Housekeeping at Four Months

Dear Milo:
In few days you will be four months old. It's hard to believe that you are the same little blob we brought home from the hospital in November - every day you're more and more like a person. I folded up your newborn-sized clothing and put it into storage the other day, and I have to say I do not feel one iota of nostalgia for your first three months. Not one smidgen. To me those clothes say exhaustion, breastfeeding, endless feedings, and screaming triggered by nothing. Thank God we are on to month four.

That said, all the books indicate that at four months you should start sleeping through the night, so I am eagerly looking forward to Thursday night, when you will officially be four months old and, as such, I can look to a whole night of uninterrupted sleep. If you wake up, as you usually do, at 1AM, I will simply point you to the page in What To Expect The First Year that explains how you should be sleeping, and then I will go back to sleep and let you mull over your progress thus far.

I'm also looking forward to the day when you will no longer have an irrational fear of hats, but the books don't indicate when that might be.

At four months you love standing and you love experimenting with weird noises. You also like to smile and sometimes you even laugh a little which is one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. I understand that yesterday you projectile spat-up nearly two ounces of formula onto your father's head. I also understand that this wasn't really your fault, since he was holding you upside down shortly after feeding you. And I also understand that you thought the whole thing was pretty damn funny, which shows that your sense of humor is developing nicely.

Keep up the good work.
Love,
Mommy

-----------
Dear Part of My Brain Responsible for Generating Sentences,
I really, really appreciate you. Thank you for writing a whole book! And thank you for continuing to come up with lots of ideas. Only... could we perhaps not make all the ideas come at three o'clock in the morning? I mean, nine AM is a perfectly respectable time to have ideas too, no? Just a suggestion.

Best wishes,
Part of My Brain Responsible for Melatonin Production

---------
Dear Oscar,
I know these last few months have been hard on you. You must be wondering why we brought home a cat that does nothing but cry, and why we needed another cat in the first place, and when that cat will change it's own stinky diapers. I could explain that Milo isn't a cat, but really he isn't all that different, so let's just pretend for the moment that he is. I promise that in just a few more months Milo is going to turn into your best buddy. He's going to pet you and chanse you and he might even give you way more attention than you ever wanted and you might have to resort to hiding in the closet the way you did for the first month after we brought him home. I'm sorry I don't play with you as much as I used to, but quite frankly I just don't get as much time to do anything anymore.

Hang in there,
The Person Who Feeds You

--------------
Dear Body,
Okay, I get the message. We do things slowly around here. Except for growing fingernails. That we seem to do at a furious pace. But what else could explain the fact that it took Ms. Cervix a full 36 hours to move a mere ten centimeters, or that at four months post partum I am just now fitting back into my largest clothes? That said, I do appreciate you giving me my waist back, even though it appears to be in a different place than it was last year. I'll make a deal with you: I'll continue to eat right and get exercise and you be bathing-suit ready by the time I go to L.A. in May. So we can look cute in that aqua bikini we both love so much.

Keep it real.
H

Hello East Bay!

A really nice review from the land of my birth. I always knew I liked California.

My Internet, Myself

So I have this program that allows you to see how people get to your web site, and it tracks search phrases. And while some people reach this site by searching on my name or my book, others reach it totally by accident by Googling the phrase "chunky baby spitup," among others.

Seeing what people search on provides a fascinating insight into the mind of the Internet user, and I have come to two conclusions. First, people are weird. Second, people have absolutely no understanding of how the Internet works. Does the woman who Googled "will my hips go back post partum" think that the Internet is sort of like a giant 8-ball? Did the person who Googled "hana-schank" just hit the wrong key or do they really think my name is a hyphenated phrase?

I offer to you now a sampling of phrases people have searched on to reach this site:

• making womens boobs produce milk
• eating laughing cow cheese while pregnant
• strapping balloons to your chest
• post partum months lumpy stomach
• uncontrolled burping

Clearly I am a resource for all things pregnancy and post-partum related, which is scary given that I know little on those topics. On the other hand, I do know all about eating Laughing Cow cheese while pregnant because I pretty much lived on the stuff for nine months. As for the person who was interested in strapping balloons to his or her chest, all I can say is... welcome!

Ways in Which Having A Baby Is Like Working For A Large Corporation

1. You have to get up really early.
I used to work for a large management consulting firm in Chicago, except they weren't really in Chicago, they were an hour and 45 minute drive outside of Chicago, and in the midwest people like to get to work ridiculously early, so I would usually leave my apartment at 6:15a.m. in order to get to work by 8:30. It totally sucked and I was completely exhausted by the commute, and I was always trying to figure out ways to cut the commute time down so that i could sleep in a little longer. When I finally went out on my own and quit working for large corporations a few years ago I discovered the joys of sleeping until I felt ready to get up, which on most days was 8a.m., but some days was as early as 7 and some days as late as 10. And there was no one yelling at me to come to work on time.

That has all changed.

Milo gets up anywhere between 5:30a.m. and 8:00a.m. The best part is lying awake for those two and a half hours wondering when he will scream. There is no longer any need for an alarm clock. And so I might as well be commuting.


2. You get sick more often.
When I used to take the subway to work I would generally come down with the flu in November and it would finally clear up in April. This is because the subway is a germ-infested petri dish full of sneezing, coughing, snotty, tired people. For the last few years I have worked from home and rarely see anyone or leave the house and guess what? I stopped getting the flu!

That too has changed.

Apparently when you have a baby and you take him outside, if there is anyone sneezing within a 50 mile radius of him, he will come down with Black Plague. This is what happened last week, and it accounts in large part for the crabbiness of this blog post. Because it seems that whatever disease Milo catches, I will catch at a magnitude of ten. So while he had a cough that sounded like a freight train and a somewhat nasty disposition for a few days, I am still, a week later, fighting off a fever and remembering fondly what it was like to once be able to breathe through my nose.

3. Your boss is irrational.
I worked for a guy once who wore the same shirt every single day. I also worked for a guy who spent all day reading comic book newsgroups back in the early days of the internet, when people did that sort of thing. I also worked for a guy who did pretty much nothing but sit in his office and smoke pot and try to sound profound. I also worked for a guy who did nothing but sit in his office trying to design an evil robot.

They were all insane, and yet, not one of them would have screamed bloody murder had I suggested they take a nap. Not one of them had an irrational fear of hats. Not one of them would have acted like they were being tortured to death had I tried to put a coat on them.


4. The pay is really good.
Oh wait, no it's not! You mean I'm not actually being paid to do this whole mother thing? Or I'm being paid in smiles, perhaps. I'm being paid in the occaisonal aaaiiieeouoiiee ooouuuwwooo. I'm not totally sure, but I think the currency of Baby doesn't have a great valuation at the moment. It's trading at like, 100 to 1 to the Dollar. Maybe once we all stop being sick it'll go up.

More Readings

Please come see me!

Tuesday, February 21
7PM
Nonfiction Reading Series @ KGB Bar
85 East 4th Street
New York, NY
(212) 505 3360

TO: Milo RE: Wednesdays

I love how people are always saying, it's okay if you need to take a break from the baby. Don't feel guilty if you put him in the swing and go have a minute to yourself. What if you need, like, 4 hours to yourself? Are you supposed to feel guilty then? I mean, he's great and all, but he's not much of a conversationalist right now.

On Wednesdays Steven has a late class and doesn't get home until nine p.m., so I have Milo to myself for 9 straight hours. Luckily, he is always asleep for at least the last two hours, and sometimes he sleeps for two or three hours in the middle. So technically it's only four or five hours with the baby. But the problem is that I have a life that doesn't stop for me on Wednesdays. So I am constantly hoping he'll entertain himself on the activity mat for just another five minutes while I check my email and take a look at how my book is doing on Amazon and just respond to that other email and by the way I need to practice for my reading next week and I just want to jot down this one sentence so I don't forget it and oh wait, you know what would make a really good essay, let me just write that down too...

I have blocked off Wednesday afternoons on my calendar in Outlook with a big note saying "Mama and Milo" and I have set it to repeat indefinitely, although technically I could have set it to end in five years when he goes to kindergarten. Yes, this is what it has come down to: I need to schedule the baby in Outlook. In any event, having him in Outlook is partially so I won't forget and schedule something on Wednesday afternoons, but mostly it's a mental note to myself that on Wednesday afternoons I am a SAHM (stay at home mom, for those not familiar with the Urban Baby vernacular) and that we will all be a lot happier the minute I stop trying to also have a life on Wednesdays.

So we usually do all right for the first few hours, but around 5 or 6pm, when we have sung songs and read books and played on the activity mat and swung in the swing and danced around to Bob Marley and had a fight about whether or not Milo would have his nails cut and taken a walk around Prospect Park (the long route) and had multiple "conversations", there is another hour or two before I can legitimately feed him again and then begin the process of putting him to bed, I start to find Milo boring. And I'm not sure, but I think he starts to find me boring too. Basically, after an afternoon together we are sick of each other and if he could read we'd probably just sit together on the couch and read a book, and if he could talk we would sit and have a conversation that involved actual words, but right now I am totally out of ideas.

So usually he goes to bed early.

Nothing Good Ever Happens in O'Hare

I used to spend a lot of time in O'Hare airport, and I used to really like it. A million years ago I worked for a consulting firm that kept sending me on projects to places like Dallas and Stamford and Boston, and as a result my weekly commute involved getting on a plane every Monday morning in Chicago and de-planing, as they say, in some other city, then flying back again on Friday afternoon. And back then I loved how clean and glittery O'Hare was, and I loved being a business traveler and hauling out my laptop (which was much more exciting a possession back then before not everyone had one) and accumulating frequent flier miles. Then at some point I got sick of the whole thing and quit and moved to New York and now I rarely leave the house.

So maybe that's when my O'Hare karma began to change. The last time I was in O'Hare I was six months pregnant and no one would help me with my bag. The time before that, I came very close to getting into a fistfight with another passenger, who accused me of cutting him in line. And on this most recent visit, the airline managed to gate check the stroller while sending the car seat attachment to baggage claim, which meant that when we got off the plane we had a thing with wheels and Milo in my arms and no seat to put him in and four bags to carry. And only one free set of hands. Now, call me crazy, but you would think that SOMEWHERE in the ENTIRE O'HARE AIRPORT the lovely people at United would be able to find SOMEONE to reunite us with our car seat so we could leave the airport. Especially given that O'Hare is a United hub and is positively swarming with their blue-suited minions.

But no.

And so, after waiting nearly an hour, during which, sadly, Milo decided to be too fascinated with the lighting design of the airport to cry, which in this case would have been a bonus, since it might have caused SOMEONE SOMEWHERE to DO SOMETHING in order to shut the baby up, we finally managed to precariously stack all of our bags on the stroller frame and wheel ourselves to baggage claim. At which point we discovered that they'd sent the car seat to the gate. Naturally.

But despite the fact that nothing good ever happens in O'Hare, something good did happen in Chicago. I stopped by my old sorority house up at my alma mater, where they'd planned an event that I can only describe as splendid and perhaps the most amazing experience I've had to date, with the possible exception of giving birth, which was not amazing so much as weird and painful. I talked for a while about how to get published to a group of aspiring writers, and I was reminded, despite my recent run-in with the breast-hating reviewer, that sometimes it can actually be really nice to be surrounded by women, and that there is an intimacy that descends, especially when you're in a sorority house filled with chintz-covered couches and floral prints, that is a little like coming home. Or maybe that was just because it sort of was like coming home, because I did live in that house for a year and a half and, as I pointed out to Steven, cried in practically every room at one point or another.

But either way, after speaking with the women in the house I felt like they really got what the book was about, and really resonated with it, and that if I could only do, like, 100 more events just like that one, I might actually sell a few copies.

"I had to come because I was responsible for the food," one woman said after the event was over. "And I really didn't want to hear about some stupid wedding book. But then when you read from the book, I realized, you're my kind of girl."

I am! I'm your kind of girl! I wouldn't want to read some stupid wedding book either. Just TRY the first five pages and you'll see. I promise.

Chatterbox

Milo began "talking" about a week ago, and now he won't shut up. He lies in his crib and goes aaeeeoouu aiiiieeaaah ooowowoo at the top of his lungs for sometimes a whole hour at a time. Then we sit him up and say to him "How was your day Milo? What did you do today?" and he replies with a whole series of gutteral howls and screeches.

The other day I asked Steven what he was going to do about living with two people who never shut up.

"I think it's great," he said. "You two can talk to each other and leave me in peace."

---------------

In other news, I am currently in Chicago on my book tour, and will have lots of interesting stories to share upon my return to New York on Tuesday evening ... stay tuned.

Someone Else Writes About My Breasts For A Change

I have been a bit busy over the past few days, ever since this came out. Apparently when someone says really nasty things about you in a major newspaper you get to write a response, so that is what I have been doing.

Thanks to the review, when you Google my name you now get a link to a porn site for bodacious blondes.

I would like to say, for the record, that anyone who thinks that requiring a "major hydraulic system of lingerie" to keep one's breasts in place is a POSITIVE thing clearly has never suffered the indignity of not being able to do things like, say, buy a button-down shirt, wear a spaghetti strap dress, or run around the block (you strap two five pound balloons to your chest and go for a run, then tell me how much fun it is).

That said, I am glad I made Alexandra Jacobs self-conscious about her breast size. As I hear she is currently pregnant, assuming that she breastfeeds she will soon understandwhy big boobs are not all they're cracked up to be.

And that's all I have to say about that. For the moment.

Why I Love New York

My publicist says that I should sign my books with a gold pen, because it will look nice and be in keeping with the brand (the books have gold print on them). So I went out into the wilds of Brooklyn this morning to locate a gold pen.

After wandering around my neighborhood aimlessly looking for an art supply store, I stopped in at a Starbuck's for a tall skim chai. On a whim I asked the cashier if he knew where an art supply store was. He was wearing two huge earrings in both ears, so I thought it might be the kind of thing he might know about, give that everyone who works in Starbucks in New York is a struggling artist/writer/furniture maker.

"Maybe just wander around 7th Avenue?" he suggested.

"Yeah," I said. "I've been doing that but I haven't found one."

"What's she looking for?" the barrista yelled from behind her espresso machine.

"Art supply store," replied the cashier.

"There's one on 7th and 10th," said a woman behind me in line.

"Don't go to that one," said a guy standing in line behind her. "There's one on 7th and Flatbush that's closer."

"Well," said the woman. "I was just thinking, if she was walking south, the one at 10th is closer."

"Nah," said the man. "Definitely 7th and Flatbush."

Now you tell me - in what other city in the world can you spontaneously provoke an argument between two strangers about art supplies? What a town.

[On a completely unrelated note, my spell-checker wanted to replace Flatbush with platypus.]

Come Visit!

My massive two-city book tour kicks off tonight with a reading in the East Village:

The Class of 2006 Series @ Boxcar Lounge
Wednesday February 8th, 2006, 8 PM
168 Avenue B, 10th/11th Streets.
Get a sneak preview of this year's best new first-time authors in the comfort of a cozy East Village bar.

Featuring:
Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America (Viking, May 2006)
Janice Erlbaum, GIRLBOMB: A Halfway Homeless Memoir (Willard, March 2006)
Hana Schank, A MORE PERFECT UNION: How I survived the happiest day of my life (Atria/Simon and Schuster, February 2006)
Pauls Toutonghi, RED WEATHER (Crown/Shaye Areheart Books, May 2006)

The Class of 2006 Reading Series is curated by Jami Attenberg, author of INSTANT LOVE (Crown/Shaye Areheart Books, June 2006). Past Class of 2006 readers include: David Goodwillie - SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME (Algonquin, Spring 2006), Deborah Schoeneman - 4 PERCENT FAMOUS (Crown, Spring 2006), and Shari Goldhagen - FAMILY AND OTHER ACCIDENTS (Doubleday, Spring 2006).

Women's Work

People like to say that being a mother is a full-time job, or the hardest job they ever had, or some variation on the two. As far as I can tell, motherhood is nothing like either of those things, because a fulltime job ends when you go home for the day, and even the hardest job I ever had didn't routinely wake me up at midnight and 4 a.m., and didn't require me to wipe anyone's ass.

The other day, after a particularly nice afternoon with Milo, I commented to Steven that I thought being a parent of a 3 month old was a little like having the playmate you always wanted as a kid (or at least one that I always wanted), someone who would play exactly the game you wanted when you wanted, and wouldn't argue with you about the rules. Steven pointed out that being a parent was nothing like that at all, because while it might seem that we were in charge, turthfully Milo was the one calling the shots. He's the one who says if it's time to go in the swing or if he's had enough of the activity mat or let's break for lunch (although of course at the moment it all just sounds like "waaah").

So really the best I can say right now is that being a parent, thus far, is an experience like no other. It's not like a job, it's not like having the perfect playmate. It's a range of highs and lows, it's an obsession, it's simultaneously amazing and ridiculous. And yesterday, when I returned home from a day-long business trip and went and peeked in on a sleeping Milo, I almost looked forward to visiting with him at 4a.m., when I knew he would look at me and think, "gee, I haven't seen you all day", and then turn and snuggle in close to my chest.

Marriage

"I don't know what to do with my hair," Steven said the other day. "What should I do?"

"I think we've reached a point in our marriage," I said, "where I'm not going to discuss your hair with you any more."

"Why not?" said Steven. "I need your help."

"Because we have the same conversation every few months and you never listen to me and I'm not having this conversation any more."

"I'll listen now. What should I do?"

"I have ceased to care what you do with your hair," I said.

"Come on," he said. "Tell me."

"Well I'm just going to tell you what I always tell you."

"What's that?"

I sighed. "I always say you should go to an actual hair dresser and get an actual hair cut, and then you totally ignore me and go get your hair cut for, like, $5.00 at Astor Place, and then you come home and say how much you hate your haircut."

"Okay," said Steven. "I won't do that. So where should I go?"

"Go to Medusa, where I go. The guy who did my hair was really nice and I'm sure he'll do a fine job."

"I'm not going to some place called Medusa."

"That's why I'm not having this conversation any more," I snapped.

"Well if that's how it's going to be, then I'm not having any more conversations with you about stuff that you don't take my advice on."

"Like what? I always take your advice!"

"You never take my advice," said Steven. "You complain about the pregnancy weight and when I say it takes nine months to put it on and nine months to take it off you say I don't know what I'm talking about."

"Oh that," I said. "That's because you don't know what you're talking about."

"Ah hah!" said Steven.

"Fine," I said. "Go to Medusa."

"I don't want to. I'm going to go get my head shaved. See how you like that."

"I'd love it," I said, "if it would mean we could stop having this conversation."

I Saw It On TV

Okay, I admit it. I watch American Idol. Okay? Now, will someone please explain to me how it can be that there are so many people out there who don't know that they can't sing. I mean, people who are really, truly delusional about it, people who stare at a camera and broadcast to the nation their opinion that they are the next huge singing sensation, and then the second they open their mouths, usually before they've even sung a note, you get this sinking feeling and realize that this person is completely tone deaf. I'm not sure which is worse, the people who can't sing or the people who can and then announce that the song they've chosen is "You Raise Me Up," which has to be just about the dorkiest song on the planet. Even I know that, and I'm all old and musically boring and stuff.

I have been watching a lot of mind numbing television lately, mostly because by the time Milo goes to sleep at six or seven in the evening, it's all I can do to shove some dinner in my mouth and stare at the television before passing out. So the New Yorker and my whole stack of books that I've been meaning to get to go unread. And aside from discovering that we live in a nation of tuneless psychotics, I've also discovered that I will now watch pretty much anything that has a baby in it. Not only will I watch it, but I will like it.

There is a commercial that comes on every now and then that has a little clip of a woman putting a baby in a crib - the commercial has nothing to do with babies, it's for cotton or lead or wheat or something. And every time I see that baby I feel an overwhelming compulsion to go check on Milo. sometimes I fight it, but frequently seconds after the commercial is over I find myself standing at his crib, making sure he's breathing, marveling at the fact that he exists at all.

Apparently I am not the only one who now feels this way about babies. The other night I was flipping channels and landed on Look Who's Talking, which seems to be constantly playing on Bravo or Lifetime or something. It was the very begining, when Kirstie Alley is in labor and John Travolta is driving her to the hospital in his cab, and I started watching it because I too have been a woman in labor in a cab, and one of my favorite pastimes is to watch movies and point out how they're unrealistic. So I was watching and thinking, that woman is SO in the early stages of labor, she's nowhere near having the baby, she's not in enough pain, they're never going to admit her to the hospital. And then in the next scene, when she's home with the baby I sat and thought, there is no way she's fitting in to her regular clothes three days post-partum, puh-leeze! And she doesn't look nearly exhausted enough. She's a single mother, for god's sake, how on earth is she able to take a shower with a newborn?

At which point Steven came into the room. I started to reach for the clicker, waited for him to say something like, "What the hell are you watching?" But instead he sat down next to me and looked at the television.

"That baby is nowhere near as cute as Milo," he said. "And he's supposed to be a newborn? He's at least three months old."

"I know!" I said. "That's just what I was thinking."