathers play with their sons and felt a physical ache, a lack. A part of me, a part of my life, was apart from me. There were times of relief, as when I got nights of uninterrupted sleep, but they were balanced by times of missing him.

Being a mom, or a mum as they say in England, isn't something that I can put on or take off, like an outfit. I can't resign, as I did my job last month. There's no time apart from it even while I'm away. My life has grown new dimensions, which can't be retracted at will, or by circumstance. I was away five days. It was just the right amount of time--enough to justify the 9-hour flights each way. Yet it felt like a stretchy eternity till I saw the duck again. Hearing him down the phone was painful but sweet.

So how did I miss him? Immeasurably. Unimaginably. Fiercely. Deeply. Surprisingly.

Unsurprisingly.

A lot.

2004-06-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday's big accomplishment was that the duck and I dropped off my application to the Loft's Mentor competition and a request for a writer's studio.

Last Thursday's big event was that the duck and I went house hunting. We looked at two properties, both money pits.

Last Friday's big accomplishment? I managed to cut AND file the duck's fingernails, and clip his toenails as well. Thanks to Baby Mozart--and Chrestomanci for the gift of the aforementioned--for the assist.

2004-06-13T19:24:00.000-07:00

It's not 42

I think there are two secrets to life, as taught to me by the duck.

Napping.

Pooping.

For him, if those things happen at all, and go well, then so does life.

2004-06-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

Mile-high milk club

Midway through my eight-hour flight plus one hour delayed flight from Minneapolis to London, I performed my first pump-n-dump of the trip. I took my hand held Avent Isis single breastpump to the lavatory while most people slept. It took almost twenty-five minutes to empty both sides. I emerged to a line of folks, who were no doubt wondering what I'd been up to in there.

The Isis, I've decided, is only for occasional or emergency "I don't know when I'll need one" use. Otherwise the quickness of the double electric Medela pump is so much more convenient that I decided to carry it on the flight back.

Having lugged the much heavier Medela on board with me, I warned the flight attendants that I'd likely be in the lavatory for a while. One of them kindly recommended that I use one of the larger lavatories in the back of the plane. I'd just sat down, attached the battery pack, hooked myself up and started to pump when the plane began to buck and jump. The fasten-seat-belts sign came on. I chose to disengage and return to my seat to await a smoother ride--the better part of valor, live to fight another day, yadda, yadda, yadda.

2004-06-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

Within the past few years, a number of new books came out on motherhood, such as Misconceptions by Naomi Wolf and Life After Birth by Kate Figes. They were touted as antidotes to the prevailing romantic ideal. I was interested to read them, since I was wondering at the time whether I wanted to be a mom myself. The idea of these books intrigued me--insights from smart women on the whole picture: good, bad and ugly.

But when I looked into actually getting the books, many were poorly reviewed, and the authors were chided for being too negative, for complaining at length about very basic things that the motherhood mystique never pretended to obscure, and for not detailing the positives with the same attention as the negatives.

I fear that I may be doing the same here. In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm trying to share my real-life experience, since no book before, and many books after, have not covered a lot of what I'm experiencing. Yet by writing mostly about these surprises, I think I've given a stilted view of how things are. Yes, they've been tough and are tough, and in ways that were both expected and not. But the same holds true for the positives--there have been some surprises there, too.

Before we found out we were having a boy, both my husband and I were certain it would be a girl. I was shocked when we were told otherwise. How on earth would I raise a boy? I was disappointed; I never said so out loud, because all books said that the baby could hear me from inside. I had wanted to have a girl. Yet when he was born, and snuggled up on my chest in the flannel blanket and funny little hat, I could not imagine anyone else that I'd want to be there. Once he was outside me, I became aware of him as a person, and didn't want him any other way than how he was.

The birth was a tough one. I pushed for three hours, and had to have a vacuum assist. I am still amazed at that singular moment of his birth. I was pushing and people were talking and encouraging, and suddenly the baby was out. That shift, from inside to outside--I'm still unable to find words to describe it.

Also, he's got these giant eyes that refuse to clarify into one color. Sometimes they look green, sometimes grey, sometimes brownish. His hair is also a blend--reddish in sunlight and pictures, but light brown or blond at other times.

I find his voice entrancing. He babbles a lot, and croons quite a bit. When he wakes up happy, which I'd say he does about half the time, he makes quiet little noises from deep in his throat: Mmm-baaa. I wonder what will happen to these sounds as he develops into "real" language.

When my husband or I enter a room, the force of his recognition is almost blinding. His big eyes get bigger, and his smile grows huge, showing his four little teeth.

He still wakes around 3 a.m. for a feeding. It's a struggle to wake up, but when he finishes, he relaxes in a way that he rarely does during the day. He puts his head on my shoulder and snuggles into my neck, sometimes flipping his head back and forth, trying to get comfortable nestled up under my chin. I love that moment more than almost anything in the world.

He loves to be kissed. Under the neck, on the belly. He also loves when I take his leg or arm gently in my teeth, and growl and shake it. He laughs and laughs.

There are other bonuses of motherhood--less emotional, more mundane. The birth was tough, but there are some nice things about my post-birth body that I'm able to appreciate apart from the duck. For the first time in my life, I love the size of my breasts. I know they won't last, but I'm enjoying them while they're here. And I haven't had a period since November of '02. Woo-hoo.

I'll try to be better about writing a more balanced picture. I have a lot of ambivalence, in the true sense of the word--I am often pulled to one extreme or the other. But there are compensating highs for some of the lows that I detail here. I don't want to be like that group of books. I'm glad that the true costs and difficulties are getting more air time, but it's all the more reason to celebrate the good stuff.

2004-06-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

Want to know what's been bugging me most this past week about opting out?

The movie theater down the street showed Raising Helen as its Movie for Moms last week AND again this week.

I finally bite the bullet and quit and am able to make it to Movies for Moms, and they're showing the same crap ass movie two weeks in a row.

OK, I haven't seen it, but I am fairly certain of this evaluation. I read reviews, you know.

Ah, the best remnant of having seen the movie Metropolitan. The review joke.

During a baby nap earlier this week I called to complain. My plan for today was to go and to see Harry Potter instead, even if all the other moms were watching Raising Helen.

But the baby is napping now, we'd have to leave in fifteen minutes, and it would involve dressing him, feeding him and I just don't think it's gonna happen.

Grr.

2004-06-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

Day two of week two, not so good

Yesterday the duck was all scream, scream, scream in the morning, till I put him in the stroller and we hit the road, first to Marshall Field's to pay our bill, then to the basement to buy Dad a cupcake, then to Target to get cabinet baby-proofers, then to Dad's work to drop off the aforementioned cupcake.

Since we'd been so busy, I was looking forward to him taking a good afternoon nap, since his last several ones had all been over an hour. I put him in his crib asleep, made a potential to-do list, made and started lunch.

Wah. Wah. Wah. He wasn't going back to sleep. He'd only been napping for 30 minutes, which is the bare minimum of actual naps. I hadn't even finished lunch. Then he proceeded to scream for the next forty minutes. Forty, people. Picked him up, put him down, changed his diaper, gave him toys, nursed him, fed him solids in case he was hungry. Scream, scream, scream.

After 40 minutes he did calm down, I fed him again, and then he pooped. That particular event seemed to raise his spirits immeasurably, so I think he'd been feeling a little backed up in the morning, hence the scream-o-rama.

This is not a glamourous life, folks.

2004-06-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

Day one of week 2 of stay-at-home motherhood

The duck and I had a great day yesterday. We played, he ate, he napped, he threw fits when I took him away from non-approved teething surfaces, like the cord to the vacuum and the door hinge. We went on an afternoon trek to Marshall Field's and Target. I filled out a Zagat survey during his afternoon nap.

Yesterday was a compensating up day to last week's difficult one.

One thing has become immediately apparent. When he starts to throw a fit, I can feel my biological response to his cries, and it's not milk let-down. It's stress hormones that go zero to sixty. I am much more aware of my capacity for anger and frustration than I was working in an office. Raw emotions are much closer to the surface.

2004-06-08T06:56:00.000-07:00

The down sides

I went to England two weeks ago for a friend's wedding. After our last plane trip to Philly, my husband decided that he and the duck were staying home while I would attend the wedding. I was grateful not to have to baby wrangle for 8-hour flights plus 1-hour delays to and from London, plus car trips to and around and from the country. In a previous post, I noted other up sides of travelling without the baby: uninterrupted dining, sleeping, and adult interaction. There were, however, some quite considerable costs. This was my first time away from the duck for longer than a work day, and I was gone for nearly five days.

The trip took a lot of planning. I needed to build up a milk reserve for the duck, who was still nursing as his main source of nutrition, with solid foods as between-meal snacks. (Since I returned, I think it's now solid foods with nursing as supplement.) Over the course of almost two months, I managed to bank a supply of thirty-three bottles of five to six ounces apiece. A biologist friend laughed when I shared this, and noted that it was so mammalian, a reminder that we're all just animals, and that the ducts are related to sweat glands. To further de-romanticise it, he wondered if I'd saved enough to make cheese. The answer, courtesy of Savage Love, is that any amount of milk can be used to make cheese. I'd saved enough to be able to make at least a pound of cheese.

I also had to pump while I was away. I brought both my Avent Isis hand pump and my Medela Pump In Style. The Isis is small and light, but only works for one side at a time, so it takes about thirty minutes to empty both boobs. The Medela is heavier and bulkier, plus requires 8 AA batteries, but it can empty both sides in less than fifteen minutes. I pumped on the plane; I pumped in a Gatwick restroom. I pumped three to four times a day while I was in England so that the duck could resume (if he wished, which he most emphatically did) when I returned.

Prior to leaving, I'd contacted the UK Milk Bank, which enables donors to bank milk for preemies and other sick infants who don't have acces to their mum's milk. Understandably, they require two medical tests three months apart to screen donors. Yet I could and did freeze some of what I pumped for use in a study on whether foremilk has a greater concentration of good stuff for babies who have tummy problems. For various logistical reasons, this was only 3 pumpings' worth. The other twelve (12!) or so pumpings I had to throw away. Each of the dozen times I poured milk down the sink I felt sad--what a waste, I'm throwing away perfectly good food. In theory, I could have frozen and carted back what I'd pumped, but this seemed far too complicated, and I'm glad I didn't try.

Only once did I have trouble with engorgement, on my second day there. I used my heat pad, which I'd brought along with an electrical adapter--look how prepared!, warm washcloths, then unplugged the clogged nipple pores with a sterile pin. The flat I was in didn't have a shower, so I just did it over a sink. When I was finally able to move the clog, I felt a huge surge of accompishment, since normally it's frequent nursing that helps, and it would have been days until I returned home to the duck. Developing mastitis and having to miss the wedding would have been a big drag. But the clog cleared decisively, I drained it into the sink, and I went on to enjoy the rest of the trip.

2004-06-07T11:52:00.000-07:00

Development updates

The duck has started to feed himself. Last week I began placing bits of banana and cereal o's on his tray while I fed him. He would sometimes play with them, but he spit the cereal o's out and just mashed up the banana. Yesterday and today, though, he's made the leap. It's amazing to me how he won't be ready, then one day he just is.

His list of favorite dangerous toys has expanded beyond plastic bags and electrical cords to include cabinet doors and drawers. We've already had a few pinched baby fingers, and some very loud wails of outrage. He doesn't seem to have made the connection yet between open/shut and pinchy, so I'm having to run a lot of interference.

I have so much to write, and so little time! He's napping well today thus far, but we're trying to get our place ready to sell, and it's taking a lot of work that my head feels as if it will explode. But he's had two naps of an hour fifteen plus already, and it's just 1:45, so I think we're doing well. We haven't even been out for a baby adventure yet. Next is lunch: apples, peas/rice and banana bits and o's.

2004-06-03T18:16:00.000-07:00

Be careful what you wish for

Day three of staying at home. I had the kind of day that I knew would happen when people said "Oh, you're so lucky; you'll have such a good time."

Today wasn't a good time, though it did have moments of goodness. Today was work. So here's the diary. Sorry if it seems as if I'm repeating myself from the other day, but since today was much harder, I think it bears detailing in case anybody thinks the grass is greener over here.

Wednesday 7:05 p.m. Put in crib, he cries.
I check every five minutes, laying him back down when I find him standing. At 7:35 I can smell that he's pooped. I change his diaper and he's back in bed by 7:45, though still crying. By 8:05 he is finally asleep.
Thursday 4:25 a.m. Wakes crying; nursed
5:45 a.m. Wakes super happy, babbling and excited. Extremely cute. Wet, poopy diaper (WPD)
7:10 a.m. Dad leaves for work. Fussy, nursed.
7:20 a.m. Put in crib for nap
7:45 a.m. Not sleeping; playing happily in his crib; I take him out and he plays in the living room
8:15 a.m. Solid foods. He refuses the rice cereal, so I mix it with the yogurt. He toys with the banana pieces and cereal bits, but does not put them in his mouth.
9:00 a.m. PD
9:15 a.m. Fussy, nursed.
9:20 a.m. Nap
[I clean up a disastrous corner of the apartment and find a new location for his high chair, away from phone cords. I get ready for yoga class and want to leave by 11, since this will be the first time I try the childcare at the gym.]
10:35 a.m. Wakes fussy. Calms when I sing him a happy song set to the tune of Hey, Jude.
10:45 a.m. Change him out of p.j.s and into clothes. Continue getting ready and get diaper bag ready.
11:00 a.m. Nurse, plus diaper change
11:20 a.m. Leave for gym.
11:40 a.m. Arrive at gym, find out that childcare ended at 11:30 a.m.
Noon Stop for lunch at restaurant on the way home. Baby starts to fuss and needs to be held, making eating a salad very difficult. Becomes so fussy that I need to leave quickly.
12:45 p.m. Solid food attempt, squash and banana; fussy
1:30 p.m. Fussy; nursed
1:40 p.m. Nap
2:10 p.m. Up and fussy.
2:15 p.m. Solid food attempt, rest of squash and banana; fussy
3:00 p.m. Out for a baby adventure to the comic shop for new comic day. Brief periods of happiness followed by more fuss, so return home.
4:15 p.m. Solid food success; prunes, mashed banana, peas
5:00 p.m. Dad comes home; baby is happy again; outside to play on the grass
6:20 p.m. Bath
6:30 p.m. Nurse and bedtime book
6:40 p.m. Asleep

2004-06-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

Oh, the humanity

Since I returned from my trip, the duck has begun to throw tantrums. If we take away something he's playing with (today's examples: the phone cord, the modem cord and the cell-phone charging cord. Yesterday, the cord to the hand-vac.He loves those cords.) he pitches a screaming fit. Mouth wide in protest, nostrils flared in outrage, eyes shiny with tears of rage and betrayal. He's just had a growth spurt, and his lungs are in fine form. This boy can YELL. After he starts a fit, I pick him up but he tries to arch out of my arms. He's getting strong enough that he may just get his wish. To counteract, I set him down, but he arches, falls backwards and bangs his head.

Then it all goes up to 11.

2004-06-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

It hasn't really sunk in, yet

I don't think that it feels really real yet--that all days will be more or less the same, and that I won't be going back to work. I stayed at home with the duck one day a week plus when he was sick, so I think it's going to take a string of days in a row for this to feel different enough to feel like a permanent change.

Either that, or the first round of bills when we no longer have my paycheck. I mentally cower at the thought.

2004-06-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

What happened, and when

Sunday, 6:30 p.m. Nursed, fell asleep
Monday, 2:20 a.m. Woke crying; nursed
4:20 a.m. ditto
5:50 a.m. Awake; poopy diaper (PD)
6:30 a.m. PD again
7:20 a.m. Fussy; nursed
7:40 a.m. Nap #1
[I wrote entries for both weblogs]
8:30 a.m. Awake
9:00 a.m. Solid foods: Yogurt, rice cereal, banana pieces
9:30 a.m. Wet diaper (WD)
10:05 a.m. PD
11:30 a.m. Fussy; nursed
11:40 a.m. Nap #2
[I fixed and ate lunch, called my mom, packed some boxes--we're preparing to sell our place--and got sucked into this guilty pleasure website]
1:00 p.m. Awake
1:10 p.m. Solid foods; mashed avocado, pears
2:10 p.m. WD
2:20 p.m. Screaming fit; I get us both base-line presentable, throw him in the stroller and we're out the door to walk through the skyways and visit Dad at work (weather was cool, grey, crappy, snizzly)
4:05 p.m. Return home; PD
4:10 p.m. Nursed
4:20 p.m Nap #3 (!?!)
[I packed some boxes, made tea, fixed cheese and crackers and tried to watch TV]
5:05 p.m Awake, and not at all happy about it
5:30 p.m Solid foods; corn/squash, pears, prunes, peas/rice
6:30 p.m Bath
6:50 p.m Nursed
7:00 p.m. Boynton bed books: Dinosaur's Binkit, Pajama Time, Snoozers, The Going to Bed Book
7:30 p.m. Asleep
Tuesday, 3:00 a.m. Awoke crying; nursed
5:00 a.m. Awoke crying; nursed
7:00 a.m. Awoke, VWD

2004-06-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

Day One

It's my first official day as a stay-at-home mom.

Duck report: the baby at 9 1/2 months is frequently pulling himself up to stand, chewing on everything, babbling constantly, and has begun eating 2+ jars of "solid" food at each sitting. I tried giving him cereal pieces yesterday. He managed to pick them up, put them in his mouth, and spit them out. I think we're a ways off from true solid food. He has a gap between his two top teeth. His hair is still reddish, brownish, and blond. His eyes are still greenish brown; I haven't seen bluish in a while.

Also, annoyingly, he may have another cold. He'd been quite well since the fever 2 and a half weeks ago that catalyzed my decision to resign.

One thing I noticed over the weekend is that he wakes between 5:30 a.m. and 6. I feed him, change his diaper, play with him, dress him, and around 7:45 a.m. he's ready for his first nap. This was the time that we were usually bundling him up for daycare, and he didn't nap there till 9 a.m or later. Already I see that having him home means a more consistent routine, one that I hope will contribute to better sleep habits overall.

2004-05-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

Emotional triage

I swear, after I resigned last week, it felt like my heart grew several sizes larger. Could it be that I was subconsciously putting limits on my feelings, so the strain of working and dropping him at daycare would not cut so deep?

After resigning, it felt like I was able to love the duck more. Or rather, to let myself love him more.

Which I hadn't even thought possible.

2004-05-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

About resigning

I resigned last Monday, and Friday is my last day. Reactions are actually not that varied. They include:

1. Congratulations
2. We'll miss you
3. I'm envious
4. You're lucky that you can do that
5. It must've been a hard decision

My responses:

1. I think it's interesting that most people's first response is positive congratulations. I think it IS a positive decision, and I'm glad I'm getting it validated, but I think it tells a lot about the tough row that working moms have to hoe that as soon as I throw in the towel, people are cheering.

2. Well, of course they'll miss me. I'm fabulous.

3. Wait till I'm doing it till you're envious. When I spend a day covered in spit up, unable to console a screaming baby and having had no adult interaction, when I have a fight with my husband over money, then we can talk about envy.

4. Inherent in this comment is the implication that my husband makes enough for this to be easy. My husband and I make about the same amount of money. There are two main reasons it's me staying home and not him. One, I'm still nursing the duck. Two, my company is up for sale, his is stable. I spent about half my take home money on daycare. Quitting means that we'll cut our income in half. This will not be easy. But we feel strongly enough that we want to get the baby out of daycare and into a more stable environment that we want to make it work. Whether we do make it work remains to be seen.

5. It wasn't a hard decision. It was five months of difficulty, juggling work and baby and daycare and bottles and pumping and mornings and sickness and exhaustion. And when the call came from daycare that he was sick again, and I had to miss another two days of work, it all became very clear. We wanted him out of daycare with a stable caregiver and we wanted it to be one of us. For the reasons in #4, we decided it would be me. Done.

His health may or may not improve. It may have improved if he stayed in daycare just because it's spring. I may go nuts as a stay at home mom. I may go nuts not having my own income. I may get even less writing done than I do today. I don't know what'll happen. But I feel fairly certain it's not going to be all rainbows and sunshine, chocolate truffles and Oprah.

2004-05-25T18:36:00.000-07:00

The better part of valor, and all that

I've just returned from England for my friend Chrestomanci's wedding. Nearly six years ago, she missed both her Oxford MBA graduation as well as a Dar Williams concert so she could come to Philadelphia and be the reader at my wedding. She'd had much anxiety when I'd asked her to select a reading for us. When she read an excerpt from Anderson's The Snow Queen, I smiled, having known she'd pick something fitting, wonderful and unique. And she did.

So there was never any question in my mind that I'd attend her wedding, and I looked forward to having her meet the baby. But as my husband and I made trip #1 by plane in January to Ohio, #2 by car in February to Chicago, and #3 by plane in April to Philly, something became increasingly clear: the duck does not travel well.

I can't really say he travels badly, though. Rather, he travels like a baby--sometimes good, sometimes fussy. And as per his usual, rarely sleeping. After serious consideration, my husband volunteered and insisted on staying home with the duck. I'd fly solo to London for the wedding.

Three things tell me we made the right decision.

One, both my flight out and my flight back sat for an hour on the runway before taking off for the planned eight hours in the air. This would not have pleased the duck.

Two, travelling to a different coutnry with a time difference meant that everything I did took slightly longer than I'd planned, and was more difficult to negotiate. See Girl Detective for the stories. I find caring for the duck a challenge at home, where things are familiar. Duck care abroad would've been quite hard.

Three, since I didn't have to duck-wrangle, I was free to help my friend, running errands and helping with to-do lists in the last days before the wedding. I also got to meet and spend time with the groom, whom I'd not yet met. Not only was I able to help in various small ways, but I had the privilege of spending time with the couple just prior to the wedding. Things were tense and busy, but there's something special about this liminal time, as they teeter on the edge of a major life change.

Additionally, there are the unofficial reasons I'm glad I went. I got four nights of uninterrupted sleep. I ate every meal in one sitting, at my own pace. And I got to talk with grown-ups about grown-up things: Iraq, deplorable American sit-coms, wedding ceremonies, books, music, film.

2004-05-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

Where in the world was Girl Detective?

Just back from England, where I was for a friend's wedding. I'm exhausted, and happy to see the baby even though he's crying himself to sleep. More later this week.

Oh, and I resigned last week. Friday is my last day. After that, I'm a stay-at-home mom.

2004-05-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

A few quotes about working parenthood

From I Don't Know How She Does It (2002) by Alison Pearson from Anchor Books:

At times, I can almost be moved to tears by the picture of the thrifty responsible homemaker I could and would become. But the idea of not having an income after all these years makes me so fearful. I need my own money the way I need my own lungs. ("What your poor mum never had was Running Away Money," Auntie Phyllis said, dabbing my face with her hankie.) And how would I be, left alone with the kids all day? The need of kids is never-ending. You can pour all your love and patience into them, and when is it all right to say when? Never. You can never say when. And to serve so selflessly, you have to subdue something in yourself. I admire the women who can do it, but the mere thought makes me sick with panic. I could never admit this to anyone, but I think giving up work is like becoming a missing person. One of the domestic Disappeared. The post offices of Britain should be full of Wanted posters for women who lost themselves in their children and were never seen again. So when my two bounce on the body they sprang from shouting me, a voice within me keeps repeating, Me, me, me.

From The Home-Maker (1924) by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, from Persephone Books:

Would it be possible for both of them to work, he and Eva? Other parents did sometimes. The idea was that with the extra money you made you hired somebody to take care of the children. If before his accident anyone had dreamed of Eva's natural gift for business, he would have thought the plan an excellent one. But it was only since the accident that he had had the faintest conception of what 'caring for the children' might mean. Now, now that he had lived with the children, now that he had seen how it took all of his attention to make even a beginning of understanding them, how it took all of his intelligence and love to try to give them what they needed, spiritually and mentally...no!

You could perhaps, if you were very lucky--thought it was unlikely in the extreme--it was conceivable that by paying a high cash price you might be able to hire a little intelligence, enough intelligence to give them good material care. But you could never hire intelligence sharpened by love. In other words you could not hire a parent. And children without parents were orphans.

I cannot recommend these books highly enough. I Don't Know How She Does It is billed primarily as a comedy, but I found it bitingly sad. Yes, there were some hilarious parts to it, but my favorite parts were like the passage above--when Pearson gave pen to the messy, ambivalent feelings that it doesn't feel OK to have, much less to admit.

The Home-Maker was written 75 years ago, but is shockingly timely. A stay-at-home mom drives herself and her kids crazy by pouring frustrated talent into being a stay-at-home mom. But when her husband has an accident and their roles are reversed, interesting things play out. The characters in this book are beautifully drawn, especially that of the youngest boy in the family.

2004-05-14T18:38:00.000-07:00

Some further thoughts on working versus staying at home

I may have erroneously made it sound like working and staying at home were either/or. And at the end of all the complexities in the middle, it actually may be.

When I went back to work when the duck was 14 weeks old, I went back part time--4 days a week on 80% salary. Even though the duck wasn't in daycare every day, we still paid for full time. So I was making less and we had more expenses, and daycare cost the same whether I worked 4 days or 5. I found that being home 3 days made parenting feel better. It made work, however, much more difficult. Gone were the days when I could do my job easily, when I could run errands over lunch, or chat with friends. Shifting to a 4 day week condensed everything. At 4 days I didn't accomplish what I would like. Going down to three days or having a job share with someone would be even worse. I'd seen and worked with women who did 4 and 3 day schedules, and I had hated to admit it about them, because I wanted to support them as women and as mothers, but they just weren't able to work at the same level as hard-working non-moms. And now I know why, because I feel the same way about myself--that my work performance went down. But when I look at what I accomplish at work, I take into account all the other factors that others don't see: lengthy physical recovery from birth, ongoing lack of sleep, constant baby sickness, breast pumping 2-3 times a day. The whole picture is a huge accomplishment, but work is just a part of that.

So I've found work plus motherhood is a raw deal. If I work full time, I miss out on being with the duck. If I work part time, then I struggle, get paid less and I sideline myself for career growth--about the best I can hope for is to keep status quo. (I have a mom friend at work who is there full time. She's up for a promotion, and I'm up for a lateral.) And if I stop work then I make it more difficult later to re-enter the work force, plus we halve our income as a family, while we add in baby expenses.

Overall, my company has a good record for working moms, but even so, there are ways to improve. If I do a job search again, I'll look for companies with on-site daycares. If my work had a benefit of sick-child care, then I might not be facing these questions. I know this isn't a common benefit, but I know so many other moms besides me for whom that this would make a huge difference.

One option suggested by my boss and another mom at work was to get a nanny. That way the duck probably wouldn't get as sick as he was getting in daycare, and if he did, then the nanny would still be there and I wouldn't have to miss work. Nannies cost about twice as much as daycare, though, and about equal to my take home pay. So I'd be working to pay a nanny. I'd have to love my job a lot and get a lot out of it for that to make sense. Additionally finding a nanny is hard, and once found there is no guarantee. Other moms had stories of merry-go-round nannies, and if they tried to share with someone else to manage the costs, then the complications were even worse. Then there are sad stories. One mom I know overheard her kid calling the nanny Mom. She found that when she got home at the end of the day the kids were tired and didn't want to talk to her--they'd done that after school with the nanny. If I had a job that was really important to me, then I'd consider a nanny. But I don't, and after much discussion with my husband, we feel that if the duck is going to have a single caregiver, it should be one of us.

That leads to another point. I may have sounded like I assumed that it should be me who stays home because of traditional gender roles. It's more practical than that. For now, the duck is still nursing, so it makes sense if one of us is to stay home to have it be me. Less alienation from the means of production for the duck. Also, my company is in transition, and his is stable. If I were at a more stable or better job, and if I had weaned the duck, we'd seriously consider having my husband stay home. I think he might be better at stay at home than me, anyway. He's more patient and he takes the duck's fretting less like a personal failure then do I.

I think the irony is that it seems like there are a lot of options. In the end, I think it comes down for a lot of people to either work or stay home because the compromises in the middle are just that--compromising.

2004-05-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

Sick, again. No joke.

We got a message from daycare today that the duck had a fever and had to go home. This is the umpteenth time he's been sick and I believe life-changing decisions are about to commence.

There's a lot that's been written lately on moms who opt out and choose to stay at home. There's some stuff out there about how hard it is for moms who opt out to get back in. There's a lot out there about the futility of having it all--career and family--because so much of it falls to the mom even in very equal marriages, like my own. Once, women had to fight for the right to enter the workplace and advance in careers. Now they don't, or the struggle is at least less, but somebody's still gotta take care of the kid. If you want to read more about it, Lisa Schmeiser's got some good commentary, though some of her links are subscriber only to the WSJ.

The draw of work is the intellectual challenge and the camaraderie of being around smart adults. The money and benefits don't hurt.

The draw of staying home is to take on parenthood full tilt. To be the one who's there when the duck hits the next milestone. To see the full range of his moods over the course of a day. To be the one there when he's got a fever, or a cold. To have him exposed to fewer viruses than in daycare. Not to have to be called that he's been bitten by another kid. Not to have to be called that he's sick again. Not to have to worry if he's really safe and well cared for there.

My mom stayed at home for about ten years with me and my two sisters, doing the Family Circle and Women's Day thing. Then one day she started working at church, and it seemed as if she vanished. She found a life outside of the home, and she was outta there. That was hard to handle as a ten year old. Not so hard to figure out as I grew up.

I'm now the age she was when she opted in. When I pointed this out to her, she noted that the difference was that she'd grown up sheltered, naive, not knowing what the options were. My sisters and I, she noted, had no such illusions.

And that's really what this is. It's no illusions--true ambivalence, being pulled in opposite directions, with each choice feeling like it negates the other. I have doubts as to my fitness to be a stay at home mom. But for myriad reasons, not being a stay at home mom has come to feel even less fitting.

If there's no right decision, doesn't that make all of them wrong?

2004-05-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

Should we stay or should we go?

Here is a fact: my husband, the duck and I live in a one bedroom condo of less than a thousand square feet.

When we bought it, we weren't sure we'd be starting a family. Now we have, and I think we've done a great job of managing in such a small space, but it was too small when he was little, and has gotten progressively more cramped as he has grown, gotten more mobile, and accumulated more stuff. Therefore, we need to move. That's about where the certainty ends.

Here are some other facts:

We have lost confidence in our daycare provider. Three of four staff have left within two months, and yesterday we got a call that he'd been bitten by another baby. Yeah, that stuff happens, but it happened twice, on his face, and I suspect that it might have been prevented with more attention. Therefore, we need to find new childcare.

We live far from our families. We live in MN, my folks live in OH, his folks live outside of Philly and one of my sisters just moved outside of Philly.

We moved out from Philly for my husband's job. After a merger, the job is no gem. My company is in flux. Once things settle, I may not have a job, or may not have a job I like, or may be working for a different company.

We both really like MN, and our friends here. It's a smart, progressive place to live. Good books, good restaurants. Good writing community. We don't mind winter and even enjoy it sometimes. We like lakes, and I love the North Shore and the Superior hiking trails. I believe that I'm happier and calmer here than I was living in Philly.

So what on earth will we do? Stay in MN? Move back to Philly? New daycare? Nanny? New jobs? For one of us? Both of us? Stay at home mom? Stay at home dad?

We need to move and we need to find different care for the duck. What that means is completely ambiguous, and the uncertainty feels maddening, frightening and wretched just now.

2004-05-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

I've included three emails I was forwarded for mother's day. They're on the treacly side, but each of them had something in them that made me nod, smile or tear up. I wonder how I would have reacted a year ago, when pregnant? Two years ago, when not?

2004-05-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

Yet another forwarded mother's day email

POSITION:
Mother, Mom, Mama, Mommy, Ma

JOB DESCRIPTION:
Long term, team players needed, for challenging permanent work in an, often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call. Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities. Travel expenses not reimbursed. Extensive courier duties also required.

RESPONSIBILITIES:
The rest of your life. Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5. Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly. Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf. Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets and stuck zippers. Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and coordinate production of multiple homework projects. Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks. Must be willing to be indispensable one minute, an embarrassment the next. Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap, plastic toys, and battery operated devices. Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product. Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.

POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION:
Virtually none. Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills, so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE:
None required unfortunately. On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.

WAGES AND COMPENSATION:
Get this! You pay them! Offering frequent raises and bonuses. A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent. When you die, you give them whatever is left. The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

BENEFITS:
While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered; this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth and free hugs for life if you play your cards right.

2004-05-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

Another forwarded Mother's Day email

(I've edited out the beginning and the end, which were exhortations to forward this, for it to make it around the world--how would one tell?--and to pray. This one seems to have made the rounds--it has a lot of Google hits.)

This is for the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in their arms, wiping up barf laced with Oscar Mayer wieners and cherry Kool-Aid saying, "It's okay honey, Mommy's here." Who have sat in rocking chairs for hours on end soothing crying babies who can't be comforted. This is for all the mothers who show up at work with spit-up in their hair and milk stains on their blouses and diapers in their purse. For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes. And all the mothers who DON'T. This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see. And the mothers who took those babies and gave them homes. This is for the mothers whose priceless art collections are hanging on their refrigerator doors. And for all the mothers who froze their buns on metal bleachers at football or soccer games instead of watching from the warmth of their cars. And who, when their kids asked, "Did you see me, Mom?" could say, "Of course, I wouldn't have missed it for the world." And mean it. This is for all the mothers who yell at their kids in the grocery store and swat them in despair when they stomp their feet and scream for ice cream before dinner. And for all the mothers who count to ten instead, but realize how child abuse happens. This is for all the mothers who sat down with their children and explained all about making babies. And for all the (grand)mothers who wanted to, but just couldn't find the words. This is for all the mothers who go hungry, so their children can eat. For all the mothers who read "Goodnight, Moon" twice a night for a year. And then read it again. "Just one more time." This is for all the mothers who taught their children to tie their shoelaces before they started school. And for all the mothers who opted for Velcro instead. This is for all the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their daughters to sink a jump shot. This is for every mother whose head turns automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even though they know their own offspring are at home--or even away at college. This is for all the mothers who sent their kids to school with stomach aches, assuring them they'd be just FINE once they got there, only to get calls from the school nurse an hour later asking them to please pick them up. Right away. This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, who can't find the words to reach them. For all the mothers who bite their lips until they bleed when their 14 year olds dye their hair green. For all the mothers of the victims of recent school shootings, and the mothers of those who did the shooting. For the mothers of the survivors, and the mothers who sat in front of their TVs in horror, hugging their child who just came home from school, safely. This is for all the mothers who taught their children to be peaceful, and now pray they come home safely from a war.

What makes a good Mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? Broad hips? Is it the ability to nurse a baby, cook dinner, and sew a button on a shirt, all at the same time? Or is it in her heart? Is it the ache you feel when you watch your son or daughter disappear down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time? The jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib at 2 A.M. to put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby? The panic, years later, that comes again at 2 A.M. when you just want to hear their key in the door and know they are safe again in your home? Or the need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you hear news of a fire, a car accident, a child dying?

The emotions of motherhood are universal and so our thoughts are for young mothers stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation. And mature mothers learning to let go. For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers. Single mothers and married mothers. Mothers with money, mothers without.
This is for you all. For all of us. Hang in there. In the end we can only do the best we can with the light we have at the time.

2004-05-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

A Mother's Day forwarded email

This was purportedly written by Anna Quindlen

If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the blackbutton eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringlets and the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin. All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past. Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete.

Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit- up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes weremade. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for
preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons... What was I thinking? But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs.

There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.