BrooklynGirl

Everyone's a Critic

Yesterday we got home from picking The Boy up at school and everyone was cold and crabby so I suggested a movie viewing.  The Boy looked through my old collection of Disney tapes and demanded The Lion King.

He's seen bits of it before, but I had to ride the fast forward button pretty hard to get past the scary parts (and there are A LOT of scary parts). I reminded him that it was a scary movie, but he was set on it.

So, we watched it. I hit fast forward a lot on my own, but sometimes he would ask me to fast forward, saying, "This part is TOO scary." 

Finally, we  get  to the middle of the movie--the  love scene between Simba and his  long  lost love as "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" swells in the background--and I thought this would be a good, non-scary opportunity to sneak off and deposit The Girl, whose nursing session had been the real reason for this little film festival.  As I'm tip toeing out of The Girl's room, The Boy comes barreling towards me, screaming, "Mommy!  This part is TOO sing-y!"

Letting (Yourself) Go

It's a cliche, really, to talk about how easy it is to let yourself go when you're a stay at home parent, but man, am I just...gone.

My standards were not that high to begin with.  I mean, yes, before kids, I showered every morning, blew my hair dry, put on a touch of make up, and wore different, clean clothes everyday, but I wasn't a fashionista, didn't have a rigid exercise plan, and was not a regular at the nail salon.

But now?  Oh, it's scary.   I recently hit this bottom: after wearing a set of clothes all day Sunday, I realized that I hadn't taken any pajamas out of my bedroom (where The Girl sleeps) so I just slept in my  clothes.  I wore the same clothes to take The Boy to school the next morning, swearing I would shower and change when I got home (which of course I promptly forgot), and because I also forgot to get the pajamas before The Girl went down for the night, I slept in the same clothes again.

Ewwwww.

I've since showered, changed, and burned the offending clothes, but the shame lingers on.

Advanced Parenting

We have an open door bathroom policy around here--mostly because we have just the one bathroom and because The Boy is surprisingly adept at turning door knobs.   

This weekend I happened to be taking a shower when I heard the door swing open and soon enough The Boy threw back the shower curtain and yelled, "Peekaboo!"

He took a long look at his soapy mother.  "Where's your penis?" he asked.

And though I know I should have been prepared for this question, words failed me.  I waited to see if someone or something would come to my rescue then I took a deep breath and offered, "Well, mommies don't have penises.   Mommies have vaginas."

"OK," he said and toddled off.

I got out of the shower to dry off and silently congratulated myself on my grace under pressure when The Boy appeared beside me again.

"What are those?" he asked, pointing to my breasts.

It's going to be a long childhood.

The Week in Bullets

It's been a busy week.  I've started and abandoned a dozen posts so I'll try to get by with bullets:

• Our best friends just moved away--not to the suburbs (as we have contemplated), but to a faraway city to which we cannot follow.  I thought I'd had plenty of time to digest and accept this news, but when I picked up The Boy from school on Tuesday, all the other moms seemed to pair off for after school activities, and I felt like the loneliest person in the world.
• I finished a freelance editing job earlier this week (an embarrassing amount of time after my initial deadline) and was so mortified by the quality of my work that I was afraid to check my email for fear of negative feedback from my client.  Yesterday,  I finally heard back from said client and apparently I don't suck as much as I thought I did.   On this project anyway.
• The Girl has an ear infection.  I'll let you imagine what that means for the sleep situation.
• Going to the pediatrician is a nightmare in my neighborhood.  All the offices are small and crowded and the waits are horrendous.  I had no choice but to bring The Boy along for The Girl's appointment yesterday, but I managed to plan ahead enough that we had books, trains, and snacks.   The 1 1/2 hour wait felt like the parenting olympics,  but I totally medaled in my event.  Totally.
• So far today we have shoveled snow off the stoop, baked cupcakes, watched The Little Mermaid, and read Click Clack Moo 2 or 3 dozen times.  The Girl is finally napping, and The Boy is "resting" in his crib right now singing the theme song from The Wonder Pets.  How many hours until bedtime?

Six Things

The last two nights have been better.  It never fails that whenever I bitch and moan about sleeplessness, I hear stories about people who've had it much, much worse, and then I’m embarrassed. So consider the below a gigantic change of subject, courtesy of Rebeccah:

Here are the rules to the game:

1) Link to the person that tagged you.
2) Post the rules on your blog.
3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least 3 people at the end of your post and link to their blogs.
5) Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6) Let the fun begin!

Here we go:

1.  Mismatched sheets make me uncomfortable.  My life is not particularly neat and tidy, but it has always included sheet sets, the way nature intended it.

2.   I don't get Amy Winehouse.  Her voice isn’t bad, but when your whole schtick is denial, well, that just seems sad.

3.  I could eat nothing but cheese and bread for the rest of my life and die happy.

4. I have a fantasy about being on What Not to Wear, but I think the shame upon viewing my secret footage could do me in.

5.  I like chocolate and I like ice cream, but I don't particularly like chocolate ice cream. 

6. I’ve never had a Big Mac.

I'm tagging Cat, Cat, and Kate.

 

8 Months

I thought about giving her some Benadryl just so I could get some rest.  She's never taken it before and with my luck she'd have a paradoxical reaction that would make her even more lively, but we didn't have any in the house so it was moot. 

But, fuck.  I just don't know what to do anymore.

We did some more CIO last week and seemed to be over the hump, but somehow we've taken a gazillion steps backwards since then.  She 'll nurse fitfully for hours, then happily gulp down a bottle, but instead of conking out (as a bottle usually makes her do), she's up and raring to go.  She's recently cut her second tooth, but I don't think she's actively teething at the moment.

At my low point last night, I put The Girl in the stroller and rolled her back and forth across the dining room (perhaps a 4 ft walk) until she fell asleep.  I got an hour's rest, and then she would only sleep when the stroller was in motion.  That was the end of that.

Maybe this is just the 8-month sleep regression ("just," as if knowing what it is makes it more manageable), but you know, I would have hoped to have recovered from the 4-month regression before going balls out into this one.

Today, my parenting of The Boy consisted of bringing him to and from school and then plopping him in front of the television.  I'm try to encourage a healthy appreciation for classic Disney movies (today we tried Robin Hood), but he only has eyes for Diego.  God help us.

Electoral Stream of Consciousness

I couldn't wait to vote for Bill Clinton.  It was the first time I voted in a presidential election, and I thought he was going to change the world--truly I did.  He was so inspiring, so charismatic, so smart.

He did some amazing things while he was in office: establishing FMLA (which, though wholly inadequate, was a good start), nominating Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, getting control over the federal deficit.  He also did some less than amazing things: the embarrassing compromise of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the directive authorizing extraordinary rendition, and, of course, that little problem with the intern.

Going into this primary, I had assumed I would vote for another Clinton:  she's less charismatic than Bill, but she's smart, and she's the senator from my state, which makes her more likely to represent (or at least be aware of) the issues that concern me.

But the Obama juggernaut is hard to ignore.  When I hear him speak, I feel the same way I felt about Bill Clinton back in the day.   It makes me believe that change is possible, that we can recover from the legacy of the Bush presidency.   I worry that his optimism is the result of naivete and inexperience--and that worry alone makes me reconsider Hillary Clinton.

She gets a bad rap.  There are people who hate her--hate her--for  reasons I just don't understand.  My mother is one of these.  The hatred is irrational and immutable; it makes me want to vote for Clinton just as a kick in the teeth to the haters (sorry mom).

But it is the hatred that, I think, makes Obama the stronger candidate in the general election. 

I would like to take my daughter into the voting booth so that, with one pull of the lever, she can see a whole new world open to her, but I don't think I'll know who has the best chance of  doing that until I draw the curtain.