And so another phase begins

My baby is graduating from Mommy-and-Me type playing with other kids to My-Buddies-and-Me type playing, where I just watch and let him do his own thing with the other kids. It's weird to watch him playing at day-care or nursery without my constant commentary ("Look, Baby, this is Nora! Say hi to Nora! Can you share? Share your truck with Nora? Hooray for Baby! Baby shared his truck with Nora! You want your truck back from Nora? Can you say please? OK, Nora has decided to play with the truck for a little longer! Can you be patient? Can you wait for Nora to finish? OK, Nora's all done now! Now you can play with the truck again! Can you say thank you? Thank you, Nora!"). Instead I watch through a little window in the door and hope my commentary about sharing, patience, please, and thank you will prevent him and the other children from being bullied, ignored, or ostracized.

Last night at the Extended Family Christmas Party, Baby toddled into the basketball court where a bunch of kids were playing a variation on dodge ball that involved rolling a volleyball under the volleyball net.

I watched from the doorway as Baby shuffled back and forth through the middle of the game. He was already in his feetie-jammies, and he was by far the youngest kid there, so I was a little nervous about potential slippings or clonkings.

Even though rolling a ball more than about two feet is beyond his immediate ability, he laughed and clapped for all of the other kids who did it, which they appreciated. And then the other kids were classy enough to stop the game and let him try to throw the ball. When he gave it his best one-year-old effort, they all clapped for him. Baby happens to think that all humans between two and four feet are about the coolest ever, so he was deliriously happy when they clapped for him. When the game dissolved into some kind of running around in lines game, they were so sweet about not bumping into him, but also running close enough to him that he didn't feel deserted. He loved it! I loved it! What a great party!

Non-Mom playing? Bring it on.

Sick Baby Christmas

I hope all ya'll had a Merry Christmas and that you're winding up the old year with panache.

Baby was sick on Christmas. It is sad to see an otherwise boisterous and energetic child drooping and flushed with a fever. Especially on Christmas when people actually want him to do cute funny things and they are finally free to pay attention to him. On the other hand, I have to admit that it was pretty blissful to sit in my big blue chair for an hour with a Baby's warm head on my shoulder and arms around my neck. While I read a book. This is something that could never happen if Baby weren't sick. Is it shameful to say that I secretly loved it?

Anyway, he's better now and back to his old boisterous self. All things considered, I would one-hundred times rather have a healthy boisterous baby than a sick snuggly baby. In fact, Husband called me this morning from Grandma's house to say "[Baby]'s being naughty again. It's awesome."

My Favorite Christmas Painting

This painting is on display at BYU's museum of art right now. It makes me ache.

Why I'm not a Homeowner

My really great landlord has spent far more money on my apartment than we've paid in rent the last few months. Since we've moved in, we've had our carpets cleaned, our windows replaced, our walls painted, our shower drains snaked, and our furnaces cleaned. On top of that, we have the apartment managers to take out the trash cans, mow the lawns, rake the leaves, even change the light bulbs. Then last week, the main sewage line for the house ruptured, dumping, you know, sewage into the unfinished basement. So we had more inspectors, a flood repair company, and plumbers come check it all out, clean it all up, and replace all of the plumbing.

Mind you, it hasn't been a picnic dealing with all of this home improvement, but it has made me really glad that we are renters and not owners. While I can appreciate the many wonderful things that homeowners enjoy, I am also experienced enough to also appreciate all of the nastiness associated with owning a little piece of paradise with faulty plumbing. And I've read enough property law cases to appreciate all of the really horrible things that could happen to an otherwise savvy buyer. And I don't have any money. So there you have it. No real property for me. Not yet anyway.

Every couple of years of my adult life, I graduate into another phase of adult development. First I would see all of my friends going through it, and then I would go through it (I'm a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to development). First all of my friends got married (and I became an expert on bridal shower gifts), and then I got married. All of my friends started having babies (baby shower gifts), and then I had a baby. Now all of my friends are buying houses (house warming gifts (if I get around to it, what with the husband and the baby)), and I'm getting nervous that I might catch the bug.

I think it's kind of weird for people to never want to get married, or once they are married to never want to have children. I can understand not wanting to get married immediately, and I also happen to think that anyone can have a happy life if they don't get married and/or have children. But isn't it a basic human impulse to want a committed relationship? And have children? When I hear about someone wanting to never come near these things, I can't help thinking they're being more than a little immature. Because I used to feel that way, but, like I said, I moved on to the next phase.

That's what worries me. I never want to own a house. No picket fence, no swingset, no vegetable garden. Is it a sign of arrested development to want to rent forever?

Earning His Keep

Baby is learning some chores. Here's what he's got so far:

1) Closing drawers, cupboards, and refridgerator doors
2) Putting his toys in his toy box (he also likes to put them in his crib)
3) Swishing the toilet brush around in the toilet bowl
4) Putting his feet in his shoes
5) Wiping a sponge around on the kitchen floor
6) Pushing the vacuum (with Mom's supervision)
7) Emptying the dishwasher (we're working on where the dishes actually go . . .)
8) Stirring mixing bowls

Isn't he cool? I think so too. No, I'm not interested in your questions about whether his doing these little jobs actually saves me time or effort. I'd also prefer not to consider whether his ability to obey and help with clean-up coincides with an increased ability to make messes. That's not the point, see? The point is that he is a happy, obedient, sweet-natured (if a bit over-inquisitive) little guy who makes his mother very proud.

Our Christmas Party

On Friday night I threw a church Christmas dinner party for 150 people. It was a success, but I'm still so tired. Some people get energized by throwing parties. I guess I do too, but only if certain elements are in place:

1) I have people helping me whom I trust to get things done
2) I feel like there's a really good reason for the party
3) I like all of the activities we're doing at the party
4) I have enough money to afford the party
5) I know and love all of the people who are invited to the party

So, for example, when I threw a surprise party for my husband's birthday, I loved every minute of it from the invitations to the food ordering to the quick cover-up when the babysitter wrecked the surprise at the last minute ("have fun at your surprise party!") Same thing when I threw parties and socials at the law school. By my third year, I'll tell you what, I had law school pizza parties down to a science, and I loved it, loved it.

None of the elements were in place for the party on Friday. This didn't mean the party was doomed to failure--it just meant that, instead of enjoying it, I stressed my guts out putting the party together. I didn't know the other people on my party-planning committee very well; I didn't feel like there was any particular reason to have the party exactly the way we did last year; I wasn't jazzed about a lot of the things we were doing; I was constantly worried that we were out of money; and I only knew the names of about 30% of the people there.

But like I said: it was a success. We found free decorations at the last minute, extra people came to help set up, we got a discount on the food, the other people on the committee turned out to be completely dependable, the numbers came out right for seating and food, and my parents had paid for eleven years of piano lessons so I could fill in for the background music when we forgot to bring a CD player (this also served to soothe my nerves while everyone arrived). Everyone left satisfied.

But it's all worth it for the one really cool thing that happened. I hadn't managed to get a Santa Claus to come to the party, which I was really sad about because I knew a lot of people wanted to have one (even though the traditional Santa's lap sitting is one of the things I think is unnecessary at a church Christmas party). Anyway, three minutes before the party started, Husband flew in with an S on his chest and found a Santa, a costume, candy canes for the kids, and a photographer. For free. While I was tinkling away at the piano. Did I mention that I'm married to him? And I love him wildly?

The Season to be Jolly . . .

. . . that I am not gearing for law school finals. At this moment, my living room is full of law students studying how narrowly tailored a law has to be before a state may use its general police power to infringe on a parent's right to direct the upbringing of a child. I am blissfully blogging away.

Law school was awesome--it really was, but Christmas is Christmas, not study-like-crazy time. I gave up seven Christmas seasons to test preparation. I missed every festivity, I did no shopping, I did no decorating, I made no baked goods, and I didn't look out any frosted window panes until the last day of finals on December 22 or so. That meant I had all of three days to get into the Christmas spirit. And I wondered why I was such a Grinch. It wasn't until last Christmas that I realized what I was missing.

Besides being just generally awesome, Christmas with a baby is a whole new holiday. For example, yesterday I dressed my baby in red pajamas that said "HO HO HO" across the bum. He has a little finger puppet nativity set that he plays with every day. I'm trying really hard to get him to say "Hey!" after I sing, "One horse open sleigh." He looks out the window every morning and says "'No?" meaning "May I play in the snow please, Mother?" Hello? Christmas spirit anyone?

Learning Playgroup Etiquette

Maggie, a character from the book "Breathing Lessons," thinks that the reason she wasn't a very good disciplinarian for her children was that she always felt pity for them. Anne Tyler, the author of "Breating Lessons," says that she rarely writes from children's points of view because she doesn't want her readers to have to relive the horrible period that is childhood. I wouldn't classify every childhood as horrible, but lately, I've been feeling a lot of pity for children in general, especially one- to three-year-olds who are learning how to be nice to each other.

Baby's been spending a lot of time on play dates and in nurseries, and, as I watch these kids, it's fairly obvious to me that kids don't naturally get warm fuzzies from being nice to each other. The only reasons they will share toys are 1) because they are modeling other, more dominant people, or 2) they expect some kind of reward for being good or punishment for being naughty.

It takes an enormous amount of self control for them to behave, and playgroup social rules are kind of complicated. You are encouraged to play with toys, but you may not take the toys from other kids, no matter how appealing the other kid makes the toy look. If a grown-up offers a toy to you, you should take it. You should not cry if you are sad, only if you are pushed on purpose, and then you must cry loudly if you want the wrong to be righted. If you are pushed, you must permit the offender to give you a hug and a kiss, even though the hug is just as likely to knock you down as the push. You may not push the hugger or run away. Snacks from Mom's diaper bag may be eaten, but you may not take snacks from other diaper bags or from other kids. You must share your snacks with other kids if they show an interest. Snacks may not be eaten once they fall in the sandbox, and sand may not be eaten either. You must clap after other kids successfully go down the slide or after someone sings a song, and you may expect other kids to clap for you, but you may not force them to clap for you. You must show interest in new babies in infant carriers, but you may only touch softly. The infants do not have to touch you softly.

Maybe I should use my legal training to draft a more formal statutory code for playgroup rules, complete with suggested criminal sentencing and civil penalties for the rule breakers and their caregivers. Hmm.

Anyway, Baby is learning these yet-to-be-codified rules surprisingly fast, but it breaks my heart to see Baby wrestling with his consuming desire to break them. When I snatch the truck away to give it back to Playgroup Buddy, he looks up at me with despair in his eyes, especially since, just as often, I'm taking the truck away from PB and giving it to him. Poor guy. I used to always be on his team, and now he can't count on my anymore. It's tempting to just stick up for him every time: take all the toys and pile them in front of him, steal snacks for him out of the other mom's diaper bags, etc. Hey, as long as the rules aren't written down, what are they going to do to us?

Instead of attending today's Activities Committee meeting . . .

Baby likes ramps. He likes to run down handicap acessibility ramps at a high speed toddle. If I squat at the bottom of the ramp with my arms out, he will hurl himself into my arms. This makes us both very happy, and we could probably repeat this process for hours without getting bored.

Kozy Shack

Today I ate an entire tub of rice pudding. I wouldn't consider myself a binge eater, but if there is a tub of Kozy Shack rice pudding in my fridge, I will eat it all.

I never plan on eating it all at once. In fact, I try not to eat it all at once. I get out a tiny bowl and a tiny spoon, I put a tiny serving into the bowl, I replace the lid, I put it in the back of the fridge, and I eat it my little dessert. Then I immediately wash my bowl and spoon and leave the kitchen to do something else. Ten minutes later I'm back in there, repeating the process. After I've had three bowls, the tub is more than halfway gone anyway, so I just give up and eat it straight out of the container, hoping Husband won't notice that it's missing from the fridge.

I guess I feel a little piggish after the whole process is over and I'm staring into the empty container ("Serves 6. Huh."). But, actually, I don't really feel too bad. I do this, I don't know, maybe four times a year. Other than this, my eating habits are pretty good: whole grains, lean proteins, and all that. I don't turn to the Kozy Shack to cope with depression or anything. Any guilt I feel about consuming six servings of dairy fat and simple sugars is overwhelmed by the reeling pleasure I get from this fabulous food. This afternoon is a beautiful memory for me, it really is.

Gluttony is sexy when it is restricted to only one food item.

Lurking Variables

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish motherhood from getting old. Most of the friends I talk to on a regular basis are moms of toddlers, but they are also all between 25 and 30. So there's this age variable lurking in the changes we notice in ourselves and one another. For example, I used to be a night person. Now I am a morning person. I didn't go from being a nighttime party animal to a 5 am aerobiciser, but I'm pretty sure I'm crankier at night than I used to be, and I'm less snarly in the morning than I used to be. This change roughly coincided with the birth of my child, and a lot of my other mommy friends feel like they've changed the same way.

Is there something about Baby that makes me less of a night person? Maybe his infant 2-hour feeding schedule beat out my tendency to burn the midnight oil. Maybe his constant toddling during the day wears me out faster than anything else I've ever done.

Or maybe I'm just getting old and I need my sleepies.

Another thing: I can't deal with scary anymore. I never really liked scary movies, but ever since Baby came along, even the DVD covers of scary movies disturb me. I feel about a hundred times more vulnerable than I used to. To offer a little perspective, I will tell you all the movie I watched on Halloween when I wanted to give myself a spooky zing: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Seriously, it's embarrassing. Baby? Age? Heightened exposure to television media?

And one more thing. My dentures need cleaning twice as often as they used to.

Just kidding. I don't wear dentures. I'm gumming along without them.

The Happiest Lady in the World

Here's the amazing thing about being a new-ish mom: Tons of Bad Things happen to you, things that no one can prepare you for because there are so many, and there's really no way of knowing which particular one will rock you the most. I thought I was tough as nails, but I surprised myself with how tooth-grindingly difficult it was for me to let my baby cry until he fell asleep in hiccuping exhaustion. I have never yet met a mom who wasn't totally blind-sided about some aspect of motherhood.

This morning as I was contemplating my saggy belly, I was thinking about when a woman is truly ready to have a baby. When I stopped taking my little packs of pills, I'm pretty sure I didn't think, "yes, I'm ready to say goodbye to my body, my peace of mind, my clear-headedness, my traditional career, my social life, and my independence."

I'm pleased to report, however, that I would have Baby again in a heartbeat. Right now he is padding around and around the kitchen table in his little mocassins, wagging his head from side to side and singing "ma ma ma ma." It is heart-breakingly cute. It's easy to say it's all worth it right now. Yesterday, Baby reached his hand into his poopy pants smeared his findings across his face, his clothes, and the carpet. I'd prefer to believe that he didn't get any in his mouth, but just between us, I'm not totally sure. Was it worth it even then, while Baby screamed and hung on my sweatpants and I scrubbed poop off of my carpet with a fistful of wet wipes? I have to admit, I had a brief picture of myself striding up the steps off a pillared courthouse in a tailored dry-clean only suit, carrying a tiny purse and a legal pad in manicured hands. No loans, new car, clean house, hot body . . .

Nope, still not worth it. That's how delirious with happiness this Baby makes me. I want to be completely clear about this. When I am confronted with dozens of Bad Things that I've never confronted before, I will tend to emphasize them. I think they are funnier/more interesting/humbler(?) than an uninterrupt stream of bliss. But the truth is that I am happy, so happy.

Family Vacation

Even without the groovy city of Seattle, the overdue visits with family and friends, and the unspeakably beautiful Northwestern fall scenery, our recent week-long vacation was an unqualified success: Baby learned the following things:

When he sees fish, he says "fshshshsh"

When he sees anything else impressive he says "o-o-o-o-oh!"

When he hears his Raffi CD, he responds to the "Brush Your Teeth" song with the appropriate actions and sound effects.

When he is allowed out of his stroller, he holds onto the side of it and pushes it along. This is a slow way to move down a sidewalk, but it gives him exercise, keeps him close, quells tantrums, and it's cute.

When other toddlers try to hug him to say they're sorry for knocking him down, he tolerates it.

When he asks for a cracker ("caw-caw?") he gives Mom adequate time to dig through the diaper bag to find one--or, if a cracker cannot be located, to change the subject to something equally enthralling.

When he doesn't like the food he is given, rather than howl, he rubs it into his hair, knowing that Mom will remove the offending food item just as quickly.

He feeds animals at petting zoos.

He sleeps for extended periods of time in locations other than his Provo bedroom: ten hours at his aunt's house and six hours in his car seat with no interruptions.

Dishwashing thoughts on a law school regret

One of the lectures in my international law class was about multi-party negotiations. The professor decided to illustrate the point of how multi-party negotiations were virtually impossible by giving the class a negotiation where a decision could not be reached without unanimity. At first she tried doing something with dividing money among the people in the class, but she only used ten one-dollar bills, and we quickly decided as a class to send someone across the street to the creamery to buy us all root beer floats.

Obviously the stakes weren't high enough. Law students care deeply about money--can we say student loans?--but ten dollars wasn't enough to really start a negotiation. We needed higher stakes. This professor knew that another thing (the only other thing?) law students care deeply about is law school grades. She told us that if we could unanimously decide our grades for the class as long as we used a 3.3 median. There were thirteen people in the class. If seven would agree to get 3.3's for the course, then the rest of the class could get 4.0's.

Most professors adhere to the 3.3 median rule by grading on a simple bell curve. Many people get 3.3's, one gets a 4.0, and a couple of students fail with a 2.6 or lower. I'd guess that no one in that class had ever gotten a 4.0 in a law school course.

This professor was a gutsy lady. She taught the feminism and the race relations class at Brigham Young University, after all (loved them!).

What followed was a nail biter of a negotiation. There was only one issue, and there was no range of values. Either you agreed to take the 3.3 or you held out for the 4.0. One by one, students agreed to take a 3.3. One student was a transfer student, and she just needed to pass anyway. Another student admitted that even a 3.3 could only improve his GPA. Another student was a lawyer seeking continuing legal education credit who just needed to pass. Another student said she'd be willing to do it just to see if the professor would really hold to her promise to skip the final exam. One student did it just to be nice.

After five students had agreed to take 3.3's in the course, the discussion turned personal. The students were actively seeking out those who shouldn't care whether or not they got a 4.0 in the course. A girl turned to me and said, "What are your plans after graduation, Ms. Portia?" She looked pointedly at my six months' worth of pregnant belly.

"Having my baby," I said confidently. Why didn't I just stop there? Why didn't I actually make the girl try to convince me that a woman who has a baby immediately after law school has less of a reason to deserve good grades in law school than a woman who graduated single and virginal like her taut-bellied self? Instead I continued, "But, um, that doesn't mean that I don't need good grades because, you know, someday, I might need to get a job, and I need a good transcript from law school, right?" That was it: My one fleeting chance in law school to publicly defend my decision to attend law school, succeed in law school, and work full-time for my husband and my baby and not for the American justice system. And I pretty much flubbed it.

I was thinking today about why I regret my missed opportunity to take a stand for educated motherhood, but I don't regret my missed opportunity to take a stand for fair and accurate grading of knowledge and ability in a law school course. We were basically assigning grades based on who was kind enough or apathetic enough to accept an undeserved 3.3. I don't think anyone mentioned any qualms about how ridiculous this was.

Frankly, this didn't bother me in the least. After two and a half years of law school, one thing I'd absolutely learned was that grades, while not exactly arbitrary, weren't fair. Why not base grades on students' kindness, apathy, or stubbornness? Was that really all that different from exams based on attendance? Exams based on your tolerance for sleep deprivation? Your typing speed? The accuracy of your bootlegged lecture transcript? (Sidenote: I had excellent attendance, a high tolerance for sleep deprivation, a zippy typing speed, a famously accurate lecture transcript).

Also, I secretly suspected that there was no way this professor would let us get away with it. Things like that didn't happen in law school. There were rules against antics like these. In the end, one of the deans reread the 3.3 median rule, and determined that our method of assigning grades was against law school rules, and we would have to take a final comprehensive exam. On which I got a 3.8, thank you very much.

And really, isn't that how lawyers roll? They don't really worry too much about the higher moral implications of their arguments because (1) the world of the law is pretty immoral and unfair to begin with, and (2) in the end, if you get too crazy, someone always steps in to keep things predictable, if not necessarily fair.

Some thoughts on changing seasons

Fall in Provo is pretty darn terrific. The weather is almost always perfect, and when it's not, it's never that bad. Yep. I'm sure enjoying the fall.

I'm getting ready for winter food. I love late summer food: zucchini, garden tomatoes, corn on the cob, etc. But when you have a lot of friends and family with Provo backyard gardens, you get your fill of it really fast. There are only so many ways to consume 20 pounds of fresh tomatoes. On to winter food: pot roast, mashed potatoes, hot chocolate, etc.

I used to also like fall for the clothes. I love wool pants and cashmere twin sets. I think it's a preference I picked up in law school when I realized I didn't have to continue wearing my Provo High sweatshirt anymore and I could start dressing like a grown up. The problem is that those clothes are dry-clean only. My baby is an average baby as far as tidiness is concerned, but that still means that dry-clean only clothes are not gonna happen. Even if I steer clear of Baby's high chair, he's still going to find a way to use my sweater as a Kleenex, napkin, towel, barf bag, or wet wipe. So the wool pants and twin sets stay in the box that they've lived in ever since I got pregnant. I wear sweatshirts and jeans.

I'm pleased to announce that the Provo High sweatshirt still fits just fine.

A Fish Out of Water

I've been over a month without internet access in our house. Every stolen minute on the ancient family desktop at Grandma's house is like a gulp of cool water.

Actually, yesterday I took a couple of minutes while Baby was preoccupied at Grandma's house to finally update this blog. After writing two frenzied paragraphs, of course, Baby came toddling over and slowly, deliberately pushed the glowing green power button. Oh well, it was just a blog entry. I suppose I should be glad I'm out of law school and my term papers are behind me and safe from Charlie's remarkable intuition with technology. Today, I accepted sweet Husband's offer to take Baby for the afternoon while I put in some quality time with public computers in the law library.

No internet, no TV, no newspaper. I am almost totally unconnected wtih the outside world. I actually checked a paper map of Utah county the other day to figure out where something was. And a phone book. What, there's a Mormon running for president?

In this temporarily primitive state, Baby and I have resorted to primitive forms of entertainment to pass the time: storytelling, circle stomp dancing, VHS tapes, etc. Instead of parking in front of my laptop, I've started showering and cleaning my house during naptime. Needless to say, my hair and my house haven't been this clean in over a year.

But it's so not worth it. I'm losing my mind. I feel like I'm living on a different planet, missing everything that's going on with my friends on Earth. Well don't worry, friends, I'll be back soon.

Sleepless in Provo

I've been awake since 3:30 am. I have a feeling today will be a cranky-pants day.

This is one of the less appealing life changes that came with motherhood: Nighttime feedings were not bad, but after a year of never getting more than 5 consecutive hours of sleep, I've been trained into an insomniac. The piddlingest little thing on my mind will keep me blinking at the ceiling, twitching my ankle, listening to Baby and Husband snore through the early morning hours. And I'm so tired.

And what's on my mind? What's so desperately pressing that it can't wait until I've had a teensy bit more sleep? Let me share just a sampling: what happened to that one pair of shoes during the move from New York, where will I keep the jogging stroller in our new apartment, how will I make Baby sit still while I clip his toenails before church this morning, remember to e-mail sister in Missouri, remember to find a babysitter for next Wednesday night, etc.

I remember hearing new moms complain about this problem before I got pregnant. I'm pretty sure I thought they needed more exercise or maybe a good snoozy book. I hope I didn't say anything to them. If someone told me today that I needed more exercise, it would probably be the last thing they ever said. Unless they could still talk with a chewed-off head.

Funny Education Week Story

Opening joke of the Dead Sea Scrolls lecture:

"My wife used to call me a model husband, and I thought it was a compliment until I looked up model in the dictionary and the definition said 'a cheap imitation of the real thing.'"

An hour later into the lecture:

". . . You see, the author personifies wisdom as a woman. Why? Obviously, because women are models of wisdom. . . . Oops! I didn't mean to say models."

Brain Games

So I spend a lot of time sitting alone with my baby, nursing or whatever. While this is calming, safe, celestial, etc., it's also pretty boring. But I recognize that it wasn't that long ago that I would have loved the chance to sit and think. I've been trying to remember what exactly I promised myself I would think about when this chance came.

I'm pretty sure that at some point I told myself I would think really Good Ideas to eventually put into a really Good Book. Ironically, when there is nothing to do but think of Good Ideas, my head seems stuffed with dumb ones. When I worked parttime at the public defenders office (probably the busiest I've ever been), I know that there were plenty of days that I got ideas for cool crime novels, but I didn't spare myself the time to think about them in that context, much less write about them. I put them off until I had time. Now I have time, but no "zest for the imagination."

But that might not be the problem. There have been plenty of heartbreakingly brilliant writers who had much more boring lives than I do. I have a feeling that if I started writing something, then the ideas would start coming. Maybe that's the rub: I don't have a lot of time to write, I have a lot of time to think. Baby does not like Mom to sit at the computer or behind a notepad. During the hours that Baby is awake, if Mom is not holding Baby, nursing Baby, or playing with Baby, her other acceptable occupations (pushing a stroller, driving a car, etc.) don't exactly lend themselves to writing. They lend themselves to thinking. With nothing to think about, it's hard not to feel like I'm getting stupider.

Injury Inventory

When I first had my baby, I got a lot of comments on the theme of "hooray for you: look at the perfect person you've created." I looked, and he was perfect, so I accepted credit as I am wont to do when I get a compliment on my baby. After all, I was pregnant for nine months, and those first few weeks of nursing were no picnic. Even so, I felt a little sneaky for accepting credit for my baby's perfect little body when I really hadn't specifically designed his elbow dimples, digestive tract, earlobes, etc.

Well, I'm earning that credit one day at a time. This last week he has been determined to find a way to bruise, gash, puncture, break, and shatter any and all of his heretofore perfect body parts. This project, which consumes all of his waking hours (read: all of my waking hours), has resulted in a skinned knuckle, three lumps on his head, a lost toenail, and a scabbed nose. The nose is the real trophy of the week; the attention it brings from every person who sees him makes it well worth his sidewalk tumble. He has been doggedly attempting a repeat performance ever since. Imagine what he could have cheerfully done to himself had I not been waddling behind him all week, hunched in toddler-snatching pose.

That's all I have to say. I don't have a conclusion, but even if I did, I don't have time to say more because, well, I need to track down my baby before he hurls himself into a post (again).

Education Week: Day One

BYU hosts Education Week every year the week or so before fall semester begins. The name is not the most helpful in actually describing what goes on there, but I can't think of a better one that would describe it. Basically a bunch of people teach a bunch of different classes, and other people attend them for the purpose of, well, getting educated. There's definitely a religion-centered theme to the classes ("Symbolism in the Gospel of John," etc.), but some of the most popular ones are "Folk Dancing for Fun and Fitness" and "Beautiful Skin at All Ages." Whatever people feel like learning, they'll teach it at Education Week.

Since I'm starting my thirteenth year of living in Provo, I've known about Education Week for a long time, but this is the first time I've actually attended. It was a little humbling to don my necklace name badge and carry my Education Week schedule around campus after twelve years of secretly scorning the Education Weekers.

Anyway, it was a good day. Husband was sweet enough to take baby for over 4 hours, so I went to 4 classes. I have to say, running around campus again made me feel a little blue to see another school year looming when the only formal education I'll be getting this year is Education Week. Bless its heart, but Education Week can't really measure up to an honest-to-goodness degree program. It's not that I want to pursue another degree (the thought makes me ill), but I think I need something to rub my brain cells against--something slightly more tricky than regulating Baby's bowel movements and something slightly more active than reading for pleasure.

One of the classes today was about setting up a preschool co-op for your own alone time as well as for the social development of your children. That would give me a few hours a week to start planning the next phase of my career. Hmm.

Home again, Home again, Jiggle-de-jig

Some observations on living in Provo again after our 3.5 month stint in New York City:

1) Life in Provo is less physically fatiguing. I'm having trouble falling asleep at night. My eyelids aren't droopy enough. This is the first time I can remember feeling this way.

2) Walking a stroller in the middle of a Provo street is really fun: no curbs, no cracks, no people . . . no cars.

3) Remind me to go to the drugstore for lotion, chapstick, bug spray, and sun screen.

4) Grandmas might enjoy one-year-olds even more than I do. And they are extremely capable and enthusiastic babysitters after a 3.5 months absence.

5) Baby doesn't remember Provo so it doesn't provide any kind of a calming influence on him, and with molars giving him grief, he could really use a calming influence.

6) A summer of New York cuisine has only enhanced and enriched my enjoyment of Provo's best restaurants: Bombay House, Gurus, and Rubio's, for example. It has lessened my enjoyment of the restaurants I never really liked anyway: IHOP.

Lesson learned

I learned when I was engaged that I'll be a lot happier if, instead of focusing on what it is about my situation that makes my life hard, I focus on what it is about my particular situation that makes my life uniquely better. Being engaged pretty much stinks. There are very few things you can do when you're engaged that aren't better either when you're just dating or you're married. In order to maintain my sunny disposition, however, I have to find those few things and capitalize on them. In case you're curious, those things are (1) planning a wedding for real and (2) going on really nice double dates with single friends.

I revisited this philosophy when I was pregnant in law school. Believe me, it's really easy to feel sorry for yourself when you're pregnant in law school, especially if, like me, you're naturally inclined to be lazy. But there are somethings about law school that are better when you're pregnant (having an additional insight into discussions about abortion, child advocacy, career planning, feminism, and disability law, for example) and there are some things about being pregnant that are better if you're in law school (having really good friends to tell you how cute you are and who might throw you a themed baby shower, for example). No matter how cold comfort these things sound, you really will have a better life if you find out what they are and really throw yourself into making the most of them.

The trick is to make sure that you focus on your own situation and keep your awesome ideas to yourself. If you think too much about why other people should be happy about their lives, it's kind of like thinking about why you should be unhappy, and that defeats the purpose. I have a bunch of friends who are single Mormon women, and lately I've been thinking too much about how happy I would be if I were a single Mormon woman because I could focus on my education, my career, and my independence. It started making me feel bitter about my temporary pauses in my education, career, etc.

This morning, as Baby sneezed soggy cereal all over himself, his mother, and his last set of clean clothes, I saw myself as my single friends might see me: a cereal-covered young married mom who can't seem to keep her baby bathed, her husband fed, and her hair brushed into it's limp little ponytail. Who, instead of focusing on the celestial bliss of wifehood and motherhood, whines about her lack of autonomy. There's nothing like a shower of Crispix to jerk you back into reality.

So, at least for today, I plan to reconsider the manifold merits of being a cereal-covered young married mom in Provo. (Did I mention I'm back from New York? I'm back from New York.) In fact, here is one right now: On a deathly hot day like today, I have the option of splashing around in a wading pool with my baby, making him profoundly happy. That is what I'm going to do.

Stepping update

So now that Baby has turned one, I know the question on everyone's mind is whether or not he's walking. Although my son is bright, cute, well-adjusted, curious, and breastfed, and although both of his older cousins walked before they were one, no, he is not walking at this time. Thanks for asking. He is confidently stepping along, holding a rope while Mom holds the other end of the rope, but I realize that doesn't count.

I don't think I'd be uncomfortable about this if it weren't for the fact that the whole world knows that he's on the wrong side of his first birthday. From this point on, he will be a late walker. There's nothing like having your baby negatively labled before he can even talk to really make you think about how many lables people give babies even from the moment they are conceived. I'm thinking any mother could rattle off the list for any given baby. For example, my baby is not much of a kicker, an easy pregnancy, a late delivery, an fast delivery, a good nurser, a colicky infant, a fitful sleeper, a ticklish baby, a social baby, a big baby, a vocal baby, a cuddly baby, a wiggle baby, a water baby, a fast crawler . . . and a late walker. That's just in the first year. During this next year, we'll find out his preferences with regard to talking, sharing,
singing, and much, much more.

Moving day

Did I mention that I hate moving? There's nothing like moving to make you feel like a disorganized slouch who owns nothing but junk. It doesn't help things if you also happen to be a disorganized slouch who owns very little besides junk.

One upside for this move is that I was able to get rid of some of my larger pieces of furniture with the held of my new best friend, craigslist. Craigslist is manna from the heavens, dear readers, when one is moving into or out of Manhattan. Not only will you get ready, willing, and able NYU students to buy, dismantle, and move your furniture, but you'll get to meet their mothers. I enjoyed a solid hour yesterday listening to the life story of Linda, a Pennsylvania nurse, while her 18-year-old son (who "loves dogs but doesn't seem to be interested in giving [Linda] grandbabies") dismantled and removed my obnoxiously heavy bed frame. I ate a popsicle.

It's not actually exactly moving day just yet. I will officially move on Tuesday evening. Today is just the last Saturday before moving day--the last day I will have my husband's muscles and babysitting skills. In spite of various obstacles in various forms, we've actually accomplished quite a bit today. And for the next three days, I will have virtually no furniture or kitchen appliances while I spend my time alternately cleaning hand-shaped tomato sauce stains off of my walls and distracting my baby from packing boxes and cleaning supplies. I plan to download two very engaging audiobooks and just plough forward.

Dream dream dream

I don't dream much lately because I think during the short amounts of time that I do sleep, I go straight into REM sleep and I am woken up before I drift back up into dreamland. It's ok. Dreaming is not usually that cool when you think about it.

When I do dream, like when Husband takes Baby on Saturday mornings, I have weird dreams. I don't wake up screaming, but I wake up realizing that I must have some kind of sick mind to have concocted such a weird dream. Last night it had something to do with living in a compound with women and children while all of the men were gone to fight the Babylonians (really, the Babylonians), and all we had to eat was dog meat, and for the entertainment of my fellow starving women and children, I decided to put on a play about this woman who shoots a canary because it's making too much noise, and then I put my baby on a ferris wheel by himself without strapping him in and he started to cry and crawl over the edge while I watched from the ground.

I think the women and children thing had something to do with the fact that I don't see my husband very often these days, but I see a lot of women and children. The dog meat probably came from the really tough and overpriced shishkabob I ate last night in Times Square. Don't ask me where I got the idea of shooting a canary in the play I put on. I think the play was an opera-type of thing, actually. And I think I was playing a man who was watching the woman. Whatever. We're planning on going to Coney Island today so maybe that's where the ferris wheel comes from. Note to self: Don't put my baby in a ferris wheel car by himself without strapping him in.

Or maybe the dream is from that one time that I was in a compound eating dog with other women and children while my husband was at war. But that was the Macedonians, not the Babylonians.

Scene on the E Train

I saw the saddest thing happen on the subway today. A woman had a baby in a stroller and a four-year-old trailing behind, and she noticed that the baby had dropped his bottle. "You are going to suffer for that," she said. "I'm not buying you a new one--you'll just have to suffer."

The baby, who was probably about eight months old, started crying. "Oh, don't give me that," Mom said. "Don't give me that. You're a brat. You lost your bottle." Then she started slapping the baby's hands with the papers she was holding. "Brat, brat, brat, brat."

And behind her the four-year-old was repeating everything she was saying. "Brat, brat, brat . . ."

I think I've become a lot more understanding of moms' shortcomings in the last year. It really sucks to lose a bottle. Or a pacifier or a rattle or a bib or a hat for that matter. And it's even worse when you realize that you lost it while you're traveling because you really will just have to buy a new one if you know you're absolutely going to need it before you can go home. I've been yelled at enough by idiot strangers to vow that I will only offer assistance to other mothers and never lecture them on how to rear their children.

The problem is, I've also become a lot more sensitive to the world of an eight-month-old. It's like I could hear him saying "Mom, mom! Please don't slap my hands! It was an accident! I didn't mean to drop my bottle, but I'm just a baby and it's really hard for me to remember not to drop my things. I'm not a brat, mom." I saw his childhood stretching ahead of him with a mother whom he couldn't trust to show him gentleness and self-control and an older brother who was learning to hit and humiliate him.

There was nothing I could have done, right? I hope I don't think of something I could have done later, because I will deeply regret having done nothing at all.

On the Education of Young People

I just finished the book "Copy This," by the founder of Kinko's. He was dyslexic and hyperactive (and also kind of nuts), but he managed to get through college and become wildly wealthy and successful. One of his biggest points in the book was that US schools only reward the students who are good at everything rather than the students who are able to use other people's strengths to make up for their weaknesses. That is a more important skill to have in the real world after all. Then, this morning on TV someone was talking about how it's dumb to give every kid in the little league a trophy instead of just the star players. The real world only rewards the excellent people, after all.

The two complaints come from different directions, but they are complaining about the same thing, really: that children aren't educated properly unless their education is a sort of microcosm of the "real world." I have a problem with that. Let's just suppose that childhood is the only time that you don't have to be in the real world. Why is it necessary to make childhood more like the real world?

I think it's ok to make childhood harder than the real world in some respects by teaching children to be able to do things for themselves that they will be able to pay other people to do for them in the real world. It's ok to teach children to be able to read and understand complicated works of literature, for example. Dyslexic children will have a harder time with this, it is true, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore this portion of their education. For a dyslexic person, childhood is probably going to be the only time that they will attempt to explore literature on their own because, it is true, later in life, they will most likely choose to do something that isn't so difficult for them. I happen to think that the literature being taught in public schools is worth the struggle. And the math and the science and so on.

I should probably say at this point that I did not struggle with any school subject except physical education so, admittedly, I don't really know how difficult it is for a student with a bona fide learning difficulty. I only know that as a stay-at-home mom, I don't draw on very much of my education at all on a day-to-day basis, and I don't use any of it to make money. Still, I treasure my education, and I'm tremendously grateful for all of it, even the stupid rope climb in PE. I'd like to think that I am successful in the real world because I am able to reflect on that education whenever I choose.

I also think it's ok to make childhood easier than the real world by giving trophies to the whole softball team instead of just the homerun star: rewarding children for effort rather than results. It's true that this doesn't mirror the real world, but, you know, it's just too wonderful for children to be rewarded this way. So what if they think they are better athletes than they actually are? They'll be straightened out eventually. I strongly support any encouragement children can get to try whatever they want, not because it makes children into better athletes or whatever but because it makes them braver to try other new things.

I married a man who is jaw-droppingly successful, not because he is smarter or stronger than anyone else but because he is braver. He was willing to just go for it whenever he saw something he thought would be good to do. Maybe we can't transform dyslexic children into natural readers and maybe we can't turn clumsy children into softball stars, but maybe by telling them how awesome they are every time they try something new or do their best, we can give them more courage.

Happy Birthday Baby

My son turned one yesterday. His birthday was funner than a ferris wheel. All day I was thinking about how much I loved him and how awesome he was. He was fabulously cute and well-behaved too. It'll be a shame when I don't get to plan how he spends his birthdays because, I have to say, I did a bang-up job.

At this time last year I was huge, sleep-deprived, ripped, bruised, and unwashed. Now I'm thin, not-so-sleep-deprived, only slightly scratched (and in much more comfortable locations), only slightly bruised (ditto on the locations), and showered. Puh-less, I have an awesome one-year-old asleep on the futon who, when he wakes up, will grin and make me feel like I'm the coolest person he's ever met. And maybe I just am.

Non dairy desserts

As most readers of this blog are aware, I haven't been consuming any dairy products for the last year. Ok, so I've slipped a little, but as a general rule, I have gone without milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, sour cream, whipped cream, cream cheese, cheesecake, milk shakes, chocolate mousse, egg nog, and Alfredo sauce for one full year, marked by my baby's birthday. As a result, I was able to nurse my baby, I lost my baby weight in a snap, and I lived for a year without the effects of a dairy sensitivity that I never knew I had (mild stomach aches, allergy symptoms, and rashes). I also had a sinking disappointed feeling every time my mom made lasagna for Sunday family dinner.

I think, all things considered, I could give up dairy completely if it weren't for dessert menus. Next time you go out to eat, look at the dessert menu and see if you can find more than one dairy free dessert. Most likely there will be a warm chocolate cake on the menu, and that will be your only choice. Now, I have nothing against chocolate cake; I'm just really, really in favor of cheesecake.

So, last night my husband brought home take-out from a Japanese dessert bar. I guess most Japanese people are lactose intolerant, so their desserts are mostly soy and fruit based rather than milk based. I think I've found my dessert replacement. Oh, the bliss of black sesame sweet tofu. Oh, the decadence of kuromitsu syrup. Every reader of this blog now has the assignment to find and buy every Japanese dessert they can find so that they will create a raging market for them and I will be able to get them cheaply when I don't live in New York.

I [heart] NY

You know that one Seinfeld episode where Jerry dates the girls who's completely perfect but everyone thinks is a complete loser? And he dumps her when his parents like her? Today I've been thinking that New York is the opposite of that. Everwhere you go, people heaping praise on New York City. Eventually, you start to buy into it. Call it peer pressure. It's like that girl in elementary school who was popular just because she was and no one could stop talking about how fantastic she was and how lucky they were to be associated with her. I distinctly remember thinking that it wasn't perfect when we first arrived, and now I can't really remember what exactly wasn't perfect about it. The subway elevators are stinky, yes, but stale urine can be kind of, I don't know, cool. Yes, it's impossible to push a stroller through a crowded grocery store, but did I really want to go grocery shopping between the hours of 7 am and 10 pm?

And then, when it's nearing the time to go home, I start to get really sad about leaving. I kind of want to see Central Park in the fall. I bet Christmas is so gorgeous in midtown. Spring? Fuggetaboutit. It's not that New York feels like home, it's like New York feels like feeling. It's like being alive times ten. It's uncomfortable and complicated and not always beautiful, but it's basically fabulous, and I want to come back.

Recruitment

For those readers who don't know, my husband is in the process of being recruited to work for a law firm in New York City. He is paid a large salary, given an office with a gorgeous view, taken to lunch every day, driven around in a Lincoln towncar, flown first class to Latin America, and taken on a number of outings to show him just how fabulous his life with be if he works for this law firm. The law firm is doing a pretty good job of recruiting him: He's developing a palate for the finer things in life, if you know what I mean.

They're not doing the best job recruiting me. Most law students in the United States are single, childless, religiously unaffiliated, and in their mid-twenties. The law firms use that demographic to plan the summer activities so significant others are not really part of the plans. Children are definitely not part of the plans. As a result, I have not seen my husband for four days because he's been in Colombia. He just returned an hour ago. Tonight, he's feeling bad about missing a party to which I am specifically uninvited. I'm having trouble feeling bad for the poor lawyers who want to party with my husband after feeling lonely for him for four days.

Admittedly, when he told me that he had the chance to go to Colombia, I told him that it sounded like a great opportunity and I would be fine on my own for a few days. Also, I have almost always encouraged him to network in unstructured situations with the other attorneys at his firm. I think that it's my past life as a law student that makes me extra supportive of my husband's legal career. Maybe I shouldn't be though. Maybe I should assert my interests as a stay-at-home mom more. He's never pressured me to contribute to the family finances by workng away from home. Should I refrain from pressuring him to spending more time with his kids? Something tells me that the two responsibilities aren't even comparable, but I haven't really figured out how it all fits together.

In the meantime, yes, complaining about it does help.

D is for Discipline

So here's a problem:

My baby likes to bite me while I'm nursing him. He has eight beautiful, sharp baby teeth. It is every bit as painful as you might imagine, and I'm having trouble making him stop. The problem is that discipline is based on repetition: he gets some negative consequence each time he engages in the naughty behavior. You know what else is based on repetition? Humor. Especially one-year-old humor. When I tried saying "no" loudly every time he bit me, he was startled and upset the first couple of times, but then he thought it was a hilarious game and he would purposely bite me and giggle every time I said no. Then I tried flicking him on the nose. I don't think he liked it, but he soon realized that Mom's humor is just as funny when it hurts a little. What was I supposed to do? Make it hurt a lot?

Then yesterday when I was feeding Baby his Cheerios, he learned that he could reach in his mouth and take his Cheerios out to enjoy them twice. Mom wasn't happy about that, so she tried her disciplinary tactics on this behavior as well. Baby was delighted: every time his stuck his finger in his mouth, he could depend on Mom frowning and pulling his hand out. It got ridiculous really fast. Fingers in, pull them out, fingers in, pull them out.

Imagine the cutest baby in the world, laughing his head off, and then imagine flicking him on the nose and saying "no, stop laughing!" Think you can do it? Good, you're hired. I'll take him back when you're done.

Shopping blues

I went shopping with my baby yesterday at a really crowded department store. The line for the fitting rooms was long and I didn't think that I'd be able to fit a stroller in with me once I got there anyway, so I decided to just eyeball the sizes on my clothes.

Actually, what I'd originally decided was to try on the clothes in the aisle of the department store. It's amazing how comfortable I am doing really undignified things ever since Baby came bouncing into my life. Don't get the wrong idea: I wasn't standing there in my underwear; I was just discretely slipping a skirt on over my dress. Not in a shoplifting kind of way, but in a will-this-waistband-reach kind of way. Anyway, apparently customers are not supposed to try clothes on unless they're in the fitting rooms, no matter how long the lines or how un-stroller-friendly the fitting rooms may be. So, I used my 14 years of experience buying my own clothes to see if they would fit.

I chose well for two of my items, but I was way wrong on one. I am writing this post while squeezed into a shirt that is way too small for me. It might, just maybe, fit my eleven-year-old sister. That's always depressing when you think something will fit you with room to spare and it actually is uncomfortably tight. I'd like to think that I'm actually thinner than I think I am, but it turns out that I'm fatter. And it's not just baby weight at this point, it's just me. So I guess it's back to the crowded department store for me to exchange the shirt for a larger size. Hmmph.

Banged up

With one notable exception, I've never lived in an apartment that wasn't painted landlord white. In this apartment, the paint is particularly boring because we don't have much furniture. We got it unfurnished, and we've only added what we plan to use during the next six weeks or so. As I got out of the shower this morning, it crossed my mind that the most colorful things in the apartment were the bruises on my legs. I think I get a new bruise every time I carry the stroller up or down the subway stairs, so by now I've acquired quite a collection: nineteen little dime-shaped bruises on my right leg (I carry the stroller on my right side) in various shades of green, yellows, pink, and purple.

It just goes to show that if/when we move here for good, I'll definitely need to paint my apartment.

Chewing Cigars

I watched Gigi for the first time in a long time yesterday. I hadn't seen it since I was a little girl, but I watched it a LOT when I was a little girl, so I thought I remembered every scene, every line of dialogue.

But I didn't. I had misheard so many lines in that movie. The most obvious mistake was the line where Aunt Alicia (sp?) says "You must learn to choose cigars." I had heard that line a hundred times, always hearing it as "You must learn to chew cigars." Gigi's disgust made perfect sense to me. Then, years later, I hear it again and realize that I had been wrong all along and Aunt Alicia's suggestion wasn't quite so gross.

This happens to me all the time. Sometimes it's because I learned the sexual humor or the literary allusion or whatever during the interim. And sometimes I don't know why I heard it one way over and over again before and realized it so obviously later.

It makes me want to rewatch all of those old movies and reread all of those books that I overwatched and overread when I was younger. I don't know if it would be worth it to sit through "The Buttercream Gang," but I could go for a walk down memory lane with "Pipi Longstocking."

The continuum between tourist and native

Last night we welcomed our first overnight guests to our New York apartment, which, for me, is a major turning point because we have made part of that transition. I still feel like a wide-eyed country mouse, but it cannot be denied that my little family has a residence and a job and experience here in the city. Granted it's just a little residence, job, and experience, but it's better than nothing, and plain old New York tourists have none of those things. As of last night, we also have had guests, another major step on the path from newcomer to old-timer.

It's also a reminder of the things that we haven't done yet in the city that we need to do before we leave. I'm to the point where I don't go out touring all day every day. I spend my time living more like a native: keeping up with errands and cleaning the apartment, maybe with a quick trip to the park. Being a long-term tourist is tiring. After weeks and weeks of waking up every morning to plan a new itinerary, figure out the transportation, work out the logistics for feeding, napping, changing, and sunscreening my baby, etc., I start to get really worn out. More and more, I find myself wanting to stay home rather than push the stroller through another world-class art collection. Still, on the days that I do yank myself and my baby out of the apartment and go somewhere, I'm almost always really glad I did. It's probably always worth it to stay a little bit of a tourist.

Yesterday my husband called at 2:30 to tell me that he had gotten Yankees tickets for that night. That gave me four and a half hours to get organized, go home, get ready, hoof it to Hubby's work, and take the train to Yankee Stadium. I was stressed the whole four and a half hours and really regretting my decision to go to the game as I jogged across Times Square during rush hour with an enormous baby strapped to my chest. But when we sat down in the stadium and got our hotdogs and watched Derek Jeter hit a homerun, it was absolutely worth it. Absolutely. And that's why, when my husband calls tonight and tells me that we have free tickets to Carnegie Hall, but I need to find a babysitter, change into a dress, pick up his suit from the dry cleaners, and meet him at work with a to-go dinner to eat on the subway, I will say, "sounds fantastic--let's do it."

Another NY Observation

My highs are higher and my lows are lower than they ever used to be. I think this is a combination of having a baby and of moving to New York. I think I said in a previous blog that this is something that happens with marriage too, but I'm pretty sure I'm used to being married at this point.

Babies are powerful little squirts, let me tell you. Pretty scary to think that my sticky little 30-pounder has such insane abilities over my emotions. If Baby's having a good day, the whole world is happy, and if Baby's sad, take cover.

And the New York thing, I don't know. For some reason when a good thing happens here, it's better than when a good thing happens in Provo, and bad things can be just absolutely devastating. Hot dogs are more savory, the heat is more oppressive, flowers are more colorful, etc. I remember a little of this when we lived in Washington DC for the summer too. Maybe I'm feeling this way because I'm away from home and I'm separated from the usual soures of comfort. I have independance on one hand so small things seem more exciting, but I'm also feeling vulnerable, so small things can also be really painful. Or maybe New York is a mystical magical place.

As my last blog indicated, I had a really, really bad morning today. I thought I would update by saying that my day completely turned around and I feel 90% better (not quiet a full recovery since I'm still sniffly). It's amazing what a whirlwind clean-up, a shower, and--most of all--a nap in a quiet apartment while Husband Dearest takes Baby Dearest out for the day can do to cheer up even the whiniest, miserablest Mama. I'm feeling good. Bring it on.

Down Day

I so got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. I'm pretty much hopping mad at the world right now--or I would be if I had the energy to hop. I'm so tired, and I'm sick, and my laundry is all dirty, and my bathroom is disgusting, and I haven't taken a shower yet, and my baby has decided that today will be a hold-me-at-all-times-or-I'll-scream-day. Maybe he's sick too, I don't know. I don't care. Leave me alone. Bah!

Mama Mia problem

So, I saw "Mama Mia," the musical on Broadway a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still wearing my happy 70s dancing pants. Does anyone have a cure for getting ABBA music to stop playing over and over again in their head? I know, you're saying to yourself, why would anyone want to stop ABBA music, but believe me, this is getting ridiculous.

But that's not why I'm writing this post. I have a problem with the ending of the musical. What started as a little niggling annoyance is now really bothering me. Even more than the endless repetitions of "Take a Chance on Me" in my head. I guess I should make a spoiler alert at this point (as if anyone is going to see "Mama Mia" for the plot). All the same, SPOILER ALERT. Anyway, the musical ends with the main character, a twenty-year-old, deciding last-minute that she's to young to get married and instead she will go backpacking across Europe with her boyfriend. This is supposedly the joyful dance-in-the-aisles ending to an exuberant musical.

Maybe I'm an old-fashioned prude or maybe I'm an old-fashioned romantic, but since when did the last-minute refusal to get married constitute a happy ending? As far as I could tell, marriage was the next obvious step for the romantic leads in this show. They were both good people, they respected each other, and they were in love with each other. The only reason they gave for not getting married was that they had their whole lives ahead of them. What was that supposed to mean? That it's unwise to make a commitment when you have so much time in which to undo that commitment? That being married will make backpacking through Europe impossible because only single people can do something so crrrrazy? So dumb.

I'm not saying that marriage wouldn't completely change the universe for any twenty-year-old because it does. I'm not saying that getting married shouldn't mean that you'll never be romantically in love with anyone else because it should. I'm just saying that backing out of a wedding is not a happy, exuberant ending. It's just . . . an ending. Giving up a marriage to someone you love and respect is giving up an adventure with higher emotional highs and lower emotional lows than you ever thought possible when you were single. Come on, musical, get it right! Surely whoever realized that a curtain call is best when done in florescent jumpsuits must be wise enough to know that.

For Want of a Suitable Medium

To make up for my recent cyber-silence, I'm going to try to post a bunch of entries today. Baby is being particularly good-natured, so I think I've got a good 15 minutes or so before he realizes that I'm not giving him my full attention.

At this stage in my life, I find my brain is just teeming with Interesting Ideas, but I've had a difficult time finding an outlet. Even though Baby's getting ridiculously large, he still demands about 95% of my time and attention, and it's hard to record Ideas when I need to have my eyes, my nose, my voice, both arms, and (let's face it) a breast directed toward Baby. Typing on a computer is not an easy task because it means that I need to be watching the screen and using both hands at the same time. When I'm desperate for computer time, I can hold Baby on my lap with one hand and type with the other, but this is slow and often results in Baby inflicting some kind of punishment on my computer (soymilk in the keyboard, broken network cables, entire laptop thrown off the table, etc.). Amazingly, even though I can't seem to multitask between nursing my baby and typing on my computer, Baby can nurse and produce the mischief of his choice.

Just think of all of the profound insights from nursing mothers that have gone unrecorded. It would be fascinating to know what my favorite thinkers throughout history thought about while they nursed--an activity that leaves a mother with nothing much to do but think. These probably brilliant, funny, spiritual ideas were all lost to sleepless nights and exhausted memories. So so sad.

Maybe I'll teach this Baby shorthand over the next year or so. Then he can be my little scribe while I'm nursing my next baby. Maybe I'll even get him his own little laptop.

Potpourri

It really hard not to have my own computer all day, every day. Mine is out of commission right now--I'd go into details, but computer-related details are boring--so I'm using Hubby's. He couldn't be more accommodating, but even the most accommodating husband's computer is not the same as having your own. Law school spoiled me on this, I guess. I forgot how to share.

So that's part of the reason that it's been a while since my last post. Another part is that I just haven't. Sorry.

New York is still busy being awesome. Yesterday we had a family outing to Teddy Roosevelt's birthplace, and on the way, we walked through a huge street fair on 9th Avenue where we blew all of our money on really delicious Greek, Argentinian, Venezuelan, Korean, Turkish, and American food. The problem with eating so many new foods so fast is that you don't remember the names of anything, so you don't know what to order when you actually visit a Greek, Argentinian, etc. restaurant.

Teddie Roosevelt's birthplace was neat-o too. I'm seriously considering becoming a TR-head (like a Dead-head, not like a Potato Head). I don't freak out about history, but pretty much everything about Teddie Roosevelt is fascinating, so I wouldn't mind making an exception for the particular subject of him.

I've found that it's easy to make false assumptions about New Yorkers. First of all, a large number of the people you see are tourists, so their weirdness should not be held against the natives. Second of all, there are so many people that you're bound to run into a few crazies every day, and it's easy to project your daily experience with a crazy person on the rest of the people you see. You have to tell yourself, no, of the 2000 people I've seen today, only one of them has been a complete wacko, so that does not mean that New York attracts more crazies than the rest of the country.

The one observation that I think is definitely true about New Yorkers is that they love babies and they are fantastic about helping out with getting strollers up and down stairs in the subway and giving up their seats for young moms such as myself. This is a good thing.

New Yo-erk

So, to make a long story short, here I am in New York City. Hubby, Baby, and I are subleasing an apartment in the Theater District for the summer. I will spend my summer touring the Big Apple with Baby in tow, while my sweet husband works for a law firm.

The long story that I shortened involved an excrutiating move from Provo to NYC, the birth of my newest nephew (a New York native), and a rollicking case of upset tummy for the whole family.

One thing that's cool about New York is that when you do something or go somewhere good, it's very likely to be famous. So, say your husband picks up dinner from a little place called Ruben's Empanadas. It's a great privately owned little restaurant that sells these sort of hot pocket dealies from Argentina. They're really good, and they cost about $2.50 each. There are similar places in Provo, but the Provo places don't have websites and guidebook entries devoted to them. It's really fun to go to Ruben's Empanadas and then read about it in "The Slow Food Guide to New York City," my favorite eating guide by far.

I'm sure I'll be writing a lot about NY over the next few months, but here are a few of my favorite NY moments so far:

The birds that live in the JFK airport
The dozens and dozens of people who have stopped me to tell me how delicious my baby is
The saxophonist in Central Park
Every blessed hotdog stand in the blessed city
The big boats near the Fulton Fish market

Muscle Momma

I accidentally left my cell phone in the car with my husband and baby, so I am impossible to reach right now, except by e-mail. It's a pretty cool feeling, just sitting in my blue chair and listening to the sounds of the teenagers downstairs who are supposed to be in school right now. I think I'll take a long shower after I'm done with this so I won't even be available over e-mail. Hmm...

So, I've been pumping iron this morning (another reason I could use a shower). I'm pretty much a lean mean mom-machine.

Actually, nothing makes me feel more weak than lifting weights at the gym. I can't lift much weight, and when I get home, I have trouble even opening my laptop.

I thought that I was getting incredibly strong from schlepping my baby around. I think that I probably got strong in the beginning, but then I started figuring out creative ways to conserve energy and he started to be able to shlep himself around a little more. I wonder if anyone's ever studied exactly which muscle groups are affected by being the primary caregiver for an infant. Probably not. Experts are interested in every tiny change in a gestating female's body, but once that baby's out, Mama's gotta figure it out on her own.

Well that shower's calling to me. Then maybe I'll make a sandwich and read a magazine and paint my toenails and do whatever else I can remember from my prebaby days.

Trizivia, Family Style

My family plays a movie trivia game that is very fun but that can only be played within our own family. It's your pretty basic movie quote game ("What's this from . . ."), but the quotes are all from the eclectic bunch of movies that we watched when we were growing up. I grew up in a household where almost all of our movies were taped off of television, usually from PBS's fundraising week or from free Disney channel week. Besides those, we had religious movies for our Sunday viewing pleasure, Feature Films for Families, and the store-bought videos that we'd get as Christmas gifts from extended family. These are the films from which the trivia must be pulled.

My family watched the same movies over and over and over again until we could pretty much quote the entire movie from start to finish, including the commercials and PBS donation promos in between. I couldn't tell you what Big Red's advertising campaign is like right now, but I can easily remember it's jingle from about 1987 ("So kiss a little longer, hold tight a little longer . . ."). In fact, all of the gum commercials from those days had pretty snappy jingles: Big Red, Doublemint, Juicy fruit, Extra, not to mention Fruit Stripes and Bubble Tape.

Anyway, the joy of the trivia game is to think of the perfect quote and to offer it in such a way that it cannot be mistaken for another movie. We have seen these movies ten million times, so it's hard to get something that not obvious. For example, "Maurice, the baguettes," is a laughably simple one from Beauty and the Beast. A better, though not perfect, quote would be "Come into the light," if you could say it with Belle's exact same inflections. The perfect quote would be one that rings familiar, but takes some thinking before you can figure out exactly who said it. A response to the perfect question should go something like this: "It's from a cartoon, post-Little Mermaid, she's in a dark room when she says it, hmm, "come into the . . . ," Oh! I know, I know! At this point, the respondent would be shushed before she blurted out the answer and spoiled the game for the other people playing.

The game gets tricky when the movie quoter starts offering quotes from movies with made-up languages, such as a popular family quote from "The Brother of Jared's Journey" that sounds something like "Boos vama nee! Boos vama nee!"

This game is pretty much impossible to replicate in written format because everything depends on how well the speaker can imitate the voice from the movie. Nevertheless, see if you can guess the following quotes from my family's illustrious VHS collection (in no particular order of difficulty):

"M-m-Merry Christmas, Papa!"

"I hope he doesn't eat any of you..."

"Hooray for me!"

"Oh well. Guess he got away."

"I respect you, Pop!"

"These are desperate times."

"They were there when he came!"

Happy nine-month birthday

Today my child is nine months old. He has spent approximately as much time living as he has gestating. Unfortunately he has what I can only assume is hay fever on this momentous day, and he can't fully enjoy it. He says, "duddle, duddle, duddle."

Even so, nine months is a pretty darned good age for a baby. He's big enough that I'm not worried that he'll freeze or starve or sneeze his eyeballs out or anything, but he's still small enough to schlepp around when I'm in a hurry. His attention span is so short that he can lose interest in, say, an electric socket and start paying attention to a shaking rattle if he needs to. He's always up for a snuggle, but he doesn't constantly need to be snuggled. He's past the wrinkled newborn stage but not in the perpetually covered with jam stage. It's nice.

And he's just woken up from a five-minute nap. A mother's work is never done...

Spring cleaning

I think I'm finally experiencing the nesting instinct that I was supposed to get nine months ago, just before I had my baby. Apparently, right before a pregnant woman has a baby, she goes through the phase of manic cleaning energy where she organizes and disinfects and "feathers her nest." I was kind of looking forward to being in the mood to do housework for the first time in my entire life, but it never happened. I came home with my baby to a cozily unorganized and undisinfected (infected?) house. He survived.

But now that spring is in the air, I've never been in such a mood to throw stuff away. It's a whole new me. I wake up, put on a springy ensemble, and, in between baby care, I de-clutter with wild abandon. Of course, there's only so much noticable progress I can make after years of clutter, but I'm having a whale of a time.

Cavaties

I think I have a cavaty. I felt it with my tongue this morning while I was trying to get a teensy bit more sleep after a rough night with my baby, and I got so tense thinking about going to the dentist that I couldn't go back to sleep.

I probably deserve a little tooth decay--I haven't been the best brusher since I got pregnant and had my baby, and what with my birthday just past and Easter coming, I've been kind of a candy fiend. Still, I'm not happy.

Don't Hate Me

Whenever I tell someone about a decision I have made regarding the way that I will rear my child, I feel like I need to add "don't hate me!" to the end of the statement just in case they want to kill me because they think I'm ruining a heretofore unsullied individual:

I sometimes forget to take my multivitamin (don't hate me!).
I don't worry about using special laundry detergent (don't hate me!).
I'm still nursing every four hours (don't hate me!).
Almost all of my baby's clothes are hand-me-downs (don't hate me!).
I'm a stay-at-home mom (don't hate me!).
My baby plays with his rattle in church (don't hate me!)
I think I'm going to start letting my baby cry himself to sleep through the night (don't hate me!).

I think I've always been a little sensitive about other people's opinions and expectations of me, but I've never been in a situation where people had such strong opinions or expectations. I've also never been in a situation where I've wanted to desperately to do a good job or been so unsure that I was doing anything right. I am smart, funny, and good-looking, but if someone looks at me the wrong way because there's a poo stain on my baby blanket, I feel like the world's biggest loser and the world's worst mom. It stinks.

Luckily, as my baby grows smarter, funnier, and better-looking, I grow more confident that I'm ok. And, let me tell you, he's getting there.

Daytime TV

One of my biggest fears about taking up the stay-at-home mom thing was that I would become addicted to daytime television. I think I have the type of personality that is prone to addiction (maybe more later on my Spider Solitaire addiction), and I had heard that daytime TV was pretty addictive. I have to say, there was a summer when I was only working a few days a week, and I definitely developed a thing for morning shows while I made my eggs.

I'm proud to say that I am not addicted to daytime TV and I don't think I ever will be if it remains at it's currently quality. In fact, I think it's totally lame. I had to go through a 3-month phase of experimenting with it before I reached this point, but now I can honestly say that I'd prefer to do pretty much any real-life activity to watching even the most interesting daytime TV. Sometimes, however, there really is nothing to do but watch TV because I have a baby who loves to nurse, and who can't keep from grabbing anything else attached to Mom (telephone, laptop, book, mp3 player, etc). Here are the daytime TV shows that I don't mind watching in those circumstances.

Daytime talk: "Rachel Ray"--too many commercials on the others
Reruns: "Gilmore Girls," "Scrubs," and "Friends"--for some reason most others make me feel like I'm getting dumber
TLC: Rarely, rarely, I sometimes tune in to "Baby Story" or "What Not to Wear"
Game shows: "Jeopardy"--It's the only one fast-paced enough for my taste
Cooking Shows: "30-Minute Meals," "Quick-Fix Meals," and "Everyday Italian"--I find watching cooking shows is a great alternative to eating if you're trying not to eat, and these are the only shows where I can remember the recipes and afford the ingredients without having to write anything down.
Soap Operas: Haven't really given any a fair chance because I feel a little ill just watching a couple of minutes. I'm open to suggestions if anyone knows of an intelligent, engaging soap opera.
Kids shows: I don't plan to watch these for a long time, as long as I have a choice in the matter, but I saw "Between the Lions" at the doctor's office once and it was good.
CSPAN: I have yet to get interested in anything on CSPAN, which is too bad because I'd really like to be the type of person who watches CSPAN, and I went to law school and such, so I sort of feel like I should be watching it. Oh well. Their fault for not making it more interesting. TV news doesn't really do it for me either. I get it faster and commercial-free online, and I don't have to listen to anything remotely related to sports.

Just a token, merely a trifle

I wonder how many blog entries begin with the sentence, "I know it's been a long time since I've posted anything, but . . ." Back in my journal writing days I started a lot of journal entries that way. A waste of time when you're going to write the date anyway, but I felt like I had to explain myself. I don't have to explain myself here, so I won't. Besides, I'm not exactly sure why I decided to take 5 months off. But I did. Hmph.

I'm trying to decide what to make for my birthday cake. My birthday party is tonight at my parents; house, and I told my mom that I'd bring the cake. I was in the mood to bake when I offered because I had just been reading "How to Be a Domestic Goddess" by Nigella Lawson (of "Nigella Feasts" fame). Then, this afternoon, I read it again, and it was a lot more satisfying to read about baking than to actually stoke up the coals and start anything. Besides, the recipe I wanted called for lemon zest, which I don't have right now. The other recipe I wanted to make called for marzipan cheese, which I never have. I think I'll just bring a box of cake mix and make it when I get there. I'm kind of in the mood for cake and whipped cream (non-dairy) and strawberries all mushed up together in a trifle. That's probably what I'll do.

I love having a March birthday. Springtime happens to be beautiful around here, and my birthday always has pretty fabulous weather. This year I had a rainbow on my birthday. That pretty much means that God loves me.