The Kiddie Cocktail

Ten years younger

There are a lot of reasons I'd like to be ten years younger. More time to be with my husband, more time to have children, less creaking in the joints. Eh. Those things are smallish and fleeting, and I make the most of what I have now, as much as I can, anyway.

There's a bigger reason I wish I were younger.

I have this friend, this amazing friend. She's a couple of years older than me. We met almost 12 years ago while doing this utterly godawful contract legal work, after the dot-com crash, when the economy was just in hell in a handbasket. It hadn't happened to me in such a long time, that kind of instant kinship with someone. All it took was her mentioning the Happy Fun Ball, and that was it. Jennifer was my friend for life. Then we cried at the same NPR stories, and she knew all the trick words for Washington Post crossword puzzles, and had a perfect memory for movie quotes, and there was laughing, so much laughing.

Jennifer gave me fun and laughter that I think we both needed, so much, during those hard roller-coaster years of unemployment, bad jobs, breakups with boyfriends and fiances, broken arms, new boyfriends, unbelievably horrible roommates, The Man Who Ruined Thanksgiving, moving, brain tumors, cancer, and family members behaving badly. To combat all of those things, we had girls' nights, cosmos, dancing, Sex and the City, fuzzy slippers, parties, tubing, great food, new friends, crazy dogs, wine tasting, and barbecues.

Jennifer is a true southern belle, impeccably beautiful on the outside, and hard forged steel underneath. She would never put dark meat in a chicken salad, lives by The Preppy Handbook, keeps up with her sorority, and worships at the altar of Lilly Pulitzer. She's also ridiculously smart. The girl has a graduate degree in food science as well as a Juris Doctor, and she's sharp and irreverent and witty. Her eyes are true gentian blue. Her hair always looks perfect, even if she stayed up all night to make a cake. Which she does, to astounding and perfect results. On her wending career path, Jennifer had her own cake business for awhile, Blue Iris Bakery.  First she made me a birthday cake. And then another. And then she made cakes that looked just like Coach handbags and cakes in the shapes of shoes, and she did a course at the Wilton School.

She made my wedding cake, and it will always be the most delicious cake I have ever eaten. It was French vanilla cake, with buttercream icing, and had strawberry-Chambord filling between the layers. It was rich, moist, perfectly flavored, beautiful, delectable. I don't like cake, but I loved that cake.

And it wasn't even the best cake at the wedding. That honor went to the groom's cake that Jennifer made, a surprise for my husband, in the shape of Napoleon's hat, a fabulous chocolate-bourbon concoction. There wasn't a crumb left. I have three regrets from my wedding, and not getting a piece of that Napoleon hat cake is one.

In one of those ways that life works, Jennifer brought her future husband to my wedding. I'd met Adam a few weeks before, when he was in Washington for another wedding. He walked into my front door, and charmed me instantly. Which doesn't happen - I'm a suspicious, doubting sort.  I won't say I knew that he was the one for Jen, but I sure did hope. He'd lived in DC for awhile, and had just moved to Louisville, KY. Which is of course when he and Jennifer finally met and fell in love. They almost missed each other.

Yes, she married the wonderful Adam. Who is still wonderful. And I could not have been happier for Jennifer, even if finding her amazing husband did take her away from Washington, DC and to Louisville. Jennifer went through a lot of crazy and awful things between the time that I met her and the time she met Adam. If she was ever sorry for herself, she did it quietly and privately. The rest of the time, Jennifer was out being her positive self, and doing the things she does best: having fun, making friends, and trying to make the world around her beautiful, perfect, and appropriately attired, preferably in Lilly Pulitzer.

Everyone deserves happiness, of course. But I really felt like no one deserved it more than Jennifer.

Even though Prince Charming Adam took her on a white racehorse to Derby City, and they lived happily ever after with mint juleps and hot browns and a house and furry dogs and incredible cake baking, there was one thing that couldn't be made perfect with love and hard work and optimism and inspiration.

I knew Jennifer and Adam wanted children. Even in her perfect Lilly outfit, Jennifer would never hesitate to hold and exclaim over a drooling baby. She looked so easy and right holding my girl the first time they met. She was always over the moon excited for any friend of hers who was having a baby, whether it was the first or the third.

But there were fibroids and cysts and scoping and swelling and painkillers and surgery and allergic reactions. Hormones and injections and drugs and egg harvesting and sperm counts and probing and insufficiently thick uterine linings. And waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Trying. Waiting. Trying. Waiting.

Jennifer documented the process for a few of us from time to time in her characteristic long and detailed and bubbly e-mails. The e-mails got shorter, and the optimism bled out, and then they stopped altogether, when Jennifer said they were taking a break from trying to get pregnant. 

She talked a little about surrogacy, but the laws in Kentucky require that the "parents" have to legally adopt the baby from the surrogate once it is born. So you could go through all of that and end up with nothing but heartbreak. It seemed too much of a risk.

They didn't really talk about adoption, at least, not to me. I don't know why, and it's none of my business. Sometimes, you just want a child of your body. You have to do what your heart tells you is right.

And what my heart wishes is that I were ten years younger, so I could give Jennifer and Adam that child of their bodies, of their souls. I would do it, I would. I would be their surrogate. I'd never have said that before I had my own baby, carried her in my body for the better part of a year. I know what it takes to be pregnant, what you go through, and I know that I could do that for them. I know I could hand over that baby to them in the end, because I would know how much that baby was wanted and loved. I know what it feels like to hold that just-born tiny, sparkling and loud, new life, and I wish so badly that I could give them that feeling. If I could, I would give them my body for a year, to give them that.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. If wishes were time, I would be ten years younger. If wishes were babies, Jennifer and Adam would have one.

I wish I could do more than wish.

 

Only one?

How do you know if you want another child? This keeps going around and around and around in my head. Where it stops, nobody knows. Not yet. I don't even know why I don't know the answer.  I've been thinking on this topic a lot, for a long time. This post from motherbumper brought it bubbling up to the surface again. I've started blog posts on this, on the computer and in my head, many of them, over and over. But I haven't published them until now.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when I was young and brash and thought I could plan everything, I was pretty sure I would have more than one. I would also be married before thirty, squeeze out at least one of thost babies before thirty, and be happily ensconsed in a leafy and pricey Washington, DC suburb with good public schools, the wife of a well-paid corporate lawyer. And that is how it would all be done.

Of course it wasn't. I got married instead at the ripe old age of 32, to someone else entirely. Then, I needed some time to travel the world with my husband, adventure, eat, drink, run a marathon. I just wasn't ready. Even though I didn't really know how profoundly having a child would change my life, I knew it would change it enough so we couldn't jet off to Thailand when we wanted to, and I couldn't spend three or four hours training for a marathon every weekend. I wanted to be good and goddamn READY.

And I was. I ran my marathon, went off the Pill, and serendipitously got pregnant within 3 months, at the "advanced maternal age" of 35. The thing is, I remember people asking me how many children I planned to have even while I was still pregnant with the first one. I just smiled, and said, that we'd see how it goes with one. Maybe it is my advanced age, but as your friends start having babies, it's just not that easy. The wrenching stories of infertility and miscarriage and preeclampsia and late-term fetal death and premature labor and disabilities pile up, and you know you can't take the birth of your one precious baby for granted. It just might not be that easy. And the birth wasn't that easy, not what I had hoped for or wanted. But she was healthy and perfect; though I felt violated and battered.

Then, there comes the sleep deprivation, the fact that you are ON DUTY 24-7, there is the juggling of that nagging day job that pays the bills with your parenting job, which may require your attention all night long. There are all the moments that you realize you don' t know what the hell you are doing, and you cry, and the fact that your child doesn't sleep all night until she is finally 20 months old. You are a mediocre employee, a semi-wretched mother, a bad and surly wife, a sleep-deprived screeching fishwife, impatient, stretched too thin, with barely a half-hour to yourself, alone, each day. If you are lucky. You are absorbed by laundry and meals and groceries and paying the nanny and finding socks and toys and some coffee and getting the right dose of Tylenol at 3:00 am, and still going to work the next day, feeling your daughter's cold invading your own body, scratching at your throat. You think, I'm such a crap-ass mother to just one kid right now...what the hell would I do with another one?

Meanwhile, all of your mama friends in the neighborhood betray you. They gang up on you. They all get pregnant again. They all fall, one by one. Bethany and Jennifer, then Rebecca and Emily and Suzanne, and Stuart and Shannon. Every. Last. One. Some of them have their second before their first one (that one that you shared with them, the one the same age as yours) is even two. You can't imagine. Well, you can imagine, and that's what scares you. A toddler howling at your feet to be held while you are clutching a hungry newborn. Nursing the infant every two hours, while your two-year old wakes twice a night from cutting molars. You think, I'd go crazy if I had an infant right now. I am practically crazy as it is, I barely have this routine, this life in hand.

Your pregnant friends, they comment on it, they ask you at the playground one day. So when are you going to have another one? Look at your daughter with that baby, wouldn't she be a great big sister? You just say, "Oh, we were never sure that we wanted more than one. We still don't know." It's the truth, and you don't think it's a big deal, but your friends seem shocked into silence, and they don't say anything more.

You start to wonder if something is wrong with you. Why don't you know? Why aren't you certain? Why aren't you like them, happily having a second baby, no matter the sleep deprivation, or the mental toll, or the size of the house, or the financial burden of double childcare costs? Are you being selfish? You think of all the people you know who have had this choice made for them, because of infertility, chronic illness, nightmarish pregnancies and births, premature babies, these agonies that they cannot physically or emotionally or financially go through again to have another child. You think of what some of your friends have gone through to have a second. The miscarriages, the finances, nine months of debilitating nausea (again), the surgeries, the IVF, the monitoring, the medications. You had nothing that bad. You got pregnant easily, had a pretty easy pregnancy, you had a fast, easy labor, but a freak flipped-breech baby. You are healthy. You could most likely have a VBAC this time around. You're considered "rich" by most standards; you could afford it. God, you must be selfish, when you might have another so easily by comparison.

Age is creeping up on you. Thirty-fucking-eight is right around the corner. Those media-hyped piles of statistics and shit about declining fertility. Your worries about whether your daughter should have a sibling. You don't really know, because your half-sister is thirteen years older, always barely present in your life, more like a distant cousin. You were basically an only child. Your husband has an older brother, but doesn't feel strongly about having another baby. He said, some months ago, that he wasn't ready for a second, because your first, your Olive, your preshus, is pretty intense. You don't know if he's changed his mind. You're utterly afraid to talk about it, afraid that some decision will have to be made. You wish you were six years younger.

The Olive's outgrown clothes and toys pile up in her closet in boxes, saved for some moment in time when a decision is made. You can't get rid of any of them, not yet. She still needs you so much, your girl. She needs to be held and comforted, and it takes everything you have, some nights, to get it all done in the dinner-bath-bed rush, and you can't imagine how you would do it with two of them. Some nights, you go to bed right after she does, because you have nothing left. Could you find something, anything, for a second child? And your sweet husband, already shuffled off to third place, what happens to him, to your marriage?

Yet. Yet. You don't want to regret anything, leave anything untried, undone. You already know in your head how the study would have to be renovated to turn it into another actual bedroom, and where the furniture would be placed. You wonder where all the books would go, but you have ideas. You think about your friends' kids, playing together, entertaining each other, knowing each other as only siblings can. You wish you knew what that felt like, so maybe you'd know if your daughter needs it, that sibling.

But you didn't like being pregnant, not at all. Didn't like nursing all that much either, even though you did it for nearly two years. You think about the agony of going through all of that again, all that discomfort, inconvenience. And more years of double-disrupted sleep, and teething and chasing and toddlers and baffling tantrums.

Sometimes, you feel that your family is perfect, right as it is. Cozy, with just you three. Only one child to wrangle, one carseat, one extra plane ticket to buy. So much love and attention, from two parents, three grandparents. Then, there are those times when there are three or four of you with her, and it seems ridiculous, overindulgent, to have all of those adults just for one small child, such excess, wasted resources.

There are, of course, those many moments of pure gold and bliss. Your utter infatuation with your daughter from the moment she was put into your arms. Your endless fascination and amazement at every single new thing that she does, even now. The smell of her curls, the feel of her small warmth in the cool mauve-grey dawn as you are both waking up. You look at her, so utterly herself, so lovely, shining. And you can't even imagine loving anything as much as her, can't imagine finding it in your heart to love anyone or anything so much, again.

But you never imagined her either. She was impossible to imagine, impossible to dream about. Only the reality of her could be enough, and more.

So, how do you know? How do you know if you should have another? How did you know?

Because I still have no idea. And time breathes, hot, at my heels.

 

They don't make 'em like they used to

They really don't. 

 

This old Fisher Price Little People boat is the best goddamn toy. It really is. And not just because of the deep nostalgia that this toy brings welling up in me.

 

Seth remembers having one as a kid. It was lost to the sands of time and yard sales. Seth's mom bought another one (now considered "vintage") on e-Bay last year, for all the visiting children to play with at her house. The Olive loved it, just loved it the first time she played with it, which was nearly a year ago. She opened and closed the blue top of the boat, dragged it around and around and around by its cord (it has wheels, and makes a satisfying "clickety-click" as it rolls along), put things in and out of it. I didn't let her play with the Little People last year, because they did seem awfully, swallow-ably small. 

But now, she is bigger. She plays with the Little People, and puts them in the chairs, has them jump off the diving board, and sit in the captain's chair. They walk around the edge of the table and the edge of the bathtub. She finds it especially hilarious when the dog jumps off the diving board.

 

We have some of the 21st century Little People toys - a school bus and a house. But they seem dumbed-down. The people are bigger. Not as many things move. Those moving parts have been replaced by electronic sounds. The details are fewer. Nothing is metal. They don't seem built to last.  

This boat floats like a cork in the tub, doesn't get waterlogged, and only capsizes in the most wild of splashing. The wheel turns, the diving board extends and retracts, the top opens, smooth on its hinges. There are so many tiny details - an anchor area rug inside the boat cabin, a lobster on a dish on the tiny table. It has been played with, no question. One leg is partly broken off on the barbeque grill, there are little scrapes and nicks in all of the plastic. A red Tiddly Wink remains lodged neatly in the seat of one of the chairs, but makes a seated Little Person only slightly off-kilter. None of it matters. This toy endures. It's her favorite toy of the moment. I wonder what she's imagining as she moves all of the people around. It looks like a nice life, Little People. I'm glad you're still around.

 

Portrait of a weekend

Because Saturday was supposed to be (and was!) below 90 degrees and 90% humidity, we went to check out a new park. Where we tried not to be insanely jealous of all the nice, well-maintained public stuff that you can find across the border in Arlington County, and then made ourselves feel better about it because we don't have to pay the taxes, or live in a suburban neighborhood where you have to drive everywhere, and hey, we can just come here any old time we want and enjoy your stupid really nice parks, Virginia. Without paying taxes. So there.

Taken just a few minutes before the Olive's first ever run-in with a very thorny bush. So much for nature loving.

Then we went home to the city and played with stuff that was more familiar to our neighborhood.

Rocks, bricks, caution tape. That's how we toddle roll in the W D of C. 

I always try to cook something awesome on the weekends, because we have more time, both of us are home to baby-wrangle, and the Olive will sit still in a restaurant for approximately 1.7 seconds, so we don't go to those so much anymore. There were corn tortillas and avocados lying around my kitchen, and some roasted peppers and tomatoes destined for salsa, so fish tacos it was.

Fish taco fixins. Plus random mozzarella that just needed to be eaten.

Deep frying makes everything better. Especially battered tilapia. 

A dearth of lemons in my house on Friday led to French 75 fail, so we had to drink them on Saturday. There are no photos, because once I got one in my hand I couldn't set it down long enough to take a picture. And damn, those things are stronger than I remember. Damn, I'm getting old.

After I passed out slept soundly due to my French 75 sleep aid, I woke up early with the Olive on Sunday. (Girl is an outstanding and energetic alarm clock that works great as long as you want to be up by six. And "by six" also includes "before six" which, eh, is just the way it is. COFFEE.) It was supposed to rain on and off all day, so it was going to be a stick around the house/neighborhood sort of day.

Our first order of business was to take the doll stroller for a walk and drag it up and down every flight of stairs on Capitol Hill. Like these:

And these:

And these:

And these:

Yeah, I wasn't kidding about those stairs. It's all I can do to keep her from going up EVERY SINGLE STOOP on the Hill. I think she sees all those stairs as mountains to be conquered...because they are there. Which makes it hard to, you know, just take a walk down the sidewalk.

It started to rain, so we went back home, got our raincoats, and went back out until lunch.

 
Leaky drainpipe - practically as good as a spray park.

Then came lunch, nap, and Papa Playtime, where a few of the dads in our neighborhood took the kids over to a local playground. I was at home ALONE for like, two whole HOURS, and I didn't know what to do with myself. I got all the chores done, made dinner, felt both free and very lonely, and sat around downloading all these photos until the Olive and Seth came home.

Dinner (baked pasta), some "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" (Olive's current favorite song), storytime, and bedtime for the Olive. Wine, ice cream & True Blood for Mama & Papa. The end. I got my money's worth out of this one. 

   
 

If this is 20 months, I may not survive the next two years

I'm just haunted by myself last night. I lost it, just lost it for no good reason. The Olive is in a sort of schizo phase where she wants everything she sees. She will play with something for only a minute or two before flitting to or demanding the next thing. It's exhausting and trying, to go from crayons to trains to books to upstairs! to downstairs! to stroller! to dolly to outside! all in the span of three minutes. The same thing happens with food. She wants watermelon, peach, rice, cheese, cottage cheese, eggs, noodles all at the same time, but she doesn't really want any of them. She's just cataloguing them, naming them, and maybe seeing if we will bring them to her. If she has crackers at the playground, she's happy with them until another kid has Cheerios, and then she asks for Cheerios. She was inconsolable when I was so thoughtless as to bring apple slices and not cheese as a snack the other day. She's trying out how the world works.

And maybe I shouldn't have started this, but I put the Olive up on the kitchen counter sometimes when I am cooking. It started with the coffee maker in the mornings. She helps me put the filter in, scoop the beans into the grinder, and she gets to press the button to make the coffee. It's become a fun morning ritual. (Except for the phase where she wanted to play with the coffee maker parts ENDLESSLY FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE AN ETERNITY and I was almost in tears, just begging her, begging her to put the filter in and press the button, because Mama is going to die right here if she does not get coffee. There is just nothing like being at the mercy of someone who is twenty months old.)

 

 The problem is that now she is demanding to get up on the counters ALL.THE.TIME. And we are trying to make her understand that it can't be all the time. She can't just be put up on the counter to ransack the nuts and dried fruit and cereal any old time. I want her to be up there cooking with me. She's been stirring empty bowls and dried beans, pretending to make eggs, even stirring some pancake batter, and tasting things with me. I want her to love doing those things, the way I loved doing them with my mom. But there have to be reasonable limits. And twenty-month olds are not reasonable or limited. As much as she flits from one thing to another during playtime, she can be the utter opposite, getting an idea in her head and sticking with it no matter how many times she is told no, we're not doing that right now, or how many distractions are offered.

And then there is the hitting and the kicking and the clawing/kneading. She tries to smack us and head-butt us when we are holding her. I've started just putting her down on the floor the second she does it, because she sometimes really hurts me when she does this. If you tell her no, you don't hit Mama, she just laughs and smiles, the most infuriating little incorrigible demon-child laugh and bared pointy teeth. She is not fazed at all by "NO" in this context. She kicks me when I'm changing her diaper. Not just kicking out. Trying to KICK ME. And when I'm cuddling her before bed or in the morning, she has this finger-kneading/clawing thing she does where she digs her nails into the crook of my elbow or under my chin, and kneads, claws. I keep cutting her nails. I try to tell her to be gentle. She stops for a moment, then starts again.

She only does these things to me. She'll whack Seth occasionally, but not like she does me.

She kicked me on the changing table last night, and I lost it. I yelled. I threw a tube of diaper cream. I said NO! and STOP IT! in the worst most horrible, awful, abusive yelling voice. I made her cry. I scared her. I stupidly or meanly tried to give her liquid vitamins in the middle of this, trying to get the task done. I made her cry more, and choke. I thought she was going to throw up from the gasping. I told her that maybe she'd listen to me now, that I mean NO, when I say it. Actually, I yelled that. Seth came upstairs to read to her. I left him with her for at least 10 minutes, while I went downstairs to just clean, do something productive, shaking with unreasonable anger, mad at her, mad at Seth, mad at me.

Because the thing is, just a second after I yelled, and scared her, and made her cry and gasp and choke, she turned to me, ME, to be comforted. She still wanted me. Did she already forget that I'm the one who made her cry? She held up her arms and said, Mama!, wanting me to pick her up and hold her. And I didn't do a very good job. I was still mad. I tried to hold her, wipe the snot and drool, put her pajamas on, but I just wanted the task done. I didn't feel like comforting her. I felt like just putting her in her crib, saying night-night, and turning off the light. No bedtime stories or animal crackers or milk or snuggling.

I did put her to bed after Seth read to her, trying to shorten the nursing/snuggling/clawing time as much as possible, because I just couldn't stand it, my skin crawling. I don't know what she notices, whether she noticed anything. I laid her in bed as usual, making sure she was cuddled with Baby and Bear and Mimi the monkey, and that her cup of water was close by.

And I went downstairs, was a bad and surly wife, drank some wine, and put myself to bed early, abandoning my husband to watch True Blood alone. I tried to figure out what had so shamefully set me off. Was it the long, busy day? Spending so much time cooking for us and our friends who came over? The Olive's manic bouncing from one thing to another? My annoyance at Seth not completely cleaning up the kitchen, and for leaving the bathroom with no towels in it? Am I getting sick, accounting for the scratchy throat and tiredness that I hadn't noticed before? All of these things?

I don't know, but I never want it to happen again. And I am horrified and sick, because I know it probably will, sometime in our lifetimes. I can't stand that I made the Olive feel scared, and cry. I can't stand how I made me feel. But I also can't stand her neediness of me sometimes, and the physical, hurting things she sometimes does to me. I have to realize it is a phase. That it won't last. Realize that I am patient and gentle 99% of the time, as I softly hold her hands from hitting me, tell her to show me her "gentle touch," think of a song to sing to her on the changing table. I have to pick her up and comfort her as best I can, no matter what, and especially when I did it. I have to make amends, even if she isn't asking for them. It is the guileless little hands, reaching up to me for comfort, just seconds after I caused them upset. Those little hands are what I have to remember, that tiny voice of "Mama." Because I am still the source of All Things to my tiny girl. She still believes in me when I doubt myself, her hands twining gently around my neck, head resting on my shoulder. It won't last, and I have to grasp it while I can.

Faraway, so close

So, my mom came to visit for a week. This is more extraordinary than you might think. My mom, as my sister says, was born old. She's a homebody extraordinare. She doesn't like being out past dark, and gripes that her book club in the next small town over meets too late (7 pm). Any kind of travel beyond her immediate surroundings requires absurd amounts of planning and worry. Since I left for college, my mother has visted me, wherever I have been, exactly six times. Six times in nineteen years. This includes two graduations, my wedding and the birth of a child.

We are, to say the least, different. I've always had wanderlust, and I've indulged it. I was that kid at sleep-away camp who was all, homesick? Are you crazy? Who needs parents? I'm going swimming/horseback riding/to make the world's ugliest lanyard! My father joked that I chose the college on the basis of how far it was from home. (New Mexico was home, Vermont was college.) I was so bad about remembering to call my parents during college that my father once actually mailed me a dime taped to a piece of paper. Just the way it is. I wandered. They stayed home.

But I now have a secret weapon of persuasion: THE GRANDCHILD. With a soupcon of guilt!

You can't just issue an open-ended invitation to my mom. There have to be SOLID DATES. And SPECIFICS. And REASONS. And yes, we REALLY REALLY DO WANT YOU TO COME. YOU ARE INVITED. I gave her an offer she couldn't refuse: our nanny would be on vacation for a week. Seth's parents were out of town. Someone, oh someone just had to come and take care of the preshus Olive for a week. Can I look up some flight times and prices for you, Mom? Yup, I shamelessly commanded her to come. My mom is retired. She has a dog. Her time is her own. My cousin lives near my mom, is self-employed, adores animals, and is available pretty much anytime to take care of my mom's big hairy beast. Which he does happily.

Of course, once she had booked her tickets, she couldn't WAIT to come. She filled her suitcase with clothes and presents for the Olive.

I was a little worried. Whereas Seth's mom is sure she can figure out anything, especially if she has a GPS and the Internet, my mom is much more timid. Seth's mom is always sure she can get the baby to eat/sleep/drink, etc., and has a hundred ideas. I don't know when my mom last did any of that. I figured if worst came to worst, I'd tell my mom to put the Olive in the stroller and walk her around for a nap. After issuing her a very clear map of our neighborhood with "boundary" streets marked, and warning her that there are, um, a lot of both people of color and colorful people here in the big city. (My mom is a born Southerner - she's overcome a lot of the racism she was taught. She tries. But she lives in a really conservative, white area and is still, uh, startled by seeing certain people. Yeah.)

My worry was needless. What I forgot is that my mom is a teacher and that she loves children. She taught preschool up to third grade, at various times. She knows what kids like. She has a million ideas of her own as to how to entertain them. She always did with me, coming up with some entertaining project (anyone else ever make Flibbers?) seemingly out of nowhere for a slow afternoon.

My mom and the Olive hit it off famously. They played together all day. We dressed her in all the new outfits that my mom brought. The Olive laid down and slept as though charmed each afternoon. They made the circuits of all the local playgrounds, and made friends. My mother was introduced to the term "Granny Nanny" by another visiting grandma, and she immediately adopted it as her new nickname. When we'd come downstairs in the morning, the Olive would run to the basement door (where our guest space is) and ask for Grandma. She was totally happy to go to my mom anytime, even when I was home.

In turn, we tried to feed my mom well, and plied her with wine (she'll only drink a glass). We really never left our neighborhood. The week flew by, and suddenly it was her last day. Suddenly, I was teary, so sad at just thinking of my mom leaving in a few hours.

All my life, I was never sad at my parents leaving, or me leaving them. There was always another adventure around the corner. And then I had the Olive. Then I realized how very far away my mom lives, and how little she travels. Seth's parents are jet-setters - even when they lived in London, we saw them more often than we saw my mom. It started to break my heart. I only saw my mom's parents a time or two a year, perhaps. They always lived on their limited income in strange, musty, broken-up old houses, in broken-down old towns in central Texas. My grandparents were quirky, and superstitious and serious, and I never much liked visiting them. I don't want it to be that way for the Olive and my mom. I want the Olive to know my mom, and love her, and miss her.

After the Olive was born, and my mom visited, she said she wanted to try to come twice a year. She hasn't managed that so far. I think I haven't pushed hard enough on her homebody inertia. We did go see her at Christmas, and the visit was great; the flight was the horrid part. I'm already dreading this year's Christmas negotiation - can we get her to come, or do we have to succumb to holiday travel with a toddler again? I'm not sure there are enough drugs and alcohol.

But then there is this:

 
A couple of weeks after the Olive was born 

And pictures like these. We'd scheduled the photo session before we knew my mom was coming, and I persuaded her to stay for it. I knew I'd want those photos - three generations, rarely together.

And the fact that for a week, the Olive looked at the basement door, and said. "Gwamma?" wistfully. And then said, "Gwamma. Bye bye. Airplane. House." That she asks to see pictures of both Grandmas every day. She picks up the keychain that my mom used while she was here, and says "Gwamma's."

I tried not to cry on the way to the airport, as my mom sat in the backseat and played with the Olive, and was appropriately amazed and proud of how our girl can point out and name the Capitol and Washington Monument out the car window. (Capi'ol! Mon'ment!). I was kind of glad my mom didn't want us to come in the airport with her. I don't think I could have held it together. We watched her walk into National airport with her suitcase, and the tears started to fall. Back in the car, the Olive kept saying "Gwamma? Gwamma?" all the way home, and I just sobbed, as I tried to tell her that we had to say bye-bye to Grandma, that we took her to the airport, and she got on an airplane to fly to her house, which is very far away. I cried for my mother, because my heart knew how much she missed the Olive already, and how rarely she gets to see this baby girl who changes by the second. I cried for the Olive, who won't ever know my dad, and who needs to know my mom. I cried for me, because I finally, finally missed my mom.

Everyday longing

I'm feeling melancholy today, like I want something, but not entirely sure why, or what. Perhaps it was the overcast, rainy morning. Perhaps it was thinking about Mandy and Hudson once again, after reading Mandy's latest blog entry. Perhaps it's because a lot of friends have been talking recently about whether they've done baby books, about recording All Those Little Things.

Perhaps it was because my own little Olive was sick for a couple of days, hot and feverish. Her fever seemed to spike on Sunday evening, going up to 103, which scared me, again because of Hudson. We're lucky enough to have a pediatric nurse practicioner in our neighborhood who - GET THIS - makes house calls. I know! We'd called her before when the Olive had her first stomach bug, and she was over within the hour. Same thing this time. I just wanted to know if we should go to the ER. She said no, we gave more ibuprofen, did a strep test (negative), probably ruled out the hand, foot and mouth virus that's going around (ew), and planned for more vigilant dosing of ibuprofen and acetamenophine. (Which I would call by brand names, but THOSE have all been recalled, and none on the pharmacy shelves for months on end now. It's never simple.) And more temperature checking, which is OH SO FUN in a toddler, and by that I mean like wrestling an angry and possibly rabid greased pig. (She now actually runs away screaming if we say anything that even remotely sounds like "thermometer" or "temperature.")

In the end, the Olive was fine. The fever broke sometime Sunday night, and she was unfeverish and back to almost her normal self on Monday. I could tell when we made a trip to a big box baby store, and she refused to sit in the cart, instead running completely amuck, climbing shelves, trying out all the display strollers and carseats, and terrorizing parents of tiny infants all over the store. And I do mean run. Homegirl is fast. She really likes babies right now, and all strollers must be investigated, so that she can peer in, then point out that they have EYES! and HAIR! and a NOSE! and proceed to stab her pointy little petri dish finger at/in all of these body parts, while I try to drag her away and the infant's parents try not to look totally horrified, both at the destructive toddler poking their baby's eyeball out, and the fact that OH SHIT OUR CUTE TINY BABY IS GOING TO TURN INTO THAT.

Even though she clearly felt better, the Olive wasn't 100 percent, and had the fussy/clingy attitude and slight scratchy voice to prove it on Tuesday morning. But no fever. So I dosed her with more ibuprofen, and went to work, feeling more than a little guilty for leaving her with our nanny.

I miss her every day, as I sit in my office. Shoot, we miss the kid sometimes when she goes to bed at night. So after being with her for three days, it's hard to leave again all day. Especially when she was kinda sick some of that time, and only wanted to be held, falling asleep on my shoulder like she hasn't done since she was tiny. I click over to my Flickr page or look on my iPhone at least a couple of times a day to see the last photos of her that I uploaded.

I think about yesterday, when I got home, and she ran to the back door at full speed to greet me, like she always does, tiny bare feet a blur, patterpatterpatter on the wood floor, rose-gold curls madly bobbing. "Maaamaaaa!" Then she has to talk about what I've carried in: "Bag!" "Glasses!" (As she points at the sunglasses on my head.) "Bottle!" (As she drags my Camelbak water bottle out of my bag.) "Shoes!" (My work shoes follow the water bottle.) Finally, she's ready. "MAMA! Up!" And she holds up her arms to be picked up. I pick up my girl, hold her tight, kissing her powder-fine cheek.

I think about this morning, when I was getting ready for work. The Olive has been obsessed with washing hands recently, and we are trying to encourge such behavior, especially since we are horribly bad at remembering to wash her hands before she eats. So anytime she asks to wash her hands ("Hands!" she says, as she points at the sink) we wash them. We washed her hands, and then she saw I was going to brush my teeth, and asked for her toothbrush. I stood her up on the sink next to me, and we brushed our teeth together, gazing in the medicine cabinet mirror. I saw my eyes looking back at me out of her face, blue-grey, instead of green. I thought about how I could photograph us, that moment.

I think about leaving for work this morning. I'd made the Olive's breakfast, a spinach and cheese omelet, grapes on the side (her choices - it's amazing to be able to ask her what she wants and sometimes, she really answers. Sometimes she asks for Goldfish crackers for breakfast, though, and then I pretend that she really wants a waffle, and try to be very, very excited about it). She usually sits in her high chair and eats, watching us get ready - making lunch, pouring coffee into travel mugs, finding our phones and wallets and sunglasses in all the places the Olive has stashed them. Today, I had a little time to sit and eat with her. Suddenly, she's done. "All done! DOWN! Bib!" She puts her hands in the air, tries to climb out of her highchair, and yank her bib off, all at once. Once down, she is literally off and running, pushing her Dolly in the doll stroller at terrifying speeds across the kitchen (Dolly is in need of a good chiropractor, I would imagine). Then I have to go, and I tell her I am leaving. She runs to the door, and I brace for tears. But there aren't any. She is happy to blow me kisses, wave bye-bye, and make silly faces at me through the sliding glass door after I close it and stand on the other side, in the drizzling rain. At that moment, I want to run back in, throw my bag on the floor, play hookey, and go with her to the basement where we can play with blocks and color and build railroad tracks and watch Sesame Street and have snacks and drink our milk. I settle for fixing that last radiant smile in my head as I turn around and walk to my car.

It's These Little Things. These tiny, everyday moments. I want to capture them, freeze frame, shutter click. I want to video the Olive all the time, to capture how she says everything, how she narrates her life all day long. My friend Mandy has been writing about her everyday routines with Hudson, because those are the things she misses the most. I like to think that I have always tried to be in the moment of these small, everyday routines, but Mandy and Hudson remind me to really do it. I haven't written enough, taken enough photos, and I've got to do more. Because "Goodnight Gorilla" is sadly not her favorite book anymore; she's moved on to "More! More! More! Said The Baby." Because she suddenly loves watermelon after spitting it out the first two or three times, and hot summer is the perfect time to love watermelon ("Melon!"). Because her wild aura of curly hair grows longer every day, and it's the craziest in the morning, when she wakes up. Because she runs so fast, travels so far, changes so much, every day.

The here and now

This article from the NY Post has gotten a lot of attention as of late. Provocatively subtitled, "Why Parents Hate Parenting," it's not hard to see why. The two best things I've read so far about this article are (a) Gwynne Watkins on Broadsheet; and (b) Hudson's mama, Mandy, on her blog, "One Good Thing."  They basically say the same thing, from two very different perspectives: if you hate parenting so much, you're doing it wrong.

Yup. Couldn't agree more. I think it's our unrealistic expectation of parenting as much as anything that seem to be making these people so unhappy. I was a little taken aback by all the revved-up New York parents in that article with all of the things that they felt like they had to do and take care of in order to be "perfect" parents raising "perfect" children, and with the overall negative tone of the article. All I wanted to say to everyone in that article was "Dude, just let go."  

Because getting into Harvard is now, like, statistically impossible, so your kid ain't going there. Plus, children apparently get just as much out of grocery shopping with you as that expensive "Sing and SIgn" class, so you might as well go have fun.

Having a child has been far more joyful and far more challenging that I could ever have imagined. Maybe it's because I had a child on the later side (just call me of "advanced maternal age" and hand my my walker, ok?), but I don't feel like I'm missing out on much. I had a loooong time to do exotic travel, eat at all the best new restaurants, stay out all night, drink way too much, do many, many many stupid and regrettable things, sleep/watch movies all day, be utterly irresponsible, and utterly impulsive. I miss those things sometimes. But I don't think I feel less happy. The Olive is little for such a short time in the grand scheme, and I don't want to miss it. Being with her is fun in a completely different way that does involve earlier bedtimes and somewhat less booze. Sure, there are things I need to work on, and I'm trying, we're getting there. It won't be all that long before we can do even more fun things with her, including all the things we loved from our own childhoods. It will only be a second longer, and she will want to do her own thing, and will probably beg us to go out to dinner and leave her alone.

I try hard, very, very hard to give as much as I can to the Olive when I am with her. Sometimes it's 100 percent; sometimes it is not. There are the days when we go out in the rain and splash in puddles because who cares if we get wet. Then there are the days where she tries every ounce of patience that I have, or that I am appallingly high-maintenance about some stupid thing. You know how there is no one who can push your buttons like your parents, in the most aggravating way possible? When you become a parent, you will learn the same thing is sometimes true about your children. Certain things they do will just set you off, so take a deep breath now. I have rarely, rarely really lost it around the Olive.  The couple of times I have can be chalked up very much to sleep deprivation. But I have also discovered deep wells of patience and understanding that I never knew I had.

I'm not pretending it's all perfect. If you read this blog, you know things have been FAR from perfect. But I tell you, not giving a shit about all the right things is a sure key to parenting success. Sleep? Go to bed early; TV will be obsolete soon anyhow. Dirt? Eff it - washes out. Same goes for sidewalk chalk, crayons, yogurt, the ink from that pen you accidentally left within reach, etc. Water? It dries. Dried beans spilled on the floor? Why the gods invented vacuum cleaners. If it's a beautiful day outside, just stay out there. No one is going to tell on you if you have scrambled eggs or peanut butter and jelly for dinner. That day that the Olive ate Goldfish crackers and cheese for lunch? She loved it, so who cares?  As my husband remarked in the dawn this past Saturday morning: "Words you don't want to hear at 5:45 a.m.? 'Pat-a-cake!'" The Olive was wide awake and ready to play, and my not-a-morning-person husband remembered that he said he'd let me sleep in, got up with the baby, made a lot of coffee, and plunged right into her high energy morning. As much as you might want to, it's pretty hard to say no to that kind of guileless, unreserved cheeriness even at that awfully early hour. She's just too cute. Thankfully, she also still naps, and sometimes, so do we.

This is about the BIG PICTURE, people. And if you need reminding, just stop by Mandy's blog for an entry or two. Anything can happen today, tomorrow, in an hour, a minute, a second. We are here now, now, NOW with our children. NOW may be all we have. So get off your ass and do it right. Set down the iPhone. Cancel that second music class. Count some ants. Dust off your pat-a-cake skills. Remember what you always liked about Legos and trains and blanket forts. Go for a wandering walk without the expectation of really going anywhere. See what life is like when you're less than three feet tall. Get on the ground. Get dirty. Dawdle. Idle. Dream. Imagine. Play. Cherish. This is not a rehearsal; this is it.

Reunited, Part 2

Somewhere in our whirlwind month of travel/visiting/mayhem, we made the trip up to my in-law's house in New Jersey. They recently moved back to Seth's hometown, after a 10-year stint in London. The reason? Our preshus baby, Grandchild No. 2. Which has turned out to be quite fine with me, because they've come to visit us a lot, we've visited them a lot, and DUDE! FREE BABYSITTING! I sometimes actually get to sit on my ass and READ A BOOK or WATCH A WHOLE MOVIE when the grandparents are around. This a truly amazing phenomenon that I absolutely did not understand when I was fey and free and childless. Now I get it. I GET IT. I get why some of my friends have moved close to their parents, why their parents have moved closer to them.

We had an action-packed weekend of visiting lots of Seth's family members, and them visiting us, but we did get a few rare hours all to ourselves. We went out to dinner with one of Seth's highschool friends in trendy young Hoboken, where we were allowed to stay out as late as we wanted, because someone else was going to put the Olive to bed. We sat outdoors at a Cuban-Latin restaurant, drank gallons of sangria, and had a most leisurely three-course meal. I sat in a chair for two whole hours! I ate and tasted my entire dinner without any of it getting cold! I didn't have to cut anyone else's food or jump up 87 times to get a new fork, a cup of milk, a cup of water, more blueberries, a spoon, a paper towel (was I supposed to eat here? Eh, forget it). I watched the parade of Hoboken's young families with their fleet of laden Bugaboos and Uppa Babies and phil & ted's, and was quite frankly feeling relieved at not having one of those charming but high-maintenance little people with me for just a little while.

Wow. I look really, overly happy at the sight of that sangria.  

It was good. I was so full that I was in danger of injuring myself. The upside of that was that all the food did a fabulous job of buffering the many glasses of sangria, so I wasn't particularly tipsy. We took the scenic route home, along the Hudson, with unbelieveable sunset-glow views of New York. We're just never outside at sunset anymore. With the long summer days, the Olive goes to bed before it's dark. Child Protective Services tends to frown upon leaving your sleeping baby in the house alone while you go for sunset strolls with your husband. So yeah, sunsets. One of the things you suddenly realize you don't see much when you have a small child.

We got back to Seth's parents' house, and the Olive was sound asleep. It had taken a little while (perhaps 20 minutes) for my mother in law to get her to sleep, but she did go to sleep. And stayed asleep until her usual brief 3 or 4 am waking. Practically miraculous. I can taste the grandparent babysitting dinners of my future, and I am going to enjoy the living hell out of them.

The other weekend highlight was a visit to Seth's Aunt Beth and Uncle Skip. They have this ginormous, unbelieveable house out in a more rural part of New Jersey. Their basement alone is about three times the size of our DC rowhouse. The best part about the basement is that it contains practically every toy that Skip and Beth's kids and grandkids have ever had. Beth has saved them all. Some are in mint condition. Every kid who has ever been in that basement never wants to leave. Adults never want to leave, as they unearth all the Fisher Price toys they remember from childhood: the school bus, the barn that moos as you open the doors, a stuffed Ernie doll (before Ernie was seriously marginalized on modern day Sesame Street). It didn't matter at all that it poured rain the entire time - there were acres of basement and toys to explore.

Including this house:

We went to the basement, she spied it immediately, and exclaimed, "HOUSE!" And played in it almost nonstop for what seemed like hours. It's the playhouse we all wanted as a kid. I still kind of want it, and wish we had room in our narrow basement or postage-stamp yard for it. I want to go back and visit Skip and Beth some more before she's too old to talk on the plastic phone, pretend to cook on the stove, open and shut the doors and shutters eighty seven thousand times. And maybe she'll let me play too.

Reunited, and it felt so good

The last month has been a crazy whirl of travel, reunions, visiting and visitors, and the ride has about stopped so that I can get off and try to write about it. It's been such a fun month, and I'd really like to (a) go back on vacation, please, where I'm not worried about my laundry or the groceries or work the next day; or (b) just be at home *not* working so I can catch up on the laundry, groceries, work, etc. Or I will take winning Powerball, thanks.

Seth and I both went to small, uppity, elite northeastern liberal arts colleges, and graduated the same year. So our fifteen-year college reunions were two weeks apart, separated by Memorial Day weekend. We were OF COURSE going to both, because anything that makes you feel like you're in college again is a good thing when you reach our advanced age.

Seth's reunion was a raging success. We hooked up with his friend Rose, her husband Will, and her daughter Athena, who is only six weeks older than Helene. With the chillun in tow, we all knew we'd be hanging with people with similar needs (e.g., animal crackers, naps, wine - what, you thought I meant the little ones?). College campuses, as it turns out, are fantastic places to turn toddlers loose. Huge expanses of lawn, no cars, lots of steps. The Olive was in paradise. We let her be a bad influence over the more mild-mannered Athena, as Helene ran up and down wheelchair access ramps, tried to uproot memorial plaques, jumped off of retaining walls, climbed every set of stairs she could find at least six times each, ran amuck in coffee shops, and attempted to steal a catering trolley, Athena's stroller and a college golf cart. 

We skipped the formal class dinner on Saturday night in favor of a picnic in the grassy quad outside the building where the dinner was held, so Rose and Seth could pop in if they wanted to, while Will and I chased children and held down the picnic blanket. We had booze in red plastic cups, bare feet, plenty of cheese for even the Olive (who will eat her body weight in the stuff), and some really tasty cannoli and cheesecake. There were photos, visits by large dogs being walked, and a reading of "Brown Bear." The height of the evening was the spontaneous cooler-top dancing, which makes me think the Olive's college years are going to be pretty interesting:

I also learned things about the Olive (other than her mad picnic dance moves). I learned that she withstands nap schedule changes and staying up way past her bedtime just fine. I learned that she can now gnaw on a whole apple (and that she doesn't want any help, thankyouvery much). I learned that she recognized the real moon instantly, seeing it in the twilight sky for the first time. I learned that she might be just a tad high energy, after meeting Athena, who actually will sit still for astonishingly long periods of time, like you know, longer than ten continuous minutes.

We left Seth's reunion not nearly as hungover as at the 10-year (whew!), and replete with sun-filled good times with old friends. We got on our plane back to DC, ready to do it all over again in two weeks.

But first, we had some Vermont visiting to do. I went to college in the fair Green Mountain State, which is one of those places that people end up staying. One of my best friends from college, Janine, is one of them. She and her husband Foster have withstood more employment roller coasters than anyone I know in order to stay in Vermont, which isn't really known for its excess of well paying professional jobs. I never get to see Janine, so we flew to Vermont on Memorial Day weekend, planning to stay at Janine's house in Bennington for a few days before heading north to my college reunion the following weekend.

The lovely and amazing Janine.  

See again, e.g., success, raging. Janine has three boisterous and sweet boys, who were amazing big brothers to the Olive for the week. My little peanut girl (not even twenty pounds) held her own in the sandbox and the playroom, loving the TRUCKS! and TRAINS! and train tracks and Matchbox cars and bikes and skateboards and the rest of the plethora of boy toys that oozes out of Janine and Foster's house and into the garage and onto the lawn. The only thing that was not the most raging of successes was the running-through-the-sprinkler portion of our summer play. The Olive isn't quite convinced that pools and sprays of cold water in the hot outdoors actually feel good. She was having a tentatively good time with biggest brother James in the sprinkler, and riiiiight as she was starting to enjoy herself, littlest brother "I'm Going To Steal The Show" Gavin snatched up the sprinkler and got the Olive right square in the kisser. And that was the end of that. We got some dry clothes and retired to the sandbox.

About a second before the fun ended.

Our time in Vermont is a wonderful blur of green, green farmland, lots of amazing local food, sprawling, verdant lawns, and mountain views that make me homesick for my one-time college home. As someone once told me, there's a reason they call college your alma mater - it means "nourishing mother," such an earthy translation of this high-minded sounding Latin phrase. It seems particularly apt in Vermont, with the earth and the fruits of the earth literally at every turn in the winding road.   

The Olive stayed up well past her bedtime every night, frolicking in the lasting lightness of northern summer. We let her streak campus in her diaper, seeing how far she would wander, while we sat in Adirondack chairs and had more liquor in red plastic cups, because we are a high-class outfit. She napped in the car, giving us an excuse to just drive, wandering the rural roads and discussing how we were going to spend our lottery winnings (Powerball was up to $260 million, so we had to play). We would definitely stay in Vermont for the season.

I reunited with old friends, put old differences behind me for good. I had so much less emotional baggage at this college reunion than at the ten year. I embraced (literally) and had wonderful conversations with people that I didn't much like in college. Amazingly, they have grown up. We all have, in the right ways.

Then, there are these ladies, or womyn or strumpets or whatever, who are to me perpetually 21, perpetually my best friends and co-conspirators. We've weathered fair weather and foul, wondrous births, terrible deaths, falling outs, and making ups. We live too far away from each other. We don't talk enough. We are trouble, and we like it that way.

 

The weekend was of course too short, my conversations were too truncated by me chasing a baby, I misplaced an obscene number of drinks, and there was never enough time to do all that we wanted. But it was one of the few trips where neither Seth nor I wanted to go home. We felt so inexplicably relaxed. For possibly the first time ever after a trip, I actually felt recharged the next week at work, more focused, happier. Nourishing mother, nourishing friends. I can't get enough.