BrooklynGirl

The Life of the Mind

As I think I've mentioned before, since The Girl's arrival, my husband has taken over the evening routine with The Boy: bath then books then bed.  Sometimes, I'm nostalgic for it (except when my husband isn't home and I have to do it), but one really charming feature of this development is how excited The Boy gets when his dad comes home.

Starting after he eats dinner, he jumps at any noise he hears in the hallway.  If a few minutes go by and Dad doesn't walk through the front door, he says, "Not Dad," and goes back to what he was doing.  Sometimes, what he was doing was standing at the front window, looking for Dad to walk  up  the stoop.

Yesterday, I happened to be holding The Boy by the window when Dad came into view.  His whole body started to vibrate with excitement.  He started to giggle.   When Dad saw him and waved, it was as if Dora herself had walked out of the television set to say hello.

With all this joy, then, it naturally follows that he gets a little sad when Dad leaves for work in the morning.  Today as Dad was getting ready, I asked The Boy where Dad was going.

"Going to the park," he said with some conviction.  Not a bad guess, I suppose, since that's most often where he and Dad go when they leave the apartment together.  But then I wondered: has  The Boy been thinking this all along?  That when Dad leaves the apartment he's off in the park having fun, fun, fun without The Boy? No wonder he's sad.

Wordsmith

Yesterday after refusing all of the usual breakfast options, The Boy toddled over to the fridge, opened the door, removed a carton of eggs, and asked, "Make eggs?"

Eager for an excuse to remove the carton from his hands, I agreed.  He pulled his stool up to the stove, helped me beat the eggs, and tried to put his tender hands on the hot, hot frying pan helped me cook them. 

With great ceremony, I put the eggs in a bowl and invited him to carry them to his chair.   He happily climbed into his booster seat (a struggle of late) and buckled himself in.  I attached his tray and re-presented the eggs.

"No eggs," he said as he waved them away.  He would not look at them again.

When I recounted the story for my husband, he said, "Well, he said he wanted to make eggs, not eat eggs."

Grrrr.

Urban Legend Revealed

I had heard rumors that some of the greater metropolita area's most  fabulous women chose the hospitals at which to deliver their babies on the basis of their gift bags. 

This seemed insane to me because, well, it is.  Besides, when I delivered The Boy, the gift bag I received contained formula, diapers, wipes, and a thermometer--nice, sure, but not in a hospital-determining kind of way.

Apparently, though, I was robbed.  There ARE fabulous gift bags.  This time when we received our discharge materials from the hospital--along with the formula, diapers, wipes, and thermometer--I also received another dainty little bag, this one decorated with what I later learned were Chanel logos.  The bag contains perfume and fancy anti-wrinkle and undereye circle cream.

The gift items are all laughably appropriate as I no longer have time to bathe and look wrinkled and tired, and these are not the kinds of things I have the time or money to buy for myself just now, but still....

Long Time No Post

Whenever The Boy, my stomach, and  I are out together, someone gestures toward my ever increasing girth and says something like, "You didn't waste any time."

I usually stammer back, "We were surprised." But I don't think that's the ideal response.  For one, it makes me sound like I couldn't quite master the concepts of Sex Ed.  For another, it doesn't sound sufficiently grateful.  For yet another, it's not really true: no, we didn't plot the interception of this particular sperm and this particular egg, but we had met with our RE not one month prior to the appearance of that double line to talk about throwing a soiree for some sperm and  some eggs in the near future so it was...on our minds. 

When I'm feeling frisky, I say something about the "difficulties" we had conceiving The Boy, which either sends my conversational partner running or prompts them to tell me about how sometimes all you need to do to get pregnant is just "relax and stop trying."  Which makes my head explode.

*****

After much sturm und drang, I did wind up selling or giving away a lot of The Boy's newborn paraphernalia last spring so I find myself once  again thumbing through my now out of date copy of Baby Bargains and wondering what truly essential items we can't live with out.   I didn't enjoy this the first time around, and it's causing just as much angst now.

The sitter continues to pester me about how we absolutely MUST get the au courant double stroller that anybody who's anybody is piloting around the Slope these days, and though I suspect we will eventually give in to this particular item, I was so self-righteous in my rejection of the $600 Bugaboo that it causes me great pain to contemplate spending that much money on a stroller after all.  Feh.

*****

I'm scheduled to have a c-section on Friday, June 1st unless I go into labor on my own before then in which case I'll give VBAC a shot.  Today is May 14th so that's, um, freakishly, mind bogglingly, unbelievably soon.

Since we don't really have local family, the logistics of plotting this event seem somewhat ludicrous.  I keep trying to remember what the days in the hospital were like when The Boy was born, but I can't recall a thing that's not in the pictures.  For example, the only meal I recall from my 4 days in the hospital was the turkey sandwich my husband brought me when I was first allowed non-liquid food.*  Surely there were other meals?  Or did we just sit around and stare at The Boy?

*I realize this is perhaps not the most pressing logistical issue, but it was on my mind today as I waited for an elevator to the antepartum testing unit (for my NST) which is on the same floor as Labor & Delivery, and all the people waiting with me were husbands bringing their post partum wives tasty treats from the outside and comparing notes on who'd been asked to travel the furthest.  It was kind of cute in an eye-rolling, only-in-New-York sort of way.

It Continues

The Boy is sleeping worse than ever.  He's battling some sort of virus so he's crabby and generally miserable, and I don't blame him a bit, but man....It's exhausting.

All this exhaustion has turned my mind to mush, but here are some things I've been wanting to write about lately:

1.  In case of illness, what is your criteria for going to the pediatrician?  We've paid two sick visits already with this particular virus (and I wager to say we would have been more if I didn't have a college friend in pediatrics who is generally willing to answer my questions).  I don't want to be an alarmist pain in the ass, but I also don't want The Boy to suffer. 

2.  I've all but decided not to go for VBAC and have a repeat c-section instead.  I've done my due diligence and have my reasons that I'll go into when I've had more than 3 consecutive hours of sleep.  I have been surprised by the hostility with which this decision has been met when I've discussed it with my generally crunchy, pro-woman friends, who are sure that I am being duped by my doctor into doing something that is unnecessarily risky to accomodate her schedule (of course, I am not).  Why does the rhetoric around c-sections (from the pro-vaginal birth camp) tend to be so nasty (to wit, Tina Cassidy's Op/Ed in the Times from January)?

Working for a Living?

I have been a good employee in a variety of contexts.  I haven't succeeded on my natural talents, but rather by hard work: I came early, stayed late, obsessed about the little details that didn't merit anyone else's attention.

But as a working parent, I suck.  A lot.

As a refresher, I currently work as a temporary, part-time intervention teacher in a public middle school.  I get no benefits and no paid sick time, personal days, or vacation.  I was promised some flexibility, but from the beginning, my boss has made it pretty clear that he sees this need for flexibility as a lack of commitment to the job.

And maybe he's not wrong.  In the old days, I scheduled a lot of personal things around my work schedule.  I was often late in getting home and had work on my mind a lot.  These days, that is not the case.  I spend a fair amount of time cursing the fact that I can't be in two places at the same time--with my son and with my students--but The Boy comes first.  No contest.

When I'm with my students, I think I'm a better teacher than I was before I became a parent mostly because I have infinitely more patience than I used to, but there is no question that I spend less time with my students and preparing to be with my students than in the past.

I should have returned to school today after a 10 day spring break, but The Boy woke up with a fever and I took the day off to take him to the doctor.  Depending on how the rest of today (and tonight) goes, I may take tomorrow off too.

I know I'm lucky that my family's financial well being doesn't depend on my having this job, and I feel like I'm setting a bad example for working parenthood--that maybe my boss will be reluctant to hire the parent of a toddler in the future for fear that he/she will be as unreliable as I have been.

In a few weeks, the job will end (school budget crunch and my own impending deadline), and I will miss  it.  But I will also be enormously relieved. 

Sleepless in the South Slope

The Boy is not sleeping again, and it's really starting to affect my sense of humor.  It's my fault: he's had a bit of a cold so I've been coddling him during his nighttime wakings and now that's become his favorite time to wake up, snuggle, and share his toddler gossip, "Gee da roh las da ug!" 

It's not that interesting at 2 am either.

It's making me panicky--even more panicky, I should say--about how one does all this with a newborn.  Before The Boy arrived, I didn't really understand tiredness.  As a lifelong insomniac, I thought I knew all about sleep deprivation, but it turns out I was wrong.  I hadn't really experienced tired until I'd been woken up every 2 hours during the night, cajoled a cranky toddler into a diaper change, attempted to spoon some oatmeal down his gullet, and then realized that I still had 10 unassisted hours to go until (his) bedtime.  If I was lucky.

How does one shoehorn a newborn into this schedule?

The Swirly Slide

Our local playground is basically divided in two parts: one part for big kids and one part for smaller, toddler kids.   The latter is, generally speaking, where we hang out.   It's still fraught with danger for a neurotically overprotective  parent such as myself, but it's generally manageable (except when it's not).

The Boy, however, has no interest in being a toddler.  He loves chasing after the older kids, even when these kids run him over or lead him to the scary, big kid part of the playground.  Looming  over  this part of the playground like Mordor is a big, swirly slide.  It seems impossibly high, unbelievable sleep, and oh so very swirly.  I hate it.

Naturally, The Boy can't get enough of it.   The problem with the slide is that it's at the very top of the play structure, and that structure has all sorts of ladders and fire station-style poles that call The Boy's name in a loud yet seductive manner.   So The Boy must be pretty closely supervised, ideally by someone close enough to grab him when he decides to leap off into the ether.  Once he makes it to the slide, however, it seems like there  should be someone standing at the bottom to manage his lightening fast descent.  I try to scramble down from the top in time to catch him, but this is when the siren song of the fire station poles seems to be the loudest, and I am not nimble enough to do this expeditiously.

As a result, the temporary solution has been for The Boy and I to ride down the swirly slide together.  He isn't rejecting his toddler identity so precociously that he's embarrassed to be seen with me, and I feel reasonably confident of my ability to navigate the slide at least as well as your average five year old.  But still: a 29-week pregnant woman doesn't really seem at home in this setting.

I really hate the slide.

First Blood

The Boy got his very first bloody nose (and bloody lip, but he's already had a couple of them) at the playground today.

It's unseasonably warm here so I took him to the park when I got home from work because he refused to do anything else I'm such a good mother.  He was running around, and I was feeling a little rusty at keeping tabs on The Boy when the playground is teeming with that much humanity, but we seemed to be doing okay.  That's when he decided to descend the cement steps...on his face.  Fortunately, there was a pile of dirt and leaves at the bottom to make the whole thing even worse cushion the fall.

He's all cleaned up and fine now,  but I happened to be wearing a brand new shirt that I don't think will ever recover.

Ah, spring.

Drawing the Line

I'm pretty middle of the road on most parenting issues: we buy organic milk,  but eat non-organic ice cream; I swear by CIO, but don't always let The Boy cry; I worry about spoiling, but sometimes bribe The Boy with treats so that he'll get in the damned stroller already.

But there's one point on which I will not compromise: I won't dress The Boy in camouflage-patterned clothing.  And I get a little fidgety when I see the camouflage in stores--especially the pink and purple camo that I imagine is intended for girls.  It just makes me...crazy.  Regardless of our current militaristic endeavors, I think we're all in agreement that child soldiers are a bad thing.  So what's up with this clothing?

What do you think?  What makes you nuts?