Fishisms

It's been a busy few weeks, with our move to the new house, the end of my maternity leave, the parade of family members sharing our space and helping with improvements...catching a breath these days takes work!

So, I present these Fishisms, which in recent days have helped to keep me grounded (or at least feed the illusion that I am).

Said in the car yesterday after I picked him and his little brother up from daycare, and realized I forgot to bring some baby paraphernalia or other home with me: "I make you happy, Mom?"

"Yes, you make me happy."

"Yepeyedo." (Yep, I do.)

To fully enjoy the boomin' system in our new (used) Jeep, my husband broke out some of our old CDs, including a few from the early 90s, like Depeche Mode's Violator. Fish is a big fan of this CD; when he's in the mood for it, he'll say "I want the robot music, Mom." When I play it, he nods his head and holds a serious expression. "I like that, Mom."

"Are you jammin', bud?"

"Yepeyeam."

Today I asked him what his favorite song was on the album, and he answered, without hesitation, "Personal Jesus Loves Me."

Parking-lot tantrum

So, this was a first. Of all the places for Big Fish (and as you'll see, Little B) to lose it...

It began as a lovely day—warm and sunny, if not a bit muggy. Took both boys to a christening and they behaved like saints. That is, until after wandering the empty halls looking for the service, we found it already in progress and Fish hollered out, “Here's all the people, Mom!” Luckily the baby-of-honor deflected any attention directed at us by crying out in protest just as the water was poured over his head.

The reception following went well; it was someone else’s kid (not mine!), who melted down, prompting that family’s hasty exit. Fish’s worst offense was taking a cheese slice from the buffet tray, having a bite, and returning it a few minutes later for the next guest to enjoy.

Herein lies my mistake: a quick snooze on the drive from the church to the farm stand does NOT a bona fide nap make. But I didn’t want to miss the strawberry festival, since with the work we're doing on the new house it's rare that the kids are able to enjoy any formal activities, weekend or not.

First, Fish marveled at the strawberries growing on the vines (he later told his dad “they come from the ground”). Then he played in the hay bales with some “friends”—read: kids who’ve never met one another who before long get a little too aggressive with handfuls of straw. I lured him away from that disaster waiting to happen with the promise of a “bal-oon” (he pronounces the first syllable like “pal”). Cute enough, right?

Once we’d burned out on available activities and I had some actual shopping to do, he got tough—running away from me in the small, crowded, aisle-less space—such that I trimmed my grocery list and grabbed just the essentials (this, of course, included the excellent shortcake). On our way out to the car I grabbed this pic of a still-happy kid, who then decided he would NOT hold my hand (as I pushed the baby stroller with the other one) but rather, would walk along the edge of the curb as close to the parked cars as possible. And these cars were pulling in and out frequently.

I asked once, then twice, for his cooperation. The last straw came when he intentionally blocked a store employee from moving past us. I scooped him up in my free arm and headed for the car, his limbs flailing and the volume CRANKED UP.

When we got to the car, he put the stiff body move on me and I couldn’t get him in. All of this was too much for Little B, who to this point had been sleeping peacefully but at that moment lost his cool, too. FINALLY I strapped a sweaty, sobbing Fish into his car seat, and was tapped on the shoulder by a 70-something woman.

Woman: “Dear, I saw you struggling over here and wondered if I could help.”
Me, trying to soothe the baby as I load him into the car: “Oh, thanks, but I’m ok.”
Woman, referring to Fish: “Well, here. Let me calm him down for you.” (Addresses Fish, who doesn’t know WHAT to make of her.) “I’ll bet you’re a good boy, aren’t you? Settle down now, buddy. You’re fine, you’re fine.”
At that moment I’m not sure if I was more miffed by this stranger’s obvious disappointment in my parenting skills and her strong desire to intervene regardless, or by the fact that I realized just then that I'd left my already-paid-for groceries in the store. I tell her this, and she offers to stay with the kids while I retrieve them. I say no thanks.

So I wait in the long line of cars exiting the lot, and when I arrive at the store entrance and can’t find an employee, I snag an unassuming stranger (a Dad-ish looking 50-something) and ask HIM to run in for my bags. I gesture to my two wailing, strapped-in kids and he complies.

Later, when we discussed what happened at the strawberry festival, Fish recalled that "I cried and cried" and that "Mommy was naughty."

So easy to please

Today was a good day for a mommy on the fence.

It doesn't take much to please me: smiles from my boys, the first sip of a (decaf) mocha with whip, a developmental milestone reached...this is a good thing since, with the new house (read: bigger mortgage), indulgences like spa treatments and new dresses are out of the question for the foreseeable future.

Big Fish used the potty for the first time--albeit at daycare, on a day that I almost kept him home (I'm on maternity leave after all, but I have to get my $800-a-week's worth)--so hey, woo-hoo!

This was nearly as satisfying as his morning visit to our room, when he burst in declaring "I had a good nap!", then snuggled up to me and his brother who was feeding in bed and began chatting--something I usually discourage since it distracts and ultimately ends the nursing session. This can be painful.

Big Fish (of little B's crooked grin): "He's smiling at."
MOTF: "He sure is. Now give him a little space, please."
Big Fish, holding his position: "I giving him space."
MOTF, gently nudging: "Well, give him a little more. He can't see you very well when you're that close."
Big Fish, still not grasping the value of personal space, now cooing and pointing to his brother's lips: "He's smiling at. He's so happy to see!"

Must I have the objects/infinitives conversation with him just yet, or can I hold off a bit longer? Or maybe Fish is right, and little B is truly grateful for the gift of sight...

Home, or What to do when the universe conspires against you whilst on "vacation" in Michigan.

If you’re still 23 miles from the next service station when your 3-month old’s crying fit hits full throttle, rather than pull off to feed him, be relentless about duping him into thinking the binky is a breast. Sooner or later he’ll either fall for it or tire of being stubborn. Just don’t expect this to work on the return trip; he’ll have wised up by then.

When your toddler wanders into your room early one morning and loudly declares, “I’m all wet! My bed’s all wet, too!” such that the baby’s sleep is threatened, remove the faulty diaper, drag him into your bed and convince him to go back to sleep. Tell him the ambient sounds he's hearing are just figments of his imagination: the neighbor’s barking beagles, the bird (birds?) whose calls are either mating ritual and mind-numbing lament, the planes whose flight paths are conveniently diverted to the area for the day…when this fails and your toddler begs to get out, tell HIM to go make the morning coffee.

When your dog loses control of his bowels in a BIG way on your parents’ carpet at 5am, stop nursing the baby immediately and shove said dog out the door where any remaining damage can be done. Calmly proceed to gather the necessary cleaning supplies (don’t forget the gloves!) and scrub the floor for the next hour and a half. You won’t do the job the way Stanley Steamer would, but you’ll feel better knowing you gave it your best. In the next two days your parents will each take a stab at scrubbing up, only to call the professional cleaners in the end. At some point be sure to finish feeding the baby—he doesn’t appreciate a meal interrupted.

Tired of listening to your 2 ½ year old whining that he doesn’t get the same food or treatment given to his much younger cousin? Then have a little fun with him. When your niece is offered yogurt and HE, too, demands it (“No, I want some yogurt!”), say to your niece, “Would you like human remains? How about some roadkill?” to which your son will reply, “No, I want remains…I want roadkill.” At the least this is good for a laugh between sleep-deprived parents at 7 a.m. (nice one, Jane!).

At 2 a.m. your newborn, already suffering through his second cold, projectile-spits up on your parents’ bed (the one they’ve kindly given up for the week) and you (such that you're sitting in a small pool of it). Grab a bath towel or two to protect the mattress and yourself from contact (this will hopefully muffle the smell as well), and call it a night. Be sure to position the towels properly, since it’s more than likely your toddler will wet the bed anyway when he crawls in with you a few hours later.

If ants mysteriously appear in your diaper bag (this on the same morning you cleaned up after your dog--or was it your baby?), don’t panic. Simply throw out all the sponge bob fruit snacks, sterilize the binkies, and give the bag a good shaking. Leave it outside for the day so that any remaining invaders can find their way back “home.” If, when you check the bag for lingerers a few hours later you find one or two, forget your inner Buddhist and crush them.

Road Trip, Part One.

You know you need to get out of town and on the road for your long trip home, but your timing isn’t quite right. Do you still do it, or wait 'til the morning to start fresh, having had a good night’s sleep--maybe avoid rush hour traffic and a crying baby (who HATES to be in a stationary vehicle)?

This was the question facing us at 4pm on a Thursday just before we headed to Michigan a few weeks back, and well, either our genius failed us, or we thumbed our noses at logic and packed the kids and the dog in the car anyway. First, we stopped at the bank to sign our power-of-attorney forms, since we’d be closing on the house in absentia. The frenetic little banker inside, who reminded each of us more than once just how much of a rush he was in, was the first sign of things to come. This was accompanied and/or followed by:


• The drive from Somerville to the Pike, normally a 15-20 minute endeavor, which took over an hour.
• The unrelenting sun, which I swear beat mercilessly down on us until 8 or 9pm, when our black dog had nearly melted in the hatchback.
• Surly parents (read: not speaking to each other at one point) and very crabby children—understandably so—one who relies on the motion of the car to be lulled to sleep, the other who cannot bear to hear his brother crying (“Mommy, you feed him NOW.” [of course this was physically impossible from the front seat of the car]) and so began a feigned wailing of his own.
• Traffic and construction speed limits once we hit the Pike, which put us just 2 ½ hours away from home after 7 hours on the road.*

*Did I mention that our A/C works sporadically at best these days and our car doesn't exactly accommodate 4 people and a large dog, plus all their gear (think essential baby gear that must be transported since grandma will not have an equivalent back in Michigan), without protest?

So, we crashed in Albany, New York—having successfully smuggled the dog into the not-so-pet-friendly hotel—and agreed to start fresh early the next morning. What time did we actually resume our travel? A much later 11 a.m., but after a healthy breakfast, no less!

House.

On May 29, we will be the proud owners of a modest 1400 square foot home (hey, it's a few hundred more than we have now!), just 2-3 miles from our current place--which means no major upheaval or forfeiting of the many comforts we've grown accustomed to (proximity to work, friends, church, entertainment, playgrounds, etc.). Hurrah!Here my mother's favorite "when it's meant to happen, it'll happen" phrase holds true. After six months, we scrapped the tiresome weekly open houses, took our condo off the market, and found a renter. Meanwhile we got serious about the house hunt again--having recovered from the offer that fell through a few weeks back--and this time WE trumped another buyer as we were able to be more flexible with the closing date. And we didn't have to sell our souls (waive the inspection and other contingencies) to do it...With the condo off the market, we were surprised to get a call from a realtor whose client "really wanted to buy into the building," and wondered if we'd consider re-listing our place if an offer was likely. So, for old time's sake we did a thorough Saturday cleaning, complete with scrambling, stashing, and arguing and showed the place on Sunday--the offer came in that night!All of this happened (the home purchase, the condo sale) quickly, over a long weekend. Add to this a new baby, and you have just a few small life changes converging. It's a bit like the way we came East: graduated, got married, honeymooned, and packed up the moving truck all in a month's time in 1997. We survived that, so surely we'll manage this.

In fact, we're happy to. Very soon we'll have a yard, a driveway, and a basement--woo hoo! Just a few basics that we haven't enjoyed since living at home with our parents. We laugh that city living in small spaces has so reduced our expectations that any home we acquire may as well be the Taj Mahal.

Uni-brow

As if it isn't an injustice alone that babies are forced out of the muffled comfort and security of the womb and into the cold, hard-edged world with its bright lights and loud colors, family members who don't respect your personal space, and hairy monsters that pass through your line of sight from time to time leaving you confused and unsettled (of course here we refer to the family dog) . . . Soon after these tortured little souls acquire fun things like acne, cradle cap, and hair loss such that they take on the appearance of highly reactive middle-aged men. Given all this, I'm not quite sure what God was thinking when he decided that, in addition, he would remove little B's left eyebrow, too--not the right one, mind you, just the left. Was this a sick little joke or an oversight of some kind? It would seem SOMEone got a little too carried away with the eraser.

Fortunately my little guy will have no memory of this dark, cruel period in his early life. And his hair is light enough that the eyebrow gaff is easy to miss in most photos. In fact here he seems blissfully unaware.

The house-hunt that threatens to break our hearts, and the bittersweet thanks when a mother departs

So, the title of this post is far more dramatic than the reality...but still, if you've ever made an offer on a home and allowed your mind to wander to images of your furniture and your family in it--only to then have that offer rejected--you'll know what I mean.

Add to this the fact that, in Boston, the house-hunting game teaches some hard lessons. For example, on the place we nearly had but lost, we offered asking price but were "beat out" by a buyer who offered the same but with NO contingencies (this included waiving the home inspection). Someone REALLY wanted that house (and we thought WE did)! We just couldn't match that given the home's history with pests...

So, a great (1/2 acre) fenced-in yard, proximity to our offices as well as local shops, and a home with character were lost to us barely a week ago, and it's been a disappointing few days of edging further and further away from the city in order to meet our criteria. But guess what? The commute is one of our concerns! More on this to come, and maybe a photo if we manage to trump the other eager buyers and score our first (true) home. Now that we've been properly initiated, it shouldn't be that difficult, right?

This post is really a mini-tribute to my mom, who left last Wednesday after spending 3 exhausting weeks with us to help with the baby (and--hurrah!--witness his birth). My mom does many things well, but what she does best is intuit what her daughter needs in her hour(s) of need. And if you read the previous posting you get a sense of just how needy I was, especially since I was all but useless, apart from being a feeding machine, the first few days I was home with the baby.

I was more spoiled than a 30-something mother should be; I had 3 other caregivers (mom as well as mother-in-law and husband, and even my dad for a few days) and a "helpful"-as-he-can-be toddler. But my mom knew almost before I did when I ought to eat something, take a shower, or just grab a quick nap between feedings. And just as important, she knew what our older son needed--attention, indulgence even--given the big transition from sole child to sharing the spotlight. He still sings all the songs she taught him during her stay, something I relish hearing if I can keep from tearing up, sappy fool that I am!

So, thanks Mom, for putting up with me and my family, for reducing your hours of required sleep each night (from 9-10 to something like 5-6!), for teaching Fisher to "read" his favorite book word by word and to sing "You're Someone Special" and "Animal Fair" (his favorites) among others, for bonding with little B when I couldn't, and for that gift you have for--dare I say--service to others.

Speaking of gifts, the baby is sleeping so it's time for me to take advantage and rest as well.

Second time around

I'm happy to report that much of what I've heard about the second baby is true: the worry about diet, baby movements, and other concerns during pregnancy are generally minimal; ability to distinguish a legitimate contraction from Braxton Hicks; a faster delivery; a better sense of obstetrispeak, and the buzz words that should/shouldn’t incite panic; and the knowledge that, when you finally come home with your newborn, you're going to cry at least a little, depending on your tolerance for pain and whether or not your husband learned from that first pregnancy to avoid asking sympathetic questions, especially "How are YOU doing?" when he walks through the door after work.

Apart from that, God, the body, and the doctors apparently like to mix things up, surprise you a bit. I was once again subject to a problematic epidural, but unlike the first time this wasn't a matter of partial effectiveness; rather, the anesthesiologist sort of misfired--"went a millimeter too far" as the attending put it, causing spinal fluid to leak through the puncture site. In theory, this doesn't sound so bad, but for the 1 in 100 cases where this occurs, something called a spinal headache generally follows. Lucky for me, I'm that 1 in 100!

Fortunately the headache (caused by a decrease in fluid between the brain and the skull) is relieved almost entirely by lying down—fully horizontal, something not so easily done in the first days after delivery and with a two-year-old looking for some attention. So, at home after 3 days in this state a visiting nurse came to see me. Her simple suggestion to raise my dosage did the trick…for the most part. For the next few days I still got the “aura” of the headache just before I was due for my next dose, but today I think I can safely say the worst is behind us, and thank God for that!

So now we—meaning my mom, mother-in-law, husband, and toddler—are doing our best to provide a safe and relatively peaceful home for our new 8-pound, 10-ounce addition. Quarters are cozy but without the help I don’t know how I (we) would’ve survived it (looking at the pics from that time are hard enough!).

Oh, and reality sets in pretty quickly—though it hasn’t displaced the overwhelming sense of love and protection I have for my newborn—as with the first kid we’re reminded that we have only a vague sense of what we’re doing as parents, and that much we’ve learned from our parents and friends, who also had at best this “vague sense.” Best, I think, to focus on what we CAN control: confirming our spot at daycare, happily occupying our two-year-old to minimize boredom which of course leads to excessive kissing and head-rubbing of his little brother, and finding a house for our growing family. All this testosterone can only be contained in a thousand square feet for so long.