What? This little bump on my forehead?

You shoulda seen the other guy!

The Worried Mommy

I recently sent my family members an update on the Chooch, and I got the following response from my grandfather (Yes, he’s online.  He’s also on Facebook.  He’s your basic nonagenarian technological badass):

“Thanks for the good news about my great-granddaughter.  I am more concerned about my granddaughter (you).  Your blogs et al have been indicating: worry, worry worry.”

I have to admit I was surprised by his e-mail, not because he’s wrong about the worry worry worry, but because I thought I had done a pretty good job of keeping it to myself.  Apparently not.  Seeing as how I can’t hide it, I might as well just lay it out there, for all to read.

Some women worry about post-partum depression.  I didn’t – I’m not the depressive type.  I was more concerned about post-partum anxiety.  I get anxious.  Big time.  When I was pregnant, I had all the normal pregnant-woman worries -  Is the baby alive?  Is it growing well?  What if it’s born with a fifth limb growing out of its neck?  Dare I admit to my readers that I had to google the difference between its and it’s in order to write that sentence?

In addition to those constant worries, I also had stress related to the fact that we had done IVF, specifically about the very distinct possibility that they might have implanted the wrong embryo.  In the best of all worlds, Josh and I would end up with an African-American baby, or an Asian or Latino baby, and we wouldn’t care about the mix-up because it would still be our baby, and we would sue the lab and get our child’s college tuition and I would buy all sorts of multicultural children’s books and brown baby dolls and it would be no problem at all.  That didn’t stress me out.  What had me up at night (in addition to my giant belly and tiny bladder) was the possibility that we would end up with a white baby with dark hair and brown eyes (Josh and I both have light brown hair and blue eyes) who could have been ours, but didn’t look like either of us and people would look and her and look at us and look and her and then turn to each other and murmur in a low voice, “That’s funny.  She doesn’t really look like either of them…”

And then Choochie actually was born with a head of very dark hair, and I knew it was true.

Of course, now that her dark hair has grown in blonde, and she has Josh’s blue eyes and my dark circles under those beautiful eyes (sorry!) and Josh’s ADD and my temperament (totally bitchy when hungry or tired but generally fairly happy otherwise), I know she’s ours.

Which frees me up to worry about everything else:  Why does she sleep so much?  Am I feeding her the right foods?  Do I really need to use one of those corny shopping cart covers?  What if I fall down the stairs when I am carrying her?  Will this kid ever learn to use a sippy cup?  What is this Fifth’s Disease again, does she have it, and are you really sure it won’t kill, maim, or permanently disfigure her?  Where are we going to send her to preschool?  What if she’s the only kid in her kindergarten class who isn’t crawling?  Or walking?  Or drinking out of a cup?  And of course, the perennial worry:  Is she still breathing??  (You’d think I’d be over that by now, right?  I mean, it has been nine months and she’s still breathing.  Well, I’m not over it, and I don’t plan to be any time soon.  I’m hoping that by the time she goes off to college they will have invented a remote breath-monitor.  Good for measuring BAC as well as general breathing activities.)

So, yes, I’m a worry freak.  The thing is, I always have been.  Choochie just happens to be the current hook on which I hang my worry hat.  And I’m ok with that.  I work hard to be aware of my worry, and not let it dictate my behavior (other than the night-time check-ins, but she’s asleep, so what the hell does she know?).  I let her put toys in her mouth that have been on the floor.  I’m not terribly anal about what I feed her.  I let the lady at the post office hold her so I could tape up a package.  Sometimes I *gasp* let her cry in her crib for awhile before I drag my butt out of bed to get her.  Hell, she’s been in there for 12 hours, what’s a few more minutes?

One of the greatest compliments Josh and I ever received was from a colleague of his who noted that we seem like second time parents.  What he didn’t know is that we work hard at it.  At least I do.  You have no idea how tempted I am to put this kid in a helmet and wrap her in bubble wrap.  But I don’t.  And now she has a decent bruise on her forehead from falling into the coffee table.  Nice.

Lest you think I’m over-compensating, I’m not.  I have more than enough worry to compensate for any attempts I might make to over-compensate.  She hasn’t had strawberries or honey or peanuts yet.  I buy organic baby food and BPA-free bottles.  I put so much sunscreen on the kid that she looks like an albino when we go out.  And I don’t let her watch NCIS anymore, as much as I want to.

So, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it, whether I like it or not.  Now I’m going to go stress out about why she doesn’t know how to wave yet.

No Blog-Ola Here

A real post will be coming soon, but in the meanwhile, I will refer you to this story from NPR about MommyBloggers, BlogHer, and the “Ethics of Blog-Ola”.  (You may also want to check out Blog With Integrity.)  Don’t worry, you can feel comfortable reading this blog knowing that I have no sponsor, no ulterior motive, and at this particular moment, no motivation whatsoever.

As long as I’m being a lazy blogger, I’ll also send you over to this review of Sippy-Cups.  In the interest of full-disclosure, we own the Nalgene Grip N Gulp, but not because Nalgene sent me one to review or anything cool like that (I think you need more than 12 readers before they start sending you swag).  Rather, I bought it because I was looking for a smaller water bottle for myself, and I thought the blue one was really cute.  (I’m a sucker for blue things.)  It wasn’t until later that I realized it was a sippy-cup.  Um, yeah, in case you haven’t realized it yet, I’m not that smart.

Naked Baby Time!

Politics, identity, and raising a Jew Baby

I don’t usually get into political issues, but this time something in the news is directly related to how I think, and a parenting issue I have been struggling with.

The arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has been all over the local news here in Massachusetts. My NPR affiliate posted a Facebook link to the latest update – that all charges have been dropped – and a few people responded by saying that the situation was blown out of proportion, that Prof. Gates over-reacted, that he should be grateful for the neighbor who was watching out for his home, essentially that Gates should just “get over it”.

On the one hand, I see their point, and in a different world, I might also be wondering why we all can’t just get along. But this isn’t a perfect world, and whether or not I agree with Prof. Gates’ reaction, I understand it, and I don’t fault him for it. Remember my post after the Holocaust Museum shooting? Now, the situation isn’t a perfect analogy, because I was responding to an intentional attack against an institution directly related to the persecution of my people and culture, but the underlying idea behind my reaction was the same. The news of the shooting brought my minority status to the forefront of my mind, and I reacted to the woman behind the counter as a Jew, not as your average White American, which is who she undoubtedly thought I was. Not only is Prof. Gates an African-American man who will never be mistaken for an average White American, but he has also made a life’s work of exploring and understanding the experience of Africans and African-Americans. He wasn’t responding to the police as a generic American, or as a respected and accomplished Harvard Professor. He was responding as a black man who spends a lot of time thinking about the experiences of black men, and I would guess that he was also scared. Having the police show up on your door step and ask you to step outside of your house is scary for anyone, but especially for a black man in the United States. Even in the Republic of Cambridge.

The point of all of this, as I said before, is that whether or not I agree with his reaction, I certainly understand it, and I can’t say that I would respond differently. Either way, I hope the world would not judge me based on my behavior when I feel scared or threatened.

The arrest of Prof. Gates got me thinking about an issue that has been rattling around in my brain for awhile now. Just as Gates undoubtedly sees the world as a black man (and an American, and a scholar, and a professor, etc.), I see the world from the perspective of a mother, a woman, a Jew, and a social worker, among other things. Jew and social worker – that can be a dangerous combination. Let’s start with the social worker part – I can’t tell you how many perfectly good books, tv shows, movies, and country songs (yes, I believe there are perfectly good country songs) have been ruined by my professional training and experience. I read child developmental books and websites that refer to Mommies and Daddies and I think about gay and lesbian couples, single parents and grandparents. Napoleon Dynamite killed me – I spent the whole movie wondering why there wasn’t a social worker visiting the home. Every time I hear the song “All Because Two People Fell in Love” by Brad Paisley (a country song about how the world is made a better place by the achievements of children who were born because two people fell in love), all I can think about is how many children are born to loveless pairings, arranged marriages, or are the products of rape or sexual assault. And House episodes – don’t get me started. I love the show (What health professional doesn’t? What more could we want than to be so good at our job that we can tell our patients exactly what we think of them, all while saving their lives?), but I don’t care if it is Lupus or MS or Wilson’s Disease, why are those family members sitting alone in the hallway while Dr. House and his team are temporarily killing their loved one for exactly 33 seconds in order to save him?? Where is the damned social worker? It’s a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse, and one I can’t turn off. Fortunately, I have learned to generally keep my mouth shut, as I don’t need to further confirm people’s already lingering suspicions that I am a freak.

And then there is the Jew in me. Just the other day I was in a music class with Choochie, and the leader of the group read a book about Grandma going to the store for cheese and black forest ham. Eeek! Off goes the Jew-alert! No, I wasn’t offended (Don’t get me wrong – bacon is DELICIOUS. I just don’t eat it.), but I was aware. All of a sudden I was re-reading the other Moms’ nametags, trying to figure out who else was Jewish – a task made decidedly more difficult without last names. Sarah? Could be. Roxanne? Likely not. Miriam? Almost definitely. Then I’m thinking about how nice it would be if there was a children’s book about grandma going to the store for brisket and bagels or cheese and lactaid. And yes, there are plenty of Jewishly-themed children’s books about Shabbat or Chanukah or Pesach, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’d like to see a general children’s book that isn’t about being Jewish, but it’s about being a kid with a grandmother, and yet it’s one that Choochie will be able to relate to when she relates to things in ways other than shoving them into her mouth.

Which sent my brain off onto yet another tangent – how will I explain to Choochie why we don’t eat bacon or cheeseburgers or lobster? As I have mentioned before, Josh and I have a… unique approach to kashrut. We don’t keep kosher in a way that would matter to anyone who cares, but it’s just enough to make us annoying to friends and family who are kind enough to feed us. We do it because it matters to us that we’re Jewish, and not eating or mixing certain foods is yet another way that we make choices based on our values. No, I don’t actually think G-d cares if I eat a bacon cheeseburger or not, nor do I think that passing up a tasty lobster makes me a better person or a better Jew. It’s just another way in which I insert my Jewish values and identity into my daily life, and that matters to me. It matters to us, and hopefully someday it will matter to Choochie. But how does one explain that to a three year old?  (Perhaps I should cross that bridge when I come to it…)

All of this is just a slice of the big pie that I am struggling with – what does it mean to raise a child with a minority identity in a majority culture? Yes, with her blond hair and blue eyes, she will be able to pass, just as her father and I often have (until we say our names!), just as Professor Gates can’t, regardless of whether or not he opens his mouth. But I don’t want her to have to pass, or to want to pass. As a white woman, she will be lucky enough to reap the benefits of white privilege, but she will also grow up in a world where the benign among us assume that she eats ham for Easter and has a Christmas tree and the anti-Semites would prefer that she didn’t exist at all, or at least not in her current form. I hope that as her mother, I can teach her to find her way of responding in a thoughtful, appropriate, and empowering manner. As Prof. Gates has shown us, it isn’t always easy.

No Cheeks… Cheeks!

Checking on Choochie

Young girls are problematic, teenage girls even more so.  I know because I was one myself.  Throughout my adolescent years I was easily vexed (can you tell I just finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?), quick to share my annoyance, and fairly unhelpful around the house.  I remember getting in fights with my younger brother and sister, who were toddlers at the time, and quite honestly not understanding why my mother would side with them.  Even if I was more than a decade older than them, even if I was learning to drive when they were just learning to toilet themselves, why did she expect so much of me?  My frustration with my siblings would quickly be transferred to my mother; I was frequently angry at her for having the audacity to give me a curfew; she would get annoyed at me for conveniently having to use the restroom right when it was time to clear the table.  We bickered a lot.

My mother (whom I now call every day) recently told me that one day when she was doing my laundry, she found a note in the pocket of my jeans, written in my handwriting, which said, “Don’t worry.  My mother doesn’t know shit.”  I have no recollection of writing that note, and I honestly can’t remember doing anything warranting such a missive.  My teenage rebellion was generally mild, other than ditching so many classes that I was declared a truant by the state of California.  The state’s attempts to scare me into attending those boring classes backfired; I had no idea that one could still be considered a “truant”, and my reaction to the official letter from the school board was one of overwhelming pride.  Other than that, though, I was generally a good girl.  Nonetheless, I still frequently found my parents to be a source of embarrassment and irritation, and I rarely, if ever, thought of their perspective.

That perspective, being, of course, how much they loved me.  (Yes, I also made them insane, but we’re not going to focus on such trivial details at this point.)  Those of you who know me know that my childhood was a rocky one, but the one fact of which I was never in doubt was how much my parents loved me.  Not unlike so many things which we take for granted, however, I didn’t often consider their love when I tried to understand (or not) their reactions to me or decisions about my upbringing.  I was a teenager, so my primary reaction to them was generally not as positive as it could have been.

Now, as a mother, I am experiencing the other side of the picture.  I trust that Josh and I will do our best to teach our daughter good judgment and discernment, empathy and kindness, and how to make decisions such that one doesn’t end up right smack dab in the middle of the a major clusterfuck.  Having said that, I can already see that Choochie has inherited certain traits from both her father and me that could make her adolescent years more challenging than any of us would like.  At only 9 months, she is independent and opinionated, active and curious, and a seriously smooth talker.  (Ok, she’s actually a terrible talker – all we get is DaDaDaDaDa and a variety of screeches and squeals, but she can charm an elevator full of busy professionals before we reach the third floor.)  At first glance, these qualities may seem great, but they are a dangerous combination.  If she’s anything like her father and me, she’s going to sweet talk us into believing that she would never take that golf cart out onto the ninth hole in the middle of the night or walk across the Golden Gate Bridge at 2 in the morning or ditch class to go play in the fields of the nunnery across the street or go rollerblading through the halls of the local university until security has to chase her off campus.  And we’ll be suspicious, but she’ll come home with a good report card and her friends will seem lovely, and what can we do?  We’ll do what parents do – we’ll give her a curfew and set limits when we can and try our damnedest  to catch her in the act if for no other reason than our own amusement.  And she’ll feel annoyed and angry and confused and perhaps she’ll even write some bad poetry about it.  But hopefully she’ll never doubt how much we love her.

Which brings me to the point of all of us.  I hope one day Choochie will read this blog, and learn about a side of me that she might not otherwise see.  She’ll learn about the early months of her life, and what a crazy, wonderful, confusing, maddening, lovely experience it was for me.  But most of all, I hope she is reminded of how much I love her.  How much we both, Josh and I, love her.  Perhaps by the time she reads this I may have forgotten to tell her that every night, when we are ready to go to sleep, hours after we have put her down for the night, we go into her room to check on her.  We check the temperature to make sure it’s not too hot or cold, Josh adjusts the fan, and I stand by her crib and stare for a minute, and then a minute longer.  We’ve been doing this since the first night we put her to sleep in her own room, when she was five weeks old.  This habit was initially fueled by my fear of SIDS, but now it’s mostly because after not seeing her for three hours, I actually kind of miss her.

So, Choochie, if you’re 16 years old and reading this, and you’re feeling angry at the world, and perhaps mostly me, know that I torment you because I love you.  You don’t remember me checking on you at night, and you’d likely be horrified if I did it now, but know that I could if I would.  Because I love you.  And because I’m a neurotic freak like that.

At the Crystal Lake Beach

Love the Stroller…

When OCD Meets Baby

I think I may have hit my first major parenting dilemma.  Yes, I have struggled with a number of different questions about how to best parent Choochie, but most of these have to do with lack of information and experience.  How exactly does nursing work?  Which stroller should we buy?  How do I get this onesie off of the baby without smearing poo in her hair?  (My sister enthusiastically cuts them off – I must say I’m tempted, if for no other reason than to play paramedic.)  Can we feed her dairy and peanuts before she is a year old?  These questions are challenging at times, especially when I haven’t slept much, but they don’t really have anything to do with me, with my values, wants, and needs (other than my desire not to be covered in poo, but I’m pretty much over that).

This past week I faced my first parenting dilemma pitting me against baby.  Well, to be clear, it was My Kind of Crazy vs. Normal Baby Behavior.  You see, I like things in sets.  And when things come in sets, I like to keep the whole set together, even if I don’t use all the pieces.  I find it pleasing when things match and fit together.  When we were younger, my sister and I used to get pages of different stamps from the cereal boxes.  I would trade almost all of my stamps for one row of my sister’s so I could have all the matching stamps.  When we would go shopping for school supplies, we would buy the little kits that included pens, pencils, rulers, staplers, staple removers, tape dispensers, etc.  My sister would ditch half of her set, taking only what she needed to school.  I couldn’t bear to do that – I lugged that stapler and staple remover to class every day, even though I never stapled everything.  It just brought me such joy to have it all together.  And such deep psychological pain to lose even one piece.  (Feel free to draw all sorts of conclusions about my ego functioning, etc., if you so desire, but I’m sure you must have better ways to spend your time.  Isn’t there an NCIS rerun on?)

Any of you who are familiar with baby toys know that they often come in sets – nesting cups, rings that fit on top of each other, small plastic blocks that fit through the properly shaped in the lid of the box.  I love that about baby toys.  I also hate that about baby toys… the risk of losing one lurks around every corner, especially when we go on vacation.

Oddly enough, 8 month olds don’t actually care about sets, pieces fitting together, or matching toys.  They seem to prefer inserting parts and bits of said toys into their mouths, and then flinging them hither and yon.  Where they get lost.  And then I never see them again.  And then I FREAK OUT.

So, you can imagine my horror when I recently cleaned up after a baby playfest and found this:

Seriously, people.  In what world is this acceptable?  I feel twitchy and uncomfortable inside every time I look at this picture, even knowing that the green ring has been found and restored to its rightful place.  Fortunately, I found the green ring several hours after it went missing, but not before I checked under the couch fifteen times, sure that it would be there this time.  I also wasted a good number of brain cells trying to decide what I would do if I couldn’t find it.  Would I buy a new toy, and use this one for spare parts?  (I decided against this option – knowing my luck, the green ring would be the first to go missing again.  Also, I would just feel like a major jerk.)  Is there a place where one can buy random parts of baby toys?  (I bought new parts for our second hand Exersaucer off eBay.  There was no possible way I could tolerate those empty holes where toys should be.)  Should I post something on one of the many Mommy list-servs I belong to?  How crazy will they think I am?  And do I care?  Honestly, I would happily sacrifice my last shred of dignity in the service of completing this toy.

Luckily, the green ring surfaced.  However, the issue is not resolved.  Other pieces will go missing, and in fact, they have:

Yes, the missing cup is incredibly distressing to me.  But I really don’t want to be that parent who is constantly corraling toys, or obsessing about them, or not letting Choochie take things places because of the risk of loss.  Toys go missing and we need to learn to deal with it.  (Ha!)  The thing is, I can’t deal with it.  I’ve tried and tried, but after 31 years, I still can’t.  I don’t know if I ever will.  Hopefully Choochie will inherit this little quirk of mine, so we can spend our days happily collecting, gathering, sorting, and matching toys.  If not, I have no idea what we’ll do.  In the meanwhile, I give the little green ring a kiss every once in awhile, and I still mourn the loss of cup #1.  On a rough day, I contemplate buying a whole new set of nesting cups, but I haven’t succumbed to my inner anal demons.  Yet.