If "Life is like a box of chocolates," only the cherry cordials remain

Yuck.

Cases in point:

Uno: I have to take Miss M with me to the OB this morning. She screams as I am being examined. She's done it before; my OB claims he isn't bothered. Alrighty then. (My mother-in-law's babysitting services are being reserved for next week instead, when I have to go to a different office and have an ultrasound, so not only am I snagging free babysitting for about 2 hours, but I also am taking her car to get there.)

Dos: I was supposed to have very little to do towards Shabbat cooking at this point. Just a quick veggie side, and buying challah on the way back from the OB. But last night, when I unwrapped the $20, one-and-a-half pound piece of salmon that had been defrosting in the fridge, it smelled of kitchen cleanser. Odd. Naturally I thought I was hallucinating, pregnancy nose or some such thing. I don't have the most acute sense of smell; I am constantly asking Taxman to smell the milk to see if it's ok. When Taxman got home, he rendered his second opinion, which was "I see what you mean. It's probably ok, but do what you want." Since I am an admitted emetophobe, I rarely chance it. If the phrase "When it doubt, throw it out," hadn't been around for eons, I probably would have invented it. So that piece of fish that was supposed to be our dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow is in the trash. New Friday project? Shabbat entrees.

Tres: Miss M, the monkey, can now scale the dining room chairs. This means that the dining room table is no longer safe to store anything, with the exception of maybe bibs and plastic cups.

Quatro: I have not had a haircut in six months. This occurred to me very recently. Taxman usually does it (the advantage of covering my hair), but he's kinda busy right now. Because my haircuts are usually free, in-house, and sans hassle, I don't have any idea where I can get this rectified. If I wanted to spend $600 on a haircut, I'd pick a random salon in Midtown and probably get a fabulous haircut. But I want to spend about $15 and cut four inches off, straight around. And I'd prefer to go out in sweatpants. So I am a little stuck.

Cinco: We're back to 6 or 6:30 being an acceptable time to wake up for the day. At least she wakes up cheerful.

None of this is worthy of the Wednesday Whining at Phantom's, which is why it's my own little Friday annoyances.

Hope the good chocolates are with someone who really needs them!

Paranoia or just plain parenting?

Do I trust Miss M?

At this point, I trust her to do the following:

*climb any/all available flat surfaces, including but not limited to stepstools, chairs, sofas, coffee tables (thankfully, we don't have one), and her Learning Tower. And then jump up and down on said surface.

*eat/drink anything vaguely edible left within 12 inches of the edge of the dining room table.

*empty any drawer, box of tissues, or package of wipes within reach.

*to play with any electronic device that lights up or beeps (or, in the case of the phone, both).

And do various other toddler things. This is just part of the package. I understand this. Really, I do.

What I don't understand is how other parents expect me to just "let her go play," unsupervised, in someone else's house. Even when I am in a house that is well-toddlerproofed--like that of our closest friends, who have a 15-month old daughter who is Miss M's best pal--I don't let her go wandering without being watched for very long. A year from now this could be quite different, I'm sure. Heck, once she starts answering me when I call her name things might change a little. But in the meantime, I'd rather she save destroying board books and denuding clothing drawers for our house, thank you very much.

Because of all this, I think that Miss M has seen her last La Leche League meeting. For now, at least. I missed half the meeting chasing her to the leader's playroom. Although she has several kids, the youngest of whom is 4 months older than Miss M, I could see about 5 potential hazards for her in that room. (And that's the "babyproof" room in the house! The last time we were there Miss M burned her hand on the riser in the bathroom; I had taken her in with me, of course, because I couldn't leave her for two minutes unsupervised.) A friend whose 3-year-old was there offered to have her daughter "babysit" and come tell us if Miss M was doing something ill advised. Um, no thanks.

Is it bizarre that I am thinking of a newborn baby as a vacation of sorts? Nurse, change, cuddle, sling, and coo...no desperate chasing involved? I am already plotting that Miss M's savta will come and hang out with her on the 3rd Wednesday in May so that the b2b and I can get 2 hours of quality couch time at the May LLL meeting.

So...am I a paranoid parent? Or just trying to be careful/responsible for my kidlet?

Appalled

I am so embarrassed.

As a favor for a friend, I wrote an article--more like a personal essay--on infant sign language and our experience with it. I am a big fan of signing with babies, so I was happy to promote it, and as a bonus it was a potential clipping for my nonexistent freelance career. The pay was zero dollars, but I put a lot of work into the article.

I did not have the opportunity to review the piece before it went to press. The publication is a tiny "supplement" (eight pages) put out by the local Jewish community council. No web presence...barely a print presence. But still, I didn't deserve this:

I sent clean copy, free of spelling and grammatical mistakes. I do that. I'm an editor, or at least I was.

What was printed was appalling. Mistakes up the wazoo. Never mind that my sentences were hacked to pieces to fit whatever "newspaper" style the "editor" was imitating, but there were spelling mistakes. Lots of them. Good grief. In 2006, when the entire world has heard of Spellcheck, that's just not right.

Other than burning every (free) copy of this in existence, I don't know what to do. Do I tell the friend (who is on the Jewish community council) how upset I am? And that I will never write for them again? It's not like I have much of a reputation to protect, but anyone who knows me (other than solely in the context of Miss M's ema) knows that I used to be an editor. And that I was paid for it. I don't expect that this article will make it out of our ZIP code, but my name is still on it.

What do I dooooooooo?

I have to go vacuum up crushed Kix from my living room rug. The Shabbat Queen is coming.

Innocence Lost

Taxman and I started dating in the late spring and were married in the early winter. His birthday, in the late fall, was the first that we celebrated together. He claimed he didn't care all that much about his birthday and didn't understand what the big deal was. Nevertheless, I put a lot of energy into a gift for him. I bought him a backpack and put little things in the pockets that he liked or reminded me of him or us. Cheesy, but we were young and engaged, and I clearly had more free time.

Fast-forward six years, and I totally understand the birthday lack-of-drama. Birthdays are a day to be grateful that you are alive, but not really any more than any other day. My inbox is stuffed full of e-cards to let me know others remembered. It's nice.

But it's not like your birthday when you are a kid. When that inexpensive gift from your mom or your friend can just light up your week, and you get to have a party, and eat cupcakes at school. If your birthday is in the early spring, and it happens to be warm and sunny that day, it's suddenly the most exceptional day of the year.

The first time you have to go to work on your birthday, it doesn't feel quite right.

Now I don't get gifts so much as birthday money. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining (it's probably all spent in my head!), but it doesn't require the same kind of planning and execution that a child's gift does.

I am waiting for Miss M to reach the age at which birthdays are Really Special, and hopefully she'll be there for a while. And I expect that somewhere in that time frame mine will have the potential to be Really Special again, too. I am looking forward to the breakfasts in bed of burnt toast and grubby fruit salad, borne by my grinning little rascals. Assuming that we've actually gotten a new toaster by then....

P.S. Happy Birthday to another Five Borough resident, Ianqui. Hope the cupcakes live up to their billing!

The Rescuers

I have been meaning to blog about this for a while, but an incident this afternoon has fairly shoved it to the forefront of my pregnancy-addled mind.

Taxman, in addition to his skilled deciphering of the United States tax code, is a volunteer EMT. The volunteer ambulance service he rides with mostly serves the Jewish community, with squads in several NYC neighborhoods that have large Jewish populations. For the sake of anyone who lives out of the tristate area, I'll call them the Rescuers.

Anyway, people (and when I say people, I mean like 99% men, but that is a whole different blog entry) who want to join the Rescuers have their training and certification paid for, but then they are expected to serve their neighborhoods. Ideally there is 24/7 coverage, but because they are not on salary sometimes it gets a little dicey. One of the "perks" (and I use the term loosely) of being on the Rescuers is the pile of clothing swag, at least in this neighborhood. Taxman's collection of Rescuer gear includes a winter jacket, a windbreaker, a fleece-lined pullover, a polo shirt, a jumpsuit (that he never wears or even could, because it is a 44 long and he is a 42 short), a reflective vest, and a couple of extremely dorky baseball caps. I believe the expectation is that they show up to a call dressed in some piece of Rescuer-wear; they also have state-issued EMT ID, which of course they have with them at a call, but somehow it's not as festive.

I have been known to snag one of the pieces of Rescuer outerwear on occasion. I don't have a good windbreaker, for instance. Or when I was slinging Miss M all through last winter, I could throw the heavy jacket around both of us. We looked like a two-headed creature, but that was half the fun. In the past month or so, I've pretty much outgrown my winter jacket, a Lands End number, size women's small; I can't really zipper it around the b2b any longer because I carry babies completely out front. So I've pretty much claimed the Rescuers coat as my own.

Wearing Taxman's jacket has led to some confusion. The Rescuers are a well-known organization among the Jews in the neighborhood. So when I stop into the kosher bakery, the grocery store, or even the post office or library, I have gotten questions and comments, almost uniformly positive, about the Rescuers. (They are funded through private donations, so people who use them for emergency medical care and transportation to the hospital are not charged.) I always immediately clarify that my husband is the Rescuer, not me. But I have to wonder...am I deliberately misrepresenting myself? I do know enough about the organization to field general questions--after marrying into the organization more than six years ago--and certainly if Taxman were asked for medical attention on the street, he would call the dispatcher and make it official, get backup and an ambulance, as per protocol. (I would do the same in that situation.)

Today, as I was pushing Miss M and her stroller basket full of groceries home, I was contemplating this exact question. Somehow I had justified wearing the jacket because a) it fits, b) Taxman doesn't mind, and c) hopefully winter will be ending very soon and I can steal his plain-jane Gap sweatshirt instead. It's kind of an extension of wearing gear from a college you did not attend--but you're connected to someone who did.

Then I had one of the weirdest conversations I have had in recent memory.

A woman, who looked a bit careworn and wild-eyed, called to me from down the block.

W: "Are you a Rescuer?"
OTE: "No, sorry, I'm not. My husband is. This is his jacket."
W: "Can you help me?"
OTE: "I'm sorry, I'm not a Rescuer."
W: "So you aren't willing to help a Jew in trouble? Let me tell you, there is terrible anti-semitism going on at [the public school across the street from where we were standing]. They won't let me pick up my daughter. Her name is _____. Can you find her and bring her to me?" [A couple of points: I don't mean to be ageist in any way--and I know my share of people who had kids in their 40s--but this woman truly looked a bit old to have a child in elementary school. She reeked of cigarette smoke. Also, it was now after 5pm, and I think the elementary school lets out somewhere in the 2:45-3:15 range.]
OTE: "I don't think that the school would release her to me." [That, my friends, has got to be the understatement of the century.]
W: (getting desperate, almost hissing at me) "You go home and tell your husband, the Rescuer, that [gives a name--potentially her own?], who lives at [gives a local address] is being harassed by her husband. [Waves a shiny gold foil candy wrapper at me, then gives it to Miss M.] Make a Star of David out of this."
OTE: "Uh..."
But she had turned to go.

So many things were running through my head, primarily that I had just fielded what the EMTs called an AMS patient. (AMS=altered mental status. Although Taxman corrected me and said this was more likely a case of an EDP, an emotionally disturbed person. AMS is a temporary condition, often with a medical cause, like a stroke or fever. That's everyone's EMT lesson for today.)

Secondly, what I didn't have a chance to tell this woman is that Rescuers (indeed, any EMTs) are qualified to take care of medical situations. They are not social workers, the police, firefighters, child welfare workers, etc. Rescuers are rarely doctors, even, so they are not qualified to diagnose beyond what they see or can ascertain from their work in the field. Their primary mission is to assess the patient and stabilize to the point at which they can transport to the hospital. That's it. Again, according to Taxman, this is something that certain callers don't understand.

But I digress. Mostly, I am rethinking the Rescuer jacket after today's dose of weirdness. And we were also thinking of dressing Miss M in the Rescuer reflective vest and a matching baseball cap for Purim next week. Not that she'll keep it on, of course, so maybe it's not worth contemplating.

Edited to add: I realized later that I sounded kind of heartless in this entry when recalling my interaction with this woman. There was just something so off about her that I was instantly on the defensive. If she had seemed to be in any kind of physical danger or truly in distress, I would have tried to convince her to go to the police or, in a pinch, walked with her to our shul to find someone vaguely more qualified than I am to deal with her situation.

Saturday night puttering

from the "This is your alphabet on drugs" department:

You all know the alphabet, I trust.

Miss M can recognize all the letters, but has her own spin on the recitation of the alphabet that goes something like this:

A-B-C-E-F-G-H-(I or J, never both)-K-L-M-T (theory: in ASL N and T look very similar)-O-P-R-R (she signs Q, can't seem to say it, but knows that there are two letters between P and S)-S-U-(sometimes)V-W-X-Y....

It's very funny. And we're going to treasure it while we've got it, because as Anita ruefully pointed out, we're sure it's only a matter of time before she gets it right.

from the "Decisions, decisions!" department:

A brief food shopping excursion to gather the ingredients for a meal in progress right now (Sunday dinner for friends who had a baby), yielded the following find: kosher ready-to-bake cookie dough in a tube. Why had I assumed that it wasn't kosher? No idea. But now the question is: eat it raw or actually put it on a cookie sheet and wait 10 minutes?

from the "It all depends on your perspective" department:

Shabbat was nice overall. The sleeping was average (I definitely appreciate the concern, though!) because to cut down on the screaming I shared a twin with the bed hog, which, despite the same dimensions, is not the same as sharing half of a king. We had to do the "touch at three points" routine, but there was no crying--to my foggy recollection--between 12:30 and 6:30, and I even managed to slip out of bed for the 3:30 bathroom run without waking the beast.

The stress of Shabbat came from the fact that every house has its own babyproofing pitfalls. What your kid needs to be steered away from is not the same as another kid. So our hosts have a sweet little munchkin, 17 months old, walking but really very docile. Apparently from time to time she throws valuable stuff into the trash, like her daddy's cell phone, but it's not a regular enough occurrence to prompt putting the trash out of her reach or into a cabinet. Miss M, of course, was interested in the trash (shorter and much easier to open than the one at home), the recycling box (on the floor, open, and full of bottles, cans, and old newspapers), the kidney-shaped (not kidding) glass coffee table, low-lying bookshelves, plugged-in televisions, and the flight of stairs. Oh, the stairs. Miss M is great at going up the stairs, but she doesn't have a great deal of practice when it comes to descending stairs. And there were no gates of any kind. So I was a bit of a nervous wreck. Other than the stairs, though, it was more of an issue of the mess potential than the danger potential, but don't all the toys and books strewn about qualify as enough of a mess?

So the perspective department came in at Shabbat lunch. Other guests included a family with a set of 9-month-old twins, who are crawling and doing a little cruising. Remark from the mom of the twins to our hosts: "Your house is so babyproof!" (Taxman and I looked at each other and nearly fell over in hysterics.) We took that to mean that she was impressed that all the outlets on the first floor were covered. I have got to wonder what she would say in a year, when she has two 21-month-old toddlers.

from the "You must be kidding department":

We are experiencing a multi-day cable/internet outage. Again. So we have to borrow someone's connection. Again. We are really paying too much for this to happen twice in two months.

No good nap goes unpunished

Instead of my 15-minute haze of drowsiness while Miss M nursed down to her nap yesterday, I had a true nap. I got up when she did. And somehow from that hour and a half of bliss it was extrapolated that I should toss and turn and generally be miserable and awake from 11:30, when I went to bed, until after 3.

I was actually considering getting out of bed to blog my misery when Miss M woke up and had soaked through her diaper and pajamas. This had never happened before, but apparently asking for water--over and over--is a really good way to extend your night nursing and delay bedtime. (And get invited to Ema and Abba's bed at 1:30 in the morning because your parents are too lazy to change your sheets.) Anyway, then I was trapped, because she had to be touching me at a minimum of three points in order to put herself back to sleep without nursing. And then she was cranky when she woke up this morning, even after nursing. So I have been busy mentally calculating how many episodes of Sesame Street we have stocked in the DVR, because I suddenly have extra laundry and much less motivation to get anything accomplished.

But the good news is that we are going away for Shabbat. No cooking! All I have to do is pack for it. We are going to visit friends who used to live in the neighborhood--they were the first people we met upon moving in--and moved to one of the 4,000 suburbs a couple of years ago. Something tells me that it will be mostly nice to see them, and slightly awkward. They are sort of a high-powered couple (law and finance) and have a very cute little girl, a few months younger than Miss M. Anyway, our child-rearing techniques could not be more different. The last time we spent a Shabbat with them the girls were a lot younger, but I have a feeling this go-round things will be in high relief. (First question posed to us over the phone: will Miss M sleep in a Pack and Play? Answer: not on your life....further thought from me: Good lord, would YOU sleep on a mattress half an inch thick? The floor must be more comfortable, although surely Miss M will be playing her usual part of bed hog.)

The mantra of today will be: no cooking, no cooking, no cooking.