Archive for November, 2009

Bring on the inflatable snowmen.

November 29, 2009 · Filed under holidays, sick days · Tagged ,

I love Christmas. Or, if we’re being technical about it, I love the Christmas season. Christmas itself is like the sparkly royal icing on a really well-made sugar cookie. Or maybe it’s more like an extremely good piece of peppermint bark, since everyone knows deep in their heart that sugar cookies kind of suck.

Now that I’m a mother, I have a brand-new appreciation for this time of year. Yes, watching Aura painstakingly unwrap every present in her stocking is camera-worthy. Of course listening to her make up her own never-ending lyrics to the tune of “Jingle Bells” is worth the price of admission. But what I’m really talking about are THE OPTIONS. Man. You can spend every single day of the Christmas season doing a new activity and never once hit up the Rainforest Café or the H1N1-ridden children’s room in the library or the toy section of the Dollar Tree. There are tree-lighting ceremonies, holiday-themed storytimes, crappy craft fair upon crappy craft fair–it’s like a never-ending parade of pine-scented events. And that, folks, is the true meaning of Christmas: ways to burn time.

Exhibit #1: Hanging garland on mailbox. If one is armed with the proper plastic tool, this activity can take at least 10 minutes. Maybe 12.

This may not seem like much to parents who work outside the home (although I know you all definitely have a deep appreciation of the subject on weekends), but to stay-at-home parents, discovering new reasons for getting out of the house and away from the morning’s ninth game of Chutes and Ladders is like crack. Really good crack, I imagine. Like if this was TV, you’d be buying it from the astonishingly good-looking drug dealer in the VIP section of the club, not the skeezy guy on the corner near the car wash. That’s how good.

Anyway. Moving on.

I discovered all this last year, when Aura and I began what I like to think back on as the Month of What It is Surely Like in Hell, or At Least the Really Undesirable Section of Purgatory. Shortly after Thanksgiving 2008, Aura and I came down with raging colds and prolonged cases of pink eye. Just for fun I also developed an inner-ear infection, whose single redeeming factor was that I could totally gross out strangers with its existence.  Before that, I had no idea how easy it is to freak out a grocery-store cashier. You mention “rupture” and “eardrum” in the same sentence and it’s like every single person in a Stop & Shop apron goes pasty. This is very satisfying when they’ve forgotten to scan your frequent-shopper card again. Makes you forget all about the knives stabbing you in the ear.

We interrupt for Exhibit #2: Shopping for and buying holiday socks. Easily takes up another 20 minutes, maybe 25 if you suggest putting on the good patent-leather shoes, too.

Between the two of us, Aura and I were pretty much blind and deaf for two-thirds of December. Yet we adjusted. Though it frustrated her, Aura got used to yelling into my good ear. I slowly became accustomed to wearing glasses instead of contacts, albeit glasses with a prescription four years out of date. Most days we weren’t fit for hobnobbing with others, so every fever-free evening I would plunk Aura in her car seat and we would drive around for an hour, trying to spot new Christmas light displays. It was a merry time, Aura announcing inflatable snowmen at top volume in the direction of my right ear, me weaving on the road, squinting wildly so as not to hit any carolers.

On days when we were feeling particularly frisky and non-contagious, Aura and I would truck on over to Target, where we would ooh and aah over the displays of moving wicker reindeer and point out the artificial Christmas trees we would have bought if Daddy hadn’t been so cheap and insisted on the shortish one with wonky boughs. Then we’d head to a nearby ice-cream shop and take out heaping cups of peppermint-stick ice cream.

It was during these quiet, nearly blind times that I began to fully appreciate the depth and breadth of the Christmas season.  So much to do! So much to experience together! If only we weren’t walking, breathing clouds of plague!

And so, in the throes of a rare spell of non-preschool-tainted good health, I enter Christmas Season 2009 with high hopes. Perhaps a little too high, since I believe Aura and I are scheduled to witness 12 tree lightings and pay visits to approximately 36 mall Santas. Such carousing will no doubt tax our immune systems to the brink. But, hey, we have all of January to lie in bed.

Exhibit #3: Riding the Holiday Express, aka decked-out commuter rail train. Meeting Elmo and then talking about it gets you 60 minutes minimum.

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Bad Habits, or Why My Hands are in My Pockets

November 23, 2009 · Filed under parenthood · Tagged , ,

There’s nothing like having a child to make you suddenly aware of all your weaknesses, failings, and general inaptitude for being a human being. Yes, I know that everyone is tasked with a few bad habits. In Aura’s case, it’s the constant evaluation of the cleanliness of the ground around her. She can spot a dust bunny five rooms away, an errant piece of sock lint from thirty yards. It can be disconcerting, leading a person to develop a Dustbuster dependence that will surely and eventually lead to tequila shots at breakfast.  And don’t even get me started on parking lots. I can’t count how many times I’ve found myself splayed face-first on asphalt because Aura pulled up short while holding my hand to pick up random litter. I tell you, I am practically hoarse from screaming “Not that filthy napkin! Please, NOT THE DISCARDED HYPODERMIC NEEDLE!”

As if it's my fault the floor is rife with PixOs. Who invented PixOs, anyway? I'd like to track them down and, um, converse with them firmly.

And then there’s Adam. His cocktail habit (making them, not necessarily drinking them, although he’s pretty good at that, too) is completely destroying my kitchen organization plan.  (You know, the one in which I imagine tidy cabinets and then wish really, really hard for them to happen.) He now has so many bottles of esoteric rums and vermouth that the essential stuff is being shoved aside to make space. Sometimes I swear I can hear the flour canister muttering to the boxes of pasta, plotting unspeakable revenge on the encroaching bourbons. One of these days it will get bloody, I fear.

I could fit at least 50 boxes of Reduced Fat Devil Dogs in this half of the cabinet alone.

But I’m the one brimming over with non-commendable behaviors.  Some habits are minor and rather inconsequential. I often speak at warp speed.  I have a sweet tooth that could crush Manhattan and my Diet Coke habit just can’t be healthy. And I’m obsessive about laundry.  Other habits are the kind I’d rather jump into oncoming traffic than inspire Aura to mimic. For one, I worry way too much, often overprioritizing the smallest of stuff. I can be judgmental, overly sarcastic.  The list goes on.

I’m working on remedying all of these things, but hoo boy, this maternal determination thing is FATIGUING. Some habit-breaking promises have turned out better than others, though.  One day, as I was filing Aura’s  tiny fingernails, I laughed and showed her how much longer her nails were than mine. When she asked me why this was, I told her, a little sheepishly, that I bit my nails.  When she then asked me why that was, I paused. How do you tell your adoring three-year-old that you gnaw your fingernails because it’s the best way you know of to deal with stress over work and commitments and family and embarrassing episodes of “The Office”? That they’re bitten to the quick because you sometimes get terrified of the what-ifs?

So I didn’t tell her any of that.  I just made her a promise, then and there in her fairy-themed bedroom, that I would try to have nice nails, too. And you know what? I’m doing pretty well. I have my moments of weakness (the combination of the upcoming holiday and a weekend screening of “New Moon” did not help) but I have yet to nibble off an entire nail. I’m not convinced that having actual thumbnails also means that I am learning to be a calmer soul, but I figure it’s a step in the right direction.

Of course, there was another part of the promise. I told Aura that once my nails were long enough, we’d both get manicures. I already have alarming visions of fidgeting and poison glares from nail technicians and possibly the largest spill of glitter nail polish any salon has ever seen.

But I refuse to worry about it.

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The Second-Child Decision

November 19, 2009 · Filed under home sweet home, parenthood · Tagged , ,

When I was a wee whippersnapper, I daydreamed complex fantasies in which I was not an only child. Instead, I had two siblings. The first was a strapping older brother who would surely introduce me to his handsome friends once I got to high school. I think maybe he could fly, too. I also was blessed with a delightful older sister, a girl whose laugh was like the gentle yet powerful tinkling of a fountain (think Rainbow Brite mixed with a little She-Ra, Princess of Power), who would braid my hair with unconditional love and smooth my foray into seventh grade.

Instead I had a dog, a terrier mix positively overflowing with unconditional love who nonetheless chewed my glasses almost beyond repair. Needless to say, wearing duct-taped glasses is not an entrée to the In Crowd.

Over the years, I adjusted the dream. If I was not to have brothers or sisters, my children would.  It would be shoulder-to-shoulder in my house, the children (all ruddy-cheeked and delirious with siblinghood) merrily fighting over turns in the bathroom and the chance to help Mommy wipe down the kitchen counters. To be clear, each child would have no need whatsoever for orthodontia and would excel at academics, sports, and the creative arts. If one fell a little short of expectations, I would simply sell him or her.

I harbored the Five Kids or Bust! dream well into adulthood. As my immediate family grew smaller and smaller, the idea of a full house retained its appeal. I wanted a packed dining room on holidays, complete with mini-wreath napkin holders and tastefully mismatched candles in varying heights. (I get a lot of catalogs.)

MarthaStewart.com swears that I can whip this up in seconds.

Then I got pregnant. As it was, Adam lost the power of speech for five full days after I showed him the positive pregnancy test, so shocked was he that we were going to have a baby after a mere seven years together. (It was a quiet, peaceful time, during which I had complete control over take-out options, it being tricky to voice your opinion on pizza vs. Thai when struck mute.) But when a very early fetal screening showed that we had stunningly high chances of having a baby with Down’s Syndrome, my full-house idea was shuffled off, somewhere else. I suddenly knew what every other parent-to-be has realized at some point or another: To have a single healthy child is a blessing, a stroke of amazing luck unmatched by any scratch-ticket win or raffle prize.  Of course we were happy and excited to meet our baby girl. She was ours and she would be perfect in her own way, whatever that might be. And later screenings failed to show any worrying markers. Still, when Aura popped out screaming and healthy and perfect in her own way beyond any description we could have come up with, we thanked God and the stars above and anything else we could think of. It was unspoken that we would try not to be too selfish; we had one healthy child and perhaps that was just enough.

Even more perfect when asleep.

And the work. GOOD GOD, THE WORK. Forget abstinence promotion or sex-education classes.  All people need to do is paste a teething baby on the back of birth-control packages and no one would ever go off those suckers. The sleep issues, the cleaning, the mind-boggling amount of patience required. If it’s this numbingly exhausting with one child, how do people do it with more? When I attend my mommy potlucks, I always sidle up to the mothers of two or more, furtively eyeing their Chinet plates in hope of locating clues to their stamina. Does an extra helping of broccoli-slaw salad help? Perhaps three stuffed shells instead of two? I have to actively resist the urge to pat these parents on the back or at least bow down before them.

I really, truly don’t know if I have enough Momness in me to do it all over again. I think it is very possible that I give nearly everything I have to Aura and that a second baby would just be screwed. Aura agrees with this hypothesis. The other day, on a whim, I asked her what she would do if she had a baby brother or sister. She thoughtfully sucked her thumb, toed a Polly Pocket on the floor, then announced, “I would leave it upstairs.” And, honestly, I’m afraid I might, too.

We could, however, search for the forgotten sibling with these Bendaroo glasses.

Because when you get right down to it, we’re happy. Really happy, actually. The three of us get along fantastically, except when we don’t and that’s of course Adam or Aura’s fault. Off and on, I undergo bouts of stabbing guilt that Aura has also been born into a small family. Now and then, I worry that she too will sometimes regret her only-child status and long for more people in the house, more noise, bigger Thanksgiving dinners. I look at all of our friends who have had a second or third child and I understand that it is doable, even wonderful. But for right now, Aura is enough; more than enough. She is still perfect beyond description. And really, that’s all we want and need.

Except when she wakes up at 2:00 a.m., again, to “chat.” Those are the times I stumble downstairs, power up the laptop, and research the going rate for a three-year-old. Turns out we could get at least enough for a week-long vacation in Jamaica and maybe a used Volvo.

Tempting.

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