Piper is singing along to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps." It is so cute I think I'm having a heart attack. Did I mention she's also dancing? Fists in the air, bouncing-up-and-down, turning in circles, head-bobbing ROCKING OUT.
Damn, I love that kid.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Grosgrain
Not the ribbon (which I do love) but the blog (which I think I love even more than the ribbon). Have you seen this? Kathleen creates the most lovely, amazing clothes...and then gives them away. She GIVES AWAY beautiful clothes like these skirts. You don't have to give her your firstborn or tap-dance or forward an email to ten strong women to win them. You just have to link to her blog. How amazing is that?!
She's opening an online shop soon, and you can bet I'll be buying from her. Piper would look adorable in those clothes. And I'll be forwarding a link to everyone I know so they can get some of her beautiful designs too.
P.S. Check out this amazing costume she made. It would be years too big for Piper, so I didn't enter to win it. It would've been a crime to store it until she grew into that gorgeous dress.
She's opening an online shop soon, and you can bet I'll be buying from her. Piper would look adorable in those clothes. And I'll be forwarding a link to everyone I know so they can get some of her beautiful designs too.
P.S. Check out this amazing costume she made. It would be years too big for Piper, so I didn't enter to win it. It would've been a crime to store it until she grew into that gorgeous dress.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
For Those As Obsessed As I Am
Indulging my well-documented obsession with Babylegs, the tiny-sized leg warmers, I am posting some sales links for those who also find them irresistable:
The excellent Banana Peels Diapers has a lot of deeply discounted designs, many half-off. I've ordered from BPD before and the customer service is OUTSTANDING. They seem to have a ton of designs on sale at the moment. Don't forget to check out their cloth-diapering supplies, too. Lots of good stuff.
Today's Babysteals deal is a two-pack of Babylegs for half off. The pink ones are sold out as of right now, but there's some of the navy/Ivy League sets left.
Little Dudes and Divas has sets at half-off. While I am not crazy about the name of their establishment, they do have "choose your designs" 3-,4-,5-, or 6-packs for half their normal price. There's a limited selection of designs to chose from for the deal, but some cute selections are to be had and the price is great.
BabySnazz has some not-quite-as-good discounts on quite a few designs, as well as "Skidpants," which also appear to be baby legwarmers in cute designs. I don't know much about the website or the Skidpants brand, but they are nice-looking.
I just ordered Piper some very cute See Kai Run shoes that were on mega-sale at Amazon ($15 for shoes that are normally $36? Yes, please!) and I am having to restrain myself from going buck-wild with the Babylegs today. The weather here has cooled off considerably and she wears a pair pretty much every day now, either in place of pants (we have precious few items of cold-weather clothing that will fit over the lumpy bulk of cloth diapers), or under dresses. I am trying not to use this "but she wears them every day!" thing to justify whipping out the Fantastic Plastic and ordering up a few dozen more pairs. They're on SALE, fer crying out loud, HALF OFF. The only thing that has stopped me so far is looking at the sales and realizing just how many of those designs we already own.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Today I watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog again (that's only the fourth time, amazingly) and then poked around online reading about it. I had the radio on - NPR, what else? Commercial pop radio makes me want to stick a screwdriver in my ear - while I was futzing online and waiting for my biscotti to finish baking.
This radio vs. internet media convergence has caused a very strange side effect.
I cannot stop thinking "The hammer is my penis" whenever I hear John McCain's name mentioned.
I also cannot stop thinking of Sarah Palin as Moist.
I have been amusing myself with these thoughts all morning. If my next-door neighbor is home, she probably thinks I'm nuts. Our windows are all open (it was 82 yesterday and they're predicting 86 today) and I'm pretty sure my random bursts of hysterical shrieking laughter carry quite far.
This radio vs. internet media convergence has caused a very strange side effect.
I cannot stop thinking "The hammer is my penis" whenever I hear John McCain's name mentioned.
I also cannot stop thinking of Sarah Palin as Moist.
I have been amusing myself with these thoughts all morning. If my next-door neighbor is home, she probably thinks I'm nuts. Our windows are all open (it was 82 yesterday and they're predicting 86 today) and I'm pretty sure my random bursts of hysterical shrieking laughter carry quite far.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Lists, Part 1
Things That Freak My Kid Out
The Kitchen-Aid Mixer
The Espresso Machine
The Steam Wand On the Espresso Machine
My Mother-In-Law
The Song "Ted Mosby Is A Jerk"*** (warning: sound)
Things My Kid Is Not Afraid Of
Strangers
Strangers' Dogs
Strangers' Really HUGE Dogs
The Street
Cars
Heights
Pulling Things Down Onto Her Head
The Hot Oven
Diving Headfirst Into A Bathtub With Or Without Water In It
***Seriously. She started sobbing within the first ten seconds of the song playing. Sobbing and howling "no, no, no!"
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Things That Are Annoying Me Today
I was never good at math. At least, I was never supposed to be. I jokingly told Ryan the other night that "the only thing I remember about Math is that I was good at English." Which is true - I was a girl, I learned to read early, I was encouraged from a young age to focus on words and forget about the numbers. There was also the subtle, underlying assumption that girls aren't as good at math, and hey since I had the English thing going, why bother to fight nature?
I wish I'd paid more attention, because today most of my gripes are math-oriented*:
- I got a letter from our mortgage co. saying we owe an extra $300 to our escrow account. As near as I can tell, after half an hour of staring at two pages full of tiny columns of numbers labeled with lots of words like "projected," "required," "comparison," and "previous," when they did the initial calculation for our payments, they underestimated the taxes. Or our taxes went up. Or they're going up next year. Or our homeowners insurance went up. Or is going up. Or something.
- The thing is, we switched insurance carriers and got a refund earlier in the year. Our new policy was $200 less than the old one, but I took the whole refund and put it in the escrow account, just to be safe. I can't seem to figure out what happened to the extra, unless our taxes are going up by $500, not $300.
- It seems like we are paying a lot of taxes. When we were house-shopping in California, I'd always look at the estimated taxes on the houses we liked. What we're paying here seems high in comparision, which doesn't make much sense.
- I would not mind paying extravagant taxes if I got something in return. Like maybe if there were sidewalks beyond the borders of our neighborhood, or a bike lane on a road within five miles of here, or if they ran some buses within eight miles of here, or if they had plans to build an arm of the new and very successful light rail anywhere near here in the next 25 years (they don't; I've combed the CATS website).
- Staring at those columns of tiny numbers has also made me pissed off at how much of our payments go to "mortgage insurance" every month. As near as I can tell, "mortgage insurance" means paying someone to sit on their ass and do nothing. It doesn't help me, and people paying it has certainly not helped banks or mortgage carriers stay upright (Helllooooo, Wachovia, Countrywide, Silver State, I'm talking to you). So how about I keep my money every month and make my payments more affordable? I'm sure a lower payment would help prevent a default more than paying your mob-like protection money "mortgage insurance" every month.
- Also, if you are going to screw up the amounts I'm supposed to put in escrow for my taxes and homeowner's insurance, can I just do it myself? I mean, I can't, under the terms of our loan, etc., but I think I'd rather. The mortgage lender has generously offered to front the money (and charge us interest, of course) or work it into our payments (which means our payments are going up by $20 a month) but personally I'd like things to be all separated out so I can see what's going on with each thing, instead of scrutinizing the jumble of figures currently before me.
- They also seem to have the amount of our last payment wrong. It's only off by a small amount, the few dollars extra I put into principal every month to round the payment up to a nice whole number, but now I have to figure out why it doesn't add up and that is also pissing me off.
Non-math related:
- I just ate my last biscotti. Now I have to make some more, and not think about the fact that I am the only one in the house that eats them (well, Piper takes occasional bites) and that I have been making them once a week, which means that every week I am consuming half a stick of butter and 3/4 cup sugar in baked biscotti goodness form. There's other stuff in there too (like, um, flour and eggs), but it's the butter and sugar that I find most objectionable. And by objectionable I mean delicious.
*Also, I wish I'd paid attention because science and math would've served me far better in life than my meandering Liberal Arts education. I would have a viable career now, instead of wondering if I'm going to have to eventually ask people if they would like fries with that.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
16 Months
I haven't done one of these in...I don't know how long. It was long enough ago that I could still keep track of the weeks. I have no idea how many weeks old she is now. I haven't even had time to write down for myself all the things she does. There's so much I've already forgotten.
The past three (or so) months have seen an astounding word explosion. She learns new words every single day. It's still amazing to us when she pops out with new ones, because hey, we did not explicitly teach her that!. Her little brain is like a sponge right now. She's learning not only the words but also what they mean, which is the thing that floors me. One day I'll ask her "do you want your jacket off?" and the next day she starts screaming "OFF! OFF! OFF!" and tearing at the zipper when she gets too hot. We bought her some Halloween books, and by the third day she is pointing to pictures and words and saying "Witch. Pumpkin. Bats." Whenever I open the fridge, she grabs things out of the door shelves and lines them up on the floor, then picks up each bottle of marinade or jar of jelly and puts it back, all the time saying "Back. Back. Back." She says this when we clean up her room, chanting it as she hands me books and toys to put back in their proper bins, boxes, and shelves.
Yesterday Ryan stayed home from work, felled by a wicked head cold. When he heard Piper stirring in the morning, he went in to see her. When she opened her eyes and saw him, she grinned, kicked her feet, and gave him a big smacking kiss. "Awesome," she said.
She can call the cats by individual names now; so far she knows Fritz, Beckham, Ellie, Joon, Mei-Mei, and sometimes Chick. She really really loves animals, cats and dogs especially. We had to tell her to "be nice" a lot at first, so now whenever she says "nice" it is always accompanied by a petting motion. It's more common these days for her to say "nice one" when she is petting an animal. I don't know where she got that, since it's not something I recall saying to her.
I hear her chattering to the cats in the kitchen sometimes: "Kee ("Kitty"). Fritz. Kee. Nice one. Eyes. Nose. Mouf. Kee. Kee. Ears? Kee. Nice one." I usually come in to keep watch and make sure she isn't poking the cat in the eyes, yanking whiskers, or body-slamming the poor creature. Some of the cats will let her do this kind of stuff, but their tolerance only goes so far.
She likes to comfort us. "Mom-mai?" She says. "Up." So I pick her up and she gives me little reassuring pats on the back. "Mom-mai. Mom-mai," she says as she lays her head on my shoulder. Sometimes when I'm really frustrated with her, she climbs onto my lap and gives me a hug or kiss. "Awright, Mom-mai. Awright." No matter how pissed off I was seconds before, it's impossible to stay mad.
In truth, I don't find myself as irritated and angry with her as often as I used to. I think her new communication skills have helped; she can tell me what she wants most of the time, instead of standing there clenching her fists and shrieking because I don't understand. She seems to have also realized that sometimes Mommy just needs a little space. I can tell her to go play in her room for a few minutes or say "no not right now," and she'll usually comply. It gives me a few minutes to simmer down when I feel like I'm getting near the boiling point.
She's really pretty fun right now. I love watching the things she labels "awesome" (like when I read her favorite books or she hears a song she likes). I love watching her dance. She really likes music and we've watched the evolution of her dance moves over the past few months. The opening credits of Freaks and Geeks had her raising her arms and head-banging in the middle of the floor; classical music makes her bob up and down and flap her arms; Zydeco, the theme song to How I Met Your Mother, and her beloved Cuban music inspire frantic marching in place; the closing credits song for Numb3rs causes her to do this strange routine where she puts her arms behind her back with her elbows sticking out at the sides, sticks out her belly, and does a slow, undulating walk around the living room, sometimes turning in circles on the spot. It is the most hilarious and cute thing I have ever witnessed.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Garfield Minus Garfield
A friend turned us on to Garfield Minus Garfield. Have you seen this? It's the Garfield comic strip - without Garfield. Totally hilarious and brilliant.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Awesome
I was getting something out of a low cupboard, which required me to crouch on the floor. Piper came up behind me.
“Mom-mai?” She asked in her little baby voice.
“What, Baby?”
She patted me gently on the back. “Awesome.”
“Thanks, kiddo,” I said. “You’re pretty awesome too.”
“Mom-mai?” She asked in her little baby voice.
“What, Baby?”
She patted me gently on the back. “Awesome.”
“Thanks, kiddo,” I said. “You’re pretty awesome too.”
I'm about to tell them they can't visit anymore.
My parents visited last weekend and brought another carload of CRAP. They did not bring my bicycle, but they did bring:
- 5 pairs of my old baby shoes, none of which Piper can wear (3 too small, 1 too trashed, 1 with soles so thick and hard I don't know how I ever learned to walk). My mom knew the too-small ones were too small when she put them in there. She brought them anyway.
- An assortment of clothes, baby clothes, books, and toys that I had put in the give-away bag before we left Michigan. I put them in the garbage bags along with the rest of the stuff my mom had designated for her monthly Purple Heart pick-up. The give-away stuff is always collected in the same spot at her house. She would've had to root through all the other stuff just to pick out the sackfuls of useless-to-me things she brought.
- A pile of fairly hideous 80's baby clothes that belonged to my siblings & me. All of which are either years too big or many months too small for Piper to wear.
- A crate of Fisher-Price Little People toys that, while pretty cool (and only partly because they are the old choke-sized ones), Piper can't play with for at least another year. She is too hard on things right now to turn her loose with so many small, fragile parts.
- A stack of baby/kid books, 98% of which I can't give to Piper because they are either too old and completely falling apart, or they are not the thick cardboard-paged kind, which means she will shred them. She's extremely hard on books.
- A crate of my siblings' and my old baby/preschool toys, in various states of crumbling decay. One shape-sorter dissolved into tiny plastic shards when we tried to wash it.
- My old Fisher-Price "School Days Desk," which was a beloved toy of mine, but is made to be used by someone 7 or more years old.
- YET ANOTHER crate of Piper's outgrown baby clothes. I'm pretty sure this is the last one, because it has a lot of things I couldn't find (like the tiny onesies we decorated for her when she was a newborn). If there are any more crates of clothes lurking about, I will probably set fire to them because I am so sick of trying to find storage space for it all and ye gods people bought us a lot of foofy pink atrocities.
- A HUGE crate of Lego Duplos, which I specifically told my mom Piper is not quite old enough to play with. She doesn't have the dexterity yet to put the things together and get them apart; all that will happen is she'll stick two pieces together and then scream because she can't undo it. I don't need any more reasons for her to screech, thank you.
- A random assortment of kid-sized silverware (there's like one fork, 5 spoons, and a butterknife). Plastic bowls bearing cartoon approximations of the characters from Willow. Willow was our favorite movie when we were kids, and my mom dutifully saved UPCs from boxes of Quaker oatmeal to get a bowl and matching spoon for each of us. She could only find one of the spoons, and I don't know what the hell I am going to do with these, but I don't think I can bear to throw them out.
I honestly don't know what the F my mother expects me to do with all this stuff. When I try to tell her to stop bringing it, she only whines "It's your stuff. You wanted it. You asked for it. I didn't do it. You wanted it."
It's all still sitting in mountainous piles in the living room. Piper has managed to scatter a lot of it throughout the house. The house is usually ankle-deep in debris by the end of the day anyway, because she just goes from room to room destroying things and making messes faster than I can clean them up. The debris is knee-deep now, and I am teetering on the brink of a full-scale meltdown because my house is so messy. I have been struck down with a malady that required an actual doctor's visit and medications, and Ryan has had an hellacious school week plus a part-time job, so we haven't had much chance to go through it, much less drop off the stuff we don't want at the Goodwill up the road. Therefore, the piles and clutter and junk have been spreading all week and I have been edging closer to insanity.
The house was spotlessly clean and 85% totally organized before my parents showed up; only three closets (one each in the spare bedrooms, one in the hall) remained for me to divide, conquer, and organize. Earlier this month, my house was so clean and organized that not only did I go to bed at a reasonable hour three nights in a row, I spent one entire naptime reading a book because I had done all the things that I usually try to frantically accomplish during that 1.5-hour window every day. My home was organized and my brain felt wonderful because of it.
Now it looks like somebody is setting up a thrift store in here.
- 5 pairs of my old baby shoes, none of which Piper can wear (3 too small, 1 too trashed, 1 with soles so thick and hard I don't know how I ever learned to walk). My mom knew the too-small ones were too small when she put them in there. She brought them anyway.
- An assortment of clothes, baby clothes, books, and toys that I had put in the give-away bag before we left Michigan. I put them in the garbage bags along with the rest of the stuff my mom had designated for her monthly Purple Heart pick-up. The give-away stuff is always collected in the same spot at her house. She would've had to root through all the other stuff just to pick out the sackfuls of useless-to-me things she brought.
- A pile of fairly hideous 80's baby clothes that belonged to my siblings & me. All of which are either years too big or many months too small for Piper to wear.
- A crate of Fisher-Price Little People toys that, while pretty cool (and only partly because they are the old choke-sized ones), Piper can't play with for at least another year. She is too hard on things right now to turn her loose with so many small, fragile parts.
- A stack of baby/kid books, 98% of which I can't give to Piper because they are either too old and completely falling apart, or they are not the thick cardboard-paged kind, which means she will shred them. She's extremely hard on books.
- A crate of my siblings' and my old baby/preschool toys, in various states of crumbling decay. One shape-sorter dissolved into tiny plastic shards when we tried to wash it.
- My old Fisher-Price "School Days Desk," which was a beloved toy of mine, but is made to be used by someone 7 or more years old.
- YET ANOTHER crate of Piper's outgrown baby clothes. I'm pretty sure this is the last one, because it has a lot of things I couldn't find (like the tiny onesies we decorated for her when she was a newborn). If there are any more crates of clothes lurking about, I will probably set fire to them because I am so sick of trying to find storage space for it all and ye gods people bought us a lot of foofy pink atrocities.
- A HUGE crate of Lego Duplos, which I specifically told my mom Piper is not quite old enough to play with. She doesn't have the dexterity yet to put the things together and get them apart; all that will happen is she'll stick two pieces together and then scream because she can't undo it. I don't need any more reasons for her to screech, thank you.
- A random assortment of kid-sized silverware (there's like one fork, 5 spoons, and a butterknife). Plastic bowls bearing cartoon approximations of the characters from Willow. Willow was our favorite movie when we were kids, and my mom dutifully saved UPCs from boxes of Quaker oatmeal to get a bowl and matching spoon for each of us. She could only find one of the spoons, and I don't know what the hell I am going to do with these, but I don't think I can bear to throw them out.
I honestly don't know what the F my mother expects me to do with all this stuff. When I try to tell her to stop bringing it, she only whines "It's your stuff. You wanted it. You asked for it. I didn't do it. You wanted it."
It's all still sitting in mountainous piles in the living room. Piper has managed to scatter a lot of it throughout the house. The house is usually ankle-deep in debris by the end of the day anyway, because she just goes from room to room destroying things and making messes faster than I can clean them up. The debris is knee-deep now, and I am teetering on the brink of a full-scale meltdown because my house is so messy. I have been struck down with a malady that required an actual doctor's visit and medications, and Ryan has had an hellacious school week plus a part-time job, so we haven't had much chance to go through it, much less drop off the stuff we don't want at the Goodwill up the road. Therefore, the piles and clutter and junk have been spreading all week and I have been edging closer to insanity.
The house was spotlessly clean and 85% totally organized before my parents showed up; only three closets (one each in the spare bedrooms, one in the hall) remained for me to divide, conquer, and organize. Earlier this month, my house was so clean and organized that not only did I go to bed at a reasonable hour three nights in a row, I spent one entire naptime reading a book because I had done all the things that I usually try to frantically accomplish during that 1.5-hour window every day. My home was organized and my brain felt wonderful because of it.
Now it looks like somebody is setting up a thrift store in here.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Desperate Measures
My parents are coming tonight and my house is a DISASTER. You can't even walk into the spare bedroom where they're supposed to sleep. Every flat surface in the house is somehow covered in clutter again, despite the fact that I had them all cleared two days ago. Piper got shots on Wed. and has been extra clingy and hard to please ever since. I let her watch the tail-end of Word World on PBS Kids just so I can drink a cup of coffee and asses the mess without her wrapping herself around my legs and screaming.
I always swore I'd never let my kid watch TV until she was older; 2 at least. No way, nohow. I hated the idea of TV for little kids, just training legions of mini-zombies to be the couch-potato consumers of tomorrow. My kid wasn't going to turn out like that. Never mind my own tv-viewing, I would save my child! I thought I would, I don't know, jump in front of the screen or something if she tried to look.
But this is not the first time I have caved. I have been known to pop in my well-worn VHS copy of The Beatles' Yellow Submarine just to get twenty minutes of work-time. She is transfixed by it and will actually sit there quietly and watch, instead of screaming at me and tearing apart whatever I am working on. My kid, who won't even sit still long enough to have her diaper changed, sat in one place for twenty whole minutes.
I didn't intend to let her watch it today. I turned on the TV to find a local news program because of a text message Ryan sent me. It was already on PBS, Word World was on and some computer-generated frog was jumping around. Piper looked up from unloading a file box of our important financial papers and giggled. Then she took a toy and went into the living room and stood in front of the TV. When I went into the kitchen, she didn't follow me and demand "Up! Up!" I got to drink a whole glass of water with no baby-hands grabbing it. The possibility of actually getting something done at some point during the day danced tantalizingly in front of me.
But my glee was short-lived. The show ended and she went back to chasing the cats around and trying to poke them with a plastic fork. Guess I don't need to worry about creating a TV addict so much as an animal abuser.
I always swore I'd never let my kid watch TV until she was older; 2 at least. No way, nohow. I hated the idea of TV for little kids, just training legions of mini-zombies to be the couch-potato consumers of tomorrow. My kid wasn't going to turn out like that. Never mind my own tv-viewing, I would save my child! I thought I would, I don't know, jump in front of the screen or something if she tried to look.
But this is not the first time I have caved. I have been known to pop in my well-worn VHS copy of The Beatles' Yellow Submarine just to get twenty minutes of work-time. She is transfixed by it and will actually sit there quietly and watch, instead of screaming at me and tearing apart whatever I am working on. My kid, who won't even sit still long enough to have her diaper changed, sat in one place for twenty whole minutes.
I didn't intend to let her watch it today. I turned on the TV to find a local news program because of a text message Ryan sent me. It was already on PBS, Word World was on and some computer-generated frog was jumping around. Piper looked up from unloading a file box of our important financial papers and giggled. Then she took a toy and went into the living room and stood in front of the TV. When I went into the kitchen, she didn't follow me and demand "Up! Up!" I got to drink a whole glass of water with no baby-hands grabbing it. The possibility of actually getting something done at some point during the day danced tantalizingly in front of me.
But my glee was short-lived. The show ended and she went back to chasing the cats around and trying to poke them with a plastic fork. Guess I don't need to worry about creating a TV addict so much as an animal abuser.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Unexpected Consequences
You get a lot of advice before you get your first kid.
Some of it is well-intentioned but stupid: “Sleep now while you still can.” As though you can hoard and bank sleep for months beforehand, as though restful, quality sleep is akin to pennies in a piggybank.
Some of it is just stupid: “Crib bumpers! You have to have crib bumpers! The baby will hit its head and get brain damage if you don’t have them!” Yeah, because so many generations of babies who did not have crib bumpers were desperately brain-damaged. Never mind the strangling and suffocation deaths every year from these things, it’s the ridiculous threat of brain-damage that should be driving our bedding purchases.
Some – very few – of the thousands of “helpful” comments people make when you say you’re about to become first-time parents are true. Of course, you don’t realize this until much later, after you are up to your neck in poop, plastic toys, and temper tantrums. One of “the things people say” has turned out to be true for us, in a way that we had not quite anticipated.
That gem of wisdom? “Becoming a parent changes everything.” That’s an approximation, of course, an amalgamation of all the variations on that thought that were so earnestly dished out by well-meaning folk (most of them parents themselves). It is, however you say it, true.
Before you have an actual child in your house, waking you up at night and demanding more of your energy and time than you ever thought possible, you are apt to laugh at these people. “Oh, come on,” you think. “It won’t change everything. Some things, sure. I’ll get less sleep. I’ll have less money. My clothes will be a bit more stained, and I’ll be intimately familiar with another person’s bodily inputs and outputs. I won’t spend my Saturday nights sucking down Cuba Libres and smoking American Spirits on the back patio of the hippie bar.”
You tell yourself that you will be exactly the same person you are now, just with a child in tow. Preferably a clean-faced little cherub who behaves well and whom you can afford to dress in tiny, cute, stylish clothing. It will be hard, of course, but you will always be certain that the work is worth it, buoyed by the strength of your love. You and your partner will watch this little person grow and help it become a wonderful human being, a majestic model of kindness, brimful of forward-thinking views, and probably the finder of the cure for cancer.
Of course, when the sleep deprivation or the crayon-drawings all over your walls or the anguish over “New Math” or the teenage door-slamming comes, as it inevitably must, it’s easy to poke fun at the person you were pre-kid, to say “Psh. Poor, clueless bastard. You thought you had it all figured out, didn’t you? Yeah, cure cancer, bring world peace, haw-haw.”
But there are also moments of total wonderment at the person you have become. You marvel at your distance from that chick who would walk down any alley in the dark and routinely got into cars with strangers, or how different you are from the college boy who spent his free Saturdays at “band practice” in someone’s smoke-filled basement. Sometimes it just smacks you in the face, this feeling of that is not who I am anymore.
This whole diatribe is rooted in an afternoon-tv showing of Trainspotting. I was idly flipping channels one day when Piper was six or eight months old, and Trainspotting was on. I can remember going to see that movie for the first time, I can remember how we obsessively watched it in college and memorized the dialogue. I have watched that movie at least twenty times in my life, and loved it every time.
Every time except this one. It got to the part where the baby is sitting on that disgusting floor, surrounded by passed-out junkies. She is filthy, it looks like she hasn’t had her diaper changed in days, she’s crying and crying and crying. Just sitting in the middle of the dirty floor, with nobody paying attention to her.
I felt like somebody had punched me in the gut. I felt sick; I almost sobbed out loud. I had to change the channel, I could not watch any further. I was perplexed. I turned the channel back, and again there was that horrible, sick feeling. I could not look at the screen, at that crying baby, for more than three seconds. I had to turn it off again. I thought about what happens to that baby later in the movie, and I swear to God I almost threw up, right there in the living room. I felt a physical urge to reach into the screen and pick up that poor, doomed junkie baby. Instead, I picked Piper up from where she was scooting around the floor drooling on stuffed animals and I hugged her so hard she squealed in protest. I put her back down, feeling at once shaky and edgy and agitated, like I’d ingested large amounts of caffeine on an empty stomach.
I also felt confused. I loved this movie, right? What the hell was wrong with me? I had always mocked people who talked about experiences like this, who sobbed for the children left motherless and the mothers left childless by some far-flung natural disaster or talked how about their mommyhood had ignited an urge to mother all children. I snickered, I rolled my eyes, I snerked at these mommy-zombies. Puh-leeeze, I thought. Spare me. Now it appeared that the sappy, overly-sentimental mommy-shoe was on the other foot. My foot.
I told my story to Ryan, and instead of laughing at me or calling me a mom-bot, he said “Oh my God, you are right. I just remembered what happens to the baby. I don’t think I can watch that movie ever again.” And then we both looked at each other: What the hell was going on here?
It happened again when I was discussing my bicycle. I have a very nice bicycle, which is my favorite color (blue), very cool and retro-looking, and still in Michigan. We don’t have a shed or garage to keep our bikes in, so they’re languishing in my parents’ rusty garden shed until we figure something out. I am so desperate for a mode of transportation that I have asked my parents to bring my bike when they visit later this month (preferably instead of, not in addition to, another carload of useless crap). I plan to put a baby-seat on it and ride as far as I can on our not-at-all-bicycle-friendly roads.
I was thinking about this, about how nice it will be not to be trapped in the house all the time (we have one car, which goes with Ryan every day on his 25-minutes-each-way commute) and how I’d have to get Piper a little bike helmet. And then I realized that I’d have to get one, too.
I used to look down my nose at people who wore bike helmets for casual riding; if you were a crazy mountain-biking mofo like my cousin, who frequently comes back from rides with body parts bloodied, broken, and otherwise damaged – well, I could see where a helmet would be an advantage. If you were a long-distance biker, sharing the road with a lot of cars on a regular basis – yeah, okay, I get it. But the slow cruises around the neighborhood, or the trips to the nearby grocery store? Only obsessive freaks wore helmets for that stuff. You know, losers.
Might as well paint a big fat L on my forehead, then, because caution is about to become my middle name. I laughed out loud at myself, and explained the situation to Ryan this way:
“I would never take Piper on the bike without her wearing a helmet, not even around the block. But what about me? What if we’re riding to the new elementary school up the street to use their playground and one of the many local asshole drivers runs us off the road? There’s not even so much as a shoulder for us to ride on, let alone a bike lane. It wouldn’t take much to send us into a ditch. She might be just fine in her tiny little helmet, but what the hell good does that do if I’m laying there with my head split like an overripe melon? What would happen to her?”
His eyes got big. His mouth made a little round O. “I hadn’t thought of that. Oh my God, you’re right. Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
Holy shit, indeed.
Some of it is well-intentioned but stupid: “Sleep now while you still can.” As though you can hoard and bank sleep for months beforehand, as though restful, quality sleep is akin to pennies in a piggybank.
Some of it is just stupid: “Crib bumpers! You have to have crib bumpers! The baby will hit its head and get brain damage if you don’t have them!” Yeah, because so many generations of babies who did not have crib bumpers were desperately brain-damaged. Never mind the strangling and suffocation deaths every year from these things, it’s the ridiculous threat of brain-damage that should be driving our bedding purchases.
Some – very few – of the thousands of “helpful” comments people make when you say you’re about to become first-time parents are true. Of course, you don’t realize this until much later, after you are up to your neck in poop, plastic toys, and temper tantrums. One of “the things people say” has turned out to be true for us, in a way that we had not quite anticipated.
That gem of wisdom? “Becoming a parent changes everything.” That’s an approximation, of course, an amalgamation of all the variations on that thought that were so earnestly dished out by well-meaning folk (most of them parents themselves). It is, however you say it, true.
Before you have an actual child in your house, waking you up at night and demanding more of your energy and time than you ever thought possible, you are apt to laugh at these people. “Oh, come on,” you think. “It won’t change everything. Some things, sure. I’ll get less sleep. I’ll have less money. My clothes will be a bit more stained, and I’ll be intimately familiar with another person’s bodily inputs and outputs. I won’t spend my Saturday nights sucking down Cuba Libres and smoking American Spirits on the back patio of the hippie bar.”
You tell yourself that you will be exactly the same person you are now, just with a child in tow. Preferably a clean-faced little cherub who behaves well and whom you can afford to dress in tiny, cute, stylish clothing. It will be hard, of course, but you will always be certain that the work is worth it, buoyed by the strength of your love. You and your partner will watch this little person grow and help it become a wonderful human being, a majestic model of kindness, brimful of forward-thinking views, and probably the finder of the cure for cancer.
Of course, when the sleep deprivation or the crayon-drawings all over your walls or the anguish over “New Math” or the teenage door-slamming comes, as it inevitably must, it’s easy to poke fun at the person you were pre-kid, to say “Psh. Poor, clueless bastard. You thought you had it all figured out, didn’t you? Yeah, cure cancer, bring world peace, haw-haw.”
But there are also moments of total wonderment at the person you have become. You marvel at your distance from that chick who would walk down any alley in the dark and routinely got into cars with strangers, or how different you are from the college boy who spent his free Saturdays at “band practice” in someone’s smoke-filled basement. Sometimes it just smacks you in the face, this feeling of that is not who I am anymore.
This whole diatribe is rooted in an afternoon-tv showing of Trainspotting. I was idly flipping channels one day when Piper was six or eight months old, and Trainspotting was on. I can remember going to see that movie for the first time, I can remember how we obsessively watched it in college and memorized the dialogue. I have watched that movie at least twenty times in my life, and loved it every time.
Every time except this one. It got to the part where the baby is sitting on that disgusting floor, surrounded by passed-out junkies. She is filthy, it looks like she hasn’t had her diaper changed in days, she’s crying and crying and crying. Just sitting in the middle of the dirty floor, with nobody paying attention to her.
I felt like somebody had punched me in the gut. I felt sick; I almost sobbed out loud. I had to change the channel, I could not watch any further. I was perplexed. I turned the channel back, and again there was that horrible, sick feeling. I could not look at the screen, at that crying baby, for more than three seconds. I had to turn it off again. I thought about what happens to that baby later in the movie, and I swear to God I almost threw up, right there in the living room. I felt a physical urge to reach into the screen and pick up that poor, doomed junkie baby. Instead, I picked Piper up from where she was scooting around the floor drooling on stuffed animals and I hugged her so hard she squealed in protest. I put her back down, feeling at once shaky and edgy and agitated, like I’d ingested large amounts of caffeine on an empty stomach.
I also felt confused. I loved this movie, right? What the hell was wrong with me? I had always mocked people who talked about experiences like this, who sobbed for the children left motherless and the mothers left childless by some far-flung natural disaster or talked how about their mommyhood had ignited an urge to mother all children. I snickered, I rolled my eyes, I snerked at these mommy-zombies. Puh-leeeze, I thought. Spare me. Now it appeared that the sappy, overly-sentimental mommy-shoe was on the other foot. My foot.
I told my story to Ryan, and instead of laughing at me or calling me a mom-bot, he said “Oh my God, you are right. I just remembered what happens to the baby. I don’t think I can watch that movie ever again.” And then we both looked at each other: What the hell was going on here?
It happened again when I was discussing my bicycle. I have a very nice bicycle, which is my favorite color (blue), very cool and retro-looking, and still in Michigan. We don’t have a shed or garage to keep our bikes in, so they’re languishing in my parents’ rusty garden shed until we figure something out. I am so desperate for a mode of transportation that I have asked my parents to bring my bike when they visit later this month (preferably instead of, not in addition to, another carload of useless crap). I plan to put a baby-seat on it and ride as far as I can on our not-at-all-bicycle-friendly roads.
I was thinking about this, about how nice it will be not to be trapped in the house all the time (we have one car, which goes with Ryan every day on his 25-minutes-each-way commute) and how I’d have to get Piper a little bike helmet. And then I realized that I’d have to get one, too.
I used to look down my nose at people who wore bike helmets for casual riding; if you were a crazy mountain-biking mofo like my cousin, who frequently comes back from rides with body parts bloodied, broken, and otherwise damaged – well, I could see where a helmet would be an advantage. If you were a long-distance biker, sharing the road with a lot of cars on a regular basis – yeah, okay, I get it. But the slow cruises around the neighborhood, or the trips to the nearby grocery store? Only obsessive freaks wore helmets for that stuff. You know, losers.
Might as well paint a big fat L on my forehead, then, because caution is about to become my middle name. I laughed out loud at myself, and explained the situation to Ryan this way:
“I would never take Piper on the bike without her wearing a helmet, not even around the block. But what about me? What if we’re riding to the new elementary school up the street to use their playground and one of the many local asshole drivers runs us off the road? There’s not even so much as a shoulder for us to ride on, let alone a bike lane. It wouldn’t take much to send us into a ditch. She might be just fine in her tiny little helmet, but what the hell good does that do if I’m laying there with my head split like an overripe melon? What would happen to her?”
His eyes got big. His mouth made a little round O. “I hadn’t thought of that. Oh my God, you’re right. Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
Holy shit, indeed.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Advisory
I just made vanilla-cinnamon biscotti from scratch, and while they were baking I made Chocolate-Bourbon-Pecan pie, which is in the oven right now.
I'm pretty sure this is what heaven smells like.
I'm also pretty sure that next time I make biscotti, I should have another adult around. Someone more observant and verbal than a 15-month old. Someone who can, say, point out that I have eaten nearly 1/4 of the raw biscotti dough and I am going to make myself ill if I don't stop shoveling chunks of it into my mouth.
Someone who can also remind me that fresh-from-the-oven biscotti may smell like heaven, but they are very hot and trying to eat them will result in a blistered tongue.
Someone logical enough to point out that if I didn't make myself ill snarfing up raw biscotti dough and gratuitous amounts of freshly-baked biscotti, topping the combo with a large handful of pecans and the dregs of my morning coffee would be a good way to guarantee that I feel sick by the time the pie is halfway done.
If you'll excuse me, I need to go make myself some peppermint tea...
I'm pretty sure this is what heaven smells like.
I'm also pretty sure that next time I make biscotti, I should have another adult around. Someone more observant and verbal than a 15-month old. Someone who can, say, point out that I have eaten nearly 1/4 of the raw biscotti dough and I am going to make myself ill if I don't stop shoveling chunks of it into my mouth.
Someone who can also remind me that fresh-from-the-oven biscotti may smell like heaven, but they are very hot and trying to eat them will result in a blistered tongue.
Someone logical enough to point out that if I didn't make myself ill snarfing up raw biscotti dough and gratuitous amounts of freshly-baked biscotti, topping the combo with a large handful of pecans and the dregs of my morning coffee would be a good way to guarantee that I feel sick by the time the pie is halfway done.
If you'll excuse me, I need to go make myself some peppermint tea...
Friday, September 05, 2008
Old Friends Long Forgotten
The other day I was moaning about how I have nothing to listen to all day besides NPR, which was making me kinda crazy, and then I remembered Pandora. I used to use it a lot, especially when I sat at a desk all day clicking my way to boredom. Looking at the stations I had saved there was kind of a time-warp; I hardly listen to any of those things anymore. So I made up some new stations and have been happily listening for days. Ryan even dug out the proper cable for me to hook my laptop up to the big cd/dvd player in the living room so I don't have to max out my laptop's speakers trying to hear it more than three feet away.
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