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So this parenting thing, it never really goes away.
I tried to get away from it this morning, when I ran what was supposed to be a 5K but was really a 4.3 mile loop on a multi-use trail with its own mini-Heartbreak Hill in the second mile.
Like I’ve said, part of why I run is to get away from the brain-buzz, the constant undercurrent of motherhood and what I am supposed to be doing for my kids, even if I am too tired, too lazy, or too stressed out to do so.
I left my children in the hands of Taxman, my stepmother, and about five other relatives. My dad, my uncle, and my cousin got snookered into running with me. (“Who’s going to run the 5K with me?” I exhorted in an email two weeks ago. “There’s no leaf-raking at Mom Mom’s house this year; how are you going to earn your pie?!”)
My cousin ran the Boston Marathon in April, so this was just a quick walk for him. My uncle took off at a decent trot, after implying he’d run a 12-minute mile (ha!). And my dad…he stayed with me. He’s in really good shape, but running makes his back hurt, so he prefers to swim or bike. It was incredibly kind of him to stay with me. In addition to being pretty slow (10:30-11:00 minute mile), I am also a full foot shorter (or is it 13 inches?) than he is. So it was really a painfully slow jog for him.
But he did it for me, I’m assuming, because he’s my dad. As we made the hairpin turn at 1.5 miles and started to slog up the hill, he said, “Why don’t you take the inside–the bikers come down here really fast.”
“You think your reaction time is that much quicker than mine?” I joshed him. “I’ve got 28 years on you.”
“I know, but you’ve got two kids to think about.”
“So do you,” I shot back.
“It’s not the same anymore.”
I had to concede that it probably wasn’t. But feeling protected, at the sometimes-ancient-feeling age of 33, helped me get up that blasted hill (with just a minute of walking and a good three or four to get rid of the asthmatic-feeling lungs). We made it through the rest of the loop, and he even let me finish a second ahead.
It’s good and it’s hard, this parenting forever.
I wish I could take credit for it, but I got it from my stepmother. I love her, but she is NOT an inventive cook, so I am sure she got it from somewhere.
Stayman, Winesap, Rome, Cortlandt, or Mutsu apples*
fresh cranberries
2 T white sugar
1 cup rolled oats (quick cooking or whole)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup butter or margarine
Fill a 6-8 quart covered casserole dish, like this:
2/3 full with peeled, cored, and chunked apples. Pour 1-1.5 bags fresh cranberries over the apples. Sprinkle the white sugar over the fruit.
Melt the butter/margarine; stir in oats, brown sugar, and walnuts. Thoroughly mix and scoop over apples and cranberries. Cover dish, bake for 50-60 minutes at 325 degrees.
I know a lot of people who asked for this recipe over at Phantom’s are of the vegetarian stripe, but this goes very nicely with turkey (obviously) and also, if one is so inclined, with this brisket.
Don’t ask me why my family treats this as a side dish instead of dessert. My stepmother is very tradition-oriented when it comes to Thanksgiving in particular (e.g., we have to have a fire in the fireplace, even if it’s 60 degrees out), so making this a side leaves more room for pie-as-dessert. Which is the tradition.
Oh, and gratutious pie:
* My stepmother has lived basically in the same region her whole life, so she can always get Stayman (aka Winesap) apples and looked at me goggle-eyed when I told her they don’t sell them in New York. So the other suggestions are mine. Cortlandts or Mutsus are a good choice–Romes are ok if you can’t find another good baking apple. (Or: use your favorite baking apple.) I don’t use Granny Smiths because you are already getting Teh Tart from the cranberries.
Halloween Lover’s comment on my last post reminded me of another funny AM coffee story.
A few weeks ago we were out running errands. [Of course. This is what parents do. Nobody ever says, "Oh yes, if it was Wednesday we were jetting off for Europe between school dropoff and speech therapy."]
I got myself a latte or a cappucino (I forget which), and naturally he petitioned for some. I promised him the end and passed him what was essentially the dregs and a bunch of foam. I had to take the top off for him to get the full experience, and although he did not stick his fingers into the foam–which is totally what I expected–he managed spread coffee flecked milk bits around the lower half of his face.
“Oh, AM,” I said, “there’s coffee all over your face!”
“It’s ok, Ema,” my formerly speech delayed sprite told me. “I lick it.”
So a neighbor’s babysitter offered a playdate this morning for AM because she thought it was too cold for her to go out with her charge. I jumped at the chance because I had to go run a few errands.*
AM has never stayed with her before, so I offered him a bribe.
More questionable mothering! Step right up, you betcha!
* Of course, the one time I visit the post office in, I don’t know, 4 years? without someone whining for snack at my feet and there is NO LINE.
Someone I don’t know very well, although we have a fair bit* in common, told me that his wife is expecting in the spring. He admitted that they are excited and petrified and haven’t a clue about anything baby.
Somehow I refrained from snowing him with my encyclopedic (but specific to mine, obviously) knowledge of Life with Child.
When he told me they were planning on using a baby nurse, I did NOT interject my opinion (which is that for a singleton, if you are planning to breastfeed, some time with grandma/aunt/trusted friend will teach you all you need to know about bathing, diapering, swaddling, etc.) other than to say that babies are demanding but really not complicated.
I told him I know of two excellent doulas, if he and his wife are interested.
And then somehow I shut the hell up.** I wonder if his wife has joined the local parenting boards and knows I am the LLL Lunatic.
Must have them over for Friday night dinner.
* He lives in our building, he is a runner, he and Taxman are on the same VAS, and we are all of the same religious stripe.
** For now. Duh. It’s kind of a weird dynamic because we really don’t know his wife at all, other than to just say hi in the courtyard.
Taxman:
Happy birthday to you!
I had plans! I was going to get up, go to the gym, drive carpool, work (for real! because our babysitter is back in town!), and bake you these. Really! (That’s what the Guinness was for.)
Instead we were up half the night with the gagging, miserable AM. Hooray for cancelled meetings, excellent carpool-mates (who took in Miss M at 7:15am), and pediatric ERs!* At least I got a nap, and for that I thank you. And also for driving carpool this afternoon.
Birthday celebrations at a later point, TBD. Tuesday is not the time for a party anyway. Maybe Sunday?
xoxoxoxo
me
* AM is fine. He seemed ok by the time we got to the ER and was definitely fine by the time we were waiting in an exam room. He routed us in Go Fish. NYC needs Urgent Care Centers.
No, not my freelance work. Not all of the laundry, although we’re making a dent right now. Not figuring out how the hell to parent a four year old, because the defiance? Is making me lose my shit? Yes.
Well.
I am sure the posters at Ask Moxie will help me through my parental, um, issues, so in the name of AskMoxie.org I ran the God’s Love We Deliver 4-mile Race to Deliver in Central Park today. My kids ran in the kids races and got huge bags of swag, courtesy of Nick Jr. and Disney. Now we have two plush versions of Blue, of Blue’s Clues. (Also books and videos.) Their races were over at 8:35 am, and I didn’t run until 10. So we killed some time taking photos and walking down the starting line for the adult race, so I could see my starting “corral.”
Finally, the kids and Taxman took off for the Heckscher Playground and left me to my devices Portapotty. I lined up, was found by the one other adult racer I knew in the field of 6,000 (how he recognized me as he passed by I have no idea), and futzed with my iPod for another 10 minutes.
After a good 12-15 hours of rain yesterday and overnight (I know because I was lying awake worrying about it), the weather turned out to be really beautiful for running. Unlike the grossly hot and humid Race for the Cure back in September, it was around 50 degrees, with a little wind and some clouds. The race course didn’t have puddles; the wet leaves were totally manageable. I didn’t go out too fast; I kept a comfortable pace and only really putting on the gas when my designated “haul ass” songs* came on my iPod (although it’s on shuffle, to keep me guessing).
I felt good. All of the mornings of getting up in the dark to run on the treadmill, worrying about treadmill running not being good prep for road racing, skipping runs because of the holidays, running too slowly or not far enough because I was nursing a sinus headache or a sore throat or a head full of snot just sort of magically melted away.
I felt strong at the 1 mile mark, fine at 2 miles, a little weary at 3 miles. I was surprising myself with my pace–there are time displays at the mile markers–because I was guessing it was under an 11 minute mile. (At the gym of late I have been trying to run 5.5 mph, a 10:43 mile, but have had a hard time making it to 4 miles, so I wanted to try to go a little slower in the race but finish without walking.) The course from 3 miles and on was flat or downhill. I could gauge when I was approaching 72nd St. and would make the turn for the finish line on the transverse, so maybe I picked it up a touch. Based on the time display at the end, I thought perhaps I had finished in about 43 minutes, a minute or two faster than I had anticipated. I turned in my timing chip (worn on one’s sneakers); when I got home I checked online and was completely shocked to see that my time was 42:14, with a pace of 10:33. (Heh, adjusted for age it was 42:02!)
So it was great. The one terrible part was when I started trying to convince myself that it would be reasonable to try a longer distance, like 5 miles. Hahahahahahaha.
That was pretty much my day. The weather turned more windy and cloudy; Taxman and the kids were a half hour late meeting me at the car (where I was freezing and freaking out about potential bodily injury and alien abduction–I left them with my jacket, my cell phone, my wallet; I threw myself upon the mercy of another mom in Barnes & Noble and borrowed her phone to call Taxman, who did not answer, so the freakout continued).
I planted myself on the couch for the afternoon, hanging out on Facebook and not accomplishing much beyond doing some dishes. But that was far more due to my crappy night listening to the rain than the running four miles.
Next up, I will attempt to convince my family members gathering in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving that we should wake up early on a holiday and run a 5K. I have a cousin who ran the Boston Marathon, my sister was a hotshit track and field star in high school and college (though Division III), and pretty much everyone else has played soccer and/or lacrosse since birth elementary school. So clearly I would be last to finish. But I’d get a new T shirt. Less laundry to do? Accomplishing something, to be sure.
* “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne and “Lose My Breath” by Destiny’s Child
With a little boy who demands to play Go Fish before completing such tasks as: getting dressed.
My schedule today includes: food shopping, putting away the groceries, speech therapy, and WORK (during the nap that may or may not happen).
Clearly we are headed for a throwdown.
Please send pastries and a (decaf) latte. We thank you for your support.
If you don’t read Mother Goose Mouse, you at least must read this.
Please come back and we can discuss.
PS To any readers of Ask Moxie who would like to sponsor/donate to this great cause, you can shoot me an email. Or even if you don’t read Ask Moxie–hey, if my junior high school friend who found me on Facebook and lives 3,000 miles away from me can….you know.
First of all, have you ever had one of those days? When it’s grey and nasty and you don’t really have a good reason to go out, but your neighbor is coming over to borrow a carrot. And it’s 10 o’clock so maybe you should consider getting out of your pajamas, so you throw on whatever. Then you realize you’re not sure when the library books are due, better safe than sorry, so you manage to get shoes on you and the kid and get out–you are smart enough to drive the 2 blocks instead of walk because it starts pouring. And since you’re already out with the car you go from the library to the bakery, and while you’re waiting on line (because omg could this guy behind the counter be any slower?!) you stop and LOOK at what you’re wearing. In public. And it looks like you got dressed in the dark. Using someone else’s closet. Because really, you had no intention of being out of your living room, but here you are.
No takers?
Anyway.
This post is really about AM. And how fabulous his speech is these days. He is a total chatterbox, and speech therapy has moved on to things like tongue and mouth exercises, which he really does not like. When he and the clinician are done with those she tries to get him to speak in full sentences by asking direct questions and expanding on his answers, which is, in my opinion, beyond what he “should” be doing at 2 1/2. He can use full sentences, six or seven or eight words at a time. But it’s not natural to give an expansive answer to everything–I don’t, and I’m 33.
Because the rise of his speech was so rapid (really, six months ago, he had about 4 words and a bunch of animal noises), everything seems condensed, the turnover so rapid. Once he started with the words, suddenly he had hundreds. Then singing songs. Then sentences. He’s remarkably better with pronouns than Miss M, who used second person to refer to herself for months “Nurse you!”; he uses me or I to refer to himself. “Me do it, Ema! I did it!”
He did develop a couple of adorable toddlerisms, which of course I’ve forgotten already, except the one that surpassed all others. “Carry me up!” –the brilliant conflation of “Carry me!” and “Pick me up!” All the time: to see things out the window; to express fatigue, crankiness, or the need for a snuggle; to be demanding and shoehorn himself between me and just about any other human being. You could count on it a couple of times a day. “Carry me up, Ema.” “Carry me up, Abba.”
We did nothing to dissuade his use of it. But just as he stopped calling Miss M “YA!”, “carry me up” is on the wane.
Walking on the sidewalk the other day, he planted himself in my path, held out his hands, and said “Pick me up, Ema.” No. Nooooooooooo. MY BABY! Don’t do dat!
I thought maybe it was a fluke, until I was standing at the stove the next day, stirring soup. He wanted to see. “Pick me up, Ema.”
I thought it was maybe just my idiocy. But yesterday I mentioned to Taxman that “carry me up” was being supplanted with a more “correct” expression. And Taxman’s face fell. “Oh nooooo,” he wailed. So, no, not just me.
Quit growing and changing for just “two minutes!” (Another favorite expression, borrowed from me.) Please let us catch up to you.
