Cynical Mom

Should I worry?

While putting him to bed tonight:

Me: "You're my favorite big boy."
Jared: "Yeah!"
Me: "And Audrey's my favorite little girl."
Jared: "No, she's my baby."
Me: "That's right."
Jared: "And I like to touch her allllllllll night"

# include <stdo.h>

We have achieved a [somewhat] regular practice of [mostly] getting some urine into the toilet instead of his pullup.

Hurrah!

I learned my lesson quick... it only took me a week's worth of $10-per-poop presents to realize that the boy was far more motivated not by a new train [gasp!] but by the ability to 'pretend drive' our car. This includes "pretend turning on the radio" and "pretend rolling down the window", as well as putting on our seat belts for real "so we can be safe!".

He regularly makes me reset my expectations. I have to remember the joy he gets in life and that when I am seeing the world through his eyes, I need to be him and not me.

It's all good.

P.S. The title of this post is toooootally funny-in-a-geeky-way-but-I-suppose-you'll-just-call-it-dorky, I swear.

I claim to not like girly things

And yet I purchased this skirt for my daughter all by myself without anyone holding a gun to my head, and I dressed her up in it and took photos:

(more pics here, unfortunately the batteries in one of the flashes was cranky)

The fourth wall of the fourth trimester

I know some women fall in love with their babies the instant they are born, or even beforehand. That's not how it worked for me, the first time around - it took weeks. I realize this is a scandalous admission, to some, like acknowledging the audience's existence in the middle of a play.

I remember it very clearly, the minute I pushed out my son... they put him on my stomach and the very first thought I had was: 'Dude. Did I just make that?'.

There you have it right there, the most inspiring story of pregnancy, birthing and motherhood, sure to inspire legions of women to follow in my footsteps and procreate so that they too can experience the joy of 'holy crap, what just came out of me?'.

I have always been a voracious reader[1] so naturally, when I found out I was pregnant[3], I instantly stocked up on all of The Classics. I remember reading about all the endorphins that would rush through my body during birth and breastfeeding, and I personified the supposed endorphins as mighty little superheroes rushing around my body from site to site, roaring battle cries as they raced from site to site.

But somehow after 14 hours of labor and one hour and fifty seven minutes of pushing ("After two hours, we're going to use the vacuum" says my OB), I didn't actually feel the endorphin rush. The only rush I felt was the Oh-Crap-I-Just-Had-A-Kid-What-The-Hell-Am-I-Supposed-To-Do-Now rush, the anti-rush of coming down from my epidural high and starting a hearty new dose of percoset.

When they placed him on my chest, I remember thinking how beautiful he was, and wondering how I'd created such a beautiful little thing. A beautiful little squawking thing who didn't stop screaming for the first 2 hours of his life. A beautiful little squealing thing who sucked the life's blood out of me in more ways than one.

A few days later, I was off [most of] the drugs, healed enough to move around a little bit, but still not quite believing what had happened to me. Eventually I healed, physically and mentally... over the next couple of weeks I'd watch him watching me and peer into his eyes, and I started to get to know him and eventually, fall in love with him. And three years later, oh my god it pours out of me sometimes. I invent games whose entire purpose is to get him to give me hugs and kisses so I can just nuzzle his delicious little soul.

Nine months ago (two and a half years after Jared was born), I gave birth to Audrey. It was an entirely different pregnancy and an entirely different birth. As soon as she came out of me I felt an outpouring of warmth, like I'd known her for ages but only just met her for the first time (as if the womb is like a chat room).

At the same instant I had two distinct thoughts: "Hrm, she's kind of ugly"[7] and "OhmygodIlovehersomuchIcan'tbelieveit". Both of my children were explicitly planned, but the second time around I knew she was our last, so part of it was me just trying to etch every last minute into my brain. And going through parenthood with Jared the first time around had grown my heart plenty and taught me how to really really love.

And I knew that no matter how I felt that first day, love would continue to grow and grow, and not just the matrix of love between myself and each child, but between the kids and their dad, and especially between the two of them. At nine months old and three years, Jared watches out for "his baby"; when she cries he gives her hugs and kisses and pats her head and says "It's OK, Audrey.... It's OK." For her part, she follows him with her eyes everywhere he goes and since she started to crawl a while back she now will patter after him and try to play with his toys or even just reach out to touch him and giggle.

[1] True story[2]: when I was a kid, we used to have contests at school aimed to encourage kids to read more, if your parents signed a letter saying you read 30 books over the summer you'd get free shit and things of that nature. My parents, however, would YELL at me for reading too much because I would take a book to every dinner, every car ride, every family event and just stick my nose in it rather than socialize.
[2] Why do I feel the need to specifically call out that this is a true story? It makes no sense. But for some reason it just fits.
[3] It was just like those commercials... I had specifically purchased a butter dish, I peed on a stick and then put it in the butter dish and put a big timer on top of it and my husband and I clutched each other's hands and stared at the dish until the requisite number of minutes had passed, at which point I insisted that he lift up the dish because I just couldn't.[4]
[4] Just kidding. Actually I was 1500 miles away from my husband visiting my family, and spent the day shoveling shit[5] from a pile onto the garden. I woke up feeling sick as a dog in the middle of the night, and a lightbulb went off - "Maybe this is morning sickness!". I had a pregnancy test with me, so I took it... the second line was so faint that I had to wake up one of my sisters to fact check it for me.
[5] They call it "mulch" but *I* know what it really is.[6]
[6] When I needed to fertilize my garden a few years ago I went to the local home store to pick up some mulch... I was very amused that they had two styles: chicken shit and bull shit.
[7] She got real cute real fast though.

I'm easily amazed

My work blog gets a couple thousand hits per post, not because I deserve it due to the regularly updated, dynamic content (last post with any substance whatsoever: May 26) but because of the domain. And then I've been blogging along here for the last couple of years on mostly parenting-related topics without really worrying about readership because at the end of the day, I honestly am doing this for myself[1], and lo and behold, I find out that some people read it. It's like Sally Field all over again. Or maybe it's like finally getting out of the hellhole known as high school and finding out that there are other dorks like you out there in the world.

Earlier this year, I was breastfeeding my 3 month old and miserable about it, and I turned to a series of books about breastfeeding to try to boost my spirits... This one made me feel even more guilty for not enjoying the whole process, and then I stumbled on Andy Steiner's Spilled Milk which I devoured in the bathtub every night for a week. Spilled Milk was like reading a bunch of my favorite mommy blogs all in one place, and I gobbled up each page, feeling better and better about myself and our struggles as I did so. I of course have been meaning to write up a comparative review of the two for going on six months now, which means that I'll get around to it roughly never.

At any rate, the reason I bring this up is that a while back, Andy Steiner commented on a blog entry of mine. Be still thine beating heart! And in my latest attempt at egosurfing (unfortunately I totally wiped out) I saw that she linked to me too. That carried me along for a while, until I came back down to reality and figured it was a one-off event. And then the woman behind printakid (who make personalized books for kids) posts a comment offering to send me a free sample of her product as long as I'd review it on my blog, and I'm allowed to say whatever I want.

Let me get this straight.

You're going to send me a book, for free.

And all I have to do is write about it?

And I can say whatever I want?

(Now if I were a less mature person, such as my son for example, if someone told me that I can say whatever I want, I would make sure to liberally sprinkle around the word 'poop').

Naturally I told her to bugger off, I can't be bought, my pride is more important to me than any amount of dollars, etc etc blah blah OK who am I kidding here?

Really it wasn't fair, it's like offering to send a free sample of anti-broccoli spray to George H.W. Bush, because I'd already professed an interest in personalized products (plus this awakened a heretofore unrealized passion for animal noses).

So naturally I took her up on the freebie, and I ordered "Laughing all the way", and when it arrived I read it to my son who got all wide-eyed at the idea of his name being in a book. He can recognize the letters in his name and was thrilled to spell them out. He gets to bring one toy in to school every day for practicing sharing, and he asked to bring the book in. When we picked him up that next afternoon the teachers told me that everyone wanted to know more about the book.

My only complaint about the entire product came up when ordering it. I entered Jared's name and also had to enter the names of three friends. Since he has four cousins, his friendships are more transient than most people's pants and I didn't want to be a cousin-ist, I chose the two cousins closest in age, Lincoln and Anastasia, and for the third name I chose Boogaloo which is a nickname I use for Jared when I tell him stories ("Once, there was a little boy named Boogaloo..."[2]). But apparently they don't allow nicknames (I'm not clear why), and my husband got the phone call indicating so and he ended up choosing the other name, Liam (Sorry Malcolm! Blame Uncle David, it's all his fault).

So I'm bummed that the book couldn't incorporate his current childhood pal Boogaloo (whose last name, by the way, is Flibbertygibbit, no I'm not kidding), but outside of that, the product is a great one. It's got a nice high quality cover and bright color pages, the story is decently cute - simple enough that a 3 year old can follow along, with enough opportunity for silliness so that a parent who tends to boredom can add a little variety - although not the variety that includes naming people Boogaloo Flibbertygibbit.

Without having the foggiest idea of how the product is created (except I'm going to go out on a limb here with the wacky idea that it involves a color laser printer), it would be so cool if they would branch out into inserting actual pictures of the kids into the books, just the heads on top of a cartoony body. Heck, I'll even volunteer for head cropping duty to transform parental snapshots into headshots to be grafted onto cartoon bodies, I can magnetic lasso like nobody's business. And try to drum up repeat business - include a few sheets at the end of the book with ideas for how parents and kids can use them, such as a "This book owned by {name}" with a place for a handprint (buy a kid their own customized book each year and stamp a handprint in the back), or some such.[3]

They do have a christmas-themed book, but unfortunately no jewish-themed one. Now if only my sisters with kids didn't both read my blog (and by "read" I mean "ah-ha, the tables have turned, and now they're the ones nagging me for not posting enough"), then I'd have some great gift ideas already lined up for the upcoming holidays, so all I can do is hope that they will read this and promptly forget about it for a conveniently timed four months.

[1] The one feminine activity I will cop to is being an avid scrapbooker. I love documenting my life and those of my children, even if no one else will ever see the pages I make, it gives me great pleasure to mark the passing of time in this way.
[2] And oh, the stories we tell. About waking up in the morning and asking mommy & daddy nicely if we can go to the train station, and being told we have to eat a nice healthy breakfast first, and getting buckled into our car seat before we go, and peeing in the potty after the day is over, etc etc. I wonder when he's going to figure out that there is such a thing as a story that's not training-in-hiding?
[3] I'm a sucker for this kind of thing - I own a stack of five tins of plaster in increasing sizes, and every year for each of my son's first three years I have vainly attempted to get a tiny little handprint into the plaster and failed miserably (however on a related note, I do have three tins full of my son's magnificent artwork, a relief map of the south pole).

Awful doesn't begin to describe it

Death is awful enough by itself. The death of someone with far more years ahead of them than behind brings with it a certain type of sadness and loss to the equation. A year ago, I posted about losing a coworker. A few weeks ago, it happened again.

We had just shipped a beta of our product and we were celebrating with a party at a lake. He drowned. His absence was noted a while after he went swimming with a friend. We spent the next hour scouring the beach and the park, hoping against hope that surely he just took off early for the day... then we found his shoes and cellphone.

A marine unit was called, and the divers went in... and soon after, we watched a diver pull his body out of the water. Tiny, limp body. He was a small guy, it was a hot day out... we don't know what happened. "Adults don't drown in still water, that doesn't happen," I told myself. "Everybody knows how to swim these days." They tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late.

The damned news helicopters circled overhead. A cameraman snuck in on land and was starting to take video footage, but a coworker yelled at him and they kicked him off - private property, small blessing.

I watched the news over the weekend as they put together the bits and pieces of his life. This is why I don't watch the news. I don't want to feed the beast.

It was a hot day and there was quite a crowd at the beach, plenty of kids and their parents enjoying the nice summer day. A young girl, probably no more than 12 years old, told the police that she had noticed him struggling while he was swimming at one point, he was slapping the water with his palms. Several sixteen year old girls who were lifeguards for the day went home knowing that someone died on their watch. A hundred other people watched in stony silence. Later on, I found myself becoming very angry at the parents who did not take their children away the instant that it became obvious something was very, very wrong.

His office is next to mine. His machines are still sitting there, locked. He has a desktop background of stonehenge. Days before the party, he said something so nice to me that made me realize that he looked up to me, and I told myself that I really needed to make an effort to get to know him better, to look out for him.

We miss you, Sean.