The 2000 Year-Old Mother

I was sitting in the waiting room of the doctor's office, watching a mother and her one-year-old-ish baby. The mother was trying to engage a ten-year-old-ish boy playing with a handheld video game in conversation.

"We didn't have those back when I was a kid," said the mother (who, it should be noted, was about my age).

"Mmmhm," said the boy.

"You know what we had? We had board games."

"Mmmhm."

"Um," said her husband. "We had Atari."

"Oh yeah," said the mother. "I guess we had Atari too."

Author Photo - The Results

Here's what I would look like if I were skinny and had perfect skin. Interestingly, it is also what I will look like on the paperback edition of my book:



I think I'd like to hire a professional retoucher to follow me around. Here I am at the market with perfect skin! Here I am brushing my teeth first thing in the morning - don't I look flawless! I'm going to add that to my list of people to hire when I sell my movie rights, just after Personal Yoga Guru and Sushi Chef and perhaps above Person to Rock Me to Sleep at Night.

A Barnes & Noble of One's Own

Yesterday I hauled my enormous laptop to Barnes & Noble because there was a book I wanted to take notes from. So I planted myself and my laptop and my book in the cafe area and soon discovered that I had somehow chosen a seat next to a very noisy baby. I looked over at the baby and he reminded me a little of Milo so I smiled and he beamed back at me and the next thing I knew we were engaged in a conversation of smiles and funny faces.

"You made a new friend," said his mother, who up until that point I hadn't really noticed. She looked tired and was wearing the Park-Slope-stay-at-home-mom uniform: sleeveless cotton camisole top, stretchy yoga-like pants cropped just below the knee, as though she was either ready to be spit up on at any moment, or heading to an exercise class.

"How old is he?" I asked. The baby looked huge, but he seemed to be doing all the things that Milo does, so I was genuinely curious.

"Ten months."

"I have an 8-month-old at home who's like half the size," I said. I always feel weird saying I 'have' an x-month-old. It's kind of like saying, I have a Siberian Husky and a rabbit.

"Yeah, he's really big," said the mother.

She looked over at my table, which was noteably baby-free. "It's nice to have time to yourself," she said, sometwhat mournfully, I thought.

I blinked. It hadn't occured to me that this was what I was having. Here I was, laptop open, copying passages from a book about the history of sex education for my book proposal, after which I would go home, feed Milo dinner and, in the space of time between Milo's bedtime and my own bedtime, try to finish up a new site architecture for a telecommunication provider. Time to myself probably wouldn't include work. But then again, the difference between work and life is blurry, particularly when the work is writing. I write because otherwise I would go insane. So perhaps I wasn't having time to myself so much as treating a medical problem.

When you're a parent you talk a lot about having time to yourself, mostly because you don't get any, or if you do it comes in brief, guilty snatches. An hour for a pedicure. Half an hour to shop for a new handbag. Forty five minutes to watch bad daytime television while the baby naps.

Back in Barnes & Noble I smiled at the baby and his mother. It wasn't really time to myself, but it was time when I got to do what I wanted to do, when I didn't have to think about whether Milo needed to eat or sleep or have his diaper changed. And even though I was tired and overworked and had a million things to do and would never do them all, I suddenly felt lucky.

To Sleep ...

I have never been a great sleeper. Actually, that's not entirely true. There have been periods in my life where I was an A-number-one-kick-ass sleeper. When I was pregnant I went through a period where all I had to do was close my eyes for ten seconds, no matter where I was or what time of day it was, and I'd be out. And when I was a frequent business traveller I used to be able to get onto a plane and pass out before we even took off. Although, looking back in it, maybe those weren't times when I was a great sleeper, maybe they were times when I was just exhausted.

Either way, my sleeping has gone markedly downhill since Milo arrived on the scene. At first I was incapable of sleeping because the second I closed my eyes SOMEONE in the house would insist on screaming until he was fed. But Milo has been a pretty reliable sleeper for nearly four months now - he's out from 7pm until 7am, with the occaisonal gurgle or whoop. [Or fart. Last night Steven and I went in for our nightly pre-bed baby oggling, where we stand close together next to Milo's crib and marvel sickeningly at the pile of cute we have created. Mid-oggle, Milo let out an enormous, grownup-sized fart. We both had to immediately run out of the room, hands firmly clapsed over our mouths, trying not to explode into hysterics.] But while Milo sleeps like an adult, I, on the other hand, have managed to stick to a four-month-old's sleep schedule. Meaning I'm up fairly reliably between the hours of 3am and 6am.

I've been tolerating it for a while, assuming it will pass, as previous bouts of insomnia have. Except that this time I'm not up thinking anything except I am sooo very tired and wish I could sleep. So I finally made an appointment to see my doctor, in the hopes that she will have some thought as to how to make me sleep. The frustrating part is that I know how to treat the lack of sleep: do more yoga, play more tennis, take a beach vacation that not only doesn't include Milo, but occurs at a time in my life before he existed. Since none of these options are really open to me right now, it's off to the doctor.

Of course, having made the appointment, last night I was finally able to get some sleep.

Those Boring Authors

Yesterday I had my author photo taken for the paperback edition of the book. When the publisher requested an author photo from me for the hardcover edition I was actually smack in the middle of labor (and, yes, still checking my email) so I just found an old vacation photo and sent it to them. I'd long imagined my author photo, even before I knew that I would write a book, there in my mind was the photo. I would be smiling ever so slightly. I would be wearing quietly fabulous clothes. I would be in my spacious Greenwich Village apartment. I would have a makeup artist come and make my skin look flawless.

And I'm sure that somewhere out there, some other author is living my fantasy. Instead, what happened was that I threw on some clothing and ran down the street to the nearest make up store because, sadly, I am out of makeup. Even sadder, the store was closed. So then I ran back home and dug out that tube of concealer that I bought in 1994, and the foundation that I bought for my wedding and that has since developed a slightly disconcerting crust, and did my best to make myself look presentable.

I met the photographer on a street corner and we took some pictures in front of a beautiful brownstone. After a while a woman and her teenaged daughter came out of the brownstone next door.

"Are you the new owner?" asked the woman.

"The what?" I asked.

"Someone just bought this house and we haven't met them yet. We thought maybe you were the new owner."

"She's an author," said the photographer. "We're taking an author photo for her book."

"Oh," said the woman, clearly disappointed. "Okay." She turned around and went back inside her house.

This scenario played out in about seven different variations over the course of the afternoon. And this is the problem with living in Park Slope. When you can walk down the street and run into Paul Auster or Gary Shtynegart or that guy with the bow tie who does the really dry commentary on The Daily Show or any of the annoyingly successful Jonathans (Ames, Lethem, Safran Foer), who cares about just another published author. Unless you're, like, a famous published author. And even then, people are just hoping you bought the house next to them so their property value will go up.

Chicago Reading

I am off in a few days to Chicago, for an event that thus far has garnered more attention than any other book event I did, probably because it includes a bunch of people who actually leave the house and talk to people and stuff. So it seems that word has gotten around, and we have even been selected by the Chicago Reader as one of their featured events. I personally like to have events and tell no one about them, but I guess this is another way to go. If you're in the area, here are the details:

June 22 - Chicago, IL
The Midwestern Ladies Auxiliary Love Revue @ The Hideout
Featuring:
Jami Attenberg, Instant Love
Wendy McClure, I'm Not the New Me
Emily Flake, Lulu Eightball
Hana Schank, A More Perfect Union: How I Survived the Happiest Day of My Life
Hosted by Claire Zulkey
@ The Hideout
1354 W. Wabansia
7-9 PM

What does it mean when every single person on the roster has her own URL?

In any event, I will update when I can, although most likely I will be too busy trying to stop Milo from putting the entire city of Chicago in his mouth (oh yes, he's coming too - baby loves frequent flyer miles).

The Depressing Circle of Life

"Look at you! You just got here" said the old man to Milo.

I was trying to edge the stroller past him in Starbucks and he was refusing to move.

"You just got here," he repeated. "And I'm getting ready to leave."

Laughter

Milo is somehow under the impression that his father is the funny one. This is partially because one of the things that Milo finds funny is having the crap scared out of him. Recently Steven turned around suddenly on Milo and yelled "BOO!" and Milo threw his arms out and wobbled for a second, teetering between laughing and crying. In the end, here's what happened.

All The Sterotypes Are True

I just figured out how to add video (not very well, though - I will keep working on it). In any event, I present to you some video shot last month: Milo and his first bagel.

What Not To Buy

Someone recently wrote about this blog and described me as the anti-mom mom. Which I guess makes sense because I have also been described as the anti-bride bride. So, in that vein, I thought I would put together a list of things you need and don't need for the anti-baby baby.

When you're gestating you have nine looong months to do nothing but horde crap for your fetus. But since you have no experience with actually caring for said fetus, you buy things pretty blindly. And there are plenty of things out there that seem to make sense at the time, so you end up with a lot of stupid stuff.

Example A:
Diaper bag that looks like a briefcase/shoulder bag/stylish work bag.
Because you will never take your baby with you to a meeting at the office. Somehow I failed to realize that I didn't need a diaper bag that doesn't look like a diaper bag because the only time you are carrying a diaper bag is when you also are carrying the baby. At which point you will be totally covered with spit up, drool, and Zweiback crumbs, so who cares about your stupid diaper bag. And, if it did come to pass that you were running around town with your stylish diaper-bag-that-looks-like-a-work-bag and were suddenly called into the office, you would not only be bringing your bag into work, you would also be bringing your baby, in which case no one would be like, "Oh, I didn't realize she was carrying a diaper bag, it really looks like a briefcase," because they would be focusing on the fact that you had arrived at the office with a screeching midget.

Example B:
Toys
Milo has a lot of toys and some of them are so cool that I want to play with them myself. However, his favorite toys right now are a piece of blue tupperware, the lid to an old peanut butter jar, and the New York Times. He likes pretty much any reading material, but he goes crazy for the Times. You can't even read it anywhere near him or he starts lunging for it. Especially the Week In Review section. That's his favorite.

***

There are also baby items that seem ridiculous at the time, particularly if you are living under the delusion that you will be able to somehow avoid inviting Walt Disney to come live in your house, but that turn out to be life savers.

Example A:
Exersaucer
Milo is, sadly, outgrowing this miracle of modern plastic engineering, but it was great while it lasted. Sometimes you just need a safe place to stick the baby. Like when the UPS guy shows up, or when you want to empty the dishwasher, or when you need a good three hours to sit down and read the latest Nick Hornby book. Sometimes I just put Milo in it and run out and go buy myself something pretty. That's a joke. I don't do that. Nor have I ever, ever, ever contemplated it.

Example B:
Shoes
Now, why on earth would you need shoes for someone who doesn't walk? Someone gave us cute little shoes when Milo was born and I thought they were second in idiocy only to another gift which was too weird and stupid to mention. (And no, it wasn't a hot plate with a frayed wire, but it might as well have been.) It turns out that they're so useful that I actually went out and bought him a second pair. First, they prevent him from ripping his socks off and dropping them over the edge of the stroller. And second, just because he isn't walking doesn't mean his feet don't touch the ground. He loves standing, and standing outside is even more exciting, especially at the playground where he can meet other babies, so long as he avoids stepping on the used heroin needles. Actually, I have never seen anything like that at the playground, but it is a playground in New York's most populous borough, so you never know about these things. Shoes. That's all I'm saying.

The Paper Eaters

A friend came by yesterday, one whom I have seen only twice since Milo's birth. The first time was at Milo's bris, or as it has otherwise come to be known, The Worst Day Of My Life; the second time was at a party that Milo did not attend, since it was at a bar on the lower east side. So I was eager to show off the fact that I have now kept another human being alive for over seven months without losing my mind.

My friend is very thoughtful, and she came bearing lovely gifts for Milo, one of which was a stuffed lizard, which I handed to Milo without really inspecting, since we were in the middle of a conversation and I was so happy to have someone other than Milo or Steven to talk to.

A minute later my friend said, "Um ... I think he's eating the tag."

And I looked at the lizard and, sure enough, there was a large chunk of tag missing. I suppose a more seasoned mother would have removed the tag prior to handing it to her infant son, and if I'd thought about it I could have anticipated seeing that tag with the chunk bitten out of it, since exactly the same thing had happened only a few days eariler when I'd been talking to my mother and not totally paying attention to the contents of a box that Milo was playing with.

I opened Milo's mouth and fished the piece of tag out. He looked surprised. After my friend left I sat Milo down and explained to him that if in the future he could refrain from making me look totally incompetent infront of other people I would really appreciate it. So we were going to have to institute a No Eating Paper rule in the house. And then Milo explained to me that tags are tasty and have I ever tried one because then I would really understand what all the fuss is about. At which point I was forced to admit that I had in fact I'd gone through a weird paper eating phase during second grade. Not that weird, considering I also went through phases of eating snow, playdough, and raw eggs.

Um.

Okay, new rule. No eating paper until you have teeth. Deal?

Brooklyn Blooms

Milo and I went to the rose festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden yesterday. I'm not much of a flower person, but the roses were truly stunning. I held Milo up to smell one and he immediately tried to rip the rose from its stem and shove it in his mouth. Kid never met something he didn't want to put in his mouth.

Spring

 

Brooklyn Meditation

After months of hibernation with a new baby, we took a walk. Summer had come to New York a few days earlier, a slow tanker full of heat and steam. And then it had eased up a bit. A cool wind blew in and it rained a lot and when the rained stopped the skies were a comforting grey and there was enough of a chill to the air that you wanted to throw a soft summer sweater over your tank top. Perfect weather. So we took a walk to a different neighborhood. And it wasn’t until I saw Ft. Greene that I realized how much I hate Park Slope.

The best way to describe Park Slope is to say that there are three shoe stores on the main shopping street, and they all sell comfortable shoes. At any given moment during the day the sidewalks are choked with strollers –umbrella strollers, RV-like double-wides with sun shades and bottles and rainbow colored toys hanging off the sides, luxury strollers that hog the pavement and require the strength of a thousand mothers to push, car seats snapped into stroller frames whisking tightly swaddled newborns down the street. There are strollers with boogie boards attached on back so the older sibling can hop a ride while the younger child gets pushed around, strollers with little pockets in back for tethering infant-sized baskets of sleeping baby, triple strollers for triplets or twins with a random sibling. Babies are pushed around the neighborhood, Pharaoh-like, sleeping or eating or demanding or crying. They are flipped into reclining positions or propped upright and given cookies. They are bundled up tightly with blankets, even on the hottest days, so that all you see are their over-sized milk-fed noggins. Sometimes it seems like the streets are full of people pushing around huge heads in strollers.

Babies are like squirrels. One squirrel on its own is sort of cute. Look how it gnaws at that acorn, scampers up the tree, rolls over in the grass. Awww. Two squirrels: also cute, but less so. But fourteen squirrels, that’s an infestation. It’s disgusting. It’s the point where you start saying, isn’t there something we can do about the squirrel problem around here? And so it is with babies. One baby: cute. Two babies: also cute, but less so. Fourteen babies all in the same place at the same time makes me want to move to another neighborhood.

And so back to our walk. Our afternoon in the land of the baby-less. As we approached the stroller-free streets I felt my spine straighten. My hips swished a bit. I felt … sexy. Can a neighborhood make you feel sexy? This one did. There were couples kissing on the sidewalk. Single people easing their way through brunch at two in the afternoon. Friends chatting about the night before. And there, in the distance, another stroller. We lingered over arugula and smoked bluefish and then wound our way through the streets to the park where people were playing tennis.

“One kid is an accessory,” a friend of mine said to me recently. “Two kids is a lifestyle.”

We pushed our accessory back to our apartment, past people who were living the kid lifestyle. They were having block parties and watching from the stoop as their kids skidded across the street on assorted wheeled toys. They were padding down the street in comfortable shoes, wearing their babies on their hips and pushing their older children in double-wide strollers. They were buying organic baby food and fighting over who gets to sort the prunes at the Co-op. They were making me feel older than was really necessary.

Housekeeping at Seven Months

As of today, Milo, your father and I have managed to keep you alive for seven months, which is longer than either one of us ever kept a plant alive. We're pretty pleased with ourselves. We're also pretty pleased with you. Your major shortcomings thus far include: the aforementioned inability to sleep anywhere but your crib, the constant stream of spitup that means Mommy doesn't get to wear nice clothing anymore, the fact that you still don't connect sitting in your chair with eating, and therefore scream and try to push your way out of it when all we're trying to do is feed you. Other than that, as babies go you're okay.

You continue to smile all the time. When we arrived home from California a few days ago, you rubbed your eyes and your jaw hung open and you stared at your room like, holy crap, how did you guys find this place again? I had no idea it still existed! And then you beamed at your crib, and at your chair, and swivled your head several times to make sure we were really home. Then you promptly went to sleep for fourteen hours.

In the past week or so you've become a squirmy pile of baby. You're getting really good at standing, and if you hold yourself up against the living room chair you can stand for a few minutes on your own. Unforunately you still don't understand that you can't just suddenly throw yourself backwards and expect to still be upright, which means we have to catch you as you tip over like the leaning tower of Pisa. You also manage to inch your way around the floor, although you don't use your arms for this - I'm still not entirely sure how you do it, but the other day I put you on the floor in your room and left, and when I came back a minute later you were on the other side of the rug. I can tell it's only a matter of time before you are a crawling, walking, running terror.

You are already into everything. You want to touch and eat anything always all the time. Your favorite toy is the plastic package that holds your blocks. If we let you, you would play with it for hours and probably manage to suffocate yourself, because mostly you like to crinkle it and lick it. Your second favorite toy is zweiback, which you don't eat so much as mash up into little soggy balls that stick to your face and clothing. Daddy says he finds the zweiback to be the most disgusting of the assorted baby byproducts.

You know your name, and you also know how to ignore us when you don't feel like responding because you are too busy seeing what that crazy cat is going to do next and for god's sake would we stop bothering you already? You are also terrifically ticklish, and when all else fails Daddy and I like to tickle you behind your neck and on the soles of your feet, which always makes your face scrunch up like being tickled is so funny you might explode.

You have yet to meet a food you didn't want to eat, which you can take as proof that you are not adopted.

We are now closer to your one year birthday than to your birth, which is hard for me to believe. Every day you are less of a baby and more of a little boy, and it's wonderful to see, but sometimes I wonder if I'll miss the way you've been the last two months, all smiles and snuggles and joy. I guess it depends on what you turn into.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Mommies

So apparently when you go to a wedding where the people getting married are in their mid-thirties, approximately half the guests will either be hugely pregnant or will have young children. As a result, I got to witness a lot of competitive mothering over the course of the three-day affair last weekend. Here we were, a group of thirty-something women with children between the ages of four months and five years, all thrust into dealing with where to store the kids while we went to the wedding festivities. And there were as many solutions as there were mothers.

There was the mother who refused to leave her child, who brought him along to every event, keeping him up past his bed time and eventually leaving early to return to the hotel. There was the mother who was lucky enough to be able to stow her twins with her parents, who lived in the area. And then there was me. I left Milo with a babysitter three nights in a row and didn't look back. Which I didn't really think was odd until I heard what all the other mothers were doing.

One night I shared two babysitters with the mother of a five-year-old and a one-year-old. About six hours after we'd left the kids, I went over to her and asked if she'd spoken to the sitters. I was only asking to be polite, because there'd been some confusion when we left as to which babysitter was hers.

"I already called twice," she said. "Everyone's fine. They're all asleep."

She'd called twice? It hadn't even crossed my mind to call once. I'd figured that if there had been any problem, the sitters would call me. They had my cell number. They knew how to operate a phone.

I suppose part of the difference is that most of the mothers there were stay-at-home moms, and I am not, which means that I am used to leaving Milo with anyone who will take him, and they are used to being their child's primary caregiver. But I also wondered if I was being too free and easy about the whole mother thing. As I've written about before, I don't really have that much of a problem being away from Milo. Sure, I get that vague nervous nagging at the back of my mind when I'm away from him, but I also have a life to live. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that I am the parent always pushing Milo higher in the swing, or hanging him upside down by his ankles, while Steven looks on in horror.

"You're scrambling his brain," Steven mumbles.

I always laugh. "There go two points on his SAT score," I say, flipping Milo upside down.

Milo likes it. He also likes meeting new people and playing with assorted babysitters. Or maybe I just tell myself that.

My mother says there are different kinds of babies and different kinds of mothers and there is no absolute right or wrong. There are babies who need to never be left and there are mothers who need to be with their babies always, and there are babies like Milo and mothers like me, and in the end it all works out. I guess that remains to be seen.