Ugh

Long-time readers (of which there are at least a few left, I am sure) may recall that my pregnancy with the dumpling (new nickname desperately needed) was rather unpleasant at the beginning because I was quite so anemic.  This week we had another "failure to thri.ve" follow up for the exceedingly skinny dumpling and what do you know, all labwork looks excellent except the man is anemic.  Really anemic.

Look, I know what to do about this.  Really.  I, for one, have been anemic to varying degrees going on a decade.  Except that he really doesn't eat much (no specific food preferences, no allergies, no sensory issues, he just has days when he doesn't want more than a bit or two of food and will purse his lips uncompromisingly.  I mean, he'll happily sit in his high chair and play with the food for a half hour, but try to get it near his mouth and you get a rather stern look).  The doctor prescribed iron supplements, twice a day.  Every day.  But then ... can't really mix those and the dairy which is high fat and probably good for him.  So considering committing to meatballs and OJ for breakfast for him everyday with liquid iron and a second dose late night.

I really do think that he is a healthy, normal, very skinny little guy.  He's happy, active, walking, climbing and dancing on tables ... in 6 month sized clothes (at a week shy of 14 months).

I just want to see him gain a little weight, and nurse a little more enthusiastically (my supply is rapidly diminishing just because he doesn't eat much), but in the meantime we'll be frying meatballs and slathering peanut butter on everything.  Any wisdom much appreciated.

Those little conversations that linger

Look, we can talk after class.  You'd have months to think about it, she say sweetly.  After all, we are both flat on our stomachs stretching.

Nope, not yoga.  Or pilates.  This is mommy and me ballet class and we both have toddlers in pink tutus on the floor next to us.  And mobile babies sitting in the center of the circle pulling each other's hair.

But even there, eyes on both my kids, annoyed at my out of shape body, distracted by the ten or so other moms around me, I said no.  A quick, hurried explanation that we may have to (probably will) leave the city within the next couple of years at the most.  Game over, no go, no need to discuss further.  So we move on to the endless chatter about art projects and potty training and such.

But 7 hours later I am still thinking about how I was practically offered a healthy, beautiful baby (no gender yet, still baking) baby.  To keep.  Forever.  With lots and lots of strings.

My friend is a foster mom.  They went into the system looking to foster children, to love them and care for them while they family's were in need, to reunite them with their parents.  And their very first match was a 48 hour old beautiful, healthy girl.  Removed by the state from her mother in the hospital because of issues.  And while they still are in open contact with the mother and she is in fact in full compliance with the court, the issues have not disappeared and that little girl is staying with them forever (although it will be another 2-5 years before that's all formal).  And then the little girl got a half-sibling when she was about 18 months old, and that little guy went to live with them straight from the hospital.  And now, just after his first birthday he'll be a big brother.  And since the issues have not gone away (and never will), they are looking for a home for his sibling.  And since everyone knows we can't get pregnant and really want more babies, well ...

Except, of course, the timing is wrong for us.  And more than that, the legal system for foster children is quite awful and practically a full time job for my friend to manage.  With supervised visits and all doctors appointments scheduled at other people's convenience a good hour from where she lives.  And we'd need to commit to staying in the city for a good 4-5 years in order to get through the lengthy legal process of terminating parental rights, all while maintaining court-ordered visits (the issues do not make these particularly pleasant for the children).  This is not to say that we're not interested in the future, but it's just not possible right now.

No, I don't have a conclusion to this post.  I told my friend if she decides to take this baby we will absolutely get certified as foster relief parents and help with the transition.  And that's really all I can offer.  If anyone does happen to be in NYC and interested, I am happy to explain more via e-mail and put you in contact with my friend.  The state does not allow parental rights to be limited before the baby is born, but CPS is writing a plan.

In news related to the children in this household, my mini-man gained 5 ounces in 8 weeks and I consented to all sorts of lab work for him.  Those results should be back soon.  School stress will be resolved one way or other by the end of this week.  Baby is teething and nursing every 2 hours overnight, toddler is delightful.  And we could have been planning for a new baby this fall.

epic parenting fail

Let's just say about a month ago we noticed an odd/rather unpleasant odor in our entryway. We cleaned out the hall closet twice looking for any leftover snacks, mopped, took out the kitchen and bathroom trash cans and washed them ... and then figured it would go away. A month ago. Oh, and let's recall that's quite a small apartment (maybe 600-700 square feet) with every door opening off of the entryway, so no area in the apartment is more than 15 feet from the front door where we park the stroller.

Cue lovely sunny Saturday with plans for a long walk in Central Park (valiant but failed attempt to get the fusspot who stayed up until the very end of our seder last night at midnight, give or take a few minutes, to nap). And since the weather was so nice I decided to finally pull the dumpling's stroller sleeping bag out.

It's a Phil and Ted stroller. Hard to reach under seat storage. And apparently something had rolled out of the grocery bags after our last visit to Whole Foods and got stuck under the blanket. Our last visit to Whole Foods with that stroller was about a month ago ...

Which is all to say that for the past month I have been pushing my two incredible babies and a moldy, rapidly decomposing, rotten tomato all around NYC.

So many incredible things

There are so many, wonderful incredible things in my life. My children are behaving quite delightfully and my husband is mostly recovered from whatever absurdity took hold him. And yet, I still can't quite hold it together. Hoping that I can somehow scrape by and finish this stupid degree and then figure out something decently paid and worthwhile to do with my life which does not require me to spend my days with a group of socially incompetent, empathy-lacking individuals. But anyway, a little cuteness on a Friday afternoon:

- The dumpling is a man obsessed with his toy stroller, which he wields with the grace of a nursing home resident reliant on a walker. He can get places, but it certainly doesn't look effortless. But oh, the agony when you separate him from his beloved toy! And the man has persistence. Even though he can't walk yet, he has been known to push his stroller for a half mile stroll.
- He also can blow kisses now. With gusto.
- The fusspot is terrified of getting water in her eyes so I really hadn't considered putting the dumpling in the shower. But he was trying to lunge head first in one morning, so I plopped him down and now he contentedly plays at my feet every shower. He smells better, and it's so sweet to have a little time alone with him.
- Speaking of alone time, my favorite time with the dumpling is watching him play contentedly around our bed while I slowly wake up in the morning. He likes to pat his tummy, poke his father's eyes, pull the shade open, and wrestle with the pillows. So very glad that we're still co-sleeping.
- The fusspot loves her books, and her ability to recite entire books from memory is quite astounding (and I realize temporary, it's normal toddler behavior, not a sign of any impending photographic memory skills. I apparently played chess quite well at age 2 because it's the same rote memorization skill). This morning she regaled me with the full Corduroy plus Herbert the Lion. Very adorable.
- She is also working on her vocabulary. Yesterday when I picked her up from daycare she turned to me and said "Mama, do you know how to scamper?" Why yes child, when my stress doesn't get the better of me, I do.
- The fusspot apparently heard me joking about what JD and her would do on their fusspot-dada playdate this weekend, even though we were on a loud subway train and she was busily playing with a friend, so it came rather out of the blue when she turned to JD this morning and said: "On our fusspot-Dada playdate we gonna meet new girls."

Oh, and random things which make me extraordinarily happy, my excellent craigslist source for high end boys clothes at bargain prices e-mailed and I get to pick up another garbage bag of delightfully adorable items this weekend. I love a good deal, and I love cute baby clothes.

No plans yet for next weekend and I fear my favorite holiday may be a last-minute half-hearted mess, but we're figure it out next week.

Wishing you all a relaxing weekend.

Dreams and reality

I left the house at 9 pm tonight (so early you ask. Why yes, my mother is in town visiting. JD is practically never home by 9) to head in to my office for a few hours work. I was more than slightly pissed at the usual criticism of my parenting (this time over my refusal to let the dumpling CIO but when you have a 12 month old with horrible separation anxiety and unexplained failure to thrive, it really doesn't seem like an ideal time to introduce a potentially emotional new bedtime routine. I'd rather just spend the half hour to rock him to sleep). So I was stewing and marching back to my office up the usual mile that I walk 1-4 times a day.

Except tonight was different. It's stunningly warm and instead of the usual loonies I encounter when I sneak out of my apartment at 11 pm the streets were filled with romantic couples. I walked past 3 restaurants with twinkling candles and full outdoor patios. And it really felt like a magical moment. A stroll in Paris or Brugges. Outdoor cafes, young couples, echoes of laughter spilling into the street, hints of live music from the jazz club ...

And it just made me wish that I could be part of it. One of those people who could relax on a Thursday night with a drink, or even just a long evening stroll with my husband and my double stroller.

I'm kind of at a cross-roads. My career seems to be careening towards a concrete wall and the impact is either going to be gruesome or just messy. Every morning I'm full of optimism and when I wake up with a panic attack punctually between 3 and 3:30 am every morning I can easily talk myself down with positive affirmations and detailed schedules. And then I actually get to my desk and utterly fail to write enough, to think through the problems, to send basic e-mails, to reread challenging texts (always in languages I struggle with). And I just can't figure out why. I really do want to finish this degree, I really do like my topic, I fundamentally have the skills to do it and yet, well, we're heading for a concrete wall at 100 mph. I've even convinced myself that just finishing is enough, that I can take time off after I finish and find something to do. But still, not working quickly enough. Not thinking hard enough. Not being creative enough and I can't quite figure out why.

And part of it is certainly the dread feeling that if this all fails there will be even fewer relaxing spring evenings strolling down the street. Not much to conclude here. I wish that I could be zen about the final outcome, or figure out a more effective strategy to push myself. I am now quite sure that "positive affirmations" do nothing towards the actual end output, and that I need to stop "taking care of myself" and just work. Less than a month to go and then this whole situation will be over in some form or another.

In the meantime, my husband forgot my birthday and I'm turning a year older in a couple of days. I have new shoes, and all else will have to wait.

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I guess that I just should have waited until I got home to write the conclusion. The warm spring air was still there a little after midnight, and the flowers were even more delightful in the dark, but the homeless men had taken over the ventilation grates and there were at least 10 rats frolicking merrily on our doorstep thanks to our building's uncovered trash cans. I am rather terrified of city rats, especially the kind that don't even try to hide when you stand there, so I had to wait and dash between them to get into our building. Terror, maybe I just need a bit more of it to push me farther.

More preschool angst

I really do know that this is probably only an issue for big city dwellers in a few select neighborhoods around the U.S., but we happen to be standing still in the midst of a swirling torrent of parental anxiety and it's really hard to ignore it all.

On Monday I was angry. Really, really angry. See, after contentedly registering at our local Catholic school I started reconsidering our even more local (about 50 feet from our front door) lovely Jewish preschool. Of course, none of these preschools list their tuition online, but a few reliable blogs suggested it might be affordable. Now the application deadline was many months ago, but I dashed off a little e-mail asking if they might have a waitlist if someone unexpectedly left before the fall. And what do you know? They've got 2 spots open. 5 e-mails back and forth about age, interview times, our preferences and we were all scheduled for a visit before I even saw the tuition rates.

Turns out the blog was wrong. Not so affordable.

So off I steamed to our little music for toddlers with siblings class just pissed. Pissed that we are doing just fine financially and we still can't afford 3 day a week preschool for our daughter. Pissed that people around us are financial idiots who seem to be pouring every penny into housing/nannies/preschools. Knowing exactly what our friends are making (my husband works with 3 good friends, they all make the exact same salary down to the last bonus penny), it seems that either everyone is getting oodles of money from their parents or they are literally not saving a penny. Pissed that my mother told me to just spend the extra $3000 (note: Catholic school is 30 hours a week, Jewish school is $3000 more for a grand total of 12 hours a week minus many, many holidays). It's not like we can cut a vacation and make up the difference. Our current summer plans consist of a visit or two to see my family (cost one plane ticket, they pick up the fusspot's ticket) and a visit to see family at the beach (cost 2 Amtrak tickets). We are spending almost every penny that we get which is not already budgeted for paying off student loans, saving for a mortgage, saving for future medical expenses (loud sound of thunder and gloom), saving for future educational expenses for our kids, or life insurance (yes, I am thankful that we can set quite that much aside. See above: we are doing just fine financially right now, but it doesn't mean that there are huge extravagances every week).

So I spent a day pouting. I wrote a rather nasty note to the school saying that we'd love their program but given the cost we really see no choice but to go with Catholic school. They countered that financial aid was already assigned (and there's just no way we qualify) but that we might be able to work out a small discount. So we'll talk more.

And then I got an e-mail tonight. A super-excited e-mail from a young woman I know, a distant relative now in college. I can't write about the details but she got into a program she really wants to go on and suddenly all of my anger switched to guilt. Here is an incredible woman born into a truly awful family (yes, the courts removed her more than once) in a truly awful impoverished state without any real educational opportunities. And she still managed to get into a good school and to get decent grades. And over the years we have been trying to cover a few small expenses here and there, winter coats when she was younger, bras and a new bathing suit every summer, some school bills.

And seriously people? I may just implode at the next idiot who makes me feel guilty for not splurging on the very best local preschool when we obviously could afford it. If we can afford an extra $3000 I am going to do my very best to give that money to hard-working young woman so that she can have an experience that as a college student she will be able to understand and learn from, that hopefully will open doors for her, an experience that I certainly took for granted. It had always been our intention to help out with the expenses for this, but I'd like to do some more generously than the baseline we usually give. And if my mother or anyone else asks why my daughter is better at her Lord's Prayer than her understanding of "tikkun olam," at least I will know the answer to that.

Ok, so I should add that part of this anger stems from a series of conversations I am still processing with the parent of another toddler. A lovely sweet shy little girl who the fusspot loves who happens to come along with a loud, abrasive in-your-face-I-know-best-mother. But then again, it's hard to ignore her words for all that their delivery is obnoxious because she is a passionate, loving parent even if we disagree on many, many things. Needless to say she had some extremely harsh words for our school (and other parenting) choices and while I agree with much of what she said in theory, I am genuinely comfortable with the trade-offs we have chosen.

We are SO that family

Yesterday was a gorgeous, sunny day here in NYC and in our neighborhood that brings all the strollers to a certain small patch of grass far from the street. Which is a nice way of saying that I saw quite a few moms I haven't seen in months as we lounged in the sun (at 8:45 am ...). Of course, the first mom I talked to is a good friend who happens to be one of those delightfully neurotic mothers who populate this particular neighborhood. And what else should we talk about but schools.

Last week when she was over for a playdate she had just put down a $4000 deposit to keep her child's spot in her current preschool but was panicked about not getting into her top choice pre-k/transition to incredibly excellent elementary school (at which point she'd lose the $4000 deposit naturally). Fast forward 2 weeks and said kid was off the waitlist and into the school, and now mom was panicked about the bill. And you would be too. $37,000 for a 9 to 3 schoolday. And in many ways, a commitment to that bill for the next 9 years because the public and private schools have different cut-offs so moving her daughter to the public school would necessitate her repeating a year. Oh, and the private schools set their deposit date just because public schools reveal admits to special programs, G & T, etc. so it's even harder to switch over.

Her solution was pretty clever: to visit the local public kindergarten to see exactly what she was comparing. And needless to say, she was not thrilled. Most of her complaints about the public school were trivial, although she did notice a few things which are genuinely scary depending on the scale (namely, overworked, stressed teachers yelling at children. I had 2 friends whose children were in genuinely emotionally abusive classrooms. I can understand bad content or wasted time, but a teacher who is so overworked that she's mean to students is not something I could handle easily). I was surprised to hear that we are districted for a school which is 75% Hispanic, only because we really don't see those kids at the playground. My guess would have been closer to 25% Hispanic, 25% African-American. She even talked about liberal parents who take pride in "slumming it," sending their kids to the grimy over-enrolled local public school when they could in fact afford a private alternative (hello dear friend, do remember who you are talking to).

Needless to say another mom I haven't seen since the fall sat down and was lauding her much cheaper private school. A school I've been meaning to register, a possible cheap "gem in the rough" in our very neighborhood. Naturally, a Catholic school.

I talked to JD about the situation last night and we basically agreed to put down the $150 deposit at this nice little Catholic school as a back-up plan. Mostly just to buy us time to figure it all out. We had a nice theoretical conversation about home schooling and the support involved parents can give to a floundering school (note: there is no public school option for us for next year. We are taking about pre-k and our district has NO universal pre-k spots. We're in the lottery in the next district over but our chances are close to nil. We very much hope to land up at a nice public school for kindergarten on).

So there I was at 9 am this morning on the school tour. And so glad to see another familiar face on the tour. In fact, there was only one other family there with me at 9 am. And who should they be? The janitor from our old building. Our non-white, non-native English speaking, kind and generous janitor. The same man who carried the fusspot home through a blizzard December 26th 2010 when I was huge as a whale and scared of falling in the snow. A friend.

We are so going to be that family.

At 10:15 am I put down a deposit and officially enrolled the fusspot for pre-k. I don't know if we'll still be in this neighborhood, I am by no means convinced that this pre-k is a better option than simply continuing our home daycare, I don't even really know if we will be able to afford the bill by the fall ($7500 for an 8:30 to 2:30 5-days a week program, as far as I can tell as cheap as it gets in the city and only because the Catholic Church is picking up the rent tab). I don't love the idea of the fusspot in a classroom of 20 with only one teacher (and a teacher's assistant without a teaching degree). I do like the play-based curriculum, the loving environment, the diversity. And I do know is that I would be thrilled to have my kid going to the same school as our neighbor. And hopefully that at least won't change.