BrooklynGirl

But How Will It Affect Property Values?

Apparently, Darren Starr (of Sex & the City fame) is thinking about creating a "dramady" set in my neighborhood.

Oh dear.

I find the notion hilarious.  In New York City, "Park Slope" is code for all kinds of things: overly earnest helicopter parents, maternal entitlement (it's always the mothers who take the rap for these things), uber organic crunchiness, yuppie gentrification run amok.  You name it; we're destroying the city with it.

But I don't care.  I love my neighborhood.  I do.  I've really never encountered any of the ridiculousness that it is theoretically known for--or, if I have, it's been easily negotiated.  Yes, my kids have been known to accompany my husband and I to a bar where The Boy eats french fries while we swill beer (no, not this bar).  Yes, I regularly suborn wanton acts of vandalism when I 
permit The Boy to draw with chalk on the sidewalk in front of our apartment.  Yes, I take my stroller--sometimes my double stroller!--into a coffee shop, and it's possible we've left a Goldfish an organic Cheddar bunny or two behind.

I know this little life isn't dramady worthy (Next week: BrooklynGirl attempts to run her dishwasher at night without waking her temporarily sleeping children and contemplates folding laundry!), but I'd love to see what mischief I'm supposed to be up to.

Getting Through

That last few weeks I feel like I've been in survival mode.  If I could just get through this emergency room visit, this  round of vomiting, this  trip  to the pediatrician, this tantrum, this freelance assignment, this bedtime, this dinner that The Boy refuses to eat, this nighttime through which The Girl will refuse to sleep.   

Right now I am getting through the remaining 2 days of my husband's business trip.

It just hasn't been very fun.*  Like caro, I want my weekends to be filled with fabulousness, but lately they're filled with obligations or desperate attempts to catch up on sleep.  The Girl will be 11 months on Thursday.  Wasn't it supposed to get easier by now?

I want to have fun.  I want to be fun. I just don't remember how.

*Whenever this thought echoes in my head,  I flash to the scene in  The Big Chill in which Richard--boring, humorless  Richard--offers his world view that "No one ever said it would be fun. At least...no one ever said it to me." And then I get even more depressed that I am
boring, humorless Richard. 

Perspective

Thank you, internets, for talking me off my ledge.  The Girl was diagnosed with a UTI and is now medicated and learning to like the taste of cranberry juice.  If only she hadn't developed that mysterious rash this evening (before we administered the antibiotics)....

I don't keep up with the news these days, but when I hear snippets about this story, I am appalled.   Beyond appalled.  I took heparin throughout both my pregnancies, and I continue to think of it as my own personal miracle drug.  If I had been pregnant during these recalls and taking the drug (even in the low doses that apparently have been without issue), I would be freaking the fuck out.   

If you wait awhile, I'm sure I'll work up a nice little hysteria wondering what the hell was in that miracle drug that I injected twice a day, every day for 20 months out of the last 40, but I'm too tired to do it now.

My heart goes out to any regular heparin users--infertile or otherwise.

Cripes.

 

The Bad Place

Things are not good.  The Girl is not bouncing back from her illness as one might hope.   She still has almost no appetite (and the nursing, while constant, is desultory) and she's very fussy.  She has a random fever that comes and goes--usually in the middle of the night--and though it responds to Motrin, its continued existence is unsettling.   My Google M.D.  suggests maybe a  bladder infection so we're jumping through the hoops to test for that, but today's hoop ended with a leaking specimen collection bag.   There are no words to express the frustration.

The Boy is on spring break from school and is way under-stimulated, pissed off  about the special treatment his sister has been getting, and going through a new and improved version of the Terrible Twos.   Over the weekend while we were out running some errands, he dashed in the open door of an upmarket grocery store, toppled a display of fruit, and then dashed back out of the store and took off down the sidewalk (to my shame, I was so desperate to make sure he didn't run into the street that it didn't occur to me to drag him back to the store and make him pick up the fruit).

And then there's the goddamn freelancing--and yes, I know I haven't been at this long enough to have earned the right to complain, but so be it.  I spent the time I should have spent working today at the pediatrician and will spend the time I should spend working tomorrow there as well (or at least a sizable chunk of it).   There just aren't enough hours in the day to get it all done so I'm doing a crappy job, and since the whole point of working was to have something about which I feel competent, well, I wonder what the hell I'm doing. 

People do this all the time--have jobs, have families, have some semblance of their sanity--why the hell can't I figure it out?

Recuperation

Thank you for your well wishes.  I don't know whether it was rotavirus or just some other pernicious stomach virus, but The Girl is getting better.  Slowly. 

I had all but weaned--The Girl really loved her solids and bottles of formula and wasn't especially interested in nursing except as a means to achieve napdom.  As unenthusiastic as I am about breastfeeding, I still had some regrets about not prolonging this stage of life--especially since it's unlikely that I'll be doing it again.  The guilt grew when The Girl got sick, and it became clear that breast milk was the only thing that didn't make her vomit instantly--whether because it was easier for her to digest or because there wasn't really that much for her to consume was not clear.

But now we're right back in it.  The Girl is all about nursing these days, and I have run the gamut of emotions from being grateful for this second chance to being quietly resentful that I once again bear  this responsibility.

And, of course, this illness  happened to fall as I was finishing up a freelance project--a  project that was already FUBAR because at some point along the way Word crashed (possibly user error), and I lost 95% of the work I had done.  Thus, it's been hard not to see the whole experience as a sign (in a burning bush kind of way) that this freelance thing is not meant to be.  I am trying to be optimistic, but so far the concept of work/life balance is seeming like a myth.

 

Emergency Room Redux

I'm not supposed to be here.  I'm supposed to be basking in the glow of a family visit, silently seething and composing blog posts in my head about how my family just doesn't get me or how I don't get them and how absurd that  is since I'm almost 40, but instead I'm here.

The Girl is sick--rotavirus maybe.  We're going back to the doctor in a little while to find out for sure.   She started throwing up on Friday night--unfortunately a few hours after she fell and hit her head.  Yes again.  I took her to the ER to rule out a concussion.  That--or worse--was indeed ruled out, but it was not a good experience.

To the Surly Woman at the Registration Desk--Do not expect sympathy from patients when you complain about how busy you are yet you take time  to change the television in the waiting room to something you would like to watch.  Having to endure "Scrubs" reruns is not in itself deserving of pity.

To the Triage Nurse--When your patient who has brought her 10 month old daughter in with a bump on the head has answered no to the question, "Is there any domestic violence in the home?" do not make the joke, "Except when it comes to your daughter."  It's not funny.

To the First Resident--Do not touch the bump on a child's head and declare, "I've never felt anything like that before."  Do not tell the child's mother that she's "probably fine," then draw the polyester curtain and step a foot and a half away and tell the attending that you suspect a skull fracture and think your patient's mother cannot hear you.

To Environmental Services--Do not bitch and moan about having to mop up vomit from the floor next to a child's crib when mother and child are both covered in copious amounts of same. 

To the Second Resident--When the child is strapped down for her CAT scan and crying piteously, do not turn to the child's mother and say, "The crying breaks my heart."

To the First Resident--Do not tell a mother,  "This is my first day here; I don't usually work with kids," after you've been caring for her child for the last 6 hours.  The mother will not be filled with confidence about the care her child has received.

To the Discharge Office--Do not give out discharge papers that tell the parent to call the ER if the child develops a fever within 24 hours of being discharged and then include a non-working phone number for ER.

Week Two

Last week (my first week of sorta kinda employment), I got this and this done, but nothing that actually paid for the babysitter.  This  week, however, I have some actual work so I'll be brief.

This morning I was staggering around the kitchen after yet another night of crappy sleep (teething, sleep regression, who the hell knows), when NPR informed me that if The Girl doesn't start sleeping better soon, she's twice as likely to be overweight by age 3.   Great.  Sleeplessness is now even more stressful--yahoo!

Another  problem in the sleep saga: I'm taking the kiddos to visit my parents next week (just me and them on a plane--watch this space to see what the flight attendants do to us).   Even though they have a great big house and white noise machines galore, my father is vaguely insane when it comes to (his) sleep.*  I'm not sure exactly what's  going to happen if he hears the nighttime symphony that is The Girl.

The Boy, in particular, is looking forward to going on an airplane (though what he really wants to ride is a helicopter) and seeing his grandparents, but I continue to have issues with my parents that surprise me.  I've said before that I thought the shared experience of being parents might bring me closer to them, but so often I wind up shaking my head and wondering how they got through the experience of having young children.  Alas.

Anyway, besides snacks and a DVD player, any ideas for entertaining kiddos on a plane?

*True story: when he visited me in the hospital the day after The Girl was born (he slept in at the hotel, had breakfast, and arrived around noon), and I asked how he was, he told me--a woman who had just had a c-section and was nursing a newborn around the clock--that he was tired and hoping to take a nap.

Gender Studies

The Boy and Dora go way back, but recently, he's been expressing a strong preference for Diego as his televised opiate.  So much so, that I started to wonder if it was a gender thing: did he prefer Diego simply because he was a boy?*  I decided to ask some questions:

Me:  Buddy, is Diego a boy or a girl?
Boy: A boy.
Aha--just as I thought.   But then:

Me: Is Dora a boy or a girl?
Boy: A boy.
So much for that theory.  I wonder if he knows the concept of "boy" or "girl."

Me: Is Pablo a boy or a girl?
Boy: A boy.
Hmmm.

Me: Is Tasha a boy or a girl?
Boy: A girl.
Interesting.

Me:  How do you know Tasha's a girl?
Boy:  Tasha's...Tasha.
Good point.

Me: Is Tyrone a boy or a girl?
Boy: <Giggles>Tyrone is....a moose.

*Personally, I think Dora kicks Diego's ass, at least in the old school episodes before the explorer star/super baby ridiculousness.