First Cross-Country Solo Flight

Tomorrow Kate and I fly to Boston alone. Mark comes on Friday, since someone in this family has to work.

Kate has already been on four round-trip flights, only one of which she and I took alone. It was a short flight to SoCal, and I figured I could withstand anything for an hour.

Generally Kate has done well on flights. She tends to lose it on landing and even though everyone says nurse the baby when you’re landing, they haven’t tried this with a baby who has no interest at that moment in eating and/or one who has already lost their shit and refuses the nipple you are woefully trying to shove in its mouth. Modesty, at that point, goes out the window–along with thoughts of ever leaving home again. But truthfully, for the majority of the flights she’s been great–with the exception of that one trip back from Boston, but that was so bad I think it’s damaging to my psyche to dredge it up from the deep place where I’ve repressed it.

So tomorrow Kate and I are staring down the barrel of a six-hour flight. My sister Ellen has flown to Asia multiple times with a baby and toddler and made it look like a drive to the grocery store. Until today I’ve been trying to emulate her and have successfully embraced a devil-may-care attitude about the whole thing–even when friends have freaked out at hearing that Kate and I were leaving before Mark. I figured a successful flight with a baby is 90% attitude, right? If I’m stressed, Kate will somehow sense it and will abandon her plan to sleep the whole time in order to persistently wail, writhe, and scream. If I adopt Ellen’s laissez-faire aero-Mom appraoch, hell, I may even get a good nap or two in along the way.

But today’s packing process has served to deliver a dose of reality. It started with the back-pack I bought to transport the car seat. When I have it on, I just need a pair of hiking boots to make me look ready to mount Everest. So, how it’ll work is I’ll wear the thing on my back as I gingerly negotiate my way down the aisle (while clutching Kate and our awkward and sizeable carry-on). If there is no one seated by me, I remove the car seat from the case (while still holding Kate?!), and buckle it into the seat next to me. If the plane is full and/or I can’t convince the masochist next to me to move to another free seat, I will have to take the gargantuan pack back down the aisle to be checked with the luggage. Oh phew–now that I walk through that in my mind I realize that should be noooo problem at all.

But wait there’s more. Luggage, that is. There’s the stroller (also checked at the end of the gateway), the world’s most immense roller bag, and the earlier-mentioned 20-ton pink carry-on packed with toys (all new and all hopefully endlessly captivating), diapers, extra clothes, food, spoons, washcloths. (Oops. Just realized I forgot a bib…) Oh, and the fragile squirmy 18-pound human.

So then, I shall muster and renew my sense of confidence and ease about this voyage! Attitude, attitude, attitude! And hopefully the kindness of a couple strangers along the way. (Shelly says that’s been imperative in her solo travels with kids.) I’m sure it’ll all be easy-peasy, but if you happen to have a free moment tomorrow, it wouldn’t hurt if you could look skyward and send some good thoughts my way.

Puppy Love

When I was little, when my family got a new dog, I’d get all excited when I woke up in the morning and remembered that there was an adorable puppy that was mine to play with as soon as I ran down the stairs. It was like a Christmas-morning feeling that went on for days.

That’s how I feel about Kate, except I start getting excited about when I get to see her again after she’s been asleep for only a few hours.

Eventually my excitement about the family dogs waned. So far that hasn’t been the case with Kate, who turns 9 months old tomorrow.

I’m so happy my family got this baby! Hooray!

Dueling Grandmas

Today Kate and I took my mother-in-law, Peggy, to Chaparral House for our weekly visit with Rose.

I think I conduct my life at a far more hectic pace than Peggy (and most humans), so by the time we were supposed to hit the nursing home we’d already gone clothes shopping, had a dip and a picnic lunch at a nearby lake, and I’d gone grocery shopping. Kate had also managed to take two naps in her crib around these activities.

So, when it was time to head out to Chap House, I’d offered Peggy the option to pass and just chill out at home. I could easily be responsible for short-circuiting my introverted mother-in-law with excessive socializing and stimulation, and I’d hate to do that since I really like her. Besides, I regulalry challenge her introverted son in this manner and it seems just plain cruel to run the whole family ragged. Peggy had thankfully managed to squeeze in a micro-nap along the way and assured me she was interested in witnessing her baby granddaughter’s volunteer work first-hand.

It should be noted that Chaparral House has essentially become the Cult of Kate. It used to be just the oldsters who hopped out of their pants when she entered the building, but along the way she’s also captured the hearts of the nursing staff. A machine could start beeping urgently from a nearby room and the closest nurse won’t flinch as she holds Kate on her knee and does the “sooooo big” thing for the 36th time.

And it turns out that having a child who is a messiah makes me kinda proud. We walked into the nursing home and all manner of wheelchair-bound folk and nurses in those goofy smocks that have everything from teddy bears to Sponge Bob Squarepants printed on them are calling out, “Hi Kate!” It’s nice.

We made our way through the adoring masses towards Rose’s room. She was asleep in her wheelchair with her back to us. She has this kind of funny hipster haircut she must have gotten from Jackie, the nursing home’s very own stylist. It’s kind of blunt across the back, really short at the nape of her neck, and longer and choppy on the top and sides. It’s what you’d expect on a German designer, but it’s powder white and on the body of a slumped octogenarian.

I woke up Rose and the second she saw Kate she shook off sleep and was crying out, “Katie!” I introduced her to Peggy and from there it was essentially the typical flow in which Rose gushes over Kate’s physical attributes, utters no less than seven Yiddish terms of affection, and gives the requisite “evil eye” warning. Today she also delighted in Kate’s hand clapping, Cheerio-eating, and senseless babble. As often as she cooed over Kate’s beauty, she marvelled at her intelligence. “So smart, this one!” Rose isn’t just swayed by good looks. “It’s a smart one too,” she says solemnly.

Rose may be old and frail, but it’s hard to rival her fervid Kate-adoration. If anyone can keep pace though, it’s Peggy. It was like watching a tennis game where two players lobbed comments back and forth to keep pace with each other, yet they were on the same team. With Kate’s virtue-extolling sufficiently covered, there was little left for me to do other than get everyone cups of water.

Due to her uneven memory, a few times Rose asked Peggy if she was the grandmother. At one point when Peggy said yes, I found myself fretting the smallest bit. I’ve spent so long assuring Rose that she’s a grandmother to Kate, that I hoped bringing the real McCoy into our circle wouldn’t dismay her somewhat. She’s not one for sharing Kate.

But a few minutes later I realized I had no reason to worry. As Peggy helped Kate sip from her cup of water and Rose scolded her, “Don’t give her too much! It’s too cold! She could choke a bit on it!” I realized that Rose was secure in her grandmother-ness. To her Peggy was just another young woman like myself who needed reminding about the potential hazards to Kate that lurk all around us.

And thankfully there’s no limit on the number of grannies you can have–be they biological or adoptive. We could have worse problems than having to make room for all the women who love Kate.

Our Two Trick Pony

We’re back from a weekend in Tahoe where our friends Dennis and Marcelle renewed their wedding vows and had a blow-out party on a fabulous deck overlooking the lake. It was a fantastic party, chock-full of great friends who I’ve known since first touching down in SF some 14 years ago. Today my hangover has a hangover.

Much of Mark and my merrymaking was enabled by his mom and stepfather who came from Ohio to care for Kate and check out Tahoe’s summer offerings. I must say, the second best thing to adoring your child directly is watching her grandparents adore her. Gary decided that Kate should call him Papa–the name he used for his own grandfather. Very sweet.

On Friday, quite by accident, I was saying something about Kate’s new trick–clapping her hands–and as I said “clapping her hands” she did it. I did a double take, said it again, and she did it again. Amazing! It was our first two-way communication. There is someone in there, and apparently she is catching on to this whole language thing.

So there I am amazed and impressed and frankly feeling like I’d be content if this was her last great accomplishment, and when we returned from the wedding Peggy says to Kate, “How big is Kate? She’s soooo big!” and Kate holds both her arms up over her head.

The child is a genius.

I have now moved on to teaching her the next sensible stunt, the giving of “high five.” Await a report.

Meeting Rose

Last week there was a volunteer meeting at Chaparral House, and a woman from hospice came to talk about death and grieving. I was looking forward to it. A few times on our Wednesday visits Kate and I had gone to Rose’s room and found the door ominously closed. I panicked on my walk to the nurses’ station with my heart rising up in my throat, but each time one of the nurses has bluntly told me something along the lines of, “Rose is in the activities room watching a movie.” Okay. Phew!

I’ve intentionally avoided asking anyone about the state of Rose’s health, even when she was briefly hospitalized a month ago. I don’t even know how old she is, but I assume somewhere in her eighties. For a while I told myself I didn’t want to invade her privacy, but I knew I really just wanted to be in denial about Rose’s age and frailty. So, I figured this meeting might push me towards a reality check, and help to gird me for what inevitably lies ahead.

The hospice woman, Karen, was amazing. Kind and articulate. I savored every word she said. She was the kind of person who you wish you could go up to after an inspiring lecture or concert and say something to them that would make them like you as much as you like them–make you stand out in the crowd amidst all their other admirers. You just wanted to be her friend.

So, cool Karen talked to us about the people who we visit at Chaparral House, and the fact that they’re at the end of their lives, what that means, how we can talk to them about that when/if appropriate, and how to handle those conversations in the moment and in our own heads. All really good practical stuff that got me a bit more geared up to some day deal with these things with Rose.

Then she opened the meeting up for more of a conversation, and asked us (about 10 volunteers and a few staffers) to share what experiences we’d had, if any, with grief. A few people spoke, then the woman to the left of me offered up her story. She said when she was 20 her 45-year-old mother died. As a result she and her sister had to care for their six younger siblings (including two–yes two–sets of twins). The woman said she was so overwhelmed by having to take on all that work that she never had time to mourn for her mother. Understandably, in the course of saying all this, she broke down.

Here she was crying for what seemed like one of the first times about her mother’s death over 30 years ago. And then she started talking about her work at Chaparral House—that she’s visiting with women who are around the age her mother would be now. It doesn’t take a shrink to see why she’s there and what she is doing. Her story was so tragic. I couldn’t imagine being in her shoes so I couldn’t quite empathize, but my God I felt for her. How great that she found Chaparral House, I thought.

And then I started to piece together my ‘grief experience’ in my mind, and considered whether I wanted to say anything aloud to the group. I also thought about how I’d explain what brought me to Chaparral House.

This is essentially what I said:

“My mother died a little over two years ago, and she said she never wanted my sisters or I to care for her if her illness got to a point where she was really incapacitated. And it ended up that her descent was really sudden and rapid. One day my sister Marie called to say I should probably fly home.

At one point during that first visit Rose muttered something that sounded like Polish to Kate. Yes, she said, she was born in Poland and left after the war. My mother was also Polish–well, born to Polish immigrants.”

So, it seemed somewhat fortuitous that Kate and I found Rose. She needs a grandchild. Kate needs a Polish bopchi. And so in that way that it’s easy to make a crack psychological diagnosis of the person sitting next you but seems impossible to diagnose yourself, it became more clear than ever to me in that meeting why Rose is so special to us. Because of my mother, it will be extra hard for me when Rose is gone.

I’ve lamented before that without my mother here I miss being able to call her to drone on about Kate’s many wonders—and to know that avid grandmother that she was, she’d share my enthusiasm for every small thing.

This past Wednesday I was holding Kate on my lap and Rose leaned in to look at her and said, “Ah, you see that? Her ears.They are so tiny and so perfect.” I shot back, “I know! Aren’t they?” And for the next five minutes we talked about Kate’s precious ears. It was great.

Out of Her Shell

In the past couple weeks Kate has experienced what can best be called a personality emergence. Our former baby, the one who’d cause Mark to sometimes say, “Would it kill her to smile a little more?,” has suddenly become a people person.

Kate and I were at Berkeley Bowl again last week (though thankfully she was spared a near concussion this time). She was practically jumping out of her pants to interact with people. She leaned out of the Ergo pack to smile and clap her hands at other shoppers. She craned her neck at children passing by in shopping carts, and went to great lengths babbling and flapping her arms to woo the strangers in line behind us.

She also practiced her newest move, in which she raises one arm out, and holds her hand open, palm to the sky, in a sort of papal-blessing type way. She just sort of aims this at people. I take it to be a gesture of good will.

This is the baby who weeks ago staunchly refused to eek out a tiny grin for old women who did cartwheels in the aisles to get some reaction from her. This is the former Winner of All Staring Contests, who could deflect smiles with a stern unblinking gaze, for what seemed like hours.

Well, for now at least, those days seem to be gone. Maybe this is my daughter after all!

Head-Banging, Baby J, and Gratitude

When Mark got home from work tonight and was playing with Young Kate she leaned forward, biffed her cheek against the coffee table, and started bawling. After comforting her he started to berate himself (aloud) for being a negligent parent. Yeah, yeah, I thought, and casually interrupted him to say she’d managed to somehow bang her head about six other times today, so he shouldn’t beat himself up over it.

I realize that if I only had an hour a day with her, as Mark sadly does on weekdays, I’d probably be right there where Mark was, tossing on a hair shirt and cursing that I’d ruined a few precious minutes of quality Kate time. But one of the glorious things about being home with Kate is that I have a front-row seat to all the dramatic, tedious, and mundane events of her life. I have behind-the-scenes access to the super-stinky diapers, thrilled-to-see-you post-nap smiles, car-seat babble, food fights, whining, puking, drooling, farting, and everything in between. So to me, a small contusion to the head–even one that’s due to not diligently guarding her noggin–doesn’t really rate. I need to be sure to remind myself regularly how fortunate I am for that.

Earlier today, Kate and I had some fun in the sun with Lisa and beautiful bedroom-eyed baby Jackson. Lisa is one of my favorite humans and friends. She was one of the brave gals willing to wear a flamingo pink dress at my wedding, to grapple with fastening the 2,137-odd buttons on my gown, and to have known throughout our friendship when I’ve needed a sympathetic ear versus a slap upside the head. And yet today, here we were with our 8- and 9-month-old babies who have probably been in the same room a total of four measly times.

Part of the reason is general life busy-ness. Part is geography. When she and Alex left SF they settled to the south of the city, and despite their fervent lobbying, when Mark and I left years later we went east. But the most significant reason why we haven’t spent more mom-’n'-babe time together is that Lisa took the swan dive back into the work world after having Jack.

Unlike me, Lisa found one of those Holy-Grail-like “Jobs You Like to Go To.” Granted, it came after years of crying in the parking lots of jobs she hated. So, when young Jack came on the scene, there was a reason that exceeded sheer finances that bolstered her return to work. As much as she wanted more time at home, Lisa feared that if she didn’t reinstate herself at her job, she’d never find a plumb workplace like it again. I hope for once that her usually stellar intuition was off there.

How does the story end? Well, after 5 months of giving the mother-and-commuting-professional balance an impressive fair shake, Lisa traded in the office job to report to lil’ Jack. She told me today how she realized that at times she was just going through the motions with the baby since she had so many things to do to get through each day. She didn’t have enough time to just hang out and enjoy him. You know, watch him hit his head a couple dozen times in the course of the day and think nothing of it.

Hooray! I’m teary-eyed with the thought that Lisa and Jackson will be able to enjoy life as best chums and partners in crime. It’s such a treat for me, that I can’t help but wish that all my mama friends have as much fun in this job as I do.

Granted, the weeks when you’re housebound from rain, and the days when the half-pint wails incessently for no good reason, can make the thought of a 3-hour conference call or developing a spreadsheet with pivot tables seem like a party. But those times are few and far between. And even with them in the mix, I need to remember to remind myself (a meta-memory task) how lucky lucky lucky I am to have all this time with my little love-bug. And remember to thank Mark for bringing home the bacon (and thereby marginalizing his own Kate-time), so I can be with her.

I’m also happy to report that Lisa, Jackson, Kate and I now have a regular date. We’ll be seeing each other every other Monday (alternating visits between Burlingame and Oakland). And hopefully those dates will breed more gatherings—maybe even an occaisional grown-ups-only night on the town.

Yippy doodle. Life is good.

A Luxury I Can’t Afford

What do you do when your baby is crying unless you’ll hold her, your stomach is growling for a long-overdue breakfast, and you have to pack for a long weekend–including gathering BBQ food, wine, baby food, and clothes for you and the wee one, and somehow get it all into the car so you can pick up your husband from work in two hours? Write in your blog, that’s what! I don’t have the disposable income I once had, nor do I have the unfettered time to check email or get into more than 3 pages of a book at a time, so writing has become my Calgon-take-me-away bath. Even when I should be doing a million other things. (Mark, assume I’ll be late to pick you up.)

I’ve been thinking a bit about communities lately. For many many years one of the most dominant ones in my life was the office. The people I worked for and with, and who–big-girl as it seemed–worked for me. By virtue of simply spending so much time in that world, and being so tired after departing it each day, it was my default community (family, Mark, and friends aside of course). And sadly those folks often did become parenthetical when work demands occupied my psyche.

Like a dinner party where you invite people who don’t know each other and everyone hits it off, it’s nice when someone from one realm of your life makes the move into another. Work is becoming a distanter and distanter memory (a grammatical joke the likes of which my father and I make), but yesterday I had the pleasure of having lunch with someone from that world.

John can not only order sushi in a really good Japanese accent (though, what do I know), he’s a kick-ass creative director and all-around good guy. We didn’t work together for all that long, but did get thrown into one of those understaffed, impossible-deadline plumbs of an account together. And amidst the mayhem, John was always a joy to work with. This is a guy who has not only redesigned and revitalized websites for dozens of Fortune 500 corporations, he’s also a Buddhist monk who has fasted for weeks at a time, and, more incredibly, not *spoken* for several-month stints while meditating. It’s not often that you’ll find these qualities housed in the same human. So, John is also no longer working at The Former Agency, so we were able to talk about Life After as though we both swam across a river full of leeches and got to the other side without a single one sticking to us. Our lunch was essentially us double high-fiving each other on the banks of the new shore, and thumping each other on the backs. Hooray! I am happy that John is now on this side with me. The Former Agency had a lot of issues, stresses and politics, but it also had some extremely talented, smart and funny folks. I’d hate to lose them just because my new job doesn’t require me to have a building security badge.

In my moving-to-Oakland-after-13-years-in-SF, leaving work, and having a baby time (when I go for change, I go all out), my need for new communities was nothing short of desperate. The one that has saved my emotional hide, welcomed me with bleary eyes, and been a haven of humor (and food) is hands-down my Oakland mother’s group. (Hello mamas! I salute you!) This is one extremely fab group of women who Kate and I have spent at least one afternoon a week with since Kate was 3-weeks old. It’s made up of 11 baby-mama couples, and there’s not one rotten egg in the bunch! And I realized a while back that we’re comprised quite amazingly of all straight women, who are even married to the men we had kids with. Did I mention we are in the SF Bay Area? This is astounding. Not that it’s better or worse for us to be this way, just *weird* in these parts. Hell, we could all pick up and move to San Diego or something and no one would bat an eyelash at us. Well, maybe some Republicans would. At any rate, it’s wonderfully affirming to have a group of people you feel comfortable enough around to talk about cracked bleeding nipples (not mine, thank God), the challenges of career and parenting, and the wonders of so-and-so’s head circumference being in the 95th percentile. Whatever your concern, quandary or need for celebration, these women have your back. THANK GOD I found them.

The other community I’m proud and happy to say I found is at Chaparral House–the nursing home Kate and I hang out in on Wednesday afternoons. It’s home to Kate’s wonderful adoptive Grandma Rose, Gladys, and Dorothy, the other volunteers, like Janet, who have so much respect and interest in the residents there, and a caring nursing staff–especially the Tibetan nurse who whisks Kate out of my hands the second she sees her and says, “Tell Mama bye-bye. You come with me now!” This week as we were walking out, I peered into the activities room to see that Sandi was custom-making sundaes for everyone. “Come on in! What topping would you like?” Why, don’t mind if I do, I thought. The grocery store and Kate’s overdue nap could wait 10 minutes. As I ate my sundae with Kate grabbing for the spoon, I looked around at some women in wheelchairs and a volunteer setting up a large-print Scrabble board (who knew?) and realized how at home Kate and I were there. Four months in, Chaparral House has become a super-cool new place that Kate and I are lucky to be part of. Thank you volunteermatch.com!

So here I stand on the far banks of the river barely able to see The Former Agency any more. And the bonfires on this side are blazing. I’m holding on my hip the most important young member of my new life, sweet Kate. At one fire the super-cool mamas and the babies from my mother’s group are gathered. At another the gang from Chaparral House are hanging out in their wheelchairs, with Rose admonishing them to not give Kate the evil eye. And by my side is the love-of-my-life, the one I’ve been luckiest to manage get on my team, Mark.

I’ve made it to the other side, and it rocks here.

8 Months Old and a Slap Upside the Head

Today our wonderful gift of a sweet angel baby is 8 months old, or two-thirds, as Mark has enjoyed saying. It’s so terribly boring to drone on about how deeply and absolutely we love and adore her. We can say it to each other of course, and tell her all the time, but I still feel the need to shout it from the proverbial rooftop.

Again, it’s a time when it rots that my mother isn’t at the other end of 401-253-8370 any more. Dialing that number is ingrained in me, and I think she was home and answered the phone 99.5% of the time I called. (One of the perks of having a hermit mom. That is something Kate will never benefit from, unless I am suddenly overcome with agoraphobia.) So yeah. I want to call my mother and tell her ad nauseum how beautiful and sweet Kate is. And not being able to makes me feel like I’m having to contain my excitement. I’m not so good at that.

So today she is 8 months old. And I think Mark and I have done a pretty good job with her thus far. From what we can tell she isn’t on drugs, and I haven’t heard a single swear come out of her mouth. And aside from occaisionally turning her nose up at her dinner, and not yet knowing how to change her own diapers, I think our challenges with her are reasonable. Someone asked me at the nursing home today how old she is and when I told him I said, “It seems like it went by fast, but also like I can’t remember the time before her.” Of course, that was just me trying to say something profound. I do remember napping whenever I wanted to and having the freedom to go out at night on a lark.

So far Kate has eaten sweet potatoes, summer squash, carrots, apples, pears, peas, avocado, bananas–and rice cereal and oatmeal. But I feel like I need to introduce some of the less-sweet and enticing foods so she doesn’t grow up only willing to eat candied yams with mini-marshmallows for every meal. So on our way home from visting Rose at Chaparral House, we stopped at Berkeley Bowl.

If you have never been to Berkeley Bowl and get aroused by produce, this place is for you. It’s like a fruit and vegetable stand on steriods with a fancy gourmet grocery store attached to it. And the variety. Oy! In the realm of eggplant alone, you could probably find 8 types. Sure, we’ve all heard of Japanese eggplant, and think that we’re pretty food-savvy because of it. But Berkeley Bowl will bust out something like Orange Siberian Eggplant, and show you who’s boss. It’s humbling.

The down side of Berkeley Bowl is that everyone else in Berkeley knows how great it is and at any given time, one-half of the city’s population is there playing bumper-cars with their shopping carts. Those erstwhile hippies get all agro over the veggies too. I’ve seen turf wars there more nasty than one I saw in NYC when two women were fighting over a pair of pants at a Donna Karan sample sale. (Maggie: I’m thinking I just may need a riot shield after all.)

So the most divine and excellent of all small people, Miss Kate, and I were wandering the aisles looking for some food to cook, puree, and freeze in ice cube trays. I was carrying her in the Ergo, which is a kind of front-pack thingy that is more fun than having the kid in a far-away stroller (i.e. I can get to her easier to smother with love in the Ergo). Here we are, two innocent produce-gawkers trying to determine what’s what, when a guy who is speed-walking frantically and weilding a yellow plastic shopping basket decides he’s in the wrong aisle, spins around, and smacks my precious sweet Katie in the forehead with his basket.

She was so shocked it took a second for her to do anything. I mean, it seemed so long that I wondered if it even really hit her, or if she was just going to shrug it off. Oh no. She let out a volume-11 wail that had Mr. I’m-in-a-Hurry practically wetting his pants. Good. Serves him right.

I was hugging the poor girl and hoping it was one of those things we could push past pretty quickly, since The Aggressor was clearly feeling terrible and I immediately went to my typical trying-to-make-him-feel-better place. Silly person that I am. When she wasn’t settling down quickly, the guy came to his senses and returned to his impatient mode. “Can’t you bounce her up and down some?” Why oh why didn’t I have the presence of mind to say, “So you’re going to clock my baby in the head with your hard shopping basket, and then tell me how to soothe her?!”

Thankfully, she doesn’t seem to have a goose egg or bruise on her forehead. The long-term psychological fall-out is, of course, TBD. Despite that, I think she’ll be wearing a helmet on all future Berkeley Bowl outings.

Fallen Acorn, Distance from Tree, etc.

Last night our new friends Melissa and Adam (hi y’all!) came over for dinner. They made themselves a small human, the wickedly cute Raulie, a month before we finished making Kate. And with them we’ve developed a new way of entertaining which involves an early start date so the babies can roll around together, feeding and bathing the babes, then putting them to sleep (Raulie in the porta-crib in our office) to allow the grown-ups to eat, drink and be merry. (Amazingly I consumed more wine last night. Hello, Betty Ford Clinic?) It’s actually a very nice way to spend an afternoon/evening and makes me feel all 1950s. Really not sure why, other than I guess it feels like good wholesome fun, and that’s what they had back then.

Over dinner I asked Melissa what take she has on Raulie’s personality. She said, “Well, he’s nothing like us.” Raulie is a high-stim kid whose nanny takes him for walks on busy streets so he can check out the traffic. The quiet tree-lined Berkeley streets are a bore to him. And he’s a huge smiler, who turns it on the moment he sees someone (friend or stranger).

No, Melissa and Adam are not dour non-smilers, and I imagine they occaisionally enjoy watching cars go by (who doesn’t, really?)–but in general, this little man seems to be carving out his own personality path at the tender age of 8 months. This struck me, because it ends up Kate is not much for the smiling herself.

Kate’s cousin Gavin will be in politics some day. At age one he’s practically shaking hands and kissing babies at grocery stores. And with the name Gavin Stone, a senatorial career is undoubedtly in his future. And the kid smiles! He’s got a grin on his mug even when he’s reached the end of the table that’s been supporting him and crashes to the floor. A big dog runs up to him, knocks him down and licks the length of his face. Gavin: Still smiling!

Now Kate, God love her, does and will smile, but she’s parsimonious about it. She doesn’t just give them up for anyone. And at times this is a bummer. Those old ladies at the grocery store, for instance, are quite tenacious. They move in on Kate to admire her big rosy cheeks, then utter a stream of baby talk aimed at eliciting a smile. In response, Kate gives them her classic what-up-with-you? look, her huge unblinking eyes taking them in indifferently. Tenacious Old Lady only takes this as a challenge, telling me she’s a grandma herself, you know. Kate, Winner of All Staring Contests, is stone-faced. It can go on like this for what seem like days, so I often jump in with a little white lie–”Oh she just got up from a nap!” I say. “I think she’s still a little groggy.” Then we make a run for it.

Since having a child is the purest form of narcissism, this smile thing gets me. Anyone who has known me for more than 30 seconds knows I’m out in the world to get to know as many of the other humans as possible. I’m hard-wired this way, as if in my final resting place they will be handing out awards to those who have met (or spoken to) the most people. (Oh, and everyone I meet needs to love me too.) So what gets me with this Kate thing is she clearly doesn’t care. She has an idly-bored way of reacting to people who are scratching under their arms, jumping up and down, and making monkey noises for her. Which isn’t to say she’ll never smile. She just won’t when someone really wants her too.

I guess I’m just getting used to the fact that you go through all the months of weight gain, baked-bean cravings, and having to sleep with 8 pillows tucked along your body, only to get to the oddly-surprising realization that this baby is its own person. Be that as it may, I’m still looking forward to getting to know her.