Skinny

This is what the OB told me last Thursday about why I haven't gotten pregnant:

"I can tell you what the problem is just by looking at you. You need to gain some weight."

WHAT!? I was expecting to walk out of there with a plan and some Clomid and a whole host of medical interventions AT THE READY, so that I may produce an heir with DUE HASTE.

But apparently, since the birth of Babycakes, my precipitous weight loss has made it so that my body doesn't produce enough progesterone to support a pregnancy.

Leave it to me to have the problem with which NO ONE will sympathize. Poor me! I have to eat potato chips and drink milkshakes and stop all that exercise. But this new lifestyle isn't ME. I like taking long runs and eating fruit for lunch. But I'm WASTING AWAY and have become INFERTILE due to this lifestyle.

Yesterday I was waving "bye-bye" enthusiastically to one of Babycakes' friends and my engagement ring flew right off my finger. Luckily my neighbor and I located it in a few minutes, but I've since moved my wedding rings to my middle finger. I suppose that really underscores how my body fat has dwindled. I can't keep my rings on, my size 4 jeans are saggy, and I can't sustain a pregnancy.

It runs in the family, this skinniness. But this family can't pass along the skinny genes (or jeans, for that matter) if I'm too damn emaciated to make progesterone.

The OB also prescribed baby aspirin and progesterone supplements to help me keep a pregnancy, if I do become pregnant despite my skeletal appearance.

Heck, it saves me a Halloween costume.

Coinstar RAPTURE

Today, I had a grand and beautiful affair with the COINSTAR MACHINE. Holy crap, that had to have been the most satisfying five minutes of my LIFE.

See, our culture has no way for men to deal with pocket change. It accumulates in their wallets and counters around the house, and no wife, however diligent, can spend it quickly enough.

Our family was living in a sea of unspent change... it was everywhere, and leaking from the counters onto the floors. When Babycakes spat a penny out onto the floor in front of me, I decided I wasn't going to take this CRAP from Hub-D's spare change anymore.

So, not unlike a rancher whose livestock has been culled by coyotes, I went on a RAMPAGE, collecting every coin from the top of the dryer and our dresser and our offices, and the overflowing bounty of change from Hub-D's valet. And damn if I didn't find a Coinstar machine just a mile from our house. OH. SO. SATISFYING.

I took all those rowdy pennies and nickels and good-for-nothing dimes and poured them into the machine. It was LOUD and clinkety and the machine started counting, counting, counting UP UP UP, showing the fortune I was accumulating, just by ridding my house of deadly change.

We had more than $22 of change, and now, to my eternal satisfaction, it is now circulating once again in our country's coffers. And in order to avoid a "counting fee" I accepted my fortune in the form of an Amazon.com gift certificate. Oh, Babycakes, there is some MAISY in your future, oooooh yeah.

I walked out of the store feeling light as a feather. This is why I became a housewife... to care for my child, and to dump piles of change in an electronic counting machine while I stare, filled with immense satisfaction.

Better

Oh glory be, our girl has returned.

She was off to a slow start this morning, super-snotty, crabby and weak. I dressed her in her new handmade pumpkin outfit, and she sadly lay down on the sidewalk despite her sporty orange beret. I thought we might be in for another lowdown sick day.

But then she perked up, and started eating.

And eating.

And eating.

She ate a huge hunk of watermelon, about 1000 goldfish crackers, a link of chicken apple sausage, 2 whole bananas, fistfuls of raspberries she stole from Hub-D, a tofu pup, a dozen cherry tomatoes, a veggie burger, a mound of raisins, three cups of formula, scrambled eggs, and some bona fide baby food.

Her fever has broken, but the rash has progressed down her legs and up her face. I'm glad I didn't take the urgent care doctor's suggestion and "try giving her some more" antibiotic in order to determine if she was allergic to it. I can only imagine how ferocious the rash would be if we'd done that.

Tonight her little pal M. came over, and the two of them shut each other inside the cabinets, squealing with glee.

So our little girl is BACK and we are ELATED. We didn't know how much we loved her BIG ENERGY, her mischievous ways, and her tendency to rip the house apart, brick-by-brick, when she's trapped inside it.

Yeah, OK, I miss the cuddles, I confess. And it was kind of nice just sitting on the sofa with my child pressed against my chest, watching movies and slouching around.

But what a RELIEF that she is better now. This means I've got to get my own energy back up, so we can start climbing mountains together again. Good girl.

Babycakes on the mend

Well, yesterday sucked.

Last Tuesday, Babycakes' sniffles blossomed into a big fat FEVER that lingered for FOUR DAYS. Yesterday was Day Four, and after Dr. M confirmed that her fever was indeed still 102, he sent us to have some TESTS done on our precious Chebbles. Specifically, X-rays and bloodwork.

How traumatic was it for everyone involved? Very. Pretty much everyone in the East Bay medical community and within our family has to embark on a post-traumatic stress program of some kind.

It took three X-ray technicians to create a set-up whereby a 13-month-old could have her chest X-rayed. The set-up involved medical tape, pillows and a generally cockamamie attitude. At first, Babycakes and I were fascinated by the goings-on. But in short order, she was screaming bloody murder, being pinned down on the bed by me, her evil mother, who held her hands over her head and her pelvis down so they could get a shot of the side of her lungs. Then the picture didn't come out because they had taken it at the wrong resolution.

SCREW YOU PEOPLE! I was so ready to grab my child and jam on out of that office, but they reassured me that they would get it the second time, with the use of a giant C-clamp and additional Three Stooges-esque behavior.

Babycakes and I were SO DONE with that facility after they took the third X-ray, that she and I just stormed the hell out of there. She was screaming inconsolably as we waited outside for Hub-D, and she threw her head back againt my jaw so hard that it's still aching. So of course I started crying too. Not in a dignified, "Crying Indian" kind of way, but total out-of-control BLUBBERING. Hub-D was still inside, where they tantalized him by saying that they'd have the results in "just a few minutes."

Meanwhile, Babycakes and I were descending into ever-increasing tears and tantrums. At one point, she caught her breath, sitting on the ground, perhaps thinking, "OK, well, that wasn't so bad. I'm not sure what I was getting on about..." then, to my regret, she looked up at me. At that moment, I was mid-blubber, so she took her cue from me and started wailing all over again. Damn.

I kept bursting back into the facility, Babycakes screaming so much that the framed signage (e.g., "Tell the technician if you're pregnant!") was rattling against the walls, and I gave Hub-D looks that meant, "We are both crying so hard and not like the Crying Indian. Whatever it takes to leave this facility, let's DO IT." And there stood my dignified husband, trying to wring our baby's X-ray results from these people. I didn't have a free hand to take a picture, but if I had, it would look like this:

Because Hub-D is so handsome and insistent, the radiologist got Dr. M on the phone and handed the phone off to Hub-D. The bottom line: it ain't pneumonia, but it's something.

So... off to the BLOOD LAB. It was located in the hospital where Babycakes was born. It was cute, seeing other new moms and dads parade down the hall with their precious bundles. Absurdly, I took that moment to be jealous of them. As though I hadn't paraded down that same hall just over a year ago, and didn't currently hold our most gorgeous achievement in my arms. But still... "ooooh, newborns."

Despite all of the babies who are born there, the people who draw blood in the lab seem never to have MET A CHILD BEFORE. "Her veins are so little," the technician said, and called in her boss to help her find a vein. Her boss tied a rubber strap onto Babycakes' arm, then her elbow, then her wrist and tapped around, trying to find that vein. They tried her right elbow-pit with the needle, mercilessly scraping around in there trying to draw the blood. That needle was probably in her arm about 5-6 years, by my estimation. I didn't watch, and sobbed into Hub-D's shirt as he stood there holding us both (Babycakes was in my lap for this procedure). Then they GAVE UP on that arm, and instead probed her itty-bitty left WRIST. Luckily, they found it fairly quickly, allowing Babycakes and me to stand up and run the hell out of there. They kept trying to ask us more questions or generally just screw around ("Does she want more stickers?" "NO, she just wants to never see your face again.") but Hub-D handled the business aspect of things while my child and I continued our unabated non-dignified wailing and beat it the hell out of the hospital. It was all I could do not to barf in the bushes outside.

As a rational adult, I know that it was a good thing that we had these tests done. A fever following a cold can be very dangerous, particularly if it lingers as hers did. Dr. M determined that she had some fluid in the middle of her lungs, which isn't pneumonia, and most certainly the cause of her cough. And the bloodwork showed that she is suffering from a big, horrible VIRUS. This is good news, because if it had shown a bacterial infection instead of a virus, then we'd all be in the biggest medical doo-doo ever.

We'll know more next week, once the blood is cultured (it takes five days), but for now, Babycakes is truly on the mend.

I torture myself by thinking that all of that crap was ultimately unnecessary, because her fever cleared up this morning, and she's starting to get back to normal. I thought, "Why did we even involve the pediatrician in the first place? She just needed time and rest..."

But as Hub-D pointed out, we were erring on the side of caution.

Unfortunately, the trevails do not end there...(what is this? the last "Lord of the Rings" movie...?) Dr. M prescribed an antibiotic for Babycakes, as a precaution until we get those blood cultures back. When Babycakes woke up this morning, she sported a big fat RASH all over her trunk -- a big, crazy bunch of dots and blobs covering her gorgeous baby skin. What in the CRAP!?

I called the pharmacist, and she said, "Yup. I think she's allergic to the antibiotic. But call your doctor."

When I tried to call the doctor, his voicemail said to call the Pediatric Referral Clinic over the weekend. So I called, and their message states that if I'd like to talk with their nurse, I need to call a *1-900* number and be charged an unspecified amount of money.

I'm sorry, what!? My child is rearing back in misery with red spots all over her skin, I'm calling you because your number was on my doctor's voicemail, and I need hang up and call a 1-900 number for advice? Does anyone else feel just a little SLEAZY dialing 1-900? I'm trying to get in touch with the on-call doctor and I'm taking a detour through PORN-LAND?

So I snaked around their phone system and finally got a weary receptionist, who connected me "for free, just this once" to a nurse. And the nurse said?...."BRING HER IN NOW."

So I trundled my sick-but-not-as-sick-except-for-the-spots child off to the Pediatric Referral Clinic, where the lobby was filled with irrestible yet disease-covered toys. What was I going to do? I had to fill out a new ream of paperwork, so I let Babycakes play with the toys, then I bathed her in hand sanitizer.

The doctor gave me no good information, other than, "The rash could be related to the virus" and the only way to tell if my child is deathly allergic to this antibiotic would be to "give her more."

You know, doc? Instead, I think we're just going to take some Benadryl and sleep, if it's all the same to you.

And that's what Babycakes is doing as a type -- snoozing in the room next to me, snuggled up with Panda, spotty as all get-out but on the mend.

Still ill

Babycakes' fever has receded a little, and she wasn't AS miserable last night as the two previous nights, but it's not enough to ward off another trip to the doctor 20 minutes from now.

I took her into the shower with me this morning, which she enjoyed last week, but she just stood there, dripping and miserable. waiting for it to be over. OH BABYCAKES!

She'd got to rally soon -- it's against the law for kids to be sick on Halloween.

Cuddles continue

Babycakes is still illin', and I made the serious mistake of reading my "Baby 411" book at 2am while I listened to her pitiful little sleep-moans.

I re-read the passage that says a fever AFTER a cold is a dangerous sign, because it could signal a BACTERIAL infection like PNEUMONIA has "taken advantage" of the child.

I had to struggle to remember that Dr. M said cases like that are "rare" and that he listened to her lungs and heard nothing troubling. But tomorrow morning, if she's still feverish, she has to go to urgent care for X-rays and bloodwork. YEESH! KID! Get better, as we don't want ANY part of THAT scene.

She's lying in her crib now, sleeping peacfully, having watched "Meet the Fockers" with her mother on the sofa all morning. I'm heading off to the OB, feeling like a SELFISH mom for leaving her with Nanny D while I traipse around town discussing additional children.

My poor little Cakesy! And if some bacteria has taken advantage of my child, so help me...

Sick Chebs

Yesterday afternoon, I took our Babycakes (aka Chebbles) to a beautiful new park. I expected her to react with her usual burst of running and rock-eating. Instead, she spiked a WICKED fever.

I didn't realize what was going on. We'd had a great day, going to swimming lessons and generally goofing around. Tuesdays are our Days of Adventure, and I thought I'd cap this one off with a trip to the idyllic golden hills near our house.

So when she started to slow down and mope, then cry, I was taken by complete surprise. Then when she got CUDDLY, I knew that something was seriously amiss. My kid is not a cuddler. She'll give spontaneous, momentary hugs, and she'll hold others' hands as a means to an end, but she does not crawl onto laps and reach up and smooch on anyone. Period... Unless she's so ill she doesn't know what she's doing.

Suddenly she wanted to just ride in my arms, fall into my lap, and listlessly eat a few rocks while staring at the sky reciting French poetry. And she started to get warm. So we left.

Heartless mother that I am, I still made her stop at the grocery store on the way home. I have a lot of excuses why I did this... (a) Hub-D was out of his favorite beer, (b) I was trying to keep her awake until 6pm, so as not to contradict "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" (aka The Sleep Bible), (c) We were out of several major food groups in our home (beer, graham crackers, baby food jars).

Was it worth tromping around the store with my feverish kid slumped against the seat as she quietly took notes for her future therapist? Oh, and exposing everyone else in the store to whatever disease she had contracted?

Well, yeah, because Hub-D got his beer. But anyway. I couldn't have known HOW sick that kid was getting. She got progressively cuddlier as the night wore on, and at 4:30am, woke up crying like a banshee, hot as all blazes and as CUDDLY as, say, Santa Claus, or a week-old puppy. Wicked cuddly. She fell asleep on my chest and I rocked her for an hour.

I could have replaced her in her crib as soon as she fell asleep on me, but there was no way in HELL I was going to miss the chance to feel my child breathing and smell her hair, with her little arms flopped around my sides. I pretended that she was gaining something by my presence while I rocked her and became progressively more paranoid about every disease she might have contracted, including but not limited to:

(1) Pneumonia (why oh WHY did I allow her outside in the morning without a hat!?)
(2) Spinal Meningitis (damn park water fountains!)
(3) Appendicitis (how could she communicate the specific site of her pain? )
(4) Poisoning (eats rocks)



So this afternoon, as she was still a hot snugglepuss, we trooped off to the pediatrician, who couldn't put his finger on the problem, but verified that she was, in his words "WHINY."

I felt so defensive. I said, "Which is UNUSUAL for HER!" and he threw me a bone: "Yes, she's a happy kid."

He suggested giving her some Motrin, and wants me to bring her in for TESTS on Friday morning if she still has the fever. I'm sure Babycakes could handle whatever tests he might dream up, but her mother sure can't. So PLEASE, for the sake of all that is holy, let my child wake up in the morning with no desire to snuggle whatsoever.

Baby Huey

"I like your new legs!" my friend S. called out to Babycakes as she left the playground this morning.

Babycakes' legs sprouted two inches in the last two weeks, so my formerly "extremely tall" baby is now "ridiculously tall."

Anyone who hasn't seen her in a few weeks is taken aback, and momentarily thinks their eyes are playing tricks on them. "What happened to her LEGS!?"

("I stretched them. I want her to be a ballerina, and I'm going to do whatever it takes.")

Dr. M says that it's OK that her height (and head circumference for that matter) are off the charts. I worry that my child will rue her position as the TALLEST child in America (with the hugest cranium). Or, perhaps this will work out OK when she grows up. I mean, ZZ Top certainly considers them an asset:

But in the meantime, my poor Baby Huey is finding her new height to be something of a liability on the playground. It's screwing with her popularity, because big kids come running up to her, and try to communicate with her, assuming that she's of the Age of Playability.

And she just looks at them. She breathes a little more snot out of her nose and stares as they try to hand her a ball or engage her in some kind of game. She's only 13 months! She doesn't have the mental capacity for imaginative play, or social interactions. She'll try to steal food from you and/or put food in your mouth while you're talking. And she'll play a remarkably EASY game of hide-and-seek with you. But other than that, she's not down with games.

She's a baby in the body of a big kid and it just pisses off the other kids. They try to reason with her ("Don't wreck our sandcastle!") and she again just looks at them, sand dripping into the snot beneath her nose, hands fully embedded in their formerly fabulous mansion-o-sand.

They don't treat her like a baby, with the patience they've grudgingly learned as older siblings and experienced playground aficionados. They treat her as a peer -- with all the requisite rule-establishment, pushing, hollering and attempts to socialize.

I'm not sure what to do about it -- right now, I race in and intervene, "She's just a BABY, you guys, but let me know if she's bothering you."

"BOTHERING! BOTHERING!" One boy hollered in response last week, as she wrecked his little mound of pebbles.

I know I'm going to have to relax about this, and let the Law of the Jungle take hold. She'll get kicked around a little, and misunderstood due to her size, and I'm not always going to be there to protect her... but she IS just a BABY! Just because she wears a size 7 shoe and has knockout gams doesn't mean she's ready for factory work. So everyone, back off my Baby Huey!

Twins

If there were a contest about who is the most ZEN BUDDHIST, living in the moment and taking life as it comes, I would come in dead last.

The latest proof? I am now completely taking for granted that my next pregnancy will be TWINS. In my wildest fantasies, they are even IDENTICAL. Even though no one has prescribed Clomid for me yet, and if they DO, the odds of my conceiving fraternal twins while taking Clomid is only raised from 1% to 2% -- I've already planned the whole damn thing out. I'm having twins.

See, one of my great-grandmothers was a twin, as was Hub-D's, and two of my cousins had twins -- so it RUNS IN OUR FAMILY. So yes, my friends, it's TWIN TIME.

My friend L., ever the one to encourage a dream, asked me, "After you have these twins, do you think you'd have another baby?" We were pushing our toddlers in swings so we could talk at length about our uteruses.

I swung Babycakes way high up in the air and said, "Hell, yeah!"

OK, I recognize how much that takes for granted: That I will conceive again (despite my fickle body), that I will conceive twins, that I will carry them to term, that their birth will go smoothly, that they will be good babies with no birth defects despite my ever-increasing age, and then I'll want to do it AGAIN. Oh, and Hub-D would want to do it again, too.

I'm in some kind of outer space of supposition, some sort of pre-Clomid-induced fantasyland. I feel like I've climbed a big teetering tree of hope, and the only way down is to fall on my kiester.

I'm a finger waggling discipline disaster

A month ago, I introduced the concept of "no" to my child, and it really hit home with her. She would do something (mess with electrical outlets, touch the knobs on the stove, fiddle with the hot water spigot), and I would say "no," and purse my lips, waggling my finger back and forth. Babycakes would be DEVASTATED. She would collapse and cry and, it seemed, feel true regret for having let me down.

She would reminisce about the times I'd said "no" -- walking past the electrical outlet and waggling her finger at it, furiously turning her head from left to right... "Nooooooo."

"That's RIGHT!" I would chirp, excited with my growing authority, "We DON'T touch electrical outlets! Insteaaaaad, let's color!"

It was a blissful month -- and I would try out my "no" authority on various other things around the house, to great effect. Perhaps we could get her to stop screwing with the Tivo!! Maybe I can actually TRAIN my child to FOLLOW ORDERS! At the peak of my high-flying discipline authority, I even tried to teach her to "heel." THINK about how convenient it would be if we could teach todders to HEEL! OK, it didn't work, but it made me laugh pretty hard.

Anyway, one day recently, Babycakes realized that all that happens when she touches an electrical outlet, turns on the space heater, or does any of the dozen forbidden things around the house, is that I just say "no" some more, and maybe come over to her and kneel in front of her (like I learned on "Supernanny") and say "no."

So, she thought, why in the world wouldn't I go ahead and enjoy myself, turning on the oven or ripping up the mums, if all I have to endure is this lady's powerless "no"-ing?

AGH! She figured it out! There is nothing behind the "no!" -- except louder and more angry "no"'s which are drowned out by sound of the hot water running, or the gas stove clicking to life.

Well, I plan to catch up and nip this in the bud. LITTLE DOES SHE KNOW, that her behavior, including the newly arisen tantrums, is ABOUT TO CHANGE. I've ordered some BOOKS from Amazon.com about DISCIPLINE, my child. And unless you've learned to read in the last 13 months, I have the upper hand, once that brown box arrives, OH YES. I'm going to learn about timeouts. I'm going to learn about earning privileges. I'm going to learn about CHORES, my little friend.

So enjoy it while it lasts, chickapee, because Mama's turning over a new leaf... once, you know, that books arrive and I read them and everything. And until then? "Nooooooo...."

We are getting the hang of swimming

We've been swimming now since July, and dang if we're not starting to get the hang of it! Babycakes has turned into a real fish, and I'm not getting yelled at EVERY time for mishandling my child, so that's a huge improvement. (Back in August, I despaired of ever getting it right.)

Babycakes seems to have real admiration for the swimming instructor, J., and I'm surprised how much I've learned about parenting from J. as well. She lavishes the kids with praise, and is alternatively tough on them -- and the mix works. She's been teaching kids to swim for 24 years, so I think it's fair to say she loves it, and she's good at her job.

Last Thursday, none of the other moms and babies showed up for the class, so it was just me, Babycakes, and J. in the water. J. went through the songs and the drills and Babycakes just glowed with all of the attention. I was PETRIFIED to go through the class without other moms to hide behind -- I'm always the one giving sidelong glances to other moms to make sure I'm doing the right thing. But it turned out really well, ultimately, especially after I told J. how nervous I was. You'd think that I was the one getting periodically dunked underwater and learning to swim -- and Babycakes just sailed through the lesson, beaming at J. as she put her through her underwater paces.

So there is a chance, however wee, that we may be POPULAR in this community. If swimming is the key to popularity, as I suspect it is, we might get in, despite how much of a complete spaz I can be (I recently pretended to smoke some tanbark at the park, encouraging another toddler to do so as well... IDIOT). I really won't blame Babycakes if, while she's nurturing her little embers of popularity as a pre-teen, she asks me NOT TO SPEAK at her swim meets, so as not to extinguish her hopes of popularity.

In other news, I'm now just a little obsessed with the idea of Clomid. My friend L. mentioned it to me today, and I googled it, and it seems like a viable solution for my short luteal phase (I ovulate on day 17), and the fact I've had no LH surge two of the last three months. Anyway, it's a thought. And my OB appointment is on Thursday. Whatever will I wear!? Should I show the doctor the picture of Babycakes swimming, as an example of her previous handywork? ("See, Dr. S., you did such a great job with that one... now you gotta do it again.")

"Kim and Carrots" Rumor-mongering

I think I'm on to a scandal regarding "Kim and Carrots."

For the uninitiated, "Kim and Carrots" is a serial story in the toddler magazine "Babybug," to which Babycakes and I have enthusiastically subscribed for the last year. The magazine always kicks off with a new installment of "Kim and Carrots" (the bunny to the left). Those two are always up to something exciting. They go to the park with Daddy (and clumsy Carrots takes a dive into the duck pond... CARROTS!), they hit the library with Mommy, they have a babysitter who makes pretend cookies out of playdough. It's awesome.

A couple of months ago, I noticed that Mommy was going on a mysterious "shopping trip" alone (thus the babysitter). What's up with that? Mommy always takes Kim and Carrots on various mundane adventures, and she came home SUSPICIOUSLY elated. My theory? Mommy wasn't shopping, folks. She was at the OB-GYN. I'm pretty sure Mommy has a bun in the oven.

My theory was given a boost by the issue of "Babybug" that arrived yesterday. Babycakes and I cracked into it this afternoon -- she and I were both so PSYCHED to find out what Kim and Carrots are up to.

Anyway, on their trip to the library, it is clear that Mommy has gained weight, and she was wearing frumpier clothes than usual. (I feel like an editor of "Us Weekly," scanning photos of Britney last year to verify her second pregnancy. I'd include one of the suspicious photos of a knocked-up Mommy were it not for the fact they are in Babycakes' room and she's sleeping.)

So either it's my cabin-fevered, obsessed-with-pregnancy state talking here, or Mommy's gonna have some news for Kim and Carrots in short order.

My timer is haunted

I think there is a pretty good chance my kitchen timer is haunted.

It's a terrific little timer -- Hub-D brought it into our marriage, having purchased it along with a bottle of 409 cleanser.

It has a sweet little "beep," and it warns you at 10 minutes and 5 minutes that your cookies/stew/timeout is almost done. So it's an essential part of our family life, and it is magnetized to our fridge.

But a few months ago, it became haunted.

OK, I'm really into the idea of things being haunted, and I confess I'm just YEARNING for a ghost to make a guest appearance in my life. So there could be a lot of delusion attached to my observations, but DAMN if this thing doesn't have a life of its own.

It has started counting UP, all on its own, with no obvious provocation. I'll just go to the fridge and notice it has been counting UP for the last, say, four hours. It just gets the idea into its little plastic 409-branded head to start timing something indeterminate.

And that's not all. It will suddenly display a time -- it will just say "0:02" (as pictured above -- this was not staged). It's always different, and always a rounded number, and the timer will just stand still at whatever time it has chosen, seemingly waiting for me to notice.

Is it too much to assign my kitchen timer a sense of humor? Yet I do! It changes all around, showing different times, or timing something mysterious, all on its own

Also, it never messes up when I'm actually using it. If I tell it to time 0:30 for some oatmeal, it doesn't dick around and start counting up or choose another time -- no, it is highly obedient and chirps at precisely the right moment.

I've wondered if it's my Uncle R., or my Uncle T., both of whom passed away in the last year. Has one of them chosen my timer as a means to communicate with me? I recognize how OFF THE DEEP END I am with this, but still, I stand there, when the timer is clocking up or has frozen on one particular number, and I wonder WHY. What was I doing three hours ago that merited my haunted timer coming to life?

I know, I know. I've got to get out of the house more often...

Concession speech

I haven't given up on getting pregnant again -- far from it, as I've resolved to meet with my O.B. and cook up a better strategy than self-pity. But the other day, as Babycakes clambered around on the BIG KID play equipment, out-precociousing her own self, I started thinking about Jesus again. And that it really wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if Babycakes is our only child.

See, Jesus was an ONLY CHILD. Hub-D says that John the Apostle might have been Jesus's brother, but I grew up Unitarian and I'm going to stick with my own watered-down version of Biblical events. So, in my version, Mary had her hands FULL with her only child, Jesus (although I bet he was even more shockingly self-sufficient than Babycakes). And she didn't moan to God about how she wanted another one, "because that first one was SO GREAT" and couldn't he just do it "once or twice more" so that she and Joseph could feel like a REAL FAMILY, and maybe try for a girl this time? No, Mary enjoyed the 30-something years she had with her awesome son, and felt lucky and fulfilled.

And BESIDES, if Babycakes is our only child, we can TRAVEL a lot, without having to put leashes on various children and stressing out and not even ENJOYING the Taj Mahal. Like our trip to Italy last spring, we can just strap our child on our back, or hold her by the hand, and EVERYONE climbs Mt. Kilimanjaro. And she can bask in the white-hot intensity of our undivided love and affection, and we can stay up late with her making up stories and playing chess and charades and making elaborate crafts for Christmastime many months in advance.

In the past, I have always wanted more children because, well, the idea that if anything should (God forbid, oh Mary Mother of Jesus forbid) happen to Babycakes, Hub-D and I would be completely adrift and inconsolable. Other than our marriage, we would have nothing to live for. It is our crushing love for Babycakes that has spurred on my desire to stock up on spares -- because there would be no recovery without other children in the wings. The show can't go on without understudies.

But that's such a morose line of thinking, perhaps inspired by the anniversary of the death of our MUCH BELOVED cat, who was only 3 and whose death sent us into a spiral of depression from which I do not believe we've fully recovered. (This was the last photo of him.)

Cripes, I just can't go through life thinking in such bleak terms! So there in the playground, I thought for the very first time... It could be really cool to have just Babycakes. We are so blissful as a family unit right now, particularly when Babycakes is in a "huggy" mood. It's not frequent, the "huggy" mood, but when it comes on, no one is safe. She gave Hub-D's ankles a big long hug a few days ago, and he's still smiling from the utter CHARM of it.

I told Hub-D about my new realization -- that I LIKE the three of us together, and that we could have a marvelous rest-of-our-lives as our current family unit without necessarily having to expand it, and he said, "OK, I think it's a little EARLY for a CONCESSION SPEECH, don't you?"

No, it isn't too early to concede. A concession doesn't mean surrender. I mean, hell, Al Gore could totally run again, and I think he'd collect a nice number of votes. A priest hasn't given my reproductive system the last rites here -- I'm just saying that I concede that a family of three can rock the house. Babycakes is enough KID for any parents, and I think I'm going to be OK.

(It's not too early for a concession STAND either... who's up for a hot dog?)

. = piano

The bad news is that I got my period again. What the crap?

The good news is that I am dedicated to finding something else to do with my life other than obsess over the activities of my ovaries, fallopian tubes and uterus.

Hub-D and I brainstormed about this last night, after I fell apart. I haven't cried like that for a long time, it just made me so sad -- I feel like a frustrated biological failure, and really, WHO can love someone who can't make something so simple as a baby?

So we're buying a piano. It was Hub-D's idea, and at first I was shocked by it. I had a piano the whole tiime I was growing up. I actually participated in piano competitions throughout high school and I was pretty damn good despite my near-inability to memorize music. (Why in the hell can't a person just bring her little sister and her sheet music to every competition instead of wracking her brains memorizing volumes of Schubert, I ask you?)

But I haven't played for years, and had let that entire skill go by the wayside. And now we will have a piano in time for the holidays, when a piano is really kind of required, don't you think? I mean, you can't very well light a Christmas tree without hollering "Oh Tannenbaum," now can you?

So whenever I'm feeling like a washed-up old floozy with a spoiled only child and a house filled with cats and raccoons, I can just take a seat and give everyone a little ragtime to think about.

Monday summary

* Thank HEAVENS! My neighbor, whom I "Boo-ed," finally put up her "Boo" sign. So it looks like I didn't ruin Halloween... THIS TIME.

* My neighborhood has already gone crazy with fake gravestones and massive spiders and huge inflatable Draculas perched atop houses. I have no "flair" for decorating whatsoever, nor does Hub-D have any interest in stringing the trees with orange Halloween lights, or setting up a fog machine and "haunted house" music. So, I'm compensating with BIG TREATS. You heard me, we're talking full-sized "100 Grand" bars. When I started handing these out last year, the neighbors went crazy. I suspect some people changed costumes and came back for a second round. So this year I'm adding TWO-CUP REESE'S PACKAGES to the mix. Oh yeah. My decorations may just be a bunch of pumpkins chucked by our door, but I have SCHOOLED Y'ALL on the treats, with your chintzy little mini-M&M packages... You have been served.

* In a bit of synchronicity, we have just bought a new mattress, just like Stella. I'm intrigued by the name: Sealy's "Peachtree Meadows." It sounds like a suburban subdivision with no sidewalks an hour from Atlanta. But it's really a mattress.

* Babycakes has to tell me what to do all of the time. I don't know how other mothers stay focused and clean and on-schedule, because more often than not I'm found drooling listlessly in a corner while my child is actively in need of something essential. This morning, we were happily playing with her Little Tikes Mail Cart when she suddenly threw her head over the top of the cart and wailed with frustration. I wiped the drool from my mouth long enough to ask, "What do you WANT, my child?" and damn if she didn't stand up from the cart, and lead me by the sleeve over to her food cabinet. Oohhhhh! It's 7am and I guess you want... how you say? BREAKFAST? You, an active, growing toddler, require actual sustenance? So I fed her and she was happy again, delivering mail to the pumpkins on the front porch. ("This is for you, Toothie! I think it's from your dentist...")

* Was it an error for me to share with EVERYONE my plans to get pregnant? Perhaps the error was in broadcasting the dates of my menstrual cycle, because now everyone keeps asking, "Any news?" I'm so clueless, I say things like, "Yeah, I just started using Method-brand cleansers and they're pretty good" instead of the real answer: "No, I'm not pregnant, nor do I hold out much hope at this juncture. Instead, I cling to my only child, inappropriately seeking her approval and allowing her to wear adult-sized Crocs whenever she wants."

Halloween approaches, despite me

The good news is that my mother found a photo of my Pink Panther costume (and my sister as a wild gypsy). The bad news is that I just ruined Halloween for my neighborhood.

See, this is how it goes on my block... at the beginning of October, neighbors start dropping off bags of treats on each other's doorsteps. It's called "Boo'ing" -- and it's a nationwide phenomenon in little neighborhood such as ours.

I got "Boo'ed" last year -- someone left a cute bag of treats on my doorstep, along with the anonymous note. And despite extreme postpartum feelings, I spread the cheer by "Boo'ing" a couple of my neighbors. See, that's how it works, like a chain letter -- you get boo'ed, you boo two more people, and everyone who's been BOO'ED puts a sign in their window that says, "We've Been Boo'ed!" -- with the hidden subtext: "We're totally POPULAR!"

Anyway, that was last year. And I was an idiot and I chose a super-Christian family to "Boo" -- before learning that they don't celebrate Halloween (!!??) and I chose a nice hippie family that didn't put the sign up OR "Boo" anyone else (have I forgiven them? no). Despite my having chosen the wrong people to "Boo", the "Boo" chain continued through others and we all had cute signs up in our windows throughout the holidays.

This year I got "Boo'ed" while we were at my sister's wedding, and it took me a full week to get my act together and "Boo" anyone else. It was only after I "Boo'ed" a couple ladies who I considered "SURE THINGS" that I realized that I had been the first to be boo'ed in the whole neighborhood.

I ascertained this fact by driving creepily around my neighborhood, slowing down at various ladies' houses and scanning their windows for "Boo" signs. There were NONE. I was the only one. Whoever originates the "Boo-ing" in my neighborhood had chosen me as the FIRST PERSON in the whole neighborhood to be BOO'ED! What a responsibility! The good feelings of Halloween, it turns out, were totally up to me.

Anyway, the women I Boo'ed, my total SURE THINGS have (a) not put their signs up, and (b) don't seem to have "Boo'ed" anyone else.

WHAT THE CRAP IS UP WITH THAT?

And what do I do now? Do I start Boo'ing other people, pathetically chucking treats on everyone's doorsteps until the Boo'ing catches fire again? Every year, the Boo'ing has gone smoothly throughout the homes of this block, and this year, NOT ONE HOUSE (other than ours, pathetically) has a BOO sign up. I am never going to be trusted with the "Boo" torch again, I bet.

Another temptation is to begin stalking the women I "Boo'ed"... "Hey, BEE-ATCH! You enjoying those CANDY BARS I GAVE YOU? Then get off your HEINEY and BOO someone!!!"

I even clipped the last living sunflower from my Garden of Grief to adorn one of the treat bags. CAN I HAVE IT BACK? I mean, if you're going to totally IGNORE the directives of the "Boo" note then I REGRET having given you such a sweet little token!

So, yeah, I passed the "Boo" torch on to the wrong women once again. But this year, the stakes were so much higher, and with every day that passes, the "Boo" note in my window festers, lonely and tattered, a testament to my having RUINED Halloween for the good people of the block.

Baby Leia

I'm so freaking excited about my daughter's Halloween costume that I can barely control myself. She's going to be PRINCESS LEIA, as a TODDLER.

I don't know if I need to dress up at Queen Amidala (had she lived), because that would be complicated and weird:

And to make matters more convoluted, our 9-year-old neighbor girl is dressing up as Darth Vader, so I guess that kind of makes her Babycakes' FATHER in the whole scheme of things, but whatever. I'm STILL going to make her pose with Baby Leia. I hollered across her yard today, "HEY! You're still going as Vader, RIGHT?" and she kind of squinted and said, "Yeah," to which I responded, "YOU HAVE TO COME OVER FOR PICTURES WITH THE BABY."

I'll bribe that neighbor girl with Reese's Cups if I have to, but I'm going to get these pictures taken and they're going to be badass. The Force is totally going to be RAMPANT in this neighborhood this Halloween.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was little, I started obsessing over my costume two months before the BIG DAY, and, other than one truly spectacular Pink Panther ensemble, I never was truly satisfied with the end result. Now that I have my own child, I am living my dreams once again, creating elaborate costumes and getting jazzed well in advance. Yesterday, I paraded my sweet child to the seamstress, where she pinned and tucked the Leia costume so as to better fit Babycakes. As she worked on the costume, she said, "I make it long now, so she wears it next year too!"

Yeah right, lady! A repeat costume? Over my dead body. We have a reputation to uphold. Particularly after last year's lobstermania...

Soap opera bride

Inspired by the $1.65 billion purchase by Google, I am inspired to start using YouTube. I've posted a video from E's wedding day here. The sound seems to be a little off, but who the crap cares, I'm so technologically ADVANCED now. Oh, and my sister's funny.

Panda reeks

He's always MOIST (saliva/boogers/piss), and he's been dragged to the four corners of the globe, so Panda reeks. And I'm not going to wash him, as truly disgusting as that may sound.

My theory is that the SMELL of Panda is essential to his appeal to my child. On those horrible occasions that we've had to offer a DIFFERENT stuffed animal to Babycakes (WHY did you put Panda in the bathroom drawer, child?), she has taken the Non-Panda in her arms, closed her eyes, and given it a good SNIFF, then angrily rejected it. She doesn't seem to care that the Non-Panda doesn't look like Panda -- it's the odor that is wrong. TOO CLEAN, folks. TRY AGAIN.

I had to see what the appeal was, so I smooshed Panda right up to my nose and breathed deeply. DEAR CHRIST, that thing stinks. Panda smells like an outhouse cafeteria.

At my sister's wedding, I told my cousin B. how baaaad Panda smells, and he said that he and his wife wait until their child is sleeping, then sneak in and grab the stinky things from her crib in order to throw them in the washing machine. Well, that would pretty much kill the beeeaautiful odor of Panda, which my child has worked a year to distill. I would be quite fearful, handing Babycakes a Dreft-smelling Panda with fluffy white fur.

See, Panda needs to stink -- it is his odor which brings her comfort in scary situations. She has a precise ritual, not unlike a sommelier, with which she takes in his odor. She lifts him by the tail and brings Panda's paws to her nose, closes her eyes, rotates the bear and sniffs EACH PAW one by one. After this, she will usually look him directly in the eye and give him a wild French Kiss, followed by a quick nose-suck. She then holds him in her right hand while ever-so-slightly touching his scratchy tag against the palm of her left hand for several minutes.

There are variations on the sniffing ritual, but that's the gist of it pretty much every time. And it makes her so happy and calm, like Infant Valium.

So Panda reeks, and I turn my nose the other way.

All I want for Christmas is a second line

The madness must stop. I have come to the point where I am urinating on ovulation tests twice a day, PRAYING for the LH surge that indicates an egg is rolling down a fallopian pike.

I ran out of ovulation tests when we were in Boston, where I used the last one during my sister's wedding reception, EXCUSING MYSELF so that I could test for the LH surge (no dice, despite my leaving the festivities for several minutes to STARE at the dim purple line).

This is ridiculous. NEVERMIND what happens later in my cycle, when I start testing to see if I'm pregnant if/when my period is 10 minutes late. And the pregnancy tests I have are the ones you dip down into pee, so I've got a baby food jar poised by the potty so I can pee in it and dip the test in, waiting while my heart beats out of my chest, willing that second purple line to appear, however faint.

But it DOESN'T. And that's OK. I vacillate between considering myself an infertile CRONE and a busy 35-year-old woman who happens to not be pregnant YET. We've been trying since my miscarriage in June, and I have started to obsess over terms like "short luteal phase" and "advanced maternal age" and "ONLY CHILD."

My wise friend E. told me a story yesterday about woman who set a deadline -- if she wasn't pregnant by that deadline, then she would seek help. This lady was just as out of control as I am with the ovulation kits and the pregnancy tests. I doubt she was as completely WACKO as I am, i.e., not taking prenatal vitamins because I believe I will JINX my fertility if I am so presumptuous as to ingest prenatal vitamins, although YES I am risking a child with neural tube defects but I'm not pregnant anyway, so who gives a crap? And I'm saving on vitamins... so I can spend ALL my money and time on purchasing and using pee-tests of various kinds.

Anyway, E. VERY gently suggested to me that I toss the kits and set a deadline, and perhaps stop talking about my fertility every single damn time we're at the playground with our kids, and my child is teetering precariously on top of the slide but I'm not paying attention because I'm doing a new round of "calendar-math" ("So... if I had my period on the 20th, but it was two days late, then I can expect my next period on the 18th, unless it's two days late as well and I have a new 30-day cycle going, and so if I've ovulated on the 7th, which I don't think I did because I had no LH-surge, but say I did, then I would know I was pregnant by the 22nd...").

So let's just say Christmas. Christmas is exactly six months after my miscarriage, and they say that women over 35 should not wait longer than six months because TIME'S A WASTIN' for cripe's sake. Does this mean that I'll begin seeing Santa as a harbinger of doom? Or perhaps I can coax the old man into leaving some Clomid in my stocking.

Babycakes and the Big Fat Greek Wedding

Our Babycakes pulled it off -- she was a flowergirl on Saturday for her Aunt E's wedding. She did not muss her dress, or eat the appliqued flowers as I had predicted, and managed to take about 10 steps into the big Greek Orthodox church before wigging out and flying into her father's arms.

But Hub-D carried her ceremoniously to her place in the front pew and entertained her with scores of animal crackers who danced along the railing and into her mouth. Never was a child so filled with animal crackers as Babycakes that day. We also gave her the important task of dismantling the rehearsal bouquet -- you know the one that is crafted from the ribbons of the shower gifts? Yeah, she went to TOWN on that big boy. And what she didn't destroy during the ceremony, she polished off on the cross-country flight last night.

So it is all accomplished -- I stood in heels for the long service, staring at all of the ceremonial objects and making up jokes in my mind to tell the bride later. The priest discussed Jesus's wine-making abilities at length during the service. Does he know that the shower was wine-themed? Does he know how hungover on wine we all were from the rehearsal dinner? But he spent a good, long time mulling the wine while my sister and her new husband tried to concentrate and not keel over from the candle fumes.

What a funny miracle for Jesus to have enacted -- I mean, some miracles are obvious -- waking the dead, healing the sick, showing up after you've died in a very public manner -- and regardless of one's religious affiliation, you must admit that Jesus really had something amazing going on, even if it was just very good PR. But listening to the tale in which Jesus made wine from the water, I wonder, why did he choose that to be one of his miracles? It seems that Jesus was simply trying to help the party's host avoid embarrassment. It sucks to be out of wine before the end of a party, for sure. It makes you look cheap and ill-prepared and people start shuffling out with lame excuses. So it sure pays to have a relative like Jesus to save the day! And I wonder now if he did this kind of thing all of the time -- kind of like the food-creator on the Jetsons. Anyway, I think it's a cool miracle to have enacted -- it wasn't just about life or death, it was about having a good time and really underscores the importance of good booze at an event.

Anyway, my daughter (who was cut off from wine by our pediatrician, who curtly informed me that wine could KILL her if she has more than a few sips at a time... whoops... how did she survive our trip to Italy?) was a spectacular flowergirl, although she didn't make it down the aisle by herself. She made the whole wedding party laugh with her crazy curtain-peekaboo antics at the picture-taking sessions, and only lost Panda ONCE during the whole affair.

(Panda was located in the closed, cold church by a dear parishioner unrelated to the wedding, who, upon receiving a panicked call from the priest's wife, interrupted his Saturday night to scour the church playroom, uncover Panda and drive like a maniac to the wedding reception in order to reunite our little girl with her dear bear.)

And we're done, and E. is married, and we are home, gradually recovering from our family-wide post-wedding hangover. Oh, Jesus, pass the wine!

Asocial

The only frustrating thing about this wedding is that my 13-month-old child has NO SOCIAL MORES whatsoever.

"Babycakes, meet your new uncle!"

"WWwwwwaaaagh" (followed by much clinging to me, as though she has been confronted with a swamp monster).

This does not bode well for her flowergirl responsibilities tomorrow.

Tonight, we practice. Practice until she is as CUTE as possible, and behaving well and getting down the aisle. It will be practice a la "The Manchurian Candidate" -- "When you hear this music, child, you will MARCH to the end of the aisle... CUTER!"

I'm easy

I have only a moment to write as we are packing our things, vacating our penthouse luxury living arrangement and heading out to the suburbs, to our hotel near my sister's nuptials, but I must say...

I have fallen in love with Boston in a way I never did when I lived here. I never noticed how fantastic this city is -- it's just behaving so WELL -- perfect weather, friendly cabs, bright autumn leaves, well-stocked playgrounds, terrific food (pumpkin chocolate chip muffins!!!) and so many terrific, fun people from my past to enjoy it with.

I wonder, though, if I'm just kind of a slut for any geographical location. I loved Nashville. I loved Rome. I think I'm just in love with my husband, so it makes all of these locations glowy and romantic, and I'm really not one to judge. That's why, when Hub-D walked into the room yesterday and said, "Would you be up for moving to Jacksonville, Florida?" I said, "YEAH!"... as in, "Will you be there?... Then I just know I'll love it."

OK, off to Natick, Mass, where my sister will marry a Greek man and add countless syllables to her last name.

Countdown to E.'s wedding... Five days to go!

There is something eerie and unnatural about weddings in that people from unrelated parts of your life come together and interact -- blowing your mind as, say, your piano teacher hits on your college roommate. It's dreamlike.

At my own wedding, I recall being approached by four women who'd all been told at some point in my life that they were my "best friend." I felt not unlike a polygamist whose wives had found one another.

Now that we're closing in on my sister's wedding, people are arriving from all corners of my life, and I can't HIDE and say, "Yeah well I'm the BRIDE so I can't possibly be responsible for choosing between four best friends... gotta get my make-up done... see ya!"

No, as the sister-of-the-bride and bridesmaid besides, I have inescapable social obligations and no excuse for flakiness or forgetfulness. I've got to be there, be polite, and keep my head about me as relatives and friends from the four corners of the world converge upon Boston for the festivities.

We're staying for the better part of this week in my high school friend T.'s penthouse apartment in Boston, which my child has already successfully dismantled. This morning she found a stash of ceramic saucers she hadn't yet fingered, so the fun never stops! T. has features like long, sharp wooden steps to the rooftop and a large indoor waterfall that make this place BABY HEAVEN... but fill a parent with dread. He has a fun set of marble coffeetables with large dishes of polished rocks adorning each of them. Anyone who has spent time with a toddler knows how that whole scene ended up... Anyone know where I can find some large replacement marble inlays???

But having my high school friend T. and my husband chatting and comparing notes is something close to horror for me. As a lifelong geeky poser, I live in dread of being found out for all the creepy things I've done and said. So far, I've kept the conversation about THEM, and about my sister, who, as it turns out, still plans to get MARRIED -- of all things -- on Saturday.