Bye Bye Night Night

The night before last I nursed Kate for the last time. At the time I didn’t know it would be the last time, and it’s probably better that way.

Last night Mark was reading Kate her bedtime books. (We’re big fans of Pippo here.) When he was done and gave me the “you’re up” signal to come in and nurse her, I was all engrossed in some work thing. Every other night that I’ve been home when she’s gone to bed–which is roughly every night of her life minus three–I’ve nursed her before she’s gone to sleep. But, kooky kids that we are, we decided on the fly that Mark would give her a bottle. (It’s wild like that around here sometimes.)

Even though the plan had been to wean her around her first birthday, I’ve been nursing her a few times a day up until around Christmastime. The thing was, I went back to work the day after her first birthday–right when I’d been planning to wean her. And when I’d get home at night, she’d see me and start to cry for “night-night,” her way of requesting a suckle. (Since it always happened before sleep she somehow got her vocabulary lines crossed there.)

So I’d give in. Why deny the little angel-puss who I’d abandonned with a nanny all day a little Mama’s milk? After 8 hours at the office I’d missed her too, and it was our way of reconnecting (quite literally). It was just too hard to make the change then.

But the practical side of me knew the transition would have to happen some time. And I’ve prided myself on being able to fairly deftly move Kate through other changes (our bed to co-sleeper to her crib, for instance). And it seems like the older she gets, and more able to express her desires and, sure, even have tantrums, these transitions can be more challenging.

Even though the nursing provides a calm bonding moment in some otherwise hectic days, and I’ve wondered why I should deny her something that’s so easy for me to provide, I’ve gotten really frustrated with it at times, and just wanted my body back. I’d storm around the kitchen while Mark was cooking. “That’s it! I want to stop this now! I don’t want to be nursing her when she’s seven–even if we live near Berkeley!” (This is one of those sudden-onset dramatic moments that understandably make men roll their eyes and say, “Women!”)

Then the next day Kate would want night-night, and I’d give in, and we were back to our old ways.

Last night when Mark emerged from putting her down I asked how it went. “Did she do okay? Would she take any of the bottle?” These all being code for, “Was it obvious that she really missed me?”

Turns out she was totally fine. Mark said she drank a lot of the bottle actually, then he plopped her into her crib, and she started her usual putting-herself-to-sleep moaning. No drama.

Of course, it galled me slightly. But more than that, I realized it was probably an opportunity. Maybe the other night, with neither of us even realizing it, should be the last time I nursed Kate. Otherwise, what happens when I plan the last time? It becomes like the over-hyped last cigarette. I start weeping pathetically and clutching her to my breast while my mind envisions La Leche League volunteers encircling the house chanting, “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” I just don’t have the fortitude for that.

So, I think we’re just going to go cold turkey. We’ll miss night-night, Kate and I. But I’m sure we’ll find some other things to do together, and we’ll be just fine.

Pop Tart Psychology

A few years ago when we were in Connecticut visiting Mark’s sister and hubby they had Pop Tarts in the house, and in the course of the visit we had them for brekkie. So when we got home Mark got some at the grocery store–two packs since they were a BOGO item, i.e. “Buy One Get One” free. (This is what you learn from having a grocery store client for as long as I have.) I lamented that we shouldn’t eat those. They were a special “when we were at someone else’s house or up in Tahoe” treat. (For some reason when you go to Tahoe you’re allowed to eat like a 12-year-old latch child.) Then I polished off both boxes before I think Mark even got one.

We went for a spell without getting them. I put my (much fatter) foot down and managed to convince Mark that cinnamon toast was just as sugary.

Well I looked in the cupboard a couple days ago and what do I see but two gargantuan boxes of Pop Tarts. Brown sugar–not even my flavor. I prefer blueberry. Though that didn’t stop me from snarfing them up in the past, nor did it this time.

And so I’m sitting here with a cup of Earl Grey decaf and now my second Pop Tart and thinking this gastronomic decline just makes perfect sense right now. Everything else in my world seems to be coming a bit more unglued than I’d like–though I did check in with Mark recently to see if I was just being dramatic and/or hormonal. He kinda didn’t answer….

Yesterday morning we finally had our pitch. A response to an RFP to keep an existing client. Their bean counters (I assume) have all vendors bid or re-bid as it were for the work every several years to make sure they’re getting the most bang for their buck. And while I don’t blame them, bidding to keep work you already have is the worst. Losing hurts more than losing to a client you never had. And winning really just gets you back to where you were before you devoted weeks of stress, extra work, and new gray hairs to it all.

That said, pitching at a publishing company does beat pitching at an agency. I mean, this wasn’t a 25-person roller coaster ride from hell that involved experts pulled in from offices in other time zones and executives who two days before the pitch determine all the work that’s been done is in the totally wrong direction, and ‘y’all should probably execute against this strategy now.’

Weirdly, I was the exec in this pitch. Not that I haven’t been a Big Girl on these things in the past, but at least then I was one in a team. And now it’s just kinda me and other people who don’t seem to have tons of experience pitching who intermittently seem to get it, then suddenly do something leaving me fretting that they don’t get it at all.

Self-imposed stress can be the worst of it all. As long as someone else more senior than you tells you what you’re doing sucks, you’re confident in that assessment. But when it’s you telling you, you can’t help but wonder if maybe what you’ve been slaving over is really okay, or even kinda good, and you’re just being hard on yourself. Then, moments later, you are utterly convinced of its suckingness.

At any rate, there were no endlessly long late nights. Nor excessive weekends of work. But my brain was totally co-opted by thoughts of this so even Kate Time occasionally felt slightly tainted by work thoughts. Which is not The Plan. The Plan is to have the job that I do when I do it and not obsess over it and have it affect my sleep, and make me snap at the people working with me since I wish they had more experience pitching, and decide to go into the office on my work-from-home day, so not be able to drive Kate and the nanny to Gymboree and then feel guilty that my work is seeping into places that are not in The Plan.

For all this I had to be in LA overnight. Kate did a great job of making me feel even worse about it all by getting a cold and being especially sad and Mommy-clingy. And it was all about me just getting home after the pitch and then I’d have the rest of the week and weekend with her, but my bag got lost and I ended up sitting in the airport fuming and waiting for the next plane to land. An hour spent waiting for your bag to turn up sucks in any scenario, but one in which you are desperate to get back to the baby you’ve been fearing you’re been short-shrifting, makes it intolerable.

At one point, with only 20 more minutes to wait, I considered getting in my car and driving home to see Kate, and just getting the bag another day.

Of course, while waiting I had umpteen work calls and several of them indicated I might need to do some work the next day (my day off). This sent me into the stress stratosphere.

Thankfully by Friday morning it became apparent that the meeting I thought I might need to have wasn’t going to happen. I might get my day off after all. And the clouds–like those white fluffy ones in the opening sequence of The Simpsons–seemed to part and some rays of sun made their way down to me and my self pity. I resolved that next week I’d take my work-from-home day from home, and to take my day off off.

And if that wasn’t good enough, when I did check work email later that day (despite my best intentions—clearly I am part of the problem), I discovered that something I’d been working on for weeks that had been caught up in corporate red tape had suddenly slipped past the goalie and my mission was accomplished. It was one of those things that I was resolved to get up my dukes over and suddenly and anti-climactically the problem vanished. Poof!

It’s so weird when you are in a mental groove and then you’re spit out the other end of it. It was like my psyche was still crunched up in a grumpy stress ball and was having trouble shaking it off and going to the light.

I can have work-life balance. I can spend time with Kate and Mark and still have a satisfying career. I’d still be getting this new crop of gray hair even if I was home being fed peeled grapes. If I keep chanting it, it will all be true, right?

Perhaps I’m approaching the recent appearance of Pop Tarts with the totally wrong attitude. Maybe I should behold them as a celebratory indulgence that’s suddenly there for the takin’, not the specter of poor nutrition that’s symptomatic of temporary poor life management.

Either way, they sure do toast up nice.

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.

Crazy Boozy Mama

Tonight when we came home from Mark’s company Christmas party I did something I never do. Mark was driving the nanny home, who had worked a Herculean workday, and I decided to boozily tip-toe into Kate’s room to admire her sleeping cuteness.

This is something friends of ours do without fearfulness of waking their wee ones. Mark and I have tended to not want to do anything to possibly jeopardize the nice sleep-sleep, so have not made this part of our repertoire.

Anyway, tonight I barreled in there to take an innocent peak, and, of course, totally woke her up. (See? This is just why we don’t do this!) And the cutest/saddest/funniest thing is that she rolled over, and I was just expecting her to settle back in—thinking this is one of the sweet things parents who look in on their sleeping babies witness—but instead she flutters her eyes open and looks up and me and says as though she’s been up for hours, “Hi.”

Which of course I internalize to, “Hi, boozy Mom. You are waking me up for no reason and I will now have to work through how screwed up this is over the course of years with an expensive and potentially inept therapist.”

The second she woke up I felt like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment. ‘”Don’t mind me! Just your obsessed-with-love-for-you boozy imbalanced mother here!”

Well, maybe sometimes you need to do something reckless like that just because you are filled with love. And sure, a little bit of bourbon too.

Pygmy Tree and More Puking

On Saturday I gathered the family in a stern holiday-spirit march and forced them out the door to Half Moon Bay, where a Google Search (TM) had informed me that there was “one of the largest choose-and-cut live Christmas tree farms in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

Despite the fact that Kate barfed all over me in the Safeway parking lot the day prior, it seemed perfectly reasonable for me to pack her into the car for a 45-minute drive for Christmas-tree-cuttin’ fun.

About a half-hour into the drive she started kinda whimpering. I offered her water and cereal and she definitively shook them off. Then nearly 10 minutes to our destination I looked into the back seat and got some sort of telltale “I’m gonna spew” sign from Kate. Mark pulled over. Thankfully, giving her some fresh air seemed to intercept the sickies, but did nothing for our feeling of being bad parents for having taken her out.

At that point though, we were almost there, so we didn’t know what else to do other than persevere. At the entrance to the farm we stopped at a small hut that had a friendly “Pick up your saw here!” sign on it. After years of post-9/11 air travel, this seemed utterly disconcerting. Here is a venue that requires you to pick up a saw before entering. It was so perverse, I had Mark stop so I could take a picture.

The hot blonde local teen working the saw-hand-out hut gave us some spiel about where the different kinds of trees were and how it was we were to find and cut and pay for our tree. As we pulled away I confessed to Mark I didn’t really listen to/follow anything she’d said. And in an uncharacteristic moment he said he hadn’t either. (If he turns his brain off when we’re together too, what’s to become of us?)

Well before we had too much time to fret over not knowing where to go or what to do we stumbled upon the “warming hut” which was producing fake snow and trying really hard (and tragically) to give off some alpine woodsy cachet. We pulled over since I’d read there was some Santa-photo op, and with Kate’s poor performance with Santa the day before I thought we could traumatize her anew and/or hopefully get a good (and free!) picture for a holiday card.

But really what happened was we bought some over-priced slice and bake Christmas tree sugar cookies and Kate freaked out when we asked a stranger take our picture with a guy dressed in a Rudolph costume. Turns out she likes Rudolph as much (or little) as she likes Santa.

When we ventured out again for the project at hand—the contrived “we will cut down our tree as part of our tradition, damn it!”—we were totally confused by what the kinds of trees that Mark and I like are called. We were even uncertain that we liked the same kind. Mark seemed set on a short-pine tree, but I had no idea what the needle-length was of my ideal tree.

“I think I like Noble Firs,” I said, trying to sound cool. “Or wait, is it Scotch Pines?” So we drove around a labyrinth of dirt roads following little hand-painted signs and trying to figure out what it was we liked and wanted and where that might be found. In the few times we ventured out of the car, I cared less about getting a tree, and more about photo ops with Kate. Prop her up, take a picture, she falls forward planting her hands in the dirt and yelps, I brush it off and re-prop her for more photo fun. Yes, I was that Mom.

Finally, we found the type we both like—Noble, I think—and realized that all the Noble Firs were teeny. Or maybe at least in this little foresty nook where we were. Was this all the Nobles that they had? We did another lap and found another section, at this point getting well into overdueness for Kate’s afternoon nap. So, determined, we traipsed around and looked for The One.

And thankfully, even with Mark I do maintain some sort of awareness of what is reasonable for me to ask. What I really wanted to do was say, “I know this was my idea, and I dragged you all the way here, and Kate almost barfed on the way, but I really don’t like these trees and let’s just go back to the place 3 blocks from our house and get a tree there.” I kinda knew that saying that wasn’t so much an option.

But all the Noble Firs were so damned puny. I was hoping for majestic, and instead we got what we referred to as our Little Teapot Tree (i.e. short and stout). It ain’t tall, I tell you, but it makes up for its height with its girth! So, $75 later we left the tree farm. We cut our tree and had our experience and made our tradition, and now have a Charlie Browner of a tree to prove it.

Today Mark asked me if it was just him or was our cut-our-own-tree adventure not exactly the scene from LL Bean that I was hoping for. And I had to confess that it wasn’t. But it made me feel like Mark and I had come a long way.

It reminded me of the time when we were first dating when we decided to make our own pasta. We called Shelley and Don to borrow their pasta maker—a wedding present that was gathering dust even for them, hardcore cooks that they are. Mark and I decided to make a lasagna. and slaved over producing perfect pasta and our own sauce. The project took all day. I mean ALL DAY. And when we finally exhaustedly sat down to eat it, I had the horrible secret realization deep down inside that I couldn’t really tell that the pasta was homemade. And that maybe I’d actually even had lasagnas with store-bought pasta and jarred sauce that I even—gasp!—liked better. For shame. Of course, it was too early in our relationship to admit this to each other. So we both cooed over how delectable it was, hiding our secret disappointment.

It was kinda that way with our cut-our-own tree. Here’s all the trouble we went to, and we have an overpriced pygmy tree to show for it.

The next day we ran an errand at Ocean Supply Hardware, and as much as I was chanting internally, “Don’t look.” Don’t look,” I looked at the trees they had for sale in their parking lot and they had some really tall and beautiful Noble Pines for just $45. Oy.

Sunday evening we were invited to the neighbor’s for a Hanukkah party. And Mark had been moaning a bit about not feeling well, but truly I suspected 90% of it was a lack of desire to venture out to a party that wouldn’t be populated with all people he knows and loves. But he surprised me and rallied, coming to the party even when I said I was happy to pop over there solo with Kate. After a half-hour of chit-chattery with various folks, he looked me in the eye and said he was going home. By the time Kate and I got back 20 minutes later, I heard the retching from behind the closed bathroom door.

Kate’s Both Ends Flu has not only made its mark on Shelly, the nanny. Now Mark has fallen prey to it too, and spent today home from work moaning and, as he put it, “throwing himself a pity party.” And this morning when Shelly arrived, she looked green. She started feeling sick on Thursday and is still not in the clear—so I sent her home and called in a sick day for myself to care for Mark and watch Kate.

So now, with the two other people aside from me who are regularly in contact with Patient Zero Kate, I can’t help but feel that there’s a target painted on my forehead. It’s only a matter of time until this plague strikes me too. The pediatrician’s office today told me over the phone that, yes, this stomach virus is going around, and it takes 4-7 days to get over. (Mark was not too pleased to hear that.)

Shelly called tonight and still feels crummy, so it’s unlikely she’ll be here tomorrow too. So if you’re overcome with a desire to stop by Chez McClusky, know that I’ve nailed a large Quarantine sign on the front door. I’m just cowering inside by the overpriced pygmy Christmas tree, waiting for the sickness to strike me too.

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.

Please please please don’t nothing bad happen

There is a mundane rhythm to my life these days, peppered with ecstatic happiness.

Mark’s job is good. He’s become a regular media darling. This morning, for instance, he was on Morning Edition on NPR, and he was amazing. That great resonant sexy voice of his that I fell in love with over endless epic phone calls early in what I was too gun-shy to even call our “relationship.” And he was articulate, like he is. Explaining something that someone else using other words would not convey in nearly as compelling a way. That’s my boy. I got into work and one of the women in production said, “I heard your husband on the radio this morning,” and I broke out of my I’m-the-boss-and-mostly-professional mode to gush for a few minutes about how great he sounded and how smart he is and how proud I am, and then I sort of shook myself out of it and said, “Okay. Have a good morning,” and wandered off to my office.

And my job is good. I mean, there’s a reason when in every one of my interviews people prattled on about the employees there being “salt of the earth.” The thing is, they ARE. I mean, I’ve been searching like a truffle sniffing pig for some office politics and have yet to unearth any. It’s almost creepy. And Thursday I’m co-hosting a holiday party with the editorial director that it appears people are genuinely looking forward to. I mean, in our team meeting this morning I felt like that intangible element of team-ness was really taking shape. Two months in and I’m no longer looking out at everyone there as them, and feeling more like a natural part of things. (Sure, I still think they’re the Bad News Bears in some client meetings, but with firm gentle guidance I’m hopeful we can even make progress there!)

And Kate. [Insert proud mama rant jam-packed with love here.] What can I say other than she continues to dazzle and delight us. Our trip to North Carolina was another wonderful touchstone with the Miller clan. Kate discovered the joys of getting to know a dog up close with Chuck and Ann’s beagle Zoe. Day One she peered down at her from my arms. On Day Two she woke up in the hotel where we stayed chanting “doggie.” Day Three she sat in the middle of the living room and let Zoe lick her face. And in the course of all spending the days together, I walked upon scenes with Kate and her grandma and/or great grandma that were too sweet for any Kodak film to ever capture. And as the report goes (since I was in DC with Amelia and company), on the traditional post-Thanksgiving shopping day, Kate greeted every mall shopper she encountered with a “hi.” Mark claims she said that no less than 200 times.

Wal-Mart: If you’re hiring greeters on the other end of the age spectrum, we have your gal.

And sure, the nanny has put an occasional bur in my saddle. (You know, that ‘ole saddle of mine.) But overall, even when it’s just the coming home and getting Kate in bed then sitting on the couch with Mark to, yes, eat dinner in front of the TV (sorry, Mom)–I just get silly happy and have to do little dances and lunge at Mark with cheek kisses. Hooray! We have a sweet-ass little baby sleeping in that room! I have this plate of ravioli, here for the eatin’! I have my husband to sit with and not even maybe talk so much but just lounge head to toe on the couch under an afghan. What on God’s green earth could be better? I ask you.

I really really really don’t want anything bad to come up. I just feel like stuff was bad for a while. Or everything good was paired with something bad. I got engaged. My mother got cancer. My mother died. I got married. I got pregnant. My weird eye problem came back. But then the eye got better. And Kate arrived on the scene.

And here we are being happy even though, with the exception of Kate’s glorious existence, nothing really big is happening in our lives. (As much as we’re enjoying watching Lost on DVD, I don’t think it’s something we’ll look back on years from now and be nostalgic about.) But sometimes I can’t help feeling like this is too good for me to deserve. Or maybe just that my the-good-with-the-bad spate was the way my life was always going to be from here on out. But I’m hoping that I’ve broken that pattern.

Please don’t let the other shoe fall. Please let me roll with this too-good-to-last feeling for a while longer. I really am relishing it and appreciating it, if that counts for anything. And if it does have to be interrupted by something, hopefully it’ll just be that there is office politics at Sunset after all.