Pop Quiz

I got carded at the grocery store tonight! Clearly, this is because:

(a) I was buying alcohol, and particularly on New Year's Eve, clerks are sticklers about carding everyone who looks under 35.
(b) I am flush with the bloom and vigor of youth, and look as lovely and fresh-faced as I did in my twenties.
(c) The clerk had watched far too much porn and actually thinks that thirtysomething women in ponytails are "barely legal."
(d) I look haggard and worn, and the clerk took pity on me and thought he'd cheer me up by making me think (b).

There is only one right answer. Choose carefully.

Bratz

From the December 4, 2006 New Yorker:

Fara Warner, the author of "Power of the Purse: How Smart Businesses Are Adapting to the World's Most Important Consumers - Women," goes further, writing that Bratz represent "a future where young girls don't need their dolls to show them the career choices they have open to them. They already know they can choose any career and pursue it. It's a future where the rules about the size and shape of women's bodies, and how women express their sexuality, are far broader and more open."

Oh, God. "Post-feminist" rhetoric, get thee behind me. This stuff makes me ill to read. And, you know, probably more so because I just finished Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (recommended) and am in the middle of Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (also excellent). But dear God, has Ms. Warner ever seen these dolls? (link has sound). Or, more to the point, has she ever lived in the same world I live in? I just...I don't understand.

Locomotion

I think I failed to mention in the last post that he can crawl. Oh, can he crawl. Like a racehorse. Behold:

Squidbits

Did I say that the developmental Great Leap Forward happened without an associated Cultural Revolution? I lied. I lied like a rug, because the revolution is here and dear God, we may not survive it.



Developmental whatnot: Ten months old. He's almost a toddler, Lord help us, and it's amazing to see. And exhausting to monitor. I really wasn't ready for this. Or rather, I might have been ready for it had it not coincided with the most vociferous phase of nobody-but-Mama-will-do that we've seen yet. If he's home, and I'm home, there is no remission of the constant whining for Mama, Mama, Mama. By the end of a weekend, my back hurts, my head hurts, and all I want to do is sit in a quiet room by myself and drink a lot, maybe with a good book. I don't know how or why stay at home parents do it.

It's cool, though. I really do mean that. It's fun to be able to take him places in the stroller sitting up big-kid-like, and to watch him enjoy car rides in the new big-kid front-facing carseat. It's great to see him pull out his own toy box, stand up clutching the rim, and methodically empty it of toys (he fell in the other morning, which was pretty funny too, though it occasioned some howls of dismay at the time). It's neat to watch him feed himself (though frustrating, as he would live on Cheerios and bread if left entirely to his own devices) and amazing to watch him focus on what he wants and pursue it, even if that happens to be (as it so often is) the unfortunate blind spaniel, the perils of the stairs, or the knobs on the stereo receiver. I'm just tired, and not as patient with him as I had hoped I'd be.



Probably more tired because there's been no daycare over the holidays and he's been teething like a mad thing, so his sleep and his mood and his eating are all thrown way off. Getting your two front teeth for Christmas is apparently far less desirable than Spike Jonez had led me to believe! They're both through the gums and coming on strong (he bit me the other day - ow) and as Himself said, "at least he won't look like an upside-down rabbit anymore."

Food notes: And just in time, it appears, we have mostly weaned him. Well, perhaps that sentence construction is misleading, because the fact is that he pretty much weaned himself a few months ago. He started refusing the breast more and more often, starting around six months old. I'd been pumping in the mornings, during the day, and in the evenings when I could to try to keep up, but the fact was that my supply was dwindling fast; finally, I just gave up. I had hoped to hold out for longer, but I didn't make this decision, he did.

And honestly? It's awesome not to worry about it. Of course, I can't eat everything in sight with impunity anymore, either, but you pays your money and you takes your pick. My boobs are almost mine again! Hallelujah! At this point he snacks once each morning, and that's it. This morning he refused to do even that much.



State of the mama: Well. That's harder to say. Around mid-November, I tanked hard into a month or so of black, heavy depression. I had trouble leaving the house. I cried all the time. I was listless and useless and miserable. It came out of the blue (after a few months of irritability, but this was different) and sat on my head suffocatingly for weeks. And then, after a visit to a therapist and the decision to go on antidepressants, it mysteriously went away. Overnight. Let me repeat - it went away. I hadn't even started the meds at that point, so it wasn't placebo effect or anything else I could think of. Just, one day I couldn't leave the house and everything made me cry. The next, I was fine. What the hell?! I mean, I'm thrilled, don't get me wrong, but what the hell, too.

This has had some lingering consequences, the primary one being that I went on the meds after all, terrified of a recurrence, and got hit with heavy anxiety as a side effect - paralyzing in an entirely different way. I cracked some fillings (and possibly some teeth, I need to make a dentist appointment) clenching my jaw, couldn't sleep, couldn't stay still, and couldn't accomplish anything because I was literally twitching. Awesome. I finally decided that since I wasn't depressed anymore, I'd take my chances on recurrence, and stopped the meds. Still, between the sickness and the cure, I effectively lost about a month and a half in there, and I've been scrambling to catch up ever since.

Through it all, I tried to be an okay mom, and I think I mostly succeeded, though I am humbled to find myself less patient, less tolerant, and less calm than I once imagined I would be in the face of parenthood. I was aided and abetted heavily in my efforts at decent parenting by Himself taking the Squid to Chicago for five days in mid-December. Going east is more fun with babies - you get to stay up later, instead of rising before the sun - and from all reports, they had a great time seeing friends and going new places. It was great bonding time for them, and allowed me to do some holiday baking, wrapping, cards, and visiting. It would even have allowed for some relaxing, if I hadn't been on the damn meds. Next week it will be six years since I met Himself, and yet I am still realizing each day how lucky I am to have him. He is a wonderful father to the Squid, and seeing them together is one of my greatest joys.



Holiday schtuff: I have to glory in the big present my folks gave us this Christmas. Christmas is a favorite holiday of mine mainly for the caroling and baking and tree and giving, not for the Getting Of Stuff, but this one is going to revolutionize our lives. My folks gave us two (two!) (2!) nights off each month for dates. They'll take the baby (our prime babysitting candidate is still in middle school, and I'd rather give her another half-year or so to mature) twice a month and let us have real adult grown-up time out! The mind boggles.

And we had a great Christmas otherwise - as you can probably see from the photos. We stuffed ourselves silly, and Uncle E and his girlfriend came down in the evening and joined Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of us for a flurry of present-opening. The Squid got more presents per pound than I thought possible, even though we didn't buy him anything - grandparents, friends, and other family are unstoppable! I even let the Squid have a potato chip (bad mama!) and he instantly figured out what the Pringles can looked like and how to open it. Oh, dear.



And now, of course, there is more sugar in our house than normally enters it in the previous eleven months, and stacks of presents to be put away, and a tree to be un-decorated, and ornaments to store for next year. From where I stand now, this tired, replete, unique moment in time, I can't fathom it. But we're racing forward into 2007, the Year Of The Pig, and before I know it, it will be the Squid's one-year birthday, and I will have a new job please please please the right job soon and we will hurtle pell-mell into more new adventures. I look forward to sharing them all with you, and Happy New Year.

Merry merry quite contrary

As one of my presents to my family this year, I got a bunch of old family photos scanned in. I don't think they read my blog, so this shouldn't spoil the surprise or anything. And for those of you who love baby pictures, I present a few selected shots of my wee!self to entertain you.









Much love to you all, and may you have stress-free, conflict-free, warm, and relaxing holidays.

Accidental Narcissism

Due to a shipping glitch, our holiday cards just arrived. And, um, wow.

Himself had already expressed to me some ambivalence about the vaguely self-aggrandizing feel of creating a card with a family photo. But, "everyone does it," I assured him cheerfully, and indeed - most of our friends with children tend to send cards featuring nice photos of either their offspring or the whole family together. I've always liked that, frankly - sometimes those are the only recent photos I have of friends I haven't seen in a while. Anyway.

So I ordered these cards, with photo of Squid on front and suitably neutral holiday message inside. I got the folding kind, because the new ones that don't fold are hard to display and that makes me twitch. What I didn't notice?

The cards I ordered measure 5.59" x 8.64".

I just assumed (ass, you, me, yeah yeah...) that they would be a normal (smaller!) size. These things are huge. And glossy.

Had I only realized, I could have swapped out the Suitably Neutral Holiday Message for something more in keeping with the general feel of the card, like, oh, I don't know -

Here is a large, glossy photograph of our child. Look what we made! He is clearly far more special than any other child on earth. Please make sure this photo is prominently on display the next time we come to visit you. Happy Holidays!

Oh, dear. Himself is going to kill me.

I'm on vacation

And I just whiled away a pleasant 15 minutes doing the Implicit Association Tests Malcom Gladwell linked on his blog. Gladwell did a lot of research on snap judgement for his book "Blink," and while I often find his conclusions a little glib, the IATs were interesting. They're designed to uncover unconscious prejudices about hot-button topics through some fairly standard psych-test techniques, and if you look at the overall result scores, they certainly seem to succeed.

However, what I found most interesting was that they didn't work for me. I'm not a fool; I know I have unconscious prejudices, ones that fall right into the nasty little traps of a bigoted wider society. I went into those tests expecting to have them showed up, to have to own my shame a little harder, to feel a little more sick at myself. And each of the three tests I took showed that I either am neutral or that I have a slight unconscious prejudice toward the group I know I have a slight unconscious prejudice against.

I wasn't "gaming" the tests and deliberately slowing/speeding my clicks to garner the desired results. So what gives? Can one really become less racist/sexist/homophobic/prejudiced just by wanting desperately to reject the subconscious shit of a divided society? Or do these tests only work if you are not savvy about how the tests work, or not a speed-reader, or not a visual learner, or what?

Curious, anyway.

The magnolia trees are fruiting, bright cherry-red pods bursting from their furry cones. The seeds are spilling all over the sidewalk like tiny rose petals, like poison berries, like shiny wooden beads. Every day I walk the baby down the hill to daycare, bundled in his warm clothes and hat against the bright crisp morning, and every evening I walk him back in the frosty dark, past our neighbors' familiar gardens spotlit by warm streetlamps.

I went to the therapist a few days ago, and snuffled and stumbled incoherently through explanations of what is going on with me. She wants me to go back on antidepressants, and so next week I have an appointment with a doctor who will refer me to another doctor for pills, and I have an appointment with our pediatrician to talk about whether or not I should wean the baby before starting the meds. I feel ... I feel awful. I cry at nothing, at everything, at things so small they can't be seen by the naked eye.

I am blessed in so many ways, and this misery in the midst of my wonderful life makes me feel like an ingrate. Every morning, the magnolias are fruiting, and the sky is cold and clear, and my baby kicks and babbles in his backpack as we walk together. How can I be unhappy in the face of such gifts?

Squidbits

Nine months old...yesterday. Wow.

This was a long month. In some ways, it was the best month yet - as each successive month has been, because he just gets more fun and more interesting and more himself as he gets older. In some ways, it was the worst since the early colicky days, as the family unit as a whole struggled with travel, with illness, and with exhaustion. I wish I'd written this post off and on throughout, as I usually do with the Squidbits, but there hasn't been time; Himself and I saw one another for a total of six days in the entire month of November, and both of us are tired, recovering from sickness, and a little off our usual game.

The Squid, I am glad to report, bounced back from his disgusting snotty cold in style, and has been practicing his crawling (!!!) and endeavoring to maul everything within reach with his usual glee for at least two weeks now. He still can't crawl properly - it's more like a flail-with-paws, flail-with-knees, and a flop forward, and on our slippery hardwood floors he goes backward, even - but he's getting there shockingly fast, and on carpet he's quite mobile indeed. Our completely un-childproofed deathtrap home is on the cusp of something the likes of which it has never seen. He moves from lying to sitting to crawling to rolling and back on his own, and is just beginning to pull himself up on people and things, which is a precursor to independent "cruising," which is a precursor to walking, which is a precursor to disaster, as all toddler parents can attest.



I let the Squid watch baby telly for the first time when we were both sick - I always thought I'd reserve it for illness, and it truly did help when I was too ill to be properly engaged without breaking down. I have to say, though, that these Baby Einstein DVDs are the biggest scam I have seen in ages. I thought they'd be research-based, carefully calibrated to developmental stages, and strongly edutaining. Instead, they are stock video clips of cute animals, some sequences of smiling children, and simple puppet dumbshows set to public domain music. It's got to cost them less than a hundred bucks to produce each DVD, and they retail for around $16 per. They also include at least three minutes of "Baby Einstein," "Disney," and "Little Einstein" branding at the beginning. A scam, I tell you. I'd love to see some RCT evaluations of the actual learning effects of those things; I hypothesize no significant gains. I "read" them to him, as I discussed a few posts ago, like I would a book, but still. As soon as I felt better, off went the baby telly.

Things he can do now that he couldn't last month: Eat toast and other breadstuffs that soften in his mouth, hold two different things with two different hands, move across a room (flail-roll-crawl-flop-wiggle), play peek-a-boo, search out specific toys and get upset when they are taken away, brush his own teeth (hee), and differential calculus. Except for that last one. I lied about that.



On the parental front, between us we logged nineteen days of solo parenting this month (not counting the three days that I was in meetings and Grandpa took the Squid), two states, at least ten all-day meetings, four cities, two separate cold viruses, one professional conference, and two countries. Upside of all this was that each of us got at least one "day off" and the Squid got to spend some real quality time with Grandpa, Uncle F, and Grammy while we were in LA. Downside of all of this should be apparent without further whinging on my part.

On the grandparental front, his Lola sent us boxes and boxes of Squidstuff, ensuring that he is warm and fed and entertained from now until the end of time February at least, and his Grandpa did some excellent babysitting. The Squid naps so well for Grandpa that I live in envy. This could be because we found out after the fact that Grandpa hadn't been reading the dilution instructions on the formula cans and had been stuffing the baby with extra-rich milkshakes! Or it could be because they play together so hard; there are few things more wonderful than watching my father with my son, tickling the baby with his beard and lifting him giggling overhead. They are great together, though there are certainly moments of weird:

"Come here, Snakebreath," I heard Grandpa coo to the baby, scooping him up and carrying him off toward the kitchen.

"Snakebreath?" I said.

"Oh, yes," said my mother, unruffled. "You and your brother were both 'Snakebreath.' I don't know where he got that."

Snakebreath. Huh.



December will bring a father/son adventure in Chicago, while I try desperately to recover some lost equilibrium at home, and our first Christmas as a family - our first tree, the traditional cinnamon rolls, holiday music on the stereo, sparkling lights, and cards from friends all over the world. Also, no doubt, a highly mobile Squid and the next stage of parenting challenges. Wish us luck!