Swimming

Swimming is so popular in our neighborhood that most minivans in the neighborhood have been bedecked with paint over the last few weeks: "Swim Fast Trevor!!!" and "Go Orcas!" Most of the swim teams around here had their final meets in the week leading up to the start of school, so it seems they were filled with team spirit (and car-safe paint) as they went into their final competitive meets.

And this suits us fine, because it seems Babycakes is a swimmer. The night she was born, her daddy dreamt that she became an Olympic swimmer and a concert violinist. I don't want to put undue pressure on her, but she certainly has been ALL ABOUT THE WATER since she was born. (The jury's out on violins.) In fact, when she emerged from the womb, everyone exclaimed that she seemed to have SWUM out.

She seems to have been born with the right physique, love of water and into the ideal community. But she has found the WRONG MOM to guide her to that gold medal. I am such an IDIOT in the water.

I have started taking her to swim classes, and I am such a friggin' FLOUNDER.

"Are you left handed, by any chance?" The teacher, J., asked.

"Yes," I said distractedly, fumbling with my child's slippery torso and trying to keep her head above the water while I executed some dipping maneuver.

"Maybe that explains it," she proffered nicely.

No, J., I'm a WATER IDIOT. Unlike my child, who has been called a "fish" and a "mermaid" by her instructors, I need some sort of bright orange water wings to distinguish me from other, more competent mothers.

My incompetence begins even before we enter the water. I wrestled Babycakes into a swim diaper at the side of the pool, only to discover that the other moms, the clever ones who are probably stockpiling car-safe paint for their child's future swim meets, change their children in the warm, private changing room I had walked right past. And they also don't just put on a swim diaper, but supercute little swimsuits, like they are real people, instead of as I saw them: "slippery beings who might shit in the water."

The other moms know each other already, and they give me that "new girl in school" super-nervous feeling. They started singing songs with accompanying hand motions and their little girls were all making the motions in their fabulous little one-piece suits, looking askance at me and my daughter as if to say... "Who's the topless Frenchie?"

I asked one of my fellow moms when babies usually start these swimming lessons.

"Twelve pounds," she said. "Well, it depends on what your swimming goals are for your child. But at twelve pounds they can regulate their temperature enough to get them started."

God, I'm LATE! I'm SO LATE!

Anyway, I followed the class as best I could, only half-drowning my child twice, and requiring J.'s assistance only half-a-dozen times. The experienced babies were swimming FIVE FEET AT A TIME, underwater and unassisted. They were DIVING. I'm talking about babies who were less than two years old, leaping gracefully from the poolside, swimming underwater with their eyes open, reaching the side of the pool and pulling themselves up. What the HELL!?

Babycakes just kind of clung to me... "Mom, I like the water and all, but these people are maniacs!"

"Babycakes," I said to her (in my mind). "If we're going to live in suburban California and be even remotely popular, you're going to have to jump in the fray here. And don't forget to point your massive toes!"

At the end of class, J. pulled me aside again and showed me moves in which I was to lift and roll my child out of the water so that the "hemispheres of her brain" would adequately "sense the boundary between the water and the air," and I bumped into J. and kept starting on the wrong foot then using the wrong arm and ultimately waterlogged my child's hemispheres.

But Babycakes didn't care, because J. gave her a cookie, and she promptly dipped the cookie in the pool and got it really gooey before she began gnawing on it with her three teeth.

That's my girl.

Big Foot

Yesterday I noticed that Babycakes had to curl her toes in order to fit into her brown Mary Janes. I had to admit that she had, in fact, grown. It was time for new shoes.

Why did this surprise me? She's a KID. She grows. That's the main occupation of kids everywhere. But so QUICKLY! And when shoes are so ungodly expensive? Shouldn't we be wearing OUT the shoes and clothes before they are outgrown? I guess that's where eBay and hand-me-downs come into the picture.

So we trotted down to the shoe store -- me striding along in my flip-flops and her skittering along, jammed into her brown Mary Janes, not unlike a hapless Japanese baby of yore with artfully bound toes.

They measured her again, and she had grown (in two months' time) from a dainty size 4 (extra wide) to a size SIX (still pretty wide). So there were new Mary Janes to be purchased, and pink sneakers, ballet slippers for her turn as a flower girl and some badass slipper socks to wear with PJ's in the morning.

I slipped the old Mary Janes in my purse, so tiny and delicate compared to her massive new sneakers. I asked the saleslady if this was typical, this, ahem, "supersized" baby foot. I had to really press her on the subject, because she didn't want to be the one to tell me I had given birth to Sasquatch.

Finally she produced a chart from under the counter that tracks typical baby foot sizes. No, she admitted, studying the chart with a furrowed brow. It's not typical. She's got feet like an 18-month-old, really.

All right. Well, that makes sense. She's wandering around in 2T shirts, so 18 mos. shoes track with that. And they're W-I-D-E. Just like her daddy and grandmother. So the cute narrow sandals I've been ogling will never be part of our reality.

We walked out of the store -- Babycakes now running in her Big Girl Sneakers. Pink and velcro'ed and just her size. They looked like little boats sailing under her brown skirt, and she could really MOVE in them.

"C'mon Fancy Feet," I called, "Let's go celebrate your new togs."

And we did, at a table for two at California Pizza Kitchen. We colored and stared at our fellow patrons. And they stared back. At Mama and her little baby Sasquatch, happily mowing through their meals.

Demons

I am officially over my postpartum/pregnancy hormone swell -- as I'm BACK into SCARING THE CRAP out of myself.

I just finished watching two episodes of "A Haunting" on the Discovery Channel. WHY do I do this to myself? My friend J. recommended the show, and it is fan-freakin'-TASTIC. It's a perfect blend of real ghostly phenomena and bad acting, plus "eerie" special effects.

(Oh thank GOD Hub-D is home so I can NOT be so sure that DEMONS are in my house.)

MFA Advice

My young friend K. just started her MFA program, and I have SO MUCH ADVICE for her.

I got my MFA several years ago, and I'm glad I did it. I honed my writing, I met Stella , and I had a good excuse to kick around Boston for a few years.

But instead of inundating K. directly with ALL of my PEARLS of wisdom, I'm posting them here, where she may read them carefully, memorizing every word and perhaps mass-produce a poster for her fellow students:

(1) Go ahead and get drunk with everyone as often as possible. You're surrounded by WRITERS who all have DEMONS and so there will be drinking. Make enough money at some random job so you can buy pitchers, particularly when you've conned your writing instructor to join you. These nights of drinking are important not only because they help you exorcise YOUR demons but because then you will have a prime chance to make out and otherwise bond with your fellow writers, because they will be published in the Atlantic Monthly sooner than you would believe, and it's nice to know famous people.

(2) Try not to actually SLEEP with any of your fellow writers. Ew, I mean, it's WRITERS.

(3) Demand feedback from your instructors. Remember that they are writers too, so they can be flaky drunks just like the rest of you. Stella and I are are still waiting for one instructor (J. Michael Deneen... I hope you find this post when you google your name) to grade our final papers from Fall Semester 1994. We worked HARD on our final papers, but he never read them. He simply gave us "A's" to get rid of us. DO NOT ACCEPT THIS BEHAVIOR! No matter how much you might look up to your instructors, do not let them off the hook for their obligations to you. MFA programs are EXPENSIVE and these guys get PAID to teach you. Demand that they do, and bond with them as much as possible, keeping advice item #2 in mind at all times.

(4) Don't read your fellow students' work to the exclusion of all else. There will be shitty writers in your program, and my experience has been that I begin imitating others' writing the more I read it. You will begin writing shittily if you only read shitty writing. Read it enough to give intelligent commentary in class, but immediately flush it out of your head with really awesome writing. Use a ratio system, such as: for every 10 pages of shitty student-written short story, read 15 pages of Alice Munro. If it's poetry, you're going to need more intensive flushing. Just keep the Norton's Anthology handy, and when your fellow students are rambling on about whether adverbs should be allowed in poems (my opinion: one per poem MAX), pretend to "refer" to something in Norton's in order to cleanse your brain of the shitty poem you're deconstructing. (I'm not alleging my own writing wasn't shitty. I once subjected my class to a poem called "Driving Down the Mountain Stoned" -- oh God, the guilt...)

(5) Seek out a few favorite instructors and heed only their advice. The instructor I chose as my thesis advisor loved my poetry, or at least put on a good show, and he really studied it HARD and took me very seriously. But most other instructors were full of crap. One of them told me to stop anthropomorphizing cows in my poems. I told him no, and I'm SO GLAD. I mean, what's a good poem without a philsophizing bovine? So find your favorite instructors, use their office hours as much as you can, and get your money's worth of the good guys!

(6) Keep your day job. I was SHOCKED to learn that there isn't an MFA job-placing service where companies FIGHT for the honor of hiring accredited writers fresh from the mill. There isn't. It was really good that I kept my random job so that I could buy pitchers of beer. That job turned into my career, and that career eventually paid off my mammoth student loans. I didn't want to become a writing instructor (too much drinking, shitty writers, and demanding students!) and the Poet Laureate position is FILLED, so don't dream that your MFA is going to move your career appreciably. That said, it's a GOOD thing, and it will enhance your ability to be a journalist or a PR flack or an ad guy or whatever -- but it's not going to pay the rent like an M.D. or a J.D. or an M.B.A. or pretty much ANY OTHER DEGREE IN EXISTENCE.

(7) Too much workshopping can kill any good piece of writing. Learn to accept about 40% of your fellow students' advice and "listen" politely to the other 60%. And only workshop your writing twice, at a maximum. Stop editing it after awhile, because you'll be like a barber who tries to "fix" a haircut and you'll accidentally ruin the spirit of the whole thing.

(8) Don't bring a huge bag of stinky take-out food for yourself to enjoy during class. Stella and I once brought a big load of Indian food to class, to our eternal regret. Were those samosas worth the guilt for the next 70 years, remembering how disrepectful we were to our classmates and instructor by REEKING up our whole classroom? Well, almost, but probably not.

[NB: I know that if Stella comments on this post, she's going to mention what bad gas I had in our MFA classes. Listen, I'm sorry about that. I was in a phase of drinking too much coffee and it went right through my system. Before she brings it up, I thought it was worth mentioning.]

I hope this advice is useful, K. Good luck and godspeed! (Watch the coffee...)

Twins

Hub-D and I drove home from Rockridge today, where we had had a pizza-related playdate, and dreamed of TWINS.

SO GREEDY, we just sat there and fantasized about what we'd name them (Evelyn and Katherine), and how fabulous they would be, and how we would surmount the medical odds (and they would be full-term and gloriously healthy) and it started to seem just inevitable that we would have TWINS.

Before today, we had never shared how damn excited the idea of TWINS is to us. But we just let loose today. See, that's another good thing about not being pregnant -- any future children exist in this misty fantasy realm, where they are perfect and amazing and inevitable.

[Other reasons it is good that I am not pregnant: beer and soft cheeses.]

But mostly I wanted to share how freakin' fun it was to sit there with my husband and dream up these marvelous twins.

"Then we'd be DONE having kids!" I said.

"No way," said Hub-D, still dreaming of his boy.

She will always be my baby

Babycakes' FIRST BIRTHDAY is in ONE WEEK. I am really not ready for this. Never has a "milestone" felt so much like the one chasing Indiana Jones. I just know it's going to squish me.

Last year at this time I didn't know her. I sat here, at this desk, tapping on my keyboard, e-mailing everyone to say YES, I'm STILL PREGNANT (i.e., leave me the hell alone). It was two days past my due date.

On this day last year, I had my sister in town, who was set to help out at the delivery (she ended up having to go home before I went into labor), and she rubbed my feet and showed me DVD's of "The State" that she had found on eBay, and we just waited. And waited.

But then, yes, the baby came on September 3.

And I'll never forget the feeling that morning, after the final push and the first meeting and nursing and great swoon of love. The nurses took Babycakes out of the room for her bath so I could get some rest. And our besotted Hub-D went with his new daughter. And I lay there with my big, watery, empty belly and felt SO ALONE. There was no person living inside my belly anymore, and I missed her so acutely. It was quiet, my body was my just my own, and it felt wrong.

Babycakes' first birthday is evoking a similar feeling. She's running now, and drawing with Crayons (I couldn't believe it either, but it's true), and making friends of her own. She's about to be ONE. She is making her own way in the world, holding my hand only for the tricky parts. As of next Sunday, Babycakes will be a real little girl and not a BABY by anyone's definition but mine.

That's right, Chubble McBubble McTrouble McPie, you will ALWAYS be my BABY.

Stuck in child's pose

Today I was in my "Power Yoga" class, attempting to do the "scissors" pose -- whereby one rests one's torso on one's elbows and splays one's feet both backwards and forwards, and it ended in grunts and collapse. Not that I'm ATTACHED to any outcome in my yoga class. No, I'm way more ZEN than that. Except I felt like a total pantywaist.

So anyway, as I lay in "child's" pose, I started to feel REALLY angry. It was huge, this anger, like a swirling upside down whirlwind of bright red MEAN ANGER. Who was I angry at, I wondered? Where in the HELL was all of this vicious pissiness coming from?

Was I angry at our supercool instructor? No, definitely not. Myself? Heavens, no! Hub-D? Hm, although a tempting suspect due to his proximity to the dearest layers of my heart, NO, not at all. Hub-D took me out for ice cream last night! MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP! So, it wasn't him. What was my problem?

The yoga class kept going on, but I was so absorbed in tracing this MEGA-ANGER that I was oblivious and motionless.

I started to realize where it was coming from, and I thought, "Oh no, not this CRAP again! No. No. I don't want to have to think about all this, and why does EVERYTHING have to trace back to my goddamn miscarriage!!???" Yet it DOES.

See, after my miscarriage, everyone said, "You'll be pregnant again before you even know it!" and "People who miscarry are usually pregnant within 1-2 months afterwards!" Everyone had a cousin or friend who had gotten pregnant almost immediately after their miscarriage.

So I thought, COOL! I don't really have to put away the maternity clothes or the maternity feelings or the maternity vitamins -- I will just PAUSE it like TiVo. But anyone with TiVo knows that there is a limit to its pausing ability, and if you try to pause too long, the TV will LEAP back to life and startle the crap out of you.

So it was like my emotional TiVo just blared back on in that yoga class. Because I'm NOT pregnant, and I got my period one day late (I hate it when it does that), and I THOUGHT I was being all ZEN about it, but I'm not. I'm pissed off! I want to put all those people and those stories in the same place to which I damned the people who said, "Your nausea will go away after Week 12." No it won't, and no, I won't be pregnant within two months of my miscarriage. I will be a barren woman approaching middle age with one precious child knocking around in the trunk of her car.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing

It seems to me that parenthood is alternatively laughably easy (Babycakes walks with me to the car and climbs into her carseat) or inscrutably difficult (tantrums), and to top it all off, I really don't know what the hell I'm doing.

I know other moms who really seem like they know what they're doing, even though they're doing it for the first time. Me? I just check in with Babycakes every so often... "This working for you? Yeah? Well, what the hell, we'll just go with it."

This goes for chewing all the random crap in the backyard like the elephant ear and the mysterious berries that fall off of our neighbor's tree. "Yawn... whatever, have at it, Babycakes... Reject all your broccoli and gnaw the backyard to shreds."

I can't be bothered to find out if things are safe. Like, is it OK to put my kid in the trunk? I think it's hilarious that she's IN the trunk with all the deadly tire jacks and FLARES and God knows what. And instead of being a rational parent and assessing the safety of the situation, I take a picture:

Uh-huh. I pick her up by her ankles several times a day. I call her "Chubbles" -- in PUBLIC. I feed her food that gives her diarrhea. I take her to Gymboree in crazy tight jeans.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing. But for some reason I'm allowed to continue doing it.

A plea for self-sufficiency

Dear Fellow Citizens,

Do you REALLY need to call an emergency vehicle? Is it DEFINITELY necessary to request that a big truck with a SIREN be sent to your home or business? I really want you to think about it for a moment before you dial 911.

See, sirens are the the one noise that unfailingly wake my child and disturb her, and it's difficult for her to go back to sleep once she's heard that wailing noise.

So come on. Could you maybe drive yourself to the hospital? Oh, it's a fire? Well, let's try using the fire extinguisher first, and then maybe a bucket brigade. That seems to work on "Little House on the Prairie" for barn fires and such. Why not give that a try before so hastily involving the authorities?

If it's a criminal at work, perhaps you could enact some sort of "citizen's arrest" on him/her and then transport them (quietly) to your local police station?

Let's all work on being a little more self-sufficient in our community, shall we? Think of all the tax dollars we could save by taking care of our OWN emergencies, or at least keeping them QUIET between the hours of 7-9am, 11-12pm, 4-5:30pm and 8pm-6am.

Thanks.

Eloise

I am thirsty, I am beat, I smell, and my kitchen floor is covered in tiny dried black lentils, Grape Nuts and several unidentified sticky substances that I'm just too tired to scrape off.

But I'm happy.

See, Babycakes, Hub-D and I spent last night in the city, which was a marvelous TREAT for all involved. As soon as we got out of the car and entered the hotel, Babycakes and I transformed ourselves into Eloise and her Nanny, enjoying every amenity, calling down for cookies and milk, and wreaking general havoc.

When one of her favorite maids disappeared into an laundry room, Babycakes tried prying open the door (her new, disturbing trick) then laid down on the carpet in front of the door, weeping. "Come back, favorite maid! Keep talking with me!"

I also discovered the peaceful pleasure of napping with my baby. Now that she's not nursing, we don't really snuggle in bed anymore. Not because I wouldn't enjoy it, but because she does NOT. See, I am really hot when I sleep. Hub-D says I am 1000 degrees "Kelvin" when I sleep. And yes, about twenty minutes into our nap, Babycakes pushed me away with all her might, crying out in her sleep... "I've been attacked by THE SUN!" But I kept my face close to her, and my overheated body off to the side, and I just smelled her hair and enjoyed my beautiful daughter.

And just for the night, along with our beloved Hub-D, we were Eloise and Nanny, far away from raccoons and my fertility library, from all of the projects in mid-completion around the house and FAR away from all the Grape Nuts and general household chaos -- we were divined down to our little family and a few bags. And I loved it more than anything.

Preschool is not an option

In (my hero) Vicky Iovine's "Girlfriends' Guide to Toddlers," she discusses what usually happens at a preschool graduation.

WHY DON'T YOU JUST KILL ME NOW?

They play "Pomp and Circumstance" and your BABY walks across the stage and receives a diploma. Your BABY who no longer needs you at all hours, who has accomplished her first YEAR of academia, who has friends that you DO NOT KNOW, with private jokes and hand signals and, probably, plans to run away together when they turn 16.

I am not OK with this! Babycakes just keeps GROWING and getting more hilarious and more sophistocated.

Lately, she likes to just stand up, wherever she is, and RUN at top speed toward the master bathroom, skidding across the tiles, prying open the shower door with her miniscule fingers and jumping into the shower stall.

Why? Because it's time to YODEL! It's mostly extended "Daaaaaa"'s and "Doooooo"'s but it's definitely singing, and she'll happily sit in that shower stall, cutting her debut album, until it's time to urgently do something else, like take one of her two beloved ribbons and stash them away in "secret" locations throughout the house.

She's such a great kid to have around. She laughs when we laugh, even though I don't think she got the joke. She eats what we eat (except her arch nemesis, yogurt). And she's my pal. And I don't want her to start going to SCHOOL at some point because, HEY, she's MY pal, and I don't want to share her with a bunch of strange children I do not know. What if they are mean to her? What if she hurts herself and I'm not there? And worse? What if she LOVES it and wants to go every DAY???

Then if I DO let her go to preschool, kindergarten is right on its heels... then first grade, and it DOESN'T STOP! The next thing you know, I'm hosting her high school graduation party and haplessly filling laundry baskets with college dorm supplies and she will move out of my house!? NOT ACCEPTABLE.

That's it. I'm going to move my whole family to some remote location in the world, one with no academic system in place. I will teach Babycakes everything she really needs to know, and she will stay OUR BEST FRIEND 4-eva, because I will have isolated her from any other social opportunities. Because she's MY pal, and I'm not going to share her. You hear me, Preschool?

Baby Loves Disco

So what's it like going to a nightclub in the middle of the day with a toddler? It's fun, but you don't get to let LOOSE and drink and be a wild woman on the dance floor.

But really, who cares, because you actually get to step foot ON a dance floor, which is an improvement over stepping on Grape Nuts on your kitchen floor. So what if you have a toddler hanging on your hip? You're OUT, in the CITY, at a certified COOL PLACE.

Babycakes, after an initial response of abject horror, seemed to warm up to the Baby Loves Disco (BLD) experience. By the end of the event, she was kickin' it on the VIP upstairs dance floor, pulling new dance moves with the aid of a little Hula Hoop. She threw back FOUR juice boxes, and found lots of interesting things on the floor to taste as well.

I was so excited that I put on a full face of real make-up, including dark shadow in my eyelid creases. The eyelid creases rarely get the shadow treatment, but it was a SPECIAL DAY, and a slew of our little baby friends were there, gettin' down at Baby Loves Disco.

I came home this evening and signed us up for December's BLD. I can't wait! Anything that involves balloons, a mirror ball, a cheese-rich food table, Abba, and a fully stocked bar is a surefire hit with both me and my wild child.

This is Baby Loves Disco's official site.

Seeking adventure

It's possible that everyone in the world is tired of my QUEST to have another baby. [Cut to a scene in a distant yurt, where two Mongolians are sipping yak milk, saying, "Isn't her period due Tuesday?" "God I'm sick of talking about it."]

But yeah, my period IS due on Tuesday, and my dour demeanor (and intense chocolate craving) seems to be my first clue that I'm *PMS*, so this AIN'T the month, and that I need to focus on the NEXT cycle and FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF MY OWN HEAD!

I tried to book a spontaneous trip to Jackson Hole for next week. Just me, Hub-D, Babycakes, the jagged mountaintops, clean air, and no books about cervical fluid. I even found the last room available in town, AND free tickets on United. BUT then Hub-D reminded me that his presence is required in the office next week and he can't possibly go. So I called the Inn back -- the place with antlers over the fireplace and warm chocolate chip cookies in the lobby -- and cancelled.

So I moved the adventure closer to home. Next Monday night, we have reservations at a hotel in downtown SF for me, Hub-D and Babycakes, only 30 miles from my ovarian-centric bookshelf -- but an adventure nonetheless.

And in the meantime, I'm heading into the city for a couple fun trips. Today, Babycakes and I are going to check out the "Baby Loves Disco" phenomenon -- I know EXACTLY what she's going to wear. (What will I wear? Does it matter?) And tomorrow, Babycakes' Aunt S. is having a party in the city, so it's another good reason to get the hell out of the house and escape the Grape Nuts that are lodged under all the kitchen counters (thanks, Babycakes), and plus, if I can convince Hub-D to drive, I'll drink WINE and make merry and chase the blues away.

I'll do anything to NOT focus on Tuesday and the little stack of pregnancy tests in the bathroom drawer and my aging eggs -- a whack on the head with a frying pan, perhaps?

Flower Girl

Would someone tell me, for the love of all that is holy matrimony, how in the world we're going to get Babycakes down the aisle as a flower girl?

When my sister first asked me if Babycakes could be a flower girl for her wedding, well YEAH, of COURSE! She wasn't even walking yet, but I thought -- whatever, we'll put an Oreo or something down at the end of the aisle, and she'll just march methodically in the direction of the Oreo, and everyone will say, "Awww" as she honors her Aunt E's wedding with her staid and understated performance.

Yeah right! I tried the dress on her yesterday, and she instantly began chewing on the dainty flowers that are sewn (hopefully not GLUED -- she gnaws through glue like a beaver through wood) on the skirt. And she started shaking the dress around like Carmen Miranda, doing some sort of inadvertant can-can as she tried to remove it from her wee body.

And, in the 45 seconds in which she wore the dress and I took the above picture, she smeared some sort of liquid on the shoulder.

This does not bode well. And DON'T tell my sister. But I suspect this event and my daughter aren't going to work together without a lot of duct tape. I don't know yet how the duct tape will be used (keep dress on/keep flowers attached/gag child) but I feel it in my bones... some sort of MacGyver-worthy action will be required.

Mistake

While Babycakes ambled around the front yard, gnawing on bark chips and calling to Otto absentmindedly ("Dah-Doh... Dah-Doh...") I devoured "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" today. I was desperately digging around in it for answers and solutions and a scientific system whereby I could get PREGNANT and STAY PREGNANT for goodness' sake.

But I think it might have been a mistake, my having read it. I learned that women who are 35 start to have miscarriages left and right. We just miscarry at the drop of a hat, according to this respected fertility specialist. We can get pregnant, oh yes, but our eggs are so feeble that if the grocery clerk looks at us cross-eyed, we miscarry. If we wish too hard for pregnancy, we miscarry. If we read Charles Dickens, if we assume "child's pose" too often in yoga class, or admire ourselves in the mirror -- well, bye-bye baby.

I am TOTALLY exaggerating. It just said that when ladies are over 35, our rate of miscarriage goes way up, and stays there. And by 40, it's Miscarriage City.

..."WELCOME to Miscarriage City! Just stack your positive EPT tests over there, and your hopes and dreams over there, because you're OLD, lady, and you shoulda had your family YEARS ago!"...

This "old eggs" effect, combined with my newly self-diagnosed "short luteal phase," just spells "O.N.L.Y. C.H.I.L.D." as far as I can tell. And there she is, teething on some sort of treated cedar. Or it could be cat poo. Whatever, she's having a good time, and leaving me alone long enough to FRET LIKE A BIG DOG about my fertility.

I haven't been CHARTING! The book goes to great lengths to convince every lady out there to CHAAAARRRRT their fertility cycle, and (close your eyes for this part, gentlemen) FEEL our cervical fluids, testing to see how STRETCHY it is. The book goes on to describe a woman whose cervical fluid stretched 10 inches.

I imagine a scene in a locker room... "Hey Gina, I heard your cervical fluid is 8 inches LONG -- oooooh!" "Your mother's cervical fluid is only 3 inches! Ha ha." "Oh yeah, then how'd I get here?"

So I was left in this tizzy, as I hauled the trash cans to the curb, "assisted" by Babycakes, who pushed them from behind as I pulled them. I was thinking so hard about my cervix and my age and my likelihood of miscarriage and the lack of extreeeme stretchiness in my pitiful cervical fluid that it was only later I realized she had plumbed through dried-up maggots in her bare feet.

I've gotta take better care of my sole representation in the gene pool, yes? Particularly now that she lets me do pigtails:

Chebbles in the City

What was most remarkable about our trip into San Francisco is that for the first time, there were NO TEARS. No crying, or whining, or weeping sadness that usually characterized some point of every trip to the city we'd ever taken. It's a long excursion, going downtown -- we drive to the train station, take the train, negotiate the elevators, and just getting from Point A to Point B can be a huge hassle.

When I let Babycakes out of the stroller down by The Ferry Building, she instantly made for a homeless man who was camped out nearby and had shiny beer cans, inadvertantly luring my daughter toward his encampment. The elevator at the train station smelled like a dead person with a great deal of body cheese. They don't have high chairs at the Ferry Building, and potties with changing stations? Hahahahahaha.

But it was a marvelous adventure, due to Babycakes' devil-may-care attitude. She was such a good sport about everything -- me alternately pulling her out of her stroller ("Go have an adventure, Chebbles!") then shoving her back into it ("Aaaah! Stay away from that homeless guy's beer!... Sorry, sir.")

I feel like she's turned some sort of corner, attitudinally. For one, she has turned into a fabulous walker. She RAN down a hill at the park on Sunday, shocking me. So I allow her to ambulate all over the place, and she's just more satisfied with life. She took a LONG second nap, and truly didn't need that 4pm snooze. She knows not to put everything in her mouth anymore, so I give her a much greater measure of freedom, and she's really enjoying being an 11-month-old madwoman.

6pm tonight found her on the Ferry Pier, eating Japanese marinated eggplant with chopsticks (chopsticks steered by ME, much to her dismay...), watching the Larkspur ferry chug out of the harbor as pigeons strolled around her ankles, knowing from vast experience that babies mean treats. And she was damn happy.

We totally have fleas

We saved a baby possum from our backyard last weekend. He was such a cute little bugger, wandering along the walk. I knew (having been the lucky recipient of a headless possum) that it was dead meat if Otto caught wind it, so I boxed up the baby possum and trundled him to the local wildlife rehabilitation facility.

Today Babycakes and I popped into the facility to ask about his well being, and he had DIED! What the hell? I had saved him from being eaten, only to have him croak while being cared for by a state-of-the-art wildlife care center? And what did he die of? FLEAS. The woman who broke the news to me had cared for him herself, and she was clearly sad. I mean, damn, he was a cute little guy. She said he was "literally crawling" with fleas, and he was so anemic from flea bites that he just died.

"What can I do!?" I asked, alarmed and feeling itchy all over my body, "How can I save the possums of the neighborhood from this horrible fate?" She didn't know. She just said that he had gotten separated from his mom somehow, and hadn't been able to clean himself to rid himself of fleas. So awful.

But then, on the drive home, I began piecing a few things together... the little brown bug that leaped from Stanley's ear when I was petting him yesterday... the cats scratching at their necks... let alone the poor DOG we're dogsitting, who is sitting, as I type, in a backyard that, let's face it, is INFESTED WITH FLEAS.

How do I say "gross" with enough syllables in it to satisfy the GROSSNESS I feel about all of the fleas that have invaded our home and yard? Gro-o-o-ooooo-o-ooooooo-o-o-o-ooooooooooooooooooo-ooooooo-ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooos!

I won't even go into the "mysterious" "bug bites" I have discovered all over my legs and forearms. I'm not going to think about it. Oh great, now I'm thinking about it. FLEA BITES! How medieval!

And you know who gave us all these damn fleas? Yeah, you guessed it. THE RACCOON. At least that's my theory, I say, as I absentmindedly scratch at my skin.

Where are the fleas in our house and yard? WHERE ARE THEY NOT? Well, they're not on the cats anymore. I chased them all down and squirted them with Advantage, wishing that I could watch the fleas leap off of their skin like passengers on The Titanic... "I'll never let go, Jack!"

Yeeech.

It was the YOGURT, in the KITCHEN, with the SPOON

So I had been puzzling out why my daughter had the world's worst Edward-Scissorhands-Diaper-Rash and Peace-Corps-Volunteer-Worthy-Diarrhea, when my friend L. came over and casually mentioned that YOGURT had done the same thing to her daughter.

That's when I replayed it, like a horrid montage, all of the times that I shoved yogurt into my child's mouth over the last month. I was of the opinion that -- due to the inherent live-active cultures -- yogurt would FIX HER. So I dipped everything in it. "Hey, you want a blackberry? SURE, but it has YOGURT all over it! Mwah ha ha!"

And she dutifully ate it. Then blew it out her ass. And I blamed the blackberry.

Now we're on a 100% yogurt-free diet and LO and BEHOLD, everything is back to normal. She's down to 2 or 3 poops a day, and I'm letting her eat unadulterated berries -- with little or no digestive consequence.

HURRAH for L., shedding light on the yogurt abuse! And fie on me, for clinging to the damn yogurt for so long.

Panda = Real

Anyone familiar with The Velveteen Rabbit must agree that Babycakes' Panda seems to have become REAL.  

Just the other day I picked him to transport him back to the crib, and I swear he kind of gave me a "look." A little wisened wink. I swear.

The secret of the lawn guys

I have always loved working on the lawn, and mowing it with a manual push mower had been one of my favorite Saturday morning activites. Then I got pregnant, and the manual mower started rusting in the shed, and our grass became knee-high with what Hub-D called "wheat." It was true -- as we ambled through our lawn, it looked the opening scene on "Little House on the Prairie." So I hired Jose.

Jose manages teams of "lawn guys." About half of my neighbors have "lawn guys" like we do -- a bunch of men (of dubious immigration status) who show up once a week in a pick-up truck filled with lawn care equipment, and basically kick your lawn's ass. It is loud and fast and super-stinky. My sister joked that they had to open up a new offshore oil derrick to support our lawn guys, they use so much fossil fuel to beautify our little yard. But DAMN it looks fantastic after they leave. They mow it and "edge" it and weed the shrubs and deadhead the roses, and as one of my friends said, "It looks like a PARK in your backyard."

So now that I'm fully able to push that manual mower again and engage in that meditative art of lawn trimming, no friggin' way. We're keeping Jose.

Especially now that we've learned the SECRET of the lawn guys.

See, we always thought the lawn guys were doing a great job. They were here on time, they had vanquished "The Little House on the Prairie," and they were always nice, cheering me on through my pregnancy and excited to meet Babycakes when she arrived. THEN came the day about two months ago when Hub-D offered them a drink of water, and things started to change.

That day, all of the overgrown orange trees in the backyard were suddenly pruned. (I didn't know they could PRUNE.)

So the next week I tried it too. They seemed confused for a moment, then I whipped out my Sesame Street Spanish and said, "Aqua???"

"Si!"

And so I put out a couple cups of ice water for them, and our gangly wisteria was transformed into a beauty queen. Babycakes and I watched the process -- like a teen makeover movie... after they were done, our wisteria plant slowly came down the stairs into the arms of her waiting prom date who was like, "Whoa! I didn't know you were HOT!" (Top photo is evidence. Don't deny you want to ask my wisteria out now...)

You better believe we offer them water every week now, and the effect on our lawn has been incredible. They no longer apathetically bump against the frail Strawberry Madrone tree with their mower. NAY! They are weeding like maniacs, lovingly trimming the jasmine, shaping the roses, elegantly shaping the massive elephant ear plant and turning our yard into a landscaped MASTERPIECE. They have even tackled the voluminous redwood suckers that had grown unheeded ever since we moved into the house:

So last night Hub-D and I swung in the hammock in our backyard, drinking port from a sippy cup (toddler gear comes in handy sometimes) and surveying the transformation that the lawn guys have enacted. Then we started wondering -- what if we offered more than water? What if we started to upgrade? To, say, sparkling water, then maybe soda. Then we could gradually bring out a buffet of some kind. What would happen?

"The Hanging Gardens of Babylon," Hub-D said. I wouldn't put it past them.

Waiting for Evelyn

We are officially in TTC mode. That's "Internet Speak" for trying to conceive. And I think a lot about Babycakes's future sibling, should we be blessed with one (make the sign of the cross, throw salt over my shoulder, do sorority secret handshake).

For some reason, I've always imagined Babycakes' little sister as Evelyn. Almost immediately after she was born, we began thinking about her. Our next baby, who, I've assumed for some reason, is a daughter. That's Evelyn.

I have Tupperware containers packed with clothes, bottles and toys for her. After my miscarriage, I chucked the outgrown infant gear (the swing, the jumparoo, the gymini) up into the attic, where it wouldn't taunt me each time I passed it. But if Evelyn should arrive, ooooh boy I'm ready for her. The "D" batteries are already in place.

I MISS nursing. That's just the first thing I'm going to do if I get a new baby. We're going to nurse like crazy, and I'm not going to wean her until, say, college.

And I miss having a light little infant who just coos from the changing table and stays put and listens to all of my little "Changing Jingles" and monkey sounds with abject delight, imprisoned by her lack of mobility.

I don't miss being pregnant. I dread being pregnant, but I can NOT wait to be a mom again. Perhaps this is why I'm so focused on a future child rather than an impending embryo/fetus. The pregnancy itself may well be SHITE, if history is any indication. But the baby -- OOOOOHHHH the baby -- will be so welcome.

Will she look like her sister? Will she share her sister's prediliction for pandas, or will some other animal emerge as the victor of her heart?

I'm so obsessed with this fictional child that I have mentally rearranged the car's backseat to fit an infant carrier (It was like Tetris, but I figured it out). I've mentally signed her up for swimming lessons (in our neighborhood, swimming lessons start at 12 pounds). I've decided how to handle Gymboree (each by themselves, while a sitter cares for the other). And now that Babycakes is understanding rudimentary verbal instructions, I have her pegged as "Mama's Little Helper."

I stare obsessively at moms with both toddlers and newborns, watching them with hollow, needy eyes. Oh, I can't wait to have a baby on the way again.

So yeah, If everyone who reads this blog can think positive "implantation" thoughts, I'd really appreciate it. I've attached the diagram below to help with your visualization. Unless that totally grosses you out, thinking about this. In which case I advise you to NEVER Google "uterus."

So there you have it. I want to meet Evelyn so bad -- hurry up, girl! Your mama's waiting!

(Oh, watch we have a boy!)

Dude

I should have known it would happen. I say it all the time, as in:

"Dude, look how red your butt is!" or "Dude, don't touch that!" or "Dude, look at all the dudes hanging out in the playground today!" or just "Dude!"

I picked up "Dude" from a co-worker of mine. I sat next to him for more than four years, and he said "Dude" about everything. "Dude, who farted?" -- "Dude, it wasn't me" -- "Dude."

So anyway, I took Babycakes around the yard on our morning chores, and she unexpectedly came upon her beloved Kolcraft Universal Stroller. She was SO EXCITED to find it -- the gleaming frame, the sturdy wheels, the awesome MEMORIES. She held her breath for a moment, then said, "DuuuUUDE!"

Things I cannot be expected to do:

* Write German. My relatives in Germany have been e-mailing me about plans for next year. They want me to respond to them AUF DEUTSCH. I'm sorry. Somewhere between 2-4 cm dilation in my labor last year, I completely gave up that part of my frontal lobe.

* Make crafts. Now that I'm a mom, I find that there is an assumption that I have any ability to sew or use a hot glue gun, or know where Michael's Craft Store even IS. I don't. But now that I'm readying my daughter to be a flower girl in my sister's wedding, people are saying things like, "Why don't you just MAKE a barrette for her with ivory and cocoa colors?" And I'm thinking, "Who can I HIRE to MAKE a (gd) barrette for my daughter that matches her dress?"

* Remember shit. I wake up like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day" -- I'm just living the same basic day over and over again, only I have little or no recall of the previous days, so it's kind of a novel and fun experience. My stepmother, pooped out from caring for Babycakes, said to me, "I forgot how boring babies are." She's right -- to people of adequate intellect, smearing the same diarrhea off of the same person's rear end 12 times a day does seem sisyphusian. But to my shunken jelly brain, it's fun because each time, I use a different washcloth, and, look! The pink one! I haven't seen that one in awhile.

* Worry about the accumulation of dirt along all of the baseboards of my house. Why? Why do things collect there? And how long have they looked like that? But I'm too busy hauling the poopy pink washcloth to the dryer, with all due haste and saying "Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew" the whole time to stop and really take a survey of that dirt. I just see it out of the corner of my eye and put it on the "When Babycakes goes to college" list.

* Stop watching TV. OK, you'd think now that I'm all righteous about how BUSY I am as a mother and how much housework I have before me, and how hard Hub-D is working and how good and right it would be for me to focus the same energy and drive into making a beautiful home filled with healthful baked goods for my family. Yeah, I'm with you, but not until I watch this "Monk" episode about the baseball player.

* Clean up my language. I got in trouble the other day with Hub-D, we were talking about Christmas and I said how much I'm looking forward to "all that Santa Shit." Well, I AM! I am looking forward to all that Santa Shit. I said it right there in front of Babycakes, who sat there listening, face tilted up to me, blonde and perfect, processing the term "Santa Shit" in her wee cranium.

* Judge other moms. I'm really out of energy on this one. I used it all up in the first six months of Babycakes' life, when I'd judge older kids with pacifiers and fat kids in strollers and fussy outfits on kids, and whatever else. I don't really have the energy to sustain my Righteous Parent Attitude, so I've totally given it up, and I kind of admire women who CAN sustain that 'tude.

So if someone should give me a searing look because I'm letting Babycakes put every last object at Gymboree in her mouth (slime slime snot snot), I'm really OK with that. I mean, I used up all that energy trying to solve some Adrian Monk case and obsess about my baseboards from afar, so who am I to judge?

My birthday gift

It's my birthday! And I have already been blessed with the BEST present. I shoved Babycakes in her wagon today in order to survey the voluminous amounts of construction occuring on our street (with a fallen tree branch BONUS), when we were stopped by Oliver the Dog and his mom. Oliver's mom looked at Babycakes, then looked up at me, and she said (totally unprompted):

"SHE LOOKS SO MUCH LIKE YOU!"

Oh wow, that is the first time anyone has ever said that. I have lived in despair since her birth, when our gorgeous child looked precisely like, well, HUB-D.

Report from the rear

Since so many people have left comments or e-mailed me privately to express concern about my daughter's X-TREEEME diaper rash, I am happy to report that it is SO MUCH BETTER.

I don't know how to confess this, but it was totally my fault, all the rash and the crap and the various digestive "issues" from which my daughter suffered. WHO GAVE ME A CHILD TO CARE FOR WITH NO SUPERVISION?

Basically the RASH was caused by her body's OUTPUT, which was a direct result of the INPUT.

And what was the input? Heh heh, well, you see... (God I'm an idiot...) I was feeding her a steady diet of:

* Grapes
* Watermelon
* Black beans
* Spicy chicken mole
* Blackberries, raspberries and LOOOOTS of blueberries
* Raw tomatoes
* Spaghetti sauce with extra cayenne
* Random bizarre ethnic things like Sag Paneer..., etc. etc.

WHAT DID I EXPECT WOULD HAPPEN? Basically, it's like a giant digestive bomb went off in her pants five times a day.

It was Nanny D who, in her completely unassuming way, gently mentioned that I might want to SCALE BACK on all of the fibrous FRUIT and other bizarre garbage I was weaving through my daughter's tiny digestive system.

So I experimented. I went back to the dusty baby food jars in the cabinet, and I fed her bananas, rice cereal, applesauce and various strained meats. No bizarre berries or spices giant chunks of god-knows-what.

AND LO AND BEHOLD she started pooping just 2-3 times/day. And her rear end thanked me with an ever paler glow.

Plus I've been loading on the corn starch. More out of guilt and penitence than anything else. And we're all happier. Me, Babycakes, and her little rear -- smiling with relief.

Oma's perspective

Tomorrow I will be 35. Just when I started to feel rotten and strange and elderly about the whole thing, my 94-year-old Oma set me straight by telling me two things:

(a) I have started a business, married a man I love and had a child -- so I can pretty much coast through the rest of life.

(b) Just stop telling people how old I am "because you look so much younger."

She said I may resume telling people how old I am once I am 80 and it becomes a point of pride.

Anyway. I love Oma.

Baby Godzilla

My child naps three times each day. It's just what she does -- 7am, 11am and 4pm, then bed by 8pm. I thought that this was wonderful and normal, and I spent half my life lurking around the house waiting for her to go to sleep or wake up. But then I re-read my "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" book which informed me that by a child's first birthday, it's weeeeeeeeird for them to sleep this long.

Let me just start by saying that if "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" told me to sacrifice a goat on our front lawn in order to make my child sleep through the night, I'd be sharpening a blade and unquestioningly approaching hapless livestock. That book friggin' ROCKS. When she was four months old, I followed the book's advice (echoed by our pediatrician) and let her "cry it out" -- and it was a marvelous, marvelous thing. She cried so minimally, and learned to just conk out on her own, sleeping 10 hours at a time -- Hub-D and I performed pagan rituals of glee. And just like the book promised, SHE was happier too.

So when "HSH, HC" told me that three naps at her age is FREAKISH, I immediately set about changing our schedule, trying to delay that 7am nap so as to engender a 9am nap, then a 1pm nap, then an earlier bedtime.

D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R

She would gamely delay the morning nap, then struggle through to 1pm for her next nap, but no matter what else happened, at 4pm, she would be falling over with fatigue. For two days, I heartlessly kept her awake and entertained throughout the late afternoon, only to have her turn into a heretofore unknown Baby Godzilla -- unhappy with everything and everyone, NOT enjoying her bath or me, and PINCHING AND SLAPPING ME every chance she got.

"OW!" I'd say, rubbing the red marks she left on my skin, "Don't hit your mama, that's MEAN!"

And she'd look at me as if to say, "Yeah, except I'm living in a POW camp where I DON'T GET TO SLEEP."

So screw it. We're going off the rails. She may eventually decide to follow the directions of the infinitely wise "HSH, HC" but until then, to spare my face and the soft skin of my upper arms, she gets to sleep whenever she damn well pleases.

Cluttered

You know how hamsters jam up a bunch of seeds and cedar shavings way back into their cheeks, then spit out their treasures into the corners of their cages? I do that with household detritus.

I look at my friends' houses with envy. How do they avoid creating hamster nests? My friend L. always apologizes for WHAT A MESS her house is when I come over. Her house is spotless, and you can walk on her floors in your bare feet without dessicated bananas or baby urine sticking to your skin. Is she secretly telling me that I need to redefine "mess" for myself? That if her house is a "mess" then my house is, well, a reeking hamster cage?

But when I approach my little clutter nests in order to dismantle them, something kind of stops me, and I find something else to do. Am I intimidated by them? Or do I LOVE them? As the following photos illustrate...


Our front counter. This has been basically unusable since we moved in. Our interior decorator, K., told me that this would be a GREAT entertaining space, and nicely but firmly suggested I hire a "professonal organizer" to find space for the things I'd piled on there. No dice, K! I need my collection of crap -- it makes me feel WHOLE.


See, as you're scurrying out the door with a toddler, you never KNOW when you're going to need sunscreen, or an "UltimateBet.com" sun visor, or, say, a giant brass penguin I bought at Pier One for $10 in 1985.

And our guest room. Some of this clutter isn't my fault, as Babycakes enjoys tearing apart that bookshelf of travel-related literature on a daily basis. It's not unusual to find her scurrying down the hallway, gnawing on a guidebook to the Trans-Siberian Railway.

But the rest of this stuff? It's outgrown baby clothes in flux, haphazardly shoved into storage bins because, if/when I have another baby, I'm going to have ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD to sort through them and properly fold them.

The family room counter. This stuff dates back to when we moved into the house. Where the hell am I supposed to put this crap? Every time I walk past this heap of accumu-crud, I avert my eyes, as I did when I walked in the door this afternoon, neatly stepping over a beheaded wren that Otto had left for my lunch, apparently.

There is that damn wilted sage wreath... I can't just throw it away! It was $50, and it still has a little life in it, right? So I keep propping it up against that counter, hoping others will find it "festive." See, I want to throw all this stuff AWAY, but something is stopping me.

Ooooh, and our dresser. It's evolved into a heap of literature about Nashville that I can't bear to file away, because we're NOT moving to Nashville now that we're working on baby #2 and Hub-D got so involved with the company, and we've moved PAST that dream -- but the dresser hasn't! It still harbors dreams of fireflies and folk music. Realtor literature and Nashville Parent magazine, at night you can just hear the banjos emanate from the underwear drawer...

Oh, don't forget that massive spray bottle I purchased at Target after the cats kept