The things you never forget

Tonight (T-minus 13 hours and 22 more exams to grade before our departure from the city) I pulled out a long-neglected but much beloved baby item: the dreaded first baby designer over the shoulder diaper bag (used, off e-bay, glorious Kate Spade). No surprise: it was full of items from my last cross-Atlantic flight with baby (i.e. the great volcanic debacle of 2010, or how I spent a week homeless in the very city I had been living in all year).

And oh, the memories! I am now that woman who routinely heads out for an 8 hour day sans almost any baby equipment. Maybe a diaper or two, but we live in the city of 24 hour drugstores on every block, and paper towels will do for wipes anyday. Sure, last week I had to call 2 friends to see if anyone could deliver a clean part of pants (size 6 months) to me somewhere in midtown, but it all worked out for the best, right?

But this bag, this bag was well-packed. New readers may not realize that with baby #1 in tow I not only crossed the Atlantic 5 times alone (3 round-trips, let's not exaggerate here, 1 trip with JD along), headed off to the subcontinent on vacation, but also managed to visit every major Northern European capital in under a year (Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Rome, London, Berlin ...) plus quite a few other stops along the way.

And since our next endeavor does involve about 24 hours of continuous travel (1.5 hours to the airport, 12 hour flight, layover, 2 hour flight, drive to house?) this bag will be packed. The basics:

- Aden and Anais blanket for nursing
- cotton blanket for warmth
- cheap fleece blanket to put on the floor for playtime (quite possibly to be tossed on arrival, and if not certainly to be thoroughly washed on return. Those floors are filthy)
- change of clothes
- hat for the cold
- wet bag for diaper blow out
- wipes/diapers (or maybe not. Every time I have talked to my airline they have reminded me in some way that they will be providing food/diapers/wipes/toys and that although a few people bring along extras it's really not necessary. That and the extra 2 checked bags for a lap child are a sure indicator that this is a foreign airline)
- the most awesome mini and easy to wash pure plastic changing pad. Also brings endless good luck as it was used by a good friend before being gifted to me
- whole bag of little spoons
- bibs. Many, many bibs
- baby tylenol
- probiotics for baby/meds for me
- snacks with a goal of taking up as much time as possible: cheerios, dried fruit, puffs, jarred baby food (I will fight security for it)
- assorted rattles, quiet book
- if I can fit it, a spare sling in case the first one gets barfed on (it happens, it's gross when you are going to carry a baby going on 24 hours)
- granola bars for me (I will have a separate carry-on but always presume it will be up high and I won't see it the whole flight. But I definitely pack a carry-on outfit when I'm going straight to an event after landing. Didn't mention that yet, did I?)
- 2 passports with visas

Did I mention that it's 82 degrees at our destination today? And this wedding has 5 separate formal events, and apparently at least 2 activities per day.

Spin that globe baby, we are about to go on a crazy adventure:
I am so excited about exactly 7 days and 2 hours of just vacation. No plans except to see my friend, play with my baby sans loud toddler, and enjoy the sights (however constrained they may be by conditions).

Hopefully more before I leave, but if not just a quick note that I will note open my blog at all while abroad (going to be using someone else's computer, totally paranoid).

Seriously?

Anyone seen the press for new legos for girls? Let's ignore the absurdity of the fact that girls need legos pre-packaged in play sets and with "more of a storyline" ('cause you know those brains probably aren't big enough to think of a storyline ...) (and oh the bloggers who are so excited! where are your brains?).

No, what astounds me is that no one seems to have mentioned the uh, physical, aspects of the new legos. Click here if you haven't seen an image.

But seriously? Lego girls are now distinctly skinner than lego boys? I'm sure that will make my toddler feel so much better about herself.

Off to pick up candles for the little holiday starting tonight.

At least I haven't lost my perspective or anything

The great news of the day is that the dumpling is back on the growth charts. Thoroughly back on the charts. The nurse told me very excitedly that he was almost to the 9th percentile.

And me? Grin froze to stiff upper lip. I gathered all of my acquired-in-the-big-city-bitchiness (y'all know I was raised in the South, right?) and said: "Write down 10th percentile."

Puzzled nurse: "But, really, even 9th is a bit of a stretch ..."

"Yeah, better make it 10th percentile."

And she did! Can I hear it for the double digits? And no, I'm sure that making her measure the fusspot 4 separate times, including in 2 different rooms and with a freestanding ruler did nothing to persuade her of my sanity. In the end she just gave up and magically boosted the fusspot from a rockin' 10th percentile all the way up to 25th percentile. So there you have it: absurdly almost-average babies. And a completely insane, exceedingly proud mama.

Which is very good because less than an hour before the appointment I imploded in the direction of my rather groggy, caffeine-deprived husband. Who I really do adore, if sometimes preferably from a distance and with a dash of improvement mixed in.

Here's the thing: it's really, really, really hard to co-parent with someone who works 70+ hours a week, and needs some alone time to boot. So when JD walked in at 1:38 am I was not only up and working (although I will quietly admit to drifting off while putting baby to bed and thus getting a late start) but had most assuredly left the dishes on the table, laundry in a pile on the living room floor to be sorted, and left the usual caked-on-snot-and-baby-goo on the high chair. So perhaps it wasn't really the best time for JD to mention that he worries that having kids has contributed to his unhappiness

Look, I get it. I really get it. At the fusspot's daycare party, another new mother was describing walking past starbucks with her beautiful, healthy newborn in a sling and bursting into tears at the idea that she would never, ever, ever again just wander into starbucks and sit for an hour to read the paper without thinking where her baby was/who was watching her/whether she had enough time/whether there were other things she should be doing instead. And this from a woman who was a full decade older than me when she had her first (which both means the transition was probably harder, but girl had a full decade of extra Sunday mornings to lounge around pre-baby). I am in no way suggesting that lazy Sunday mornings are worth nixing the baby aspirations, or that I did not understand what I was getting in to, but neither of those is actually relevant to that terror that your life is slipping away in the time it takes to scrub the high chair every night or wait for your toddler to poo in a public restroom or repeatedly re-weatherizing one or the other child following delay after delay at getting out the door. And JD has added in a very healthy dose of financial anxiety which I have thankfully managed to skip entirely (I think this has much to do with his experience as a new immigrant, and mine as a thoroughly upper middle class first generation American).

I am part of a small moms groups that meets every week. It's actually a class for our toddlers, but I for one would happily pay for a structured way to interact with other really reasonable moms and their babies. And while both of them previously had very prestigious careers, they are at home now with their children. And the one thing that they both say repeatedly is that their husbands appreciate how hard it is to be home all day with 2 kids. And maybe (ok, probably) mine doesn't. And folks, I'm not even really "home." It's 11:30 pm and I have a (decaf) coffee in hand because I have another couple of hours of work to do. And work stress. And then I will get up at whatever time one or the other of my children wakes up. And take them to daycare, work, go straight to synagogue, and then come home and single parent them again on a Friday evening and quite possibly all weekend depending on whatever craziness JD is up to at work (and honestly, yes, my non-Christian husband ought to be volunteering to work more over Christmas so that people who need to get home for the holiday can). So in the short term I need a way to channel all of my anger at my husband someplace other than straight back at JD. Because this working/minimal daycare/single parenting thing is absurdly hard, and the next time he suggests that is is hard for him, well ... beats me. Let alone the idea that the man is at some very small level unwishing the one thing that I have actually succeeded at doing with my life: raising two adorable, secure, loving, happy miniature people. And hey, they were both even in double digits on the growth chart today thanks to my hard work.

One more thing I guess we didn't really have to worry about (yet)

Let's just be upfront: we don't celebrate Christmas. It's not our tradition, not our holiday. And I don't just mean the lovely silent night part in Church, we don't have a tree. We don't listen to carols. We don't exchange gifts. We don't even try to make our otherwise minor and wimpy holiday into a parallel celebration. Hanukkah is lovely, it's just a minor celebration. Nothing even close to sukkot or pesach, two holidays we aren't exactly expecting to see "decorations" in the stores for, even in our neighborhood.

I have absolutely no problem with other people doing so, and no problem at all with the fusspot enjoying other family's traditions in their homes. Which is to say, that if we are invited caroling or to a Christmas cookie exchange, I am happy to go. My rule is simple: not in our apartment. [The related issue of what to do about entirely clueless not Christian in-laws who see Christmas as entirely secular holiday and are happy to engage in every tradition they can grasp is a separate issue. This after all are the same people who nodded in agreement when a rather tipsy yours truly told a child a few years ago that santa was just a much older Jesus. I mean, there really is nothing religious behind their cookies/lights/tree and yet it drives. me. crazy. But then again most of that is probably all about appearances: I don't want my kid to be the one in Hebrew School who says "Oh yeah, my grandparents had a Christmas tree" because gosh darn it, they aren't even Christians!].

But obviously we obsess about what to tell the fusspot, how to explain that other people have lovely traditions and yet we're going to skip them. After all, even her daycare has a Christmas tree and the fusspot has been enthusiastically participating in the lynching of her stuffed animals and barbies which dangle rather suggestively from the plastic tree by 5 pm.

So it is delightful to realize that we can just skip around this monstrous sized pit of doom for another year (I mean, if this holiday is ever-so-much-fun, why won't we let her participate, seems like an obvious question). The fusspot insists on referring to all of the "Snowmen" she sees around town and asking when it will snow. This is of course a slight improvement from last year when she referred to them as "mama" (you know, because of my extravagant facial hair and roly poly girth).

On Sunday we were wandering through a big store and the saleswoman came over to the fusspot and wished her "Happy Holidays!" and the fusspot turned and smiled and said very enthusiastically "Happy Halloween!" which basically sums up our level of comprehension around here.

And so, a very Happy Halloween to all of you.

And speaking of upcoming holidays, it just so turns out that the dumpling and I will spend a good part of our Christmas Eve on a layover in ... Dubai. I can't even believe this crazy trip is happening, but barring war/coup/rising political tensions, it seems like baby and I will be hoping on a plane halfway around the world for a whirlwind 5 day wedding celebration. More on that later.

I guess we aren't exactly following parenting advice all that well

On Sunday I took the fusspot to the ballet. Living in the big city, you can find wonderful things like a one hour version designed for toddlers (although it was still a good 20 minutes too long for most of the audience). This isn't so much a post about that, as about my rather horrifying realization that this is the very first time that we have deliberately taken the fusspot to an activity sans baby. Sure, she went to daycare for a few weeks after he was born without him. And there have been the odd weekend mornings when the fusspot and JD ran out to coffee without me and baby, or the big excursion to buy her winter coat with grandma while the dumpling napped, but that's about it.

You know all that advice about doing "special activities" with your toddler when the new baby (who happens to be 9 months old now) is born? Whoops.

Needless to say, the fusspot was duly concerned about where baby would be, whether he would miss us, whether he could join us for lunch afterwards (nope), etc. And when asked about the ballet later in the day, she repeated multiple times "Dumpling wasn't there." There is something so endearing about realizing that she just takes his presence for granted in her life, that she finds it normal to find the dumpling in our room in the morning and to have him trail around after her all day. I love that they go to daycare together, and one big benefit of not being able to afford preschool for her next year is the hope that we will be able to keep them together for another year.

There are certainly moments that she is frustrated with him, but given that he cannot yet climb up high she is quite happy to take her toddler-toys up onto the couch or the kitchen table or the desk in her room and have him enthusiastically sit below and watch. We also occasionally use the gate on the kitchen to allow her a space for non-baby friendly activities (like her beloved light box), but that is fairly rare. The one time of day that I still haven't figured out is bathtime, and specifically what to do with the dumpling after his 60 second bath (he is a maniac in the bathtub and I just can't keep him safe for much longer than that. The guy wants to nosedive into the water, climb the porcelain, bang his head into the spout ... and no combination of infant bathtub/bumbo/ring seat seems to contain him) when she wants to play for more time (oh, how I envy couples where both parents are home at bedtime. JD is averaging about one bedtime every 2 weeks at the moment, and that is weekend inclusive).

Speaking of the dumpling at 9 months, we have a big weigh in on Thursday and I am very, very much hoping that he will have gained a pound or two, putting us thoroughly back onto the growth charts.

I love that his favorite toy in the entire apartment is the humidifier which sits on the floor of the fusspot's room. He loves to take it apart, laughs as he drops the pieces on the floor, and is then duly enthralled when you put it back together for him. Even better if it is actually spitting out mist while he's playing with it.

I also adore how our happy guy has absolutely no patience at night. When he wakes up during the night (every night. multiple times. just saying.) he goes from happily asleep to a wail that sounds like I just-learned-of-the-destruction-of-the-temple or the-truth-about-global-warming in under a minute. He has no energy to look around for food or explore, he just lies face down on the mattress wailing until his snack appears.

Sorry, no good conclusion to this post. I just wanted to remember a few things from this big birthday weekend. Kind-of crazy that I have now been blogging for over 4 years.

I'll see you school stress

and raise you endlessly delightful birthday party planning procrastination. Let's see: 2 kinds of cupcakes, cookies for the adults, baked mac and cheese for kids, sandwiches for adults ...

... handmade birthday party invites ...


... custom-dyed clothespins ...


... noodles for elegant necklaces ...


... and of course little brown packages tied up with string ...


did I mention that I convinced a friend (a single guy, to be precise) to buy helium balloons yesterday, bring them to the office, and then hand-deliver them to me after 9:30 pm so that the fusspot could wake up to BALLOONS even though she is three and obviously would have been every bit as thrilled if we'd just gone to the store and bought them yesterday?

Just another evening

sitting crying quietly in my office. I realize that I lead a charmed life, I know that my problems are trivial on the real scale of issues, but it has become really hard to work through them. I have snapped more at the fusspot in the past 2 weeks than in the previous 2.9 years. She has had 3 time-outs in her crib, even though we don't do time-outs. No, there's nothing wrong with her. I am just so much more short-tempered when I am stressed.

The stress is all work-related, and it's not going away. And while I realize that the responsible/strategic/best for the long-run strategy is to dutifully agree to every demand, to politely nod as I am maligned, to strategize about how to get out of here as quickly as possible it may just not be possible.

Last April I wrote that it might be time to label this career my first great failure and move on. I keep being told not to do that, to try harder, to work more, to give it more time, but I'm just not sure. The short term is so rough. I had both babies in bed by 9 pm last night, then I cleaned up, worked until 1 am (nursing baby back to sleep twice), woke up at 5 am in a panic and worked unproductively for another 2 hours, went back to bed for 45 minutes, dashed out the door with both kids in tow (JD is out of town) and am now sitting at my desk writing my to-do list for tonight. There is no dinner at home, it's raining and the kids have no raincoats with them (nor can I take the subway with the double stroller). I am just not sure that this stress is fair to the people I really care about. But everyone keeps telling me to give it another couple of months. And really, I don't exactly have a good back-up career lined up. There are plenty of things I could do, but in the short-term it would be some type of work-at-night below minimum wage job, and that's not exactly appealing either.

How's that for a depressing post? Back in a few weeks hopefully with many more cheerful thoughts.

It's that time of year

when everyone is talking holidays and family and travel ... and we are gearing up for a big birthday bash over the weekend for the fusspot. And it makes me wonder if those of us whose families don't fit into the hallmark card are just quieter than normal, or whether other people are also trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Here's the thing: I had a very happy childhood, and my family is overwhelmingly normal, pleasant, responsible. There are no gross deficiencies here, no huge scandals, no decades-long feuds. And yet ...

last night when I logged into skype to chat with my sister and congratulate her on something she'd done, the fusspot walked up to the computer and said VERY loudly "WHO IS THAT?" Because we hadn't spoken in 6 months (although we do e-mail), and although she lives only a couple of hours away, my sister has seen the fusspot maybe 5 or 6 times, for a half day each. She had met the dumpling exactly three times: at his naming (she flew in for 4 hours total) and twice when enroute to or from a NYC airport for about 2 hours each. No, she has no other nieces or nephews.

And my father, who I overwhelming find quite normal, entirely failed to remember the fusspot's birthday or get her a card or present. And last night I told him that was fine (we do talk every week), but then this morning I decided that it really is not ok. So I went online and ordered something for the fusspot, from her grandfather. And I tried not to cry. She has an amazon wish list, she'd be thrilled with a $5 package of stickers or a card, but she's 3, it's important to her that the people close to her are involved with the big events in her life.

My guess is that more people than not have slightly remiss families like mine, and I'm wondering if you cover for it? Do you explain that my closest relatives (except for my mother) are in fact very, very distance relatives (you know, cousins three times removed ...) who I just happen to love and admire very much? Do you cover for the people who should remember big days? I know that the fusspot is surrounded by adults who love her and see her regularly: her daycare provider, our close friends, the mom of one of her good friends, but I also know that those relationships are less likely to hold up under multiple moves, extra children, etc. I cherish the photo of the fusspot being held by her great-grandmother (on JD's side, all of my grandparents are deceased), and would happily suffer a 12-hour flight with 2 children to have a photo of the dumpling with his great-grandfather hanging on the wall, but it seems like neither my husband nor my family can even understand that.