Brooklyn's Newest Tiger

I can't help myself - these are just ridiculously cute:

 

Costume Drama

A few weeks ago I was discussing Halloween with a random father at the Tot Lot. I told him that Steven was initially against dressing Milo up, since he wouldn't understand the whole thing anyway.

"But to me," I said, "it seems like the whole point of having kids is to get to celebrate Halloween, right? Isn't that why you have kids? So you can get a few more years of Trick-or-Treating?"

The father gave me a bemused smile.

"Anyway, he's going as a tiger," I said. "What's Will going as?"

"Frida Kahlo's monkey," said the father. And then he asked me if Milo was eating only organic food. So yeah, that's Park Slope.

In any event, yesterday we put Milo into his tiger costumer (technically it was a Tigger costume, but I prefered to think of it as the more generic tiger) and went to the Halloween festivities at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Where we discovered that apparently there had been a run on tiger/Tigger costumes, because there were at least 5 other little tigers wandering around the cherry esplanade. None as cute as Milo, of course, who has recently learned to walk holding on to only one hand, and who, as a result, was extremely interested in wobbling his way over to whatever sparkly piece of litter or pink stroller (he is obsessed with pink strollers) he could find.

As the afternoon wore on Milo banged a drum and played the triangle and eventually it was time for the dance contest. Since walking is still new, dancing isn't really in the realm of things one might reasonably expect Milo to do, so we just held him and watched the other dancers. A group of kids got up and danced around, and then the band leader announced a winner.

"Where's the boy in the tights?" he said. "He's my winner."

A shriek went up from one corner of the dance floor and you could see the boy in neon pink tights and a cape jumping up and down.

"What's your name?" asked the band leader.

"This is Supergirl," said the boy's father.

The band leader, and pretty much the entire crowd, did a double take. Nope, we all agreed. Definitely a boy.

"Okay Supergirl," said the band leader. "You're our winner."

The kid was obviously thrilled to death, and it reminded me of a short exchange I'd caught the other day on the Urban Baby message boards, about whether one would allow one's kindergarten-aged son to dress up as Princess Leah.

"Depends," someone had replied. "If he wants to wear the white bikini costume, definitely no."

By the end of the dance contest Milo was tired, so we stuffed him into the stroller and made our way home. We passed a bevvy of Spidermans, two girls dressed as American Indians, which seemed a little impolitic, and a whole host of infants too young to even sit up dressed as bumblebees and lobsters.

Costume technology has come a long way in the past 20 years or so, when most people wore homemade costumes, or if you got one from the store it was basically just a plastic sheet that you tied around your neck. And a plastic mask with a solitary rubber band and a little air hole cut out where your mouth was. By the end of the day the mask was always all soggy and gross from trapped breath, and the rubber band usually broke.

Today's costumes are full body affairs that look like real clothing. The superhero costumes come with muscles. Masks seem to be out; hoods are in. on the one hand these costumes look like more fun, but on the other I always liked seeing what I could cobble together out of my own clothing. As though if I could rearrange my wardrobe in just the right way I might become someone else.

Happy Halloween

 

Saturday with Milo

 

Other People Who Write About Dealing With Tiny Irrational People

I had, like, a whole free hour today - a lull between projects - and I took the time to catch up on what some other women have to say about the oddly small people who live in their houses. Two blogs I'm adding to the blogroll over there on the far right are Mother Shock and Fussy, both of which are routinely insightful and funny - two things that are hard to be when you have someone who NEEDS YOU THIS VERY SECOND RIGHT NOW, NOT TEN SECONDS AGO, NOW!

Milo is going through some separation anxiety. Did I mention that before? I might have. No one will do but Mommy. I don't know why. Maybe because I'm extra smushy. Maybe it's some pheremone I exude. Maybe it is, once again, the power of my magical breasts. It can't be because I spend the most time with him, because Steven and I are pretty fifty-fifty about the time we spend with Milo. It can't be because I spend the least amount of time with him. Whatever the cause, Milo has begun howling and bucking and flinging his red-faced self around whenever anyone who is not me tries to pick him up. If I am in the room with Milo and someone else is holding him, Milo will do everything he can to get to me.

On the one hand: kind of flattering. On the other hand: totally, totally sucks. At first it made me feel guilty, but after a few days of this kind of behavior I began to get the sense that it has nothing to do with me. Like, he doesn't prefer Mommy because I'm funnier, or warmer, or his source of food. He just prefers me because that is what he's genetically programmed to do. And being governed by your hard-wiring? Not so attractive. Almost annoying, really.

The parenting books say this kind of behavior peaks around 12-18 months, and in some cases never really goes away. Yum. I can't wait.

Seattle Then and Now

Last week I travelled two and a half days for a meeting that lasted one hour, but the upside was that I got to see Seattle - a town that I'd always heard great things about, but had never actually been to. Seattle has always been this sort of mythic town for me. When I was a kid we used to refer to Seattle as you might nowadays refer to Topeka or Altoona or the Okeefinokee Swamp - like, it was really far away and kind of backwater.

But by the time I got to college Seattle was the place to be. It was, everyone understood, a place full of flannel and coffee and great music and cute boys and if you moved there you would probably, like, be neighbors with Eddie Vedder, or at the very least some cute guy would pick you up at a grunge show and then after breaking plates and getting into a car accident you would fall madly in love and move in together.

And then, a few years after that, Steven moved to Seattle for a year to pursue his dream of working the night shift at a Mormon bagel bakery, which seemed like the kind of thing one should do in Seattle. Then he came back and we got married.

People mention a lot of things about Seattle (the rent is cheap, it rains a lot), but they never talk about how beautiful it is. They also never talk about the unnerving desire that hits you the second you step off the plane - namely, the odd feeling that you must instantly purchase a fleece pullover. And some coffee.

All of which is to say that I think if I'd gotten to Seattle earlier it might have been my kind of town. But at this late date, after nine years as an eyebrow-waxing, kitten-heel-wearing, pedicure-getting New Yorker, the town made me kind of itchy. I wanted everyone to stop wearing comfy sandals and put some real shoes on. I wanted people to put on a a little eyeliner. I wanted there to be less coffee, less biking, less recycling, fewer vegan lunch options at the corporate cafeteria. I guess, ultimately, I wanted Seattle to be more like New York. Except for the real estate prices. Those they can keep the same.

So I missed home and, even worse, home missed me. I have been paying all week long for how much home missed me. Milo cries when any one else picks him up, he longs for me to hold him and play with him and feed him and BE THERE ALWAYS.

I'm trying, little chicken. I'm trying.

Housekeeping at Eleven Months

Dear Milo:
This weekend you celebrated your eleven month birthday. Only one more month until you celebrate your first birthday with, if all goes according to plan, a homemade zucchini cupcake and a long nap. Then Daddy and I will go out to dinner and celebrate the fact that neither one of us is in labor.

This month you told your first joke, although given that you are eleven months old it was physical comedy, not linguistic. You sat in your crib and, as I watched, purposely fell over repeatedly. We laughed together, and then the doorbell rang so I went to answer it. When I came back into your room, the second you saw me you fell over and cracked up. You were waiting for me to come back so you could immediately fall over, and you had perfect comic timing. I laughed so hard I had to sit down, and you laughed so hard you turned bright red. It felt great to share a joke with you.

This month was also your first visit to the Museum of Natural History. I'm not sure which you loved more: the dinosaurs, the stuffed monkeys, or licking the plastic information placards. But either way, it was my favorite visit to the museum of all time. Steven said it was the best time he'd had there too. By the end of our visit, as nap time was nearing, we both got anxious about showing you the giant whale, which was a room we remembered fondly from our visits as children. I spent a lot of time as a kid at not only the New York natural history museum, but also New Haven's Peabody Museum, which has a nice collection of dinosaurs and, instead of a big whale, a giant squid. I couldn't quite remember which museum had the whale and which one had the giant squid, so I spent the last half hour of our visit walking through the Museum of Natural History muttering, "Where's the motherfucking giant squid?".

Eventually we found the squid, which turned out to be a whale, and I think it was a little bit to big for you to comprehend, so you mostly ignored it. But you loved the big, dark room with the big empty space on the floor beneath the whale, and you squealed with delight and pointed at assorted objects in the room while crawling all around the floor.



You pick up new words every day. A sampling of words you understand: light, hat, foot, cat, dog, bird, book, broom, car, teeth, ears, up, belly, burp, rice cake, banana, give, ball.

You are still the happiest, smiliest baby on the block. You are also into everything all the time. You are finally crawling, although you still prefer standing and cruising. Yesterday you figured out how to crawl over a step for the first time. You pretended it was no big deal, but I know you were excited about it.



Keep smiling, little chicken.
Love,
Mommy

This Week in Milo