Monthly Archives: March 2010

New rules

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Let’s assume I do, at some point, call the guy about the kitchen floors, and make a decision, and we find some boxes from somewhere and B sorts out the moving truck he says he can somehow borrow from work and eventually it all falls into place and we close on the house as (re)scheduled and at some point we have moved into our new abode and are, like, living there.

There will have to be changes.

We can’t go on as we have until now, in our nice, compact (see how I’m already getting sentimental about the very things that until now have been more likely to make me just plain old mental) three/four-room apartment where nobody could ever be more than one doorway away from you.

For one thing, Miss will no longer be sleeping on the mattress on the floor beside our bed, because she’ll have her very own room. (With a mattress on the floor where I will no doubt spend a fair proportion of my nights at least at first, as I do now.) Which is good, I know it is: we won’t wake her when we go to bed, we’ll be able to, y’know, do stuff, without fear of small-voiced retribution, she might even sleep longer… but the thought of it right now feels like sending her to boarding school, or into service – she’ll be so far away, it’s not natural for a baby to sleep so far from her mother… I’m a sap, that’s all there is to it. But sometimes, especially on those rare occassions when B is away for a night, it just feels wrong for me and my two children to be all in different beds, in separate rooms, with walls and doors between us – I dunno, I think it’s the cavewoman in me coming out.

Also, I vow to have a cleaning roster stuck to the fridge, with a different task for every day: Monday – swiffer downstairs floors, Tuesday – hoover family room, Wednesday – wash kitchen floor, Thursday – upstairs floors and dusting, Friday – bathrooms; that sort of thing. Fridays will be great. I have to get over this ridiculous attitude of vague outrage and put-upon-ness that things just keep getting dirty and having to be cleaned even though I already did that once. Or else I have to get a job to fund a cleaner.

I’m sure other interesting opportunities to be annoyed by the vastness of our new domain will arise. I might have to pick out the kids’ clothes the night before to avoid lots of traipsing up and down stairs all morning before school. (The stairs? When will I hoover the stairs?) I still haven’t figured out how I’ll keep the small people out of the kitchen when it won’t be gateable the way it is now, or what to do when I want to cart Monkey off to his bedroom for three minutes of peace and to stop him beating up his sister. I’m not sure he’ll be impressed by the notion of a naughty step, and I’m not really sure I want to channel Supernanny and create one either. Maybe I can just toss him downstairs to the basement instead.

Using words, resting eyes

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Last night I uploaded a post I’d written a while ago and not posted for some reason, about Miss’s expanding vocabulary. In the three weeks or so since then, it’s amazing how many more words she has – I actually asked her to “use your words” to tell me what she needed today. (It didn’t work, of course.) Unlike her brother, who would never repeat a word just for the sake of it, she’s a little parrot, quite happy to attempt anything. The other night there was a clamour for more Blues Clues from Child One, and suddenly Child Two came running over to me hooting “Boo coo, boo coo.”

I can’t even start to list all her words, but thinking about just food words, there’s waffle , peas , cheese , bread , drink , juice (not that she gets it), sandwich , broccoli , bagel , apple , strawberry , blueberry , cookie … okay, so sometimes you need the context to know she’s saying it, but I’m still impressed.

We’re all a bit at sixes and sevens these days as far as sleep goes. I’d love to blame it on the missing hour, but it’s more to do with nap transitions – Miss from two naps to one, and Monkey to giving up his naps altogether. So some days she drops off for a quick catnap before we pick him up from school, and then naps late or (argh) not at all; some days he naps and goes to bed late, others he skips the nap and goes to bed early.

All I can do is offer the opportunity – which for us means going for a walk around 1pm with him in the stroller and her in the Ergo – and if they take it they get the nap and if not, they don’t. But there’s no consistency, so it’s hard to plan anything: an afternoon playdate or even a trip to the post office might be sabotaged by someone who didn’t nap, is unexpectedly napping, or can’t be taken out in a car for fear they’ll fall asleep. Yesterday Monkey had no nap, so he went to sleep at 7pm – which meant he was awake at 5 this morning, which has led to a nice early nap this afternoon, which I hope will bring us to a reasonable bedtime and a reasonable waking tomorrow, but who knows.

Monkey never actually admits to napping. The most you’ll get him to say is that he rested his eyes. Here he is resting his eyes in the stroller one day last summer.

Apportioning blame

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On the way to the doctor’s this morning (where it turned out Monkey has a totally unexpected ear infection rather than just the same old cough or seasonal allergies; as we drove I wasn’t even sure why we were going, but it must have been my maternal intuition or something sending me there…but I digress…) Monkey was musing on reading and the future.

“…and when I’m married to Helen and I’m a Daddy, I’ll read stories to the little boy or little girl every night. And sometimes I’ll get angry and shout at them because that’s what Daddies do.”

Me: “Well, sometimes Mummies get angry too.”

Him: “Only wrapped-up ones.”

Me: [Thinks] Wrapped up? What? Very self-centred mothers? Mothers in cold climates? Oh wait… “You mean, wrapped up like in Scooby Doo?”

Him: “And Phineas and Ferb.”

Me: “Yes. They’re called Egyptian mummies.”

Which led to another conversation about death, actually. Monkey would rather be mummified than turn into a skeleton, just so we’re all clear on that.

Hot crossover buns

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It’s an odd thing, meeting someone whose blog you read. It’s kind of like meeting a movie star, because you’ve been seeing their face for years but they don’t know the first thing about you. So when it happens, for the first little while until you get your act together and understand that they’re just people, you’re somewhat starstruck and wobbly and not at all sure what to say. Or maybe that’s just me.

Today I met Secret Agent Josephine (aka Brenda) and Bethany Actually , as well as Carrie of The Queen’s Rambles . (And a little later Shanee , who sadly I hardly got to talk to at all, but she had a lovely daughter just a little older than Miss.) I’ve been reading Brenda’s blog since she was pregnant with Bug and I was pregnant with Monkey. I’ve watched Bug grow and used her milestones to think, “Ooh, he’ll be doing that in a couple of months” (completely erroneously, since she’s a girl, so when she was turning paper pages by her first birthday, he was still munching on board books, and when she was singing the entire alphabet he was probably still calling me Daddy). I’ve been impressed by Brenda’s lovely graphics and her wonderful art projects and amazing party-throwing skills and sighed over her photos of the beach for a long time, and there I was this afternoon having coffee and hanging out at a playground with her and the others as if I do this sort of thing all the time. And despite children who were constantly on the verge of falling off things that were much too high and hard for them to climb (Miss) and needing to go to the bathroom (the Other One), I had a really nice time, and also got to play pirates/sharks with Bug and Erik and blow giant bubbles with Annalie. Sadly, we had to run off too soon to a prior engagement, and of course it was just five minutes after Monkey had finally started playing with the other children. It is ever thus.

In totally unconnected news, Spring has sprung around here like a rabbit out of a trap. On Friday, to be precise, the blossoms came out and the magnolias bloomed and the daffodils came up, and now the weather is just gorgeous. So everyone went to the zoo yesterday. Everyone, plus us. And the orangutans were inspired by the delightful weather to get a bit frisky. We went into the Think Tank building, where the apes do their clever stuff, and found Mr Orang gyrating rhythmically on top of Mrs Orang, who was lying back and regarding the audience with a long-suffering expression reminiscent of one who thinks the sooner he’s finished the sooner she can get back to the ironing, and is that a damp patch on the ceiling or just a shadow? Monkey – my Monkey, I mean – was fascinated to see the apes up so close, and sat and watched for quite a while. Then he asked me if orangutans have to pee, and if they have penises. I replied in the affirmative. After a little longer he said, “Why is that orangutan jumping up and down on that other orangutan?” At this point the male was hanging from a handily placed rope and really getting into it. We told him they were trying to make a baby orangutan. Happily, he didn’t ask any more about the mechanics, because I think I might just have fallen down dead if I had had to go into further detail right there.

Then we moved on to the elephants, where Mr Elephant had his very long schlong out for a bit of an airing. Monkey was more interested in demanding ice cream at that point, so we didn’t have to deal with that either. Ah, innocence.

The sort of spectacle that might have embarassed me once upon a time

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I had to give back my Best-Parenting award today. There I was, pushing a screaming toddler in the stroller through Barnes & Noble with one hand, dragging a recalcitrant preschooler all the way from Music to Children’s Books with the other (literally: his body was on the floor all the way), yelling Yes You Do Need To Use The Bathroom repeatedly all the while, and trying to weather the disapproving glances from the parents ranged around their little darlings at the train table.

To wit, the backstory:

Monkey got out of the car antsy and disinclined to do anything I asked – nothing complex, just things like standing up or walking. I soon realised this was because he had to pee but wouldn’t admit it. Miss was tired, as it was getting on for noon (or something; the hour went forward last night and I’ve been confused all day about when it was, when I thought it was, and when it really should have been) and she hadn’t napped. She also doesn’t like being in the stroller, especially when there are lots of interesting things she’d like to be grabbing and running around looking at.

I pulled and pushed the two of them from the carpark to the bookshop where I knew we could hang out awaiting their dad and also use the bathroom, but Monkey shot out of the lift like a cork from a bottle and ran in the opposite direction. I trailed after him with the stroller and its unhappy captive (the guys in Music asked if I needed anything; they got a withering look and probably a muttered request for new children), and when I grabbed Monkey’s hand he said, “Drag me,” so I did. It only looked like it hurt; he actually finds it hilarious. Once I had manoeuvered him with my foot (“Kick me!”) into the Ladies and positioned him in front of the toilet, he actually performed with no more than perfunctory protests, and as soon as it was over he was suddenly a much more reasonable and biddable child. And once that was done I could free Miss from her canvas prison and she miraculously stopped wailing like a stuck pig.

Whereupon I took a deep breath and was able to meet the eyes of the other parents with defiance. Who among us has not been in such a position? Let them throw the first miniature Thomas the Tank Engine. (Trains are Not For Throwing, Felix.)

Deception

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Every time I see that last post title it reminds me that my hair is in a terrible state. It will be getting cut tomorrow (first time since October, since I somehow skipped my usual Christmas appointment), but that will do nothing for the shocking appearance of my roots, which I only ever notice when wearing contact lenses and looking in a mirror in decent light, and you can guess how often that happens. (Hint: Our bathroom is in the middle of the apartment. It does not have a skylight.)

Never mind. Onward.

I did a bad thing the other day. I deceived my son, with full and malicious intent. At least, I’m sure he thinks it was malicious. He, lacking a nap of course, ran away from me outside Target. He was on the footpath, not in the car park, but he went way too far ahead and I didn’t know when he was planning on stopping. I had a sleeping baby on my back and a trolley of shopping in front of me, so I couldn’t exactly leg it after him. I yelled. I trotted. When he was close enough, I dug deep in my mental bag of enticements/threats and came up with: “I have a lollipop!”

He turned to me with a beam on his face and ran straight over.
“You have a lollipop? For me?”
“No. There is no lollipop. I just said that to make you come.” And I manhandled him into the trolley, trying to avoid the bread.

As we headed for the car he was confused. “Why did you say you had a lollipop?” he kept repeating, though I kept telling him exactly why. I’ve never done that to him before, and obviously I can’t do it (too often) again or he’ll get wise to me. But also, I did feel a little dirty. I try really hard never to lie to him (okay, there’s that Santa thing, but I mostly glossed over things rather than lying outright), and I want him to know he can always trust me not to mess with him.

So I suppose I just have to stop going to Target when he’s missed a nap. It’s going to be a long rest of his life.

Roots

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For so long, we have resisted the trappings (literally) of people who will stay in one place for a long time. We lived the nomadic life of the fledgling academic, flitting from one post-doc position to the next, without acquiring too much stuff, without putting down too-deep roots.

But there’s something about having small children that pushes out tendrils and digs them deep into the place you are whether you like it or not. One day you’re seeing familiar faces at the library and enrolling for baby yoga; the next (it seems), you’re finding those same people are now in his nursery school class and you’re inviting yourself over to their houses for playdates. (Thanks to the joy of Facebook, that is. For people like me who are a little scared of the phone, it’s wonderful. I don’t like calling people because (a) they might be busy eating dinner or putting the baby to bed or, I dunno, having sex, and (b) they might not instantly know who I am, and that’s just embarassing all round. With the lovely Internet, they can look at it whenever it suits them, they can ignore me if they want to and I’ll never know, and if they can’t remember who I am there’s a whole profile there to remind them. But I digress.)

There are things we never bought because of the tenuous notion that we might get to up sticks and move back to Ireland at any moment, or somewhere else less desirable. We have a tiny stereo system, no stand mixer, an ancient TV, the crappiest furniture (except my beloved leather sofa), the smallest, oldest car. All our wedding china is still in my parents’ house, together with a room full of other presents, photo albums, and assorted shoes, pairs of. I have an envelope of gift tokens for shops in Dublin where we still hope, one day, to buy stuff for our Irish house.

And it’s not that we’ve given up on that idea, nor is it the case that a fully permanent, tenure-track position has been attained here: but somehow it’s just become time to stop and live where we are, properly, like a family of four. So today we bought a second car, with plenty of boot-space for all the flat-pack only-fairly-crappy furniture we’ll be buying from IKEA for our huge new house. We’re going to get a fancy flat-screen telly to go in our fancy new living room. We might even look into shipping over the Denby Imperial dinner service. But every Christmas I’ll fish out the envelope of vouchers and make sure they’re all right, and probably not just go and spend them on shoes.

Martyrdom

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My sister-in-law has a baby girl just four months younger than Miss. Naturally, there is great competiton between the two grandchildren. Cousin’s adorably unruly mop of curls gives her the cherubic edge, but we like to think that Miss outpaces her in sheer get up and go. In truth, cousin didn’t really get up and go anywhere till very recently: let’s just say she’s Not A Climber.

But as a newborn, Cousin was a terrible sleeper, until her mother very sensibly and sanity-savingly employed a magical woman known in select circles of Dublin parents as a baby whisperer: a sleep trainer. Somehow, and allegedly with no crying involved, this wonderful lady effected a miracle and Cousin went from being a baby who woke every twenty minutes to sleeping twelve hours a night, every night. I heard about this with envy and am still waiting, with shameful schadenfreude, to hear that Cousin has regressed, fallen off the wagon, started teething, or anything that would throw a spanner in the works. So far, not a peep. It’s as if they only have to be parents twelve hours a day, and the other twelve they can just go back to being their regular pre-baby selves.

And yet. Every now and then I daydream about having some expert come in to observe and then “fix” my children: Moxie , , even SuperNanny (God help us) could perhaps get my kids to sleep through the night, eat their dinner, or come when called, because I’m certainly having no luck with such basics. But I realised today that if such a thing were to come to pass I would secretly be rooting for the kid, to prove that no knowledge of child psychology, no amount of experience with other people’s children, no amazing techniques, would have any effect on my offspring, because they’re Special Snowflakes and they damn well know their own minds and won’t be falling for any of your tried-and-trusted solutions. So there.

Of course, this is really because it would validate my own inability to do anything with them, and because some apparently not-so-tiny part of me really wants to be able to cast up at them when they’re teenagers how I was up several times a night with them for two years. Each. A really stupid, stubborn part of me.

Inspectoration

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On Sunday afternoon we set off for the house inspection. With two children, both in need of naps. First we drove around for a bit, since we’d left early, to see if anyone would fall asleep in the car. Child #2 obliged; child #1 did not. We did a drive-by, saw someone sitting outside the house in a truck, the seller about to leave but not gone yet, and passed our realtor as we left for one more loop. Luckily she didn’t notice us, or she would have wondered if we’d lost our nerve and were skipping town.

Got back, parked, child #2 woke up. Child #1 still defiantly awake and trying to eat the snow. (Not yellow. Just plain dirty.) In we traipsed, Grumpy (the driver), Dopey (sleep-deprived), Bashful (but hyper), and Snotty (and wailing), to the home that might/may/will be ours. The inspector was already there, one of those thin, ebullient, slightly fey men whom you assume are gay until they mention their wife and then you have to reset your gaydar and remind yourself that there’s nothing certain in life.

So B and Monkey headed outside with the inspector to climb on the roof and partake in other good activities for a child who should be napping, and I talked to the floor guy and the walls/windows/kitchens people. This was not a very good job for me alone, because I’m easily swayed by people who know more than I do, so I tend to agree with everything. Thus:

“Will I do inside the closets, where nobody will ever see?”
“Um, sure. I suppose. Yep.”
“Will we paint this bit too?”
“Yeah. Why not. Unless we don’t need to. Do you think we need to?”
“What about the wallpaper? You don’t like the wallpaper, do you?”
“Now you mention it, I hate the wallpaper. Let’s get rid of the wallpaper.”
“Are you keeping the appliances?”
“Well, yes.”
“What about a built-in microwave? You should probably have one of those.”
“Um, we do have a microwave. Can’t we just make a shelf for it?”
“Oh no, it has to be part of the extractor fan. They’re only, what a hundred, two hundred…” (Our microwave was the $40 one. It has rotary dials, like a phone.)
“And these windows in the basement that nobody will ever see, do you want to replace those too with fancy new fiberglass ones that cost a bomb?”
“Sure, yes, let’s do that.”

I may be backpedalling a bit once we get the quote. After I scrape myself up off the floor.

By the end, the baby had fallen asleep twice (on my front in the Ergo the whole time) and Monkey, after trying to lie down on the floor, had finally conked out in his dad’s arms. We conducted our final chat with the realtor over their gentle snores and the rumbling of my tummy. And then we left, everyone woke up, and we headed for two large gourmet burgers and a pleasingly retro ray-gun. The baby had some fries.

Numptiness

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Miss comes for a walk strapped on my front in the Ergo, clutching a still-damp wipe that she insisted on grabbing while I changed her. She keeps stuffing it down my cleavage, then producing it again with a manic chuckle.

At some point in his linguistic journey towards becoming the chatterbox he is today, Monkey started to say “Uh-huh” in response to everything, as if to say “Yes, yes, of course, tell me something I don’t know.” Miss says “Ohhhh,” in the tone of one who has just had everything explained to her satisfaction, thank you very much. It’s a lot more gratifying to the explainer.

This evening as I was trying to persuade her to get sleepy, she kept repeating “Goggles” (looking at the table behind me, where there were indeed a pair of goggles) and “Go-go” (beating her chest a little because this is her word for gorilla). She was getting agitated, and eventually I said, “Yes, those are goggles. Go-go is different, that’s a gorilla.”

She replied, “Ohhhh,” in a very relieved tone, as if it was all clear now and she could stop worrying about it. And put her head down and went to sleep. (Well, not quite.)

Then there’s “Nump.” If you’re singing Insy Winsy Spider and you get to the end, Nump means “Again please.” If you’re re-hooking your bra cup because she stopped nursing, an indignant Nump means “Where do you think you’re going with that? I was just taking a break.” If you’re trying to quickly note that you are out of Cheerios yet again, Nump means “Gimme that pen and paper so that I can scribble all over your shopping list and render it illegible.” It’s a great word. We should all use it.

Monkey was being threatened with tickles, and then being tickled. Miss came over to us, pointed at her own pyjama-clad tummy, and said, “Nump?”
“What, you want to be tickled too?”
“Yup.”
Happy to oblige.