Day 10 Off Dairy

This morning the cleaning lady didn’t cluck sympathetically when looking at Paige–or more specifically Paige’s skin–then cast me an askance look as if to say she’s not above handing me over to Child Protective Services.

It makes me think my abstinence from dairy may be starting to pay off.

Despite whatever progress we’re making it’s still a constant struggle to keep off the stuff. I feel like I should be in some church basement getting a pin for my 10 days “clean.”

Mother Loads

My oldest sister Marie has 12 years on me. And like 97% of America, she married and starting reproducing at a younger age than I did.

So when Kate was a newborn and I was adjusting to a break from office life, living in a new city, and caring for an infant 24×7, Marie was working through some domestic changes of her own. Hers was on the opposite end of the parenting spectrum though; the oldest of her two sons had just left for college.

With Mom gone, my sisters and I call each other when there’s something we want to tell Mom about. It’s not as good as the real thing, but given the situation you need to make do. Marie will call: “Since Mom’s not here to brag about this to, I’ll just have to tell you that John made the Dean’s List!” Or Ellen will just leave a message, “I miss Ma! I really wish I could call her right now.”

Anyway, being at home with a baby increased my calls to Marie exponentially. I needed someone other than Mark to prattle on to about Kate’s dazzling beauty and brilliance, and to celebrate her most mundane accomplishments and grocery store interactions. And with her Nearly Empty Nest Syndrome newly engaged, Marie had her share of stuff to talk about too.

Oddly, more often than not, our conversations turned to the topic of laundry. I was living through what everyone forewarns happens when you have a kid–an alarming increase in washing, drying, folding, and putting away clothes–and endlessly repeating this process. For Marie, her laundry had fallen off dramatically. She’d often say that with just one son at home and always off doing things with his own car and friends, there was so much less for her to do–and God knows, there was also less laundry.

Call it wacky, depressing, or weird, but I’ve come to see how the cosmic cycle of laundry (no pun intended) creates a bit of a natural and calming rhythm to things on the home front. Laundry is rarely stressful. It’s not demanding or physically taxing. And it’s often satisfying in the way that something dirty becomes clean and renewed, and a pile of disorder moves towards order and harmony. It’s ever-present in some state of completion–and there’s nothing you can do but accept that. The moment you
finish a white load you end up dropping a white t-shirt into the
hamper. And so it goes. There will be another white load soon enough. (I’d also say that there’s that great clean laundry smell, but these days we’re a no-dye no-fragrance kinda family.)

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I can think of a million things I’d much rather do than laundry, but of all housework crap that must get done, it’s not half bad. And it beats emptying the dishwasher by a long shot.

So here I am again, home with a newborn and having pressed the pause button on my work life once more. And now with two kids–oy the laundry! And by sheer coincidence, Marie’s in a new place too, this time with her youngest off at college as a freshman. No one at home but her and her husband, generating a relative dearth of dirty clothes. Once a bustling hive of activity, a place she’d pop into several times a day, all is now quiet on the laundry room front.

But in our recent conversations she’s outed herself a bit on how she’s managing the change. Her son’s at Brown–an easy drive from their Boston suburb home. At first she’d mention having to go there to bring him something–his blue blazer for an upcoming formal, his mouth guard. More recently she’s been attending his lacrosse games. She started mentioning how bedraggled he looked when she’d see him. “His North Face jacket reeked. I think it had been soaked in beer.”

It was her entree to admitting that he was clearly in need, so she’d say she took some of his laundry with her when she’d go visit Dad who lives nearby. “I just ran a few loads while I was having lunch with Dad,” she’d say.

The other day she mentioned having brought Rory’s dirty clothes home with her. She went so far as to say how satisfying it was to soak them for a while and see the water turn gray. How good it felt to really get them clean. It made me remember there was a pair of Kate’s poopy panties awaiting me on our laundry pile downstairs.

But I didn’t want to show off.

Last week Marie called to check in. They’d been to Brown to one of Rory’s games, and she mentioned she dropped off the laundry that she’d taken from him on her last visit. And in the peaceful voice of a woman who’s come to terms with what it is that makes her happy, she told me when she was there she offered to do Rory’s roommate’s laundry too.

I managed to swallow saying, “No fucking way!” because I knew she realized herself it was utterly wacky. And who am I to get in the way of that other kid getting the yellow stains out of the armpits of his t-shirts?

Besides, it’s impossible to know what things I’ll be clinging to when Kate and Paige are off to college. God knows there’s an inner Smother in me just waiting to come out.

One thing I’m fairly certain of is when it comes to unloading dishwashers, they’re on their own.

Another Day, Another Dollar–or Not

It’s official. I am a stay-at-home mom.

I went to Sunset today and told my team I’m not coming back, and even though they were sad (which was flattering) and I was sad in the moment of looking at all their faces and just being in that building with all the beauty and flora and creative energy, I know it’s the right decision.

And, considering my day yesterday, that is saying a lot.

Yesterday was marked by two major poop explosions. First was Kate’s which came shortly after the nap she allegedly takes each day. The thing is,  the diaper that they’d put on her at preschool was scooted over to one side–kinda like a thong, but only over the left butt cheek. Suffice it to say it was ineffective at trapping the poo. And without diving too deeply into the minutiae of scatology, a poop explosion with a toddler is a much different situation than it is with a baby.

So, when Paige took her turn, she had to throw in a twist. We were out for what was to be a short walk to the dry cleaner. Kate saw the library and decided she wanted to go in, and since Paige was crying and hungry I consented and decided to feed her on a couch there. After Paige nursed for a while and we all read some books, Paige was staring dreamily out into the middle distance looking as satisfied and content as a baby can be. I should have known something else was brewing–if only for the fact that I, of course, had no diaper bag with me.

Let’s just say Paige’s project was so loud that it shattered the silence in the library. And when I dared to look, her entire back was sopping wet and bright orange with poo. Thankfully my pants were black, and the wrap I eventually tucked Paige in–poop-strewn as she was–was navy blue.

I’m happy to report that on our walk home I didn’t bump into any old boyfriends or anything. Paige and I were wet and stinky. It’s no surprise Kate was lagging half a block behind, feigning interest in the front gardens she passed by and trying to look like she didn’t know us.

Mark walked in the door last night five minutes after a calm that followed both girls totally melting down and losing it. Things suddenly got miraculously quiet right after several minutes of mayhem, and I should have known Mark was about to walk in. Sick as it is, I wished that he’d gotten there in the high (or low?) point of it all so he could witness what that witching hour is sometimes like.

To be fair, Mark does know and appreciate that the going can get tough. He was great about taking the baby, jumping in with Kate’s dinner, etc. But when Paige needed to be fed he had to apologetically hand her back over.

I sat in the rocking chair in Paige’s room. Still wearing my likely shit-stained black pants, and nursed Paige with my tired head literally held up by my hands.

Paige ate her fill then stared up at me. And before I knew it was coming, an immense arc of vomit came rushing out of her mouth covering her, my shirt, and the 80% of my pants that were devoid of her earlier shared fecal matter. All I could think of was, “Of course.”

Back in my office-work era I certainly had some stressed out times, but–in the literal sense–yesterday took the cake for shitty days.

Ah well, it was nothing that my fourth load of laundry for the day couldn’t wash clean.

Diary of a Pack Rat

Whenever I throw something away I have to announce it to Mark. I’ll just scream out to him wherever he is from my position near the garbage can. “I’m throwing out these holey socks I’ve had since 7th grade!” Or, “I’m throwing out these flip flops with the paper-thin soles!”

I throw things out so infrequently I require positive reinforcement when I do so. It’s not like Mark is someone who has facility with tossing things himself. If anything, he understands how hard it is to part with crap, so he empathizes and cheers me on.

I’d say it’s a genetic trait since my mom was utterly incapable of parting with things. But it didn’t get passed down to all of us. My oldest sister Marie is living proof of the backlash of being the child of a hoarder. She throws things out with clinical ease, utter emotional detachment. In fact, at one point she told me she heard that things don’t last in the freezer for more than two weeks, so whatever she was keeping in there wasn’t around for long either. I don’t think that, aside from the humans, she’s got anything in her house that’s more than a few years old.

As the youngest, I represent the opposite side of the spectrum–though Ellen and Judy do their fair share of packratting. In fact, Judy has a storage unit with the contents of an entire apartment that she hasn’t lived in for years, so that counts for something.

At least everything that I hoard–with some exceptions–has some redeeming value. When my mother was selling the house we grew up in, which she’d lived in for over 40 years, my sisters and I slogged through three floors full of stuff. There were doll-sized afghans knitted by church bazaar ladies. Patterns for outdated outfits for pre-teens. Twin bed frames long unassembled, woven palm frond fans, mismatched shirt boxes from Macy’s and Lord & Taylor, circa God knows when (definitely pre-80s). And endless amounts of books and magazines. The woman had every Woman’s Day, Gourmet, and National Geographic ever printed (though not in any sort of order that might make them collectible), not to mention a pristine vintage set of The World Book Encyclopedia. (The Wold Book was the Internet back when I was in grade school.)

Much of this crap filled the eves of the attic, but much of it was in the living space. It wasn’t like she was a crazy-lady in a cat-filled house, but anywhere where there might be a couple magazines in a “tossers” house, there would be a treasure trove in which one could perform a sociological study of fashion and food trends through the decades in my mother’s house.

And her old magazines weren’t enough. You know when you go to a yard sale and someone is selling a carton of Bon Appetit magazines from 1974-1976, and you think to yourself, “Ha. Good luck selling those, buddy. Who the hell would buy those?”

Well, if the sale was east of the Mississippi, my mother would, that’s who. My cousin Nancy who is for all intents and purposes a sister, and certainly my mother’s fifth daughter, used to find ways to lug armloads of magazines out of my mother’s house after a visit, so she could recycle them. We would laugh until we cried talking about Nancy’s attempts to sneak out with a bag of yellowing National Enquirers (the dirty papers, as my grandmother called them), which my Aunt Mary would distribute to my mother after she and her sister, Mimi, had read them. Sometimes Nancy would almost get caught and oooh you didn’t want to cross my mother when you were trying to get rid of something she thought she needed. That was never an easy conversation, and always ended with you setting down the bag and Just. Walking. Away.

When we were getting ready to move her to her smaller house we’d argue with my mom over the smallest items. Up in the attic in a shoe box full of other random crap like pin cushions and crochet hooks I’d found a handle to a coffee mug–truly a white handle to a random mug, not even a china cup–and I remember my mother blew her stack when I tossed it in the garbage. “I’m holding onto that,” she scolded me. “That mug is somewhere and I’m going to glue it back on.” It would have been funny it was so absurd, if it weren’t for the fact that you’d been shoveling through stuff all day and wanted to just sit down and cry with exhaustion and frustration.

After my sisters and I had five of these arguments each with her, all over various worthless items, my mother grew incredibly defensive and upset over the whole enterprise. She was trying to hold onto all these pieces of her life, and we were thoughtlessly plowing through it all and willing to just throw it all away. I can see how the panic of something she really cherished getting discarded could be unnerving, but my sisters and I held staunchly to our side of the situation. We were blinded with drive to get more than 40 years of accumulation moved, organized, and/or somehow staged in a way that made it look appealing to a potential buyer.

Eventually we somehow managed to corral the save-able stuff, toss some of the crap on the sly, sell the better stuff we all agreed we didn’t want but someone else might, and get her into the sweet smaller house that she loved, without ever coming to blows or needing family mediation. Net net we must have somehow grown from the experience.

Part of the thing with my mother no doubt had to do with her having grown up in the Depression. She never used tea bags twice, but man did she scrape every last drop of batter from a mixing bowl. And in the way that you buy whatever laundry detergent you had growing up because that’s just what people use, I definitely picked up some of my mother’s Depression-inspired habits without realizing they were anything other than the way things are done.

When Shelley and I were first roommates I went into the fridge one night after dinner and saw that Shelley, whose mother was a bit older than my mom, had wrapped up the small heel of a tomato in Saran Wrap. I laughed when I saw it, thinking that even I would never have saved that, but Shelley would probably not hold onto flannel nightgowns for as long as I do, so it all evens out. Besides, how can you make fun of someone who is suffering from a version of an illness that you have?

At any rate, tonight I threw out a perfectly good shirt of Kate’s. Well, it used to be perfectly good, but it must have been in the laundry pile downstairs with some food on it because it got blue speckles of mold on it–even after going through the wash. The shirt was actually pretty new, but I knew it wasn’t ever going to come clean. So, after rejecting the thought of saving it as a rag, I just tossed it in the garbage can.

Maybe some day when Kate is helping us clean out the house so we can move to a smaller place, she’ll thank me for having let go of some things along the way.

The Joys of the Season: Packing It All Up

It may make me sound like a holiday curmudgeon. And I’m not. I swear! But this year, one of the highlights of the holidays was packing up all the ornaments, decorations, and Christmas crap.

And not for any reason like we had a bad Christmas, or I that I have any negative associations with the baby Jesus. In fact, we had a lovely time. Christmas Eve we had a fun dinner party with Sacha, Joel and Baby Owen and Joel’s parents who were in from Chicago. I made Aunt Mary’s eggnog, we dressed the babies up in special waiting-for-Santa PJs, and when they were in bed we made our way through some good food and wine while chatting about everything from being deprived of junk food as a kid, to what causes Joel’s mother wants to fight for when she retires. When it was time to go I got Kate from the Pack and Play in their bedroom and her hair was sticking straight up like Phyllis Diller and even though we’d woken her up and dragged her out into a brightly lit room of fairly lit adults she was wincing and all smiley and it was so darn cute you just had to laugh at her and hug her to pieces.

And Christmas day was relaxed and lazy and fun. Peggy was here being Supreme Grandma to Kate. After a 10-minute period of Kate not totally gushing over Peggy when she first arrived, she shook that free and the two of them dove into in a wonderful love fest that was fun to see. You just can’t help but love it when another person is as gaga for your baby as you are.

On Christmas after opening presents and eating cranberry bread that I made (just like my Mom used to) and lounging around, we headed out for a before-it-rains hike with Kristen B and fam. Afterwards we ended up going to their house for an impromptu lunch of leftovers and to check out Milana’s Santa loot. Neither Mark nor I even thought about taking a shower until after 7PM. It was a dirty-haired Christmas, and it suited us just fine.

In the post-holiday shopping blitz (in which we probably spent more money than we did on all our pressies for others), I bought some ornament storage boxes at The Container Store. Then at OSH I got a Rubbermaid wreath storage bag. And at Target I picked up a wrapping paper and ribbon holder that looks like a golf bag, but lacks wheels (which would be a nice feature for their next gen product).

It was all I could do not to rip the ornaments off the tree the moment I entered the house with my storage boxes. But in a maternal act of selflessness I saw how much Kate enjoyed looking at the tree, so I left it intact until yesterday.

Suffice it to say, I’ve never had so much fun taking down a Christmas tree. I let my OCD out of the closet and wore it like a badge of honor. If I could have I would have alphabetized those damn ornaments, but I managed to derive enough pleasure from simply stowing each one carfefully in its own compartment where it will be safely stored and easily retracted next year. Oh simple pleasures!

My grapevine wreath, along with the pinecone ones Mom made and the shell one Aunt Mary made me are all wrapped and sealed in the wreath bag–and labeled neatly with green masking tape. (Do other people own six wreaths? Am I normal?) I covered all the other random decorations in bubble wrap and put the manger pieces in the same old newspapers that my mother stored them in for years. (I didn’t look at the year on the papers but I should have. I bet it’s old!) And Grandma Kohl’s divine Christmas tree skirt and 12 Days of Christmas wall hanging got furled up and packed away in the special cotton bags she made for them.

What, I ask you, could be more fun? In fact, I blew off the neighbor’s New Year’s Day party I was having such a dandy time doing all this.

Mark tossed the tree out front and vacuumed up stray needles and I slapped my hands together gloating with satisfaction while surveying the house. Without the tree and all the fixings it seemed like we suddenly have so much more room.

And just like that we’re back to non-holiday mode. It’s over and packed away perfectly until next year when we do it all over again.

Will I Ever Be Hungry Again?

Oy, am I full.

I think it’s the culmination of a week’s worth of eating. And with each meal I’m surpassing my body’s natural step-away-now-you’ve-had-enough signal, and even the back-up i’m-serious-stop-all-intake-immediately warning sign and continuing gorging myself convinced that there’s some under-utilized gastro-intestinal space somewhere where I can pack away a couple more Christams cookies, pieces of gingerbread, Toblerone chocolate, or in the case of this past lunch, a simple cup of hot chocolate. How is it that of all things it’s one small liquid beverage that managed to send me over the edge to bloated sloshing Santa-belly mode. Forget the Betty Ford Clinic. My first stop post-holidays is Over Eaters Anonymous.

In one famous moment in my shared-memory life with Mark, we ate dinner at some German restaurant in Hayes Valley called Supenkutchen (go with my spelling here). We were out with our incredibly fabulous friends Scot and Sheryl, and some friend of theirs who was in from Europe or somewhere who was probably a world-famous cyclist, though I wouldn’t have known. So this dinner. Well, first off, it’s a German restaurant, so it’s hardly the 70’s diet dinner of cottage cheese and canned fruit, right? But add to that the fact that they serve post-War portions at this place: two gigantic slabs of meat, with a pound or so of schnitzel on the side, on a platter that’d fit your Grandma’s turkey, along with the requisite pints of beer. I have to burp just thinking about it.

After that meal I was so full, so miserably overstuffed physically and so filled with self-loathing for having gotten myself into that place, I was over-the-top Crabby. Famously Crabby. I mean, I was lashing out at myself and others with the helpless frustration of a boa constrictor who’s trying to digest a small goat.

Now, if ever I am crabby (rare an occasion as it is), Mark and I measure my crabbiness on a scale relative to that night.

Scot and Sheryl and their maybe-famous guest ended up staying at our grand Noe Valley flat that night, and as I changed the sheets on the guest bed I remember biting Sheryl’s head off when she asked something meek, kind, and innocent like, “Can I help you?” You’d have thought I’d already bitten off enough that night.

At any rate, all the food, plus the intermittent gloom of the weather, and either too much sleep, or not enough, have left me feeling somewhat logie this week. I’ve gotten to sleep late thanks to Grandma Peggy being here and spending lots of QT with Kate, and we’ve all taken Family Naps (TM) when Kate has taken hers in the afternoons, but still I’m finding myself somehow sleepy.

Maybe slowing down and relaxing–which I generally tend to find stressful and have trouble comprehending its popularity–has exhausted me.

Yesterday I dragged myself to yoga, and despite how smelly I realized my feet were once class was underway (somehow my personal hygiene has also dropped off this week), I think it was a good effort to shake off my lazy sleepy holiday schlump. Today my stomach muscles feel slightly sore which is gratifying.

I think it’s from yoga, and not my excessive food intake, but it’s anyone’s guess.

Another theory: Kate has somehow tapped into the wellspring of my energy and is wielding it wildly for her own personal gain. The gal is on a general all-out blitz. She officially started walking this week. And not just the we’ll-crouch—and-hold-out-our-arms-while-she-walks-towards-us thing. She’s now often walking on her own volition to get around. Sure, at times she stumbles and sways and falls on her ass. And part of the time she still opts to crawl. But she probably gets that from me.

And that little mouth of hers is working as hard as her legs. We were in the car the other day and Mark turned to me and said, “My God will she ever stop?,” and in that way that there’s some annoying background noise that you hadn’t noticed until someone points it out, I realized she’d been talking non-stop for the past half-hour.

“Baby, baby, baby, doggie, Santa, Grandma, Dadda, baby, baby, baby, doe, doe, doe. Uh-oooh! Uh-oooh! More. More. More. Rabbit! Rabbit!”

For the love of God, it’s exhausting just listening.

But she’s our own little Energizer Bunny Love Bug. And with all her drunken sailor walking, and the accompanying bar-fight facial bruises, scrapes and contusions she’s collected on her mobile adventures and interactions with Christmas present toys, the gal is ridiculously adorable. So much so that one must grab her and squeeeeze her and give her no less than a hundred kisses, like it or not.

And mostly, she’s got better things to do. Now she wriggles out of your clutches and says “Doe! Doe! Doe!,” which if you choose to accept it is her way of telling you she’d like you to put her down. She’s got places to be, man.

And if there’s anyone to blame for her being wired for action, it’s me. I’m just hopeful that at some point soon we’re able to re-distribute the energy levels between us a bit more equally. It’s weird not being the one whose stumbling around wildly and talking non-stop.

Nearly Christmas

I’ve been a cookie baking fool. Over the course of the past few weekends I’ve been producing cookies at a furious pace and maniacally labeling freezer bags and Tupperware with cookie types and dates and storing them up for Christmas. Then to top it off I made cranberry bread this morning. I’m like a conscientious squirrel readying myself for the long cold months, and I can only imagine if I were one of the other squirrels I’d hate me.

But the fact is, aside from the by-product that it will be nice to have an assortment of cookies for those who stop by for some McClusky family holiday cheer, I think the cookie baking somehow turned into this nostalgic refuge for connecting with my mom.

There is something about getting your house ready for Christmas when you’re the one playing Santa. I want it to be nice. I want the tree to be pretty–not over-the-top fancy, but sweet and nice and covered in ornaments that have meaning to me or Mark and someday when she’s old enough to grock it all, to Kate.

My mother kicked ass at Christmas. Not that she’d ever take any credit for it, and not that she was showy about it. But she made pinecone wreaths, she baked and cooked special food, she hacked down her own tree with an axe and made a profusion of Chex Mix.

Going through all the motions this year I’ve given myself time to do it without stress and panic and the fear that I wasn’t going to have time to do everything I wanted to do. Even though it’s taken time and energy and planning, it’s this weirdly rewarding act—getting ready for Christmas—which was totally devoid of external pressure. How comforting it is putting a perfect double batch of Mark’s family chocolate cookies in the freezer.

And part of the comfort of it all is the knowledge that I’m doing the things that my mother did year after year—and since this is the first time we are having our own Christmas and not going home to RI, doing this all myself has made me realize all that goes into it. She’s been on my mind so much as I set out the manger figurines, or wrangle with fresh garland that I’m determined to frame the front door with, or put the cards in the little red wooden sleigh every day after Mark and Kate and I open them together. By repeating this well-worn ritual that she performed for so many years it’s like I’ve somehow been hanging out with her.

Part of the connection comes from the fact that so many of the decorations, the manger, the sleigh, the ceramic angels that lean towards each other and kiss–and are surprisingly not tacky, though in describing them it’s hard to imagine how they couldn’t be. So many of the things were hers. And I think she knew that of all of us I would cherish them the most. I think before she was even sick she said that I’d get the manger “one day.”

Peggy arrived today, and after going to a Christmas party we came home and got Kate to bed and watched a movie called The Family Stone. I guess I’d put it on our Netflix queue at some point thinking it was a light-as-a-feather comedy about a guy taking his girlfriend home at Christmas and she’s all New York and uptight and they’re all mellow and quirky but tight-knit and they give her a hard time.

It turns out the movie, while also being about the anal girlfriend thing, was more about this amazing family who lived in this huge old house that was totally enviable, but also a real family house with the requisite set of mismatched coffee mugs. Diane Keaton plays the eccentric but crazy-with-love mother of five distinctly different but successful in their own way adult children.

Somewhere towards the end, I realized that somehow my perspective on movies like this has totally shifted. I’m not identifying with the horror of being the child whose parents make a scene in front of the new significant other. I’m not picturing myself as the derelict daughter who wants to make the girlfriend’s life hell because she’s protecting her brother. I’m totally putting myself into the mother role—even though the mother is probably in her sixties in the movie. I’m thinking about how great it would be to have a brood of five children, who are all unique and fabulous and who unconditionally adore me despite my idiosyncrasies. I’m relieved to see that as this mother I’ve managed to hold onto my smart and funny husband who I still connect with and who isn’t afraid to hug and kiss our adult sons and tell them how much he loves them. From the snow-covered house to the cute gay son to the high-thread count sheets and patterned wallpaper, it was a nice daydreamy kind of fantasy.

I kicked Mark who was lying on the couch next to me. “Five kids,” I say. “How great is that?”

And of course, before they spell out what was going to happen in the otherwise light and breezy movie, it dawns on me that, of course (duh), the mother is sick. Just when you might be nearing the point of finding the family all to perfect in their garrulous noogie-giving love for each other, you realize that they are about to lose their most central character.

So here I am. Having spent the past few weeks channeling my own mother and hoping that somehow from wherever she is seeing me and admiring the fine job I’m doing of feathering the McClusky family Christmas nest. Then after renting an unsuspecting holiday hoax movie I’m suddenly crying over the fictitious dying mother who I wanted to be, and over the searingly sad pang of goneness of my own mother. No gut-wrenching sobs, mind you. Just the kind of weepiness that anyone would get watching a movie like that, but at a deeper, more personal level.

Maybe my mother is communicating with me through my Netflix queue. I swear I don’t remember ever having picked that movie, but it seemed to have made its way to me at a perfect time. Maybe I needed some sort of culmination to it all. Some big emotional moment to work out all these stray thoughts I’ve been having about Mom, so I can settle into Mark and Kate and the here and now and focus on the great new Christmas we are about to have–thanks in no small part to all my hard work.

Not So Much about Santa

The rains are here. Well, not at this moment, but they arrived yesterday and today is all gloom and impending showers. So now I’m charged with having to translate my concept of a white Christmas to a wet Christmas, seeing as it’s the first year we’re staying in California for it.

In the past, I never worried if I wasn’t in the Christmas spirit as I was working through the month of December and doing my Christmas shopping in palm-tree-lined Union Square. My single-gal tradition was always to go to Brooklyn for a couple days to visit with Mike and Lorin before heading home to RI for the holiday. And if I wasn’t absently humming The Little Drummer Boy before, I knew I’d get a turbo dose of Christmas once I touched down in NY. There is something about the cold, and the frenzy, and the hanging with Mike for our traditional holiday fancy dinner out, and sure, the store windows in Manhattan, that mere mortals can’t combat. Like it or not, Jewish, Islamic, Catholic, you get swept up in it.

This year we’ll be here. And Peggy is coming which will be great. But there won’t be snow or good bagels, or Aunt Mary’s Christmas Even 7-fish feast, or my mother’s sausage stuffing that Marie always makes, not to mention Marie’s exceptional pumpkin and apple pies. She somehow got the pie-perfect gene from Mom.

So yesterday I took Kate for her picture with Santa. She’s been looking at Santas in books and ornaments and storefront displays, and can even say something approximating Santa. But seeing him in person sent her into utter freak out. I mean, sure, the guy was some fifty-something unemployed hack with yellowed teeth (the ones he had) and an intermittently surly attitude. But still. Here we were, driven to Marin, where we’d met up with Shauna and Baby Kieran, our Yeshi-midwife friends who we’d fallen out of touch with and had Santa pics taken with last year. And once we got into the little Santa hut and I approached him, Kate clung to me like a panicked koala. And just moments after I’d told Shauna while waiting in line that Kate only nurses at night and before naps, she starts frantically signing for milk while looking at Santa wild-eyed.

Ultimately we got a shot where Kate’s halfway on my lap and Santa’s and I’m leaning out of the way. Kate isn’t actively crying, and nor is Santa, but both of them look like they need someone to cut them a break. I think we’ll reserve the Santa pics for the grandparents this year, and come up with Plan B for the Christmas cards.

Kate slept on our drive home, and as she was waking up I pulled into the Safeway parking lot, feeling ambitious that I’d make dinner. After unbuckling Kate from her seat to put her in the Ergo pack, she looked up at me innocently and let loose a fury of vomit. Twice.

I was drenched, she was drenched. And the diaper bag with the wipes was on the floor of the front seat, buried under 4 large shopping bags. It could have been buried in the ground and would have seemed easier for me to get to.

For the first time since having Kate I was truly stumped. How do I move the two of us, her on my lap facing me with her legs wrapped around my waist, with a pool of puke balanced between us, to get the wipes? And really, even if they were right there at hand, the wipes seemed an utterly inadequate tool to handle this job.

Someone pulled up in the parking spot next to me in a huge SUV. I was sitting with the back car door open, mentally floundering about what to do. I considered yelling out to the woman for help at least getting the wipes. But she was worlds away and was gone before I summoned the words.

So I clutched whimpering Kate to me and waddling around the front of the car, balancing her and the pool of puke. I managed to open the front door and prop myself against the seat edge pushing back all the shopping bags. Then I started stripped us down. Kate’s jacket, her beautiful handmade sweater from Mrs. Brown, her sweet ivory velvet dress (all fancy for her Santa pic), and her also-sopping tights. Without a better thought at hand, I dumped the clothes in a pile on the ground in the parking lot.

At this point Kate is cold and crying. And then it starts to rain. (Of course.) I peel off my cashmere sweater and add it to the heap. Thankfully I’m wearing a tank top.

Amazingly I had a change of clothes for Kate. I’d brought it in case the dress got annoying for her to stay in. So, while she bawled at top decibels now, I dressed her, and with one hand while holding her dumped the contents of one of the shopping bags on the car seat and piled the puke-strewn clothes into it. At least were only 5 minutes from home.

So we’re three days into this little virus thing, which the nanny called on Thursday night to inform us she too became plagued with. It’s got to end soon.

Undeterred by it all I have every intention of forging on with holiday-spirit-making activities. I got up early with Kate and readied myself to make about 5 different kinds of Christmas cookies–some from Mark’s family traditions and some from mine. I may even tackle the Italian filled cookies that are a bear to assemble, but my mother always diligently produced. And unless she’s looking Martian green, we’ll trundle Kate off to a Christmas tree farm to cut down a tree and ride on their little Christmas train later today.

If it kills me, and all of us, we will get in the Christmas spirit, damn it.

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

It’s True What They Say About Puke

Your own kid’s puke that is.

I’ve heard people say that when your own kid is puking you aren’t overcome with being grossed out because you’re too busy being concerned. I found it hard to wrap my head around that concept. But today I experienced it first-hand, and it turns out it’s true!

Our adventures in barfdom began at 7AM when Mark went to get Kate up. She was sitting up happily in her crib which was spattered in vomit. Her hair was sticking out in every direction like Phyllis Diller, but chunky. And the stench. Oy! Poor gal didn’t even realize she could have gotten some major attention given the scenario. Until of course we started fretted and cued her to whine and cry. Being demanding has a learning curve I guess.

Mark hosed Kate down as I dashed out the door to a client breakfast. I’d been up in the wee hours, dragged myself out of bed and got all dressed up. It was particularly trying, seeing as it was a work-from-home day, and I would have otherwise stayed in jeans and been slovenly–and slept in as late as possible.

I hopped on the highway, got ensnared in a massive traffic pile-up in the approach to a tunnel, then realized I was on the wrong highway. So I sat in tunnel traffic two ways (argh!!!) since I had to turn around after going through tunnel one way and sit in SF-bound traffic to get back through the other way to finally arrive somewhere near my starting point 25 minutes later, and running desperately late.

I called the client once I was on the correct highway where there was clearly an accident since traffic was moving at 5MPH. Omitting the barf-covered baby and the wrong-highway misadventure I blamed my lateness on the current traffic hell realm and promised into her voicemail that I’d be there as soon as I could.

She called back 10 minutes later. Traffic was loosening up and I was moving along. I was even feeling somewhat optomistic about my progress. Then, laughing, she said she thought I must be having “a senior moment” and informed me that our breakfast meeting was set for NEXT Wednesday. At which point, stomach sinking with the thought that this whole nightmare was utterly avoidable, I glanced across the highway where I’d have to turn around to head home, to see traffic at a standstill.

An hour and a half after having left the house–two and a half hours after having woken up–I returned, stripped off my work clothes, tossed on my jeans, and started my work day. Lovely.

Shelly was home watching Kate and informed me she had, as Mark and I call it, “broken poopies” Poor girl was wrangling with the old Both Ends Flu.

So by late afternoon when a rash started developing on her face, reminding me of that weird hoof and mouth virus that Baby Owen just had, I headed to the pediatrician. Where of course she was perky and energetic and babbling with the doctor about kitties and pigs and such. In fact, she pointed to the doctor and proclaimed “doggie” in the waiting room, which all the nurses at the front desk found incredibly funny. I guess they like seeing the docs cut down to size sometimes, especially by one-year-olds.

They weighed Kate and the doc who saw her looked in her file to see when she was weighed last. 10 days ago. Yes, I’d just brought her in for her soupy cough and we’d seen another of the pediatricians. So of course I was then convinced he was making some notation in her chart like, “Alert: Mother possibly suffers from Munchausen’s by Proxy.”

On the way home with Kate seeming so totally fine, I decided to stop at the little local market to get some dinner stuff. As I go to unsnap Kate from her seat she mutters something, turns to me and gushes forth a sea of puke. Then does it again, but more the second time. She was drenched, as was the the carseat, and eventually me–who was desperately trying to determine if I should let her be, or try to unbuckle her mid-barf to hold her head forward. And once she was done the scariness and the yucky taste etc. had her howling. Not to mention me trying clumsily to drag her out of her seat onto my lap.

And it’s true. Even when I finally freed and hugged her wetly to me, I didn’t squeam about the nastiness at all. I was just thinking of my poor baby. And questioning my own judgement that she was okay enough to run into the store with. (No, I didn’t still go in!)

When we got home, the poor little sweetie and I had some quiet time reading books, then I gave her her second bath of the day. And even after two Silkwood-strength wash-downs she still had the vague stench of stomach acid in her hair. And it didn’t gross me out one bit.

Halloween Redux and a Poke in the Eye

For anyone who ever doubted me, I did succeed at making the damn Halloween costume for Kate. I can’t say that I figured it out on my own. After my overwhelmed pattern-opening moment, I called a friend, Melissa, who is crafty with a loom, a sewing machine, and God knows what all else. Over the course of three tutorials in which I covered her house with tufts of craft fur like lava covered Pompei, she deftly guided me through the often utterly incomprehensible directions, and even made great time-saving suggestions to boot. (Don’t sew on the arms, just have her wear a black shirt underneath.)

Why is it two women who don’t even know each other super well can work during the days, take care of their toddlers through their dinners and bedtime routines, and still summon the energy to successfully–and even pleasantly–work together on a fairly complex crafty project, when a young guy can’t even teach his girlfriend how to ski without all hell breaking loose?

At any rate, the costume was adorable! Kate was a starlet–well, a skunk really, but a dazzling one! At the neighborhood Halloween parade Mark kept nudging me so I wouldn’t miss it when the other parents cooed over the cuteness of it all. (And frankly Mark being proud of my maternal craftiness was all the flattery I needed to consider going another round with this home-sewn costume concept next year.)

In a more recent turn of events, nanny Shelly informed me one evening last week that at the park Kate was playing with a baby and was so excited. “She really wants one.” Somewhere in the amazingly-good but not perfect English that Shelly speaks I misconstrued her to mean that Kate wanted a sibling, not a baby DOLL.

So once I sorted my way through an initially suprising suggestion that turned out to be a quite reasonable one, we went to Target. I resisted the urge to wait until I found the ultimate sweet and cute and not plastic-tacky doll for Kate and just get her one, since by the time she is 27 and I find one that I think is worthy of being her first doll, she probably won’t care.

What was funny was the day we went to Target I’d met Shelly and Kate at a sushi place for lunch. When I walked into the restaurant, Kate was so excited to see me she started squealing. Then squealing seemed to continue to appeal to her after she’d gotten over the fun-ness of having me there, she sqealed more and louder. So Shelly said “Shhhh, Katie.”

Well, at Target when I handed her her soon-to-be First Official Doll, the first thing she did was look at it gravely and say, “Shhhh.” Finally Kate can manage someone else’s behavior instead of being the low man on the totem pole. I’m sure that’s fun for her.

The second noteworthy thing she did upon receipt of the new doll–after the requisite hugging and kissing of it–was take both her thembs and bear down on one of its eyeballs. It had those old-school kind of eyes with lids that open and close and eyelashes. It’s one of her ways of giving the doll love: hug it, call it “Baaaaby!”, give it kisses, and gouge at its eyes.

Yesterday I went into her toy box to get some toys I’d stowed away for a while so she’d think they were all fresh and new when she got to play with them again. I found an angel doll that Mark’s stepdad’s mother had gotten Kate. I handed it to her and she grabbed it with her wild-eyed happy look. “BABY? Baaaaby!” Then she went for the eyes.

Let’s just hope that these little Equus-like episodes are all a harmless expression of a baby’s bodily exploration, and we’re not raising a little future Abu Ghraib prison guard here. Sheesh.