Parenting Challenge #323

Curb your instinct to burst into guffaws when the adorable 3.5 year old girl serenades you with a mini-opera with a single lyric: shit.

Foul-mouth'd cherub.

Shit! Shitshit! Shit shit shit shit shit shiiiiiiiiiiiit!

MAMA! MAMA! SHIT! SHIT SHIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!

1 Million, Billion Bonus Points for accomplishing this before you have finished your morning coffee.

(Who else is glad it's Friday?)

xoxo, A

Nines

The baby has been out as long as she was in, 9 months old on Sunday the 2nd. The baby is trying very hard to not be a baby for much longer, what with all the pulling up and climbing stairs and trying to walk and babble-conversing and being almost a year old. The baby needs to STOP because she is my last baby and she is really just the sweetest, silliest, easiest baby ever.

I haven't yet told you her birth story, partly because it was so devoid of drama. The baby has been so agreeable from the moment she was conceived (excepting the 8 days she hung out past her due date, that was kind of a dick move) that I was able to deliver her without any pain medication whatsoever. So, we can do this real quick and move on:


Overdue. Boo.

After trying sex and pineapple and long walks and yoga and spicy foods and pizza and swept membranes and everything that is supposed to get the damn baby out, one Thursday night, a full week past my due date, I felt a contraction. A real, true contraction that made me go oof. But it was only one. And so we put our big girl to bed and went to bed ourselves. I had decided that I would try laboring through a *very* unstudied version of the Bradley method, and somehow lulled myself into such a state of relaxation that I was able to sleep for a few hours at a time between the somewhat more intense contractions, until the next morning. Friday, December 2nd. We woke rested and ready to get the show on the road.

The baby is so considerate that she waited until her big sister was breakfasted and whisked away by my parents for a weekend of ice cream and movies. The in-laws were put on alert to begin their drive up from Connecticut. Tim and I arrived at the hospital in time for a second breakfast*, around 10 am, and so began the long waiting time. Contractions were coming every five minutes or so, and for every one I closed my eyes and breathed slowly and deliberately and went hmmmmmm and was probably pretty weird-looking but it fucking worked. We walked the halls, we did the stupid slow-dance shuffle you see on every birthing video, I used the birthing ball, I draped my upper body over the edge of the bed and watched Food Network (that shit is soothing) while Tim rubbed my back. I had my Pandora station set to Super 70s Soul. It was awesome. We had a break for lunch*.  I went to the bathroom several times. See how boring is this? It was kind of boring, except for the growing realization that we were ABOUT TO HAVE A (NOTHER) BABY HOLY SHIT. But I was trying to keep that voice quiet, because that panicked voice had served me ill at Little A's birth. So with the Giada and the Contessa and the Aretha and the hmmmmm I kept the panic at bay.

My lovely midwife, Jerri, popped in at intervals to check my stats and sit on the couch and just hang out. My even nicer nurse came by more frequently to chat about whatever, our kids, the current show on TV, oh and also monitor my contractions and give me the crazy strong antibiotics I needed for the Group B strep I somehow picked up between pregnancies. At one point the nurse gave me the best shoulder rub I have ever had in my entire life, seriously, I would have paid a hundred dollars for that outside of the hospital, and there I was getting it for free just because I was pushing a baby out. Lucky me! Also, oxytocin is for real. Because:

After said shoulder rub, all of a sudden I got really, really tired. I wanted to lie down on the bed, so I did. And then even more suddenly shit got super real. My contractions became much more intense and frequent. I felt something like a water balloon popping inside my ladyparts and OH IT WAS MY WATER BREAKING SHIT IS GETTING REAL. The thought hey! an epidural would be really nice right about now floated into my mind space, but it was way too late. I was fully dilated and stripped out of my civilian clothes (cause, duh, I never changed until my water broke and ew gross like nearly everything birth-related) and the nurse was put on hurry-up to set up the birthing tray because all of a sudden I wanted to push. I never got that overwhelming sensation with Little A., but here it was: I wanted to push and push and please don't make me stop pushing because I am gonna be a pushing machine. The nurse said I could do little tiny pushes until Jerri came back from another patient. That kind of made me laugh. *Tiny* pushes? Hee. Hee. See how tiny?

And then Jerri came back. Jerri said, do whatever you need to do. Apparently, what I needed to do was grab those bars on the top of the bed (the next day my arms were SO sore, like I did 100 pullups) and go RAAAWWWWRRRR like a crazy thing. And maybe 4 crazy Sheela-na-Gig pushes later, Baby G shot out. Seriously. My nurse said she'd never seen a baby come out that fast. This is not bragging; I literally couldn't have helped myself. Unlike the first birth, I just let my body do its thing. And my body, I guess, can be efficient when my head is not in the way.
 

9 minutes old. Total. Bliss.



But then there was the problem. Baby G had the umbilical cord around her neck, and because my body wanted to shoot the baby out, Jerri didn't have time to gracefully unwrap the cord. So oh, oh, oh. The grey little baby they put on my chest that day at 3:40 pm. I cried and begged her to start crying, too. They took her away to give her oxygen and I cried and begged them to bring her back. Two of the longest minutes of my life passed and finally, finally, I heard her little cry and they brought her back to me and we looked into each other's eyes and good lord you guys. I fell in love so completely. We sat, happily cuddling and nursing and dreamily smelling her head and admiring her fingers and etc., for hours. The oxytocin and other feel-good chemicals didn't leave my system for two weeks.



9 months old. Total. Goof.



Natural childbirth, yo. Thumbs WAY up.

And so, my last baby was born. And it was so amazing, and so banal. And so, we became a family of four.

The end.

The beginning.

xoxo, A



*If you have a baby, do yourself a favor and find a midwife practice. So empowering! I got to decide things! I didn't get poked and prodded against my will every 15 minutes! I got to EAT! YAY MIDWIVES.





Gratutious babytoe photo serves no purpose.



Goin' Round this Roundabout

Well, in case you were wondering, I have found the cure for my recent, ridiculous overabundance of nostalgia: my 20-year high school reunion.

Every day I drive 40 minutes to sit in an office in the basement of the house where I spent all but the earliest of my school years. The house where I woke up at 5 am so I could do my homework and eat breakfast alone and have plenty of time to put a shit ton of mousse in my hair (no big bangs, though. More like a skater boy cut. Yikes). Where I got in a shit ton of trouble because I got caught spending the night at my boyfriend's house instead of at Ingrid's. Where I cheated on said boyfriend and then broke up with him and then got back together and then finally broke up with him for good after my freshman year in college. Where I opened my acceptance (and one most painful rejection) letters from college. Where I sat in a cheap, low fabric chair on the deck, reading Orlando and longing to be grown up and make important decisions for myself.

Little did I know I was making important decisions for myself, and casting my character, if not in stone, than at least in something it would be very, very difficult to modify. I graduated from high school on a hot day in June of 1992 and surprised myself by sobbing at the very lame Project Graduation party afterwards. The summer after we graduated I saw virtually no one but my boyfriend. My best girl friend found alcohol and lost her virginity and hung out with other girls I had known for years but who never quite were my friends. 

The roads leading to this house are all full of nostalgia-bombs too: the road upon which my boyfriend drove us, too fast and blasting Dinosaur Jr., to school every day. The road from the boyfriend's house I drove way too fast so I could beat a ridiculously early curfew. The road that twists up to the old grange hall where I was in my first "professional" theatrical production. The traffic light at the turn I took to my since-Jr-High crush's house on the day when I finally told him how I pined for him all those years I was his friend and confidante about all the other girls he dated (and how much was my life like a John Hughes movie?).

See? Everywhere I go around here, there is always something there to remind me. I have been spending the past year in the near-constant dull ache of nostalgia for days of old. For what was. I guess for what might have been.

And damned if there isn't a more bracing tonic for what might have been than confronting what is right now.

I did not keep in touch with anyone from my class but intermittently with said ex-boyfriend and one other girl who inexplicably asked me to be her bridesmaid. At our 10 year reunion I was newly transplanted to Brooklyn, super shiny and happy and in love with my life. So I went, and drank, and mingled with the barely-changed faces (the bride had gained weight but still looked and seemed essentially the same). Then ten more years somehow flew by and I moved back to Maine and bought a house with a boy and had two babies and wait how the fuck did ten MORE years go by?

And although I knew I would not know anyone, not really, at the reunion, I sure did have to go. My parents were lined up to babysit and I got my biennial haircut then nervously and uncharacteristically tried on several different outfits.

And thus coiffed and dressed we arrived at this ugly little cheap hotel event space. And BOOM went my nostalgia. All those familiar faces, grown rounder and softer. Everyone's voice sounds different than I remember. There were husbands and wives and pictures of children. No one is especially fabulous or especially grotesque. Stephanie was still a bitch, Melissa still smart and competitive, Marcy still bubbly and sweet, Laura still pretty and vapid, Dan still ruggedly handsome and vague. My old best friend Angela and I just sort of picked up where we left off and talked about life with new babies in our same old half-joking can you believe my LIFE way that we used to talk about our teachers or our crushes. The old cliques from high school formed again at the reunion, but with alcohol. We were just a collection of almost 40-year olds gathered 'round to celebrate the mere fact that we can still gather 'round. And then one classmate's band started to play and people started to dance and I am sure that is where things got more interesting but of course, I had to bail to meet curfew.


So. I still drive to my old house every day, and feel twinges of the past, ghosts of my decisions. But the ache is gone. We all just got older, but are not that old, and we wandered around living, but still have plenty left to do, and that is all. 

xoxo, A

I've Got My Own Hell to Raise (as long as it's before 11 pm)

You guys! I went out! To a show! With a girlfriend! A nighttime ladydate! With cocktails! It was amazing!  Nighttime! And a regular bra!! FREEDOM!!!

(Yep, until the SUPER WILD HOUR of 11 pm. And then boy was I hurtin' in the morning, cause babies don't care how late you were up or how many Citron and Sodas you had (2.5, for the record) or about you stupid post-pregnancy feet not used to heels anymore ouch.)

All that aside, how long have we loved Fiona Apple? A long time. It was so long ago that I first heard Tidal and was struck by its exotic familiarity. For a very long time I have been trying to perfect the ascending notes of Slow Like Honey during my shower-singing sessions (much to the chagrin of many of my former roommates, I am sure). For a very long time I have been amazed that someone could string together lyrics like "you've no reverence to my concern" in a goddamn hit single. Fiona, man. Carrying forth the solemn torch of confessional poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, combined with the badass self-preservation of Patti Smith. She keeps on making albums, surviving, and (perhaps unwillingly) serving as an inspiration to hordes of overly-sensitive young women who get all poetically mad at their boyfriends. Or the world. Whichever.  Not that we know anything about women like that. Not at all.

So, anyway. I had been silently moping over my presumption that the show -- because it was a social event happening in the evening and I just don't do that shit anymore -- was not going to happen for me. But one serendipitous conversation later (Tim mentioned to his friend that I had wanted to go and his friend said his wife, who is the sweetest person ever, also wanted to go but neither of us thought we would go because no one else had asked us to go wah wah waaah this is why you should just ask people if they want to do things, SELF) and I booked a lady-date to see an awesome lady-singer. I was thrilled to be out and happy to shell out the dough to see how Ms. Apple has grown up.

What I found out is that she barely has. Her voice was ferocious, ragged in some songs, on purpose. She danced like a feral yoga instructor or plopped herself down cross-legged and swayed like a little girl listening to records during musical breaks. She chastised the audience for talking during songs (people who talk during songs are bad in bed, she said. And so, um, I stopped talking). The whites of her huge eyes were visible in every part of the auditorium.  It was a tiny bit scary and fairly enthralling and the opposite of the shiny shiny polished pop star thing that a lot of music has become.

She played all the "hits" and several songs I had never heard before, including one batshit crazy song off her new album that is all circus bloops and jangles and was awesome and this description is why I am not a famous music critic. I liked it, and I want to buy the album and play it at high volumes in my car. There you go. 

And the show, the mere act of sitting in front of someone who has gone for the elusive it that is making a living sharing stories about yourself, nudged that part of me that identifies with writers, singers, artists, soul-barers. Not that I have DONE anything about it -- mama hasn't got the mental energy yet, but soon -- I was reminded she is there. The girl who used to carry a tiny notebook and dash off poems at cigarette breaks. The girl who felt too much and slept too little and thought that misery was the only true path to art. My greatest form of self-expression is through my kids, these days, and that is fine and good. But my former self, cut-off army shorts with Camels in the pockets, no money, bad boyfriends, sparking with creative energy self, yearns for another sort of outlet. Soon, I promise her. Soon.

xoxo, A

I Was Born, 6-gun in My Hand

Hey, have we talked about 3.5-year-olds? They are mystifying, awesome, terrible creatures. One minute, cuddly, hilarious, helpful, and sweet. The next, swinging at you with fists of fury and SPITTING because of some unintended slight. Woe betide the mama who BUCKLES THE TOP BUCKLES!!! Unless, of course, she wants me to buckle her top buckle.

Two things have helped shore up my stores of patience: treating her like a slightly deranged person [ie: never rushing her, asking about preferences before doing (cf: "do you want to snap your top buckles?"), and never ever ever rushing her, again] and re-framing tantrums as "emotion storms," which makes me feel a bit like a hippy-woo-touchy-feely-parent but also forces me to remember that we are, in fact, dealing with a creature who knows not, not always, how to modulate her reactions and emotions. Who will make a mountain out of a you-didn't-get-me-the-kind-of-popsicle-I-wanted-molehill. Sort of like me before all of my years of therapy and yoga, but my emotion storms were all internal. Except for that one time in Boston I had to pull over my car and kick things. But that's a story for another time!

Ahem. 

Last week was especially challenging on the toddler-care front; I am not sure why. Perhaps we are both tired. Perhaps she is having a growth spurt. Perhaps I am not eating enough or drinking enough water. Perhaps we are both just having a week where we are both assholes. There has been too much shouting and too many tears. Too much purposeful ignoring. Too much threatening and stomping and goddamnit-I-JUST-NEED-SOME-SPACE-ing.

It's both of us, but I guess it is really mostly me. I need to shift my attitude, I need to get more sleep, I need to remember that she is just small, and figuring everything out, and also? That she is my hilarious, sweet, goofball, first baby.

WHEREIN I GO STRAIGHT-UP MOMMY BLOGGER BECAUSE KIDS THEY SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS AND YES YOU WILL READ WHAT MINE SAYS AND LAUGH BECAUSE I SAID SO: 

One afternoon, she told me, in the blandest conversational tone, I told Cooper, "Penis Company."  I paused. You said what? I asked. I told Cooper, "Penis Company," she said again. I boggled for a moment, then asked, well what did you MEAN by that? Use those words in a sentence. She sighed, gave me the slightest hint of an eye-roll, and just said again, PENIS COMPANY. As if this was something everyone knew.  Her friend Cooper knows now, I guess.

However, the adults in our house still haven't figured this one out, and since we haven't had a note from her preschool teacher, we're leaving it alone. Though. Sometimes I will nudge Tim in the middle of the night and say PENIS COMPANY and start laughing, because I am a big jerk.

THING SHE SAID THAT YOU MAKE YOU LAUGH UNLESS YOU HATE HAPPINESS AND ARE A COMMUNIST TAKE 2:

We have started Little A. in swim lessons, because she is hard-core loving the pool this year, and I am equal parts happy and terrified about that. Happy: I love to swim and it is one of the few sport-type things I feel like I do well, so we can share this. Terrified: Water. Toddlers. I need not say more.

So anyway, to the local pool/Red Cross Swim lessons she goes, and every week she is excited to show off what she has learned. This week, during our post-dinner post-lesson swim, she tucked her pool noodle under her arms, leaned slightly to the side, and did an enthusiastic scissor kick. And yelled BOOTY CHANT! BOOTY CHANCE! BOOTY SHANK! 

Again I stopped agog. Did you learn that at your swim lesson? I asked. No, it is my own special swim, she said back. And then swam and shouted BOOTY CHAMP BOOTY SHANK over and over until I declared swim time was over and wrestled her out of the pool and into the shower and into bed whereupon she alternately shrieked and kicked and shouted she was not tired and snuggled and sighed and said I love you bigger than all the moons and stars Mama.

Because that is a 3.5 year old. I am so lucky to have one. 

xoxo, A

Dada, Testify!

This one's for Auntie E (sorry for the rotation issue). Happy Friday everyone!

xoxo, A

They Will Say It's Elementary

As I might have mentioned, Little A. is FULL of questions lately. Figuring out the world, she is. Most of the questions are easy to answer. Even things like "Why is Easter?" and "What is GAY?" can be broken down into toddler-ese, with relative ease. I don't want to shy away from telling her about life and all the complicated and amazing things people do.

(Por example -- Easter: A long time ago, there was a man named Jesus. A lot of people liked him a lot. He told people to be nice to each other and helped people. But some people didn't like him, and they got so mad at him, they decided to kill him. But lots of people think Jesus was magic (yep, thank you, Sarah Silverman) and came back to life on the Sunday after he was killed, and they made a holiday called Easter to celebrate that magic. And gay? Well, that's just like how Mommy and Daddy like each other a lot; we are a girl and a boy. But sometimes a girl likes another girl a lot, or a boy likes another boy a lot, and that is called being gay. These answers worked, people! Nary a why afterwards!) 

But. The other morning, before we had even finished breakfast, as I was running around packing snacks and lunches and pump parts and extra clothes and diapers and does-everyone-have-pants-on? checks I heard her voice pipe up, asking Tim: Are you and Mommy married?
 
I continued out of the room. And said, under my breath: Good luck with that one, Tim! 



Because, while the answer is simple: we just aren't. But. It is also adultly-complicated: Mommy is a serial monogamist who is terrified of commitment, and while she considers it a triumph of emotional maturity and years of therapy that she does not blame Nana and Grampa for her issues, she sure can point the finger squarely at their perpetually, obviously unhappy marriage for THAT one. Also, Daddy was married before and it was pretty terrible. And his parents got divorced and it was even worse than terrible. And marriage is forever and the thought of being legally bound to someone forever makes Mommy feel like someone put a plastic bag over her head. And also, Mommy likes to claim you guys as single head of household. Shall we get into tax code this early in the day?

No. No no no. So, I ran away. And waited to hear what he would say. It was this:

No, we are not married. But we love each other very much, and we love you and baby G very much, and together we make a family.  

And that, my friends, was as much of an answer as she needed. And as much of an answer as *I* need. Here's hoping we'll get a few years of mileage out of that, so Mama can work out some of those commitment issues before her friends with married gay parents (c'mon, Maine!) start teasing her on the playground.

xoxo, A