Kitchen Counter As Potty

Dahlia has some new favorite hangouts in our house. Number one among these is probably the kitchen counter. How I got into this habit, I'm not sure. Like most parental mistakes, they happen inadvertently.

She puts on her cutest face and says, "Hug?" To which it is nearly impossible to resist picking her up. But I can't stay in the hug position forever, and because I am a very busy woman, I placate her by placing her right next to me while I make lunches, cook dinner, etc.

Dahlia, who is eerily intelligent for an 18-month-old has made the logical connection that if she's perched upon the kitchen counter, while I'm in the kitchen, that I won't leave her side. She knows that if I take her down it's usually because I have business elsewhere, and she may not be included in said business.

There are interesting things to do up there. She can play with the coffee maker, grab bananas and persimmons, play with the cyclamen or the toaster, and most importantly It keeps me close. But it presents problems when I have to use sharp objects or turn the stove on, or do anything that isn't 3 feet from the counter.

It also is problematic when she takes her diaper off as she has begun to do. On Tuesday, for example, she disrobed with a little help from Miles, and asked for a hug. I hugged her and placed her, happy as can be, buck naked on the kitchen counter. She promptly rewarded me by saying, "Poopy" and leaving a turd the size of a persimmon. I whisked her and the majority of the turd (wrapped in paper towel) right off to the bathroom, leaving the rest of the mess for later. In the bathroom I said, "Bye bye poopy!" and flushed it down, and within seconds, Dahlia was sitting on her potty, which I'd dragged to the kitchen, looking adorable and confused, while I scooped the rest of the poop and disinfected the counter with two kinds of kitchen spray.

Seeing that I might make a run for it, and leave the room for a moment, Dahlia said, "up" meaning that she wanted me to put her and her potty on the counter. I obliged, and she went pee-pee and poo-poopy inside the potty. And I was very happy and proud of Dahlia. All those readings of Once Upon a Potty are paying off!

Where Has the Time Gone?

August, September, October, November. Well, it really has been a very busy period, one day just swept away the next. In that time we've been through 3 au pairs from Yenny to Angely to Triin. My work has been in major flux, Miles and Alec finished summer camp at a ritzy pre-prep school near our house; Miles started third grade; Alec started kindergarden. Dahlia has been picking up a very sophisticated lexicon and a serious sweet tooth. We've had construction in the house, Hadley traveled for business; the seasons switched, we had to chop down our two big maples, well actually we paid two men and a crane to do that; My parents and Hadley's parents have visited and gone, visited and gone; there have been ER visits, minor injuries for each of us, and all in all there has been no time to breath or write or read or sleep.

But hopefully now that we have a new au pair who I pray will be with us at least a year, I can get back to blogging here at least once a week.

Ta Ta Thomas the Tank Engine

A man came to our house this morning to look at the trains that the boys have cast off. He stood on our porch and stood and stood, waiting for me to reduce the price...

For years my boys played with little else. Gordon, Thomas, James, Henry and all their locomotive consorts were on their tongues, the way children of missionaries must know the characters in the bible.

Shortly before Miles, our eldest, turned 2 my parents bought him a train set and my father and husband assembled the table, after which I lovingly set up the tracks and we waited for Miles to play. We waited with the hushed silence of parents anticipating some great developmental leap on the part of their child. But at two, Miles didn't yet know what to do with them.

The train table stood in his room, a beacon of things to come. As he got closer to 3 he spent more and more time at his trains, but still they derailed too easily and he needed constant supervision to play with them or he'd be reduced to tears and shrieks of frustration within seconds.

Enter Thomas the Tank Engine.

About the time he started nursery school we let him watch Thomas on TV, and the stories captivated Miles, as they do so many boys and girls. Once he had those stories and their characters in his little mind his play with the trains literally took off. Over the next two and a half years Miles played with them constantly and collected them train by train. He'd sit at the kitchen table pouring over the Thomas catalog with longing.

Seeing Miles's fascination, Alec loved them well before his second birthday. He would yank the tracks out from under trains like a little earthquake, the tracks that Miles or I had artfully set up. If frustration were a commodity that we could have sold, we'd be rich as Croesus. The boys would bicker over who got to play with James, or Diesel 10. To remedy this situation we or my parents would buy another James, but it was never enough. Even then, the boys would fight over the one thing that they didn't both possess--whatever that was.

Time passed. The train table lost a leg from all the rough and tumble. Miles started first grade. There were other more exciting toys. Though Alec was still in his prime Thomas playing years, Miles minced no words in telling Alec that Thomas was for babies. And of course Alec believed him. The trains sat and sat--sad extras from the movie Toy Story.

I got pregnant with Dahlia and serious nesting set in. We finished the basement to have extra playspace, but the trains just seemed to be in the way. So I dumped them unceremoniously in a mass grave of a Rubbermaid container and put them in a closet under the basement stairs. It was my hope that I could bring them out in a blizzard for a great day of play. And I did, but the boys were bored with them. They chose to make snow angels and play Wii instead. Then I knew that Thomas's day had come and gone in our house.

When I placed an ad on Craig's list, I was not expecting the overwhelming response I received. I got over 20 emails from people expressing interest--new members of the Thomas cult, wanting all the religious paraphernalia I possessed. Or just parents hoping to make their little darlings happy without paying full price.

...so the man stood and stood on our porch. But I didn't come down in price. I didn't have to. There were others lined up to buy them if he didn't. The man knew this. He pulled a wad of clean bills from his chinos and counted them off. "This will be a christmas present for my little boy," he said. A christmas present in July.

Mea Culpa: Or Confessions of a Guilt-Ridden Mama

The boys are up in Canada with their grandparents. And I am in a confessional mood this morning.

Here are my confessions:

1. It is partially my fault that the boys' trip to Ottawa with their grandmother took 12 hours instead of 2, because I didn't know that I could print the boarding passes instead of just the itineraries. Thus their seats were given to others while we waited for Natalie to arrive on her weather-delayed flight.

2. Alec didn't have a bag of things to do on the plane because he didn't pack one, and I didn't feel like packing one for him either because I assumed that Natalie would tell him stories on the short hour flight.

3. Last week I was on the toilet and Dahlia wandered out of the bathroom. The door to the basement had been shut when I went to do my business, but one of her brothers subsequently left it open and she decided to visit her brothers, but she can't fly or go down the stairs without help, and when I found her she was a crying heap at the bottom. And I was sure she'd broken her neck.

4. I picked her up despite a warning in my head that she may have a spinal injury. I picked her up and ran upstairs to call the pediatrician. She stopped crying in a minute or so. The pediatrician's aid said,
"Are the basement stairs carpeted?" Check.
"Can she move her arms and legs?" Check.
"Does she have any noticeable bumps or bruises on her head" No. Check.
"Did she lose consciousness?" No. Check.
"Ok, then just watch her. If she acts any different or throws up bring her in."

5. Then I went to work. I had to. I told Yenny to call me if Dahlia did anything different. I told her to check on her during her nap and not to let her sleep more than an hour. I told her to watch her like a hawk. And then I got in my Camry and drove away.


Epilogue: Thank goodness Dahlia was okay. No harm no foul. And the boys and their grandmother made it to Ottawa in one piece. But I like to think I've learned my lesson, then again, I'm not sure what lesson that is. Perhaps the moral of the story is to get off my keister even if my butt is in a sling.

MacGyver Momma

This blog entry is dedicated to all of us moms who try to keep ourselves looking as unhag-like as possible while running after a posse of messy, loud, endlessly needy youngsters AND switching as effortlessly as possible to the adult world of work. This blog post is NOT meant for Moms who manage weekly pedicures, facials and the like.

Life with young children in an urban setting requires a certain amount of invention just to get through the day, let alone look human in the process, but it helps to have a bunch of stuff in your car. If you are anything like me your car looks like it should be condemned. However, all the clutter can have its upside when it comes to scavenging something useful for any given purpose.

If you haven't managed to brush your teeth, put on make-up or comb your hair I highly recommend the Mom's Car Kit that includes: a lipstick (pink enough to double as blush), a matchbook, a corkscrew, a mini-tube of toothpaste, a small vial of purrell, some diaper wipes, a bag of almonds, a sippy cup full of water, a safety razor, a small vial of hand lotion, and an iphone. With these items one can do an amazing array of necessary bodily functions in one's car and emerge from said vehicle looking more human than when you stepped into the driver's seat.

Here are some examples of the multiplicity at your fingertips.
Say you just managed to run out of the house leaving the kids with the babysitter and you have 20 minutes to get to a client meeting. You haven't managed to shower in more than a day, and it's been hours since you looked in the mirror or brushed your teeth. You have creamcheese on your shirt from the baby, mud on your pants from your 5-year-olds sneakers, your hair looks like a dying shrub, and your hands look as if you make your living as a sewer rat; oh and you have to pee.

Have no fear.

First sprinkle some water on your hair to wet it down and tame it, then pour a glob of lotion on your hands, rub it in and put the excess onto your hair to keep it from being a flyaway mess. Then apply a dab of lipstick to your cheek bones and rub it in until it looks like blush. Cross your legs to keep yourself from peeing in your seat and apply the lipstick to your lips. Drink a little water from the sippy cup and pour the rest onto the clean sock next to you and into an old coffee cup in the cup holder. Then pull your skirt up to crouch over the sippy cup. Pee into the sippy cup. It helps if you are a pro at Kegels because it's easier to stop midstream if your cup runneth over. Pour the pee out the window* and continue from the beginning.

Put the wet clean sock into the sippy cup to dilute the pee so it doesn't stink up the car and so it reminds you to take it in with you to wash, after your client meeting. If you happen to splash yourself a drop or two don't worry. That's what the wipes are for!

After you've relieved yourself, get to work on your nails. Clean them with the corkscrew tip, file them with the matchbook flint until they are even enough for government work. Then it's time to clean your mouth. Put a dab of the toothpaste on your finger, "brush" your teeth with your fingerprints, take a swig from the old coffee cup of water that you poured from the sippy cup before you used it as a potty. Swill the toothpaste/ stale-coffee tainted water around your mouth until you are about to upchuck than spit it back into the old coffee cup and pour the contents out the window*.

If your legs need a shave, wipe a little Purrell on your legs or armpits and start shaving fast until the Purell dries. If you cut yourself at least you know it's sterile. Pop a handful of almonds in your mouth to stave off hunger and check your iPhone to make sure that nothing's changed with your clients or kids.

Now you are ready to pull up to your client's building. Check your reflection in the mirror, check your email one more time on your iPhone. Polish your shoes with a diaper wipe and your are good to go.



* Always be sure that you pour said fluids out in ways that won't be stepped in by passersby. I highly recommend the soil around trees especially if there is sufficient mulch, or a seldom used patch of grass behind a building.

Is Our Daughter the Family Dog?

Well, she is the third. And she is a quadraped for at least another week or so until she gets this walking thing down pat. Plus she's in that stage where everything goes in her mouth, so she will try hard to clean the floor with her pincer grasp and open mouth. I suppose I should be grateful that she doesn't lick the floor.

Her brothers, especially Alec, treat her like a pet as well. They fight over her relentlessly, "It's my turn with Dahlia," says Alec as he grabs her arms. She protests, not liking to be treated like a doll/dog. "No it's my turn," says Miles as he woos her with a strawberry that might as well be a doggy bone.

I even treat her a bit like a poodle, in my fetish for dressing her in the perfect outfit. But she draws the line at hair bows. Every time I put one in her scant reddish fuzz she takes it out.

Being compared to a dog would surely not offend her. Doggy is one of her first words and she will bolt towards one given any opportunity. Neighboring the boys' dojo is a dog grooming place, and Dahlia who isn't even 14-months old knows exactly how to get there from inside the dojo. It's hard to stop her. She scoots out the door onto the sidewalk and without hesitation turns left and walk-crawls two doors down to the doggy place, saying Doggy Doggy Doggy the whole way. When we get there she indicates that she wants me to pick her up so she can see the dogs. And when I do she tries to reach over the little wall to grab them.

Maybe one day when we bite the bone and buy a real dog she'll lose her status as the family dog, or probably much sooner when she can tell us in more than baby words that she's a person to be reckoned with. But certainly, one of the first things she will tell us also is that she wants a dog in our house 24/7, preferably in her room. And maybe, since neither she nor her brothers will let me put bows in their hair, we'll get a dog who will.

Karate

Kempo Karate has turned my little ruffians into gi-wearing ninjas, well almost. For the past month and a half Yenny, our wonderful au pair, and I have been taking them 3-4 days a week to a one-room dojo with ancient florescent lighting and dirty mats. It smells like a bottle of turpentine unless the doors are open to the outside because of the cobbler bellow. But, I don't care. Who knew that hitting other children with noodles and kicking, lunging, and punching imaginary villains is the perfect anecdote to hours of good-humored fratricide on the living room rug.

Plus they look so damn cute in their little white uniforms: Miles with his willowy grace, Alec with his wise-guy intensity. I started Karate with them in April and have since earned my yellow belt, something they are erstwhilely trying to do themselves. The class that they go to is a mix of yellow and white belts. The Sensei often divides the class so that a white belt (rank beginner) is paired with a yellow belt (upwardly mobile beginner). This has lead to all kinds of interesting results. For example, yesterday one of the yellow belt boys got wacked in the eye by an overly zealous white belt and burst into big, pitiful tears. But this set up has its strengths too--I witnessed a yellow belt teaching a wide-eyed Alec how to deflect a front-on neckgrab. Learning from other kids seems to help their little egos integrate more of all the information being thrown at them in each session, and they get to go through the motions twice as students and then as teachers, which reinforces each move.

However, the laws of the jungle apply as always when children congregate. In one on one skirmishes before the group, invariably one of the opponents is cheered, "Go Josh! Go Josh!" While the other kid fights on in silent ignominy. I wonder how the sensei allows such blatant inequity. Though, there's only one of him and he has a classic case of ADD if ever there was one. One minute he's looking at the kids fighting, the next he's answering a cell phone, or looking down at his feet and coughing in the weird Tourrette's way he does. So, his gaze is certainly unpredictable, and advancement within the ranks of the fledgling warriors is somewhat random, but everyone is getting great exercise, and the lessons do provide physical discipline. Sometimes, the sensei pays attention, and when he does he seems omniprescient.

Breaking and Entering for a Nap or Mom's Afternoon Off

Facebook status for this afternoon: Meiera Holz Stern snuck into her house with all the stealth of a cat burglar, just to take a nap, so the kids wouldn't tackle her from all diections with their loud needs.

I called the au pair to tell her my plans so she wouldn't call the cops on me. Then I staked out the house from the safety of my black Camry parked on a side street at an oblique angle from the house. A man with a cigarette, who looked like a house painter--he was spackled with paint-- came out and gave me a suspicious once over. I looked down at my iPhone and counted the minutes until I knew the minivan would pull out of the driveway with the kids.

Once I saw Yenny and the morsels leave for Karate I parked the car on the said side street so they wouldn't deduce that I was at home, climbed a low fence and walked over two yards to my own. Despite the innocence of my motive, I couldn't help but feel a bit tainted by my desperation for a quiet afternoon.

When I woke up, the house was still quiet. I had 5 minutes to use the bathroom and get myself a snack before the wee beasties returned. If they knew I was home there'd be no peace. So I hurried and made it back upstairs leaving nary a trace of my presence. I spent the last hour and half before I had to relieve the au pair munching crackers and hummus and reading about Amazonian shamans and healing plants. It was a guilty treat, and one made even more delicious by the fact that it was'nt foiled. When I came downstairs the boys assumed I'd just come home from work.

I definitely won't do this often, but I felt a bit like Ferris in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Dahlia Took Her First Step Tonight

She let go of my hands and took a step to Hadley. We couldn't get her to replicate it after that, but nevertheless she walked for a brief moment alone. Dahlia has recently shot up. I am amazed that this baby of mine now hits her head on the kitchen table and grabs any willing pair of hands for a loop around the house and another loop, and she is so tall that I don't have to stoop down to walk with her. Then she gets down on her bottom and crawls in her adorable way that reminds me of a gondolier--one leg is the oar going into the water, one leg and her cute little butt is the boat, and her hands are the hands of the oarman as he rows through the canals of Venice.

In the grass and on the shag rug in the living room she will break into a traditional crawl, but she is too smart to do this on harder ground--it hurts her knees. In fact on Sunday I noticed she had yet a third crawl for rough terrain. Our driveway is in bad shape, full of degraded gravel and tar. Instead of risk her tender little knees she arched herself into a downward dog pose and gingerly moved her hands and feet across the hazardous way.

Then there are the stairs. Of course we have the requisite gates everywhere because given the chance she will climb up all three flights of stairs faster than Miles can do a page of homework or Alec can get himself dressed in the morning, which is not necessarily the fastest, but still a suprisingly little amount of time considering the ratio of the length of her body to the square footage of stairs in our vertical house.

I think Dahlia and President Obama have something in common in that they are both tackling many many things at once. Dahlia definitely has a better deal than the president, but she is no less hard working. She is not content to merely master her gross motor skills she now has an arsenal of words too. She is only just 13 months old and she says

1. Mama
2. Addy (Dada)
3. Aleh (Alec
4.ZZZZZ (Miles)
5. Jjjj (Yenny)
6. Te''y ( teddy bear)
7. Do'ee (Doggie)
8. Hi

She shakes her head no when she doesn't want something. She waves goodbye and hello, and she shakes her finger to say no.

She also dances everytime she hears anything resembling music. This includes a number of her toys, the phone, a song etc. She rocks her body back and forth and flails her little arms. And when her brothers are wrestling like good little puppies she crawls right in the middle of all the ruckus. She is not detered despite getting whacked one too many times already. She will be one tough cookie!

It amazes me how early babies have a sense of themselves as little people. She gets right in the middle of the boy's play, and walks, and talks, and pulls clothes from her dresser which she tries to put on by dragging them over her neck BECAUSE she knows she is a little person. She eats what we eat, tries to talk and play as we do, and a little over a year ago she was still a fetus. It is nothing short of miraculous.

The other remarkable thing about little d as I like to call her is that she now has 8, count them 8 teeth!

Will Miles Grow Up with Anything but an Aversion to Literary Gatherings?

Last night I went to hear Paul Harding read at Brookline Booksmith, which is a local bookstore in no danger of going under. Until yesterday I had no idea who Paul Harding was. I ran into someone who was part of my book-group-that-is-no-longer--the mother of 5 children and an aspiring writer--who told me that her teacher, the next BIG WRITER, was giving a reading. She used words like Faulkner and Hemingway, so I was incredulous but intrigued.

"No, I don't think it'll be feasible, but thanks for the invite," said I with 3 kids, 3 clients, a husband, a house, a garden, and aspirations of writing myself. No way, I thought as I bounced Dahlia on my hip in CVS pharmacy where I'd run into this woman on my way to the diaper wipes.

My philosophy of life is to water things in turn, and my writing/reading life has been seriously parched for some time. So despite the lack of feasibility, with 45 minutes to spare until the reading, I arranged it with our au pair and with Hadley that I would go. But the kids, who usually get me on Wednesday afternoon and evenings were not happy. Especially Miles, who is usually the least overtly needy of the bunch. However, last night he showed me that he was mighty dry too, despite the tears that he produced with such dramatic effect.

While Alec was frolicking in the back yard with a stick torturing inch worms and alternately collecting them in a Tupperware container, and Dahlia was crawling and standing, and generally cavorting in the early evening light, Miles was protesting, "But Mommy, don't go!" He pleaded. I explained to him that I wanted to go to meet other writers and that I wouldn't be gone for long, but he wasn't buying it. "Stay!" He whined as he waited with me outside on the curb for the woman with 5 kids to pick me up in her massive SUV. And once she had my phone rang.

It was Miles and he was crying. "Mommy, why did you have to go?" He has a very high pitched cry and it was hurting my ear drum. I moved the phone a little away from my ear and tried to explain again, "Daddy will be right home." I added.

But at this point he just wanted to punish me, "You're a bad mother," he said as he continued to sob. I refrained from calling him an ungrateful little pissant, and told him instead that I was sorry he was so upset and that I would be happy to stay on the phone with him until Hadley got home. He continued to whimper and screech until I said I'd make sure we had some "just Miles and Mommy time" this weekend. Then he said, " Ok, bye mommy," and that was that.

But I was sure that I had made the wrong choice going to hear a reader on the advice of an acquaintance whose judgement I couldn't vouch for. I knew the kids miss me, and that being the juggler that I am sometimes balls get lost or sat on or forgotten until they're moldy. So I had a hard time joining the lively discussion in the Suburban among the other literary women in the car pool that the woman with 5 children was steering.

When I got to the reading I was reminded why I hadn't put all my eggs in the literary basket. It was a gathering of maybe 30 people, mostly middle-aged women with some men thrown in, and a sprinkling of younger students. But the average age of the attendees was probably 55. The basement room was lined with used books and lit with a churchy flourescence. Not very auspicious I thought as I took this in and viewed the little white book that he'd be reading from. I'd rather be home with the fam.

But then Paul began to read, and despite myself I found his words captivating until I'd forgotten all about my drama with Miles and was hearing only the rhythm of the words and the eccentric details of his characters. And then I remembered why such quaint things as novels and readings at book stores attract me. There is alchemy in good writing that overcomes all personal drama and all technological boundaries.

Despite the threat of Facebook and the Kindle and all other new media, there is still nothing quite like the smell of books and the witnessing of a writer reading from his own work--connecting directly with readers in the most immediate form. But is this just because I and the geriatric attendees were raised with this? Will Miles grow up with anything but an aversion to literary gatherings?

Psychotic Little Boat: An Ode to Sleep

What a distant island the rested inhabit
I can barely see it through the fog of my fatigue.
It is a sunny island,
where the clocks are all in sync,
where the denizens eat beautiful fruit
that tastes as bright and sweet as they feel;
where kind words are spoken
and everyone, even the aged,
is embued with dewy youth.

On this now distant island
everyone sleeps when the sun goes down
and wakes in the morn.
At night when the moon is up
everyone's breath evens out and sails up
to the clear night skies
in unison.

But months of waking
to feed the baby how many times a night
waking to change pee-soaked sheets,
waking because of the heat
or the cold
waking because the baby snores
waking and not finding my way back
has exhiled me from this place—
made me an unnatural voyeur
and cast me off in a little leaking boat
farther and farther away
from the spot in my bed
where my body has left its mold
the shape of stolen dreams.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos

Is something Miles has been repeating under his breath as he commits the order of the solar system to memory. And it brings to mind other fun little mnemonics from my own childhood: Roy G. Biv and Never Eat Soggy Waffles for the colors of the spectrum and the 4 directions. Do any of you remember others?

This week I have needed all kinds of memory devices for things a lot less cosmic than these. I was flat on my back with a fever for most of the weekend, and when I emerged in phlegm glossed fashion it seemed that my brain would just never be mucus free enough to function in the way that makes Miles refer to me as his very educated mother. I might be able to russle up some nachos except for the fact that we have neither corn chips nor cheese in the larder, and I can't remember when I'll have time to go shopping again, let alone do half the things on my to do list before the sun goes down and I succumb to my exhaustion and the ocean of swirling phlegm in my sinus cavities, or are they planets? East or west? How many kids do I have?

Minivan--Looking Back on Our First Year

We purchased a Honda Odyssey Touring, on Halloween 2007, when the dream of having 3 kids was just beginning to unfurl in my womb. It was an act of planning for the 5 that we would become the following April. And now that I look back on it, it felt like another costume we were donning. It didn't seem real, the kind of car that I or my family could possibly own.

At first, owning a minivan felt symptomatic of a larger transformation into petty-bourgeois, thirty-something parenthood. And I for one felt slightly sick because of it. What had/has happened to my youth?

After all, we sold our precious time to buy a moving box with automatic doors and 7 seats. But, oh those seats are heated. We have a retractable moon roof and tires that will drive for miles and miles even if one of the kids puts a nail in them. The car has so many air bags that if it decides to do a pirouette over the guardrail of an overpass it will encompass us all in pillows that inflate at 1/20 of a second. The car really is a marvel. But it is also the emblem of The Soccer Mom, The Suburban Family, and the ultimate death of cool.

But so are living in the 'burbs and having 3 kids. Why do I care? Part of me really had a hard time with this minivan and the demographic it consigned me to. In fact, within the first 6 months of buying the minivan I searched for a hint that I was not the ultimate joiner of the middle-class, near middle-aged nexus of people on conveyer belts who pop kids out between working jobs with ever increasing responsibility just to pay the bills for the minivans they buy.

Really, in my hippy college days this whole concept was light years away. And even through my twenties. I wanted to love and be loved and find self-expression. Now more than halfway through my thirties I am a respectable citizen with a minivan to prove it. And I am mostly on a conveyer belt, even if I like to think I drive the minivan. Sometimes, or most of the time, it still drives me.

But fuck this! That is probably why I went on a communication binge for 6 months after I purchased the minivan, whereby I started phoning, emailing, and Facebooking friends, acquaintances and ex-lovers, anyone who could remind me of who I used to be. I wanted to remember a time when life was not so regimented, when I could go out for a drink and stay out. When I could explore the world freely and taste, drink, smoke or do more or less what or whomever I liked without any horrible fear of unraveling, and the repercussions of stopping the conveyer belt.

Though I still like to think of myself as someone with a deeply bohemian take on life, the fact of the matter is that having children, if not also being happily married has cemented my fate, at least for now. It has been about 15 years since I did the things in the paragraph above with wild abandon. And I am happier, steadier, arguably more creative, and certainly a better person than I was before. So, if all that comes decorated in a heap of steal otherwise known as an Odyssey, I'll buy one again any time, thank you very much. But I can do without the conveyer belt--that mechanized, automatic, unrelenting passage side to my life. Can I dismantle it and keep on driving?

"Where Do I Go?"

Asked Alec, my 5-year-old, when he loped up to our room to cuddle this morning and found nary a spot for himself in bed. I welcomed him to cuddle me, but he answered his own question by wedging himself, in proper birth order, between Miles and Dahlia, to which Miles responded with a slight shove to Alec's back and lots of verbal protests. Dahlia crawled over him. That in a nutshell, or a nuthuse, sums up our family dynamics at the moment.

Yesterday morning I took Alec to the pediatrician's. I had to lie to him about shots to get him in the door. Once he'd peed in a cup, squinted through his eye test, resisted his hearing test, and been weighed and measured it was time. I told him that I had made a mistake, that in fact he'd have to get some shots to get into kindergarden. He hid under my wooden chair.

The doctor came back with the nurse practitioner. I lifted the chair up, and with the doctor's help got him onto my lap where I held his legs and arms with mine while the two other women counted to 3 and shot needles into his arms twice on each side. He cried bitterly, and I felt like a cross between a child who tortures a bug in a jar, and the evil Munchausen-by-proxy mother in The Sixth Sense.

He refused the bandaids that the doctor had laid out for him, something his 4-year-old self would have taken comfort in, but that he is now too old for. He finally stopped crying long enough to stick 2 bubblegum lollipops in his mouth at once. I reminded him and myself that this was for the best—he would be spared the fate of contracting diphtheria, tetanus, mumps, measles, polio, chickenpox, and homeschooling. The last of which he said he'd like to get.

I thought, as I do from time to time, what would happen if I home school my kids? And for awhile I was imagining Miles reading Tolstoy at the kitchen table, Alec out in the yard collecting specimens of lichen, and Dahlia eating lead paint chips from the asbestos shingles. The image of our bed this morning comes to mind. Who am I joking?

Just as it's mostly good for Alec to be innocculated, it's just as important for our immune systems and our souls to be exposed to any number of ordinary germs and adversity— in and out of the home.

Alec cries, but he's getting tougher and tougher each passing day, underneath his hair shirt. I just hope that he'll keep his sweet, tender side and not cover that up in bravado the way boys in our culture do without much conscious training. And the way most people have to in order to grow up. I think I am as deluded in the hope that he'll maintain this innocent vulnerability, as I am that I might be able to prevent this garden variety adversity from entering his soul by some simple vaccines, or by keeping him from them.

Unfinished Homework

Miles was sick last week: sore throat, headache, low-grade fever, so he missed 3 days of school; peed on our good leather sofa twice with the excuse of being too sick to get up and go to the toilet; had his fair share of Wii, Lego, and reading time; and otherwise enjoyed himself once the Advil started coursing through his slender little veins. This morning we had some re-entry problems.

My mother was visiting from the much warmer place that she calls home, and Alec had his 5th birthday party Sunday that went very well. But Miles doesn't like it when he isn't the center of attention. And he really doesn't like it when his brother gets all kinds of presents that he wants for himself. And he really really doesn't like it when, do to extreme procrastination, he has to sit at the kitchen table after the party to finish his homework, while Alec gets to play with his new toys.

To make a long, audibly taxing, shrill story short, he didn't do his homework. This morning, he spent 5 minutes on it, but his heart wasn't in it, to say the least. This morning I took him to school so I could talk to his teacher. Miles had the body language of a boy going to his execution. I felt terrible for him. He sat right at his desk and busied himself with the work on his chair while the assistant teacher and I spoke in hushed tones, and the word consequence was bandied about. He gave me a little rabbit kiss as I was leaving, and I could feel his nerves. In any case, I had to dash off to Alec's conference so I couldn't stick around to watch the other shoe drop.

OTHER SHOE: The pediatrician just called me while I was writing this post to say that Miles does in fact have strep. poor guy. So he's headed home again.

When I got home from work Miles was furious. "I had to waste time in the nurses office waiting for Yenny, when I could have been eating lunch with my friends!" To which I appoligized. Miles then said, "I just want to go to school!" which I took as a very good sign that he enjoys it so much.

Update: April 3
However, the next day and for the a total of a week, Miles had to stay home popping Amoxycillan, Advil, and Alec. The latter, was his scapecoat for feeling so bad. But Alec got a few pops in at Miles, and we almost had full blown war on our hands. Thankfully, Miles and Alec are both in school today! I hope that peace will reign again.

Flippers, Amelia Earhart, and DSS

Alec's birthday went over without a hitch. He got a special birthday hat at school. The teachers had to give him some quiet time to settle himself because he was so excited about being the birthday boy and thus the true center of his little universe for 24 hours. Our au pair picked him up with a friend after school and the two had a rocky play date that culminated in Alec pulling his favorite fuzzy green blanket over his head and telling his friend to go home.

He ended his day in the claw foot tub where he tried out his new shark kickboard, flippers and goggles. He was so tired after his bath that after Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, and two readings of The Horse in Harry's Room he fell asleep as if I'd turned a switch.

Thank goodness because Hadley was at the hospital for his sleep study being pasted with electrodes.

Miles, bless his self-sufficient 7 1/2 year-old self, was happily playing with his Sponge Bob Crabby Patty Lego and reading about Anne Frank and then Amelia Earhart while I was busy nursing Dahlia and then supervising Alec's "swim." I found it intriguing that he was reading about 2 doomed females, and the other book on his docket was about card tricks which he has been practicing for weeks since seeing a very impressive magician at his cousin George's bar mitzvah.

Dahlia tried to climb the stairs again but only made it up one and then fell landing with a thud that I’m sure almost prompted the neighbors to call DSS. After that she nursed for a long time, played with Miles a little and went grudgingly to sleep.

Cake

When I am hungry, which is most of the time, I like to think about what types of cakes my children would be. Well, two of them do have birthdays within this 3 week window, so I have been thinking about cakes for that reason, lest you think I am totally depraved.

Miles would be a beautiful angel food cake laced with Grand Marnier and covered in berries of every type and shavings of white chocolate over everything like a thin layer of snow. Miles loves snow more than most people love chocolate, and his complexion is pale with blonde hair, so angel food seems to embody him, and yet he has gravity and a sense of humor, hence the berries and blizzard of white chocolate.

Alec would be a petite but tall layered cake with alternating rounds of flourless chocolate cake, because he is dark and so intense, and strata of moist pound cake with big vanilla buttercream light sabers piped around the sides. The zebra-like cake would then be topped with a spotted horse because it symbolizes Alec's love of animals and his unbridled nature, as well as his opposing personality sides: alternatingly loving and laden with conflict.

Dahlia, hmm. She is harder to characterize because her personality is still emerging. She is sweet and surprisingly long, so I would have to say that Dahlia is a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, probably multilayered as well, and finally festooned in dahlias of the palest pink with reddish centers. The cake would have a handle for her to grab to pull herself up to its height so that she could eat it from the top down.

Bacon, Hotella, Kwassums, Cucumbers and Sprite

This is the menu that my son devised for his birthday today. For those of you who don't speak Alec-ese that translates into lots of grease, sugar, and all his favorite foods in one meal: Hotella=Nutella, Kwassums=Croissants. He has been looking forward to this day for months already. And finally the count down is over. He is 5. For him this means a day blessed with said foods, lots of Lego-oriented presents, a Wii game, some books, a kick board that looks like a hungry shark with flippers and goggles to boot. All these are evidence that he is special, that we love him. In this past year, with the birth of his baby sister and his somewhat homicidal reaction to her, that message has sometimes gotten lost.

This morning, he brought his baby sister a kwassum and cuddled with her without trying to pull her limbs off. She cuddled him right back. Peace abounded. Hope for a more harmonious year dripped about like sticky soda.

He walked around the kitchen in his ski underwear (that he has worn since December as if it were a hair shirt) and talked into the camera as he filmed a movie of the breakfast table.

On the way to the car he was even happy that he bumped his head on our Camry's passenger side mirror. Well, at first he almost cried, but I picked him up and said, "You did that because you're growing! Now that you're five your head is taller." He giggled at this evidence that he was a person to be reckoned with, a person whose head was actually taller than he remembered. Hadley and I drove him to preschool together equipped with a posse of vanilla cupcakes and a bag filled with all the accouterments to decorate them. He pranced about his classroom like a little king, on his toes, nose high.

I can't help wondering if this mood will carry him to give up his hair shirt soon, or possibly grow into Dahlia's knight instead of her tormentor. I have faith that these may come to pass.

Alec has the soul of an artist or a Sicilian as Hadley and I like to joke, and as Hadley likes to say makes him a Holz--after my temperament and that of some of my predecessors. Whereby he can be the most charming person on the planet, so full of life, love, and fun OR an angry, paranoid, petty criminal. At five, this last tendency has made it a hard year for him and us. Keeping him from dropping things on Dahlia's head, detaching said limbs, wrecking Miles's Lego, and refusing to wear any clothing if his ski underwear isn't on underneath have been just some of the ways Alec has marked his fifth whirl around the sun.

By the way, I call his ski underwear his hair shirt because he wears it religiously, fearing who knows what evil fate if he should be caught without it. We have had to carry him naked to school without on those few days when it was still in the wash. In a Boston winter this is no small feat. He recanted each time, getting dressed in the Odyssey with the spirit of a tortured saint. Furthering the hair shirt theme, his long underwear has rubbed his skin raw. Since he started wearing it he has come out with eczema all over his belly and underarms that nothing but Vaseline laced with a trace of cortisone will get rid of.

Today he is wearing his hair shirt. But spring is underway and his head is growing. And in his sugar plumped cells change is afoot.

Procrastination will get me only so far

Well, I've been talking about blogging about motherhood for years now.  And aside from my time on the AOL owned Blogging Baby which is now called parentdish.com, I've kept my musings to my oldschool journal, or poured my heart out in emails. Each time I went to create a blog, different excuses paralyzed me.  So here's me giving up a little bit of my deeply entrenched perfectionism in exchange for just getting my thoughts on this subject out there in the blogosphere. And here's me flipping the bird to Procrastination and all its evil tentacles.

Hope for Trash Can Babies

Every once in awhile, a news story appears in my web browser that perfectly captures my mental state at the time. That's not to say that I ever seriously contemplated trashing my kids or giving birth on an airplane and forgetting to mention it as I exited the plane. But this story from New Zealand about a Samoan woman really caught my imagination.

"The television station said authorities discovered something was wrong after she approached them saying she had misplaced her passport. They noticed she was pale and blood-stained." 

What I'd like to know is how she gave birth in a tiny plane bathroom without alarming everyone on the plane. And how did she fit her baby in one of those tiny airplane waste bins that are always overflowing with paper towels? Thank goodness they're both safe and reunited.

Or maybe reunion is not such a hot idea if the woman shoved her newborn into the trash and got off the plane? 

A brief search on Samoa did not give me any more information. As far as I know it is not a known ritual in any human culture, but you never know what the trend might be in the South Pacific these days. No offense meant to any Samoans reading this, I am merely trying to shed some light on a very nearly tragic situation.

Speaking about trash can babies, remember the Wisconsin teen who birthed her baby in the bathroom at prom and after throwing him away went out to keep dancing? I wonder what music was playing when she left the bathroom and thus her baby whom paramedics couldn't resuscitate.

There are many instances of just this sort of thing. In fact I came across an anti-choice/pro-life site that listed them as examples of more immorality on the part of today's would-be mothers. But I am loath to admit that the authors of this site touched on a larger issue: in a society where trash can babies are relatively common, how can we provide a safe place for these babies? Preferably one well away from the trash bin.

Now surely, there are some who might argue that the birth itself rendered these single mothers so angry at their progeny that their instinct to destroy the outcome of such a process was natural. But I am an eternal optimist, and I like to look for a more positive angle in the messes that are these trash can baby tales. 

For all the horror stories and images out there promoting the idea of birth as a painful-ordeal-from-Hell requiring strong meds and doctors, the truth is that these women had unassisted births. Moreover, births that did not require them to call out alarming others. Births that worked, up to the point that the trash can reared its gaping maw. But my point is that the unspoken positive in all this is that even under the extreme duress that these women were under, their bodies did what women's bodies do--have babies naturally without a slew of high-tech gadgetry and OCD medical procedures.

Let's focus on the positive, people! And may I suggest that if waste bins are becoming the rage in secret births, let's put ones in public bathrooms that are big enough for babies and equipped with blankets + an automatic call button that would alert the authorities when a baby is placed in one.