I wake up many mornings in the pre-dawn and rush to the doctor's office, in an effort to be home before Bunny wakes up. My inner arms are covered in bruises and adhesive marks, such that I look like a drug addict. I pee on a variety of types of sticks and examine my underwear with great frequency. I'm alternately nervous, anticipatory, despondent, and tired. Who am I?
In case you don't recognize yourself or friends in this description, I'm a person trying to get pregnant in the not-so-very-old-fashioned way. As I've noted to friends, we've called in the pros. So far the journey is noteworthy for the three miscarriages, the "pregnancy tissue" that was left after the most recent miscarriage in my fallopian tubes and the chemotherapy drugs I had to take to expel it, and my weight gain.
Weight gain, you might ask? Why are you gaining weight when you're clearly stressed, sleepless, and donating huge quantities of blood to Columbia Fertility every other freaking day? It's because of my reward system. It started out seeming reasonable. Every time I gave blood at 7:30 a.m., I got a Starbucks coffee as a reward. After awhile I added "any kind of" Starbucks coffee... so then I moved to the vente not-non-fat, not-sugar-free pumpkin spice cinnamon dolce whatever-makes-me-feel-good latte. And then, because of my already-articulated lowest common denominator principle, I started adding the pastries. How could I not? (Other than that most elusive of qualities, willpower). With months of blood test (mostly every other or every third day), you can see how this would start to catch up with me.
I keep trying to come up with a new reward system. One that has no extra calories, but still gives me a feel-good to counteract all the feel-not-so-good. No wonder I don't want to use food as a reward for Bunny! I realize: there simply isn't anything as effective.
I'm going for the fertility fifteen.
** Yes, I know I'm not as funny as the SNL Mom Jeans video. But come on, what other picture could I use about mommy weight gain?
So, I admit it. My first few months back in DC were not my happiest. I spent much of the day ruminating over things I missed about New York. In particular, I missed my friends (and their kids, Bunny's friends), my neighborhood, our routine, walking everywhere, our classes, and Central Park. I had a really hard time letting go. I hated dealing with the car and the traffic, I hated that most of what I needed in life wasn't within a few blocks of my doorstep, and I hated having to dial 1-212 (or 917) to reach the people who'd been my lifeline since Bunny was born. I even kind of hated having a house. It just felt so... big.
The shift away from those ruminations was slow. One day last spring, at our Toddler Tiempo class at Chevy Chase Community Center, I made a friend. Lynna's daughter, the Goddess, was just Bunny's age and also shy. Lynna offered me words of support as Bunny struggled with the active class. We talked each class. We made a playdate, and then another. Now they are weekly.
Bunny and I got more used to the whole car situation. Sometimes when we left the house she didn't say "can we walk?" (although I always thought it). I started to see some advantages to a world that spread beyond 20 blocks.
I've grown somewhat less scared of the house (although not the kitchen). My mind still reels to unseemly places when water seems to be coming in or someone mentions "electrical issues" ("how do we call the Super?! where's my "panic button?!""). But it's getting better. (We'd better hope so, in fact, because we're about to leap from house-renters to house-owners, which seems like a whole new kettle of stressful fish.) Bunny has a playroom. There's a basement to keep our piles of junk. Mech works from home because... dah, dah, dah! we have the space! These are all good things.
And then one day this summer, the transformative moment came. Mech, Bunny and I went to Wheaton Park. We drove there. We brought stuff in the car. We parked. Bunny ran around the playground, we went on the carousel, and we rode the miniature train. There was no subway ride, no taxi, and no oppressive crowd. There was space, and grass, and more space. I said to Mech: "wow, I really didn't know what we were missing!"
I'm not saying I don't still miss New York. I do. But I've come to see lots of great things about this town, my once-and-current-home. As long as I can stay away from 495, 270 and 66, count me in!
I just posted about how unqualified I felt to write anything about the DC kids scene, and now I've decided to go ahead and do it. Let's face it, I wasn't qualified to write anything about the classes in NYC either, and that didn't stop me! Here is a bit about the classes around here and our take on them. This is all from the perspective of a shy and cautious 2 year old girl (and her mommy, of course).
Music Together (Chevy Chase). We took Music Together classes for several semesters in Manhattan, so it was an easy pick to take one here last winter when we moved. We picked the one that was in walking distance from our house, at the Chevy Chase Community Center. After all these Music Together classes, in two cities and four locations, I've decided two things: (1) it's all about the teacher; and (2) the CDs are really annoying. The teacher in Chevy Chase was a bit uninspiring to me (although it's a fine balance between uninspiring and over-inspiring, and I'll take uninspiring any day). We're going to try another MT class in McLean Community Center where the teacher has gotten rave reviews. I will update.
MusiKids (Chevy Chase). Following my ho-hum winter semester with Music Together, in the spring I decided to try the also-local MusiKids which holds a class at the Chevy Chase Baptist Church (also walking distance from us... get the theme?). Our first teacher was Gigi, who fell a bit into the hyperactive category for my taste at first, but it turned out Bunny loved her. She still roll plays that Miss Gigi is her music teacher whenever we play school. Gigi has a great voice and a ton of energy. After the spring semester with Gigi, we signed up again for the summer and got a different teacher (I can't recall it, but her name starts with a T and she is very young) and she drove both Bunny and me crazy. Her voice was just fine but her personality grated like a bad cheese.
Toddler Tiempo (Chevy Chase). This was another of the first classes we took upon moving to DC. It's also held at the Chevy Chase Community Center so it was very convenient to us and I let that fact override my concern that I don't speak a word of Spanish. It turned out that was a fine call, as the Spanish part of the class wasn't very intensive. It was a fun, high-energy class that followed the same format every week with running, circle time, play-doh time, talking to animals and counting in English and Spanish. I loved the idea of this class and I loved the teacher, Louisa, but I will say that this was one where Bunny struggled with the high-intensity activity level and constant changing from one thing to the next. By the time she got into the play-doh, it was time for run-and-stop. It may be better-suited for the non-shy, non-cautious set.
Creative Thinkers Art Class at Glen Echo (Glen Echo). This class is taught in a Reggio Emilia format by two lovely teachers: Judi and Ilva. Unlike most other classes, which run 45 minutes for kids this age, this class was 1.5 hours. I do think that was too long for this age group, although the time was well-spent. At the beginning of each class the group gathered and Judi/Ilva described the various art projects available at different tables that day. Then each child "put on their thinking cap" to decide which activity to do first, and set about painting, gluing, drawing, mushing clay, or whatever inspired them. They could move onto the next table whenever their inspiration ran dry. I loved that the class really allowed for creativity and individualism. Bunny's playroom is now covered with the outcomes of her experimentation.
Abrakadoodle (Chevy Chase). In substantial contrast to the Creative Thinkers Class that we took in the spring was the Abrakadoodle class we took last winter. At the beginning of each class, the teacher told us a bit about a particular artist, and then every child was told to make a project that closely resembled an example created by the teacher. To be frank, I thought this whole approach was complete crap. I would have assumed that the point of an "art class" at 2.5 years old was to expose kids to the different artistic medium, and to allow them to do what they wanted to and could with them. The idea that they were supposed to create an existing template annoyed me greatly. I was quite the Abrakadoodle rebel and just had Bunny do whatever she wanted to with her materials, which led to some odd looks at the end of class when everyone was supposed to display their identical creations (all made by moms and nannies, natch) and Bunny's was... her own.
Jonah's Treehouse (Glover Park). We've taken Jonah's Treehouse classes for 3 terms. It's a gym-style class with indoor climbing, jumping, sliding, bouncing and throwing equipment. At the beginning of each class is some structured singing and playing, and then after that most of the class is free play, with a few interuptions from the teacher to lead an activity (which the kids can opt out of, as Bunny almost-always does). At the end is some parachute play and bubbles and hand-stamps (an apparent requirement for baby and toddler classes). I like that the facility seemed very clean and heavy on the Purell use. I like the teacher, Alice. This format of class is one that, again, isn't Bunny's forte, but as this type of class goes, she does well and enjoys it.
Gymboree (Silver Spring). I probably wouldn't have tried a Gymboree class because Jonah's Treehouse is similar and we were already doing that, but Lynna and the Goddess were taking Gymboree over the summer and I'm nothing if not desperate for more time with friends. Like Jonah's, Gymboree is a gym-style class with similar climbing, sliding and jumping equipment. The teacher spent more time directing the kids from one activity to the next than Alice did in Jonah's, so overall Gymboree was more structured. Bunny seemed to prefer this, to my surprise, possibly because each activity had a story. ("Now we're horsies, let's ride across the balls into the stable!") The downside was that the facility didn't seem very clean to me.
Movers and Twisters Yoga Class at Circle Yoga (Chevy Chase). This was the hit of last spring and promises to be the hit of the fall as well. It's a mommy-and-me yoga class with 2-4 year olds at a very adorable yoga studio near Chevy Chase Circle. The teacher, Robin, is a mother of two herself and very understanding of the limitations and motivations of toddlers taking yoga. She introduces all the poses with stories about animals ("now let's be bears and raise our heads up and growl!"). We do poses together (Bunny crawls under my downward-facing dog), poses apart (she does her own downward facing dog!) and rest time together at the end (everyone's favorite). It's not, of course, a real yoga workout for me, but it's a gentle and fun time and I do get some stretching in that overwise evades me. And this is, I think, Bunny's all-time favorite class ever. That's saying a lot, for this overscheduled young lady.
Parenting Playgroups (Alexandria). I found Parenting Playgroups over the summer in my effort to re-create the experience I had at the Parent Child Center that I so loved in Manhattan. I can't say it was the same as the Parent Child Center, but Parenting Playgroups was also valuable. The only problem with it, for us, was that it's a 50 minute drive from Chevy Chase to this part of Alexandria, and that was just too far for this car-phobic mama. The play-and-learn sessions, which is what Bunny and I did over the summer, started with free play with moms and kids and teachers for about 45 minutes. What I liked about that was that the setting was very school-like, with art stations and car stations and a play house with babies. Bunny could freely move from one area to the next and seemed to enjoy that variety. Then for the next 45 minutes, Rene Hackney, the head of Parenting Playgroups, gave a talk to the moms while a teacher gave the kids a snack and read to them. We were at a table just next to theirs, so they could come over anytime for a mom-fix. Rene talked each week about a different topic. Some were: separation anxiety, grandparents, school, discipline, tantrums, eating, sleeping, and more. We just did this program for the summer but if you sign up for the full academic year the list of topics discussed is quite impressive. What this program lacked that the Parent Child Center had was time for moms to discuss their own concerns and issues. This was more of a lecture-style talk. It was valuable to us, though, and if it were closer we'd still be going.
Ballet Petite (Bethesda). I feel early writing this review since we just started this class for the fall. That said, this class is beyond cute from the point of view of the grown-ups taking the girls (it's all girls) in their pink tutus and tights to twirl around. My concern is that that may be the best part. We got the tutu, we got the tights, we got the slippers (all -- suprise! -- sold at the Ballet Petite store), I took the pictures. Now that it's started, though, the class seems a little overly structured and rigorous for kids who can't even pronounce "Angelina Ballerina." It starts with some tippy-toe walking and circles, then jumping, and then a story to act out as a ballet. Because the class is only 45 minutes, it feels a little frenetic to me to fit it all in. Plus the teacher reminds me of an overly-made up and tanned lifeguard at my old pool who either mainlined caffeine or swallowed perky pills. I wish they'd go a little heavier on the "petite" and a little lighter on the "ballet."
I seem to have become blogger-blocked. That is to say, I think of things I would like to write about, but I never sit down and do it. I blame it on the laundry (I blame a lot of things on the laundry... just ask Mech!). I blame it on the house. (Let's face it, I had a lot more time for blogging when I lived in a lovely maintenance-free work-free apartment.) But I'm not sure that's all it is.
I think I've lost my focus of the blog. When it started, I was a starting-out infant-toting first-time mother in New York City, a city that was pretty new to me still. That seemed like a story. It certainly wasn't original-- that I never claimed! -- but there was something to write about. Taking the subway (or not, in my case), finding where to buy stuff, schlepping to the 92nd Street Y, learning that Manhattan was really just a series of small towns masquerading as a giant city. All that.
Now we've moved back to DC, where I grew up. That's not much of a story. And we haven't been here long enough for me to claim any sort of expertise on the local kids scene, so I'm not sure what to say about that. Bunny is 2 and a half, which is not uninteresting (heaven knows!) but it's not quite the same "holy shit!" as having a newborn.
MB says "it's all copy," and it is, but perhaps this particular moment in life is somewhat less copy-worthy.
I hope I find my blogging raison d'etre again. Please stay tuned!
Long ago, before it was at all relevant to me and at a time when I thought it never would be, I read an article that tried to assess the market value of the work of a stay at home mom. It detailed the cost of hiring child care, doing laundry, cleaning, cooking, taking care of the household, doing and/or hiring yard work, etc. Although informative, it was a tedious-sounding list of items.
I have a better idea. Mine, too, can be used for SAHs, WOHs, part-timers, or any other variant, because we all have these moments.
$30, please, for every time I have to say “use your normal voice.” $20 per instance I sigh, clench my teeth, and say “I’m counting to three…” $10 for each time she almost chokes and spits her food into my hand. I’ll call it $40 for a full-blown tantrum. $50 if we’re out in public, nowhere near the car. $30 for each meal I prepare, of which not a bite is taken.
Just as a back of the envelope calculation, let’s say I demanded the modest fee of $10 per time I had to get up during the night with Bunny during her first year. I call it a modest fee because I can promise you that on no occasion would I have said “sure, for $10, have her wake up again in an hour.” Let’s call it an average of 3 times a night for that first year (it was way more often than that at the beginning, less often at the end). That works out to be an annual wake-up salary of $10,950.
Right now we’re averaging 5 a day of “use your normal voice.” That’s $4500 a month! If it continues, $54,000 a year for my anti-whining salary!
And these are just the small-ticket items. I’d demand at least $100 per time I hear scary things (like the word “disorder”) from the pediatrician. If it gets more scary, I’ll demand more. I think $200 would be fair for any solo-with-child airplane travel. Double that for overnight or transatlantic. Triple that for solo-with-multiple-kids.
Each of these behaviors will, I assume, be replaced by others that I can tag with a price point. So perhaps my anti-whining salary will go the way of my nighttime wake-up salary (one can only hope!). But it can be replaced.
The way I count it, this kind of pay schedule would yield a higher salary than I made when I was a lawyer. Now that’s what I’m talking about. Show me the money!
Why am I spending time on match.com? I am a happily-married mother of a two year old. And, if I am spending time on match.com, why am I posting about it here, where Mech (at least in theory) and his family members could read about it?
I'll tell you why (you knew I would).
I'm pimping out my Mom.
Nonnie is still technically married to my Dad, but he has been in a nursing home for several years and her only role with him is that of a caretaker. For awhile now she has expressed interest in meeting someone for friendship or dating. Despite her valiant efforts (that is, sitting at home, going for walks,seeing movies alone and occasionally saying "I wish I could meet someone") Prince Charming has not galloped onto the scene.
So I decided to help. My first suggestions were for action. Go to Politics and Prose events, I said. Try poetry readings. Do volunteer work. Maybe you'll meet a nice gentleman with similar interests. These strategies were every bit as effective for Nonnie as they were for me when I was single. So then I suggested she ask her friends for set-ups. Nothing came through there either. And we were left with the last hope of the single partner-seeker: the Internet.
Nonnie had all the usual objections that anyone might have to this idea, plus another big one: she doesn't have a computer. A real Luddite, my mother. Even promises of daily e-mail pictures of her granddaughter haven't lured her into the computer age. Go figure.
Last week Wes was in town and we wore her down. "Everyone does it," we said. She sighed, drank half a bottle of wine, and said "okay."
So I created her profile. I listed her "turn ons" and "turn offs" (oddly, "being pimped out by my daughter" was not an option under "turn offs.") I uploaded her picture. And I waited.
I didn't have to wait long. Our lovely Nonnie is being absolutely deluged with e-mails and "winks" (the lazy-man's version of e-mail on match.com). Lo these many years ago when I did match.com, I didn't have nearly this level of response. It would be downright disheartening, were it not also so tantalizingly odd.
Nonnie has two dates just this week. I hope one of them takes. It would be great for her, of course. And it would be a real boon for me. While I spend naptime checking all her e-mails, our household laundry has reached previously-unseen proportions, I've barely gotten to the grocery store, and Bunny's coloring paper consists entirely of rejected profiles I've printed out for Nonnie's consideration. Go, Nonnie, go.
Mech and I are hoping to give Bunny a sibling. I say that both carefully and cautiously. Carefully because our desire is exactly that: to give her a sibling. I don't really want to get pregnant (much as I didn't enjoy it the first time) and neither of us are looking forward to early months of babyhood. I say it cautiously because (a) I'm old, and (b) my body seems not to want to hold onto the little blastocysts that we've made to date. However, care and caution to the wind, we both really enjoy our relationships with our siblings, can't imagine life without them, and can't imagine not at least trying to give Bunny one. So here we are.
I was reminded recently of why this could all be a terribly bad idea.
For the first time in her 2 plus years, someone besides Mech or I put Bunny to bed. It was my Mom (Nonnie). She seemed like a great candidate for this first-time experiment, as Bunny is more comfortable with her than anyone other candidate (besides, that is, her four-year-old cousin Carmen who didn't seem like she was quite ready for this particular challenge). The party started at 6:00 so there was no way to do our usual trick and put her to bed ourselves and then leave Nonnie with the monitor. Mech was out of town.
As a result of this change in routine, and despite my 5 pages of babysitting instructions for Nonnie, Bunny did not in fact go to sleep at her usual bedtime of 7:30. Nor did she fall asleep by her late-but-not-deadly bedtime of 8:15. When I got home at 10:30, she was still awake. I knew I was in for it. She was totally overcharged by this point, and no amount of coaxing would get her down. Finally at 1:30 or so I brought her into bed with me (sick of the constant trips to her room) where she did semi-settle down, but woke up every hour or so for the rest of the night and then got up for the day at 6:00.
While it wasn't the worst thing in the world, it reminded me of the early sleepless days with a baby. And after just one night like that, I was wiped out for days. I got all forgetful again, unable to read, dumb as a door. It got me to thinking about my own reserves.
I'm starting to think that I had some sleep-deprivation reserves, built up over 36 years, that allowed me to cope with the year-plus of sleep-deprivation we had with Bunny. Further, I fear that I literally depleted every last ounce of that reserve, so that just one night of no sleep sent me into some profound, inexcapable level of exhaustion.
I'm like the U.S. I'm just plain out of sleep reserves, and I don't see any sign of Saudi Arabia offering me any of theirs at a reduced price or windmills starting to do the job. If I ever do get pregnant, I'll need to start sleep exploration in my own version of Alaska.
Everyone tells me that I'll manage. And I believe it, sort of. Secretly, though, sometimes I believe that everyone else (all these moms of many children, many activities and boundless energy) are actually the Middle East of sleep. Just sitting on piles and piles of sleep reserves and driving up sleep prices around the world.
My father has Alzheimers disease. Over the last several years he has gone from forgetting who is President, to forgetting where he was, to forgetting where he lived, to forgetting who I am. It has been an extremely painful journey for all of us, not the least for him.
One of the first signs I had that my father was losing his memory in a serious way was years ago when he couldn't produce the name of the Secretary of State. For someone else, that may have seemed like a minor incident of forgetfulness. Not for my extremely political, extremely partisan Dad. That meant something was wrong.
I spend a lot of time these days wondering who Dad would support in this year's primary were he to be aware of it. He would be so happy to see -- in his lifetime, although not his cognizant one -- that there is a real chance that either a woman or an African-American will be elected President. He was a partisan Democrat and so proud that his was the party of inclusion. This would have been, to him, the culmination of the work of Franklin Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey and the other Democrats of my father's day and preference.
I can see it going either way, to tell the truth. My Dad liked Bill Clinton a lot. But he always thought Hillary was the smarter Clinton. And, he'd add, "she can keep it in her pants." My Dad, being the political animal that he was, had a higher tolerance than many (myself included) for mind-numbingly purposeless battles about things like whether Obama wears a flag pin and with whom he may have served on a board. "That's politics," he would have said. With a grin. "Hillary has to play her hand."
Or maybe not. He also would have loved Barack's life story. My father, too, lived the American dream. Dad did not have any racial biases to overcome, but he was born during the Depression into poverty and a rancorous family. He was raised, primarily, by a grandfather who beat him. The only reason he was able to attend college was that his 2.5 years of service during World War II (starting at age 17) entitled him to G.I Bill funding for 2.5 years. He completed college in just 2.5 years, Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to have a successful career and to provide a lifestyle for Wes and me that no one in his family could have imagined. We're not Rockefellers, mind you, but it's a far cry from the hardscrabble life he knew. So that aspect of Obama's life and struggle would have spoken to him. "Only in this country," I can hear Dad saying. "Thank God."
He would mostly agree with either of them on most of the policy issues: health care, social security, education. He was a bigger advocate of free trade than either candidate is willing to appear, but my guess is they are too.
My Dad virulently opposed this war. One of the last pieces he tried to write before his brain became too muddled was a letter to the editor of Washington Post setting forth the reasons that this war is disproportionately impacting people of lesser means and people with smaller political power. He wanted to see members of Congress with children in Iraq; that would, he said, end the war faster than anything else could. "I've seen war," he often said. "I don't want anyone else to." I wish we'd gotten that letter published.
I will vote for either of these candidates when one of them is the Democratic nominee, as I know my Dad would. I wish he were here to see this.
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