Sharing

Last night MAS decided his little sister needed a train sticker, too. And you know what? She seemed actually pleased when he carefully placed it on her forehead.

Watching the two of them interact--which they've only really started doing the last few weeks or so--makes me so happy I can't even begin to describe it.

When You're The Bad Mommy

At least once a week MAS and Eggberta and I go to a playspace at a church not far from our Carroll Gardens apartment. The space is open and the woman who runs it friendly. The first two hours are open play, followed by snack time, clean up time and circle time. Once circle time is done, we go home for lunch. They both usually fall asleep on the way home. All in all a good deal for $12.

But something happened there Monday that’s got me thinking.

First off, let me say that MAS is a spirited child. He’s just got more energy than any of the other kids we’ve run into here in Brooklyn. Second, my kids are only a year and a half apart. (Not 100%  planned, but that’s a post for another day.) Third: I don’t always handle my current situation with the grace I’d envisioned I would when I was on bed rest with Eggberta. There. I said it.

Enough preface, here’s the story. (It’s a small one, mind you.)

MAS had a temper tantrum when we had to put our toys away and go to circle time. He’s 2. It happens. But as he was writhing on the ground—very dramatic of him, no?—he banged his head on a chair. After another struggle, I finally got him into the rug where all the other kids were assembled for circle time. Phew, I thought to myself. And we settled in: Eggberta on one knee, MAS on the other. We sang one song. We sang another. Then he got up and darted across the room to the toy house. I got up to retrieve him and said, “Honey, it’s circle time.” Repeat three times. After the last retrieval, I started to frustrated. Eggberta started fussing. The other mothers stared at me. And—here’s the crux, folks—I was embarrassed. All the other kids were sitting quietly for circle time and my son was pin-balling around the room. I got up one more time, retrieving him, but this time he sort of collapsed and threw himself to the floor crying. And in that moment I felt angry, really angry at him for not sitting quietly like the others. Then the woman who runs the playspace and who leads the circle time, the woman I think is so nice and so kind, said in an exasperated voice, “Oh, please, he’s just playing. He’s teasing you.”

I felt called out and judged in the worst way. And for the remainder of circle time I felt ashamed, like the most terrible mother in the whole world.

But as I was walking home, pushing my ginormous stroller with two now sleeping kids, I realized that she was actually right. Yes, it’s important for him to learn to follow the rules and yes it was right to retrieve him and not let him run wild. But to get embarrassed? To get angry? Especially because I felt judged by other mothers? I wasn’t acting in the best interest of my child in that moment; it was all about my own ego, about how I was being perceived as a mother.

Of course it wasn’t right for her to call me out that way. If she thought I was overreacting then a better approach would have been to take me aside after the session… I’ll go back—choices in Winter are few and far between here in the wilds of Brooklyn—but still my enthusiasm for the place has definitely cooled.

Have there been any times you’ve lost your cool as a Mom and reacted in a way you’re not proud of? Or felt judged by others in a non-constructive, non-helpful fashion?

Let the weaning begin...

I love Brooklyn, I really do. But in Winter? I understand why so many older New Yorkers flee to Florida as soon as they can.

Why?

Take a look at this picture I took outside my building.

That's the sidewalk & street.

Now, okay. Forget about driving. Who wants to dig a car out anyway? But walking? Try getting a single stroller through that mess, let alone my clunker of a double. So instead Mas, Eggberta and I have been trapped inside our once-spacious-seeming apartment for DAYS. All of our toys are boring.

But thank god for facebook/twitter: one status update and two friends I haven't seen since high school graduation in May '91 sent me a couple of recipes for home-made playdough. Sweet!

Mas is napping now--in his stroller, which is the only place he'll nap post toddler-bed transition--and so I took the opportunity to give little Eggberta her first taste of solid food: sweet potatoes. She loves it. In fact, take a look:

See that? She's grabbing the spoon and pulling it toward her face!

Unlike Mas at that age, who, upon his first taste of avocado promptly spit it out in disgust.

He likes food now, mind you. Particularly ice cream, but he'll also eat beans, lentils, and edamame. But man was it a hard row at first. He prefered mama's milk, you see. And food he could take or leave.

But I have high hopes for Eggberta. Two more days of sweet potatoes then we're moving on to avocados. Exciting times chez nous, non?

Required Reading

Last night, after three rounds of The Hungry Caterpillar, I told now two-year old MAS that he could have one more book, then, yes, yes, it was bedtime after all. (Now that he's in a toddler bed, bedtime has become a series of carefully orchestrated negotiations and trade-offs. More on that in the coming weeks, though.)

So MAS toddles off to the bookcase where a series of his books & ours live intermingled. He spends a good minute or two carefully scanning the choices before he selects one and bounds back to where I'm sitting, a shit-eating grin on his face.

"Read," he commands and hands me this:

And So I Leapt

I’ve spent a lot of my life being afraid. Afraid of what you may ask? Well, everything. Anything. How I appeared to others. Whether or not the various projects I was working on would fail or not. My writing career. My love life. My sometimes troubled sometimes close relationship with my parents. My depressions. My anxieties. My regrets.

Yada. Yada. Yada.

All of this amorphous fear had one clear result: I was a ruminator, a hesitator. I spent hours and days and years contemplating a move before I made it. It was almost as if I had to run down every possible What if… scenario in my mind before I acted just so I’d know beforehand what I’d do in any given set of circumstances.

Example? I met Ebronis when I was 24, moved in with him when I was 25. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that 50 or 60 years later we’d be relaxing by some lakeside cabin, anticipating the arrival of beloved grandkids. And yet we didn’t marry for another 6 years. Had our first child 11 years out. And even then, I worried: was I doing the right thing? Was I rushing things?

Yeah. I was that kind of person.

But on Thanksgiving 2008 everything changed. MAS entered my life in a lightning bolt of fear and pain and taught me that no matter how intricate your plans, no matter how careful your preparations, life will take you on paths you never even thought to anticipate. Those paths may indeed be frightening, just as I had always thought. But what I didn’t know was that those frightening paths, those unexpected detours into tragedy, could also change you in startling and beautiful ways. That hardship could actually make you a better person, not just sadder and more scarred.

So here I am today. Not anything like the Minerva Jane of before. I look like her. Sometimes I even act like her. But inside? She’s gone. Someone else—someone stronger, someone fearless--lives here now.

All of this is to say that when MAS hit the 12-month mark Ebronis and I talked about trying for a second baby. We both wanted a large family and felt a sibling was the greatest gift we could give to our son. (Our own families are sparse and disappointing in so many ways.) 

Besides, I was about to turn 37. It had taken us a year to conceive the first time.

Time, after all, waits for no woman.

So, despite the depression MAS’s birthday had brought on with its memories of the NICU and emergency C-sections and NEC, we stopped using birth control. 

Maybe a year, we said to each other. At least 6 months. And if it doesn’t happen, that’s fine too. We have MAS. And despite his rocky beginning, that baby is wonderfully, miraculously—normal.

But pregnancy after a preemie? A 28-week preemie? Weren’t we being irresponsible? Weren’t we taking a grave risk you may ask? (I asked myself that, after all, so why shouldn’t you?)

My answer was no. There wasn’t anything wrong with me—like an incompetent cervix or a clotting disorder—that would increase the risk the second time around. I’d had a urinary tract infection and had been dehydrated. A fluke. A random brush with potential tragedy. Besides, if it happened again I’d know what to do. I’d be able to handle it—even better than I had the first time. A second baby, a sibling for MAS, would be worth doing it all again. Despite everything.

Still. This time I’d drink water nonstop and take cranberry extract and see a high risk doc. I’d get weekly p17 shots. I’d take it easy.

But I wasn’t afraid. I mean at all.

Of course, if you know me in real time, or have any sense of how stories like this always end, you know this: four weeks later we were pregnant. Not a couple of months or a year. 28 fucking days.

You’d think I’d be nervous. Especially now, as we close in on week 20. Fast approaching the dreaded 28 weeks when last time everything went awry.

But no. Nothing. No fear. No anxiety. Nothing. If anything, I’m more relaxed than I was the first time around. More confident.

Strange how life works. How beautifully strange.

Another Thing Mamahood Taught Me

After 36 years, 9 months, 20 days and 34 minutes on this planet, being a mother finally taught me the secret to peaceful living: proper planning & organization!

My friend Mark would be proud, I think.

Carroll Gardens In Fall

This morning, on the walk back to my apartment after working for some hours at the local cafe I caught myself thinking: my god I love my life... After so much angst--a moody adolescence; lost & confused early 20s and the difficult road to mamahood--everything in my life just seems to be falling into place.

If this is how my 30s feel, I can't wait to see what my 40s bring.

    My walk home... 

    And the munchkin who awaited me...

How we roll (to music class)

Right now I'm loving:

the bibbity;

anything by gapbaby;

happy baby's grrreat greens;

and the beautiful photos over at Progressive Pioneer.

MAS on Smith Street. En route to Music For Aardvarks.

Enter The Nanny

Our new very part-time nanny started this week.

Let me say that again: the nanny started this week! An event filled with joy, relief, a little fear and a little guilt.

She comes from 8-11 on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Not a lot of time, I know. Barely enough time to get started on the million and one projects I'm either late finishing or late starting. But still. Already its making a huge difference. I'm astonished how much more I can get done in three hours compared to before MAS was born. I've become efficient, folks. Before? I was a typical creative: scattered; distractable; prone to sudden insights while doing the dishes. Now? I sit down and do it now because I know I've only got 2.25 hours left and I have X to complete and Y to outline. Yet another way in which I'm not the same Minerva Jane as I was before he so dramatically entered my life.

Yet another gift he's given me.

Back to the nanny.

It took me eight months after MAS's discharge from the NICU to hire someone, even though I was already technically back to work a month before he came home. (Ebronis and I have a marketing firm. We shifted most of our clients over to him during my brief bedrest but I retained one or two.)

My mother-in-law comes one afternoon a week, so this isn't as bad as it seems. Besides, he goes to bed at 7.

Still, things have piled up.

But every time the idea of hiring someone would come up I would hesitate. The money! The drudgery of finding the right person! He was so vulnerable, you see... And I only needed a few hours. Weren't most people looking for full-time work?

All good points.

But behind all of this protesting, all of these compeltely logical reasons, was a deeper psychological one.

I didn't see my baby until 24 hours after he was born. Didn't get to hold him until he was a week old. He spent the first 9 weeks of his life cared for by a team of nurses, a group of predominately Philippino professionals. (I don't know why, but most of the NICU nurses at St. Luke's Roosevelt on 57th were transplants from the Philippines.)

They were all kind, competent people who had MAS's best interest at heart and without whom he wouldn't have survived, but it still felt so unnatural to be told when and how I could feed, hold, and comfort my own child. I had to ask permission every time. Sometimes it was granted, but if it didn't coincide with the nursing rotation it wasn't. By the end a weird psychology had evolved: I started to feel that it I didn't behave he would never be discharged. I tried so hard to be a good enough patient for the both of us.


So when I got him home? It was like I was making up for lost time. I encircled him, protected him in ways I wasn't able to during that last trimester-cum-first two months. And I was reluctant to let anyone else in...


But now? MAS needs more interaction than what I can give. And I need to figure out who this new Minerva Jane is. And get back to the non-mommy parts of myself...

So today she came at 8, fed MAS his breakfast of organic DHA- and probiotic-enhanced brown rice cereal, and took him to the park where they played on the swings and slide. He returned rosy-cheeked and exhausted from the playing. And now? He's napping peacefully in his stroller while I get back to my old bloggy self.

13 Things About Brownstone Baby

1. He was born on Thanksgiving Day.

2. He was born 12 weeks early.

3. He therefore, like all preemies, has a double identity: Sagittarius and Aquarius.

4. He loves the stuffed loon on his activity gym.

5. He thinks diaper changes are funny.

6. He’s ticklish.

7. He abhors being hungry.

8. He finds his Fisher Price swing sometimes hilarious, sometimes disturbing.

9. He had a full head of hair when he was born; no mean feat for a 28 weeker.

10. Since he learned to stick his tongue out it’s become his favorite trick.

11. He loves bath time more than any other time of day.

12. He loves speed whether its in the car or stroller: stoplights and traffic jams make him angry.

13. He's been hitting every single milestone when he would have had he been born on his due date--sometimes earlier. (Rolling over at 3 months!)

Avian Analogies

To take the bird metaphor further: she who lays her eggs in an open field has to be more aggressive in defending her chicks than she who lays in a camouflaging tree.

Me? I laid my egg on a freshly mown suburban lawn. Danger all around: kids playing ball and dogs digging and cars speeding past.

Nestless, I used my very own puffed up self to protect him. And letting go of that? Ah. Harder than I thought.

Mountain Buggy Strollers In Brooklyn

MAS in his Mountain Buggy Urban Elite


First off, let me say that I don’t really think you can get by with one stroller or one baby carrier anymore than you can get by with one pair of shoes. Sometimes you need a sandal, sometimes you need a sneaker and sometimes only a rain boot will do.

In the best of all possible worlds you’d get a lightweight stroller for hopping on and off subways, a rugged jogging stroller for marathon training (see how funny I can be?) and a chichi but durable Bugaboo for urban restaurant and shopping excursions.

But. Financial circumstances being what they are, forced to make a compromise Ebronis and I were when MAS entered the world.

So we bought a Mountain Buggy jogging stroller. Because I had—still have—this idea that I’m going to get back in shape this summer by training for the NIKE 10k. Not that I really have all that much more to lose—skipping the entire third trimester was a really great way to forgo the whole mommybody thing. (And no: I don’t recommend it as a strategy: a 2.5 pound baby is a frightening thing.

Back to the stroller.

Things I love about my Mountain Buggy Urban Elite:

The rugged wheels handle the often-crappy Brooklyn streets & sidewalks without once jostling the baby awake.

A swiveling front wheel makes turning city corners a breeze but it also locks into place for stability on long runs.

The water bottle holder puts a cold drink at my fingertips.

The seat is extra comfy and MAS has no trouble napping out.

The entire seat and sun canopy snap off for easy cleaning.

The $50 car seat clip meant I never had to wake MAS when going from car to stroller to apartment. (If you have a colicky baby like I did, you’ll understand the true value of such a feature.)

Things I Hate About My Mountain Buggy Urban Elite:

Since it weighs in at 23 lbs there’s no way I’m lugging that thing up or down any subway stairs soon.

The wide wheelbase makes for a stable ride over a variety of terrain but also means I can’t get into certain narrow Brooklyn storefronts.

There’s no coffee cup holder. (Hello people: caffeine is the only antidote to infant-induced sleep deprivation. Sheesh.)

Keep in mind that this thing is the SUV of strollers: its overall appearance is mountain bike meets REI fashion. Not surprisingly, maitre d’s see us coming & cringe. Some, like the folks at Chestnut, mask their chagrin so well they deserve a medal for the effort.

Given all the above we’ve decided to purchase a second lightweight stroller for subways & restaurants. A used Maclaren, for example: 11 pounds or less & folds into near nothingness.

Got one?

Walk-Up Living. Or, An Ode To The Sling

We, like many Brooklynites, live in a walk-up. Still, our two bedroom apartment with its leaky faucets and over exuberant winter heating system (can we say steam heat=sauna) comes at a pretty penny--three times the rent, in fact, that we paid for our 3 bedroom full bath Charlottesville, VA place.

But committed we are to city living. Or rural living. (Its the suburbs that I find soul-crushing.)

Now that the bambino is home, I'm finding those three sets of stairs create untold obstacles to my daily living. Sure, I have a great stroller.* But getting it up and down the stairs with baby in one arm? Yeah right.

That's where this wonderful thing called the sling comes in. Unlike the Ergo, which I also own and shall write about shortly, the sling is super fast and easy to put on. Slip it over one arm, slide the baby into the pocket and away we go.

And days when MAS won't stop crying? After I've bounced on the exercise ball for over an hour and STILL no sleep for the preemie-liscous boy? Why, the sling: slide him in and my hands are free to say read a book or sweep the floor--or GASP, write a blogpost.

* The Mountain Buggy, while fab, is friggin' heavy.

Chicco KeyFit 30: Fit For A Shrimp

The Shrimpster, in his Chicco Keyfit with Infant Insert


I was a little anal about my baby registry, I have to admit. Part of it was that I was so flummoxed by the number of choices and chagrined by the implication that if I made the wrong choice I’d be a BAD MOTHER that I researched the pants off of everything. That, and I tend to over research things in general. (I even had a spreadsheet of items I wanted! Color coded! And cross referenced!)

Anyhoo, when MAS was born three months early that whole process sort of got dropped. Funny, that. I’d researched everything online, you see, and hadn’t had a chance to really visit the babychain stores to see the crap in real life. (More on that later when we talk about strollers & citylife.)

Plus, it seemed like every time we started preparing for MAS's arrival something bad happened. What do I mean? Paint the babies room: go into preterm labor & deliver 12 weeks early. Order the crib: baby gets NEC and has to go on a triple course of antibiotics for ten days and is fed through an IV.

Scary shit, no? Sorta makes you superstitious, no?

And then there's the fact that our needs and priorities shifted a bit: preemies are a special case. Especially super shrimpy preemies like MAS. For Chrissake, he just barely hit 4 lbs 12 oz when we brought him home so the Graco SafeSeat I’d registered for sure as hell wasn’t going to cut it. (The SafeSeat is only good for babies 5 lbs and over...)

The only car seat that could really fit him was the Chicco Keyfit 30, which I begrudgingly registered for even though it was more expensive than the Graco and didn’t fit the SnugGlider that I REALLY wanted. (A swing! And it vibrates! And is so small I could fold it and slide it under the sofa! A Brooklynite's dream, really...)

But boy was I wrong. I love this car seat, if love is a word that can really be applied to something like a car seat. It was a breeze to install because its got a spring-assisted level foot, bubble levels, and “Center-Pull” adjustment. And it fits babies 4 to 30 lbs and has these latches on the side so I can use it in our car, in a car service car or even a Taxi—from the day he came home from the NICU until he’s like 2. So MAS is pretty much set.

Luckily it also fits my Mountain Buggy Stroller Car Seat Adapter and Kolcraft Universal Car Seat frame—the latter of which, annoyingly, was stolen from my apartment building’s vestibule. (But also luckily: Brooklyn thieves are stupid: they stole the cheap stroller!)

After He Peed Into His Own Mouth...

MAS is my first baby. And while I read up as much as I could during my seven month pregnancy, there are some things book learnin’ just can’t prepare you for: like the way little boys love to pee whenever their genitals are exposed. A little pee never hurt anyone I figure, so I’ve been occasionally remembering to cover him up with a wipe during a diaper change and occasionally forgetting… At which point I either change him or just swab both of us down and go with it. But yesterday, on our stroll around the hood—christ! It was 60 degrees!—I saw this thing called a wee blocker at Area Kids on Montague Street here in Brooklyn. (I think you can also buy it at One Step Ahead.) It’s basically a cloth egg that fits right over his penis. (Machine washable of course.) It works like charm. Necessary? Nah. But for ten bucks he looks awful cute & we both stay dry.



(And yes, he did pee into his own mouth once. But you know it really didn’t seem to bother him as much as you might think…)