City Girl Tales

Welcome to crazytown

2008-07-25T14:57:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I saw a new therapist. I have been in therapy before, but it has been six or seven years since the last time I saw a shrink--before I got married, anyway. The purported reason for my seeing this new therapist was my complete lack of libido and its attendant negative effects on my marriage.

I know I've been promising to blog about the whole sex thing in detail but I've just never gotten around to it, so you'll have to make do with a quick summary: No sex allowed during entire pregnancy, and I was frankly too cranky about it to "take care" of my husband in other ways instead. After I was cleared for sex post-delivery, we tried a few times, but each time was very painful for me. My libido has also been non-existent. It has been close to a year since the last time we tried and while I miss sex, it is only in a theoretical kind of way. I am too tired, too sapped physically and mentally and emotionally, to feel anything approaching desire, and I also just don't feel very sexy or sexual these days. I recognize that this is not good for my relationship with my husband (who is increasingly frustrated with this state of affairs), and I even mentioned it to my OB at my most recent checkup--even asked for a hormone workup to make sure there was nothing physically wrong. She basically said, "You work full-time and you have a kid. Of course you don't want to have sex. If you DID want to have a lot of sex, that would be unusual."

At any rate, I finally got my shit together and managed to find a therapist who not only specializes in post-partum issues, she also specializes in infertility issues AND she takes my insurance. Our first session was yesterday.

I feel pretty confident that, while there are probably biological and post-partum components to my current sexless state, a lot of it stems from relationship issues (sorry, can't go into detail), and the relationship issues and lack of sex feed into each other in a vicious circle. So I arrived prepared to delve into that. I also recognize, intellectually at least, that the whole IF/tough pregnancy/breastfeeding clusterfuck probably left me with some lingering issues about my body and its capabilities. But, while I was certainly prepared to talk about those things, I generally feel on a day-to-day basis that I've bounced back pretty well from all that crap, and in fact I feel pretty proud that I've been able to let go of the horrible bitterness I once felt.

However, when I was giving the therapist a short summary of my backstory, by way of explaining how our sex life had gone south in the first place--two years infertility (which is so short in the grand scheme of things!), tough pregnancy, one trimester of bleeding, two trimesters of contractions, four months of bedrest, c-section, breastfeeding disaster--she kept making these shocked and sympathetic and wow-how-horrible noises. A therapist who specializes in seeing women with fucked-up reproductive histories was shocked and appalled by what I had been through. And the floodgates creaked open, and I started to cry, and I couldn't stop sobbing.

So I guess I'm not as healed as I thought I was. I'm going to have my work cut out for me.

10 things I learned on my summer vacation*

2008-07-20T12:41:00.000-04:00

*credit due to Shanna. And yes, I got back from said vacation two weeks ago. It turns out it takes a long time to catch up from a week away, even if you technically only missed three days of work.

1. Get to the airport way earlier than you think you need to. Because when you take into account checking bags, getting through security, getting food for everyone, eating food, running around trying to burn off energy before a flight, and early preboarding, one hour is not nearly enough.

2. If you put brown knit pants on your somewhat bald daughter (because she needs something comfy to wear on the plane), the flight attendant will think she is a boy, even though she is wearing a pink and orange flowered T-shirt. Because heaven forbid that a girl wear neutral colors or anything other than pink ruffles from head to toe.

3. Keep your kid in their infant carseat as long as possible. In fact, buy this carseat and if you have a tiny kid like mine, you'll be able to use the seat well into toddlerhood. Which means no lugging a huge convertible seat through the airport--you can hang the infant seat off the back of your stroller by the handle. Awesome.

4. You really need a lot fewer toys and entertainment than you think you do. We got by for six whole days with a magnadoodle, a toy cell phone, a couple little cars (tucked inside a little purse, for the joy of carrying and removing and replacing), bear for bedtime, books for bedtime, and a little finger puppet that lives in the diaper bag anyway. (And portable DVD player stocked with Blue's Clues for emergencies.) BG entertained herself for hours carrying around the little individual creamers that came with the hotel room coffee pot, and the plastic-wrapped cups, and our empty water bottles. And the emergency instructions card on the plane.

5. Waiters at nice restaurants who are kind to small children and the parents of said small children deserve a special place in heaven. Especially when a child throws fries on the floor and the mother goes to pick them up and the waiter says, "No, no, don't worry about that, this is your time to relax and enjoy yourself."

6. Traveling with a small child is really, really different from traveling with just adults. That sounds stupid, but it didn't really hit me until this trip. Our old style of travel was to basically eat our way through any given city. This time, we managed to eat reasonably well, but forget about swanky bars and posh restaurants with velvet banquettes and low lighting. And all activities were extremely toddler-friendly.

6a. Kids love aquariums. They just do.

7. Wedding ceremony held outdoors on a damp lawn + four-inch heels + toddler who insists on being carried all the time = not an ideal combination.

8. 17-month-olds are a lot more flexible than you would guess. Napping on planes, adjusting to a three-hour time change AND staying up later than usual, spending way more time in the carseat than you're used to, eating out every meal, taking baths in the big tub and showers with Mommy when you're used to a small toddler tub, lots of strangers, all no problem.

9. However, no matter how flexible a kid is, taking a total of only 45 minutes of nap on the day of a big event translates into very cranky child, especially when Mommy suddenly gets up and leaves you with Daddy and walks down this long aisle and reads some poem to all these people and you're supposed to be quiet but you just want MOMMY!

9a. If you take a toddler to a wedding, don't expect to hear or see much of the wedding.

10. Vacations are nice, but it's good to be home.

T-minus 14 hours...

2008-06-29T19:05:00.003-04:00

until we leave for the airport. It is difficult to pack when your toddler keeps taking things out of the suitcase and leaving them strewn around the apartment. Thanks for all your advice, I am definitely following your suggestions.

Got to go, Bat Girl is dismantling my suitcase (and muttering, "See...addle!" over and over again--I taught her to say that this afternoon when she is asked "Where are we going tomorrow?"). See you in a week!

Help, please

2008-06-24T11:13:00.003-04:00

Next week we (me, the husband, and Bat Girl) are flying cross-country for a dear friend's wedding. When we were planning this trip, I decided that since we were going to have to endure long flights and time change and cranky baby no matter what, we might as well make a whole week out of it. So we are going to be gone for six days. That's six nights in a hotel room. Six days eating out for most meals. Two late nights (rehearsal dinner and wedding) for a child who normally goes to bed at 8 p.m. on the East Coast and instead will be kept up probably past 10 p.m. on the West Coast (that's a five-hour difference). Two coast-to-coast (5.5+ hours) flights with a very active toddler who melted down the last time she was on a plane, nearly a year ago, for just two hours. It's the longest we've ever been away from home with BG and the first time we're going someplace that's not a relative's house (with ability to cook for ourselves, for example).

So obviously I need some advice. I have combed the Internet (including this post of Cecily's) for all sorts of tips, which led me to purchase a Magnadoodle and a stack of Blue's Clues DVDs (we have a portable DVD player, which I tested out on BG on a long car trip a few weeks ago--worked great at toddler anesthetizing, except that she is still rear-facing in her car seat so I have to hold the DVD player for her and/or prop it up on a stack of blankets so the heat from the machine doesn't fry her little legs). I'll probably pack minimal toys--her bear, a few books for bedtime. The kid can entertain herself for ages ripping pages out of magazines or staring out the window at BIG TRUCK! CARS! DOGGIE! so I'm not too worried on that front. And worst comes to worst, we have Blue.

I also bought her her own seat on the plane, and I scored a Volo on eBay for cheap so we wouldn't have to worry about our beloved Techno getting mangled by baggage handlers (and yes, it had to be another Maclaren, not because I'm a snobby Big City mom but because I'm tall and the handle height on those $20 umbrella strollers makes me want to kill myself). We'll be wheeling her in the stroller through the airport and hanging the carseat off the back, then gatechecking the stroller. We have one of those teddy bear backpack harnesses so she can run around in the terminal without us having a heart attack trying to keep track of her.

I made sure we'll have a refrigerator in our hotel rooms (we're staying in two different hotels, just to make things even more complicated) so we can keep milk and yogurt and a few essentials on hand (and hopefully eat most breakfasts in our room to save $), and our first hotel is a few blocks from my mothership, Whole Foods. BG is a pro at eating at restaurants, so we have that covered--although lately she has been more and more impatient with sitting and behaving at the table, so that could blow up in our faces spectacularly. Not sure yet what we'll do for plane food--I'll have to pack something, as there is no meal service on our flight. Flights are scheduled to overlap with naptime, fingers crossed there.

I emailed a friend who lives in the area for toddler activity recommendations. I've been checking the weather obsessively--apparently the Pacific Northwest is still pretty cool but it'll be in the mid to upper 70s by next week. I have a long to-do list of things both minor (buy Purell) and major (buy shoes to wear to wedding). I'm freaking out a little bit. What am I forgetting? Any tips for traveling with an under-2 toddler? Any suggestions for stuff to do in Seattle?

Um.

2008-06-17T16:55:00.003-04:00

Yeah. Sorry for leaving you hanging with that teasing post and then not showing up for nearly a week. Work exploded and then it was the weekend and I never have time to blog on the weekend because of being in Mommy mode and then, well, yeah.

So. I don't really know what came over me. I've posted here before about my ambivalence about having another child, swinging from pole to pole depending on the day and the season and whether I've just watched an episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8. (Cute kids! But OMG, there are so many of them!) Some days, I feel so complete in my love for my daughter that I can't imagine needing any more. Some days, I feel so lucky in that love that I can't imagine not wanting more. Some days, I fret over our budget and my stuck-in-the-Big-City career and think there's no way we can afford another. Some days, I think maybe if I just chilled out on my Whole Foods habit there would be plenty of cash for another year of organic formula. Some days, I am overwhelmed by how hard parenting is and think how crazy we would have to be to add another to the mix. Some days, I think about what kind of sister Bat Girl might be and think how sad it would be not to see that.

Then there's my husband, who after months of his own ambivalence has finally stated that yes, he would like to have another. It just seems right, he says. But he's also currently in talks to go back to work, in a job that would involve him being at work many, many, many hours a week, at a time of day mostly opposite to my own work hours. (This is just a fact of life of what he does for a living.) This would mean no more SAH dad, and instead paying for daycare and having less flexibility in my own hours because I'd need to race home to pick up BG before 5:30, and then with two kids, that means paying for daycare for two, and being basically a single parent every night, etc. etc. etc....

But then, I don't know what happened, I came into work that morning, and it was like a fugue state came over me. I was on my clinic's website, and then I was dialing the number, and pressing the button to be connected to the billing department, and talking to the nice lady there (oh, they are so nice at my clinic), and then I was sitting there thinking, What have I done?

Because it's not like we've been trying, or even not preventing. I'm still on the pill. And to be perfectly frank, we haven't had sex since 2007. (I keep meaning to write that post about sex but god, it's so depressing...) I mean, not like sex = baby anyway (can you imagine?), but I feel like one ought to at least put in a good-faith effort, right? So we'd need to work on that first. And maybe I'd go back on metformin, or maybe not. And then we would go straight to IVF, because I WILL NOT risk multiples after what I went through when I was pregnant with BG, and we would do single-embryo transfer. And even though my clinic takes my insurance, I only have a $10,000 limit for IVF and related expenses (I think including meds, but I'm not sure), and I think that barely covers one fresh cycle, let alone possibly multiple FETs, and we really couldn't afford it without insurance, and and and...

And then I get a headache and have to stop thinking about it.

I just

2008-06-11T15:46:00.001-04:00

called my old clinic to see if they still take my insurance. (They do.) Huh?

Things I am not loving right now

2008-06-11T15:33:00.002-04:00

• Clear bra straps, especially when worn with strapless, halter, racerback, or other strap-revealing clothing. Just because something is see-through doesn't mean it's invisible, people. Your bra straps are still showing.

• Cabbage Patch Dolls. Why do they put a (probably toxic, phthalate-laden) scent on a doll? Why is the doll's head sticky? Why is the smell so strong it literally makes me gag? Why does my child love this horrible toy, so that I had to smuggle it out of the house in the middle of the night?

• Getting a stomach bug in the middle of a terrible heat wave. Nausea + vomiting + 98-degree heat = v. bad.

• Molars. Fuck molars.

Adventures in hygiene

2008-06-03T11:59:00.003-04:00

Bat Girl has developed this charming new habit of picking up some random bit of whatever and bringing it to us, saying, "What's this?" (Well, actually it sounds more like "Wassdis?" but we know what she means.) That is, it's charming when, say, we're in the park and she asks "Wassdis?" and I tell her it's a rock and she wanders around saying "Wock! Wock!" for the next 15 minutes. It was much less charming this morning when she handed me something and said "Wassdis?" and by the time I realized it was a small clump of cat litter--as in, cat litter that has hardened into a chunk because it has been PEED ON--she had already stuck her fingers into her mouth. Damn you, molars. Much scrubbing ensued.

*****

I was out of town for three days and my bloglines seems to have exploded. Pardon me while it takes me a week to catch up.

Okay, okay...

2008-05-29T10:53:00.002-04:00

You've reminded me that yes, in general the clothing options for girls ARE a lot more varied than for boys. (Although, we hardly ever put her in the cute rompers and rarely in dresses--again, not so practical for grubbing around on the concrete.) We can all debate whether the pink princess shit is better or worse than the endless sports/transportation/pirates/etc. at some other time.

Random rant

2008-05-27T20:24:00.003-04:00

Why is it that shorts for little girls are all SHORT, as in barely cover the diaper, while shorts for little boys can easily be found in a sensible knee length? My kid is just as active a toddler as any boy. She likes to run and climb and explore, and she frequently falls down, because one falls down when one is careening at top speed on short little legs. Maybe if we had a backyard with perfect velvety grass, this would be OK to do in short shorts, but our outside time happens in the public park, where there are giant rocks to climb and big knobby stumps to explore and big expanses of asphalt outside concrete-lined sand pits. If she were wearing any of the little cutie-pie shorts we've been given as hand-me-downs, she would have both legs scraped bloody and raw EVERY DAY. Why can't you buy cute LONG shorts designed for girls? Why do most places have, at most, one or two cropped pants for girls but a million options for roll-up cargo pants and carpenter shorts and all sorts of practical things for boys?

Hmph. Off to buy shorts in the boys' department.

Lest I forget...

2008-05-26T22:19:00.004-04:00

Two years ago this holiday weekend, we made a baby.

It turned out pretty well for us, don't you think?

[Photo removed for privacy purposes. Sorry!]

Nerd meme

2008-05-23T13:24:00.004-04:00

I swiped this meme from Jody--basically, it's a list of the top 100 books marked "unread" by LibraryThing users. You're supposed to bold ones you've read, underline ones you've read for school, and italicize ones you started but didn't finish. But since I have so much overlap between books I've read for pleasure and ones I read for school (English major with a focus on the 19th century novel, anyone?), I'm going to bold everything I've read, italicize ones I started but didn't finish, and underline ones I'm pretty sure I've read at least part of but can't really remember. Other notes as warranted.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell [sitting on my shelf uncracked]
Anna Karenina
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Crime and Punishment
Wuthering Heights
Catch-22
The Silmarillion
Don Quixote
The Odyssey
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses [but did I enjoy it or remember anything about it? NO]
War and Peace
Madame Bovary
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre
The Name of the Rose
Moby Dick
Emma
The Iliad
Vanity Fair
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Blind Assassin
Pride and Prejudice
The Historian: A Novel [sitting on my bookshelf untouched]
The Canterbury Tales
The Kite Runner [Amazon.com keeps trying to get me to buy this]
Great Expectations
Life of Pi [another one Amazon recommendations keeps pushing]
The Time Traveler's Wife
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Atlas Shrugged
Foucault's Pendulum
Dracula
The Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mrs. Dalloway
Sense and Sensibility
Middlemarch
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Sound and The Fury
Memoirs of a Geisha
Brave New World
Quicksilver
American Gods
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dune
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Satanic Verses
Mansfield Park
Gulliver's Travels
The Three Musketeers
The Inferno
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Fountainhead
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
To the Lighthouse
A Clockwork Orange
Robinson Crusoe
Persuasion
The Scarlet Letter
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Once and Future King
Anansi Boys
Atonement
The God of Small Things [I think I finished this one...]
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Cryptonomicon
Dubliners
Oryx and Crake
Angela's Ashes
Beloved
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
In Cold Blood
Lady Chatterley's Lover
A Confederacy of Dunces
Les Misérables
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Watership Down
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
The Aeneid
A Farewell to Arms
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Sons and Lovers
Possession
The Book Thief
The History of Tom Jones
The Road
Tender is the Night
The War of the Worlds

I was surprised at first by how many Jane Austen books were on here, but I guess it makes sense, really, that this list has so much overlap with any list of the Best Books or Most Important Classics or what have you--these are books that people think they ought to read, or at least to own. And so the more people there are who love a book, the more people there are who pick it up because everyone else loved it, even if they might not love it themselves.

I was also surprised by how few books I marked unfinished--or, well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given that until fairly recently I had a complex about leaving books unfinished and would FORCE myself to slog through books I hated just to finish. I guess I thought it was a test of character or something. I'm a much happier reader now that I've realized life is too short to waste on books you don't enjoy.

By the way, should I read The Kite Runner or Life of Pi as Amazon keeps trying to convince me to do? At this point I am almost resistant to doing so because of being told so many times how great they are.

Hey, did you hear formula is POISON?

2008-05-19T10:39:00.003-04:00

Ah, yes, something else to feel guilty about: Apparently Similac Organic formula is noticeably sweeter than other formulas because it's made with--gasp--sugar!

With the exception of a few weeks worth of Similac Advance at the beginning of her life, and of course four months of half breastmilk, half formula, Similac Organic was the only thing Bat Girl drank for the first year of her life. And seriously? This article alarms me not one little bit. Really, I fail to see the problem here.

I may not be a "professional taster," but in my experience breastmilk is far sweeter than ANY formula, SO included. So the idea that adding sugar to formula instead of lactose or corn syrup is going to make your kid overeat or give them an insatiable taste for sweet things seems bogus to me. One mother is quoted as saying, "[S]ugar is a concern for us--that’s why we started her on vegetables rather than fruits, so she wouldn’t get used to the sweet taste first." Too late--your baby was BORN with a taste for sweet, and the commandment to start on veggies instead of fruits is outdated and not based on real science.

And what about the argument that sucrose causes tooth decay? Well, first of all, a kid needs to have TEETH to have tooth decay. Second, so does lactose or corn syrup or ANY kind of sugar--it's why you're supposed to brush your kid's teeth after they have a cup of milk at bedtime. Is it possible that sucrose is not the healthiest form of sugar available? Sure. I'll even concede that there may be unknown differences in the way sucrose is metabolized versus other sugars that could be deleterious to health. But, you know, once you make the decision to poison your baby with formula, does it really matter? (HA!)

No, seriously though, for me, if this article had come out when Bat Girl was still drinking formula, I would not have switched. Organic is more important to me than what kind of sugar is in the stuff. And SO comes in ready-to-feed form, which other organic formulas do not, and I am really, really lazy. And based on my highly scientific sampling of babies (n=1), SO has not caused any problems. Bat Girl generally had no more than 24 ounces of formula a day when it was her sole source of nutrition. She drank a little more (around 30 ounces/day) when she was nearing 10-11 months, but that was a signal to us that we needed to step up her solids consumption. She has consistently fallen around the 50th percentile for height and around the 25th percentile for weight. She eats all kinds of vegetables, including broccoli, spinach, and peas. She had no problem switching from formula to cow's milk, and when I gave her (sweet!) apple juice for the first time this weekend she spat it out. She is super healthy and active and suffers no apparent ill effects from her year drinking pure evil.

But if you need a good Monday morning dose of rage, check out the comments on the article. There's the usual "breast is best," "down with the evil formula conglomerates," followed by the backlash by women who couldn't breastfeed, followed by the backlash-backlash from people claiming that women who can't breastfeed are RILLY RILLY RARE and everyone else is just a lazy selfish bitch, etc. Awesome! My favorite comment is #56, which I quote in part especially for you, my IF homies: "One thing we forget is that there is much more to breastfeeding than the milk itself. Breastfeeding is to breastmilk as making a baby the usual way is to in vitro fertilization. Feeding a baby breastmilk in a bottle is just not the same thing as breastfeeding." The best/worst part is that that commenter? Jack Newman, whose handouts I used extensively during my own breastfeeding battles. Ain't that just a kick in the pants?

Fifteen months and fearless

2008-05-05T16:06:00.003-04:00

"Fearless" being the adjective most often applied to Bat Girl in recent weeks, by us, by friends and family, and by complete strangers. She tears across the playground at the speed of kids twice her size, she tries to climb up the slide like the big kids do, she wants to hang from the jungle gym bars and cannonball into the sand pit, she'll march into the middle of a crowd of seven-year-old boys and snatch their ball ("ball!") for herself, she climbs onto the rocking chair in her room and stands on it to crane her little neck to look at the trucks ("chuc!") outside ("tsa-tsai!"), she shouts hello to all strangers and doggies, she'll happily wander away from me at the playground or in someone else's apartment and if I'm not careful, I'll find her minutes later, elbow deep in mud or stolen sandbox toys or a bag of cat food.

She loves draping things around her shoulders--a T-shirt pulled from the laundry pile or my dresser drawer, a pair of pajamas from her own room, one of those crib toys with a lot of little stuffed animals strung together--and is especially delighted if I drape a long-sleeved tee of mine over her like a cape. We thought this was peculiar, but apparently another kid we know who's her age does this too. So I guess it's normal?

She likes to "clean"--give her a rag and she will crouch down and scrub the floor, or wipe her high chair tray, or clean her hands. I don't know where she got this, as she certainly didn't learn about scrubbing floors from her parents.

After spending the first year of her life unattached to anything besides her parents' bodies--no pacifiers, no loveys, nothing--she's suddenly fallen for a couple of teddy bears ("beer!"), and she alternates dragging them around our apartment or snuggling them in front of the TV. She's not particularly interested in sleeping with them, though, nor do they provide much comfort when she wakes (still!) in the middle of the night--only Mom or Dad with a bottle will do.

She continues to be a little chatterbox (though most of her words are probably unrecognizable to anyone but her parents) and has started putting words together, like "Mommy shoe" (pointing to my sneakers) and "see toe!" (in the bath, pointing to her toes). Our friend who babysat for her last week claims BG said "It's a ball!" but I'm pretty sure she imagined that.

She loves self-feeding and can only tolerate being spoon-fed for a few minutes before demanding the spoon ("poon!") herself, which means I'm sometimes frantically shoveling yogurt into her so I can get her fed at least a little before she smears and splashes and coats the whole kitchen with food. She's finally gotten the hang of holding a larger piece of food and gnawing on it, rather than trying to shove the whole thing into her mouth. At the end of meals, she often sweeps all the food remaining on her high chair tray onto the floor, grandly rejecting the pears/chicken/cereal/quesadilla/peas/whatever...then as soon as she's let out of her high chair, she's like, "Oooh, food on the floor!" and snatches it up and eats it before I can wrestle it out of her hand. She's still addicted to the bottle (four 4-oz chugs of milk a day), though she'll drink water from a sippy at meals. She does not deign to hold either bottle or sippy herself, however--why bother trying to master the correct angles when you have a mom or dad who will hold it for you like your personal drink bitch?

She's extremely strong-willed and will throw a major screaming tantrum in a heartbeat--red face, arched back, supersonic shrieks, flinging herself to the floor. This is especially fun when it happens for no apparent reason at 3 a.m. (Though the pediatrician, this morning at her 15-month well-baby visit, observed that she had a whole lot more teeth coming in, which might account for the middle-of-the-night screams. We're kind of slow to figure things out.)

She loves music and loves dancing around the room in my arms or her daddy's arms. She also "dances" herself, swaying and rocking to the beat with a big grin when a fun song comes on the TV or stereo. (The other day it was an Erasure song, which prompted my husband to observe, "You really are a Korean girl, aren't you?")

She peed in the potty a few weekends ago, but I'm pretty sure it was a total accident.

She is the coolest little person, and I can't believe how fast she is growing up.

In case you were wondering...

2008-05-02T16:33:00.002-04:00

I was offered the job. But I turned it down today.

The money was okay, not great. It was a small bump up from my current salary--not as big a bump as I wanted, but not an insulting amount, especially considering that my industry is not doing so great right now, and that I'm the sole breadwinner of my family. It would have been enough to buy myself some more nice things once in a while, enough to help out the college fund a lot. But ultimately money wasn't the reason I turned the job down.

I don't ever blog about work, or what I do for a living, so this will be hard to do without violating that rule but...suppose you were a zookeeper. (I am not a zookeeper.) And say you were dreaming of running your own zoo devoted to penguins, but right now you're working as a general zookeeper, taking care of a few penguins as part of your overall duties. And you're suddenly offered a job running the...um...reptile division of a zoo that has no penguins whatsoever. You might consider taking the job, just to get the experience running a whole division of a zoo, but this would be taking you further away from your penguin dreams (because you'd be losing out on penguin experience, and not keeping up with the latest penguin care innovations). So you stay at your current job, in the hopes that one day you might be put in charge of the whole penguin exhibit. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I decided to sacrifice a small short-term gain in income in favor of my long-term dreams (as much as I can be said to have any career "dreams," as wizened and cynical as I've become). Luckily my husband was supportive of this. And I guess Bat Girl will just have to take out another college loan when the time comes.

But it was a tough call. It's not the first time family considerations have entered into a career decision for me. In fact, I took my current job, after being self-employed for a long time, largely because we wanted better health insurance to cover IF treatments. But this time, it was even more concrete, thinking about how much organic milk or tiny shoes or 529 contributions that small but real raise would have bought. And in deciding in favor of my dreams, in taking a risk, I really did feel for a moment that I was depriving my child.

Ah well. If mama's happy, everyone's happy, right?

Dear Whole Foods,

2008-04-23T11:43:00.003-04:00

Don't get me wrong. In theory, I applaud your decision to eliminate plastic shopping bags in all your stores. I'm something of an eco-freak myself, and I think we can all agree that plastic bags are evil and polluting and make us slaves to the oil companies and kill animals etc. I like bringing my own shopping bag and I do appreciate the $0.15 discount you give me when I use it.

But. Your plastic bags were the best. I loved them, I really did. They were roomy and hefty (I almost said "big and thick," but this is not that kind of blog, you perverts. Okay, I guess it kind of is) and didn't need to be doubled up. They made the best garbage can and diaper pail liners--they never tore, never leaked, kept in the poop smells better than any other bag. Now we have to use those cheap flimsy bags from the grocery store down the street.

And what am I supposed to do with all of these paper bags? Because sometimes, I just don't have my own shopping bag with me, and I have to use your paper bags (doubled up, annoyingly). And my kid is only 14.5 months old, so she doesn't have any textbooks to cover, and the cat only needs one bag to play with, and there are only so many presents you can wrap in brown paper bags before you become that girl, and you don't want me to be that girl, do you, Whole Foods?

And here's the big thing: I live in the big city. I don't own a car. I walk and take the subway everywhere. I walk from my office to your store, and then from your store to the subway, and then a five-minute walk from the subway to my apartment. And you know, a lot of times it's raining, or snowing, when I'm walking home. And I am just waiting for the terrible day when one of your stupid brown paper bags gets soaking wet and falls apart and spills my groceries all over the sidewalk while I'm walking home in the rain. Uphill. With wet shoes. And my canvas shopping bag is soaked through and my box of stupid yuppie organic "O" cereal gets all wet. And it will be all your fault, Whole Foods.

I will probably continue to spend my entire paycheck at your store, because I'm a lame eco-yuppie like that. But I will hold this plastic bag thing against you. I just thought you should know.

Love,
electriclady

What was that about the terrible twos coming early?

2008-04-21T20:34:00.002-04:00

A phone conversation, today, approx. 4 p.m.:

Husband: Yeah, she just dumped everything out of your T-shirt drawer.

Me: Well, make her put it all back.

Husband: Hey [Bat Girl], put the shirts back in the drawer.

Bat Girl (in the background): No!

*****

Kitchen chez electricfamily, approx. 6:30 p.m.:

Me (to BG, fussing in her high chair): Hang on a sec, I'm just making you a little guacamole.

Bat Girl: [ultrasonic, ear-piercing shriek]

Me: I think my eardrum just ruptured.

Blah blah blah

2008-04-15T15:32:00.005-04:00

Last year, when Bat Girl was still in the "aa...goo?" phase of verbalization, a friend with older kids told me that watching your child learn to talk is one of the coolest experiences there is. And she's right.

I'm fascinated by how Bat Girl picks up words. Sometimes she just starts saying words out of the blue--if you hear "No" often enough, I suppose it's not hard to just bust it out one day, as she did Easter weekend. (Except she pronounces it "noo," which is hilarious.) Other times you can watch her working on it. A few days ago, she pointed to the flowers on the lampshade in her room, and I IDed them as "flower" to her. Every night since, she points at the flowers and says, "Fow!" I say "Right, flower!" and she repeats back carefully, "Fo-wa!"

Most of her vocabulary is unintelligible to anyone but us ("chuc!"=truck; "tsai!"=outside="Hold me up to the window so I can look at the chucs, lady!"). Because of the random nature of our reading material and toys and our city life, she has what is probably a somewhat unusual vocabulary for a toddler. She says "shark" and "penguin" but not "cow" or "pig," "truck" and "BIG car!" but not "apple" or, frankly, "Mama." (She says mamamama but doesn't consistently say "Mama" the way she she says "Da-ee!", dammit.)

She listens carefully, so I've had to cut down on my swearing--a month or two ago I dropped something and said "Shit!" and she promptly parroted back, "Shit!" Or I'll say something like, "Are you going to sleep better tonight?" and she'll say back, "Niiight?" in the exact singsong ickle-bickle tone I used.

The other fun thing is, of course, teaching her stupid baby tricks. Like how, if you sing the Blue's Clues mail song to her, she'll chime in at the end, "Maaiiiii!" complete with jazz hands. My husband especially enjoys teaching her things in secret and then busting them out to surprise me. A week ago we were all hanging out in bed and he said, "Hey [Bat Girl,] KARATE!" and she immediately responded, "CHOP!" complete with chopping hand motion. I nearly peed my pants laughing.

The downside is that despite her extensive vocabulary, she is still 14 months old, and still has trouble communicating the most basic of things. Or rather, I understand perfectly that when she reaches up for my glasses, sitting on the bathroom counter, and lets out a wordless whine, she would like to grab and mangle them. But no dice, kid. And I understand that when she stands outside the gate shutting her out of the kitchen and lets out a series of high-pitched, supersonic shrieks, she means something along the lines of, "Stop messing around with breakfast and come pay attention to ME! And/or let me in there so I can snack on cat food!" And I foresee many more toddler meltdowns along the lines of what we've been experiencing lately, where she'll demand her "CUP!" and then when you give her said cup, she screams and turns her head as if offered a poisoned chalice. And then plunges into despair when you take the cup away, sobbing "cuuuup...." Yeah, I'm guessing we'll hit the terrible twos early, here.

*****

I keep meaning to post a monthly update on Bat Girl but I can't seem to get it together--I still have thirteen and fourteen months sitting in my draft box--so this will have to do for now...

Why am I awake right now?

2008-04-10T22:44:00.003-04:00

I have a job interview tomorrow. I don't particularly want this job. I like my current job. But despite our fat tax refund, we could really use some more money. So I'm going into this job interview, and if they ask for my salary requirements, I'm going to ask for nearly 40% more than what I'm making now. Because really, why the hell not?

The problem is that about a year and a half ago, our computer died and I lost the only digital version of my resume, and I never got around to making a new one. I still have hard copies of the old one, so it wasn't too hard recreating it, but I had never updated it to include my current job. So I'm sitting here at 10:30 pm trying to remember what the eff it is I do all day long.

Woohoo!

2008-04-10T11:40:00.002-04:00

Just got a call from our accountant--we are getting a HUGE refund this year. As in, approaching five figures huge. Whee!

Unfortunately, we can't run out and blow it all on DVF dresses (me) and vintage Transformers (husband) and foie gras (oohhhh), as over the past year, between the hospital bills and the organic formula and the partially unpaid maternity leave and the going from two incomes to one and the price of EVERYTHING going up and the total lack of budgeting skillz up in our house--and, clearly, the massively excessive tax withholding from my paycheck--we have been running a major budget deficit each month. So most of that fat gubmint check will go to replenishing our savings, and then maybe we will buy a sexy new vacuum cleaner. And pay the accountant.

But it's nice to know that having a kid does have SOME financial perks. Now excuse me, I have to go change my withholding.

(God, being a grownup makes you so fucking boring. Accountants! Withholding! This is what passes for fun around here!)

Blogger makes me tired

2008-04-01T21:35:00.002-04:00

But despite my total lack of html skillz I managed to update my sidebar, cleaning up my links and figuring out how to get my bloglines feeds listed. Check it out! Who else should I be reading to help me waste time at work? I had trouble sorting some blogs into infertile vs. non-infertile but really it was too much of an existential quandary on 5 hours sleep and fuck it, it's not like anyone's going to go looking and then complaining about it, right? (although, if you feel your blog has been mischaracterized, let me know!)

Also, I have been planning to go through and label all my posts and then do a sort-by-label thingy on the sidebar, but there doesn't seem to be any quick way to do that--I either have to manually code each label's link or I have to switch to Blogger's paint-by-numbers "Layout" mode, which I think will break all the html fussing I've already done. Bleah. Any ideas? (Besides "Shell out for Typepad, you cheap Luddite.")

Housekeeping posts are so riveting!

Bad mommy

2008-03-31T15:02:00.004-04:00

We were having a pretty good weekend, at first. Went to music class, where Bat Girl was her usual spunky, spirited self, and where another mom complimented me on how well-dressed BG is. Went to a first birthday party, where other parents remarked on BG's "cool personality" and on what an impressive walker she is and how energetic and inquisitive she is. So I was feeling like a pretty awesome mom, never mind the fact that none of these things is due to any excellence in parenting on my part. (Well, I guess I can take partial credit for how nicely I pair her hand-me-downs with Old Navy jeans.) That was Saturday.

Then on Sunday, I dropped Bat Girl on her head.

Okay, technically I merely dropped her, and her forehead HAPPENED to strike the top of the metal gate keeping her out of the kitchen, and then she HAPPENED to continue falling until she landed facedown on the floor with a sickening thud. And then there was that moment of silence before she started screaming when I thought, "Dear god, I killed my baby." And then the screaming, and the screaming, and the huge black and blue lump that immediately appeared on her forehead, and the attempted icing of said black and blue lump (do you know how hard it is to ice a toddler's forehead? we were only able to do it with the serious application of Blue's Clues*, and even then she kept trying to pull away and shove the icepack off because DAMMIT WOMAN I CAN'T SEE THE CLUES WITH THAT THING IN MY FACE!). And the googling of "baby concussion symptoms," and the flashbacks where I keep seeing her slip out of my arms, do a spiraling half-twist in the air, and plummet to the parquet.

But we're all fine now, really. The ice seems to have worked and the mark is hardly noticeable today. BG hasn't been vomiting or having seizures or walking funny or anything, and she was back to her regular cheerful (interspersed with screaming due to THE BOOK WON'T COME OFF THE SHELF FAST ENOUGH or THE SKWISH WON'T FIT INTO THIS BOX WHERE IT IS CLEARLY NOT DESIGNED TO FIT BUT I MUST MAKE IT FIT, because come on, she's a toddler) self pretty quickly. And I'm sure a head of white hair will look very stylish with my "World's Worst Mother" badge, right?

*Yes, she watches TV. Blue, and also the baby crack known as Yo Gabba Gabba. In fact, she will walk up to me, hand me the remote, and demand "Bwoo!" I'm telling ya, Mother of the Year over here.

Two?

2008-03-17T13:24:00.002-04:00

I have said repeatedly in the past year that I do not want any more kids. I used to think I wanted two, maybe three (as did my husband), but the arrival of Bat Girl was such a hurricane in our world--not to mention the tsunami of bed rest and its related physical, mental, and emotional destruction--that we could not imagine doing it again. At least not any time soon.

I don't know if it's hormones, or springtime, or what, but the last couple of weeks I've felt a weird pull in the other direction. Don't get me wrong--I am not even considering THINKING about getting pregnant again. I resolved from the beginning that I'd wait until Bat Girl was close to 2 before going down that road again.

But consider, if you will:

Exhibit A: Two weekends ago, I happened to catch an episode of Jon and Kate Plus 8. Now I know, the proper response to this show of any sane person--especially an infertile--is to run screaming in the other direction. These people are, as they themselves admit, a "fertility nightmare," an example of what you do NOT want to happen when you head to your friendly neighborhood fertility clinic. But instead of horror, I was filled with...longing? What? What is WRONG with me? It was seeing all those cute part-Korean toddlers running around with their little lisps and squishy bodies. Bat Girl hasn't quite grown into that yet, but she's getting there, and it was cool to think about what she's going to be like at 2 or 3 or 4...and then a little wistful, thinking about how cool it might be to see another kid go through the same stages. Maybe a little boy. I don't know. I got my period two days later, so I'd like to chalk it up to that.

Exhibit B: This weekend, we were watching the kid of a neighbor of ours--he's 9 and has brother-and-sister twins, age nearly-3. (And yes, ART was involved with the twins, as you might guess.) When his mom picked him up, the little ones squealed with delight to see their older brother, ran up and threw their arms around him screaming his name. He acted embarrassed but you could tell he was thrilled to be worshipped so much. I looked at the mother's beaming face and thought, "This is why you have another."

Exhibit C: This morning, talking to a friend whose mom is going through a tough time, and who wished "for the first time in my life," she said, that she had a sibling, someone who could share this burden with her.

The thing is, having a sibling is no guarantee of companionship, worship, or a helping hand--heck, I'd consider my brother and I decently close and we only talk once a month. But I do wonder what we--all of us, Bat Girl included--might be missing.

On the other hand, last night we also caught Dennis Quaid and his wife on 60 Minutes, talking about the medical error that nearly killed their newborn twins. A friend of mine just gave birth to a baby who will have lifelong disabilities (undetected on any of her prenatal tests or scans). I think about all the things that can go wrong, not least because of my wonky ute, and wonder how anyone can have the audacity to have children at all, much less tempt fate by trying again after having one healthy baby.

*****

Thanks for all your comments and emails re: my plagio meltdown. It was especially helpful to hear from those of you who decided not to do anything about your kids' heads. (And from Ornery--hello, ORNERY!!! We miss you! Hope you and the babies are well!) I've decided to let it go and make my peace with Bat Girl's head shape. No one else notices it but me and my husband, and she'll grow hair soon (please? where is the hair?!?) and it won't be noticeable at all. I hope.

*****

Work (and taxes) is kicking my ass right now. But I do have a (now two weeks late) post about Bat Girl at 13 months in the works, and lots of other stuff on my mind. Remember how I said, way back when, that I was going to post about sex, or lack thereof? I have so much to say about that. Next week I hope I'll have more time to write...

Headbanging

2008-03-03T22:16:00.000-05:00

I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but Bat Girl has a flat head.

To be precise, she has mild positional plagiocephaly--the rear right quadrant of her skull is flattened and the rear left quadrant pushes out very slightly. We first noticed the flat spot when she was around three months old, but in retrospect it's likely she came out of the womb that way, given the cramped conditions and her breech positioning. (Her right ear was also smushed and folded almost double for the first few weeks of her life.) She has always favored turning her head to the right, so it's also possible that she had very mild torticollis, especially in light of her resistance to nursing on my right boob (i.e. turning her head to the left). If she did, it was very mild, as she has no problems with range of motion now.

At her four-month well baby visit, we pointed out the flat spot to the pediatrician. She was unconcerned and recommended that we do some repositioning (bolstering Bat Girl when she slept so she turned to the left, etc.), which we had already already doing, and we left it at that. However, by this point Bat Girl was already rolling over and mostly slept on her tummy or side. Everything I read about plagio said that mild cases usually resolved themselves once the child started rolling and crawling, so I wasn't worried and pretty much forgot about it. We made an effort to keep her off the flat spot when we remembered, but it wasn't an obsession or anything.

By the time Bat Girl was 9 months old, the plagio was definitely no better, and in fact I worried that it was getting worse. Was her head bulging out to the left? Were her ears still misaligned? (Earlier, her right ear was visibly set further forward on her head than the left.) I brought it up to the pediatrician again, who took another good look at Bat Girl and said, essentially, yes, she has a flat spot, but it's not that bad, she doesn't need a helmet, and once she grows some hair you won't even notice it.

But I kept obsessing about it, on and off. I'd go through periods where I thought, oh, it's not so bad, you can't even tell. Then I'd catch sight of the top of her head in a mirror and think, holy crap, and then spend two or three days googling pictures of pre-banded plagio babies' heads until I worked myself into a panic. But I thought it was probably too late to do anything about it, and to be honest, I really did not want Bat Girl to wear a helmet. I just didn't. So I stuck my head in the sand.

Over the last month or two, though, I've read about Statia's battle to get the Mini banded, and have emailed with her about her experience, and I started to think, why not just see a neurologist and get it checked out, just for peace of mind? So last week I prepared myself for battle and called the pediatrician. Who, of course, gave me no hassles at all about it and gave me the names of 4 pediatric neurologists. Only one of them accepts our insurance, so I called the office to make an appointment. Here is how it went:

Me: I'd like to make an appointment with Dr. Fancypants.
Bitchy Receptionist: What's the diagnosis?
Me: Plagiocephaly.
BR: And how old is the infant?
Me: Actually, she's a year old.
BR: Oh, Dr. Fancypants doesn't see plagio patients older than 10 months. Why are you just calling now?
Me: Our pediatrician felt it might get better on its own, but it hasn't really improved, so--
BR: Well, it's never going to improve. It's too late, her skull has hardened.

AARGH! Setting aside the fact that YOU, BITCHY RECEPTIONIST, ARE NOT A DOCTOR, AND IN FACT HAVE NO MEDICAL TRAINING WHATSOEVER, I have read of plenty of cases where children have been banded as late as 18 months and shown improvement--not as much as if they were banded before 9 months, true, but it's not totally unheard of. Also, WTF?!?!?!?!? Why not just tell me, "I'm sorry, Dr. Fancypants doesn't see plagio patients older than 10 months"? You could even add, "He feels that after 10 months is too late for treatment." There is no need for you, bitchy receptionist with no medical training, to editorialize and diagnose MY child over the phone. Ugh.

Unfortunately, my default reaction in cases such as these is to fall apart and start to cry, rather than opening up a can of whoop-ass as this woman so richly deserved. So instead of ripping BR a new one, I hung up and felt like the worst mother in the world. Why hadn't I pushed for a referral sooner? Was Bat Girl's head going to be fucked up for the rest of her life, and would she resent us forever for not fixing it?

I'm still debating whether to call around and see if one of the other neurologists our ped recommended will see Bat Girl. It will probably cost around $350 for the appointment (that's average for a non-insurance-covered office visit around here) and it seems likely that another doctor will tell us there isn't much they can do, given that BG has passed the optimal banding age. The money is definitely a factor--obviously if it would help BG, there's no amount of money I wouldn't spend, but if it's just to be told "Sorry," I don't know if it's worth it. The head shape looks bad from some angles, but other times it seems fine, and honestly I've been looking at it so much, I don't know what to think anymore. Her ears have definitely evened out, so maybe it's getting better.

My main concern is that it not cause other problems for her down the road, and it seems like long-term effects are usually in severe cases where there's facial asymmetry. BG doesn't have any facial asymmetry due to the plagio--back in September she was diagnosed with mild ptosis, but after the Bitchy Receptionist encounter I called the pediatric opthalmologist we saw back then (whom I LOVE, btw, if anyone needs a ped. opthalmologist in the Big City area) and he assured me that the ptosis was "100%" not caused by any head shape irregularities. (And I believe him, because I also have a slight asymmetry between my eyes, as does my dad.)

In the end, it comes down to the guilt, as always. Guilt for not noticing sooner, guilt for not being more aggressive with repositioning--we turned her so her head faced the other way when she was lying down, sure, but we could have also changed the way we held her during feedings, etc. etc. On the other hand...we did tons of tummy time, she spent no time in a car seat and very little in a bouncy seat or swing (was in-arms practically constantly her first three months of life), she rolled over and crawled early, so what else could we have done? Other than call a doctor and get her banded, of course.

At the very least, this is another fun thing we can blame on my stupid uterus. (Intrauterine crowding due to twinning, uterine anomalies, and/or breech positioning can lead to plagiocephaly. Too bad our pediatrician didn't know that, or didn't mention it when BG was two weeks old and I told her I had a UU and asked if there was anything we should watch out for in BG as a result--she said, "Nope, nothing!") And we like blaming things on my stupid uterus.

I don't know...forgive all the rambling. What would you do?

There really needs to be

2008-02-27T15:48:00.003-05:00

a crib with a side that folds ALL the way down, so you can lie down next to your baby while she falls asleep, then just get up and leave.

(Normally our bedtime ritual is: bath, books, bottle, brush teeth, then I take Bat Girl into our bedroom and lie down with her until she falls asleep (20-30 minutes), then transfer to the crib. I like the lying-down-together time--it's sweet, Bat Girl likes to pat my face and crawl all over me before she finally settles down, but then she falls asleep without needing to be rocked or anything. But sometimes, like last night, she wakes up as I make the transfer and then I end up standing next to the crib for another 10-15 minutes rubbing her back or tummy to settle her back down--can't leave the room, oh no, not allowed. And so today I have a totally sore neck from leaning over the crib--which is why I don't just put her in the crib to fall asleep in the first place. The folding-side crib would solve all this! Especially if it were queen-sized! Not to mention that BG really does sleep better if she falls asleep in the same place she's going to wake up, pace Pantley.)

PS Thanks for all your gift suggestions. I think I'm going to go with Peter's Chair and some crayons and a coloring book. Play-Doh is a great idea too but I think too heavy to ship to Hong Kong. :)