BrooklynGirl

Walking Right Into It

The scene unfolds over dinner...

The Boy: Can I have some chips?

BrooklynGirl: Some what?

The Boy: Some chips.

BrooklynGirl: No, no--we don't have chips.*  Chips are a treat, not dinner.

BrooklynGirl continues spooning pureed carrots into The Girl's mouth when she notices The Boy's not eating.

BrooklynGirl (exasperated): What's the matter?

The Boy: I'm sad.

BrooklynGirl: Why are you sad?

The Boy: I'm just sad.

BrooklynGirl: I'm sorry.  Is there anything that would make you less sad?

The Boy: Chips might make me feel better.

*We have plenty of other junk; chips are just not my junk food of choice.

Real Estate

Recently,  we had some friends and family in town and because it was so damn cold outside, we spent a lot of time cooped up in our 800 square foot apartment.  And any 800 square foot apartment that contains a jumperoo gets small very quickly--and then it starts shrinking. 

No one actually came out and said, "How can you live like this?" but it was the subtext in every conversation we had. 

I saw their point.  The things I love most about my apartment, my neighborhood, my borough, and my city are not obvious when it's too cold to go to the park or linger over cookies outside the bakery or window shop on 7th Ave or wander down the boardwalk at Coney Island.

Recently, we started exploring other housing options in the city.  We went to see that rare species, a house vaguely close to where we live now that costs less than a million dollars and it was...awful.  The whole thing tilted backwards, hadn't been updated since the 70s (or maybe the 60s), and was at the very top of our price range--not including the hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs the house would likely need.

So, just for kicks, we started looking at listings to see what the same amount of money could buy us in the suburbs.    I know I'm late to the party here, but good Lord, it's a paradise out there!  The square footage!  The backyards!  The 1.5 bathrooms!  It's enough to get us in the car to take a look for ourselves.

We're not ready to do anything rash.  There's a lot to consider: a commute from the suburbs would give my husband much less time with the kids (and would mean more solo parenting for me).  My own professional life would be affected: my teaching certification in NY state is already a mess because I haven't been working; who knows what would happen in a brand new state?  Also, there's the fact that almost all our friends are here in the city.  How hard will it be to build a new social life?  Finally, there's that plunging housing market that gives one pause over just about everything.

Besides, what would I call my blog?

An Anniversary Song

Four years ago tomorrow I started this blog.  Things were not good.  I had been trying to get pregnant for almost two years and had begun seeing an RE--Clomid hadn't worked and a laparoscopy hadn't discovered anything useful.  I was beginning to think that I would never be successfully pregnant.  And I could think of nothing else.

Infertility was every insecurity in my life writ large: I couldn't get pregnant because I was overweight or because I hadn't truly established myself professionally or because I still had unresolved issues with my family or because there was just something wrong with me, some reason I wouldn't or couldn't or shouldn't be a parent.  These weren't thoughts I had ever or have ever had about another person struggling to build a family, but I couldn't help connecting them with my own situation.

Ultimately, I did find a path to parenthood: 3 failed IUIs, 3 early losses, one Factor V Leiden mutation diagnosis, and one IVF cycle later, I was a mother.  Compared to the struggles of my infertile blogging friends, it was a walk in the park.

With the birth of my son, a cloud lifted, but did not entirely disappear: every stumbling block I hit as a parent there was a voice in the back of my head. "See, you were never meant to be a mother," it whispered to me when The Boy wouldn't sleep or wouldn't eat or wouldn't talk.

That voice has gotten quieter, but it's still there--after the surprise of The Girl, after The Boy began to sleep and eat and say, "I love you, Mommy," after I began to trust my own intuition (sometimes) over the advice of Dr. Spock.  That voice is the reason why I continue to blog.

I haven't been as present here as I would like to be.  I hope to be here more and to spruce things up with a new look.  Until then, I thank you for reading.  Your companionship--though comments, emails, and so many wonderful blogs--has been an enormous source of strength.

Finally, with apologies to the  Cowboy Junkies, I thank my husband, my son, and my daughter for the life I could not have imagined four years ago:

And I don't know how I survived those days
Before I held your hands
Well I never thought that I would be the one
To admit that the moon and the sun
Shine so much more brighter when
Seen through four pairs of eyes than
When seen through just one

 

Christmas Revisited

As I have mentioned before, I am a badly lapsed Catholic so until we sort out a religious philosophy, Christmas seems to be about presents, Santa, and evergreens.  Right now I'm okay with that--and The Boy marked his first Christmas as a sentient gift recipient being very okay with that.

But, as we took down our decorations, he got sad.  "Christmas is over," he announces somberly whenever we see old Christmas trees waiting for recycling on the curb.  He is ecstatic when we pass a house that still has its decorations up--including, most recently, a giant inflated nativity scene:

"Who's that?" The Boy asked, pointing at the manger.

Hmmm.  The only begotten son of God, who died to take away the sins of the world?  Too much information?  I decided to go with, "That's baby Jesus."

"Who's that?" He asked,  pointing at Mary.

"That's Jesus's mom."  Easy enough.

"And that?" Pointing at Joseph.

"That's Jesus's dad."   Basically true.  Sort of true.  I looked around for lightning bolts or mortified neighbors.

He was quiet for awhile looking at the nativity scene, and I wondered if he was thinking about the Big Question: Who is baby Jesus and why is he so special that he gets his own inflatable form?  I hoped he wouldn't ask because I wasn't ready to go there.

"Okay," he said, meaning that he was ready to go.  He took a few steps away and turned around to wave goodbye.  "Bye Donkey!  Bye Sheep!" He said to the heretofore undiscussed animals on either side of the Holy Family and trotted down the street.

Huh.  I guess I've got  some time.

So Much for Resolutions

I have been trying hard to live up to #7, but damn if #1 doesn't keep getting in the way.   

We've had some setbacks in the sleep department.  I'm demoralized.   It's one thing to let your kid cry when CIO seems to be working, but quite another when it does not.

It Is Done

We  let The Girl cry it out.

Things had gotten bad--oh so bad.  She hadn't slept longer than a 3 hour stretch in 3 months and most recently, she wasn't sleeping longer than a hour and a half.  Even co-sleeping had lost its appeal--she would nurse fitfully for hours, not sleeping and not letting anyone else in the bed sleep.  The husband and I were zombies.

So, we'd decided to do it, but how?  The Girl had a crib in The Boy's room, but we never put her down in there while The Boy was sleeping because we didn't want her to disturb him.  Her designated sleeping area was the Pack N Play in our room, but she never seemed all that comfortable there so I didn't seem the best location for her to brush up on her self-soothing skills.

In the end, we decided to move her crib out of The Boy's room and into ours, requiring the husband to disassemble and reassemble the crib.  The husband and I would thus be sleeping on the small and lumpy pull out in the living room--a fact I look forward to throwing in my daughter's face as soon as she is ungrateful about anything. Beyond that, I stepped up the introduction of solid foods on the off chance that she was waking because of hunger.   And then there was nothing left but to do it.

Of course I had the usual guilt and doubt, but we had tried everything else.  When I mulled this over before, Julie commented that it somehow seems harder to CIO with the second (and quite probably last) child, and that was  absolutely my experience.  Even though I really believed this would work--The Girl often fussed herself into daytime naps--it was hard for reasons I didn't expect.  Exhausted as I was, I did still cherish some of those nighttime snuggles that are so rare with The Boy.*  And CIO seems somehow like the first loss of innocence, the first time that you deliberately are not there for your child.**  But we were just so fucking tired.

She cried for 20 awful minutes, then I went in an rubbed her belly and when I turned to leave again, the sound she made was heartrending.  15 more awful  minutes of crying and she slept.  More or less until 6:30 the next morning.  The night after was better.  And the night after that was better still.

It was the right thing to do.  She is happier.  The husband and I are happier.  But I am also sad.

*Not because he doesn't wake up but because it's hard to snuggle a writhing  mass of two year old.

**Yes, yes--teaching your child how to sleep is an important way of being there for her, but you know what I mean.