Mrs. Cleaver was a closet drinker

Yesterday afternoon was, hands down, the worst day Jack and I have shared. He melted down in the middle of the grocery store into a full fledged flailing fit of temper.

In the chaos of his hysteronics I stood, white knuckle gripping the bar of my shopping cart with a dilemna. One little being on shoulder whispered, “You should take him immediately out to the car so that he knows this is unacceptable.” The other shoulder’s little voice noted, ” Really? Who is that punishing? He WANTS to get out of here. You’ll just have to come back and refill your grocery cart and start all over. You’re shopping with coupons for crying out loud. Push through woman! And by the way– you look great today.”

I went with the second Jiminy Cricket.

So there we went, me pushing the cart and Jack screeching under one of my arms like a legged football or, in turn, holding my hand and walking but not riding in the cart because he’d flail his little head too near the metal edges.

Not a pleasant shopping experience. But a girl needs her laundry detergent and orange juice.

Throughout the rest of our expedition up the CryMeARiver I began to raise my eyes and take note that every senior citizen I passed– women AND men– gave me an encouraging smile. It was the 25-45 demographic (and mostly women) that frowned or shook their heads. What, may I ask, in the hell is that all about? My working theory is that the older people recognized my moment of hell for what it was– a moment. A tired Mommy, a teething little monster baby, and a need to replenish the food supply. Maybe, too, for the senior set was a twinge of envy that Jack should still be so small and not yet grown and moved away?

For the others it seems a little harsh. I realize that a screaming toddler of no acquaintance isn’t the background muzak one might prefer while running their own errands– and I’ll excuse anyone in that range that doesn’t have a child… but some of them are in the same boat. In line, while I loaded things on to the conveyer belt while holding Jack in the other arm I felt a pair of eyes boring into me. They belonged to the woman in line behind me with a cart full of Pampers diapers in various sizes. Assuming that they are for her own household then she has at least two if not three children in diapers. Why would she, of all people, shopping sans enfant be so unsympathetic to me? (And why would she buy Pampers when they smell so of baby powder and floral scents? Ick.)

What a crappy day. We sat in the car and cried together. Then made blueberry pancakes for supper.

Sesame Street needs to have a day where everyone loves each other with all their hearts but just don’t like each other for an hour or so. It’s a good lesson to learn. Unfortunately, little kids already get it… and old people have it down pat. It’s all of us in the middle that need to be reminded of it.

It never rains but pours through our roof

Funny how you get complacent about home repairs/maintenance, isn’t it? Not so much “what a great story!” funny but more “Yes, Doctor, I think two more sedatives could do the trick” funny.

We’ve had two out of character rains this month… both delivering torrents of water in short periods of time. Apparently our not-yet-two year old roof with the alleged 10 year warranty can handle such a thing. Apparently it’s designed for a gentle mist. The kind you get at the supermarket when you reach in to pick a zucchini.

The first rain happened while we were on our way home from the Big Apple. We stumbled in to our happy familial fortress in the wee smas and fell into our beds. The next day I happened to glance up and noticed the pretty new ochre colored rendering on my ceiling. “Huh,” I thought to myself, “I don’t recall having an artistic moment…” I don’t take Ambien– I don’t sleep walk and perform extraordinary feats of human accomplishment while I’m in some state of REM– or do I? Do I work in plaster? There were small pieces of plaster on the carpet. Huh.

I pointed out the new decor to the husband who echoed my incredulity. Huh. Huh. (A few more and we might be able to put together a nice tribal sound with the kid and his bongoes next door…)

Our first assumption, between the rains, is that certainly this was the work of our antique plumbing. (Sometimes when people ask me if we own antiques I want to answer, “Why yes– particularly in the walls…”) We called up the plumbers (they’re practically before our family members in our speed dial line-up) who came over the next day.

I feel like the plumbing guys and I have developed a nice relationship these past 9 years. I know I’ve sent them on some nice, 4 star holidays and feel like I have at least a third staked in their childrens’ college education funds. Still, we like to pretend that it’s all just professional… so even while I know, in their hearts, they long for a big, welcoming embrace and maybe a nice, hot cup of tea to catch up over… well, they just went ahead to inspect the “damage.” (Did they call the shroud of Tourin “damage”– because that’s what I’ve got going on my living room ceiling right now.)

My pals went upstairs and peeked in the little access door near the bathtub. They came back down to peer in the downstairs WC directly beneath. And then they came back to crane their heads at the ceiling with me. And Jack. “Well. It beats us” they announced, “You don’t have any pipes there.” They walked me through it all and came back to their logical conclusion that it might possibly could perhaps be the roof.

Now– those of you that have been over might be a bit dumbfounded… our living room has two outside walls… but it’s on the first floor and the “spot” is nowhere near the roof line. I pointed this out to the plumbers standing in my living room in case they were on Ambien and perhaps invisioning themselves somewhere else entirely. “Water comes in funny places,” said the less talkative of the two (and that’s a subtle, subtle distinction, believe me), “We’ve seen it before.”

Too bad they don’t do roofing. The first of the roofer guys came this afternoon. (After a 3 because I’m not counting Sunday day wait and then a few hours off of his ETA– not that I’m starting to keep a tally or anything. AND after the crucial piece we refer to as Evidence B– the second rain storm that came through yesterday evening.) We’ll call him by his Indian name, LostinaTruck. LostinaTruck took a look in the living room then took me on a tour of my own house through the upstairs and the attic…to the downstairs bathroom’s gaping hole-in-the-ceiling to announce, “Wellllll. Looks like it’s your plumbing. Yep. When I put my hand up there I felt a drop on that corroded pipe joint.”

I pointed out that the ceiling seems to be fine when we bathe, shower, flush, brush are teeth… that it’s only when it rains hard that we seem to have a problem. Why wouldn’t it have been a problem when we used the tub/shower/toilet/sink? (This stymied him. Apparently LostinaTruck is used to patting the housewife on the head. In his world I’m not supposed to ask follow up questions.) LostinaTruck repeated things and we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere so I introduced him to Quality Boy– who answers his dayphone as “Rob.” and let the two of them chat while I started making a jelly sandwich for Jack. LostinaTruck mumbled something and left.

Of all the things I have inherited from my father probably one of the most recognizable is a short fuse for uselessness. I don’t handle that well. I’m good with ignorance– I actually have quite a tolerance level for that. But give me the proverbial titty on a boar pig and I check out quickly. Robby made sure he was home for LostinaTruck’s pals, Dumb, Dumber, and TwoWay’s arrival this evening. (To appease me, the seething wife, Rob was kind enough to call the owner and politely invite them to revisit our home for another chat… although he left out my suggestion that I didn’t really care if they couldn’t send up a guy on the ladder if it was raining they can hire a monkey or shimmy up the side like Spiderman for all I care.)

While Rob and his new pals walked around and over our house I got Jack settled in for his supper meal. He and I chatted and made horsey sounds (”Neeeee!”) because we’ve been working today on the difference between the noises that cows make (”Mo!”) vs. his little IKEA horses. Rob led them all on a nice if abbrieviated house tour that was made even more ridiculous by the constant chirping of TwoWay’s pants. TwoWay’s wife, HarpsaLot, wanted to know when her beloved would be home. Why doesn’t he ever let her know when he’s making another stop? What time did he want to have dinner anyway? How long would he be? It was all I could do not to grab Jack’s babymonitor and hope to get some good line interference.

And, what, you ask is the outcome of these human interactions? This battle between poverty and shelter? The elements and our good natures? Apparently it’s caulk. Lots of caulk around a few areas that seemed troubled to our professional pals.

Caulk. $10,000 caulk.

Stay tuned…. and send the kids by to see the grotto of the Saint of Money Sucking Houses while he appears on our ceiling. You can’t make this stuff up.

Day Trippers

Robby and I like to travel. I come from a family that regularly took trips to near and far places because they sounded interesting. Some of them– like the long weekend to Mt. Rushmore or the Sunday brunches at a Cracker Barrel… in Kentucky… are now legendary. I remember when we were expecting Jack (or “B.R.” as he was known in those days) that I was surprised by the passively negative comments people sometimes made. What stood out most were those in regard to travel. My favorites sounding something like this, “Oh, well. (Tsk) you’ll want to travel now while you can– after that baby’s born you won’t be able to…”

In the nearly 10 years before Jack came into the picture we’ve taken some great trips. We didn’t see what adding a baby into the mix would change about that. A good number of people around us did. I’m happy to report that we’ve been right and they’ve been wrong.

Jack travels well. A foreign clime doesn’t seem to effect his sleep or habits much (though in France he went on some kind of eating boycott and only really enjoyed the bread and fruit… but really, who can blame him? For the most part, with a couple of steak frites and croque monsieurs we did, too.) and he is unfazed, thus far, by any motion sickness.

We took him to New York City this past week. It occured to us that it was Fathers’ Day and that we’d had such a nice time traveling last year (Gettysburg) that we should make it an annual event. So we poured over the maps and chose NYC as the destination.

Of course, it’s never the destination. It’s the journey. So here are our 10 tips for traveling with a monkey:

1. Pack quality not quanitity. I’m a good packer. I don’t take a lot of extra stuff that I won’t wear or use. Robby’s a terrible packer in training to be a mediocre one. I blame myself. I used to help him out a lot more before Jack required my skills Now that we’ve left Daddy to his own device (and suitcase) I have to weed out the ridiculous (”Do you really think you’ll need 9 t-shirts for a 4 day trip?”) and the ludicrous (”I think we probably can leave the Parka at home. If it snows we’ll have enough to worry about”).

2. Be organized. On our computer is a running list called “Jack-a-Go-Go!” and it has a rundown of every possible thing he might need on a trip. In the last 18 months that list has been used for weekend trips, conferences, friends’ homes, Europe, and the cottage up north. It’s a tremendous help when packing. I can cross off the things that don’t apply and pack the things that do. It’s helped me remember the obvious (diapers and wipes) and oft forgot (socks, bedding, and baby spoons).

3. Most of our trips have been by car… with the one exception being the flights to France. But both required the same thing– a Jack bag of toys and tricks. Quiet toys. Nothing rattley or sing-songy. Before the plane trip I went off in search of a quiet toy that would light up– apparently this idea is yet untapped in the Fisher-Price/Mattel/Little Tykes world of fun. The solution was a joint effort on the part of my sister and I– in our desperation she spotted two nifty gift cards at Target. One has a light up snowman when the Target symbol is pushed and the other has a little Christmas tree that lights up and twinkles. The nice lady at the check out stand let me have them for free when I explained what they were for (I was going to put the minimum amount of $5). They’re still in the diaper bag and he still gets a kick out of them.

3. Pack snacks. Jack’s nonmessy favorites include the Beechnut Banana Toddler Cookies, Goldfish crackers, Earth’s Best Elmo/BigBird crackers, and Honey Graham bears. We’re kind of anal about him not eating in the car too much– but when we break our rule on a long trip it’s these things that come in handy. Jack’s really, really good with a straw so we don’t have to pack a sippy cup anymore– but it’s nice to have one, too, for bottled water on a long trip.

4. Bring home with you. Everyone laughs at us– but we’ve washed all of Jack’s things in Dreft or Baby All since he was born. And we take along our own crib sheets for him that smell like home. It’s worked for us–.

5. Seek our Asian restaurants. We’ve never been to one yet that hasn’t been especially sweet to our baby. Cracker Barrels are toddler friendly, too. We don’t do fast food with Jack– it’s usually too noisy and too bright and there’s nothing he’ll eat anyway. In NYC we picnicked a lot. Central Park was, hands down, Jack’s favorite spot. Yesterday we drove about an hour away and stopped for a picnic in the town over– it gave him a chance to run and play and us a chance to save some money by eating from home. Away from home.

6.Expect the unexpected and day-pack for it. Take the hoodie in case the a/c is cold. Take the extra disposable bib. Take the snacks. And take something out of the ordinary– we have a wind up caterpillar that Jack thinks is the cat’s meow. But it only comes out at restaurants with a wait.

7. Diaper wipes are your friends.

8. So are those ridiculous sounding disposable washclothes. In a hotel room they’re great. a little water and they foam up with nice soft baby soap.

9. Add in a third of the time you’d normally need to get anywhere– or even a half. Jack’s good in the car. He’ll doze and play and look out the window. I read to Robby and Jack listens along (it usually puts him to sleep). Stuck in traffic the other day we sang “Itsy Bitsy Spider” I think 11 times. Pull over when you’re in danger of a mutiny. Find a park or a mall where little legs can run a bit of energy off.

10. Share the good stuff. We’ve benefitted from the years of experience my sister and brother brought to the table raising my nieces. And from other pals with small fry. And the magazines on babies that I read. Because of this help we have a diaper bag that’d I put up against anyone’s in term of preparedness yet streamlined qualities. We’ve got a nifty cloth seat that folds into pocket size for the odd place without a high chair (hello France!) and a wee little first aid kit that has gotten a lot of use from us (if not Jack). The point is– we’ve whittled down a lot of the extra crapola that just isn’t necessary because we’ve had older, wiser folks to steer us in the right direction. Now’s not the time to be stingy with the good ideas.

Bottom line is (and with the way we pack that’s a clean little bottom) that if Jack likes travel it’s because we don’t make a fuss or bother. I’ve worked in museums for too long to want him to grow up to be the kid in every group that is so overwhelmed by the difference in his surroundings that he can’t appreciate what it is he’s come to see. We’ve been determined– not just to prove wrong the naysayers– but to give Jack a nonchalance when it comes to packing up and go– so that the destination (and the journey to it) can be extraordinary. Not every trip is smooth. And certainly Jack’s had his fair share of melt downs… but better a melt down on the way to Chicago’s famed museums then in his room.

And I realize now that I missed the point with the doom and gloom folks 2 years ago. They’re the ones that don’t travel anywhere anyway. Remember that when you are poopooed for taking your little bundle of baby to some far away zip code.

Godspeed.

Iceberg dead ahead

Some days life is more cluttered than others, isn’t it? I have two full laundry baskets of ironing. The baskets grow when I turn my back. I don’t mind ironing some of Jack’s tiny little things—but I dread my and Robby’s shirts and the tablecloths. Ugh. The ironing baskets are just the tip of the iceberg. Little by little I’ve let things slide around the house and now I feel guilty. And overwhelmed. I don’t want to get into the Mommy Working discussion… but there’s a tinge of failure when I’m home most of the day and still can’t get everything done. Block towers and kicking a ball around in the backyard is more important right now. I can clean house when Jack’s at tee ball practice.

My head’s a little cluttered lately, too.

Our little friend Nettie is making improvements. She’s out of one proverbial woods and into another… She’s communicating with her parents and others. She’s relearning things she learned years ago. Each day she makes steps forward. Her accident has changed us. We’re more thoughtful behind the wheel of our cars. We hold Jack’s hand tighter. We remember Nettie in our prayers every night even when we don’t know what to pray for.

Jack’s little bump is gone. His forehead is smooth again with a smudgy looking shadow of a bruise. More than once I’ve started to reach for a baby wipe only to realize that it won’t come off.

My nieces’ have had a weekend of dance recitals. Robby, Jack, and I went and watched them flit and float and fly across the stage on their toes in their bright costumes. The littlest dancers shocked us with their teensiness. Yesterday it was the girls we knew wobbling to put one foot far out from the other. Now Maddie and Keegan are twirling on pointe in bodies that are long and lean and strong. I went out to the recitals one night where my sister was running the backstage. In the ghost light I read bits of my book until she’d hiss, “Terri! They’re in this next dance!” and I lumber my 36 year old body over to the very edge of the curtain where I could snap photos. In this way I saw Keegan’s first performance on pointe. It was hard to remember to snap the shutter… Behind the next curtain I could hear my sister sniffling, too. When did our fiery little girl grow so elegant? Better still was her Irish dance number and the complete and unabandoned joy on her face as she bounced in circles around the stage. If you’ve been to a dance recital then you know that there are some girls that dance with wooden expressions on their faces and other girls that dance with looks of concentration… and a few that light up like bright, bright candles. I’m glad that I know two who are in the last catergory.

Last night I went and had night out with two good friends. One was my former boss. Now she’s just my Friend. I’m glad that we aren’t limited to just our former working relationship. I enjoy her company and value her opinions and advice. And she’s a mean cook. (I’m very food oriented. Good cooks are highly valued. Good bakers even more so. She used to bake for Zingermans—need I say more?) We had a leisurely dinner with entirely too much food and much sharing of both our plates and our lives. Then we went and had our toes painted. If you’ve never had a pedicure you really should fit one in. It’s one of the obtainable luxuries in life. I brought Milano cookies. We chatted and came out with toes in two shades of red and a shimmery copper. Very fancy. If you are in need of a foot model give me a call. Mine are fabulous.

It was a nice treat, last night—especially today when my small son was auditioning for the part of Damien with a very screechy and tantrumy tentrum all day long. Ugh. Two year molars? Demon possession? The last BeechNut Banana Cookies for Toddlers? You make the call.

That’s the top of today’s iceberg. Chip off a chunk for your glass and ease my load?

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Well. Put another parenting merit badge on our sashes… we can check off “Emergency Room Visit” now.

Yesterday evening, just as the dinner hour was approaching Jack was playing in the living room. He likes to walk around with the couch pillows in front of him… which is akin to you or I walking around with a crib mattress. He tripped and went forehead first into the coffee table. KNOCK! and then popped back up to standing where he burst into a long wail. I scooped him up and shuusssshed him and found the point of impact– a rapidly protruding little patch on his forehead. Already it was a bright shade of purple and was growing steadily more protrusive by the second. I began to wail a little myself.

By the time (4 minutes) we made the decision to head to the emergency room, Jack was chattering away, completely oblivious to the knot on top of his face. It made me think of the time my two pals were playing croquet and one beaned the other perfectly between the eyes. Friend 1 gushed blood down her face where it splashed and pooled on her white sweater. Friend 2 backed away in horror at the scene. We drove past the emergency room at our hospital and went the extra two blocks to the Kids Med Station where we figured we’d get in faster. (Our merit badges will have extra gold piping on them– we figured right.)

Of course, by this time Jack was happily singing to himself in the back of the car. He’s recently learned the “Elmo Song” (after 20 months it’s finally caught on?) and regaled us and his little stuffed Cookie Monster with the chorus, “La la LA!”

At the clinic we filled out seemingly a full dossier of information. Jack watched “Finding Nemo” on the little waiting room television. I think they give you stuff to fill out to keep you quiet. It’s busy work. The insurance card has all the information– certainly our names and SS numbers and address and all that is there. The forms are just a means to keep everybody from going off like Debra Winger’s mommy. They’d give our modeling clay if they could figure out a way to make it look like it was necessary. Or lego kits, “Here, please construct the nurse a diorama of the accident site while we process your insurance card.”

More traumatic then the whole bumping of the head to Jack was the visit to the doctor itself. First the nice nurse wanted him to stand on a scale. Jack’s feet shot up in the air making that impossible. She let him use the baby scale… (23 lbs. 11 oz. Shrimpboat.) and then there was the incident with the pulse thingy that clips on to a child/adult sized finger. His are still too little so she tried it on his toe. “Noooo!,” opined Jack. She gave up after try number two and went with a little flexible thing that she wrapped around his big toe. It took both she and I to hold his foot still long enough to find out that his blood pressure was a little high–. Wailing like a banshee will do that apparently. By the time she put a thermometer under his arm he’d had it with the whole health system. Thankfully the doctor was a little more concious of his personal body space. He calmed down considerably. The doctor was a petite Indian woman who assured us that it won’t be Jack’s last bump and that he’s fine and we would be, too. And within a half hour we were back in the parking lot heading off in search of a grilled cheese for our hungry boy.

Just the same Jacky got a visit from his AunT and cousin out of the deal. And they brought suckers. Poor sticky boy was kissed and rekissed and his purpley bump was admired and oh!ed over.

Today he’s his usual little monkey self. Very climb-y and without any fear of the coffee table. Which is good. This is one merit badge we could have done without. The last thing we need is to have to take up Carpentry, too.

Who Wears Short Shorts?

Jack’s wearing shorts these days– his legs have shot out over the winter and they are like climbing vines. He sits and rubs his knees and says “ohhhOhhh!” like he’s never seen them before. Which, to be fair, he hasn’t much. He’s usually got long pants or bib-overalls or pajammas on.

When he’s pleased he sounds like Elizabeth Taylor. You might remember a few years ago when she was hauled out to present an award at the Golden Globes ceremony. She was heavily medicated or jetlagged or drunk or extremely confused… and proceeded to open the envelope before announcing the nominees. When she was finally put right and was able to announce the winner, Gladiator, she said, “OoohhOHhhh! GLAAAADia-tor!” We quote her a lot when we’re excited. It cracks us up that Jack does, too, in his own way. His little eyebrows going sky high and his lips pursed into a perfect O. My money’s on him if he was ever in a Operate Heavy Machinery Contest with old Liz.

Sometimes it keeps me up at night to realize, in a whomping breath, how much I love him. And then I can’t wait until it is no longer night and I can scoop him up.

All good to remember when I find that there is still mushed up banana on his highchair the next day. Ugh.