Parallel play

Baby A. is the son of J.D.'s oldest friend, Patrick, and his wife, Jamie, both of whom have become my friends. I don't like them because they are J.D.'s friends and because I have to--I like them for themselves, because I want to.

Baby A. is four months older than Lulu. I actually got my positive pregnancy test the day of Jamie's baby shower. When A. was born, I had just crossed the threshold into the second trimester, and holding Baby A. was a little bit magical for me, not only because he was my friends' kid and I loved him instantly, because I was starting to see that there was one of these soft, squishy bundles waiting at the end of the road for me, too.

When I was on bed rest, Baby A. and his parents came to cheer me up. After Lulu was born, when she finally came home from the NICU, Baby A. was one of her first visitors.

From the very beginning, Jamie and I would laugh about how much fun they'd have together when they grew up, all the adventures/scrapes/mischief they would get into. We couldn't wait to see it happen. We watched to see it happen.

But for the most part? The kids ignored each other. At best they were extremely wary of each other.


Sometimes Baby A. seemed curious about Lulu, and would kind of test the waters by hitting at her. When Lu didn't hit back, he'd crawl away. For Lulu's part, I'm not sure she really knew that Baby A. existed. Sometimes she'd focus her eyes on his face for a second, but then they'd slide away toward something else. Four months was too big a gap; they weren't on the same developmental playing field.

Until this weekend--when Lulu finally caught up. J.D., Patrick, Jamie and I spent the day at their cabin in the mountains...and the kids spent the day playing together--actually playing together!--on the floor in front of the picture windows.


Sophie the Giraffe was the rock that finally broke the ice. Baby A. reached for it--Lulu snatched it back. Baby A. gave up, very chivalrously, and spent an hour or so gently feeding Lu her other toys in the most gentlemanlike fashion. He knows how to treat a lady.

When they got tired of the toys, Lu lay on the floor and Baby A. crawled over her a few times and even got a little fresh, taking a bite or two of her cloth-diaper-covered behind. Then he crawled away to eat a bug. There was some brief static over a bottle that both babies wanted to claim for themselves, but it was soon forgotten. As Lulu fell asleep on the floor, Baby A. stroked and patted her hair. Maybe with a little more force than was strictly necessary, but the right sentiment was still there.

I love that Lulu has a friend. I hope they will be friends their whole lives. And I can't wait to see what kind of mischief they'll get into, together.

Just a Happy Day

I half suspect we are going to have a very nasty and long winter. What other explanation is there for this glorious weather we've been having - in November of all months?

Sunshine and 60 degrees today, and enough leftovers from last night's supper that I didn't need to cook. What other excuse did I need to spend most of the day outside with the littles?

While Grace napped today, I dragged Joy's table and chair out and we did school outside. HOMESCHOOLING baby, oh yeah! You're not a real homeschooler until you've done school outside. True dat.

I even brought my tea outside. Black dragon pearl tea. The perfect thing to drink on a sunny and crisp November day, outside watching my girls play.

(With handwarmers I knit myself, by the way. And don't you like my nail polish? It sparkles. Oh yeah.)

After Grace woke up from her nap and we all had lunch we came back out - OH.

Wait.

Before I get to that, I have to tell this.

After Joy and I finished school, I came inside to make lunch. Joy wasn't ready yet, so after very carefully pacing out the boundaries in the backyard of where she could and couldn't go, I let her stay outside.

FIRST TIME EVER.

I mean, I've let her play outside on her own at my parents' house before, but they live out in the country, and there are usually other adults around to glance out the windows at her and keep an ear open. This is the first time I've been brave enough to trust her to stay in her limits and not kill herself or get kidnapped by some creeper swooping down out of the sky.

Of course, I compulsively crept from window to window to watch her, but I didn't let her know she was being watched, and she was pretty proud of herself. I was proud of myself, too.

And then, of course, she came to the door and said, "Mamma, I saw a SNAKE! And I said, 'hi, snake,' and watched it go off in the leaves. It was yellow and green and a BIG mama snake."

I gulped, told her she was good to stay back and not try to touch it or follow it, and then came in and Googled snakes native to NY state.

It was a garter snake. Phew.

Anyway, after Grace got up, we all came back outside, and I stood back and watched the girls play together. Lots of giggles.

Joy usually leads the way.

But never think Grace doesn't have a mind of her own.

Most of the time, Joy accepts that. With a few reminders from Mamma, of course (hey, I'm a younger sister, too).

It's been awfully generous of Mother Nature to give us these golden days now. We can pull out the memory of them later, in February, when it seems that the world has always been and will always be cold and grey and bleak.

Thank you, Mother Nature, dear!

ETA: so I wrote this post yesterday; this morning, Carl had to pull a tick out of my back. IF you are going to spend a happy day outside playing in the leaves, please make sure to check you and your kids all over when you're done. I erroneously thought the frosty night would have driven them all into the ground; obviously there are one or two still left in the leaf piles.

One less, now.

Mommy meangirl

I have to preface the entry by saying that I live in the snootiest county in the snootiest area probably in the world. There's this messageboard, for moms in my metro area? And it is filled with some of the meanest parents I have ever had the misfortune to run across online. People who won't hesitate to tell you that they think you are a bad parent, that you are fat and poor, that your kids are ugly. There are SO many mean moms on there. But luckily I have never encountered any of them in real life. All of the moms I have met in real life, at parks and library story hours, have been nothing but totally awesome and nice.

Until today. Today I am pretty sure I was mommy meangirled.

It happened like this: Lulu and I got up early. It was raining, so our usual jaunt to the park was out. So we decided to go to a playgroup meetup at a local community center. We've been a few times before, she loves it, I have a great time talking to nice people. Today I sat down in my usual spot, started chatting to the other parents. There was a dad to the left of me, a mom to the right with her twins. We listened to stories, we sang songs. Then we put the babies on the floor and let them loose on a bunch of small plush balls.

Just about this time, a new mom walks over, plops herself down with her kid, and confiscates the balls nearer to us. She turns to the mom with twins. "Would you like to play?" The mom with twins says yes, and so the new mom rolls a ball to her. Then she leans ALL THE HELL WAY over me and says to the dad, "Would you like to play with us?" The dad says yes. She says nothing to me. She rolls the ball over my legs to the dad. Lulu is sitting there clapping her hands, watching. The mom collects the balls, rolls them out again. But not to us.

WTF, right? I just kind of sat there, waiting for her to ask us if we would like to play, too, but she didn't. Soon it became apparent that she didn't plan to, and I really didn't know how to respond. I suppose I could have asked, "Hey, can we join in?" but neither of the other parents had had to ask, and something in me balked at having to be all, please, sir, I want some more to this woman who had so obviously snubbed us. Across the room were some moms I knew, nice moms, moms who had always included us in previous playgroup activities, and I wanted so badly to get up and walk away from the mean mom but my foot had fallen asleep, which prevented a quick getaway.

So I just sat there, feeling like a fool. Thinking of other times in my life I had felt this way. In sixth grade, when I learned everybody in the class except for me and a few others had been invited to Allison Dupre's birthday at a really cool waterpark near the beach. I had always been really cool to Allison, practicing spelling with her in the carpool line before a big test, lending her Sweet Valley books. We were in Scouts together. She had come to my birthday. When I confronted her, crying, asking her why I wasn't invited, she said, "I just didn't feel like inviting you, Cathy."

While I waited for the feeling to come back in my foot, I went over a mental checklist, trying to work out if there was anything about the way I looked, right then, that would make it appropriate--even wise--to exclude me from the playtime fun. I was wearing jeans and a black tee, ballet flats, an anthropologie sweater. My hair was brushed. My teeth were brushed. While I was not wearing makeup, I had at least showered and put on earrings. They were $4 earrings from Forever 21, covered in tacky rhinestones, but I did not think that qualified me as crazy woman from whom you must protect your children. Maybe she didn't like the cut of my jib? Maybe she thought the others would be more complacent minions?

And the worst part was, this woman's kid? Was older than Lulu, about a year old. And could tell that Lulu wanted to play. So every time she got the ball, she rolled it to my daughter. And then the mean mom would reach over, take it back, and roll it to one of her BALL PLAY APPROVED friends. It made me sad, to see her kid so open, so inclusive, because I know when that baby grows up, she is going to be a meangirl just like her mother. Because you learn what you see, right?

The hour came to a close, the other parents got up and drifted away, and finally, the mean mom turned to me and tried to make small talk since she had nobody else to talk to. I guess I was better than nobody at all. I usually try to cut people some slack in situations like this, but today I wasn't in the mood. I just kept thinking of how my kid's eyes followed the ball she (or I?) obviously wasn't good enough to play with. And plus she was being so suddenly nice and it freaked me out. The feeling had come back to my foot so I stood up and collected our things. The mean mom said, "Are you going to come back next week?" And I said, "Maybe."

Here is what I would have liked to say, though.

"Listen, lady, probably not--unless you're not here. Because seriously, you have just made me feel about three inches tall and I don't like the fact that you found it so easy to be rude and excluding to a little baby. Maybe you don't like my diaper bag or some shit, but that's no excuse for excluding my kid. She doesn't realize now but one day she will and she'll be hurt, and I actually think people who can be hurtful in this way are psychopaths that are a worse of a threat to society than someone like Dexter, who dismembers and kills people on the reg. You've now thrown me into a quiet panic about how I will handle this mean girl shit in my daughter's preteen years, how I will make her feel better when girls like your own kid are mean to her because they can be, since I don't seem to be doing such a good job with it myself right now. Nothing would make me happier than if you relocated to Timbuktu. I wish you hemorrhoids. Good day."

I got home and dug through the toy box and found a few balls of our own. I spent a little while rolling them to Lu, praising her when she bopped them back in my direction, talking about how good it felt to share when I rolled them back. I might not be able to protect my daughter from all the meangirls in the world, but I swear by the three faces of Jove, she will never be one herself. Not while I have breath in my body.

This messy life

I've always prided myself on my ability to keep a clean house. It's something that has always been very important to me. There are a hundred thousand neurotic reasons why. I got married at 21, and so I think having a perfect, spic-and-span abode felt like some way I could prove I was mature enough to be somebody's wife, that I was ready for it. Also, J.D. and I have always lived in small spaces, and there just isn't a lot of room for clutter. Clutter actually makes things take longer: try cooking dinner in a 30 square foot kitchen that's laden with dirty dishes. And then there's the fact that cleaning is such an easy way to feel like a success: you do the job, and then you can step back and see it's done, see what you've achieved. When I was in law school and struggling with thorny legal issues that had no real resolution day in and day out, I found it difficult to sleep unless my entire house was clean, everything put away, all the laundry folded, all the towels hanging the same way on the rack in the bathroom. Which...is probably something I should discuss with a therapist.

Having a baby changed things. For one, there was more clutter. Little toys, onesies, cloth diaper inserts, all needing a home, a place. Tiny socks needing a mate. Bottle bladders, guaranteed to reduce colic--all of these things needed to be washed, dried, matched with corresponding parts. And then, of course, there was less time to do all that.

I tried my best for a while to keep up. I followed the Fly Lady's protocol. I downloaded the Motivated Moms app for my iPhone, and received a list of tasks to perform each day. But both programs made me feel like more of a spazz, not less. Organize my crafting corner? WHAT crafting corner? Clean guest bedroom? I vacuumed the couch, looked inside the cushions, found three forks. I got sidetracked for an hour by a note directing me to scrub my upstairs bathroom--oh, what I could do with an upstairs bathroom! And an upstairs!

I started to fall further and further behind. A few dishes left in the sink when I went to bed. A jumble of shoes in the corner, instead of neatly put away in corresponding closets. And then, almost without my realizing it, this happened.

At first I felt bad about it, fought a little harder. I'd decide to tackle that front closet, pull everything out as the start of a massive decluttering project. Then the baby would wake up, and I'd have to leave everything where it was and go change her, and oh, shit, do a load of cloth diapers, and all the shady things that had been hidden away at the back of the closet slowly became permanent parts of the surrounding landscape. It was like quicksand: the more you fight, the faster you sink.

So I stopped fighting. One of the most liberating moments of my life was the day I realized that I was a better mother because I had stopped putting such a premium on a clean house. Before, Lulu spent a lot of time in her swing while I folded clothes, listened to way to much of the Toddler Tunez HD music channel. The song about walking to school, bouncing like a kanga-ranga-roo? On a trampa-lampa-line? I think that was driving both of us insane.

Now we do a lot more of this:


And this:

And yes, there is still some of this


But in the end, it's probably a lot less brain-damaging than the trampa-lampa-line.

And now, if you'll excuse me, Lulu just woke up, and I need to go hike up Mt. St. Laundry to find a burp cloth. Wish me luck! I may be some time.

Swing Time

Dear Child Protective Services,

I want to apologize for traumatizing my child on the swings the other day. In my defense, I didn't really know how much they would scare her. I mean, the first time we put her on a swing, she seemed to really enjoy it.


So how was I to know how skeptical she'd be when we tried it again?
Also in my defense, there were times when she seemed to think it was OK.

And I thought if I kept pushing, she'd change her mind about it. And after all, good parenting involves giving your child new experiences.

Although I do apologize for that one big push I gave her...


where she almost toppled out.

And for abandoning her on the torture device so I could attempt an artsy wide-angle shot with the camera. It will never happen again.


But I want you to know that I came right back the VERY MOMENT she started to cry.


And that when Lulu made this face

I took her right home.

And while we are apologizing for things, I am sorry for those three episodes of Big Rich Texas I made her watch with me while we snuggled on the couch afterward. It didn't really seem to affect her all that much...


But I know that you are afraid I have done lasting harm to her tender psyche. Sorry for that, too. I promise you I will do my best to make sure my daughter does not grow up to abuse facial fillers.

But even if she does, I promise not to mock her. (Much.)

Thanks for understanding!

Until next time,

Cath