Disingenuous Elmo

Posted on April 24, 2013 by The Waiting

Disingenuous Elmo is not the opening act of the opening act of the opening act of MGMT at Coachella. It is the theme to much of my first year of parenthood.

One of the real neat things I do when I get thrown into a situation in which I have no idea what I’m doing is play make-believe that I have control. I put on a $9 wig from Party City and trot around like it’s totally normal and gorgeous. I eventually get swept up in the charade and convince myself that my farce is real, which I guess might be the entire point of pretending in the first place. Playing pretend that we have everything figured out is a coping mechanism. We cling to images and symbols that sound right and we want for ourselves. But when those symbols – take Elmo, in my case – don’t jive with reality, I have to snap myself out of my pantomime and start living as a real person rather than an actor. My neon blue curly wig is not fooling anyone, and it’s only setting me back from embracing my own graying roots.

No Elmo in sight in this Season 16 cast picture Source

Elmo was still a minor character on Sesame Street when I was a child. In the ’80s, he was just a minion in the Bird Bird Army. But then, when I was in ninth grade, Tickle Me Elmo came out. Little kids got the Crazy Elmo Eyes and parents became equally possessed with Elmo fever, essentially slitting each others’ throats on Black Friday to acquire one of these toys for their kids. I absorbed the Tickle Me Elmo wars as they were recounted on the evening news. As a side note, just remember the next time you are throwing a shoe at your TV for reporting “news” about skateboarding pigs that this has been going on for years. Fluff journalism is nothing new.

I could not have known it at the time, but observing the fixation that both children and parents had on Elmo in 1996 was shaping my view of parenthood, which I wouldn’t enter myself until 2012. I filed Elmo away as the kryptonite of all crying children, and the vibrating doll became the symbol of parental appeasement.

When my day of reckoning finally did roll around and I pushed C from my loins in a moment of triumph with a splash of what-the-eff-have-I-gotten-myself-into, all those old images of Elmo came back to me like the smell of my kindergarten lunchroom. I clung to them and assumed they were collective parenting Truth. I sincerely believed that if things got really bad one day – like, the baby was screaming from dawn to ~~dusk~~ dawn, totally angered that she had gotten stuck with me as a mother – Elmo was the trick to fix it all. All I’d have to do was switch him on and she’d mellow out.

This is as delusional as it sounds. Obviously. Elmo was the furthest thing from C’s mind when she was hungry, tired, or just frustrated. All my attempts to thrust that little red monster on her were met with contempt and ire. This is no surprise, of course. It’s also not the moral to the story.

I continued to perpetuate this image of her that she just loved Elmo. Look at my cookie-cutter baby. She is so cute and obsessed with a little red monster. Yes, she is just so attached to him and isn’t that just darling? Thank God for Elmo or I’d never get rest! LOL LOL LOL. Platitude after platitude. It was all fabricated by me because I was panicking that I didn’t know who my kid was. Elmo was this symbol I latched onto and perpetuated in my everyday dealings with other parents and in my writing because I didn’t want anyone to know that even though I loved C, I had no idea who she was. No idea. Some days, she was happy as a lark and then she’s have a Jekyll and Hyde moment and turn into a seething teething monster. Her preferences were fickle. Just when I thought she was developing an attachment to a particular toy, she’d scorn it. She really, really liked that damn Gangnam Style, but that didn’t fit in with my image of things babies should like. So I disingenuously convinced myself that Elmo meant something to her even when she couldn’t give a crap about him. All I wanted was a good, safe symbol.

It has been my experience as a parent that all births come in pairs, even if your child wasn’t a twin. First, you give birth to a little screaming salami. Then, in the bloody, mucousy afterbirth comes another screaming infant: yourself. That person is just as foreign to you as your baby. During your childless years, you were in utero preparing to be pushed forth into a foreign, cold world of parenthood. Just like your baby, you baked long enough to survive on the outside, but surviving is not the same as thriving. You still have to figure out who you are and whether Elmo or whatever you selected as your arbitrary mascot is actually yours. You have to shoot spitballs to the wall and see if any stick. And if they don’t, you have to let it go and forgive yourself for not living up to your idealized version of your parent self. Let that effortless love you have for your baby leak into the dwindling supply of love you have for the parent you, that other new baby. Forgive yourself for not being able to anticipate who you would be.

But then, move on.

It took me a year to realize that Elmo was not ours. More importantly, it took me a year to realize that it’s OK to have moments - nay, weeks – when I look at her and feel like I’m staring at a stranger. Even though I may feel like she changes every day, there is a thin, strong, invisible fishing wire threaded right through her that makes her essentially her. As her mother, I have the ability to find it better than almost anyone else, but only when I stop looking for it and observe her as a whole.

I’m stripping away the Elmos and finding a relationship with my daughter that is better than anything I could have ever seen on the news when I was thirteen.

The Other Side: A Final Note For the First Year

Posted on March 31, 2013 by The Waiting

Dear Miss C,

Hello, my girl. It’s been one heck of a year, eh? I will never forget the moment I awoke at 6:15 one year ago today and knew that you were coming. Just the day before I had been at Target doing some mundane shopping and thinking about how I still had to wait one more week to meet you. Just like your mom, though, you were a little early. That’s a good habit to get into.

I knew you were mine, but I still had to get to know-know you. There is no orientation weekend for babies and moms; you just have to dive in headfirst and hold your breathe. I was dumbstruck that nothing in my life could have prepared me for the mix of emotions I felt when I looked at you and attempted to give you what you needed. I often thought about how ludicrous it was that only a few days before, you were still baking inside me. And now, you were out. Just out. I was as new to being a mom as you were to being a human, and we both cried a lot and slept very little in those days.

OK, so maybe you slept. Sometimes.

Looking all happy with the world at 2MO.

But we learned. You taught me to practice a brand of patience I never dreamed existed. This was a special kind of patience that I couldn’t acquire while waiting at the DMV or even teaching ESL kindergarten. This patience wasn’t forced; it just existed within and without me at the same time. You broke my heart with your sweetness and delicateness. I had no desire but to love you and give you the best of the world. All of a sudden, those long, long weeks of not sleeping and just struggling to get through the day are a distant memory, even though they were less than a year ago. This is because you are magical and somehow found a way to contort time itself. Um, maybe not. But I’m your mom so to me you’ll always be magical.

“Highchairs are AWESOME!!!! ZOMG!”

You have been an easy baby. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it. You slept through the night when you were seven weeks old and weren’t collicky. You loved being held and curling up on our tummies while you slept. You’ve never much liked it when I put you in you playpen or your scooter when I took a shower, but day by day you’re learning that you can occupy and entertain yourself. The world is your oyster and as much as I cringe when you dart towards the dishwasher whenever you notice that it’s open, I am glad that you care. I’m reluctantly happy that you would rather tear pages out of books than watch TV. You are my special little mess and I relish the fits you throw because then I know that you’re feeling. I have made a little breathing feeler. If you ever have children yourself, you’ll understand why that’s such a big deal to me.

I have made a human, and that human is you. You were the one I waited for all along.

Vote early and vote often. Let your voice be heard.

Let your voice be heard. And go ahead and rip your socks off if you don’t want to wear them, too. Do what you gotta do.

The other day, we were taking a bath and you looked straight at me and babbled a sentence-length series of syllables. Your sentence was full of meaning and intent. The words weren’t there, but you had basically taken off the training wheels of language. I stared back in your eyes and marveled that you had something to say. And not only that, but it was to me that your words were directed. Please always, always know that your words are valuable and strong. Take care of them and own them. When you use them, be kind and smart, both to others and yourself.

Knowing you has easily been the most incredible honor of my life. The word “amazing” springs to mind, but I hear that word too often and so it surely cannot describe the uniqueness of watching you interact with the world and knowing that you are mine in a way that no one else is. I adore you, my Sweetbabybuney. Thank you for being you and loving me in a way that no one else ever has or ever will. Thank you for existing and for making me be a better me. Know that Daddy and I love you more than we could ever possibly tell you in a letter or a poem. Our hearts keep growing with every breath you take. Keep inhaling and soak in this big world at your feet.

Happy birthday,

Mommy

Just Because

Posted on January 29, 2013 by The Waiting

Little girl, I love you so,

More than you will ever know.

Your back, your ear, your teeth, your nose

Every day, my heart just grows.

I know that there will come a day

When you’ll grow up and move away.

But right now, in your babyhood,

You’re still all mine and that is Good.

The Other Side: Notes on the Ninth Month

Posted on January 2, 2013 by The Waiting

A girl with a curl(ish).

Even though we all know that 40 weeks actually equals ten months rather than nine (or at least those of us who have actually been pregnant know this, as that last month is probably the most miserable making us acutely aware of the passage of time), I can’t help but think that Miss C has now been out for roughly the same amount of time that she was in. She’s been in the world for 2012 and 2013, which makes her quite a woman of the world. It’s funny to me how much I groaned and moaned and felt sorry for myself during the more vomit-y moments of my pregnancy. Now that she’s here, I wish I could indulge myself and take a moment to nap or watch TV all day when I’m not feeling my best, but a crawling exploring baby doesn’t really afford me those moments.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

A cabbage leaf makes a good hat. (As does a tissue box. Bonus points for the reference.)

These last nine months have been rich and scary and wonderful. This small girl has transformed from a wiggling ball of sugar to a person who likes things, who knows me, and who dances and yells when she needs me. She has preferences and is hinting at the possibility of eventually forming opinions. I am so proud. Nothing she does goes unnoticed. I swell with happiness every time she discovers something new.

Little assistance necessary.

And she’s been discovering a lot. Crawling is passe. Now that she’s mastered it, she’s pulling up all by herself on sofas and coffee tables. She even shows a little bit of indignation when we put her in her scooter chair because she can go faster without its assistance and she knows it. She can feed herself her bottle now. When she reaches her milestones, I often get melancholy, but I like it that she can feed herself at least partially now because it gives me a couple extra moments to meander over my own coffee. Independence is good for everyone.

And words. There are words. Even though she’s unable to say them herself, she knows and responds to “breakfast”, “lunch”, “dinner”, “snack”, “bottle”, “bath”, “change”, “daddy”, “mommy”, “nap time”, “hello”, “goodbye”, and “car ride”. (She also responds to “Gangnam Style” but that doesn’t exactly make me look like the best parent.) B and I will likely start signing with her too, so if you have any experience with baby signs, please let me know in the comments because we need to start somewhere.

She found all the shells at Bubby’s house.

She literally started waving at us and other people overnight. When we were on the road for Christmas, we always stopped at Panera Bread for lunch because duh, it’s Panera and it’s the best EVER. Every time we went in, she waved at everyone and smiled and often squealed. I have no idea how she acquired the waving skill because it’s not something B or I really showed her how to do, so I guess it’s instinctual. Is it lame that I think she’s a genius whenever she waves at us and others? I think she’s a genius most of the time not because I’m overly doting but because I just can’t believe I CREATED this girl. It is amazing to me that at one point she didn’t exist and now she does. And not only does she exist, but she exists well and she is achieving things. Gah.

Strangers and extra activities are kind of a scary thing with her right now. We worked really hard to get her in a routine that she could depend on and to give her safety and security in her interactions, so it was only a matter of time until a deviation from those routines would scare her a little or at least put her in a tizzy. When we left her for an overnight visit with my mom while we were in Memphis, she had a hard time adjusting for the first couple hours (as did we). But eventually she realized that she was safe and loved so she relaxed. She is surrounded by people who love her and she knows it.

Taken approximately 11 1/2 hours into Christmas. It was a long day but she (and Grammy) were good sports.

I wrote about her dancing a few posts back, but dancing and swaying are a big enough thing for her that it’s worth repeating. She loves music and tempo and sways to the beat even when I’m doing something rhythmic like using the electric mixer or hammering a nail. I am planning on doing a post soon about some of the music she likes, which I think will offer an interesting postscript to the posts I wrote during my pregnancy about the music I imagined playing for her. I’m also contemplating putting up a video of her on the blog. I’ve been hesitant to do so in the past because I’m trying to define boundaries about what I will and won’t share here. Any thoughts (especially from the mommy bloggers) are, as always, appreciated.

So nine months. Three more and then she’s practically in college. I’m holding on. Happy nine months on this crazy planet, sweet girl.

We are the goodest.

The Other Side: Notes on the Eighth Month

Posted on December 4, 2012 by The Waiting

To the baby who will eventually read all these posts about her development over her first year:

I’m sorry this is going to be a short summary of all the stuff you’ve been doing. You are currently napping in your swing*, and I have no idea how long your slumber will last. Writing about you during your waking hours is out of the question, as you are in to everything and love to have my full, undivided attention.

*Which, incidentally, you totally busted out of a few days ago. I heard you screaming bloody murder and when I went to go check on you, you were dangling by your leg from the strap. My apologies for not buying you that baby straight-jacket that could have held you in place.

Crawling has given you a new lease on life. There is no turning back from your semi-independence. I think back on eight months ago when you were smaller than the throw pillows on the couch and could barely latch on when I fed you. Now you can make it across the entire apartment in about 15 seconds. You are growing too fast. You’re killing me, C. I want you to stay small, but with each new syllable that you utter, you are romancing me with the more mature you. You’re coaxing me with your delicate movements and I am beginning to wonder if all that time I was pregnant with you and when you were a newborn was just a figment of my imagination, since the child I have now is more a girl than a baby. These two yous can’t exist within the space of one year.

I am resigning myself to your 12 month old outfits, even though you’re only just now beginning your ninth month outside of me. I’m putting the clothes you’ve outgrown in a bag in your closet. It’s a big yellow bag they gave me at the hospital when I had you, a space to put all the personal effects of my pregnancy. Now it holds the footie pajamas I can’t pretend you can still wear. My organized self used to like cleaning out your drawers of the clothes you had outgrown, but now it makes me sad. Just one more night in your tiny green pajamas? Just one more morning with a long sleepy nursing session?

No, you have places to be and toilets to inspect. I don’t blame you for it, but I am already missing the girl you were this morning, only a few minutes ago. Yet I adore the girl you are now. You are beckoning me forward and holding my hand as I become the mom you need me to be, all while I hold you up right back.

All about the paci

Is it possibly that I’ve never put a picture of C in the bath tub on the blog? Oversight remedied.

We finally found the best remedy for achy teething gums: partially frozen zucchini.

This is the one and only outfit I bought for her before she was born. Good purchase.

She loves her blanket forts.

The magic of a blanket fort.

Time to lower the mattress.

Good Company

Posted on November 30, 2012 by The Waiting

The pride I feel for Wee Cee is like nothing I had ever experienced before I had her. Even her growing hair is a cause to celebrate. I’m sure I’m too fussy, but I don’t care. She’s my little slice of perfection and even when she’s driving me to the brink of insanity, I adore her. The fact that she can elicit a response from me at all is a credit to her developing personality and all the more reason to feel parental pride.

Just the two of us

Along with all the milestones she hits, I’m learning too. I’m learning the profundity of the love all parents have for their children. Before I had her, I thought parents loved their kids because, hey, why not? You can’t beat ‘em, so you may as well fawn over them. That’s part of it, but it turns out that the adoration you have for your own child is largely instinctual. There’s a little piece of yourself crawling around and babbling, and with each crawl and babble, you become more and more addicted to her. This parental adoration is the great equalizer. We all have it, and that’s reassuring. It’s good to know that everyone who ever lived was either loved this way, and if they choose to have their own kids, will be vessels of this selflessness.

My dad had to travel a lot for his work as a Caterpillar salesman. He went on solo sales calls constantly, but he also went to a lot of swanky conventions. Occasionally my mom would accompany him sans my brother and me, so as to recharge her own batteries. Sometime when I was in fifth or sixth grade, she went to Scottsdale, Arizona to meet my dad at a convention being held at the Gainey Ranch, apparently a very big deal. She arrived before my dad and relished the opportunity for some maxin’ and relaxin’, since this is what we all did in the early 90′s.

One day, she went down to one of the several fab restaurants at the hotel to enjoy brunch. (I actually have no idea what meal she was having, but I’m assuming it was brunch because brunch is the most luxurious and swank of meals. The Gainey Ranch likely only sells brunch.) Adjacent to her table was a large group of women who were clearly having a good time. One lady in particular zeroed in on my mom and within minutes her little party of one had been absorbed into the amorphous larger table.

This is all no big deal until the identity of the chatty lady from the big table was revealed.

Beatty Zimmerman and her son, Bob Dylan

She was Bob Dylan’s mom. And she wanted to talk all about her son.

My mom learned that she had been displaced to Arizona for the winter at her son’s insistence that it would be more comfortable than Minnesota. My mom was intrigued. She asked what he had been like as a child.

“He was beautiful. He was a poet and he always wrote us poems as gifts. He was tender and kind,” Bob Dylan’s mom gushed. These types of questions never get old. No matter how famous your child is, he is still your baby. For this was the woman who knew Robert Zimmerman. She loved him when he was born and she loved him when he grew. She even loved him when he plugged in.

She asked my mom about my brother and me, and my mom described us with the same maternal enthusiasm. In that moment, they were just two moms, talking about their babies.

My mom told us this story when we were kids and we were impressed because she had met a relative of a celebrity. In a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon sort of way, I was famous too because Bob Dylan and I existed as equals within the same conversation. And as much as I still want to glean some kind of glory from this, these days I think more about Bob Dylan’s mom than I do about him. She loved him in a way that no one else ever will. She would have invited my mom over to her table even if he had been a gas station attendant. She loved him for the small things, the things that make him essentially him.

And that’s parenthood: adoring them because they are ours. There are no caveats or exceptions. We are in good company with our parents because they will always love us, gold record or no.

My mom and me in pre-C 2011

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Today’s the last day to RSVP for Pressedivus! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Monday’s post for more details.

The Other Side: Notes on the Seventh Month

Posted on November 7, 2012 by The Waiting

I am the parent of a seven month old child. This wallops me every time I think about it.

My seven month old child. B and I commonly refer to the summer months as “when she was a baby.” She’s clearly a middle schooler now that it’s fall.

Babies are a bigger deal than we give them credit for. Things we take for granted – feeding ourselves, our ability to put ourselves back to sleep when we wake in the middle of the night, and spacial awareness – are things that pose big challenges to them every day. Luckily, since they haven’t acquired the concept of giving up, they just keep on keepin’ on until they master these skills. It’s pretty admirable. Sometimes I wish I were a baby because I’d be learning new stuff every day. I’m not doing NaNoWriMo (I’m doing NaNoWriDecade), but if I told C to, she’d probably crank out a book. No promises that it would be all that good, but she’d give it the ol’ college try.

So! On with C’s newly acquired skills. This may be a long post. Heh.

First off, crawling. Crawling like a mofo. But you know this. C has places to go and dust bunnies to ingest, so she’s a busy girl. She can also sit up by herself completely unassisted.

The monster under the crib.

Napping has gotten a lot better. Although there are no hard and fast times that she will conk out each day, she has improved about 1000% in falling asleep for naps without the bottle. I will just put her in her swing – and POOF! – within about eight minutes she will usually fall asleep all by herself. (Running the vacuum doesn’t hurt, though). I’m calling Harvard on this one. She had a bit of sleep regression during the last week of October with the onset of all her new skills.

Since she was wearing a brown boyish onesie, I decided to put a ribbon on her head so people would know she was a girl when we went out. So when we took the ribbon off, her hair did this. LOL.

It was bound to happen eventually, but it looks like she has finally gotten sick. This is likely because she puts everything in her mouth and sucks her thumb*. But this morning when I was changing her, I noticed little splotches all over her torso. Thankfully, Ashley posted last month about similar symptoms in her daughter Sonia, and so I’m pretty sure C has come down with Roseola. Pretty yuck, but the moral to this whole story is that it pays to read blogs of people whose kids are a couple steps ahead of yours because when your kid finally comes down with something, you freak out a lot less. She’ll be OK.

*I was considering giving the thumb sucking item its own whole paragraph, not because it troubles me, but because it’s so cute. It’s the little things.

I may have written about this in the past, but I’m now going officially on the record saying that breastfeeding proper is pretty much over. She will nurse for about 15 minutes in the morning, but lately she’s been taking to biting and this is no bueno. I pump throughout the day so she is still getting breastmilk, but I’m not going to lie: I’m kind of over it. Since we’ve made it this long, though, I figure we’ll go for five more months. Famous last words. She’s a big fan of eating otherwise, although she’s not really at the point yet where she can feed herself her little baby crackers. She mostly just holds them in her fists where they then melt. I usually find them still in her hands 30 minutes later. Yum.

Her babbling is getting more and more defined each day. I love to hear her little coos and da-da-DAs. No ma-ma-MAs yet. She’s making me hold out. That’s OK, though. We have an understanding.

She loves her routines and we do too, but she really enjoys being out and about with us. We went to Raleigh last weekend to meet up with Kelly from Excitement on the Side and her kids*, and she just hung out in B’s lap the entire time and enjoyed herself. At some point, she became a baby who could do this! It’s no small thing.

*There will be a post or seven about this. The hangoutage was as awesome as you think.

A baby after her parents’ hearts

Happy seven months to our sweet girl! We love her so, so much. I could think of a more pithy and poetic way to describe my love for her but she’s exhausted me too much. So let’s just reduce it down:

Mommy=smitten

Baby=perfect

The Other Side: Notes on the Sixth Month

Posted on October 1, 2012 by The Waiting

Six months and one day ago, I was still a pregnant lady who could (in theory) sleep as late as I wanted, go to bed when I wanted, take a shower in complete privacy, watch every single episode of Arrested Development in one sitting on a whim, and get more done in one day than I can often get done in the space of one week these days. And do you know what? My life is about a bajillion times better now. This little girl has made me sing for my supper, but it turns out that when you have to work – really work – you feel pretty dang amazing at the end of the day. She has taught me to appreciate the tiniest little things in life as miracles. I can so see now why new parents constantly feel like their babies are geniuses. When you see a child grow from being a tiny sack of crying sugar in their first days to actually being able to move around on their bellies, you know that it’s a big freaking deal. She highlights every moment – even if she’s screaming – as the most special time I can imagine simply because she exists.

She’s pretty much the most adorable child in the history of the world.

Teeth have been happening. Last night, Miss C was gnawing on B’s finger when he let out an “ouch!” and followed it with a “no I mean really. OUCH.” I scurried over to pry open her mouth, and there I found a tiny white dot on her lower jaw. I squealed with delight at the prospect of my growing baby sprouting teeth and she was terrified at my squeal and promptly wept as if the news that Elmo had just been hit by a bus was trending. I have got to learn to keep the volume down.

Also, solid food is happening. FYI, “solid foods” is such a misnomer. There is nothing solid about cold pureed squash. So let’s just call it “human food.” She has been eating rice cereal for dinner for the past three weeks, and last week we started her on human food at lunch too. So far she has tried squash and avocado, both of which she likes. Not overwhelmingly so, but she has yet to reject the food, and I’ll take that.

She played, then she passed out. Extra points if you can spot the baby.

Her naps are becoming more consistent, although I know that now that I’ve said that she will likely go on strike and refuse to sleep for a week. It finally dawned on me that when she doesn’t nap well, it’s because she’s either 1, teething or 2, going through a growth spurt. I am so dense sometimes that it kills me. I console myself with the thought that I lit-rally have no idea what I’m doing as a parent and that I don’t have any family in town to help me. The learning curve is steep, but I’m not going to throw in the towel just yet on learning to be a parent whilst she learns to be a human.

She keeps a-rolling and a-rolling but hasn’t yet sat up completely unassisted yet. Interestingly, though, she has skipped ahead to what I like to call “pre-crawling.” On her stomach, she moves her legs and arms back and forth like she’s swimming and she gets super frustrated when she doesn’t go anywhere. It won’t be long, and she can take her sweet time as far as I’m concerned because I’m not ready to babyproof the apartment just yet. I’ve gotta finish making her Halloween costume. Priorities: I’ve got ‘em.

On the move

The more she does, the harder it is for me to re-calibrate my own life. Luckily, I’m finding it easier and easier to just give up control for five minutes and hand her off to B on the weekends and ask him for help when I need it. We got in a rut for awhile when I felt bad asking him for help and he didn’t really offer it because he thought I had everything under control because I never asked for help. But I’m getting more comfortable requesting assistance and resisting the urge to tell him he’s doing something “wrong” when he bathes her or feeds her. Of course, they get along famously. He can make her laugh in ways that I simply can’t. And he’s much, much better at coming up with new and interesting ways to entertain her, likely because he’s not here with her 80% of the time so he sees her with fresh eyes. I don’t know what I’d do without him. Actually, I do know: I’d be a crappy mom.

I know I’m biased but dear lawd my baby is beautiful.

So the sixth month. Happy half birthday to my precious Miss C! The love I have for her is just more than I can describe in a blog post. My life now is admittedly a lot harder than the one I had six months and one day ago, but I wouldn’t change it for all the tea in China. Or England. Or India. Or wherever they have good tea. She’s about 43,827,543,956 times better, easily.

The Person I Waited For

Posted on September 12, 2012 by The Waiting

Mondays and Wednesdays are B’s late days at work. He teaches evening classes those days and doesn’t get home until 7:30. So on those nights, I make dinner around 6:30 and then sit down at the table with Miss C by my side in her walker. I eat.

Monday night, I looked down at her while I ate and had one of those moments where you seem to be elevated over yourself, looking down at your life, which all of a sudden has taken on more permanence. Looking down at that little baby, I thought, “It’s you, the person I had been waiting for.” It’s hard to describe how I felt, as the knowledge that the child starring back at you is your own in an inextricable way is beyond what I can express with words. But she looked back, able to take for granted that I am her mother, unaware that there are relationships other than the ones she has with her father and me. Right now, we are all that she really needs.

I recognize this little girl as my own, and she recognizes me as her mother. It’s amazing how in sync we are with each other without really trying to be. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have difficulties; I think she’s had maybe one or two days in her whole life where she didn’t cry at all. Through all the crying and the sleeplessness and the shots and the gas, she is a happy girl because I can give her what she needs and she can trust me.

All I ever wanted was to have her so I could devote myself to her. I thought about the baby I would have someday long before I even became pregnant and I wondered who she would be. Even when I was a kid, I wondered what her birthday would be. Pick any random date, and I would think to myself, “Is this the day in 20 years I will celebrate my child’s birthday?” As she grew larger during my pregnancy, I constantly wondered what her face looked like and what her disposition would be. And now, all of a sudden, she’s here, looking right back at me. In a blink of an eye, the idea of a baby has become my reality.

It’s her.

I’m Glad I’m Not Patricia Heaton

Posted on August 27, 2012 by The Waiting

See how miserable she looks? Source

Remember that show “Everybody Loves Raymond”? In it, Ray Barrone lives in Queens across the street from his overbearing mother (Marie) and grizzled father (Frank) and has to deal with constant clashes between them and his wife Debra, played by Patricia Heaton. I can no longer watch this show because it stresses me out beyond belief. My viewership was one of the casualties of getting married and having a child myself.

I assume that the big idea behind her constantly-bedraggled character is that she is no June Cleaver or even Clair Huxtable, for that matter. The life of a stay-at-home mom is challenging, and it’s made even more challenging when you marry into crazy and crazy lives across the street. But she frustrates me because in the multiple seasons that the show was on the air, she adamantly tries to “fix” her husband and her mother-in-law. Inevitably, her plans to cut the cord between them never ever work, and she just ends up yelling and clenching her jaw by the end of the episode. Give it up, lady. This is the hand you were dealt when you decided to marry an eternal man-child.

My life is not Debra’s, though. Here’s how:

1. My child is present.

Did you know that Ray and Debra have three – count ‘em – THREE kids, two of which are twin boys? Where the heck are they? They are brought out whenever there is a back-to-school episode but that’s about it. They aren’t even usually around for Christmas or Thanksgiving episodes. Since her kids are never around, I cannot understand why Debra is always so stressed out. I guess she’s too busy hating Marie that she forgot they existed.

2. Apartment living

I complain about my apartment a lot, and I’ve gone on the record saying that the idea of owning a home isn’t totally reprehensible to me. However, Debra does a great job of keeping my head level about the advantages of living in an apartment. Despite the fact that sightings of her kids are as rare as the Loch Ness monster, that place is too big for her to keep it neat. The proliferation of bric-a-brac is worse that at the Salvation Army thrift store. At least our several rooms are manageable.

That first pillow on the sofa passed out in horror when it saw the Barones bring in a snazzy Thomas Kincaid print. Source

3. I get along with in-laws and they are not insane.

Even if I did live across the street from my mother-in-law Sidney, I wouldn’t lose my mind. Sidney is one of my favorite people ever. She has always seen me as my own person, not as B’s girlfriend/fiancee/wife. She got to know me from the beginning, and as far as I can tell, never felt like I took her son away from her. And she ~~likes~~ loves to spend time with Miss C. That’s another thing I never really got about ELR; the grandparents are more preoccupied with their middle-aged sons than their grandchildren. Weirdness.

4. I have a blog.

There is an episode that stands out vividly in my mind where Debra takes a little time out to do some cathartic crying. Marie sees her doing this and freaks out because she thinks there is something really, really wrong. Debra explains that it just feels good to cry sometimes.

I am occasionally a crier too. Sometimes it just feels good to weep about nothing and everything at the same time. I did it a lot when Miss C had just come home. But I also have a blog, AKA a hobby. Maybe if Debra got herself a blog or another hobby she wouldn’t be so dead-set on the fruitless task of making her husband behave like, oh I don’t know, an adult.

5. My husband isn’t an idiot.

Guess who doesn’t love Raymond. Ding-ding, it’s me. The central positive relationships in his life are with his dopey brother and his mother. His wife does not get the best parts of him, and when they do have a conversation it’s about his jacked-up family. I can’t help but wonder if Ray and Debra will both look back on their lives when they’re old and cherish the years when their kids were young. Probably not. By then their own kids will be living across the street from them, and they will be busying themselves with ruining their lives too.