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People are nice. Or trying to be. Everyone is complimenting me on how great I look for this late in my pregnancy.
“I can’t believe you’re almost due!”
“I can’t believe you’re out and about and running around at the park!” (Frankly, dealing with Miss M at home is worse. Due to the I-must-climb-EVERYTHING stage she is in, it’s better to be in a place where climbing is appropriate.)
“You’re all baby!” (I get this a lot. It’s mostly true, except for the weight that went directly to my thighs–but I don’t wear shorts.)
“You look so small!” (This is a LIE, I’m sorry. I look like I’ve stuffed a huge bowling ball into my shirt.)
I have to tell you though, all of these statements make me incredibly cranky. In my head they are reinforcing what my OB has been reporting: My body is not ready to give birth. From what I hear it is uncomfortable to walk around for weeks at 4-5 cm dilated, but I wouldn’t know.
The two best comments I’ve gotten all week were from another playgroup mommy that I ran into at the doctor’s office. She said, “You look so low!” (I don’t think I’ve dropped, but it was encouraging to hear), and when I mentioned that I was still nursing Miss M, she asked if I was planning to tandem; I said yes, and she said, “Wow, that’s great.”
I know I am lucky that I don’t suffer in my pregnancies. My body handles it well. I don’t get sick; I don’t get terribly uncomfortable; I don’t get swelling. But based on what happened in my last labor (when Miss M was in the wrong position and/or too big to get out), I get nervous when people offhandedly tell me I look so great and not pregnant from the back. I’d rather look a little haggard and sleep deprived–true!–and have people tell me they’d bet I’ll be in labor within 3 days.
I love Instant Messenger. Taxman and I use it all the time. I don’t have to involve his secretary–I’m convinced she doesn’t like me–and most often what we are discussing doesn’t require an immediate answer, so a 20 minute lag (or whatever) doesn’t matter.
Today Taxman needed to know whether to order more tax-season overtime dinners, paid for by his firm, for next week and beyond. Essentially, he wanted to know when the b2b would be showing up. Umm. If only I knew!
The conversation then drifted to related topics:
OTE: i wish i had some sort of SIGN that this baby would be coming soon! mucus plug, SROM, or *something*
Tx: i hear ya
OTE: do you have any idea what SROM is?
Tx: no
OTE: ok. just checking.
Tx: so, what is it?
OTE: spontaneous rupture of membranes
Tx: k
He didn’t even say “Ewww.” (Although he did ask me to put a towel under the mattress pad last week.) What a guy!
Watching your toddler literally strip off winter, leaving behind coat, hat, and mittens, in order to run around the playground in the sunshine and boldly challenge the five-year-old boys who dared to linger at the bottom of the slide.
The playground was the highlight of our day. Unfortunately, there were a lot of lowlights:
*waking for the day at 6.
*a too-short nap that ended in an unexplained screaming jag.
*a fragile ego…or something like that. When I refused, politely, to share her lunch, she cried. Big, fat tears. Weird. Trying to dissect–related to the b2b?
*bathtime=flood in the bathroom.
I hope tomorrow will be a more gentle day. Starting at 7. Please, please, please.
Me:
Confession: We watch way too much TV. But now we partially justify it because with a DVR, you can skip the commercials. One of the other nice things about a DVR is that you can pause or rewind live TV, for those times that I need to run to the bathroom at an inconvenient time, or we are not thinking fast enough to catch all of the witty banter on Gilmore Girls.
A few days ago the alarm clock (set to AM news radio–you know, the “traffic and weather every ten minutes” people) went off at its usual 6:35 or whatever. And I was not quite ready to be awake, clearly, because my thought was: “Oh, I missed the end of that sentence. Where’s the remote so I can rewind?”
My daughter:
Runs her hands through her hair (curly) at night, getting her fingers snagged, and then pulls the hair out, and wakes up crying and desperately futzing with her hands to try to unwrap the strands from her fingers.
The world at large:*
This particular mother does not install a car seat for her son in a cab when she takes one. Apparently, the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission vehicles are exempt from the New York State law that requires car seats/child restraints for children under age 7. Whether or not drivers may or may not pass judgment on those caregivers who choose not to install them is mysteriously not cited in the article.
For some reason, it seems like the New York Observer, in its quest to be a hip and trendy paper, finds the kookiest mommies in the five boroughs and has them write stuff. A few months ago it was the pregnant woman who had pretty much decided not to breastfeed, although she readily admitted it was nutritionally superior (blah-blah; she Knows For A Fact that breastfed babies get sick too!), because she wanted to be able to share feeding responsibilities with her husband or someone else. She didn’t want to feel tied down: to her baby, to pumping, to the expectations of other educated mommies. (Unclear if anyone had tipped her off that parenting is kind of a long-term commitment.) And she really missed wine and soft cheeses while she was pregnant and shouldn’t have to be subjected to such torture any longer than was necessary!**
Now it’s the lady who really can’t be bothered to deal with silly safety contraptions. Hey, her mom used to take her unbelted in cabs all the time and she was fine! Why should her son be any different?
Seriously, where do they find these people?
*Apologies to Anita, who has seen my rantings on these pieces more than once!
** Good grief, I sound sanctimonious. Look, despite the fact that I am a card-carrying member of LLL, I have known enough people who can’t nurse for a million reasons. I’m not saying it is the be-all and end-all of mothering. But it does make me sad when it doesn’t work out. And makes me even more sad when a mother-to-be (all medical issues being equal) won’t even try.
And by that I mean the Jewish Holiday Causing the Most Mental Anguish.
Here comes Pesach!
To make it all better, here’s my recipe for Raspberry Brownies (suitable for Ashkenazim)
Nonstick vegetable spray
16 Tablespoons “light” olive oil
12 Tablespoons cocoa
4 (large) eggs
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup raspberry or strawberry jam
1 cup cake meal (like matzah meal, but more finely ground)
Preheat oven to 325. Spray 9″ x 13″ inch shallow metal pan with nonstick spray.
Combine ingredients in a large bowl and blend well.
Bake brownies until tester inserted comes out with moist crumbs attached, about 18-20 minutes.
If these are not moist enough for you, I would suggest either upping the amount of jam or adding a little more olive oil (a teaspoon). The original (nonpesach) recipe calls for berry liqueur–if available that’s nice too (a tablespoon or 2).
For lovers of all things chocolate, especially easy and impressive chocolate cakes, the recipe from which this was adapted is superb.
The one year Taxman and I cleaned our apartment (Hell.on.Earth.) and actually stayed home for part of Pesach, we hosted a meal and served these brownies as dessert. (A granita would be a nice touch, not that I did that.) Other menu items included Strawberry-Pear Soup and poached salmon with mango salsa. How I remember this, I have no idea…it’s taking up space along with the John Hughes movies, I guess.
Strawberry-Pear Soup (serves 4-6)
4 cups hulled and sliced strawberries
1/2 cup water
2 ripe pears, cored and cut into medium dice
3/4-1 cup apple juice
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (or more to taste)
1/4 cup white sugar
Using an immersion or regular blender (I used a food mill one year–more trouble than it’s worth), puree strawberries with water, diced pears, and apple juice. Add lemon juice and sugar to taste; how much sugar is necessary will depend on the berries themselves. Serve very cold with strawberry slices for garnish if you’re feeling fancy.
To be honest, I have no recollection where I got the recipe from, but I’ve changed it enough from the original that I don’t feel like I am stepping on any toes.
The main course was salmon poached in white wine, in a recipe I cribbed from one of my mom’s cookbooks. I don’t remember if it was from the Joy of Cooking or the New York Times cookbook (most likely candidates). I’m sure everyone has their own favorite recipe for that. We served mango salsa (replacing the serrano with a jalapeno) as a topping.
The frustrating part about Pesach is that there are so few starchy options. No pasta, no rice, no bulghur, no barley. Just lots of potatoes. Quinoa, because it is a seed that grows with grasses, not grains, it is actually acceptable for Pesach. But I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would bring it into their house on Pesach without Passover certification, which I’ve yet to find. If I were willing to check all the seeds, I might be able to swing it, but this year I’m going to be a little busy.
So for now, it’s a lot of meat, fish, potatoes, eggs, fruit and veggies. And Pesach is the one time of year I treat myself to salted butter. And brownies, of course. Lots of brownies.
The end is near. The end of what, I’m not sure. Hopefully this pregnancy. It’s now 4 weeks at the outside (so I’ve been warned by my OB, who has an OR booked for me on the 17th).
Here are my signs, in no particular order:
1. I slept last night. Sure, I had the usual wake-ups due to baby bladder and Miss M. And yes, I barely slept Saturday night. Nevertheless–when Miss M cried out at 1:15 and 3:15 and 4:15, I wasn’t already awake!
2. My shape now approximates either Hitch or Fudgie. When I was pregnant with Miss M, Taxman frequently told me I looked like a “miracle in progress.” (Awww.) Now he’s openly guffawing at my size.
3. I caught a glimpse of a package of cotton candy in the Passover aisle at the grocery store yesterday. In big letters, it said REAL Cotton Candy. In much smaller letters above that, it said “artificially flavored.” I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around these opposing ideas. First of all, would you consider artificial flavors and food dyes real? (I guess they are real in the existential sense.) Or do they mean real cotton candy in the sense of it being authentic? What is authentic cotton candy, anyway? Is it the fluffy, air-spun sugar that you find at fairs and ballparks and the circus? If that is the real cotton candy, a dense wad of artificially flavored and colored sugar stuffed into a small package with a clown face doesn’t seem to qualify as the true representation of cotton candy. Who decides these things? Why am I occupying brain space with this? Surely because I don’t want to think about other things!
4. Today is the first day of spring. The weather seems to take issue with that, however, as it is going to be 40 and windy all week long. Is this Mother Nature being super nasty to the stay-at-home parents of toddlers? Is this revenge for the Bush Administration denying that global warming is as much of a threat as the science indicates, to the tune of having lawyers/petroleum lobbyists rewrite climate documents? I didn’t have anything to do with that! I hate the Bush administration! New York is a blue state! C’mon, show some pity! I’ve got to get my kid to the park!
If anyone has any tips for getting the 2028 Olympic gold medalist in judo out of me as quickly as possible….you know where to find me.
Yuck.
Cases in point:
Uno: I have to take Miss M with me to the OB this morning. She screams as I am being examined. She’s done it before; my OB claims he isn’t bothered. Alrighty then. (My mother-in-law’s babysitting services are being reserved for next week instead, when I have to go to a different office and have an ultrasound, so not only am I snagging free babysitting for about 2 hours, but I also am taking her car to get there.)
Dos: I was supposed to have very little to do towards Shabbat cooking at this point. Just a quick veggie side, and buying challah on the way back from the OB. But last night, when I unwrapped the $20, one-and-a-half pound piece of salmon that had been defrosting in the fridge, it smelled of kitchen cleanser. Odd. Naturally I thought I was hallucinating, pregnancy nose or some such thing. I don’t have the most acute sense of smell; I am constantly asking Taxman to smell the milk to see if it’s ok. When Taxman got home, he rendered his second opinion, which was “I see what you mean. It’s probably ok, but do what you want.” Since I am an admitted emetophobe, I rarely chance it. If the phrase “When it doubt, throw it out,” hadn’t been around for eons, I probably would have invented it. So that piece of fish that was supposed to be our dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow is in the trash. New Friday project? Shabbat entrees.
Tres: Miss M, the monkey, can now scale the dining room chairs. This means that the dining room table is no longer safe to store anything, with the exception of maybe bibs and plastic cups.
Quatro: I have not had a haircut in six months. This occurred to me very recently. Taxman usually does it (the advantage of covering my hair), but he’s kinda busy right now. Because my haircuts are usually free, in-house, and sans hassle, I don’t have any idea where I can get this rectified. If I wanted to spend $600 on a haircut, I’d pick a random salon in Midtown and probably get a fabulous haircut. But I want to spend about $15 and cut four inches off, straight around. And I’d prefer to go out in sweatpants. So I am a little stuck.
Cinco: We’re back to 6 or 6:30 being an acceptable time to wake up for the day. At least she wakes up cheerful.
None of this is worthy of the Wednesday Whining at Phantom’s, which is why it’s my own little Friday annoyances.
Hope the good chocolates are with someone who really needs them!
Do I trust Miss M?
At this point, I trust her to do the following:
*climb any/all available flat surfaces, including but not limited to stepstools, chairs, sofas, coffee tables (thankfully, we don’t have one), and her Learning Tower. And then jump up and down on said surface.
*eat/drink anything vaguely edible left within 12 inches of the edge of the dining room table.
*empty any drawer, box of tissues, or package of wipes within reach.
*to play with any electronic device that lights up or beeps (or, in the case of the phone, both).
And do various other toddler things. This is just part of the package. I understand this. Really, I do.
What I don’t understand is how other parents expect me to just “let her go play,” unsupervised, in someone else’s house. Even when I am in a house that is well-toddlerproofed–like that of our closest friends, who have a 15-month old daughter who is Miss M’s best pal–I don’t let her go wandering without being watched for very long. A year from now this could be quite different, I’m sure. Heck, once she starts answering me when I call her name things might change a little. But in the meantime, I’d rather she save destroying board books and denuding clothing drawers for our house, thank you very much.
Because of all this, I think that Miss M has seen her last La Leche League meeting. For now, at least. I missed half the meeting chasing her to the leader’s playroom. Although she has several kids, the youngest of whom is 4 months older than Miss M, I could see about 5 potential hazards for her in that room. (And that’s the “babyproof” room in the house! The last time we were there Miss M burned her hand on the riser in the bathroom; I had taken her in with me, of course, because I couldn’t leave her for two minutes unsupervised.) A friend whose 3-year-old was there offered to have her daughter “babysit” and come tell us if Miss M was doing something ill advised. Um, no thanks.
Is it bizarre that I am thinking of a newborn baby as a vacation of sorts? Nurse, change, cuddle, sling, and coo…no desperate chasing involved? I am already plotting that Miss M’s savta will come and hang out with her on the 3rd Wednesday in May so that the b2b and I can get 2 hours of quality couch time at the May LLL meeting.
So…am I a paranoid parent? Or just trying to be careful/responsible for my kidlet?
I am so embarrassed.
As a favor for a friend, I wrote an article–more like a personal essay–on infant sign language and our experience with it. I am a big fan of signing with babies, so I was happy to promote it, and as a bonus it was a potential clipping for my nonexistent freelance career. The pay was zero dollars, but I put a lot of work into the article.
I did not have the opportunity to review the piece before it went to press. The publication is a tiny “supplement” (eight pages) put out by the local Jewish community council. No web presence…barely a print presence. But still, I didn’t deserve this:
I sent clean copy, free of spelling and grammatical mistakes. I do that. I’m an editor, or at least I was.
What was printed was appalling. Mistakes up the wazoo. Never mind that my sentences were hacked to pieces to fit whatever “newspaper” style the “editor” was imitating, but there were spelling mistakes. Lots of them. Good grief. In 2006, when the entire world has heard of Spellcheck, that’s just not right.
Other than burning every (free) copy of this in existence, I don’t know what to do. Do I tell the friend (who is on the Jewish community council) how upset I am? And that I will never write for them again? It’s not like I have much of a reputation to protect, but anyone who knows me (other than solely in the context of Miss M’s ema) knows that I used to be an editor. And that I was paid for it. I don’t expect that this article will make it out of our ZIP code, but my name is still on it.
What do I dooooooooo?
I have to go vacuum up crushed Kix from my living room rug. The Shabbat Queen is coming.
Taxman and I started dating in the late spring and were married in the early winter. His birthday, in the late fall, was the first that we celebrated together. He claimed he didn’t care all that much about his birthday and didn’t understand what the big deal was. Nevertheless, I put a lot of energy into a gift for him. I bought him a backpack and put little things in the pockets that he liked or reminded me of him or us. Cheesy, but we were young and engaged, and I clearly had more free time.
Fast-forward six years, and I totally understand the birthday lack-of-drama. Birthdays are a day to be grateful that you are alive, but not really any more than any other day. My inbox is stuffed full of e-cards to let me know others remembered. It’s nice.
But it’s not like your birthday when you are a kid. When that inexpensive gift from your mom or your friend can just light up your week, and you get to have a party, and eat cupcakes at school. If your birthday is in the early spring, and it happens to be warm and sunny that day, it’s suddenly the most exceptional day of the year.
The first time you have to go to work on your birthday, it doesn’t feel quite right.
Now I don’t get gifts so much as birthday money. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining (it’s probably all spent in my head!), but it doesn’t require the same kind of planning and execution that a child’s gift does.
I am waiting for Miss M to reach the age at which birthdays are Really Special, and hopefully she’ll be there for a while. And I expect that somewhere in that time frame mine will have the potential to be Really Special again, too. I am looking forward to the breakfasts in bed of burnt toast and grubby fruit salad, borne by my grinning little rascals. Assuming that we’ve actually gotten a new toaster by then….
P.S. Happy Birthday to another Five Borough resident, Ianqui. Hope the cupcakes live up to their billing!
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