It's Here!!!

My new super-duper camera has arrived, at long last. Here are some new Milo pictures to commemorate the occasion.



















You know how people are always saying that kids like to play with boxes more than they like to play with the toys that come in the box? Well, now I've witnessed it:





















That would be his bootie that he's holding. And that would be because he likes to pull off his shoes and chew on them.


There is nothing on earth as much fun as the swing at the playground, except maybe trying to lick the cat. Oh, and watching Mommy whistle. That's hilarious.

The Columbia MFA Hubub

So I am just discovering this now because I never leave the house and don't really talk to anyone, but apparently there has been a big to-do going on in a small sector of the writing world about this letter, which appeared in the Columbia Spectator.

For those don't want to read the whole thing, the summary is as follows. A professor in the fiction divison, whom most fiction students believed to be one of the better professors (and who was particularly lauded in the literary community for his published work, not to mention also being the recipient of a Guggenheim award), was denied tenure last year. He went to the U of Chicago instead to chair their writing department. He's obviously still pissed off about it, and he wrote a letter to the Columbia newspaper about how much the Writing Division sucks. He says that the majority of the professors suck, many of them haven't done anything of literary merit in ten years, and that they hire more of their kind to make themselves feel better. He also says that some of the students are functionally illiterate.

Let me first say that this is mostly directed at the fiction community, and that I was in the nonfiction program, so I'm not sure how much it applies to my experience at Columbia. Also, I totally one hundred percent owe the fact that I am a published author to the Columbia program (well okay, maybe 95%). I went into the program saying I wanted to write a book, I found professors who helped me shape an idea and get it down on paper, and I sold my book within months of graduating. The professors I worked with were active members of the literary world. Two of my favorites published books while I was in the program. One of them blurbed my book and was happy to do it.

That said, the program is not really about writing and selling books. It is about discovering your artistic side while paying $32,000. At 30, I was not interested in playing around with my artistic side. I was interested in getting published, and I did what I needed to do in the program to acheive that goal. I was in the minority. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that people in the program were functionally illiterate, I would say that a high percentage of students had no clue what they were doing in the program. They were experimenting. They were killing time. They were playing. I was writing.

On my first day in the program, the head of the program welcomed us by saying we should look at our two years at Columbia as two years where we would not be judged. We would write, we would find our inner voices, we would try out new styles and formats. We should not attempt to have jobs, we were told. Instead, we should focus on writing things that no one would publish. Not surprisingly, most people graduated from the program with no manuscript to sell and no marketable skills.

While nearly every single one of my professors seemed happy to work with an aspiring writer who might actually publish her work, I sometimes felt like my fellow students found me annoying. I wasn't an artist. I was commercial. I was a sell-out. I actually wanted to get paid for my writing. Ridiculous. I felt this again a few months ago when I participated in a panel up at Columbia on supporting the writing life. Most of the students wanted to know about getting babysitting work or what life was like working as an underling at a publishing house. (The answer seemed to be: uniformly crappy.) When I spoke about being an Information Architect and how the work was not only interesting and lucrative but also required skills similar to writing, almost no one asked me to elaborate. Most of the audience looked at me like, oh yeah, and how do you like working for the man?

So all in all, I'm glad that Mark Slouka wrote that letter. I don't know how much of it is true, but I agree with him that the Writing Program needs reform. I don't think students should be encouraged to write things that are unsellable any more than they should be lauded for mediocre work. The more Columbia MFAs who succeed as writers, the more we can help each other and build a thriving writing community of connected, working authors. So go forth, Columbia MFAs, and prosper!

Put Me Down Already!: A Photo Essay

Over the weekend we tried out the Baby Bjorn for the first time in a few months. We used it once or twice when Milo was a month old and he hated it and screamed. I also hated it, because it felt like being 10 months pregnant. And Steven hated it because it was hard to see what Milo was doing or how he was feeling or if he was about to cry.

Then, this weekend, we went to see the Wegman exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum (which I described as "art, sort of") and we put Milo in the Bjorn so he could look at the art too, and he had an absolute ball. He of course was less interested in the art than in the other people at the museum, all of whom he wanted to talk to, smile at, and occaisonally let out a shriek of glee towards. Then he wanted to hold the museum map, and then we had to take it away after we discovered that he had eaten half of it.

In any event, the Bjorn was fun but not that comfortable, so I went online this morning, innocently, to purchase some other type of baby carrier. Not so fast. Baby carrying, it turns out, is a political issue.

For starters, baby carrying is not just an easy way to get from Point A to Point B. It is, apparently, a parenting philosophy. It's about being a vegetarian (don't these people know that babies taste good?). It's about wearing comfortable shoes. It's about believing that your child should be carried by you, constantly, all the time, everywhere.

Even when you are making dinner:










Or chilling out at a Furthur Festival:

Or pretending to be a migrant worker:

(Pretending to be a migrant worker seems to be the favored activity of baby-wearing activists. )

And long after the child is old enough to actually, um, WALK:

Also good for carrying your baby like a gym bag, after your quick post-partum workout. (By the way, there is no way in hell this model gave birth, like, ever, let alone recently enough to have a baby that size in a sling.)

You know what else baby wearing is good for? A hot night out at Studio 54:

But most importantly, baby wearing is good for eating up lots of time while you try to figure out how to get the damn thing on.

That's my report.

ps: Oh, and I am so totally sticking with the Baby Bjorn. That's right. The corporate, evil empire of baby slings. And know what? I'm gonna put Milo in it and take him to Starbucks. Then we're both going to eat a big fat juicy steak, get in a bright yellow Hummer and keep it idling for three hours in front of the Park Slope Food Co-op. Take that, baby wearers of America.

DHW Magazine

Here's the piece in Destination Weddings & Honeymoons.
And yes, that is me in the pictures.

Intelligence Test

So this morning I set about to write the following list:

Ways in which the cat is smarter than Milo
1. He knows and responds to his name.
2. He is able to differentiate between me and Steven.
3. He is able to feed himself.

Ways in which Milo is smarter than the cat
1. He is not surprised when, at night, we close the door and expect him to go to sleep. Every night, when I put the cat away in the office he always gives me this look like, whaa??? I thought we were coming in here for an extra special surprise!
2.

At which point I got stuck. Mostly what Milo has right now is intelligence to be demonstrated later. One assumes that at some point he will be capable of saying "Good morning, Mommy. I'd like some waffles for breakfast." And that the cat will never say that. One assumes that at some point he will begin to anticipate things. He may already be able to anticipate his nightly baths. When we take his clothes off he gets extra giggly and happy. Or it could just be that he really likes being naked.

I Second That Emotion

For the past few months, Milo has had only six emotions: Happy, Pain, No Pain, Hungry, Tired, and Quiet Contemplation. Over the course of the last week or so he has suddenly developed a whole host of others, including Anger, Frustration, Extreme Joy, and I Feel Generally Pissy. For a little person he's pretty happy, but he has also started throwing temper tantrums that make you want to leave him on a street corner.

He used to love getting dressed, and now suddenly putting a shirt on over his head causes him to howl at the top of his lungs at the injustice of it all. He used to like having his diaper changed, but now diapering him is about as easy as diapering the cat. It's like trying to change a diaper on a moving, shrieking target. When he can't quite reach a toy, or when he discovers that he STILL isn't strong enough to crawl, or when he gets stuck on his belly and can't roll back the other way, he lets you know just how displeased he is about the whole thing.

People have assured me that this is a normal developmental stage, like the Terrible Two's, except that no one calls it the Terrible Five And A Half Months because the alliteration isn't as nice, and that it will pass quickly. On the other hand, what if he's just the kind of person who gets easily frustrated, who likes to throw temper tantrums, who some day will grow up to shoot anyone who suggests he change his shirt.

"It's nice that he's developing more personailty," I said to Steven yesterday. "But what if he develops a personality and it turns out he's an asshole?"

"I think whether or not he's an asshole is up to us," Steven said. "I think we have to teach him to not be an asshole."

One more thing to add to my list. Pay bills, brush teeth, write in blog, teach Milo not to be an asshole.

Update: Bugaboo Meets Old Navy

Many moons ago (okay, it was December, but it feels like another life time) I wrote about wheeling the Bugaboo into Old Navy. On Easter Sunday I did just that, although it was sort of by accident. I was actually en route to Target (for some reason wheeling the Bug into Target doesn't seem as odd as wheeling it into Old Navy) to buy a picnic blanket so we can begin introducing Milo to the wonders of the outdoors, when I realized it was Easter Sunday and Target would be closed. But Old Navy would be open.

I knew this bizarre piece of trivia because I had been en route to Target last Easter Sunday. It was a grey, wet day, and that I dragged myself and my morning sickness the 30 or so blocks down Atlantic Avenue for the sole purpose of buying maternity pants at Target. When I discovered the store was closed I had to bite my lip to keep from collapsing into a sobbing, sticky heap. Thankfully, Old Navy is across the street, and I made my way there and slid on a pair of maternity jeans that I would then proceed to live in for the next six or so months, until I got too enormous to fit both my ass and my belly into them, at which point I simply ceased leaving the house since I didn't have any pants.

So here we were, a year later, only now Milo was on the outside and had, like, arms and stuff. I thought back on how sick I was, on how annoyed I felt at the fact that I had already outgrown regular pants at only 10 weeks into my pregnancy. And then I looked at Milo, at this solid chunk of kid who, at five months, already weighs as much as some one-year-olds, and the intensity of the nausea and the sheer enormity of my belly made sense. Cause = Milo. Effect = huge, uncomfortable pregnancy. After he was born I craned my neck to see him squirming on the table the nurses were examining him on, and I remember thinking that he didn't look at all like a newborn. He looked like a weight lifter. He had biceps.

In any event, Milo and the Bug and I visited Old Navy and bought nothing, and then we went home. It turns out that the oddest part about owning a Bugaboo is not feeling silly wheeling it into Old Navy. The oddest part is that other Bugaboo owners like to stop you on the street and ask questions. On my way home from Old Navy some guy in a suit tapped me on the shoulder at a street light, pointed at my diaper bag, which was hanging off the handlebars, and asked "Is that a Bug attachment?", by which he really meant, "I have a ridiculously expensive stroller too!".

The only people who stop me to ask about the Bug are Bug owners themselves. Except for one lady who owned a Stokke, which is the other ridiculously expensive stroller on the market. She seemed to want to compare ridiculously expensive strollers. Other people ask when we switched from the bassinet attachment to the seat attachment, complain about the stroller's girth in the same way you might complain about how big your yacht is, or just shoot you a knowing smile and a wink like, hey, we're rich too!

Even our nanny (who, by the way, when I first asked her to take Milo out for a walk, responded by saying "Ooh! I get to use the Bugaboo!") reported back to me that she gets stopped on the street by other Bug owners. Once she was in the park and some woman with a Bug came running over to her, saying "I never see Bugs on this side of the park!". [Translation: "The real estate agent told me this neighborhood was gentrifying, but now I'm not so sure."]

I have to say that having received the Bug as a gift is the best of all possible worlds. I get to push this fabulous stroller around town (and let me just say that it is, as strollers go, fucking awesome) while simultaneously thinking poorly of people who own Bugaboos.

Milo The Screech Owl

I used to think that having a baby was the ultimate in selfless acts. In the great hierarchy of selflessness, giving the gift of life seemed right up there with building houses with Jimmy Carter or working for Doctors Without Borders. But now, a few months into my great selfless act, I've come to see having a child as the ultimate in egotism. People always love to show off stuff they've made, whether it's a macaroni castle or a book or boogers. (I'm suddenly reminded of the four-year-old character on Mad TV who walks around saying "Look what I can do!")

In any event, anything that one can possibly make in life, even if it's the Brooklyn Bridge, pales in comparison to creating a living, breathing human being. I mean, look at me - I made a spleen! I made kidneys! Not just one but two of them! And look what this thing I made does, for God's sake. It eats! It poops! And now, get a load of this, it ROLLS OVER!. Has anyone ever made anything so marvelous in the history of time?

I now understand why people are constantly whipping out pictures of their kids, or talking about what little Aiden or Jaden or Caden did yesterday. Because all of these things are a massive ego trip. People are always saying (well, in the movies anyway) that their kid is the best thing they did with their lives. (To which I used to think, and still sort of think, come on, any idiot can make a baby. I mean, my CAT can make a baby.)

So it's hard not to think that everything Milo does is the coolest, greatest, amazing thing ever, and how wonderfully it reflects on his parents. That was until a few days ago, when Milo discovered he has the ability to screech. Screeching is not cool. It is not amazing. It is supremely annoying. There's not a lot you can do to make a five-month-old stop doing something. You can't explain to him that if he screeches he will get no more mashed banana. You can't take away his toys for screeching. You can't even say "Milo, no more screeching," because he will just smile at you and try to eat his own foot.

And so we wait for the screeching phase to be over. We wait for it to be replaced by something that will once again remind us how cool we are for making a human being.

All Me, All The Time

I have an essay in the summer issue of Destination Weddings & Honeymoons Magazine, which I think is now on the stands. As soon as I manage to get my act together enough to leave the house I'll try to purchase a copy and scan in the article. They are also giving away copies of my book, which is nice of them.

Viral Mothering

A few months ago, when both Milo and I were sick with the Plague, coughing and sneezing and running fevers and generally feeling crappy, I complained to someone about how much it totally sucked to not only be sick, but to also have to care for a sick baby at the same time. I used to almost relish my visits with the flu. I liked being able to drag my pillow and duvet out into the living room and snuggle up on the couch, I loved lying around in my pajamas all day and watching bad daytime television totally guilt-free.

But now being sick just totally sucks. Because not only do I feel crappy, but I don't get to lie around and revel in my illness. Instead I have to function and care for someone who feels just as bad as I do, if not worse.

So I was explaining all this to someone a few months back, and told her how I just wanted to lie on the couch and I wished Milo could just lie on his couch and leave me alone so I could reccuperate.

"Yeah," said whomever I was talking to (I've long since forgotten who it was). "But when you're sick you want your Mommy."

I nodded in agreement, and only moments later did I realize she didn't mean that I wanted my Mommy, she meant that Milo wanted his Mommy. And then I felt sorry for Milo because he didn't have a Mommy who would take care of him when he felt crappy and who would comfort him and bring him soup. And then I realized that I could, in fact, be that Mommy. And since then things have been different between me and Milo, ever since it dawned on me that for him, strange as it seemed, I was the person who was supposed to Make It All Better.

I'm sick again, which is partially why this blog has been quiet lately, and this time I'm doing my best not to make Milo sick. Because as much as it sucks for me to be sick, it sucks about a thousand times more for Milo to be sick.

Now if only I could get Steven to bring me some soup.

America's Most Neurotic Home Videos

For the past twelve years or so I managed to live a very satisfied existence without the presence of a video camera in my home. I have also managed to live without the presence of a microwave, much to the dismay of my mother-in-law, but that's a different blog entry.

When I was about seven months pregnant, I was visiting my father and we determined that I would need a video camera very quickly. Not to capture my son's impending birth on video (I didn't want to see the birth when it was happening, why would I want to sit on my couch and see it years later?) but to capture everything that would come after the birth. First smiles, first words, first feedings, first steps, etc.

And capture moments we have. If anyone wants to come by our apartment and watch a few hours of video of Milo sleeping in his bouncy seat, we have plenty of it to offer. We also have Milo in his stroller, Milo in his exersaucer, Milo being changed, and Milo being bathed.

The first month of Milo's life both my parents kept harassing me to send them video. I tried to explain that I was too exhausted to operate a video camera, let alone attempt to figure out the software necessary to get the video out of the camera and onto a DVD (which, thanks to Sony's ingenuity, is totally impossible and requires not one but three software programs) but they were persistent, and eventually I sent them some video. To which they both immediately responded, "This video is the most boring video I've ever seen." Well what did you expect? The kid is four weeks old.

In any event, the videos are marginally more interesting now, and while I dutifully document every little thing Milo does, I can't help but feel slightly self-concsious as I do it. Because every video I take reminds me a little of video I've seen of myself as a baby, or as a kid, or as a teenager, or any other home video that has ever been shot in the history of time. There are the parents, young and beautiful and happy, marvelling in the wonder of their new baby. There is the baby, cute and round and happy, marvelling at the newness of the world.

And now, here I am, and this time around I am the parent. And some day Milo will watch these videos and think, wow, look how young my mother looks. Or, what were people wearing back in '06? Nice hair, Mom! Nice furniture! What were you thinking? Why are the walls to my room brown? How come all my clothes say Brooklyn on them? Why am I wearing cargo pants, for God's sake? And so on.

It all feels like we're looking back on the past before it's even happened yet. Sometimes we are. Sometimes we shoot video and then watch it back ten seconds later and marvel at how cute Milo was back then, ten seconds ago. But mostly it feels like we are playing roles. Here is the happy young couple smiling with their new baby. That was before we found Jesus/ divorced / moved to Albuquerque. Here is the new baby playing in his exersaucer. If only we'd known then that he would end up in prison/the lead singer of a rock band/president of Bahrian.

It's hard not to see the present and the past and the future collapsing into each other each time I flick the on switch on the camera. Sometimes I don't speak while I film, and I pretend I am shooting silent home movies that we will screen on the wall of our rec room. Sometimes I narrate in my head. Sometimes the camera captures our lives and sometimes it captures lives that are nothing like ours at all.

Music for Aardvarks' Parents

A few weeks ago, when I was visiting my brother and his fiancee, they put in a CD that I liked. My first question was, "people still buy CDs?" My second question was, "Who is this, I need to buy it immediately?"

Anyway, about a week later I stumbled across the same album on iTunes, and I bought it and have been listening to it for a few days now. And while I like it a lot, mostly because it sounds kind of like what you might get if you took Lyle Lovett and David Grey and Nick Drake and put them all together in a washing machine, there was something that sort of bothered me about some of the music. So I started listening more closely to the lyrics. And I realized that a certain set of lyrics made me queasy:

Maybe we could sleep in
I'll make you banana pancakes
Pretend like it's the weekend now
And we could pretend it all the time
Can't you see that it's just raining
There ain't no need to go outside

So then I realized what I didn't like about the album. It's for people without kids. Because no one with kids sleeps in on the weekends and makes banana pancakes and all that that implies. My banana pancake days are over. Or at least, they're on hiatus for the next ten years or so.

I am, not surprisingly, a big fan of nonfiction in all aspects of my life. I like books that are about people who are at similar stages as I am in their lives. I like music about things that might happen in my life. And while I'm sure it's all very nice that Jack Johnson sits around eating banana pancakes on weekends, I don't want to hear about it. I want to hear songs about babies who can only roll over one way, or about parents who run out of formula in the middle of the night. I want songs about exersaucers. And if there are no songs about exersaucers, then I at least want to hear about Victor Vito and Freddie Vasco who ate a buritto with tabasco, they put it on their rice, they put it on their beans, they put it on their sweet potatoes and on their collard greens.

See what I'm saying?

I still listen to the CD, because I bought it, after all, and it's not Jack's fault that he doesn't have kids. Yet. But it made me realize that even though part of me feels like the old me, now that my clothes are starting to fit again and I'm able to get a human amount of sleep and I have returned to doing things like going to yoga and having dinner with friends, that I have been forever changed in more ways than I first imagined.

So over the weekend I told Steven the whole story about the CD and my theories on why I didn't want to hear about banana pancakes and how I had decided that maybe it was a bad purchase. Then I played him the CD.

"I don't think your not liking the CD has anything to do with banana pancakes," Steven said.

"It doesn't?"

"No. I think you don't like the CD because it sucks."

Thanks, sweetie.

Reasons Why There Is No Need To Make Anything Up Ever

I recently discovered this site, and I would just like to say that this is why I write nonfiction. It is also one of the things that reminds me why I put up with the high rents and low personal space required to live in NYC.

The Growing Season

So in general if you are female and young(ish), when the weather warms up strange men begin to yell things to you on the street. I'd forgotten this, because last spring and summer what strange men were yelling at me, if anything, was "it's a boy!" or "hello Mama". Yesterday I took the afternoon off, if you can classify running around midtown doing assorted errands as "off", and en route to the subway a truck honked at me and someone yelled "lookin' good" out the window. I stared at the truck thinking, me? Really? But I'm, like, someone's mom.

I was equally stunned when I went out with a few friends for dinner about a month ago and someone tried to pick me up. The best part was that his opening line was, "Are you from New Jersey?". I wasn't sure if it was because I no longer look like a Manhattanite or because he just assumed that everyone was from New Jersey. He, I should add, was clearly from New Jersey. He was also, like, fifty, and in town to see the Allman Brothers. He told me this information and then looked at me as though I might say, "Who are the Allman Brothers?"

"Oh yeah, I saw them a few years ago," I said instead. I didn't add that it was more like a million years ago, back before Steven, before Milo, on a date, in fact. I didn't say, wait, was that really me? I didn't say that it was so long ago that I might have been wearing black jeans to the concert. Or maybe that was a different date.

I'm not sure what I expected the guy to say next, except that it certainly wasn't what he did say, which was, "Do you know where we can buy some weed?"

I had to restrain myself from falling on the floor in hysterics. Well, no, I don't know where you can buy weed. I know where you can buy discount diapers. I know where you can buy replacement parts for your breast pump. I know how to get to Costco.

"I think you think I'm much younger than I am," I said. It occurred to me that he thought I was an NYU student, since we were right near NYU. And then I excused myself and made my way back to my friends. I couldn't believe they thought I might know where they could get weed. I'd never been more flattered.

Housekeeping at Five Months

Dear Milo:
Yesterday you officially turned 5 months old. In honor of your birthday I'm going to dispense with the mushy stuff and just get right into what you like and dislike.

These days your likes far outnumber your dislikes. Even your irrational fear of hats seems to have subsided to a vague distrust, and I can see that easing into tolerance in the next month or so. Until recently the thing you loved above all else was bananas. That was until today, when you encountered sweet potatoes, and now there's really no question where your preferences lie.

You still love standing and flying, but now you also love being hung upside down for brief periods of time. You smile all the time, constantly, at everyone you meet, which sometimes makes me wonder if you're really my child. On the other hand, you also have a slight obsessive streak when it comes to the flag on your exersaucer. You see it and you need to bite it, immediately. Then you need to give it a long talking to. You love the flag fiercely and almost maniacally until you can't stand it any more and you suddenly hate it and need it to go away. Then in the morning, you're always happy to see it again. This makes me realize that you are in fact my child, and that we can look forward to long talks about how best to channel all that obsessive energy.

You started saying syllables a few days ago, thank God, because Mommy was starting to get a little worried what with all the vague screeching and guttural vowel sounds that pour forth from your little body like a faucet. You also started opening and shutting your mouth in a very exaggerated fashion and saying "rah rah rah rah". After a few hours of this it dawned on me that you were maybe imitating what people look like when they talk, at which point I fell in love with you all over again the way I first did when I witnessed your love of bananas.

Other things you love: your feet, which you grab whenever possible; the cat, which you try to grab whenever possible; you seem to love your toys indiscriminatly, so long as they can either be smashed or inserted into your mouth. You love funny faces, and you also seem to be experimenting with doing weird things with your tongue, which sometimes makes you look a little like a chimpanzee. Baths are still the best.

You don't have things you hate so much as things you are lukewarm about: applesauce, your stroller, tummy time, discovering that no one is paying attention to you.

You are still changing at a ridiculous pace. Today you went down for a nap with brown hair and woke up with dark blonde streaks and new tufts sticking out at funny angles. Yesterday you would begin chewing before the food was actually in your mouth. Today you figured out how to time it right so chewing and food in the mouth happen simultaneously. You're still a lot of fun. Keep sleeping through the night and we're going to get along just fine.

Love,
Mommy

Man's Inhumanity To Man, or Milo and The Big Plastic Rattle

A few weeks ago Milo started grabbing anything within reach. He was totally entranced by the concept that he could reach for something, wrap his little fingers around it and, no fucking way, hold it! Three days ago Milo discovered that once he has a good grip on an object he also has the ability to smash said object rapidly up and down and in assorted directions, which was cute and funny until he smashed his big plastic triangle rattle into his head.

He was sitting on my lap when it happened, and I watched him do it, knowing the rattle was sooner or later going to make contact with his huge head, thinking irrationally that as a human being he would of course intuitively understand that when one smashes things into one's own head it hurts.

And yet.

The moment after he hit himself in the head there was stunned silence, that truly horrible but also slightly funny moment that babies have when they're sucking in as much air as possible so they can unleash the mother of all screams. So I watched as Milo turned bright red, opened his mouth wide, and paused for a second before letting me and all the world know just how much it hurt to smash a big plastic triangle into your own head.

A few moments later he was fine, ready to pick up the rattle again and begin the process anew of flinging it around. But me, I wasn't fine. I felt sad. Because up until that moment, Milo had never been capable of hurting himself. Up until that moment, as far as he knew, things rarely hurt. He had been living in a world without pain. Or at least, without self-inflicted pain.

Of course, I understand that he needs to smash himself in the face with a rattle a few times in order to understand why we don't all walk around smashing ourselves in the face, that he needs to experience pain in order to learn about the world, that this, the chorus of Jewish mothers in my life will say, should be the worst thing that ever happens to him. But I guess it makes me realize that this is the first in a long series of sad or painful things that will hapen to Milo. That he smiles all the time and thinks that the world is an amazing place because he has yet to discover that not only can he smash himself in the head, but that other people can, and will, smash him in the head. That the world is in fact full of head smashing.

And yet, three days later, Milo is still as happy as ever. I'm sure he's long forgotten about the painful possibilities of the rattle. Or maybe he's just a happy guy. Maybe he's just going to continue to be a happy guy forever on.

Steven and I were discussing this possibility last night, that two crabby, cynical people might have produced a genuinely happy person. And we marvelled and shuddered at the prospect. How on earth would we parent a happy boy?