Monthly Archive

That pretty much sums me up lately.

• Last week I took both kids to the doctor. Random bits of fever, sporadic complaints of sore throat, eat tugging, strep throat sweeping wildly through preschool. No strep, no ear infection. But two days later AM was back. Still feverish, not eating, cranky as hell. Guess what? Return of coxsackievirus, but the version where your throat hurts so much you don’t eat or drink for three days. So that was scary, and the one time I really wished I knew how much liquid he was getting when he was nursing, because that and cold cow’s milk was pretty much all he consumed.
• Oh, but also decaf iced coffee and a donut from Dunkin’ Donuts. I looked like the Worst Mother in the World ™, pouring coffee into his straw sippy cup (I KNOW! Full of BPAs!) and letting him scarf down a donut, but I swear that was the only thing he ate in its entirety all day. The next day I got him to eat a few grapes and two bites of sweet potato.
• In the middle of All That, my mom and stepdad arrived to visit.
• They stayed for five nights. The apartment seemed much smaller with two extra adults, but they were happy to read to the kids, take them to the park, or help with bathtime. So that was very nice.
• I was constantly worried about the next meal. Truthfully, during the week and during the day, I kind of eat whatever. A yogurt here, bowl of cereal there, cheese and crackers and baby carrots for lunch if that’s what I can grab. The kids are thrilled with a cheese stick and a tortilla, nuked peas and corn on the side, and would eat pasta every day if I let them. My parents do not eat like this–my stepdad eats low carb, which is kind of the opposite of us. We kind of intersect at fish and veggies and brown rice. Not bad, or hard, but not exactly as easy as pasta and salad. And fewer leftovers.
• There are a lot of days when Miss M does not want to go to school. Still. There are only 4 weeks left. I feel terrible–like I have failed her for making her stick it out in a class that she still hasn’t warmed to. (Of course, the only real alternative would have been no school at all this year, and that would have been unhealthy for us both.) I realized yesterday that her teacher is unnecessarily strict and sometimes just really not nice. Not abusive, but I would like my baby to have some TLC– at least someone to get down to her level and try to meet her halfway when she is tired and something is bothering her. I feel like someone who has been teaching 3 year olds for 10 years should make it look easier or better and be warmer and more lovely than me, who has never had a 3 year old before this one.
• AM is really trying to make some words. I can see that not too far away he will be calling me Ema and Taxman Abba (he can say “ahhhh-bah!” but won’t apply it to the person) and Miss M some version of her name. And it is awful to say, but I will really miss him padding around the house yelling “MA!” (for me) “BA!” (for Taxman) or “YA!” (for Miss M). He is really scrumptious, when he’s not throwing his damn trains at my head.
• Speaking of AM, he has his own numbering system. One equals one, two equals two, and three equals more-than-two. He has his own signs for all of these. It’s fun to play with.
• The freelance assignment that I have hanging over my head got modified and extended. Good because there is much to do. Bad because it is eating my brain. Engineers: good people, but most of them cannot write a lick. At least the ones whose writing I see.
• The in-between fruit and vegetable season is killing me. I want tomatoes and blueberries. NOW. (Please.)

Tonight Taxman and I went out for dinner. (Any time we go out alone in May it’s my belated birthday celebration. A long standing tradition and bit of gentle ribbing for someone with a March birthday married to an accountant.) My parents babysat. AM put himself to sleep without any fuss whatsoever.

But anyway, the weird part was that we ran into my first cousin once removed and part of his family at the restaurant. We were not in our neighborhood–we were in the Town Across the Hudson With Lots of Kosher Restaurants. They were even further out of their element–they live in the NYC Borough With Lots of Jews, which is not really close to northern New Jersey at all.

We weren’t even sure it was him at first, but I recognized his wife’s voice. Then his daughter-in-law opened her mouth, and I whispered to Taxman that his son had married a woman from South Africa and this had to be them.

They were seated next to us. His wife looked up and saw me and said, startled, “Katie!” And I kind of wanted to die, a little, because really nobody on earth calls me that any more. Except sometimes my baby brother and I (mostly) forgive him because I’ve known him since he was, you know, born.

My family is sprawling and kind of unwieldy. We don’t keep in touch all that much. I filled my OuterBorough cousin in on my dad–and he graciously asked about my mom, knowing they’ve been divorced for 30 years–but I had no clue what my aunt or her kids (my first cousins) were up to. I should probably ask my dad about them, but his relationship with his sister has been distant since they were kids, so he never volunteers.

We left with vague promises to go to them for Shabbat, which would actually be fun, now that nobody would be pressuring me to stay religious, get married, or have kids. (Check, check, and check.) This particular cousin invites us to a lot of his family events–bar mitzvahs, weddings, and the like–and he did come to our wedding, which felt very far away when Taxman pulled out his wallet sized photo of the kids and said they were almost 4 and just 2.

Not that I necessarily believe in a sort of “heaven” where dead relatives hang out and check in on the living, but if there were my grandfather–this cousin’s beloved Uncle Maxie (his name was really Jack)–would be sitting there with a cup of coffee and a big sly grin on his face.

I guess we’ll have to blame the weirdness on Jersey.

I don’t even have time to bullet today (maybe once my parents are gone), but I leave you with my amusing tale from the stirrups. Others may be awash in advertising and sweating through the paper gowns, but I’m bringing the milk.

I had my annual GYN appointment Friday, taking advantage of the grandparents babysitting. It was lovely, really. I got to read two whole pages of a New Yorker article. I got to have adult conversation with the receptionist. I got to go to the bathroom by myself.

During the breast exam, my OB/GYN always describes how one should do a BSE. And then he got to the part where he said to try to express something to see if you get bloody discharge. And he got a squirt of milk near his face.

“Still nursing,” I said, laughing.

“I can see that,” he said. “Nice trajectory!”

I do aim to please.

The past few days have been a whirlwind: Shabbat with friends who moved to the leafy suburbs, brunch with Ianqui, book club meeting to pick our next six books, and the local La Leche League meeting. The last three of those things were at my house, in a 24-hour period. So despite the fact that my achingly dull and stupidly frustrating freelance assignment was unfinished, all I could do last night was lie on the couch and watch House. (Last week’s was better, methinks, but still! The drama!)

But I digress.

At Target last week, with an eye toward the events of the weekend, I purchased a mini muffin tin. And it was fun. I made banana muffins and zucchini muffins for Shabbat, and a mess of downsized carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for everything else.

I highly recommend the carrot cakes. Yum. If you double the frosting you’ll have plenty to slather on the cakes. And extra to put on, say, some fresh strawberries. Or to eat with your fingers when you run out of strawberries because your children will!not!stop! pestering you in their quest to eat all the fruit in the universe house. (Yeah, I know about the dirty dozen. And yeah, we bought the organic strawberries. It’s going to be an expensive summer–and not just because of the gas prices.)

In our continuing quest to tear Miss M and Ay-ya-ya apart, the moms determined that a playdate would not be possible today because of A’s doctor’s appointment.

I took my kids to the backyard playground for 25 minutes, until grey clouds loomed so close I hustled them out. But as we got to the lobby I saw A’s mom coming up the driveway with her three daughters in tow. “Back from the doctor already?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I forgot my car keys and didn’t realize until I was halfway down the block.” (I instantly agreed to watch her kids so she could run upstairs and get them, understanding that she could do it in a quarter of the time without them.)

“I switched strollers,” she continued, “so my brain…”

“Stop right there,” I said. “You don’t have to explain any further.”

And now I return to my rush-rush freelance assignment from hell.

Seriously.

It was so beautiful earlier in the week. Whole afternoons were consumed by the park and its rather icky sandbox, followed up by a good scrubbing, a hearty dinner, and 12 hours of sleep. (Not me, of course. Miss M.)

But now it’s Friday. Second Friday in a row that brings a cold, nasty rain and a grey pall over everything. And two hours less of school.

Did I mention that my freelance assignment came in? I now have 60 minutes to complete something appallingly boring that’s an exercise in frustration to boot. Because after 12:30, I’m going to have some kids to entertain for many, many hours. Indoors. Eep.

Yesterday afternoon, I heard AM crying a particular cry. It means that Miss M is bothering him in some way. Because we were literally about to leave the apartment, I knew they were waiting at the door, so I guessed there was some physical altercation–along the lines of her pushing him down and essentially sitting on him. This makes him unhappy. I proceeded to screw up, as usual, and gave her an earful of negative attention.

But this morning, after his breakfast, he marched into her room, babbling, and climbed into her bed, which woke her. I peeked in and saw them snuggled together under her comforter, and she was reciting Curious George and the Firefighters to him. I don’t want to ruin it–I am not even going to remind her to pee. (Although I hope she gets out of bed if she has to go!)

I suppose it’s normal to see the two sides of sibling relationships, even at this age. Right? (Please say yes, because an hour later she was stepping on his hand.)

Is it just me?

I tried to find cute/funny cards for my mom and stepmom and found either schmaltz or sentiments that struck me as a little mean-spirited, to be honest. So I didn’t buy them, instead making phone calls and sending cute photos of the grandkids over email.

Anyway, I hope it was a lovely day for new mommies, newly christened moms, new grandmoms, moms-to-be, and everyone else who was celebrating with loved ones.

Special hugs and kisses to my (sadly blogless) friend 3daughters, who, as of yesterday, will have to change her name to 4daughters!

And I am not talking about the incessant whys. Things like “Why do I have a purple cup? Why is this cup purple? Why is that a toilet?”

At the airport on Sunday I watched over the kids as they watched a DVD; Taxman went to El Al ticketing to see if there were any alternatives to waiting around for 7 hours. At one point Miss M exclaimed, “My foot is cold!” This is a Miss M-ism, meaning that her foot is asleep. She used to get hysterical when this happened, but thankfully these days she seems to be taking it much better.

Anyway, a few minutes later, she got up and started shimmying around. “What are you doing?” I queried.

“I’m walking around,” she explained. “I have needles and threads.” *

* This is definitely a keeper. I have a feeling we’re going to be using this phrase when she’s 20.

The kids seems to be stuck on Atlantic time (Miss M sleeping 7-5:30 instead of 8ish to 7ish; AM sitting up at 5:30 this morning and signing for bread), so I may never be able to stay up until 10pm ever again. So instead of my thoughts on our trip, you get random stuff.

1. Should I get a gift for my speech therapy grad student? Last clinic session is Monday, and it’s not like she’s getting paid. I would like to, because I think it would nice. She and AM have a real rapport; I’m going to miss watching them. Anyway, assuming I do, what to I get? She’s single, mid-20s. I have no idea of her interests, since we only talk about AM. Help!

2. Speaking of speech therapy, AM had a great session on Monday. Came out with all kinds of things I did not know he knew (something akin to “ribbit” for a frog sound and “ruff” for a dog sound and “quack” for a duck sound). Maybe we’ll hear actual words soon.

3. Sprouty somehow survived two weeks without watering–I had left him for dead, really–and has the beginnings of another bean. He is now The Lima Who Would Not Die.

4. My book list for March-April

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger *

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

The Last Life by Claire Messud

The Midwife’s Tale by Gretchen Moran Laskas *

I Was A Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile

Plainsong by Kent Haruf *

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

* = book club selection

All of this at the expense of The New Yorker, but I just can’t give up my subscription because my fantasy is to plop myself down at a coffeehouse one rainy Sunday and read the growing pile of them in one go.

5. I have a freelance assignment (supposedly) coming. When it gets here I will fail to have any sort of outside life whatsoever. So it’s not you (or your blogs), it’s definitely me.

First glimpse of Israel.

Looking for turtles at Nachal Alexander. Deliberately defying instructions not to climb on the fence.

Watching horses from afar at Kfar Roeh.

Moonrise over Jordan. Thankfully only I was awake to see this.

Cousins and wallaby at Gan Garoo, an Australian-themed zoo.

AM feeding grey kangaroos. His first lesson in how to win friends and influence people others. (He also tried to hug and kiss one of them.)

Miss M figured out how to get the kangaroo feed for free. Then had her first experience as an enabler.

My personal inspiration. (They sleep a LOT.)

Our camera was on the fritz for part of the trip, so none of our pictures from the beach or from Gan Ha-shlosha (natural swimming pools) came out. Suffice to say the kids loved the water and had to be dragged out, teeth chattering.

It’s been a long time since I experienced such physical rage, so thank you for that.

It is a comfort to know that I have it in me to come to the defense of my mothering skills with shaking anger, to raise my voice in a plane full of sleeping people and scream “How dare you!?” when you tell me that my son’s tears of overtiredness and cranky desire for a bed when sleepy (he is his mother’s child) are suffering on the scale of which you have never seen. Did you actually think I was doing nothing except waiting for your precious sleep to be disturbed? That I hadn’t offered him every kind of snack we had, that I hadn’t nursed and rocked and offered every toy, tried every sitting and lying position possible, but just waited for his cries to escalate to such a level that I wanted to knock back a White Russian and wait for death?

Of course, maybe you didn’t know that it’s difficult to keep a two-year-old amused and comfortable and confined on an 11-hour flight, especially when followed by a seven-hour delay.* Or that there’s something that you are lucky enough to be able to take advantage of in this situation–EARPLUGS. And I hope the seatbelt doesn’t get twisted around your neck when you lie down across three seats and sleep for two-thirds of the flight across the Atlantic.

The trip was really fun, although exhausting. More details once I recover (from the flight and the mounds of dirty laundry).

* Thankfully in the airport, not on the tarmac. And with meal vouchers good for four kosher restaurants to boot.