the pieces of my life

I love cleaning supplies. In my fantasy world, we live in a clean home. There’s no gunk on the stove hood, no dust bunnies beneath the sofa, no dried pureed peas on the dining room. The house would smell fresh and there would be no crunching sensation beneath my feet. So in my quest for this Martha-approved house, I buy cleaning products. I’m a sucker for cleaning products. I see the ads on TV, and I buy. Swiffer dusters? Got ’em. Clorox wipes? Check. Kitchen soaps, fabric refreshers, shower sprays, you name it. I can’t wait to buy the new disposable toilet cleaners.

So the problem? The problem is they are all sitting unopened underneath our kitchen sink. I never, ever use them. I buy them, and they sit. Because the truth is, I love cleaning supplies, but I hate cleaning. Every single week I think, “Wow, I should really vacuum the carpet upstairs, because I know the dust and crap that gets in there is really bad for Doodles.” And every single week, I think, “I’ll have time to do it tomorrow.” You know what? I have the time. I just have better ways to fill that time. If we didn’t have house cleaners that came every other week, we’d be in a certified sty. Believe me, you don’t want to be in our house at one week, six days.

In one area, I’m completely deficient as a female: I don’t get shoes. Never have. It was the one element of Sex in the City that never made sense to me. Shoes are the things I’m required to wear when I go out in public to keep the bottoms of my feet from getting dirty. I hate heels. I don’t long for strappy little sandals. I think spending ridiculous amounts of money (meaning more than, say $30) on something that clomps along the ground is ludicrous. In December 2001, I bought an ugly pair of gray Merrells that were the most comfortable shoes I had ever put on to wear in the Fernely warehouse while working the holiday rush. (And apparently I’m in the minority in thinking they’re ugly.) I love those shoes. I wear those shoes nonstop. When I was working at BU, I had to wear actual shoes. I have no shame in the fact that I shopped for said shoes at Payless (although, truth be told, I had a couple of good pairs from Nordstrom that I bought before interviewing for jobs in Boston). Then, toward the end of pregnancy, none of my shoes fit. I could only wear open backed shoes because my feet had swollen to elephantine proportions. On the weekends, I could happily wear my comfy Merrells. And then once Doodles was born, it was Merrells every day. As you can imagine, shoes that have been worn that much are probably in need of replacement. Actually, they needed to be replaced a couple of years ago, but I haven’t been able to find the exact pair again, so I stick with the same pair. But they are definitely on their last legs (so to speak). So this past weekend when I was at the outlet malls in Kittery, Maine, looking for clothing for Doodles, I bought, on a whim, a pair of comfy red mules at the Hanna Anderson outlet. So now I own a second pair of comfy shoes. But when I got home, it occurred to me, I have no idea what–besides white and black–I can wear red shoes with. I asked Adam what to wear him with–he has more fashion credentials than I do–and he said, “Yeah, I don’t know what you do with red.” So I have a lovely pair of comfy shoes that are going to sit at the bottom of my closet. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

We haven’t actually seen it happen, but when I checked a half hour ago, Doodles was fast asleep on his stomach. When Adam just checked on him, Doodles was on his back. Which means that either someone has been sneaking into our house and rolling our child over or he’s learned how to roll from his front to his back. Which is exciting. And scary. Because a child who can roll from his back to his front and his front to his back is officially mobile. Also, when Adam went to get Doodles this morning, he was on his hands and knees, rocking back and forth, a precursor to crawling. Luckily, it takes Doodles a very long time to get from one stage to the next, so I’m don’t think he’ll be scooting around anytime soon. The downside to all of this is that Doodles is waking during the night–twice on average, once at midnight, once at three a.m.–and screaming for about an hour at a time. We’re not sure if he’s teething (we read that the two upper teeth come in three to four weeks after the two lower, and, hey, it’s been about four weeks since those lowers poked through) or if these new developments on Doodles’s part is interrupting his sleep. And speaking of interrupted sleep, there goes the little squawk on the baby monitor. At least I know I won’t have to roll him over.

• Doodles is now seven months old. Which is not good. Because in the scheme of “nine months on/nine months off” for weight loss, it means I only have two months left to go. Granted, I’m within four pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight, but given the way my new body is shaped, I have more than four pounds to go.
  
• Speaking of “nine months off,” I did a little weight lifting at the gym. I used only a five-pound weight and did lots of reps. Simple, right? Right. I can’t lift my right arm now. I couldn’t figure out why my right arm hurt so much more than my left arm, and then I realized I carry an eighteen-pound weight everyday in my left hand (so I can have my right arm free to do stuff).
  
• The O.C. still rocks even if Paris Hilton did guest star. Everyone’s allowed a mistake occasionally.
  
• I just want to take a second to rave about the “thinking moms” out there. For starters, there’s the DotMoms blog, which is a great collection of mothers (of kids of all ages) writing about their experiences, good and bad. It represents quite a diverse range of moms and views and backgrounds, and I find reading it to be refreshing. Then there’s Brain, Child, which I’ve just started my subscription to. It’s a fabulous literary journal about motherhood (concentrating on mothers, not the kids). Mothers of daughters especially should run out and get the latest copy just to read the essay “The Vagina Dialogues” by Shaunna Harrington, which is hilarious and on the money (mothers of sons will like it too but won’t be able to relate in quite the same way). Parents, check out these two things! Okay, advertisement over.
  
• Is anyone else as upset as I am that Bob Edwards is being forced off of Morning Edition (the CNN version of the story)? Bob Edwards is Morning Edition. I’ve been a supporter of NPR for a while now, but all I ever listen to is Morning Edition. It may be time to reconsider that support.
  
• He’s cracking. Adam actually said this morning, “I’m not sure how I feel about Bush these days.” Heh heh. Before I’m done with him he’ll be reading The Nation and wearing Birkenstocks (not that I actually read The Nation or wear Birkenstocks, but you know what I mean).
  
• Curb Your Enthusiasm is such an incredible show. The season finale was one of the best episodes I’ve ever seen on TV. I thought I knew where it was going. I was cringing with the mishap that Larry David was getting himself into, that he always gets himself into. And, as happens in 99 percent of those episodes, the show totally took my by surprise. It was hysterical! They use their guest stars so well (in this case, Mel Brooks and David Schwimmer). (If you don’t know who Larry David is, he’s one of the co-creators of Seinfeld and the character of George Costanza was based on him. The interview he did a decade ago with Laugh Factory is one of the funniest I’ve ever read.) Watch this show! (End of second paid placement.)
  
• Doodles is now thoroughly enjoying his baths. I, however, am not. Because Doodles is obsessed with the plastic duck thermometer. It floats so nicely. It’s made of a very light plastic, which means it’s easy for little hands to pick it up. But my child doesn’t want to pick it up. My child, lazy little guy that he is, would rather lean precariously over in the water and stick his face on the floating duck to get it into his mouth. Picture bobbing for apples but with a duck instead. Which means I’m constantly on edge, trying to clean crevices and keep Doodles from submerging his face. No matter how many times I hand him that stupid duck, he drops it and leans over, with his mouth wide open. Water on his face doesn’t bother him, but it bothers me. So basically instead of him learning to pick the duck up, I’m learning that I need to check the bath water temp before Doodles gets in and then hide the stupid duck.

I hadn’t had a workday in a while, because last Monday we were coming back from New Hampshire and the Friday before that I was preparing for the trip. In years past, preparing for a trip meant spending five minutes tossing clothes into a duffel bag. Now it’s an hours long process involving sorting out which toys will keep Doodles occupied the longest, guessing how many outfits he’ll poop on, and trips to the grocery store to make sure we have adequate amounts of organic baby food. We seem to have had a lot of visitors lately, which is great, but it means that my days for work tend to get shuttled into getting-things-done-around-the-house days.

So I was psyched for last Friday because I have a number of projects I’m working on and I had a deadline this week. Besides, my e-mail backlog was getting out of hand. So I spent the morning attempting to take care of the most pressing e-mails, starting my challah (which I bake every Friday we’re home–nothing makes the house smell as good as fresh baked bread), and figuring out what needed to be done first. I just had everything organized and I started to get into the business of writing, when my cell phone rang. It was the day care. Doodles was being recalled. Apparently the flu bug hit again. He had diarrhea (and now that I have a baby, I guess I need to learn how to finally spell “diarrhea”) twice and I had to come pick him up. I think that child is conspiring with the fates to keep me from getting any writing done. Funny thing is, I took him home, and he was in high spirits. I didn’t see any diarrhea and he was in a bouncy, happy mood. Made me suspicious of the day care. My child was doing wonderfully.

On Saturday morning, Adam, Doodles, and I got in the car for the hour drive up to my in-law’s house. We were going to hang for the morning and Adam was going to help his dad install some software on his computer. We made it just over halfway there–just outside Newburyport–when Adam looked in the backseat just in time to see copious amounts of vomit erupt from our child. I pulled off and got into the backseat, and Doodles kept coming up with more and more vomit. I couldn’t believe he had that much in him. We debated whether or not to keep going, but ultimately decided to turnaround because I knew I’d have to feed him again and that I’d have to do it in small amounts (which meant I’d have to pump and feed him, and I didn’t have my pump with us). A quick call to the doctor confirmed this. She said we need to get some Pedialyte into him and monitor him carefully to make sure he had three wet diapers. I was to feed him a teaspoon of liquid (Pedialyte, breastmilk) every five or ten minutes. Yeah, like Doodles was going to like that. At first, he’d bat away any bottle with Pedialyte in it. We bought numerous flavors and kept trying them. After a bit, we tried the first one again (Gerber’s version), and he finally took it. We have three nearly full bottles of Pedialyte in our fridge if anyone needs some (and it kills me that they say you should throw them out after three days).

We got home and we maniacally checked his diaper. I’d grill Adam: “Was it wet? How wet?” He did fine the rest of the day, but then it was bedtime, which sent me into a minor tizzy. Doodles sleeps on his stomach now. Exclusively. If we roll him over, he rolls right back. He might spend a minute on his side, but his position of choice is facedown, on his tummy, with his face in the mattress. It’s a little freaky. I had visions of him puking in the night and then sleeping facedown in it. Yuck! And, to my mind, dangerous. So every time he made a peep, I ran in there (or sent Adam in) to check on him. He made it through the night with no puking, and I’m happy to report that it was not only the end of the stomach flu, but it ended in time to have the 24-hour symptom freeness that the daycare required for him to return. He’s back to his old self, with a huge appetite and plenty of giggles.

Thought I had a few nice things to say about being a Hah-vahd spouse in my essay for the HBS Survival Guide. Turns out I was wrong.

We have a Sara Hickman album called Toddler. It’s a good album (although I think I like Newborn better). However, there’s this one song on it that I can’t stop singing and it’s making me insane. The main lyrics are:

I know a wienie man

He owns a wienie stand

He owns everything from hot dogs on down

Someday I’ll be his wife

His little wienie wife

Oh how I love that hot dog man

The lyrics don’t do it justice–you have to hear it. I keep playing it over and over and over and when I’m not playing it, I’m singing it to Doodles. I may be causing great emotional damage, but I just can’t stop myself! It’s so catchy!

Doodles can roll from his front to his back. I’ve seen him do it a couple of times. Yet, he seems to have forgotten how to do it. Because now he rolls from his back to his front–obviously forgetting that he detests tummy time–and then gets stuck. I’ve been summoned into his room more times lately to roll him, in his crib, back to his back. The routine is this: he gets on his stomach and starts to cry; I roll him back; he smiles and then within seconds rolls right back to his stomach and starts to cry again; lather, rinse, repeat. I just hope I can teach him soon that if he doesn’t like being on his stomach, he shouldn’t get on his stomach.

My father has it in his head that he’s going to teach Doodles all the math and science he needs to know. So he’s starting the lessons. Only he refuses to start at the beginning–too boring, he says. So he’s teaching Doodles his prime numbers. Over the course of the weekend, my father would raise his arm and shout, “It’s prime time!” And then he’d yell out, “Two! Three! Five!” Of course, when Doodles was feeling sick, he was “not ready for prime time,” however, I decided that teaching him to say “Jane, you ignorant slut,” wasn’t the best thing to teach an almost-seven-month old. When I need to hire a math tutor because Doodles doesn’t understand that one and four need to fit in there somewhere when counting, I’m sending the bill to my dad.

To celebrate my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary–which happens later this month–the family went up to Bretton Woods for the weekend. We stayed in the townhomes there, which were surprisingly nice given that they were chosen randomly off the Web. Having the townhouse was key, because in enabled everyone to do his or her own thing. The Tweedle Twins (the Tweedle Twirp and her boyfriend) could sleep in late while the rest of us went for breakfast. The folks with the wee baby could go to sleep early while the others stayed up finishing off their game of Trivial Pursuit. We could all indulge in hot chocolate and cookies right in our room. We had one fancy-shmancy dinner at the Mt. Washington Hotel and it was really fabulous. My only regret is I ordered poorly for dessert (I had the oysters, frisee, and lamb, and they were all superb).

For the activities, we all split up, with my father and Adam hitting the slopes (Peter to ski; Adam to snowboard), the Tweedle Twins playing Ping Pong at the hotel (the townhomes are part of the resort so we had full access to the hotel and sports center), and me, my mother, and Doodles going snowshoeing. Snowshoeing was wonderful. I wasn’t sure Doodles could handle it, but he did quite well. I put him in the Baby Bjorn and stuck a pair of sunglasses on him because it was a bit windy and I didn’t want the reflection from the snow to hurt his eyes. Oh man, you’ve never seen such an adorable snowshoer. We got stopped a bunch of times as people oohed and aahed at how cute he was. I had intended to go out for just an hour, but he was doing so well that we stayed out for two hours. About halfway through I could see Doodles was getting tired so I turned him around in the carrier so he could fall asleep on my chest. I really enjoy snowshoeing and I’m not sure why I haven’t done it more. My first experience was at Mt. Rainier and it was obviously much hillier and the snow was plentiful. The weather conditions at Bretton Woods were lovely–the weather was in the mid-30s and the skies were only a tad overcast. The only downside of snowshoeing with Doodles is that by the end of the day, my shoulders were pretty sore from the weight of our chunky monkey in his Baby Bjorn.

The next day, I had a short massage scheduled. I feel a little gypped on the massage, as when comparing notes with Adam–who had the same therapist just before I did–he had a much more aggressive massage. I like a lot of pressure, but I think she was a sexist masseuse and gave Adam a better rub. However before the massage I found my parents who were tubing. I wasn’t going to try it, as at the age of three my father had severely traumatized me. We lived at the time in Westchester County in New York and we had a very steep driveway (I’m sure my father will post a comment claiming it wasn’t that steep at all, but I was three and dammit, it seemed steep to me!). He stuck me on top with a tobaggan, went to the bottom, and told me to slide down. I didn’t want to. It was long and scary and I wanted nothing to do with it. It was a horrible experience and it turned me off of sledding. So when I saw my folks tubing, I initially wanted nothing to do with it. The slope was fairly icy and it looked dangerous. But overcoming my fears, I got into the tube, and gave it a go. Man, do I love tubing! I went on three runs before I had to go get my weak massage.

Overall, the weekend was lovely and Doodles was well behaved the entire time. He charmed folks everywhere and during our fancy-shmancy dinner, he kindly slept through the majority of the meal (babysitting could have been arranged, but if I don’t feel comfortable with people babysitting in my own home, there’s no way I’d let them babysit in a rented townhome). For anyone looking for a weekend getaway, I highly recommend the resort at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire.