It's something of a tradition for an older sibling to receive a gift "from" their new baby sibling upon the birth. I suppose the rite was started as a way for the parents to make the big brother or sister feel special amid all the hullabaloo over the baby, and perhaps a new toy would help keep the older child occupied in those first days as the parents readjusted to the "getting by on 2 hours of sleep" routine. I also like to think the gift is something of an olive branch extended by the parents on behalf of the baby to the older sibling; a way of communicating for the baby in rudimentary toddler-ese, "Look, kid, I am giving you this awesome new toy so please don't kill me in my sleep even though I am about to destroy life as you know it."

Harper has developed something of a thing for penguins of late. It started with his enjoyment of watching the daily penguin feeding at the California Academy of Sciences, and was launched into mild obsession status by his love for the book 365 Penguins, which he would insist we (specifically, the ever-so-patient Byrne) read each time we visited our neighborhood bookstore. So, the baby will be giving him his own copy of the book as well as this pudgy little handknit penguin (I admit, I helped a bit with the knitting part). My hope is that 1) He'll love the gift, and perhaps even his baby sister as well, and 2) He won't immediately request 364 more penguins (this is a distinct possibility, as he is a lover of both large numbers and consistency).

The pattern came from the Winter 2004 issue of Knitty, but I first spotted it in a Hail Mary search on Ravelry for a knit penguin patttern. It was an easy and quick knit that I was able to complete in leisurely spurts over a couple of weekends, and it just may have hooked me on knitting plush animals--I like that all the parts are worked separately and then seamed and stuffed, making these types of projects easy to pick up and put down as needed. I would have liked to use a more smushy, soft, and natural fiber, but I had a big skein of cheapo black acrylic yarn left over from some long-ago learning-to-crochet project, so I picked up some cheapo off white and gold to match and got going. In the end, I am thrilled with the results, and now the toy is imminently washable, a fact I am sure I will praise when Harper's sister ruins his life yet again by spitting up all over his (hopefully) beloved handknit penguin.

P.S.: Please forgive the substandad photo, taken with my phone. I finished knitting this in a bit of late-pregnancy nesting panic, and it immediately went into my hospital bag, which immediately went into the back of the car to await the onset of labor. Ducks--or penguins as they were--must all be in a row at this point, lest I go a little more crazy.

So many little reasons to feel big happiness this morning:

1. My boys return home tonight, after their weekend away!


2. I have an amazing mother and mothers-in-law and am supported, encouraged, and loved by such a wonderful network of women--all of whom I celebrate today.


3. I have generous and loving neighbors, who knew I was alone today and delivered a plate of homemade challah French toast topped with fresh berries and whipped cream, and a mimosa with just enough Champagne. Almost as much as the delicious food, I appreciated the sight of a pajama-ed, morning-haired little one--something I was missing this morning.


4. I got to read a good chunk of the Sunday Times undisturbed over breakfast, and I have plans to read the rest of it this afternoon.


5. Perfect, warm farmer's market weather.


6. A jam-packed staycation for me that included lunches and dinners out with friends, shopping, a much-needed pedicure, a long walk, reading, knitting, a massage, yoga, crafting, hanging out in the garden, couch napping, and in-bed laptop movie-watching, plus plenty of time to do a major clean-out of the pantry and bathroom cupboards and catch up on bills and paperwork. The perfect combination of resting and nesting!

This weekend, Byrne took Harper to Austin for a visit and I decided to stay home to do some resting and nesting and enjoy some much-needed quiet alone time before Little Miss Reese comes waltzing into our lives.

What do I have planned? A whole lotta nothin'.

Seriously. I have nothing against socializing, and there certainly are some friends I'd like to reconnect with this weekend if the opportunity arises. But a big part of this break for me is the liberation from a schedule for the first time in the last three years of my life. Spontaneity has been on a hiatus around here, and I am just now realizing how much I've really missed it. I'm out of practice.

An already-emerging theme of this weekend has been re-learning how to slow down. At lunch today, I found myself initially fidgety. When my food arrived, my first instinct was to dive in and eat quickly. Part of that was due to the fact that I had been fasting since the night before for a blood draw, and I was ravenous. But also, I have become so accustomed to eating quickly while simultaneously taking care of someone else's needs. So I set my fork down, took a breath, sipped my drink, leaned back in my chair, and pulled out a book. I accepted a refill on my iced tea. When the waitress tried to clear my plate prematurely, I politely asked her to leave it so I could nibble some more.

After lunch, I decided to browse the bookstore down the street. Again, I found myself rushing, quickly searching through my mental files for any books I've been meaning to check out. It took a few minutes of feeling mildly frantic before I realized: I don't need to be anywhere else right now. No one is hungry or tired or bored or asking to go home or to the park. I can linger. And linger I did, so long that I didn't realize my watch had stopped ticking and my parking meter was expired. Oops. Or was my ignorance to the passage of time all part of the lesson of these few precious days?

My boys are off on an adventure together, and I am here alone, enjoying the quiet thrill that comes with relearning simple ways of being happy and free. So far, it has been the best Mother's Day gift I never knew I wanted.

It has its ups and downs. On the one hand, it's all, "No, no, no, no! No breffixed (breakfast)!" and "Waaahhh! Want a lollipop!" But then you also get early-morning snuggles accompanied by jokes like this:

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Banana! I love you!

My son and I take a trip to our neighborhood branch of the Oakland Public Library every three weeks or so to load up on new books, since we read several a day and we've long since blown through my large collection of children's titles. I always look for books that correspond with his admittedly eclectic interests, and I have been completely surprised by how successful I've been at finding just the thing.

For example, several months back Harper developed a real affinity for signs. Traffic signs, construction signs, signs in the airport, signs identifying elevators and public restrooms. Our time in the car, on the bike, and with the stroller became a never-ending barrage of questions about signage: "What that sign is? What does it mean?" The next time we were at the library, I typed "traffic signs" into the online catalog on a whim and in the hopes of getting a break from identifying every sign we encountered. Lo and behold:

When the Whole Foods Market opened in Oakland, Harper was very excited. He could care less about a pretty, well organized store with a great cheese counter, quality deli, fresh juice bar, or café with free WiFi. No, the real reason for going to Whole Foods is the elevator that takes customers from the rooftop parking lot to the store at street level. Likewise, when we went to Portland last summer, he was ambivalent about the great zoo, children's museum and parks--he would have been content to stay in the hotel and ride the elevator up and down four floors all week. The mission of our next trip to the library was to find a book about elevators. Eureka:

Harper's newest obsession is Roman numerals. This definitely makes him an odd duck in the 2-and-a-half-year-old crowd, but he mastered the alphabet and numbers long ago, and when he saw Roman numeral chapter headings in a book we were reading at bedtime, he wanted to know what they meant. We explained, and then all he wanted to do was find the Roman numerals in the book every night. He started laying out his magnetic alphabet not in words, but in Roman numeral-like sequences, and asking us to translate. Yesterday at the library, we were browsing the shelves, not looking for anything in particular. I ended up in the single-subject area of the children's section, at the shelf with books about numbers and basic math. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this:

Whether the credit goes to the breadth of the children's publishing industry or the collections of the Oakland Public Library, I say hooray for books!

Who is this little boy, and what has he done with my sweet, tiny baby?

Most toddler mispronunciations are adorable. Some of my son's ways of saying things are so beloved that they have become a part of our family lexicon: Elevator = "eh-vuh-LAY-tor"; pretzels = "PREN-sills"; Abby Cadabby (of Sesame Street) = "Abby Too-Gabby"; Uncle Eric = "Uncle Eggy". But his newest is a little Bushian for my taste.

Binoculars = "bin-OCK-lee-ars."

So, today I was watching Martha Stewart's TV show (OK, fine, I admit it, it's my lunchtime thing, I will hear no more on the matter!), in which she highlighted the finalists of her "Dreamers Into Doers" contest for people who have let their passions drive the establishment of their business. It was a real tear-jerky show, complete with string-ensemble background music, guest Maya Angelou talking about all her "daughters" around the world, and stories from women who have transformed their lives with things as simple as Southern biscuits and as profound as nonprofit services for families with dying kids.

Despite the over-the-top production of the whole shebang, one finalist's story really moved me, and she eventually triumphed as the winner. Amy Jaffe Barzach's nonprofit, Boundless Playgrounds, builds playscapes that are accessible for children of all abilities, with ramps instead of stairs, wheelchair-friendly surfacing, swings with back supports, and elevated sand and water tables. In the footage, it was clear that these aren't simply playgrounds for disabled kids, they truly are just really cool playgrounds for all kids that also happen to be easier for children with mobility challenges to use.

Something I hadn't thought about before seeing this show was how most playgrounds aren't accessible for parents with disabilities, and how this limits their choices for ways they can engage with their own children. One mother talked about being able to push her son on the swings for the first time because finally there was a park that was not planted in a sandpit or wood chips, which are impossible to navigate in her wheelchair. I found this part of the story the most touching of all.

I know how important it is for children to play, experiment, and explore on a daily basis, and I have a hard time imagining how it must feel to not be able to participate in this process as a parent. I found myself thinking about what I would do without my son's and my several weekly trips to the neighborhood parks to play with the other kids. Our lives would be so lonely, so less rich in experience and fun.

You can read more about Boundless Playgrounds, and find one near you, here.

I can't believe my surprise Earth Day baby turned two years old today.

April 22, 2006

April 22, 2008

I find myself visiting YouTube much more often now that I have a child. I don't allow Harper to watch a lot of TV, but the minutes-long snippets on YouTube are often just the thing: I can put Harper in his highchair, load up a clip on my laptop on the kitchen table, and be unfettered for that critical last few minutes of dinner prep or what-have you. I've found you can almost never go wrong with classic Sesame Street. Here are some oldies-but-goodies we've been watching lately:

Cab Calloway Sings "Hi De Ho Man"

Byrne remembers this from when it first aired, but I somehow missed it, despite watching my share of Sesame Street back in the day. The best part, besides Cab Calloway? The two-headed Muppet guy excitedly announcing him: "CabbieCalloway! CabbieCalloway!"

James Taylor Sings Jellyman Kelly

The best part, besides the tuba player, and also whatever James Taylor apparently smoked backstage? The kids just dying for their cue to start singing the chorus.

Grover Tries to Grok Personal Pronouns

Harper's "lovey" since he was about 6 months old has been this cuddly plush Grover doll, so he immediately lights up for any bit starring "Gro." I think you'll enjoy the humor in this clip even if you are not 2 years old. My exposure to modern-day Sesame Street is admittedly limited, but it seems to me that they were writing Grover a lot funnier (for kids and adults alike) in the 1970s and 80s.

Me, July 1976

Harper, July 2007

One of the things I love most about motherhood: how being with my son opens the floodgates for memories from my own childhood to come tumbling back at the most random times. They're like little presents, these memories; like little unexpected vacations back to fleeting moments that I thought I had forgotten, or perhaps never knew I remembered.

Tonight before dinnertime, Harper and I sat on the front grass. I was blowing bubbles and he was doing everything he could to grab the bottle of bubble solution out of my hand. In my effort to keep the bottle away from him, I was not careful to let the excess solution drain from the wand before raising it up, and it was dripping all over my fingers and down my wrist.

Suddenly I had a very vivid sensory memory of blowing bubbles in the front yard of the house I grew up in at dusk on a summer evening, competing with my sister and the neighborhood kids to see who could blow the biggest bubbles, focusing so intensely on releasing our breath as slowly and evenly as possible that we didn't care about the way the ridges on those tiny plastic wands that come with the cheap toy-store bubbles hold only the sheerest film of bubble solution, and the excess would drip down the handle and all over our hands and wrists and forearms, and after it would dry in the warm air our skin would feel all itchy until the street lights came on and someone's mom would call them in and it was time to go home and take a bath.

... and four generations of Markussen-O'Donnell-Hailey-Reeses.

Happy Mother's Day!

According to a study conducted by Salary.com Inc.:

If the typical stay-at-home mother in the United States were paid for her work as a housekeeper, cook and psychologist, among other roles, she would earn $138,095 a year.

The 10 jobs listed as comprising a mother's work were housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, laundry machine operator, van driver, facilities manager, janitor, computer operator, chief executive officer and psychologist.

The typical mother puts in a 92-hour work week.

Here's my list of job titles that Salary.com left out: nurse, nutritionist, personal assistant, project/product manager, wardrobe consultant, coach, bodyguard, and graveyard-shift supervisor. Am I forgetting anything, mamas?

I live in the tech-centric and salary-inflated Bay Area, so I personally know people who make a whole lot more for doing a whole lot less. But, then again, I bet they couldn't get their bosses to stop their griping with a simple zerbert to the belly.

On April 22, Harper hosted his first birthday party. It was a small party, a glorified play date, really, with a few of his little friends and his grandparents in attendance. But you know me, any party is an excuse for nesting and primping
and baking and crafting to an extent that one's back becomes stiff from sitting on the floor in front of a bad movie, glue gun in one hand and a pile of felt sheets in the other.

Here's a little peek into the scene. (These photos were taken by my dad; more photos can be found in the First Birthday photo gallery).

For the past few days, I've been "vacationing" in New York (the reason for the quotes will be apparent forthwith) as my husband and his company host a blogging summit here. I should say that I've been to New York several times, but this is my first trip with a baby.

I'm certainly not the first one to wonder how people manage to raise kids here, in a city so storied and vibrant and wonderful and yet also so family-unfriendly. But this week, I have gotten a very personal taste of just how hard it can be, and I'm not just talking about the high cost of living, troubled schools, or crime rate. For many parents New York City, especially during winter, even getting out the door in the morning works up a sweat. And when all those little things that can go wrong, go wrong, hoo boy.

A couple days after we arrived, my son came down with a double ear infection. He had had a couple of restless nights, which we chalked up to a near-perfect storm of babyhood: jet lag and teething. But when he was still sleepless the next day and also grumpy, lethargic, and feverish, I knew the suspicions I had been brewing were right.

Hark, we have entered the Cheerio Era. Last weekend, we purchased the first of what will surely be hundreds of bright-yellow boxes over our son's baby- and toddler-hood. It's safe to say that Harper is already officially a Cheerio junkie. And I am a fan, too, not only because I think it's so dang cute the way he picks up each piece of cereal individually with his little pincer grasp, focusing all his energy on getting his hand up to his mouth and then the cereal out of his hand and onto his tongue--sucking it out of his fist if necessary--but also because of the time that such a pursuit buys for me. The other day the two of us went out for lunch. At a real restaurant. After placing my order, I fed Harper--one of his new favorite meals, applesauce with a bit of roasted-beet puree mixed in--and then asked the server to bring me a clean plate, onto which I placed a dozen or so Cheerios. The kid entertained himself with the Great Cereal Hunt of 2006 while I savored a warming bowl of curry noodles and a cup of tea. It was a thoroughly civilized mother-son outing--even if we did leave a trail of slightly moistened Cheerios scattered on the table, the floor, the high chair, the booth seats....

There are now two new items on my list of things so bad that I wouldn't wish them on anyone, ever: The feeling you get when your baby screams out in fear and pain and the feeling you get sitting with your baby in an emergency room.

Last night, Harper took a pretty bad fall. For months, we've fed him his dinner with him sitting in his bouncy seat on the kitchen table (never again). Last night, Byrne took on dinner duty so I could get some work done. He put Harper in the seat and turned his back for the proverbial second to grab Harper's dinner when we both heard a huge crash and a cry unlike any we'd heard before. Harper had apparently leaned over sideways, toppling off the table (still strapped into the seat) onto some bags of groceries on the floor. The groceries may indeed have cushioned his fall a bit, but he smacked his face on some not-so-soft purchases, cutting his nose and outer eye. I was about one atom away from ceasing to exist altogether.

The front page of this week's Sunday San Francisco Chronicle featured a graphic reading TOXIC! spelled out in large letters constructed out of infant toys and baby bottles. Stopped me right in my tracks on my morning walk with the kiddo.

This week, a woman filed a suit against Delta Airlines because, she claims, she was asked to leave a flight on Freedom Airlines (an oh-so ironically named Delta carrier) after she breastfed her daughter. A Freedom spokesperson says the woman was given a blanket and told to cover up.

I've flown on Delta recently, and do I remember any flight attendants offering a blanket to the woman seated a few rows behind me--the one with the D-cup implants that were being held back from the world by nothing more than a partially zipped size-2 Juicy Couture hoodie? I do not.

It should be said that the plaintiff is not some chip-on-her-shoulder "lactivist" out to prove a point about breast being best or about Americans' puritanical prudishness when it comes to boobs. She says she was trying to be discreet and also that she left the aircraft of her own free will. "It embarassed me," she said.

...you hear it all the time in parenting circles. Apparently, if your kid happens to take a super-long nap during the day, it doesn't necessarily mean he'll have trouble getting to sleep that night. Some experts say a day spent napping often leads to a night spent sleeping, and vice versa. The same is usually not true for adults.

Thing is, I think the sleep-begetting-sleep condition may be contagious. Last night, my son--who at 7 months has still never ever slept through the night--only woke once. So why was I so tired today? I even followed that other maxim of the baby-care books--sleep when the baby sleeps--and took an afternoon nap. It's not even 10 p.m. and I feel dangerously close to passing out on my keyboard. I couldn't even keep my eyes open to watch Grey's Anatomy. It's that bad.

Did my body get a taste of what it's been missing out on all these months and decide to go on strike until it gets more of that sweet, glorious sleep?

This is all to say that I am far too tired to write a proper blog post today. I promise I'll make it up to you tomorrow, Internets.

Nighty night!

Not that I think kids require special music recorded especially for their demographic--my baby boy responds just as well to a scatting Ella Fitzgerald, early Stevie Wonder, and The Ramones as he does to lullabies and nursery rhymes. But he also loves my singing (the fool!), and in an attempt to expand my repertoire beyond "Old McDonald" and "The Three Little Fishies," I went in search of some children's CDs with traditional tunes and also new, simple melodies that I could perform when the fussies came a-calling.

In my research, I stumbled upon a blog, Children's Music that Rocks, written by NY Public librarian Warren Truitt, the self-described "Children's Librarian in the greatest Children's Room of the greatest library system in the greatest city in the world." Truitt reviews albums created for children, as well as the occasional grown-up release that kids also might get into. It was on his blog that I read about Elizabeth Mitchell's new CD, You Are My Little Bird (see link at right).

I ended up buying the CD, and on the whole, I enjoy listening to it. I could do without the tracks on which Mitchell's little daughter contributes to the vocals (charming and cute, to be sure, but not the most soothing listening). But Mitchell's fresh, sweet voice and takes on more contemporary tunes (Gillian Welch's "Winter's Come and Gone", Neil Young's "Little Wing") are great. Have any of the tunes made it into my sing-aloud arsenal? Oh, yes: Mitchell reminded me that Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" is perhaps the perfect little ditty to sing to a cranky baby, and I have her to thank for my son's new favorite song, the Spanish lullaby "Los Pollitos (The Little Chicks)."

I don't often use this space for highly personal, emotional journaling. I feel like blogs too often cross that line that separates useful or soulful writing from plain exhibitionism, and I haven't yet figured out how to tread that divide gracefully so I try to stay away from the TMI genre altogether.

Anyway. This is all to say I write about my struggles with a bit of trepidation, and with the hope that someone out there will find my writing useful, or soulful.

Recently I began picking up some freelance writing and editing projects again. I have a home office and the intent was to work there part-time, when my baby napped and occasionally in the evenings. I'd only take one project at a time, and I'd only book as much work as I felt challenged me but didn't overwhelm me. I didn't have an immediate childcare plan in place because the cost would take a serious chunk out of the hourly rate that I earn, and I don't have such a need to work that I am willing to lose precious time with my son in order to merely break even financially, as so many women do. A friend has offered to let me share her babysitter a few hours a week; perhaps that will help and all this stressing will be for naught.

But, news flash: It's hard, y'all. Balancing motherhood with virtually anything else of substance is akin to walking a tightrope with a tray of full wineglasses in one hand and a capuchin monkey in the other. My best laid plans to limit my working hours have quickly begun to fall apart: clients run late, projects overlap, deadlines loom. When I'm being the best mother I can be, I feel like my work is slipping. When I'm on top of my paying projects, I feel like my baby is getting perhaps a little too much "independent play time."

Two simple, if drastic, solutions make themselves plain right away: Either quit working altogether or pay someone to care for my child for several hours a week. But neither of those choices is totally satisfying to me. I wish I could do it all. I wish there were at least 36 hours in a day, and that I only required 4 hours of sleep. I wish I had more support where I live, like family who lived nearby who could hang out with my son a few afternoons a week. I wish I could talk to my clients about the challenges that their demands present to my ability to be a good mother, without losing their respect. I wish I didn't have to worry about being judged no matter what I choose, being labeled by some as either a mediocre mother (but a successful woman!) or an unintelligent, ambitionless conformist (but a great mom!).

I know some of you out there have struggled with this same thing. And I know some of you manage to do it all, have established careers and good relationships with your kids and orderly houses and clean laundry and great wardrobes and creative hobbies and romantic moments galore with your husbands and babies who sleep through the night and never cry.

Tell me: How do you do it?

Harper and I spend a lot of time on the rocking armchair in his nursery, where I feed him most of the time if we're home. Next to the chair is a little side table, with a small CD player, my bottle of water, a burp rag or two, and whatever book I can read in 20-minute increments. (I don't always turn my focus away from my baby while feeding him, but even the most besotted mama needs a little break from gazing at her beloved from time to time.)

In my short breastfeeding career thus far, I've found a couple of books that are ideal for Reading While Feeding. The requirements: The book must be a size that can be held comfortably in one hand, the chapters or sections must be short so that the book can be put aside quickly, and the content must be engaging but not too heavy, since a squirmy four-month old can be quite distracting.

This morning in a fit of frustration over wearing the same old clothes over and over again for the last two months, I decided to go before the self-esteem firing squad once again and try on my favorite prepregnancy jeans.

That's when angels descended with full trumpet fanfare, singing, "We come from the heavens to praise the glory of the buttoned-up Sevens!" They may not fit exactly the way they did nine months ago, but by God, they fit. I'd like to thank my son for being such a good little feeder and, yes, even for being a fussy monkey unless I am bouncing him or walking him around in his sling or stroller. Way to keep Mama burning those calories, Little Bug!

No matter what else happens today, it's a good day.

Hallelujah, amen.