the pieces of my life

I just want you all to know that I live in fear–absolute and complete terror–of the day Sweetie Pie becomes truly mobile. Don’t let anyone fool you with that demure girl bullsh*t. Sweetie Pie is 13,768,439.72 times louder, busier, and more active than Doodles was at this age. I think we’ve got a real spitfire on our hands. I don’t know whether to be proud… or to run for cover.

I’ve had it up to here (you can’t see it but my hand is at stratospheric heights) with Sweetie’s sleep. As you know, we’d given up on Ferberizing. Many suggested we try again at nine months. I kind of figured, “Hey, we’re not having another baby, she goes down in her crib for a few hours at night so I get some time with Adam, what the hell, let’s just keep cosleeping with her.”

And then Sweetie decided that she’s on the verge of crawling. She scoots backwards. She rolls prolifically. She gets on her hands and knees and rocks and rocks. But apparently she wasn’t getting enough of time to do this during the day. So she started waking at 2 a.m. To practice. In our bed. For one and a half to two hours. A night.

On night five of this, I simply couldn’t take it anymore. “Get her back to her crib!” I decreed to Adam. There was much crying involved. Some of it even came from Sweetie.

So what to do? She couldn’t sleep with us, she couldn’t sleep without us. But I figured once I started down this road, there was no turning back. Sweetie is now in her crib. And every night there’s been crying involved. So much crying, in fact, that twice now she’s woken Doodles, who we then take into our room because it doesn’t seem fair to him to have to listen to Sweetie.

Now, mind you, this isn’t “leave her along and let her cry” crying. This is “pat her on the back, whisper soothing words, nurse her a little more” crying. But it is crying nonetheless. Basically, she goes to bed at 6 p.m. or so, depending on what time we get home. She’s definitely ready for sleep and she fights it, but we’re at the point where after about five minutes of crying, she’ll drift off. She then sleeps until 10 or 11. And then she wakes with a vengeance. I nurse her. She’s obviously exhausted, but she does sleep… eventually. It takes her about a half hour to calm down. Then, like clockwork, up at 3 a.m. Last night for the first time I was able to nurse her and she fell back asleep within three minutes instead of the half hour of fussing.

Improvement, right? Nursing just twice a night instead of hourly. Only when we were cosleeping, I could pretty much sleep through those hourly nursings. Now I have to get up, go to her room, get her out of the crib, go into the next room to sit in the glider, nurse her, put her back in her crib, and return to my bed. I’m waaaaaay more tired than I ever was before. Honestly, I don’t know how all the non-cosleeping parents out there do it!

I did pick up The No-Cry Sleep Solution and it does have some interesting ideas… none of which had any effect on Sweetie. All these sleeping books forget to take into account older siblings. The book says something to the effect of, “The hour before your baby goes to sleep, keep things calm and quiet. Try taking her for a walk or relaxing with her in bed.” Um, yeah. What about the kid running circles around the table while you’re trying to feed the baby a nice quiet meal. What about the kid jumping up and down screaming, “I’m hopping like a frog! I’m hopping like a frog!” while you’re trying to give the baby a soothing massage. What about the kid who picks up the baby’s hand and puts it to his ear, leans down to the top of her head, and then yells, “It’s a Sweetie Telephone! I’m talking in the Sweetie Telephone” while you’re trying to find a clean pair of pajamas. What about when you give in, put the kid in front of the television, and just as you finish nursing, starts screaming, “Little Einsteins is over! I want another show!”

The books don’t seem to cover that. Maybe it’s time for some new books to be written.

I haven’t forgotten you people… you’ll have to give till the morning, though. (I’ll postdate so don’t be confused).

The saying is if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. I disagree. What the saying should be is, If you can make it in New York with two kids, you can make it anywhere.

Let me tell you, there are few things that feel as uncool as driving down the FDR in… a minivan. The minivan was critical for the trip–when Pie freaked out, there was enough room for Adam to sit between the two kids and keep them happy–but boy did I feel bridge-and-tunnel driving that thing in the city.

Did we survive the trip? Barely. It was alternately very, very fun and very, very bad. Adam and I actually got a night out–the Nana and the Peter stayed in our hotel room with the wee ones–and I got to see high school folks I haven’t seen in decades. I got to drink alcoholic drinks, which happen to be my favorite kind of drinks. I had conversations with adults and I felt like I was someone other than a mother for once. (The odd part, though, was going out in New York in daylight. In my youth, I lived in the East Village, and it never would have occurred to me that daylight hours were for anything other than going to the office or catching up on my sleep. No self-respecting New Yorker would consider venturing out in daylight hours. They melt or something.)

But then there were the other moments. Like when Doodles, who requested to nap in Sweetie Pie’s crib, decided he wasn’t going to nap. He was going to play. And no matter how overtired he was (very) or how angry I was getting (very, very), he was not going to sleep (not at all). The highlight came when I turned to Adam and said, “This is no fun. Let’s go back to Boston now,” and Doodles latched on to this. He stood up in the crib, big fat tears streaming down his face, screaming, “I want to go back to Boston. I WANT TO GO BACK TO BOSTON NOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!” He did finally–two hours later–conk out in the bed once I lay next to him and closed my own eyes. Something about my pretending to sleep always puts Doodles to sleep.

Sweetie Pie’s sleep was not a success, but luckily that was mostly the Nana and the Peter’s problem as I was out enjoying said alcoholic drinks.

Will we go back? Eventually. But there better be a hell of a lot of those alcoholic drinks waiting for me.

Sweetie Pie has started sleeping for about a three to four hour stretch in the evenings. We’re putting her in the crib, she fusses, we rub her belly (or back–she’s begun rolling over onto her stomach, which freaks me out still to no end even though I remember from when Doodles was this size that once they start rolling on their stomachs to sleep on their own, there’s nothing you can do about it), and she’ll fall asleep. We put her down at 6 and she’ll wake up between about 10 and 11 (although one blissful night, she stayed asleep in her crib until 1:30!). At that point she’s pretty much inconsolable unless either Adam walks her or I nurse her and then bring her into bed with one of us.

So, we got cocky. “She’s starting to sleep!” we cheered. “She’s starting to sleep,” we exclaimed. We patted ourselves on the backs. Sleeping Sweetie! We had been wanting to go to New York for a weekend, so we figured, “Why not!” My parents will be there to babysit one night, and I have no qualms with them hanging with Sweetie while she sleeps and then sitting with her in bed once she needs to be transferred. It’s not like in the old days where someone would be trapped next to her in bed for the entire evening. In Miami, Adam and I wanted to go out for a drink at the hotel next to my parents’ condo. When Sweetie fell asleep, we had to beg the Tweedle Twirp to sit in bed next to her so we could run out for exactly one hour. Adam and I were crushed when the hotel bar was closed for a private party and we booked for the next closest bar, about a 10 minute walk away. We had the bar to ourselves, considering no one in Miami drinks that early unless they’re still drinking from the night before. We made it back in 65 minutes (“Your five minutes late!” snapped the Tweedle Twirp–she forgets sometimes that she’s complicit in this whole child thing; my children are supposed to take care of her when she’s old). But now, everything’s changed! We can use babysitters! We can go out on real dates! Our daughter sleeps for a tiny, pathetic stretch of time but we are so conditioned that it feels like a real achievement.

You know what comes next. I bought our nonrefundable hotel room on Priceline. We made plans with friends. We get excited. And Pie stops sleeping. Last night, she slept for one–count ’em one–hour before demanding a bedmate. Crib streak–over!

Sigh. They can sense these things, can’t they? And they just want to punish us. I think Pie just doesn’t like to leave the house. Doodles, meanwhile, can’t wait to get out. I made the mistake of telling him that we were going, and since then it’s been nothing but, “I want to ride a subway train now! I want to see Peter now! I want to go to New York now!”

Nonrefundable. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Doodles is in a gymnastics class. He’s been taking gymnastics for about seven months now, and he adores it.

During the next session, the entire gym will be putting on shows. His class will be doing a “Chicken Little” routine. It’s all a big sham, I think, to get the parents to fork over money for costumes and then to pay an admission to watch the show. I feel like this is my inauguration into the world of just dumping all the contents out of my wallet for extracurricular activities.

Anyway, that wasn’t my point. The point is, the girls will be wearing yellow leotards with yellow hair scrunchies that they’ll put around their ankles, like chickens. The boys will be wearing black shorts and a white T-shirt. Now, if you were a 2 1/2 year old, which outfit would you rather wear? Exactly. Now compound that by putting one of your two best friends–who is a girl–in the class and she gets to wear the yellow leotard and hair scrunchy. Doodles declared today that he wants to wear the yellow leotard.

What to do? Do you know, as much as I worship the Free to Be You and Me album, I hardly ever play it for Doodles. And one of the main reasons is the song “William’s Doll.” For those who lived under a rock in the ’70s–or with Republicans–the song is about a little boy who wants a doll and his friends make fun of him and his father doesn’t want him to have one. His grandmother finally gives him a doll because “someday he is going to be a father, too.” I loved this song growing up. I still love it. But I don’t want Doodles listening to this song because it would never even occur to him at this point that boys don’t traditionally play with dolls. We have some dolls at home that once or twice he’s done something with, but I do know that he has enjoyed playing with dolls at school. I’m afraid if he hears the song, it’ll put the notion into his head that boys don’t play with dolls.

My point here is that I really try to be gender neutral in dealing with my children, a fact made difficult by my buying Doodles’s clothing off of ebay (lots of very “boy” looking clothing) and that Sweetie Pie’s clothing is mostly hand-me-downs (hence a preponderance of pink), but I offer Pie plenty of trucks and I didn’t blink when Doodles wore Pie’s pink socks to school.

Because the gymnastics show is still two months away, I simply steered him away from the clothing rack without saying anything. But what do I say? The leotard is girl clothing? Uh, I don’t think so. Do I point out that the boys will be wearing something else? Well, I could do that, but what’s going to have more effect on him: some boys he sees once a week or J., who he follows/fights with/plays with/hugs on an almost daily basis?

Okay, so maybe I fork over the $30 and let him wear the leotard. I mean, he is only 2 1/2. And if we were doing it in the ‘burb we live in, I think I’d feel quite comfortable doing so. But the gym is a bit aways, and it’s more of a working class environment, and I don’t think I want to go around explaining why I think it’s okay for my son to wear a yellow leotard and a scrunchy. But is that classism on my part? Or just laziness?

I’m hoping that by the time we have to order the outfits comes around, he’ll want the shorts and T-shirt (yeah, right. Even I covet one of those little leotards!). Otherwise, I’m going to have some great pictures to embarass him with when he’s 16 and trying to impress girls. “And here’s one of Doodles when he decided to perform his Chicken Little routine in a yellow leotard!” Might be worth the cost of the leotard just for that priceless humiliation.

I remember the conversation I wanted to blog about! And it was with Adam, not with Doodles.

In the a.m.
Me: Doodles, what do you want for breakfast? Hmmm, what do we have? [Rifling through cabinet, finding a box of Cocoa Puff bars] We have a chocolate bar left. Do you want it?
Adam: Would you mind not calling it a chocolate bar? I don’t like where that leads. Cocoa Puff bar or cereal bar.
Me: That’s fine. Good point. As long as we’re fixing up our speech, could we please stop calling them “Peeps” and start calling them “breakfast”?
Adam: It doesn’t work that way.

I had a lot to say this week, but I’m so roly poly after our Passover seder that it’s all fled me.

I said to Adam: We had some conversation this week that I wanted to blog.
Adam: What was it?
Me: I don’t remember. I just remember wanting to blog it but I was too busy to do it.
Adam: I’m not sure what it was.
Me: Hmmm. Maybe it wasn’t a conversation with you. Maybe it was a conversation with Doodles. Well, it was either you or Doodles.
Adam: That’s not saying much for our conversations.

True. But I still can’t remember. We got back from our South Beach vacation on Sunday and coming home was a real downer. We had so much fun with Rachel, Max, and Lily and Milo’s bar mitzvah was fabulous. We got to meet tiny little Helena (although I need to point out once again that tiny little Helena’s mom WOKE UP my sleeping child; I give her benefit of the doubt, as her daughter was a mere two weeks old at the time, but you can sure as hell bet when I return to Miami, I’ll be sure to wake up her sleeping child and she can see how nice that is for everyone). Doodles went bowling for the first time. Sweetie Pie just smiled and looked gorgeous for everyone. The weather was perfect. The Tweedle Twins were in fine form. And we came home to dreary weather, looming work deadlines, and mere days to prepare our house for Passover and our seder for eight adults, five toddlers, and one Sweetie Pie.

Passover seder was a success, if you can call four out of five toddlers turning mutinous fifteen minutes into the haggadah a success. But, hey, I think that’s thirteen minutes longer than they made it last year. Doodles recited one of the four questions (with prompting) and Sweetie Pie discovered that she loves matzoh balls (food #47 that she eats and Doodles won’t touch). In the middle of the crowded room, at one point, Doodles did demand that his father play baseball with him (uh, didn’t happen). Too much food. Sweetie Pie did remarkably well, especially considering that she has her very first ear infection. But the girl loves a crowd and she worked the room.

And now poor Adam is trapped in bed with Sweetie Pie–who still won’t sleep on her own–so I can blog for you people. Time for me to go relieve him and relax a little, knowing I don’t have to have a sit-down dinner like this for a whole ‘nother year.

This post was originally written at 2:47 a.m. last Thursday.

I’m pretty sure this is what Sweetie Pie is thinking right now: Hi Mom. I’m awake. Did you notice? I’m not just awake, but I’m Awake. Oh, hell, who are we kidding? I’m AWAKE! AWAKE, AWAKE, AWAKE! La, la, la, la, AWAKE! Entertain me, please. I mean now. STOP CLOSING YOUR EYES! Yes, I may have wormed my way into your bed, but now you must keep those eyes open and MAKE ME HAPPY! No, I don’t know what will make me happy. That’s your department. Take me for a walk. I don’t care that this is Miami Beach in the wee hours and you’re in pajamas. Yeah, that’s it. Put me in the mei tai. What, the balcony? I want to go out. I want to par-tay! Mom, didn’t you hear this is South Beach, where the party never ends? And I don’t just mean the party in my pants that I’m currently working on. Oh, I like this. You walking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth… Ha ha ha! This is funny! I’m just going to look at you with my big wide eyes and laugh and laugh! Because this is so much fun! Oh, I could do this for hours. Ha ha ha! And I think I will…

Desipte all the Swiffer Swuff (okay, I did just make up that word), hardcore feminist, cool-chick Veronica is a finalist in Swiffer’s Amazing Woman of the Year contest. If she wins, $5,000 is donated Women in Media and News. So go vote for Veronica here.