Anything Said: September 2007

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Friday, real and imagined

Friday afternoon, upon deciding that Cletus the Former Fetus' day-long rant of screaming and ear-tugging existed in direct opposition to the fact that she had been on antibiotics for three days for an ear infection diagnosed earlier in the week, I chanced to pick up the phone and call the child's pediatrician for advice. The following transpired:

Imagined scenario: A kindly nurse came to the phone. With compassion and good humor, she said, "Don't you worry about a thing. Your child's antibiotics will begin kicking in at precisely 6:00 this evening. I know this because I am a trained medical professional and, also, a magical sorceress."

Real scenario: A snarly nurse came to the phone. With mighty sighs and an extra helping of bitchface, she said "Why would you wait until now to call us? Now I'll have to go interrupt the doctor and see if she wants you to come in."

Like, for real. She said that. I was all "ok, um, would you?" and she was all "hold, please" except without the please, and then five minutes later she was back on the line telling me that the doctor would see me but that I had to get in my car and be there within ten minutes. So I did. Because apparently I take orders from mean ladies.

Cletus and I arrived at the office to find that it was in the process of closing down for the afternoon. At 3:15. They were just kidding around, I guess, about that whole 9-5 thing posted on their front door. But whatever -- we ran into the front lobby and up to the counter and --

Imagined scenario: -- the receptionist took one look at my bleary-eyed snot-nosed kid and smiled sympathetically. "Thank goodness you got here before we closed an hour and a half early," she said gently, "and welcome to your doctor's office. We recognize that you will pay about $300 for this 5-minute visit because of your high-deductible insurance plan, and we appreciate your business, since you -- sick people -- are our entire reason for being. Please come right in and the doctor will make your daughter well."

Real scenario: -- the receptionist greeted us with a steely glare. The waiting room was empty. I took a seat with a suddenly and infuriatingly chipper, chatty Cletus (does anyone else's kid pull this kind of shit?) and watched as the receptionist wheeled her chair over to the other woman working behind the counter and began to whisper. A nurse quickly joined them and the three women continued to grumble, periodically shooting glances over at me and/or shaking their heads, for about five minutes.

Finally the nurse broke free from the huddle and invited Cletus and me to join her in an exam room. Once inside the room, I decided to put on my nice mask. "I'm so sorry to call at the last minute and I hope we aren't keeping you late," I offered up. "I really was just calling for advice; I had no idea I was going to be asked to come in today."

Imagined scenario: The nurse gave me a sheepish smile. "I know, don't worry about it, we were closing early anyways" she said. "These things happen. It's not like children only get sick at convenient times. What's important here is that we get this little one feeling better!" And then she pulled out a cookie for the baby. The doctor's office of my fantasy world involves a lot of sweets.

Real scenario: The nurse tsked at me like she was my teacher and I was the kid in the dunce cap. "Oh, you don't have to apologize to ME," she said. "I just wish you would have called earlier so your baby didn't have to suffer."

Again, for real. She actually said that.

Imagined scenario: "Listen Bitchy McBedsideManner," I shouted, "do you have any idea how hard it is to be a first-time parent, to have no fucking clue what's going on with your kid, with your life, with your mental stability, to labor over every decision you make and then still second-guess yourself at every turn? And then to have a sick kid, and to do everything the doctor tells you to do for that sick kid, and then when what the doctor tells you to do doesn't work, to have some crazy woman with a chart and a thermometer tell you that YOU are the one to blame?" Then Cletus whipped off her own diaper and threw it across the room like a shotput while I pelted the nurse with cotton swabs.

Real scenario: I just stared at the nurse with my mouth open because, seriously? Did I just hear what I thought I heard?

Ultimately, the doctor came in and was nice enough and determined that not only had the antibiotic not worked on the infection, but that the infection had spread to both ears. She prescribed something stronger which appears to be working, as the child slept through the night last night and managed to go longer than ten minutes today without throwing a fit or beating me over the head with alphabet blocks.

Which, really, is lucky for Cletus. Because if it were up to me? It would be misery and suffering all the way, baby. That's just the way I roll.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Written before I had another piece of cake for dinner

Remember when I used to write about things other than babies?

This weekend was my husband's fake birthday. We're into fake birthdays at our house -- celebrating when we want to celebrate, delivering another hit to The Man. This year I wanted to do something special, seeing as how it's the end of the husband's first year as a dad and he's worked so hard and even taken the occasional break from his usual routine of pretending to be fast asleep when the baby cries during the night. So I flew his best friend out from Boston to surprise him with a weekend of frolicking. They went on many adorable man-dates, including a bike ride/picnic combo and a show at Second City.

There was also a chocolate cake and cupcakes (from a box -- I didn't suddenly acquire skills) involved, which I've been eating for breakfast.

The husband and I have been thinking: we need to get a hobby. Does anyone have any ideas? The requirements are as follows: said hobby must be something we can do in our apartment during the evening hours. It must not require any level of proficiency in crafting. It must not be scrapbooking; I do not scrapbook. It must not be boring. It must not lead to marital fighting, which excludes things like Scrabble playing (he makes up words and then has the gall to find them in the dictionary when I challenge them) or exercise (his muscles remind me of my lack thereof, which reminds me that I'm lazy, which reminds me to eat more cake). It must not involve the television. We do not need any more encouragement in the Angel viewing.

Options we have considered so far include brewing beer (pros: beer; cons: involves lots of stuff we will have to purchase and store), learning to cook international food and/or to become better bakers (pros: yum; cons: $$, as well as the high probability of total failure), and taking up crossword puzzles (pros: he's good at them; cons: I'm not). Any other suggestions are highly encouraged.

My next-door neighbors are having what appears to be a cocktail party on their wraparound porch. My daughter is having a party in her crib, which has extended an hour beyond what was supposed to be bedtime. I was invited to neither. I'm going to go make some soup.

If you want to laugh and laugh and take your mind off of your consuming obsession with your child's vaccination schedule, do the following:

Listen to this. I tune in every week, but have not enjoyed an episode this much in a long time.

Watch this. It made me pee, just a little.

Monday, September 17, 2007

I know what MY wish is...

Remember this creature?

On Wednesday, she will be one year old. I know that every parent of an infant says this, but I really mean it: I cannot stress to you enough how ridiculous this is.

I've been sitting at my computer for an hour now trying to write something profound, typing and erasing sentence after sentence. Part of this, admittedly, is due to the fact that the husband is watching "The Birds" on cable in the other room and it's remarkably hard to focus over the screeches of man-eating gulls. But mostly, it's due to the fact that it just seems impossible to sum up a first year of parenthood -- really, a first year as a new version of me -- in a little orange and blue Blogger window.

From September 2006 through January 2007, my life was pretty much a variation on a theme, and the theme looked something like this:

There were days, many days, so many days that I'd be embarrassed to count, when I didn't want to get out of bed, when I felt like my only friends were the makers of Similac and the hosts of The View. I don't think I felt bonded to Cletus, really bonded, until late winter or early spring, when the screams were occasionally replaced by complacency, gassy smiles, milk-drunk laughs.

This past Saturday, my family threw Cletus her first birthday party at the house they bought just a couple of months ago. There was so much love in that shiny new living room, it was crazy. Also occupying space in that living room? Presents. An absurd amount of them. Observe:

(Just wondering: do they even make toys that don't chant obnoxious rhymes and jingles anymore?

Cletus chose the occasion of the party to debut her first independent steps -- five of them, wobbly and stinted, leading right into my outstretched arms like some kind of Pampers commercial. I felt a jab in my heart, a voice whispering in my ear: "This is how it happens; this is what life is like when you let yourself live it." These past few weeks have been all about me doggedly NOT allowing myself to breathe. Cletus wasn't sleeping -- why wasn't she sleeping? Cletus was pooping rivers and teething and constantly sick -- what was wrong with her? Cletus wasn't meeting Developmental Milestones A through F on the prescribed Dr. Sears schedule -- why couldn't she just be normal?

I'm pretty sure this is a lesson I'm going to have to learn again and again. My job is to love that baby, wherever she's at, whatever she's doing. If she's one year old and I'm already frantically comparing her to her peers, what kind of a freak show am I going to be running when she's six and having trouble reading, or when she's twelve and breaking my heart by being all into makeup and dresses and shit?

Anyway, I'm not saying that I'm going to stop complaining and worrying and obsessing, because, well, have you met me? I squeezed nine pounds of human out of my ladyparts, and that gives me a get-out-of-social-niceties-free pass that I can pull out whenever I feel so inclined. But I am saying this: Cletus the Former Fetus, crazed grinning laughing screeching babbling toddling turbo-pooping dancing whirlwind of a child, you are the great love of my life. Early last month, I posted a Deborah Garrison poem that spoke to the dark days of early motherhood. Here's one for coming out on the other side. The situation may be different from mine, but the sentiment is filling me right up:

Above the Roar

When I was unhappy
words slipped ceaselessly
from my pen,
arrows down the page,
tears run together,
running to tell.

But when I was happy—
when a second girl
slid out of my body
on the third breath,
glistening with the caul
still on her head
(like Caesar, the doctor said);
when she clamped onto me
and my uterus buckled and
I was weeping for everything I’d lost
that she couldn’t lose
because those things were
already gone;
when her sister was belting
“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true!”
up and down the back stairs;
when one or the other
lit with fever lay humped
on my chest and I was burning
another vigil to the flicker
of shallow breathing,
that candle of worry
just the length of one night;
when I looked into your eyes
and heard your mind clearly
and answered silently yes,
I love you, I adore you
(and it was loud, my ears were roaring);
when I chased the baby
down the hall where he dashed,
penis flying, proud and squealing,
to delay his bath a hundredth time—

I was wordless, free…

Look at me grab him!

--Deborah Garrison, from "The Second Child"

Happy birthday, littlest one. Now please, for the love of God, go to sleep.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Float like a butterfly, sting like a baby

People, my kid totally just beat the crap out of another kid at storytime. Like, with her hands and a cardboard book. I think she has rage issues. Do you think that's because I say "fuck" too much?

Every Tuesday we attend a storytime for babies at our local library. I briefly worked at said library last year conducting storytimes for preschoolers, so I always feel a particular amount of pressure when I'm there with Cletus the Former Fetus to keep her under control, since I know firsthand the challenges of engaging the bratty kids with the negligent parents. Lately, though, Cletus hasn't been receiving that memo. She's the oldest baby in the storytime session, since she turns one (I KNOW!) next week, and she seems determined to flaunt this life experience advantage to the fullest extent possible by going completely apeshit every time her feet hit the floor.

We walked in the door today and she immediately started shouting out pronouncements in gibberish, raising her hands heavenward and shaking them around for emphasis: "DIGGUN DIGGUN DIGGUN! YAH!! ba ba DA DA GAHHHHH!" The other babies kind of glanced up at her, all "dude, we're just here for the stories, ok?" But Cletus would not be swayed. The instant I sat her down on her little red mat, she was off and crawling. She pulled the librarian's books out of the little wicker basket where they were held. She attacked the wee felt animal cut-outs the librarian had intended to use to illustrate a sing-along. Sadly, thanks to my daughter, Old McDonald now does NOT have a horse. She squirmed and kicked and launched herself off of my lap every time I tried to subdue her into a nice game of "Two Little Blackbirds". She did not, I think it goes without saying, listen to the stories.

Then at the end of the session, the part where the librarian hands out shimmery scarves and the other normal babies use them to play peek-a-boo while my child shoves hers into her mouth and then does a cartwheel? That part? That's when Cletus decided the time was right to turn to the teeny well-behaved little seven-month-old sitting sweetly beside her and clock her upside the head. The assaulted party began, naturally, to cry. This prompted Cletus to poke at the child's eyes with her fingers and then, apparently not having received the response she was looking for, to swat at her again, this time with a cardboard book about dogs.

To her credit, the mother of the injured baby simply laughed it off. I did, however, catch a couple of uber-nannies over in the corner giving me the stink eye. Which, whatever. I assure you that those bitches were not up from 2-5:30 this morning with their charges, plus they get PAID to wrangle their little companions. I can only reign the child in so much, you know?

Anyway, I felt bad, and after the storytime was over I asked the librarian if she thought I should transfer Cletus over to the 1-year-olds group. She gave me a tired smile and said (I paraphrase): For the love of God yes yes YES, except that you can't because the 1-year-olds group is full, and that is why my job sucks. See you next week.

Now I'm all half embarrassed and half proud and wondering if I should bring along some protective outerwear for next week's session...

Saturday, September 08, 2007

"She's been in there a long time. Do you think she's ok?"

Does anyone else feel like they will have to fuck someone up if they hear that "Hey There Delilah" song on the radio one more time?

This week was a challenge. Cletus the Former Fetus rocked it All Star Poker style, all "I'll see your lack of sleep, and raise you a raging case of pinkeye." I dropped the child off at daycare on Wednesday and, yes, she was a little bleary-eyed, but I figured that was what happened when you stayed up all night flinging pacifiers across the room and speaking in tongues. But by 10:00 I had a phone call at work from the babysitter who was like "Yeah, so, I've filled up a bucket with the green stuff that's pouring out of your child's eyes. Maybe you should come and get her." Now she's getting antibiotic eyedrops of death four times a day and the husband and I are scrambling to try to make up the work hours we missed on account of that whole Thou Shalt Not Bring Diseased Children To Daycare commandment. Which is really a sucky rule when your kid is the one already infected.

It wasn't all bad, though. I ended up working two night shifts at the library, which meant that I was twice able to indulge in my secret combo of shameful nighttime driving joy: eating fast food in the car while listening to Delilah (not the aforementioned crap song; the crazy love tunes lady) on the radio. An isolated case of two wrongs most definitely making a right. Last night I got my BK on while listening to Delilah say to a caller, "I just love adopting babies." Like she was talking about collecting pewter figurines or something. Then she spun some Air Supply. I love that woman.

Can we make a sharp turn here and talk about the bathrooms at my work, please? Because they are outfitted with those awful automatic flushing toilets, and every time I use the facilities I feel like I am in a race against time. It's like they've got their motion sensors turned up to 11. You sit down on the toilet seat; the toilet flushes. You scratch your face; the toilet flushes. And don't even think about reaching for the toilet paper before you are prepared to use it, lest you set into motion a cacophony of flushes that knows no end.

Now let's say you're a person who hasn't consumed her optimal amount of drinking water in a given day. And let's say you had a big lunch. And let's also say, just for grins, that you pushed out a baby about a year ago, thus leaving you with a semi-permanent case of not-quite-but-could-become-at-any-time almost-hemorrhoids. Care to calculate how many flushes a simple trip to the bathroom might cost you?

I'll tell you how many. SIX is how many. SIX flushes. In your workplace. With your colleagues right outside the door, waiting to use the restroom themselves, all "I guess she really had to go."

And as a side note, the library office restrooms also have those automatic sinks where you just hold your hands under the faucet and tepid water sprinkles out all of its own accord. So now every time I use any public bathroom I find myself striding over to the sinks, thrusting out my fingers and waiting out of habit, like a spoiled handwashing princess.

This post really has no point and I got some garlic cheese curds from the farmer's market this morning, so I'm going to go eat them while there's still an ounce of nap in this baby of mine. Which of course means she should wake up in about 1.5 seconds, right on schedule.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

What fresh hell is this?

Here's another thing I'm learning about parenthood: every time you think that you have reached a point where you couldn't possibly be more tired? Still More Tired Comes. Add to the list of things nobody ever tells you: kids just up and forget how to sleep. Like, that whole Weissbluth mumbojumbo about "Lisa and Neil let their baby cry it out, and it was hard for the first three nights -- little Ava cried for 40 minutes!!-- but then it was like something clicked and Ava has been a peaceful sleeper ever since"? That crap? People, shield yourselves from the propaganda!! Apparently you can spend half your life teaching your child to drift off to sleep, but why bother? SHE WILL FORGET HOW.

Seriously. How do you forget how to sleep? It's like -- can you forget how to pee? Who knew this was possible?

Cletus the Former Fetus has barely slept since Friday. Every time her butt hits the crib mattress, she starts partying like it's her birthday; her eyes are glazed and she's barely conscious but she's sticking around until last call, dammit. From 7 to 7 she sleeps maybe 6-7 hours total, then the next day she's toddling around all loopy like she's jacked up on applesauce and speed. The husband and I grind our fists into our eyes and feel our way around the house like Mary Ingalls in the blind school. We speak to each other in a messy language of grunts and barks. We are unwashed. Yes, we realize that this is just a developmental phase. Does that matter? It's a cruel and torturous developmental phase.

If this is all a part of her learning how to walk, she better come out of it trotting like a pony.

At my moms' group meeting this morning, a young woman with a child Cletus' age and another on the way asked me if my husband and I were thinking of "trying for another" anytime soon. I don't know if it was the look of crazed terror that lit my eyes or the sheer volume of my bellowed "NOOO!", but for whatever reason she backed away real quick-like, all "Oooo-kaaay, Screamy McFreakpants". What can I say? What I lack in social skills I make up for in sleep-deprived hallucinations.

And here's the really crazy part: I can't nap! I've tried -- daily, since this whole business started. I position myself on the couch, I nestle in with the dog and some pillows, I rest my head and... nothing. My mind churns and spins and I get frustrated and before you know it I'm watching Rock of Love with Bret Michaels on VH1.

May you all have pleasant dreams. And if you're online at 3:45 AM, let's chat. Otherwise, it'll just be me and some guys who want to talk about Magic the Gathering.