carl in casimirland.

Spring is wafting through our open windows, and I've been in such good spirits that, if I weren't breastfeeding, I'd accuse P of slipping some drugs into my drink because he was tired of my complaining. Pills would explain why I seem to be on slow motion and Casimir is on fast forward. Sometimes I feel like I've been in a coma for a few months and just woke up, because how the hell else could he have changed so fast? Or is it that I'm so tired and trudging along in slow-mo, that I don't quite recognize how much he is changing until one day in a brief fit of clarity and focus his 11 month-old face shines through the fog of exhaustion? I don't know.

A long walk to clear your head.
My mom came over again today so that P and I can do some work on our house. She always says, "go do something fun together" because I guess we're due for a "date" and she doesn't want us to end up divorced because we can't afford to run off for a week at the Hyatt in Puerto Rico sans the kid like my other siblings. We say "Yeah, we should" and then start cleaning and fertilizing and doing things like digging up the old laundry pole in our yard, finally. It's not every day with a baby that you have time to dig a hole deep enough to root out a rusty laundry pole with a four foot-deep cement base. So the romantic lunch of calamari and chianti has to wait. We've got soil to till and a basement shelving unit to erect.

It's times like these (pretty much every day) that I could go for a cleaning and yard service and a regular sitter. And extra pocket change, for the date. Then my mom takes these marathon long walks with him. I think our house must bore her, because she arrives, whips that coat on him and they are off for the day, not to return until they've had adventures and have got stories to tell. It's just them and the buggy, conquering the world all afternoon, apparently. (I often think that if, god forbid, some really bizarre thing should happen and they should by awfUl chance end up abducted or hurt or missing together, that the police would be suspicious that I didn't alert the authorities until they'd been gone for five hours. 'Yes, they went for a walk. A long one. No, I didn't worry until it had been four and a half hours.') It's never just any trip to the coffee shop. They go to the coffee shop in the next town, and sit next to some other children and she tells me how Casimir howls at the kids for attention, and then when he gets it he does every trick- so big, then clapping, then bouncing and then he mimics their noises. Everything. All the stuff that he won't do with me, when I ask. And then he gets called "Mr. Sociable" by all the onlookers watching the performace. I hear about all this when they finally arrive home and I've got a dustmop in my hand, and I'm wondering why our walks are a bit duller -save for the babyswings- and why two painfully shy people who didn't date until their twenties and who only met because one was on Paxil and rum and cokes, could possibly produce such a gregarious child, aka Mr. Sociable. But aren't all babies kind of like that? "Oh no! He is definitely one sociable kid!" mom says. "It's not just me, everyone says that. " I think she just wants him to take after her. He is pretty sociable though. I mean, for someone who can't really talk.

Mercy, Mr. Sociable.
Even my parent's neighbors- the people I both like and avoid at visits because I can't always handle the almost-out-of-control enthusiasm of an ex-kindergarten teacher and her equally enthuasiastic spouse- are Casimir's new favorite people. When I was young I was never really comfortable just standing there and absorbing the unbridled excitement of their greetings as they bellowed out some cutesied version of my name should we meet in front of our houses. "HEY THERE LINNBURGER LINNABIN!!" When I was in high school, I'd wonder if they would ever stop, or outgrow it, or simply become too old to muster up that level of enthusiasm. I never imagined that it would simply continue forever and just be trasnferred onto the next generation. Casimir heard one of their high pitched squeals and actually raised his arms so that the man shouting "Oh Mercy! Oh Bother! Oh Mercy Mr. Casimir!" could hold him instead of me. This isn't really my style, to talk that way to him, getting him all whipped up in an enthusiastic frenzy of Oh Mercys and Oh! Bothers! I'm affectionate with him and certainly capable of goofy, but I'm probably closer to Dieter from SNL on the emotional effusiveness bar graph. I like to think of it as my germanic sensitbilities. Maybe I should be more wacky and fun loving? I just can't be that fun-loving all the time. There's no way. We just tickle, and play, and cuddle. I thought that was good enough. But it's kind of a bummer when you're left to feel like someone not even related is seemingly more thrilling and gets him clapping more than you, the boring mom who just watches him 24 hours a day. Or does mom just get boring after awhile? Was that the appeal? Or was it that I don't have that level of bursting, infectious exictement in me, on most days? Either way, I found myself whooping up the "Mercys" the next day. It's kind of catchy, actually.

Wisconsin is very hot with the Amish right now.
I saw that in the paper this morning. For some reason, it made me laugh really hard. I'm not sure if it was the idea of Wisconsin being really hot (no offense to Wisconsin. I'm from Illinios, after all), or anything being "really hot" with the Amish (those fad followers), or just that I'm not allowed more than 3 hours of cumulative sleep, ever, and consequently have a skewed sense of humor. But it was funny.

No cumulative sleep.
Speaking of getting no cumulative sleep, I get no cumulative sleep. I really need to just go to bed at 6pm, because that's when he does his longest stretch. I just don't understand why he can go to sleep on his own now, but cannot stay asleep. Developmentally, that would make sense to be able to do both. Cosmically, that would really be the kind thing to do to me. I know I deserve it. I've been good.

I started to really want to know just how many times and when exactly he was getting up. Usually it's just a hazy fog of wake up calls, one after another. I think I thought I was going to chart the important information in a sleep journal or something, the way the experts recommend. First I set out to buy an inexpensive watch with a light. Do you know how hard those are to find? Like it's some rare technology or something. But I couldn't spend a lot, and I had had it with cheap athletic watches that break after two months, so I went into Swatch on a mission and came out with the only watch they had with a light on it. It says "SUPERDIVA" on the face of the watch in big red letters.
Anyway, superdiva couldn't make the light work in her slumber, so now I have the glaring red, illuminated numbers of one of those clock radios I have always hated, bathing our entire bedroom in a wash of red. Casimir loves to howl at it and uses my adams apple as a stepping stone to reach for it at 6am to try and grab the numbers. swell. And I still don't know how often he is getting up. This half-awake, half-asleep state I spend so much of my time in allows me to nurse him or help him find his pacifier/plug in the dark (or red light zone, now) without really having any cognizance of what time it is or how often this is happening.
And then the cherry on top of it all is pretending that he is sleeping really great at the pediatrician when they ask, because otherwise you get that look of what-are-you-doing-wrong concern, and they try to fix the problem for you with unsolicited suggestions. "How can we fix this?" the first ped asked. "Um. Hire a night nurse for me?"

The first stretch is usually pretty good though. I set him down after our little routine and the only utterance i hear is a little pipsqueak of protest if we are talking too loudly. I think it's his way of saying, "hey! quiet!" Then after he's asleep I tiptoe into his room to cover him up with a blankie. Sometimes I hear him stir when I do this, and then I end up standing there in his room, frozen in the darkness for minutes on end like the psychopath in a Tell Tale Heart, waiting for his breathing to become even. Only instead of dismembering him when I'm sure he's asleep, I gingerly drape his blankie over him.

Why didn't I do this before?
Yesterday, after the cutting board just, literally went flying off the drying rack and hammering onto the floor a mere six feet from Casimir (It's not enough to worry about chokables and ear infections, add paranormal activity to the mix!), after two rounds of put-the-clothes-in-the-drawer-then-take-them-out-then-put-them-back-again I got really bored and it was raining and he was fussy and with the urgency of the desperate I called the local Gymboree the way some people might reach out to a hotline. I can't wait to start their classes. But do they really have to have an answering message that sings some thematic Hello song? They know it's the parents calling, and not the kids, right? They know we don't normally communicate in rhymed, happy verse, right? Or did I miss some kind of mental programming in the maternity ward? Do other grown ups really hear that and think that that kind of jubilance on an answering machine sure is impressive and clearly reflects the level of dedication to children and knock-em-out kid fun! It just annoyed me. I guess that's what makes me a Superdiva.

My mom gave Casimir these adorable, big block letter fridge magnets. She got the letters of his name, and I think she might be in with the people at the vital records department because we've got C-A-S-M-I-R spelled out in red, blue and yellow on the fridge. I suppose I should just take a hint and change it legally. Wait, no. Screw that. If I change it, I'm going all Polish. It's Kazimierz or nothing. Rock on.

Anyway, another older baby waved to Caz from his stroller yesterday, and he just waved right back. It was like the baby salute. I think I heard a "Yo wassup?" but I may be imagining that. Everyday, mundane activity to you, riveting leap in social development to me. Then he just continued to wave as we walked, in what was the one-float Casimir parade. Maybe he's practicing up for his own special parade some day.

And WHY, why, WHY can't I just RELAX when I get out without him? I always have so much stuff I have to do or want to do when I finally escape, that it's like I can't even dawdle without someone in my head screaming OMIGOD HURRY!!! Like the "babysitter"/his grandma is just going to up and leave him sitting alone on the lawn, waiting for me if I don't arrive home punctually at the designated time. Not likely. It's not like the early weeks when I'd get out for a big fifteen minutes and actually, really miss him in the time I was gone, or be afraid that in my haze I'd forget I even had a baby and wander off to a movie. It's just this RUSH mentality that I've got too much to do, and too little time to do it. I need to get out more.

The part about poo.
I realized the other day, when I offered to change a diaper after the baby's regular morning poop (regularity is wasted on the diaper-clad) if P would make the coffee and toast me an english muffin, that I personally don't think changing diapers is such a big deal. And no, I don't always do the icky chores while he just plays with the baby. It's not because I find every aspect of babycare fulfilling or think his poo smells sweet, although I do find his butt adorable. But it's just that it's kind of the standard example of what sucks about babycare, and frankly, I think there are many other mundane tasks that annoy or disgust me more. Like putting the queen-sized duvet on the comforter, for instance (I could never be a hotel maid in Europe). For real annoyance, try changing the crib sheet when the sheets are made nowadays to barely fit so that the baby can't possibly suffocate on a wrinkle of loose fabric. Scrubbing hardened whatever food it is off the highchair is grosser. Trying to put my child to sleep for the first 9 months of his life was a far, far bigger blip on the scale of no fun. I could go on. But anyway, yeah. Diapers. Just don't ick me out, at least not from my own progeny. Yet. Maybe there's a time limit after which point in time it will make me nuts. Like you hit diaper #1000 on the counter and you just throw it to the ground and have had it with the smell of A&D laced poo and scream. I suppose I'll find that out. But we've already hit the phase everyone warned us about, when the baby eats mostly solid food, and so far, I'm still good to go. Bring it on, baby. I can handle it.
*edited to add, duh. A little mentail calculating made me realize that I probably hit 1000 diapers loooong ago. Sorry, environment.

The part where I get defensive and annoyed.
Anyway, I was trying to resist posting each and every mental turn my brain takes in here, because I've mentioned that other journal, plus the regular paper journals, but then a rant came over me, and what do you know here I am again, poised in front of the confuser. I've been reading the Mommy Myth, which anyone who bothers reading this has probably heard of. In short, I agree with pretty much everything. I mean, obviously. Who can't get on board with a book that rails into the myth of motherhood that our society holds up? It affects so many aspects of how we mother. I mean, my god- I worry about how to bring groceries into the house with him. Should I leave Caz in the car while I walk backwards toward the door with the groceries, or try to balance both big baby and multiple bags of groceries as I walk to the door, or plop him in the pack and play by the front door while I get the groceries from the car? It's not that I seriously think the house will catch on fire while I'm ten feet away fishing bags of potatoes out of the car trunk or that the car will blow while I'm throwing the bag of eggs hurriedly through the front door, backwards, with an eye on the car. (Thank god we don't live in the 3rd-floor apartment anymore.) I'm mostly worried that some neighbor I haven't even met will by chance view this whole procedure and think that it's bad that I leave him in the car, or in the house, or risk carrying him while weighed down by bags. Seriously. That's the kind of shit that runs through my head. It's bad enough that I fear that something will happen to him about 45 times a day. I have to fear all the judgment, too. It's outrageous, but there is reason that my worry has reached that insane level. So I am definitely in the "Right on!" camp while reading 98% of the book as it details the level of imposible perfection expected of mothers and how they are relentlessly judged. But.

But it really bugs me when that one trip up in feminism creeps in. Maybe I'm imagining it, or I'm being oversensitive. I know others liked the book. But it's very easy, when discussing sexism, to end up criticizing women themselves, which is kind of counterintuitive. Women are certainly not above criticism, but so often it is too easy to criticize women for sexist behavior instead of just exposing all the forces that go into molding, encouraging, and rewarding that behavior. Am I being too vague? Well, I was getting really cranky while reading it last night, because I sometimes feel like the authors end up criticizing the moms supposedly aspiring to the myths as much as they bash the myths themselves. And I think, like the media hawking these myths, that they underestimate most moms. Yeah, we're still eyeing that bird of perfection in the sky, like we are with almost every aspect of womanhood, and we struggle, but we also know it's fucking stupid. I will probably not defend the celebrity moms they go nuts at, (although Reese Witherspoon? hello, I don't ever see her treating her child as an accessory on a cover page.) But certain statements bring out the defensiveness in me. Statements like this:

[So and So] failed to conform to the new norm of "savvy" motherhood in the media, especially as exemplified by the celebrity mom, of the educated, authoritative, highly organized woman who read every childcare book published, fed her kids tofu and "all natural" Cheerios, carefully calibrated the balance between emotion and intellect, and juggled work and family."

Well, okay, I don't think I carefully calibrate anything. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm not the yuppie image of perfection that they are referring to. But I'm still thinking, fuck-an-A! I feed him tofu, read stacks of childcare books, and store his Oaties in neatly labeled transparent containers from the Container Store. I realize this is just humor and sarcasm on their part, but it comes through a few too many times at the expense of tofu-feeding moms everywhere. And I love dripping sarcasm, but not when it's dripping right onto my head. It's not an a-ha! moment. It's just an annoying moment, and it feels like they end up making fun of some moms trying to do good more than the myth. Not helpful. So can I even admit that I speak German to him sometimes, in an effort to round out his brain, and keep a typed up list taped to a cabinet door detailing foods he has tried with no adverse allergic reaction? Or would that make me a mommy myth moron? Would I be cooler if I shunned my predilection for organizing everything, including his clothes, and my interest in reading and learning about anything I am involved in? Are any efforts at trying to be a good mom up for ridicule? Is that feminism or sexism, because I'm having trouble keeping track here. It brings back memories of feminist message boards where you can't admit that you not only wear make up, but have got something sticky called "Lust" on your lips as you type about feminism from work.
You know, I already don't get it right in many departments (like patience, just as a hypothetical), but I'm not going to make fun of perfectly patient moms, because I know they're out there. So, am I just trying to be that saaavvy mom? Well, yeah. I am. Isn't everybody trying to be a mom who has her shit together, to some extent? You pick and choose your good mom/bad mom activities.
And you get the impression that they are just barely holding back from snarling invectives at SAHMs and attachment parenting folk. Attachment parenting, like anything, can be taken to an extreme and that drives me nuts, too. But some of it actually makes sense, because it arose to counter some of the previous parenting advice, that is just as much of a fad. I "wear" my baby a lot of the time in that sling they make fun of, and I'm not trying to compete with the neighborhood moms, I'm just trying to free up my hands. Nor am I, as a SAHM (Well, a wahm actually) viewing my staying at home interval of time as a professional career.

I think the authors are right on with many of their ideas. I'm glad they published the book. And maybe I'm reading into it too much because I've seen attitudes like this crop up in other aspects of feminism. But I think they underestimate moms in much the same way the media does. I'm aware of guilt and where it comes from (and I even read those ridiculous celebrity mom profiles). In fact, I'm starting to think that more women are. I suppose there are moms out there who really are trying to emulate the existence conveyed in the Downy commercials and on 7th Heaven, and they probably are card-carrying members of the Independent Women's Forum. But in my experience, women are smarter than that. They're already afraid of being their mothers, and yet none of them is even close- at least in the way they fear it- because it's not thirty years ago. They're all already trying to be a hip mama, trying to think independently and not turn into a stereotype. And they're not going to, because it is a stereotype. They might discover mashed sweet potatoes on their jeans when they finally get out, or be more tired, or get the damn minivan, but they're still real people with other non-diaper related dimensions to them. And I wish that this book would actually allow them that, because they're supposed to be fighting for that. And it seems like they end up just making fun of us along the way. But that's me. What do I know, I neatly stack the jars of back up baby food on a three-tiered display from the Container Store.

In conclusion.
Thank god my mom is coming over today. I need to be airlifted out of cazland for awhile.

P keeps kidding about how he can't decide if he's going to have the fat cat or the pudgy baby for Easter dinner. It was sort of funny, the first 20 times. My mom used to say things like this. I married my mom. The thing is, I remember the way my cat- the cat we spoiled with love for years- once ran terrified into the bedroom when P suddenly cast an eye at the cat and licked his lips while he was sharpening the knives for cutting veggies. I thought it was funny. The cat obviously got the message, but not the joke. He ran like hell and I found him cowering under the bed, where he ran any time thereafter when the sound of knives being sharpened rang throughout the apartment. That must be frightening, to think that after so many years of trusted companionship it comes to that: your parents eating you.

I mean our sense of humor is not really that cruel. It's just that kind of lovey dovey "I love you so much I could eat you up!" kind of talk. (Except maybe the knife action in front of the cat was over the line. Not my doing.) But I know my little niece got really freaked when one boring, predictable adult after another commented that they were going to eat her up when she went as an M & M for Halloween. So I would hate for Casimir to think we are actually going to eat him right up, if he does understand. And I have no idea what he can understand, quite frankly. It's like having a little exchange student stay with you, and you're the stupid American who doesn't know his language at all, but you really aren't quite sure how much he gets of yours, either. Sometimes you think he really has no idea and sometimes you think, oh yeah, he gets it all, and is just laughing on the inside at your attempts to communicate.

My noncrunchy baby.
While I'm on the devouring animals topic- I'm raising a carnivorous human and am not always so comfortable with that fact. The two things that Caz has tried that made his face light up the most were pineapple and chicken. He can eat yogurt or cottage cheese by the gallon, but nothing made him smile more than some nice fresh (as in just cooked, not just killed and plucked) chicken. This is a slightly tender (pun) topic for me, because while I've never really marched under the vegetarian label, I pretty much acted the part for years. I just could never completely commit, or rather did not want to until I knew I could give it up, without cheating, for the rest of my life (I'm like that). But things kept getting in the way. I went to college. I ate no meat. I went to Germany. Meat was in everything but beer. I ate meat. I'd see the poor, big, headless piggies dangling from hooks in the butcher shop next to my apartment as I merrily left for class, but I'd still end up eating some bockwurst. Back in Vermont/crunchy veggie land. No meat. Then to Austria. Meat in everything but coffee. I ate meat. Back home. No meat. Meet man. Man eats meat. I eat meat. You see the pattern? And I have no plans to go back to Vermont or live alone, and I've practically forgotton that I was once even attempting to go veggie- that's what taking my vegetarian commitment slow did for me. So now, I try to consume it minimally. Is there even sense in that? It makes me feel better, anyway.

And this is why I offer up some yummy yummy chicken to a very eager baby whose mouth is agape with quite a bit of hesitation. His dad will do it anyway. Maybe if it's just "occasionally" and we stay away from the hot dogs, it'll not be so evil. That's what I tell myself. I wonder how many babies out there are vegetarian these days. Meat is not a "super baby food" according to the baby food book by that title. According to Caz, it was pretty super. What if he becomes one of those guys who waxes on about throwing a steak on a grill and how great that is, with the baseball cap and whole frat attitude. But I'm just as bad, really, in my own way. I remember too well how when I was little, my mom would make steak tar tar (Mmmmm I know, now you all have a taste for that) and I would dig into it with gusto usually only reserved for twinkies. Once I just swiped the bowl and sat in front of Fantasy Island with it (maybe we were out of chips). At camp on our canoe trips, my friends just gave me their summer sausage rations. "It seems like you are way more into it than me, anyway" my friend Melissa said. Thanks. Is that even a kind gesture? I'm not sure. So anyway. I know if I give him some now, he's probably going to be as big of a meat head as I was when I was eating everyone's summer sausage rations in the boundary waters. He's not getting any steak tar tar, though. I'll at least get something right.

This is really trivial, unlike all my other points of striking social relevance, but when I checked into the doctor's office yesterday and said my name to the receptionist, a woman waiting with her little girl said, "Oh, do you spell that with an e?"
Why yes! As a matter of fact, I do! It turns out, so does her oldest daughter. It amused me because I was blathering on about this topic in my blog before, and I thought that it was just me who, in an attempt to assert originality, adamently marked the difference between those of us who spell our boring, rhymes-with-pin name with that distinguishable e. And like me, she clearly got really excited when she found another one.
"And everyone mispells it!" she lamented, obviously aware that we spell it the correct way. Lately I seem to be awash in run-ins with other with-an-Es out there, but when I was little I felt alone enough that I finally just started leaving it out when I had to write my name. I thought dropping it would make me seem more grown up.

Anyway, after chatting, the younger daughter who was with her introduced herself proudly to me as Margo(t), and gave me the cutest little knowing expression when the nurse called her in and said "Mar- got?" The trouble with names I've seen. I hate to think what I've unleashed on Casimir, considering his own family can't spell his name and the birth certificate took five months to correct (although I guess Casmir would be more phonetically logical, but then I would be Lin if phonetic were the way to go. Why break with unnecessary vowel tradition?)

Tiny bubbles.
Since Caz hasn't really taken to cuddling with and consequently drooling on any single stuffed toy lately, leading me to wash the stuffed friends individually, I decided it was time to just wash the whole army. I went nuts, even flagrantly ignoring those tags that clearly had an X over the little washing machine diagram. Every plastic toy bobbed up and down in a sudsy sink, and every snowman, teddy, green frog, and cloth book swirled around in the washer over a span of several loads. I wish we had one of those front loading washers with the clear glass door so I could have seen snowman's face as he swirled around, immersed in suds. Since he always looks kind of happy, I think it would have been funny to see him smiling in the washer-- like he was having a really good time in there or something. I'm fairly neurotic, so this form of spring cleaning gave me a bigger buzz than I get when cleaning out the closet. Didn't last though, because five more minutes of existing just created more dishes and stuff to pick up.

Hammy.
Casimir keeps doing this spastic look that at first worried me and made me think it was a seizure or that he was going to need medication by age five for sure, but I think it just means that he is, like many children, a ham. If you can recall that annoying expression of Joey Lawrence in his Gimme A Break days, (Or was I the only Nell Harper fan?) when he was little, before he got even more annoying on Blossom, then you can probably picture it. He sticks his hands up, and gives this kind of half smile, half look of being surprised, mixed in with a little spastic shaking, and that's it. Sometimes he clenches his teeth and acts all frenzied- hence the worry- but usually it's more of a cheesy performance. And then one day I was showing it to P (kind of making fun of it actually, in a loving way though) and Casimir started immitating me right back, as I immitated him. And on it went. It's the funniest face and makes him look not just crazy (and adorable), but much older. And then of course when people come over I start the Joey Lawrence charade in an attempt to make Casimir do it for them, and he doesn't, and I'm left looking exceedingly excitable and dramatic.

hhmm. I celebrated St. Patrick's day by looking up the word leperchaun. Turns out, it's leprechaun. i spelled it wrong. whoopsie.

Grey, it's the new black.
My little red jujubee- as I've referred to him due to my predilection for eschewing blue and putting him in all red all the time- has pretty much turned into a grey and light blue jujubee (do they make them in grey and blue?) on account of him getting bigger, my sister sending a care package, and the increasing difficulty of finding any affordable, bigger-sized clothes without the standard boy-blue on it. Another little boy in blue, just what the world needs. It's just clothing, but I guess I envisioned my little boy being the purple and orange-clad one, waving his little hand from the sea of blue and pink as he marched off to pre-K. Dreams. I forgot I wouldn't really have complete control by then, anyway. A certain power struggle comes to mind, involving me and my mom and my outfit on picture day in Kindergarten. Needless to say, the dress remained on the floor and I'm smiling in my mustard yellow t-shirt in the class photo. I was winning already at the tender age of 6. I imagine he will too, whether it's blue or pink or nothing, that he wants to wear.

Sticky.
Anyway, I went to the midwife and the hospital the other day to find out if I'm going to menstruate eternally, and it was so emotional being there alone. I was sitting in the waiting room amidst the stacks of pregnancy mags with all the other pregnant women, almost jealous. But I don't really want to be pregnant again. I just missed when I was pregnant with Casimir, and when he was super little. I mean, it's fun now, and I can't wait until he's walking and talking and until he's one and two and three and so on(Is three supposed to be the terrible part? Or two? skip that part then). And enough people told me that I better appreciate the first few weeks/months yadda dadda because they change so fast and all that, that I finally took the cliche to heart and really attempted to drink up each moment, as if you can somehow appreciate it more if you concentrate really hard. But that doesn't work, because it still passes and you still miss it.
And then entering the hospital all I could do was remember how I waddled in there really pregnant and was wheeled out with a little baby feeling really happy but crying like a (pun!) baby. I'm a sap. I even missed our old apartment as I drove past, which is really saying something about rose colored glasses, because the whole building really looked like it had seen better days (like probably twenty years ago). I thought I stifled the sentimentalist in me, but she still badgers me with annoying "remember when??"s relentlessly when I'm feeling vulnerable. Anyway, yeah. Sap.

Casimir is 11 months old now. Hooray! I never thought I'd make it. And I even know what to do. When I was pregnant, I'd think about some future date and be like, "Baby will be 5 months old then. Shit. How do you take care of a five month old? What do you feed them? Can they cut their own steak then?" I was so busy reading about birth, I forgot there would be a baby at the end of the birth process. I guess day by day, and month by month, I figured out all the big secrets. I used to be really clueless though. I used to think that 11 month-old babies were almost big kids. I think I even would have thought that they were capable of stringing (real) sentences together and running away from you at that age. In actuality, he's just working on the cruising and the Mama and Dada and Baba (whoever that last person is) and to me is still a tiny little baby. I have to actually see week-old babies to realize how big he's become. I'm guessing I'm going to still think that when he's 25.
Sap. Right off a tree.

Clearly the fact-checking department needs an upbraiding, because I think I made a mistake. If I was watching Diane Sawyer interview those women about working and motherhood yesterday, it must have been on The Early Show, or whatever it's called on ABC, and not The Today Show, on NBC. I don't really have any allegiance to one show- I occasionally just flip back and forth and try my best to avoid Charlie Gibson while feeding Casimir his banana and rice cereal, so I often don't know which one I'm watching. But I think it must have been The Early Show. So glad I cleared that up. The corrections were just flying in.

Actually, I realized this last night when I was awoken for the 43rd time by a certain gassy fusser and couldn't get back to sleep. I'm really exceptionally super-duper tired, and a little mad at someone who is two and-a-half feet tall. Sometimes it's hard not to feel bad about being annoyed with someone who can't even articulate a good defense yet, much less spoon his own cereal. And I even went to bed early, and it didn't seem to help. In fact, last night I actually wanted to go to bed early. Usually I'm so busy staying up, having a ball with my nonbaby time (i.e. "Me time" according to the parenting magazine vernacular), that I stay up too late and bring all the exhaustion on myself. But last night Casimir migrated from his crib to our bed at an earlier hour (not really by himself, we help move him), and even though P was with him (for those anti-co-sleepers raising eyebrows at the thought of a baby rolling out of a giant bed) I really wanted nothing more than to just cuddle up in bed with the fussbuster. It was almost the best part of the day, when I finally did. I remember in the glory days of high school, when I sometimes got sick of the school- practice- ten hours of homework grind, I'd just look forward to climbing into bed finally and think that was the only good part of the day. That probably wasn't too healthy. But this was. It was the greatest, and had warm and fuzzy written all over it.

Won't you be my neighbor.
I found a little leperchaun face down on our yard yesterday. To be clear, it's not a real one, but a school project, made of some kind of styrofoam. It's pretty cute, but it has the name of my neighbors on it.
Enter another neighbor quandary for me.
Did their children make it for us, and put it on our door, whereby it just blew onto the lawn? This is likely since they made us a welcome picture when we first moved in. Or, did they make it for themselves and it just blew onto our lawn? This seems likely because it has their last name on it in big letters, and unlikely because they live across the street- a long way for a leperchaun to blow. So do I hang it on our door by it's little red hook, and flaunt what is quite possibly their stolen leperchaun? Or put it back on their door, and thanklessly give back a nice little green gift? These are actually the kind of things that trouble me. I went through the whole process already when we first moved in and I found the "Welcome To The Neighborhood" artwork in our mailbox. I wasn't sure then which gaggle of kids across the street made it, and being too shy to go over and actually ask (what if I got the wrong house first?), I just put it on our fridge and calluosly never thanked them until about three months later when they showed up at our door with Christmas cookies. I am a horrible neighbor. I did actually go over yesterday and ask one of the boys playing basketball in his driveway. He was sweet, but I gathered from his all-over-the-place, seven-year-old response that he basically had never seen that leperchaun in his life. I can't bring myself to knock on the door to just ask about the leperchaun, even though I can actually manage to wave and say hello when we are both out and about enjoying the forty degree weather. So I don't know. He's lying on our dining room table at the moment. And isn't he supposed to bring me luck or gold or something? I'm waiting.

I still really want that bag. If only I didn't just have to pay the plumber the equivalent of three Casimir bags.

Caz and I were watching a bit of the Today show this morning, and when they mentioned a segment on how more mothers are "leavng the boardroom" to stay home, I knew I had to see that. It's always suspicious when they're going to talk about "trends" of women doing anything. I get so tired of the media announcing that feminism is dead, ALL mothers are pining to stay home, it's 1955 again, and isn't this what feminism and choices are all about? Like it's that simple. Anyway, in the end, I don't think that was quite their point. Frankly it's hard to be sure what exactly the true point was, because all the interviewees had their squirming babies with them. I can't even carry on a conversation with a friend in my own home while holding my own child, so distracted do I get by the Baaa Baadada DaDA MMmm TThh Baa, I can't imagine going on television to talk about important things with him in my lap. Not that I'll be on television any decade soon.
But anyway, I think I did catch the sense of a few points they were making, and I liked them. They acknowledged the class privilege of even having the option to stay home, for starters. They mentioned that more and more moms who stayed home for a period of time later look to go back (of course they're welcomed with open arms), and that some would probably continue to work if they had access to part-time work and on-site daycare (shocker). Also, it was said that "longer maternity leave would be nice." Kind of the understatements of the year, but statements I could get behind, nonetheless. And on the Today show! How super. Usually I don't hear or read anything positive about parents needing maternity leave, part-time work, and on-site daycare unless I've got my nose buried in Mothering Magazine. There's about fourteen blog rants and entries in that topic, but I've got to get a shower and a phone call in before he wakes, so I can't get too worked up. I did really like that it wasn't the typical retro, "Let's again convince them that home is where all mothers want to be until their children enter graduate school, cuz otherwise we're screwed" schtick. I think i've explained/ranted that I want SAHMers to get more respect. So sue me if I don't think encouraging moms and moms only to all stay home in lieu of actually offering them work/family balancing options doesn't count as that. The fact that this segment didn't sound like that was probably because they actually had working or formerly working mothers speaking in stead of some talking head from the Heritage Foundation.

It was also fun to watch because there was one woman interviewed from Chicago. They didn't exactly explain who she was (or I missed it), and her name didn't show up on google, but I liked what she said, or tried to say in between reigning in her cute and kinda fussing older baby. I didn't recognize her at first, but I recognized the baby immediately. He was none other than one of Casimir's fellow Yanke Doodle Dandy pool bobbers, from his swim class. Then I recognized the mama. I'll have to accost her at the next class and bring up that I saw her on Today, which will probably only be annoying to her, but that's OK. I pointed him out to Casimir and got to casually pretend that we regularly run in circles with people who appear on national television. And all before the 9am nap. I wonder what fun and exictement awaits us before lunch.

I really want this bag with Casimir's picture on it. It's a good thing I can't really afford to throw $100 at a trendy bag right now, because otherwise I know I would do it. He has so many cute pictures, you see. I could get multiple bags.
I'm embarassed now.

I'm not so sure how I feel about that counter staring at me from the middle of the screen hollering out that I've had "1 visitor" thus far. Okay, I just set it all up four mintues ago, I mean what was I expecting. But still, I might go back to sitemeter and doctor it up so it looks like I've had 345,384 so far. I might have had that many visitors, up until now. I mean, maybe.
That's OK, I didn't initially want anyone to read it. I like to keep to myself. But then if someone does read it, they'll feel bad for me, and won't believe me when I say I don't mind-- kind of like when I didn't get asked to go to the prom, and didn't want to go, but wanted to so people could stop feeling bad for me.
Couldn't the damn counter at least be aligned with something though? The placement is bothering me.

Shark.
We had our baby and parent "swim" class today. We joked about showing up in a string bikini and a speedo, just because I don't know why, but we showed up in the boring Land's End stuff. As a mom, I donned the prerequisite shorts and full tank top. Just so I look the part. (Actually, it's just my official "Y" suit.) It was very fun, and Caz was looking pretty rad in his shark swim trunks. And it was a darn good thing I didn't assume that the "family" locker room was just moms and kids, the way it was at our former YMCA, because this one was co ed. I'm glad I discovered that before I began changing. It's hard not to shake that feeling that something is wrong though, when you are in a locker room and there are men there, and you are a woman, even when everyone was dressed. It brought back odd memories of when my fellow American friend Anne and I were hitting some water spa in Austria and were very puzzled to see men in our locker room, and to see everyone forgetting to put their swimsuit on before leaving the locker room. Needless to say, we were the only fools in the sauna in our swimsuits. Sorry, this American puritan doesn't shed a lifetime of body shame so easily. I hadn't even seen Anne, who I'd known since preschool, naked. No strange Austrians were going to see me naked. But back to the Y-- you could tell the nonAmerican or two in the locker room by the way they weren't afraid to shimmy out of their suit and into their nice dry underwear under their towel. I was just waiting for him to just whip it off and do it their way. May as well.

The instructor offered up a hesitant, "Okay this is my first class!" and then proceeded to rip effortlessly into about 20 kid's songs complete with accompanying water activity. I think she lied. At first I felt too uncool singing "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandeeee.." as Caz and I bobbed up and down on top of our styrofoam pool noodle, and I wasn't exactly having fun with my arms nearly frozen, afraid I would somehow drop my child into the 3-feet depth of the pool. But after a while, stuff like "the mighty duke of york..had ten thousand men" (there's that outdated British stuff again) kind of loosens you up. When P had his turn, I sat on the side of the pool with what I'm sure was a really cheesy smile of adoration plastered on my face, watching the little shark boy being dipped in and out of the water to the tune of hokey pokey. He hadn't been in a body of water larger than the tub can hold since we dipped him in a cold Minnesota lake at four months old. He loved it so much that it was worth the soaking wet butt I had to come home with. Maybe I'll try the towel shimmy next time; I bet if I practice, I can do it.

Sleeping is for babies.
I really need to write some (semi) positive things, for myself and for the blog image. No one wants to claim to write a baby blog that is about plague, basement floods, and death. So anyway, one thing that is really the opposite of all that is the cute proclivity Casimir is developing to answer my "NoNo"s with a sly, subversive smile. If I say "nono" to pulling up the stopper in the tub so that the washcloth won't go swishing down the drain, plugging it right up like last time, he looks at me with a cute smile as his hand hovers threateningly over the stopper, just before he does it. I guess he understands no. I should probably stop smiling when he does this, or I think I'm going to really regret it. I also just love it when he manages to motor away from me and as I catch up into the next room, he's sitting there on his haunches, grinning at me like "nyanya haha. Don't move so fast there, do you?"

So anyway, I keep reading and hearing that babies Casimir's age hate to sleep so much because the world is getting so exciting to them and there is just so much to do. Often when I was rocking him to sleep and I'd see him open and close and then open his eyes again I'd imagine him thinking, "Shit! I was almost out..must.stay.awake.must.stay...." It's good to have someone around you who is so excited about life that they don't want to sleep. And it's funny, because I don't want to sleep anymore either. It used to be one of my hobbies, something I really looked forward to. If only I hadn't always put off my homework or studying or, as an adult working at home, livelyhood, all day, I would have gone to bed by 9pm each evening. Now, I have to be chastized by P that I should get some sleep. And I know I need sleep to be a good parent and a functioning, noncrabby adult. But it's not quite because I find the world so exciting. It's mostly because I get so excited at the prospect of several hours to myself, I just nearly wet myself and can't decide what exciting activity I will do first: read intelligent book, or look at US magazine, exercise, sit in front of Law & Order or the internet.. the prospects are exciting, I must say. Who would want to sleep?

It's not that I don't like taking care of him during the day, but I just start to hunger for your own time, after awhile. I mean, as much as I realized that someone was taking care of certain children I knew all day, I don't think I quite realized when I saw a mom walking her baby that she didn't just go home and fold him up with the stroller. She spent every waking moment bathing, feeding, cleaning, playing, and babbling with that little person. Every minute. So yeah, I get a little excited in the evening and since I'm a grown up you can't make me go to bed. I've got things to do.

Videos are tools for relaxing.
Speaking of breaks, we watched our Baby Einstein videos today. There is still always that modicum of guilt simmering in my brain when I plop him in front of the television, but Baby Einstein rocks. Cartoons don't really do it for him yet, so it's just really nice to have a few videos that actually interest him. And even though it was apparently bought out by Disney (I assume so by the ubiquitous Disney logo that suddenly appeared when I bought a fourth video) I think it is so great that the company was founded by a mom. It does crack me up though, how at the end they discuss the video in a playroom with little kids and really stress the fact that the video is a "tool" to use to "interact" with your child. I guess they don't want to be accused of making a product that encourages people to start plopping their kids in front of a screen from day one. Or if you do, they don't want to be blamed. But you know, I interact all day with him. His "Einstein" video is my break from interacting. I sit back on the couch and stare at the bubbles or puppets on the screen, usually silent, if I'm not flipping through a vacuous magazine. Maybe I occasionally spurt out "wow! train!" but mostly I'm just silent. I babble endlessly enough at him about everything, so I figure we both need a break from me. Still though, when we watch the end of the video (It's his favorite part, so I just leave it on and have consequently got each word memorized) I have to laugh at the disclaimers. "We point to the screen together and I can teach him what things are!" Or, I vegetate for all of fifteen minutes in my day, and watch him bounce to the music. Yeah, more like that.

Thing that made me happy, in a snarky way.
I went into work the other day. And while I was working diligently at a library common table, I must say I was quite pleased to overhear some people discuss with great earnestness some reruns of Friends, (You know that one, where someone's girlfriend is really pretty but has the really messy apartment, that one?) as if the characters are real life individuals who are just the wackiest, funnest folk to know. It made my own lunch conversation later, which consisted of clapping and "EeeeeEEEEeeeeEE" seem very intellectual.

Realization of the Year.
All that babysitting I did my first summer after college for families of young toddlers and babies- well I suddenly realize why so many of those families had almost no furniture to speak of, no books, no shit lying about. It took me awhile but I've figured it out. And here I thought it was because it was Boulder and they were hippies and anti-material things. It's BABYPROOFING! tada! No one told me.

I suppose I should let the baby have cake. And eat it too.
P created a shitstorm this morning by sauntering into the dining area with his coffee and plate of chocolate cake (breakfast of champions) when Casimir was present. Really not the intelligent thing to do, because he insists on trying everything we eat and there is just no tricking him. Taking a bite of pizza and then pretending you are eating pureed peas does not work any better than pretending to change the TV channel with a rattle to see if he'll give up his persistent demands for the actual remote. I am much more laid back now in letting him sample things, but you don't have to go through sleep difficulties with an infant to realize that coffee isn't a good idea. Nor is cake. I am reduced to hurriedly eating dolmadas and chocolate in hiding as I peer at him around the corner. I mean it is kind of rude to eat cake when someone's got multi-grain rice cereal to look forward to, I admit, but I don't always want to drink my pear or subsist on yogurt and tofu, so I just try and do it behind his back-- which is really difficult to do when you're not supposed to take your eyes off someone.
This kid will eat anything I think, but he is no longer the hippy tofu freak he was and has turned into a dairy queen. I didn't think I'd be buying cheese and yogurt (or anything) in bulk when he was this old. I didn't think I'd be rushing to the store within two days to get more of something because he ate it all until he was at least be as big as the growing young boys (never girls) you see chowing down on tv food commercials.

Back to the morose topics:
So I learned something about that that fun little children's rhyme that doesn't appear to make sense:
Ring around the Rosie, pocket full of posies
Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!
Supposedly this dates back to the 14th century when the fun bubonic plague ripped through Europe, and the first line refers to the sores that developed on bubonic plague victims, and the last bit to the tragically everpresent death milling about in everyone's lives. Isn't that lovely? I'm assuming it's true, though it didn't fascinate me enough to continue researching to confirm it. Now I guess this is really not surprising, considering that most nursery rhymes are so old they're still talking about villages and plows and lords and ladies and such, and we all know about the brothers' Grimm and how the American versions of their stories had to edit out the endings where people got their eyes pecked out by birds or whatever. Old time fairy tales weren't even intended for children, I learned from an old professor of mine who is like the folklorist/proverb expert of the universe. That is also not surprising, considering how hansel and gretel were going to be put in an oven and so forth. But the Ring around the rosie one was still a surprise to me. It didn't make sense, but it still sounded sweet. Nothing about rings and rosies really evoked gaping open sores of the plague-ridden to me. I really wish we could just trash the old nursery rhymes anyway. I was flipping through one giant nursery rhyme anthology we were given, and while it was updated slightly and illustrates old mother hubbard on a scooter and describes girls as being made of puppydog tails (and boys of spice and everything nice) it still is just annoying and doesn't rhyme half the time, and when it does is about the queen of England and tea or describes peter the pumpkin eater putting his wife in a pumpkin shell where he kept her very well. Surely, after hundreds of years, we can do better.

That day that I thought was so bad- well, it got worse. I knew I would have my ass kicked for complaining about a flooded basement and menstruation. I had that vague mental tugging when I was whining about the trivial that was either just a nod to common sense that my life is not so darn hard, or the faint tug of intuition (likely the former but it's fun to pretend the latter sometimes) that three inches of water in a basement was not the worst.

But this is supposed to be about babies and pacifiers, so I'll stick to the pleasant, pampers related topics.

Like miscarriage. My doctor gave me her "theory" that my endless menstruation problem (this isn't world wide web material, is it?) could perhaps be an early miscarriage. Well she doesn't know, and I'm not really convinced. I will never know, just like I will never know if the miscarriage I had before was really meant to be or caused by the guy inappropriately named Jesus plowing into our car a few weeks before Christmas. That was hard. Early miscarraiges don't quite seem the same, though. There is a big difference between possibly one week and most definitely 8.5 weeks. Apparently these really early ones are as common as mud, and most of the time one does not even notice until they've had a serious one and actually learn how common they are. (Isn't it funny how pro-life people don't mourn the unborn who were miscarried? Just a thought.) I'm not sure I would even be so sad, if it were true. Before I was sadder than sad, but this would be different I think. I don't really have that womanly intuition, but I'm not so sure it's even true. It could just be menstrual freakiness. At any rate, I certainly hope that when I die, that I find out the answer to all these random, unanswered questions in my life. Because I'm going to be really pissed if die and don't even get to find out.

I think that experience mostly upset me because the idea of becoming pregnant again is a jolting one. I could handle it and would be happy, but it would be such an entirely different experience. There would be no prenatal yoga, resting, sleeping in, preparing elaborate, folic acid soaked meals, nor endless reading about birth and labor visualization (Imagine a flower opening everybody! for 12 hours!). Sometimes I'm not entirely sure I even want to have another child for many reasons, but I feel like I will anyway. That sounds bad. Part of me would like to, part would not. Normally I would suggest veering away from 18 years of commitment if one is feeling wishy washy, but I know I will (try) probably go for a second helping and am feeling good about that, despite certain doubts in my ability to field two persistent little persons while the cat meows and the phone rings. Perhaps I'm confusing destiny with patriarchal plans and the ordinary, but I kind of always knew I'd take a couple steps off the path and then walk right back on toward marriage, a child, then children, before I hit the death part, as if the blueprint were all drawn up already. Just a little feeling I always had. But the idea of that actually becoming a reality scared me a little at first. I mean, what would I call the blog? Violetville? Henrytown? MamaGoesCrazy.com?

Protect your head.
To segue from superstious to weird, I saw the Bike Helmut Guy again today. This is a local guy in my old neighborhood who wanders about warning about bike helmut safety. I wrote that I felt guilty the way I avoided him in the past. I mean, his lecture is kind of boring, but as if I'm so fancy and important that I dont have two minutes? I see him all the time, as I also mentioned before (for those who don't hang on every post that goes up here and keep track), and today it was in the very same spot as the last time, in front of the library- I mean, on the same sidewalk square that I saw him before, each of us crossing paths as before- I was heading in and he heading out.
"Summer's here!" he said again as the flurries floated around us. That's his line.
I gave him a big smile this time, determined to prove that I'm the compassionate person I like to think I am. I learned again all about his story, but this time with a few added details. I heard the whole spiel about how he was on Wall Street and worked for the Wall Street Journal and moved to Florida and see the scar? Then he was in a bike accident and didn't wear a helmut and lost his job and his wife and his kids and everything all 32 years ago and see the leg braces? I guess he is a pretty persuasive argument to wear your bike helmut. It was kind of affirming for me to see him again and not think about avoiding him, but hello? Can some other sign with a little more clarity please indicate the fatalistic importance of me running into this guy on a weekly basis? I don't even ride my bike anymore- haven't in years. Because if it's fun with coincidences, I think it'd be more fun to run into old school or camp friends. I can think of neater coincidences.

Babies and degrees.
Yesterday as P's out-of-town old college buddy left, P made an interesting observation. He said that he may not have his PhD, like his friend, and he didn't get to pursue fun hobbies that he used to, like skiing, but he sure was glad that his friend met Casimir, because Casimir is kind of his big accomplishment. "He's kind of what I hang my hat on these days," he said You won't hear me saying that, that my child is my main accomplishment right now. He is my primary focus. And I am proud of him and how I'm doing. I mean I do put everything into him. But I don't really think in those terms, that this child rearing thing is my only "accomplishment." Probably because the world mostly thinks that of me already. Which is why it was kind of odd and amusing to hear my male, full-time worker of a partner defining his identity and worth by holding up his golden baby. Interesting. He should probably be the one blogging about baby, and not me. Not a bad idea, since he's more of a bowl-of-cherries person.

You know when you head down to the basement with baby and laundry and you see baby's outgrown exersaucer floating, that it's going to be a bad day. You just know. And you know you're going to spend lots of time obsessing over dark thoughts and cursing the evil son of the deceased previous owner of the house who didn't disclose basement flooding problem because he's an asshole and you know you're going to fantasize about hauling some of the ugly old cabinets he left in the basement and dropping them off in his front yard, dripping wet. You know you're going to be menstrual for the seventh day in a row setting all new record and baby will be fussy because he didn't sleep enough and it's going to just be one of those fussy-assed days where your dropping a deodorant cap is going to make you nuts even before it stops bouncing and rolls under furniture. You'll try to work but researching the bubonic plague so illustrator can correctly draw plague buboes in children's history textbook will bring internet photos of real live plague sores and buboes (the plague still exists??) before your eyes, and this will really just make things worse instead of giving you neat disciplined feeling of working while baby naps. Sometimes you just know that despite the absence of any major catastrophe, this day is just sucking and will continute to suck greatly until you can happily usher it out and move on to the next and maybe get it together and not take it all so seriously and perhaps even wash stored exersaucer-turned-boat with (forced) laugh. Or just trash it.

I just keep babbling into the empty chasm that is the internet universe. Anyway, my mom came over with the pink pacifier today. Apparently it was just lost, and she found it, and didn't really throw it away because it was pink. I just assumed she did. Because I'm a cad.

And all her friends have seen the Mel movie about Jesus, and say things like, "It's good, but you can't really watch all the scenes" or "It's well done but you really can't eat popcorn while watching it" or "I could really only watch half of it, because it was so disturbing, but it was excellent." Like I'm going to see a movie that you can't even watch. I think I'll settle for setting my sights on renting Lost in Translation.

Yesterday while out walking the streets with Caz in the stroller I wondered why I unconsciously had to add "isn't it" or "is it?" or whatever? with? a? question? after everything I say to Casimir.
"It's not as cold as they said it would be, is it!?"
"Should we walk an extra block, Caz? What do you think?"
As if adding that little question at the end makes it somehow easier to pretend that the little person you are taking at won't respond for probably a good half a year. It's kind of the opposite. Why don't I just make a statement? What's with the isn't its and is its? As if he's going to suddenly say "Indeed it isn't as cold as they said it would be, mummy." it reminds me of the Scottish friend I used to have who would follow up everything with "do you know that?" in his little lilt. It was never, "I'm hungry" it was "I'm quite hungry, do you know that?" They're these little, nonsensical questions at the end of each statement that just meet silence and sound silly, unless you've got a Scottish accent. And yet I keep on uttering them. And sometimes, it's just hard to shut up period around the little guy at all. I just blabber on and on. I'm not sure if it's some natural instict thing or just a desperate measure to engage with anybody throughout the day. They tell you to "talk to your baby" but I've just become and endless, blabbering chatterbox, with the automated "don't you think?" at the end of every excited turn in my one-sided conversation.
At least I'm not as bad as the guy I heard in Costco. He had his little newborn in the carseat, fitted neatly into the shopping cart, and he was just babbling away. I mean I'm usually babbling away to Caz in the grocery store or wherever, oblivous to anyone around us who thinks I'm talking to myself at first. But this guy was just going on and on and on with his "Which deodorant should we get little one? Oh the selection isn't so good here, so let's wait on that, since we don't want to buy in bulk with deodorant if we don't like the selection because deodorant takes a long time to go through and on and on and on." And I thought I was bad.
Didn't I?

It's not me, It's Casimir. It's like someone opened him up, fiddled with some wires or something, reprogrammed something, and then gave him back and now he falls asleep on his own. Meet the new Caz, definitely not the same as the old Caz. This child sleeps. On his own. You have no idea how much of a transformation this is for him. We just rock him a little, crank up the music box, say night night ball, night night blue bear, night night green frog, and plop him down and he hunkers in and goes to sleep, just like all those books I threw across the room say babies will do. This is a really good thing, because the rocking to sleep thing and having to set him down over the period of 10 minutes was kind of destroying me slowly. And oh yeah, it WASN'T EVEN WORKING anymore because he'd wake up in the sling, wake up when we set him down in order to lie next to him, wake up no matter what. So I tried setting him in the crib again, thinking that I don't know, maybe it would work and then money will just start shooting out of all our vents, and what do you know, he works now. But we still bring him into our bed when he wakes later, and that is problematic. I think now he is used to having his own bed/crib and continually wakes when he flails and rolls and I gently rearrange him so that he's not spread eagle in the middle of the bed hogging up all the space. So he wakes up constantly, and tries to get up completely, pushing himself on all fours, grinning like a sleepy drunk, but then collapses with exhaustion until he pushes himself up again. He looks like a little elephant learning to stand, up on all fours, shakey, and down again.


Not to bash the "I haven't been getting out much" shctick into the ground, but I was stewing because i haven't seen a single movie that was nominated for an Oscar. Not one. Of course, most of them I don't want to see, and I just enjoy reading the endings on a movie spoiler website. But there are several that I do want to see. And now I keep hearing about "Mel's Passion." That I definitely don't want to see. I'm not a big fan of gore, no matter how noble the cause or decent the intention. Gore is Gore. Besides, I didn't even read the book and I know the ending. And of course I don't really believe in Jesus, I don't think. There's also that. So I probably will not use one of my Precious Breaks and see that. But I decided I would get out and see a movie, and I didn't even know the movies that are playing. The last one I saw was Mary Magdelene (kind of the opposite of the Mel Gibson movie, I think) and that was a really bad choice because you just should not see a movie where brand spanking new little babies are ripped out of their mother's arms and sent to new parents when you are on your postpartum special-me-time, getting-out-for-the-first-time break. It's just off-putting. Maybe I'll just stick with Blockbuster for now.

To switch from movies to boobies (which illogically go together, at least in Hollywood) I think when I stop breastfeeding I'm going to imbibe not a demure half glass of vino but most of the bottle, and then in the morning when I need to perk up at 6am I'm going to do so not with one dainty cup with about 5 mugs of French Roast. It's just that he appears to be weaning himself (I'm just guessing that's what the gnashing of the teeth and biting and big guffaw at my pain and pushing away from me mean) and while I know I should pump and give it to him that way until he's one, the prospect of suddenly not breastfeeding got me giddy with excitement. Hey you take it where you can get it. At least he will stop eventually, and this way will not have to attend a local college as I thought. I've enjoyed it, but after 10 months it's losing it's specialness. And then there's the biting. I mean, if a breast pump suctioning device were set next to a giant glass of Chardonnay that is a long time coming, which would you choose?

So much for thrift and cleverness. Cutting up the sling and transforming it into several small comfort blankies completely didn't work. I ended up attempting to do it on the kitchen floor that needs to be mopped while Casimir protested in his dad's arms, either really pissed that I was decimating his lounge hammoc or just really wanting the kitchen scissors I was using to mouth and throw. There was stuffing coming out of the padding and loose threads, and it's just not lovey/blankie material. P suggested sewing it up to tie up the ragged edges. I said "Yeah maybe" and inwardly thought "Um, No."
But of course this fancy baby catalogue (they all find you, somehow) Babystyle arrived in the mail right after I did this. Amidst the $80 diaper bags and size 0 models holding their newborns in darling onesies was some "hot, new, euro" baby carrier for bigger babies and toddlers. I had never seen this model, and it looked pretty cool, despite the sizable price tag. It even looked like it was fashioned out of burgundy and orange cargo pants. Of course I had to order it, and am back where I started from and will never escape having my child glued to me. But I'm just gruff about it to hide my melty maternal interior; it is a sweet and fun way to balance 23 pounds on my hip, and how else am I supposed to get stuff done and free up my hands while holding him? Letting him tug my yoga pants right down from the floor when I'm doing stuff and he wants me to pick him up is cute and all, but it gets old. And why can't that happen more often-- new options just presenting themselves as simply as a catalogue in the mailbox, right when I need them?

I finally opened up my latest issue of Child magazine. It was a gift subscription by someone who meant well, but occasionally there is a useful article in between the children's fashion pages. According to the cover, this is the "Mom Issue." That was news to me, because here I thought each and every issue was the "mom issue." Who do they think is reading the other 11 issues a year? Baby? Dad? Come on. Even the sling wearing, hush-a-by-baby-singing dad over here wouldn't bother reading Child Magazine in between Backpacker and Chess Life. Then I saw that the subtitle is "50 ideas for taking time for yourself." But you know, usually when I want to take time for myself I don't pick up a magazine with the word "CHILD" on it. (or a child, for that matter.) Anyway, they actually feature one of the latest feminist/mommy books The Mommy Myth, and apparently it's polar opposite, so perhaps it's an issue worth reading.

In other baby word news, I've completely given up on the whole "baby signing" idea. It sounded like such a neat idea. Apparently it's a fairly common idea and some babies really do learn a few signs, and their parents not only figure out what their child is saying, they get the assurance that their baby is indeed a genius (of course the real driving force behind signing). I didn't think that we'd be fluently conversing in signs when we didn't want daddy to understand, but it would be nice to know at times what on earth he was thinking or wanting or hollering at me. Because, despite my adoption of many Attachment Parenting methods, I really am not always in tune perfectly to my baby's wants and needs the way so many AP sources assure you will be if you practice the AP methods. Maybe that's just me. But I can't seem to figure out the signs with just a two-dimensional drawing and I don't have the patience to keep trying, so without any major breakthroughs I gave up. Kind of like I gave up on the infant massaging when he just kept wiggling, and once in awhile when I'm just naturally giving him a rub or squeeze I guiltily throw in one of the special "anti-gas" massage strokes I learned, as if I do it all the time. So I gave up on the "Sign with Your Baby" book. Instead I'm reading The Price of Motherhood and The Mommy Myth and reading about how crazy it is that I think I need to sign "more milk or peas?" to my baby to begin with. Hey, I thought it would be fun, what can I say. Turns out, he just smacks his lips if he wants more. I don't need to try and press my fingers together, signing in front of the high chair and feeling like an idiot. As far as what else he is saying when he grunts and hollers, I guess I'll just have to wait a couple years to find out.

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune wrote a good column about the tragedy of Andrea Camparani's death and the issue of postpartum depression. I keep typing in the thoughts that wouldn't stop after I read about her death. She lived close to where I lived until Casimir was a few months old. I would wonder if she was lonely in a foreign country, if she had any friends or if family was scheduled to visit soon to be with her; I wondered, if I had gone to the library one day earlier and by chance had seen her, taking her last walk, would I have even noticed her desperation? But I just keep deleting most of it. I'm not sure my thoughts even make any sense. Serious blues after birth completely escaped me, thank god, and yet it amazes me how much giving birth-- a pretty common activity-- would enable me to relate to and feel pain for a complete stranger whose own birth and postpartum experience became too dark to tolerate.

Casimir is though. Because you know you're fascinated.