The difference is shoes

Moxie has developed her personality. It is: opinionated.

Yesterday, while Tallulah was in school, Mox and I were hanging out at home. I was attempting to clean house and The Moo was attempting to destroy it. She was winning. First she discovered Tallulah's crayons, left on the coffee table, and decided to decorate the plain, boring old table. "No!" I yelled. "No coloring on tables!" Then I remembered my positive discipline (it always comes to me a sentence too late) and re-stated it.
"We color on paper, Moxie, paper." I dragged out a big roll of paper, cut a strip to cover the coffee table, and let Moxie at it. We colored together awhile, then I began tidying again. While I was tidying, Moxie crawled over to the shoe rack and picked out a pair of white dress-up shoes I had never put on her before.
"Moxie, those shoes are too stiff," I told her. "They'll hurt your feet."
"Blah," said Moxie, shaking the shoes at me.
"You need shoes that are flexible so your feet don't get gnarled and grotesque."
"Blah. Beeelaaaah!" Moxie said louder.
"Your arches haven't developed yet, and you won't be able to walk in those."
"AAAAARRRRRGGGG!!"
So I put the shoes on her. They were a bit too tight, but Moxie immediately grinned up at me and pointed to her feet. When we went to pick up Tallulah she wore the shoes and greeted everyone she saw with a grin and a point at her shoes. Everyone agreed her shoes were pretty and she was pleased.

Tallulah, on the other hand, is a black shoes girl. Her auntie Kimmie bought her some fancy black Mary Janes and, despite the fact that she has about seven pairs of shoes-- all of which are more appropriate for her everyday activities like running, climbing trees, and pretending to do Kung Fu-- she wears these Mary Janes every day. For every occasion.

They're getting a little beat up so I went to the Stride Rite outlet in Ellenton to buy her some new shoes. They had these:



Cute, right? I wanted to get them for her so badly. I can picture her running and jumping and doing fin stuff in these brightly colored cheery shoes. But I've done this before-- bought her shoes I thought were great only to have her continue to wear black Mary janes until the coating is flaking off and the smell emanating from them envelops the entire house. So I bought her these:



Meh.

Both my girls-- apparently-- have huge opinions about shoes. And I thought, ok, they are opinionated and fiesty, that's cool. But they look different. Moxie is a little darker in her coloring, her cheeks are a little more bottom-heavy, their faces are shaped differently. They are totally different people with a similar strong opinion about shoes.

Then a friend came across some old pictures of Tallulah when she was about the same age as Moxie is now. Observe:












My children are identical!!! Can you even tell which one is Tallulah and which one is Moxie? Neither can I. I have started marking all the pictures with initials and dates because in about two years I won't know whose baby pictures are whose. The only way to tell them apart will be to look at their shoes. Black? Tallulah. White? Moxie. I have got to stop taking naked pictures.

FYI: if you're playing along at home, the answer key is Moxie, Tallulah, Tallulah, Moxie. Mixed them up, didn't you.

Ah, sweet mystery of love at last I've found you

Moxie won't sleep with me. For the most part. What I mean by this is: Moxie will sleep only if she is attached, Hoover-like, to my nipple and even then she is restless and easy to wake. With Kent, she falls asleep and stays asleep. I tell him all the time it's because he's boring, but that only amuses me a little bit and the rest of the time I feel helpless at not being able to get the baby to sleep.

Kent has gotten in this routine of taking Moxie after her middle of the night nursing and getting her to sleep in the crook of his arm. If she doesn't settle immediately, he takes her downstairs to the living room couch and for some reason snuggling together on the couch puts her to sleep 95% of the time. A couple nights ago this didn't work and I gave her some more midnight snacking time. While I lay there with the baby kneading my tummy with her feet, pinching my breast, and slapping my face, I realized that Kent hadn't come back upstairs and was still sleeping on the couch. Aw, hell no!

Then yesterday it's 11am, I'm still in my pajamas, the kitchen counters are displaying a dirty-dish replication of the Swiss Alps, breakfast shrapnel is still littering the floor under Moxie's highchair, and I'm running around the house with a naked poop covered baby searching for a diaper when Kent breezes in from a meeting, announces that he's taking a shower and then proceeds to take one. The nerve!

I was thinking about this today when a friend told me she and her husband are 'taking a break'.

"We're not really separating. We just need to take a breather from 'us' right now," she explained. To which I replied, huh? Because this is not in my world-view. Sure, we'd all like to take a break-- from our spouses, our kids, the bills, work...all of it. I often, when Tallulah was little, complained that if only I could put the baby on pause for a week, a day, the length of a long nap, I'd be just fine.

But it doesn't work that way. Kids and life and stress and joy just don't wait. In fact, just this week Moxie has been walking, said two new words, Tallulah's tooth got loose, we rediscovered the joy of smoothies... not to mention the regular, everyday stuff like reading the bedtime story and having the following conversation after school pick-up: "How did your day go?" "I don't want to talk about it."

And I know this isn't what my friend was talking about. Grown up relationships have a different pace and rhythm, but I feel it works the same way. We-- all of us, the whole family-- are in this together and becoming each other's strengths by being present for all the little, everyday things. Through sleeplessness and stinkiness and piled up dishes and feet to the abdomen -- all of it. I just can't see how, once you become a parent, you can ever separate the everyday stress and joy from the relationship.

Kent and I have developed a marriage so far removed from the breathless wonder of falling in love. It's messy and loud and spends way too much time talking about who ran the washer last. We spend no time actively being romantic or discussing our inner selves or musing on why we love each other. We don't think about the mystery of love or where our relationship fits into it. Yet somehow, here we are. In the middle of it.

The zenith of cute

We were at the bookstore and Moxie was pulling everything off the shelves and giving me the baby equivalent of "Whatchu gonna do about it?" so I picked her up, set her on her feet four feet away from Kent and said, "Walk to Daddy." And she did, thus ending her babyhood and propelling her on the path to sullen adolescence.

For the past two weeks Moxie has been developing new toddler-esque tricks. She kisses (only Tallulah gets the drooly ones. Moxie is content to give everyone closed mouth kisses, a fact for which Kent and I are extremely grateful, but attacks Tallulah open-mouthed and dripping. Tallulah is underwhelmed with baby kisses), she finally has some sign language (she touches her fingertips together to say 'more', but since she does it only after shrieking at the top of her volume and pitch levels it comes across as more Dr. Evil than Baby Einstein), and now, walking. There is no way to avoid the movement out of babyhood and into toddlerhood and, frankly, I wouldn't want to prolong babyhood.

We've been making a big deal about Moxie's new abilities and Tallulah had been noticing. "I think I'd like to be a baby again so I can be cute," she told me. So I lied to her and told her she, as a five year old, was just as cute as a baby. This is a lie, not because Tallulah isn't the cutest five year old in the history of five year olds-- she is, obviously. (anyone reading this who actually owns a five year old may take offense to this statement. And I'm sorry for that. I'm also sorry for you for not having the cutest five year old in the history of five year olds. For real-- sorry.)

But it's a lie to say any five year old can match a baby for cuteness. It's a biological impossibility. Babies are designed to illicit protective responses. Those big eyes, the impossibly large and ungainly heads. This is thousands of years of human evolution and we are helpless in the face of it. By five, milky sweet breath has developed into morning breath. Poops are solid blocks of stink. Cute helplessness has given way to incessant attention seeking behaviors.

So, as much as I'm ready to exchange baby lugging for toddler hand-holding, ready to see Moxie's personality change and develop and grow, I know that at some point I'm going to really miss the sweet cuddly baby stage.

But not today.

My name is Kellie, and I am a self-torturer

There was no desperate housewives last week, thus no streaming episode online, the fug girls took the WHOLE WEEKEND off just because it was Thanksgiving, and I'm all caught up on Hulu's episodes of Bones, Kitchen Nightmares, and Battlestar. So you will excuse the fact that I read Dooce and now am wallowing in Mom Envy.

I don't usually read Dooce. Sure, she's funny. Yeah, she's figured out how to a.) write daily and b.) make a living from her writing. And I suppose that if I were to rate parenting insight and humor 1-10 with 1 being I'd rather be in that part of labor where my hipbones get wrenched apart from the inside, I'd rate her writing as a solid 15. But I'm on a self torture diet and reading Dooce is like an alcoholic sitting across from a Long Island Iced Tea sipping a glass of water. I started my diet, by the way, after attending a yogurt and kefir making class with a friend who does things like make her family's kefir and yogurt from raw milk produced by happy local organic cows. And I came away from the class believing firmly that I must make my family's yogurt and kefir if I want them to grow up healthy and happy. Until this class I had felt pretty good about getting kefir into my family on a regular basis. But now, the shame. The kefir my family drank was from the store. And sweetened. And pasteurized. I might as well just punch my baby in the face. Which is what my husband almost did when I told him about my plan.

Actually, what he did was laugh at me. Then gently reminded me that we'd just moved, had a six month old baby, and I was starting a new job. Store bought kefir was GOOD ENOUGH! Since then, I've had many opportunities to repeat that lesson to myself. I say it like a mantra whenever I start to stress myself over the little things. Dishes piled up in the sink. Moxie finding-- and eating-- Cheerios on the floor. Laundry going straight from the clean basket to my children's bodies with no stops in folded piles or dresser drawers along the way. It's GOOD ENOUGH!

So I kind of prepped myself before I opened up the dooce website. She's going to be funny and entertaining, I said to myself. I want a giggle. Even if she writes about an experience I've written about only she does it funnier and with greater insight. that's fine. What I do is good enough.

Only, dooce is pregnant in the first trimester and still writing every day in funny and witty ways. She's writing upbeat observations about pregnancy and parenting her older daughter. Tra-la-la, life is great and well-scripted. And I can't help but compare it to my own second child pregnancy. I spent week 6 through week 24 lying in the middle of my bed clutching the edges so i wouldn't fall off. It was my boat in a sea of nausea. The only sentences I put together were to tell Tallulah, when she crawled gently beside me, to stop breathing so hard, she was rocking the bed.

The other thing I did which REALLY made me fall off my self torture diet was weigh myself immediately after our second Thanksgiving dinner. Why? Why did I do that?

Sick in the head

I'm sick, my head is pounding, my nose is running, and Moxie has decided that screaming is the best form of communication while Tallulah has chosen conversationis interruptus (it sounds better in latin) which means that every two seconds I start to ask Kent if he's seen the tissues or the tylenol to which Moxie responds "AAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!" and Tallulah says, "I was TALKING!!!"

Tallulah forgets about having conversation with anyone other than her imaginary superhero friends until either kent or I begin a conversation. Then she remembers, only, instead of beginning a conversation with us or joining our conversation, she just continues her superhero imaginary friend conversation and gets furious with us for not realizing that she is now speaking to us and how do we dare interrupt her train of thought.

And Moxie has decided that sign language, which I've been trying to teach her for the past four months, is totally lame and for suckers and she never sees us using it so why the hell would she? And instead, she's using imitations of the sounds she hears us making, only at a Much Grander Volume.

The only person making me happy in my sickened state is Kent, who just finished cleaning the kitchen after lunch while on a break from his work. I keep trying to tell him how happy he makes me, only I keep getting interrupted. Or out-volumed.

I want to leave the house to replace the tissues or the tylenol that have now mysteriously disappeared (why is it that these things sit on a shelf for months during health and the minute a cold comes on, poof, they scurry away to dark corners until you're healthy again) but I can't because I would have to take my children to the store with me and I'm afraid that some well meaning little old lady or young woman with ticking biological clock will stop me to gush over how cute my kids are and I will start weeping and warning them against the dangers of biology.

Moxie and the curse of the second child

The alternative title to this post is: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Moxie is turning one on November 28th. Can you believe it? It seems like only ten posts ago I was blogging about being pregnant. Umm, err, ahem. This might have less to do with the passage of time and more to do with my lack of blog entries. However...

Since it's her first, we haven't had to deal with the whole, birthday-near-a-major-holiday thing and I'm figuring out how to negotiate this. We celebrate Thanksgiving typically with my mom and family on the actual Thanksgiving holiday. Then, because Kent is ruthless when it comes to eating good meals as often and in as much quantity as possible, he's convinced his parents to have their Thanksgiving dinner on the weekend so we can eat with them, too. Next weekend is also Moxie's birthday so we decided to have a birthday celebration tonight, a week early.

And here's where being the second child is both a boon and a curse. On Tallulah's first birthday, we invited three babies her age, their parents, Tallulah's cousin, his parents, my parents, my sisters, Kent's parents, our neighbors, and another family. Tallulah was totally overwhelmed and in every picture she is looking dazed, confused, and on the brink of tears. For Moxie's birthday dinner, we invited grandparents. Period. And my set can't make it which means Grandma, Grandpa, Tallulah, Kent, me, and the birthday girl-- just a quiet family celebration. I think this will go over so much better with Moxie and we'll be able to really gush over her and laugh at her little fingers in the homemade carrot cake smashing it around messily. But when she is eight years old and trolling the photo albums for a final score in the game "Who does mommy and daddy love best," I believe she will hold up the first birthday pictures as proof of something unintended.

Plus, Kent decided to get Moxie a present today after he finished work, but she hadn't napped and he rocked her to sleep and inadvertently fell asleep himself. So now they are cuddled up together on the bed looking adorable and sweet. This is, of course, Moxie's preference in life right now: daddy cuddles rate way higher than toys and presents. But, again, an eight year old Moxie is really going to get some points on the scorecard since Kent's nap-share is taking up his shopping time.



This is probably a good time to even out the score: Tallulah, when you were two weeks old, I put you down on the couch and got up to make some coffee. I wasn't more than two steps away before you rolled off the couch and landed smack on the floor. I think this is proof that you should be playing the game, "why did we get stuck with these parents?"

Oh, and here--finally--is a picture of Tallulah's bangs. I took the picture that night, but the red wine made me too lazy to upload. And, no, I did not give Tallulah any of my red wine to dull the pain of her haircut. Who can spare the wine?

womanly advice

Tonight I was googling sugar addiction because I'm pretty sure I have it and I found this pretty amazing site about how to balance life as a mom and caregiver with maintaining a sense of self. I'm a total sucker for this kind of thing-- I love flipping through Oprah's O magazine even if I have to roll my eyes every other page as she leads the reader through a maze of 'reasonably priced splurges' at $200 per 'must-have' cashmere sweater or affirmations to run ten miles and get a pedicure during lunch.

Then, because I was on a roll of finding helpful womanly advice, I checked out Gwyneth Paltrow's newsletter/website. And damn, was that a mistake.

What is wrong with Gwynnie? Has she been hanging out with Oprah too much? I mean, what could her thought process be? Gee, Oprah, you haven't acted since the Color Purple. All you do is sit around and tell people how awesome they could be if they were like you. Hmm....I'm awesome. I don't want to act and be away from my rockstar husband and oddly named children. I should tell people how to be like me!

So now I'm in a ridiculously bad mood. First, I'm realizing that I should cut the sugar out of my diet which makes me very very crabby. Second, I'm pissed off at Gwyneth for telling me that I can be just like her when I obviously can't. I have no Oscar winning actress mom or hunky actor dad, my husband is not a multimillion dollar rock star, and I don't, when I choose to work, get paid three million dollars to make out with hunky actors. But according to Gwyneth, I should not "be lazy" or "be passive" about my life. Thanks, Gwyneth, I'll keep that in mind. Here's some advice right back at you: if you can't write worth a shit, don't lecture via the written word.

Sigh. I think I'll take the first step towards de-sugaring my house and finish the Ben & Jerry's in the freezer.

Tallulah's bad haircut is good for me

I gave Tallulah a haircut tonight even though we only had ten minutes in part because of wine induced urgency. I drank a glass of wine at dinner-- or two-- and was staring at Tallulah's bangs hanging down over her eyes like a sheepdog and suddenly, tipsily, couldn't stand the thought of her having bangs in her face for One. More. Minute.

So I cut them.

I think they're pretty straight, you know, relatively speaking. I mean, her forehead isn't straight, you know? And one ear is definitely higher than the other and even her nostrils don't line up completely. So I did great, considering.

I'm foreseeing a lot of these wine-induced emergencies in our future. I went to the Holistic Moms Meeting this week and the one take-away message I got was that wine is, indeed, good for you. In particular organic Australian red wine because it has the highest level of resperidal, the anti-aging nutrient grapes produce. Which is great for the times I go to the Wine Warehouse, but on my regular Publix run Cheap Red Wine (no shit-- this wine exists and is tasty) will have to do.

It's for my health.

Broccoli Blues

It's 6:20 am and I've slept approximately 20 minutes all night in part because Moxie is uncomfortable and restless and in part because I get anxiety insomnia. I lay in bed and think about how I'm not getting any sleep and I have to work in the morning and how am I going to get through the day without any rest and why can't my babies sleep at night and whatever happened about that amendment about preserving land and oh my god the last episode of Desperate Housewives, Gabriel is hilarious this season and so much more relatable and do I have anything to pack for lunch and are my library books overdue....so on and so on ALL NIGHT LONG.

And I blame this on broccoli. We gave Moxie broccoli Thursday for dinner, right before Kent and I had a date night to do karaoke-- something we've been planning a long time but never seem to manage. We've given Moxie broccoli before and vaguely remembered some stink issues, but we figured it would hit the following day and not while Moxie was being watched by grandma. Poor grandma.

By the time we got to the grandparents house there was a definite odor emenating from our dear, sweet baby. Passing her off to grandma, she wrinled her nose and said, "someone's poopy." It's against my morality to hand off a poopy child, so I whisked Moxie away and began to change her diaper only to discover no poop. Just really really stinky broccoli pee. When I went back out to the living room, I discovered that the smell had lingered. It was now covering the living room and bathroom, drifting in Moxie's wake where ever she crawled. By the time Kent and I left, we were fleeing to escape the smell. Poor poor grandma.

This is only the second time we've left Moxie with the grandparents and, although they have always insisted that our babies are angels, even through Tallulah's constant screaming, I think the broccoli pee tested grandma's angel theory. I don't think any religion describes angels bearing that smell.

Anyway, we're still dealing with broccoli fallout. The broccoli pee made Moxie's bottom sore so she can't sleep and needs to keep us informed of her broccoli status throughout the night.

I don't even like broccoli.

The Tide is High

Kent and I woke up this morning and immediately watched Obama's acceptance speech on youtube:


Then I went to one of my favorite blogs, www.americanelf.com-- I like it because it's a cartoon, the artist's kids are the same age as mine, and drawing random bits of parenting life gets a point across in a very different way than typing it into words. Like yesterday's:


Yes. Yes.

Dinnertime and the livin' is easy

So I'm making dinner (right now in fact-- look at me multi-task). The sauce for the fish is boiling down, the fish is in the oven, the salad is on the table, and the veggies are roasting next to the fish. I start chopping dinner for Moxie: papaya is her latest fave and I've got a big bowl of that plus some chopped pears and I'll give her a little naked fish for protein. And chopping all this stuff is making me remember Monday night, Kent's cooking night, when we were all set to sit down at the table for dinner and I innocently ask, what's Moxie having? And he gives one of those 'Oh shit!' looks, then promptly grabs the box of cheerios and dumps a handful on her tray. "Done!" he pronounces.

I was kind of debating going for a run after dinner-- I have a headache and the cool weather makes me want to slouch around in my house with my socks on, drinking tea and being cuddly with my babes. But now I'm definitely going and let me tell you why: my health and well-being is very important to my family. Because if I die young from a heart attack or cookie-induced glaucoma, my kids are gonna be living on a diet of cheerios and Twizzlers. And I won't have that.

It's Tuesday, not perspective day

It's Tuesday and I'm doing my regular Tuesday routine: running mad loads of laundry, tidying up the house, scrubbing the kitchen, folding and putting away laundry, running to the grocery, preparing meals for the week... you know, the usual mom stuff. Tuesdays are my catch-up day after working all weekend because, even though Kent does cook and run a load of diapers over the weekend, he just doesn't see the house the same way I do. The grease on the stove top, the crusties in the crevices of the highchair-- these are visible only to female eyes.

And everytime I put the baby down, she tries to climb Tallulah's stair step-- it's her latest 'work'. Moxie loves to accomplish things: climbing up the stairs, reversing and climbing back down, gumming an entire apple, climbing into the living room chairs and turning to sit like a grown up-- these are her Mt Everests. She is conquering the world one baby milestone at a time and today's milestone is climbing onto the 2 and 1/2 foot stairstep that Tallulah uses to help me in the kitchen and pulling all the books off the non- baby proofed bookshelf she can reach from the top. But every time she leans against the bookshelf with one hand so she can grab and fling books with the other, the stair step slides farther away from the shelf. Yikes! So I keep dashing from the laundry to her, the cooking to her, the scrubbing to her. Since this is my day at home with just Moxie, one could say that it's a day to relax, but one would be wrong. Then one would get a punch in the nose.

It is however, a gorgeous day. The sun is shining, the breeze is blowing in the windows, and it has cooled down so much Tallulah and Kent complained that they were cold. Then I went to the grocery store and people kept telling me to hurry from the car to the store and "get that baby inside where it's warm". Can you believe that? It's 68 degrees, people! Get some perspective!

Dirty, like I'll never be clean again

I've been watching cable tv all day because my in-laws are out of town and when they go out of town, we spend at least one day watching their cable and swimming in their pool. When I've talked about watching tv before, I've been talking about watching streaming tv on the internet, which is a totally different animal: there's a minor amount of commercials and you have to search out whatever crappy show you want to watch. With cable, though, you're just flipping the channels and...Wham! You come across a show like The Mermaid Girl about a girl born with her legs fused together, unable to surgically part them, and her family's struggle to deal. And I have very mixed feelings about this show. Is it exploitive? Presumably, the show is giving the family money for filming them and they're raising awareness for the disease. But it's very hard to see that aspect when the camera keeps recording this girl scootching her 'mermaid tail' across the floor and I'm so glad the show gives her the name, Mermaid Girl, because it feels wrong to describe her. She has a flipper. If you've seen Brain Candy, the old Kids in the Hall movie, then you, too, have enjoyed a good flipper baby joke. But to see this girl is so much more disturbing than the flippers-for-hands image that Flipper Baby elicits. But I feel bad for feeling so disturbed-- she's a six year old girl. Anyway, after ten minutes of gaping, I gather the strength of will to tear my eyes away and change the channel. Deep breath of relief.

Then I fall into a "What Not to Wear" pit because it's featuring a 36 year old mom and I'm hoping that she looks just like me so the tips will be appropriate the next time I win a $1000 shopping spree at J. Crew (it could happen, right?). Then I spend the next fifteen minutes worrying that I do look just like her with the frizzy hair, pudgy legs, disappearing chin, and protruding tummy.

After a few hours of switching between bits of movies I've already seen, tivo'd episodes of Ugly Betty, and Celebrity Fitness episodes (Erik Estrada still has it, that cutie pie), I got excited when Super Nanny came on. I love watching other people parent their children. Love it. I can't even explain the deep satisfaction I get from watching well-meaning parents holding their kicking and screaming children in time out or yelping when they get bitten by a two year old. Yes, I think with grim pleasure, bite that bad mommy.

It hurts me how much time I've wasted today and how dark is the chasm that used to be my soul. I feel like the tv is trying to catch my attention by catering to the worst aspects of my character. If cable tv were a mirror, I would feel ashamed. While I've been typing this, Kent came along and took control of the remote control and now his soul is shining through-- a Johnny Cash biography and mixed martial arts fights.

Squinting

I haven't been able to write about parenting because I haven't been able to think about parenting. In fact, I'm trying hard not to think about anything at all. I've been feeling lately that my life is all work-- working at my job, working at my housekeeping, working on my marriage, working on my friendships, work, work, work. Not because I'm putting any energy into any of these things, but because nothing is fluid or smooth right now.

You know what I'm talking about. Some days you tell your kids to get their jammies on and go to bed and they do. And then they sleep for four hours straight giving you and your husband a chance to drink a glass of wine, giggle about an Onion article, and make sweet sweet sexy time before falling asleep at a reasonable hour. Then the next day, well rested, your best friend calls just after you've dropped off your kid at preschool and she's dropped her kids at school and wants to giggle about fashion and celebrities and other non-important issue over omelettes.

Other days, you tell your kids to go to bed and they scream and kick and trash the playroom and it takes two hours to get the oldest one in bed and then the baby won't fall asleep even though you pace for an hour with her. And you pass her off to your husband just as the older one comes out of her room AGAIN to demand water. And at some point in the middle of the night after being awakened by a hungry nursing baby or a foot in the face by a restless preschooler (because of course she climbed in bed with you when she woke up for the fifth time at midnight) you are lying in bed unable to get back to sleep and realize that the only words passed between you and your husband all day was "Oh, I was going to tell you about..." before being interrupted by one or both of the children and "Your turn" as you passed a screaming child between you. Then the next morning your best friend calls to talk about her crappy day and when you are interrupted by the baby crying she gets frustrated and when you both try to figure out a time to hang out and chat no time is available because of this doctor's appointment or that errand. And when all of this happens it's no one's fault, it's just the way life is, but it makes every day feel like work. Even the things that usually are fun and fulfilling.

The days when nothing is fluid, it's easy for me to feel oppressed and depressed about my life. It's been a long time since I've had a complete night's sleep and with Moxie only ten months old, this isn't going to change soon. I'm back at work and we're still not getting ahead financially-- that's not going to change soon. Kent and I are doing fine, we're just too tired and busy to connect and that's not going to change anytime soon. I'm trying not to think about this too hard. I'm just doing what I have to do; washing the dirty baby or floor or kitchen or laundry. I'm taking care of the work at hand and squinting at the big picture. I'm trying not to rush through this hard time because this babyhood and young childhood is a weird combination of stress and joy and I'm not sure its possible to have one without the other. Of course, if I'm wrong and there is a way to get through this without the painful days, one of you bitches better tell me.

My zen moment

Tonight Kent and I got into a fight. I forget what it was about-- laundry, kitchen duty, whether or not apocalyptic movies have to talk about god [I say if the movie is about the dissolution of humanity, the concept of god is practically begging to be addressed at some point. Kent says this isn't necessary and points out Mad Max. No talk of god there, he says. And that movie rocks.] Anyway, whatever the fight was about, it got loud. Kent decided he didn't want to go to our friends' house for dinner like we planned. And since the friends have kids Tallulah's age, she was promptly pulled into the argument. "Wait, wait. Let's not fight," she says, trying to salvage the evening. "I have an idea. Let's still go to our friends' house. It'll make us feel better." We explain that Mommy and Daddy need to work it out and then we do. We keep talking until we reach an understanding of each other's viewpoints, hug, kiss, tell each other how glad we are to be married, and hop in the car for our evening. We give Tallulah the standard, "Mommy and Daddy argue sometimes, but we always love each other" speech which she acknowledges with a grunt. As long as we're headed in the direction of playtime, she's got no input.

Fast forward a few hours. We're leaving our friends' house and I'm doing all my tricks. The five minute warning which I let Tallulah negotiate into ten minutes, the play/clean up time which now means cleaning up like superheroes, the race to the car, etc. We get to the car with surprising ease and I compliment Tallulah on her exiting behavior. Then Kent and I start to chat when Tallulah interrupts.
"Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom!"
"Tallulah, you know how to get my attention. Say excuse me and then wait your turn."
"But it's important!"
"Then say excuse me."
"Aaaaghhhh!"

Did I mention that it was 10:30pm? That her bedtime is 7:30? That she doesn't nap anymore? That bedtime is always our hardest time of day?

This conversation was the beginning of a half hour long screamfest. While I held her bedroom door shut and she kicked and screamed on the other side, I thought about something I've heard before about kids. It is developmentally appropriate for kids to behave well in public and school, and then act out with their parents. I always wondered about that. Why would a child understand how to get themselves heard and negotiate the toy they want and generally interact appropriately, then forget just because they're in a comfortable environment? As Tallulah gnawed the wood off the doorjamb, I had one of those flashes of insight: children are moving from a wordless, cultureless, lawless existence into a structured world with too many rules, words they can't comprehend, and expectations they have to struggle to fulfill. They hold themselves in as long as they can and then, Boom! They go completely bitchcakes. And they do it in the place where they feel most free, where the repercussions are the lowest.

So, in this light, Kent and I fighting is an important part of raising our girls. We show them that we disagree, we feel strongly, we yell, and after it's all over, we still love each other. We're still glad to be a family. And Tallulah is sending us an important message by losing her shit. She's saying, I trust you to still love me, even when I don't follow the rules or act the way you tell me to. So, it's good to fight, it's great when my kid yells at me.

Aah, insight. It looks so much like self-delusion.

Hot Guy Day

It was hot guy day at the grocery store today. Usually the days I go are old people day which is fine because Moxie loves to flirt with the little old ladies-- she lights up when they call her pretty. Shallow baby. But today was hot guy day and it's weird for me on a few levels.

First, if they're under 25, I automatically rate their suitability to date my daughters. Especially Indie teenagers with pencil jeans and black floppy hair. I imagine their sullen looks when they come to pick Tallulah or Moxie up, Tallulah's anguished, melodramatic pronouncements, "I'm in lo-ove, mom, you don't understand!" I imagine Moxie matching cool-for-cool, "Yeah, he's ok. He wants me to go to prom but, I don't know, it seems kind of lame." I picture the cute clean cut boys picking up the girls, calling Kent 'sir' and telling me they know where my daughters got their looks from. While I wander the grocery aisle I practice my look: "I know you're going to try to get my daughter drunk and keep her out past her curfew and that's why we have GPS tracking implanted in her hip and an automatic rifle in the closet." It's a lot to get across in one look, so I practice now.

But the older hot guys I find even more disconcerting. I compare all of them with my husband or with guys I went to high school. Like today there was a tall blonde guy checking out ahead of me with his 4 year old son. Instead of keeping it simple and admiring his ass, I'm analyzing his parenting skills and wondering where his baby mama was. Is he taking the kid so she can have the morning off? Is he raising his son by himself? Did he just give his kid a chocolate bar? Because these things influence how hot I think he is. And this is crazy because parenting skills should only affect hotness level when it comes to my husband. But it affects how I view every man of baby-making age (I know this could potentially be a wide range. I'm thinking late 20's to late 40's. Not Palin's soon to be son in law or Sean Connery) Am I alone here? Like when Brad Pitt left Jennifer Aniston for Angelina, his hotness points dropped significantly. Jennifer may not be my ideal woman, but to leave her for a blood drinking Billy Bob Thornton cast-off? Yuck. But then they had babies and his hotness factor went back up again. Higher than ever. Actually, strike that. There's nothing higher on the hotness scale than the low riding pants he wore in Fight Club. But you get my point.

Anyway, I was musing about the intricacy of male hotness for a mom while I loaded up my groceries and I noticed Moxie making eyes at an older guy getting into the car next to us. He was in his 60's or 70's and making smiley googly eyes at Moxie to make her giggle. "Watch out," I said. "She's an incorrigible flirt."

"Just the way I like them." He said. "Only maybe a little older."

There is no subtlety or intricacy to the male mind.

What the Hell Wednesday: Tylenol

I was playing Chicken with Moxie's fever last week, waiting for it to rise above 102 to get worried. I try not to medicate, trusting my children's healthy bodies, good nutrition, and occasionally supportive homeopathics to get us through the minor colds and flu bugs. But at night I worry more-- what if I sleep through the side effects of a dangerously high fever? Here are the side effects of a dangerously high fever I'm looking for:
*extreme lethargy and difficulty rousing
*difficulty breathing or odd breathing (shallow and fast or heaving in the diaphragm)
*dehydration (sunken spots on the soft spots of the head, no urination, no tears)
*seizures
*vomiting and diarrhea
*guarding of the abdomen--tummy is sensitive to the touch

Some of these are no more a problem at night than during the day-- I'd probably wake up if Moxie started to vomit on me. But lethargy?

So I tend to medicate with Tylenol at night, but I try not to medicate normally. I wait it out as long as I can, daring the fever to go over my comfort zone before I touch the medication. You might ask, why? Why not medicate for comfort and convenience? After all, having a miserable baby to tend all day is no picnic. The first reason is, our bodies punch us into fever for a reason. Fevers make the body inhospitable to bugs. If we don't allow the body to use its natural defense, how can it rid itself of the bugs?

The other answer is, Tylenol is evil. Oops, did I say evil? I meant....well, yeah, I meant evil. See, tylenol is metastasized (read: cleared) out of the body through the liver by binding to a powerful antioxidant called glutathione. Glutathione "plays an important role in antioxidant defense...Glutathione deficiency contributes to oxidative stress, which plays a key role in aging and the pathogenesis of many diseases including seizures, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, liver disease, cancer...." So basically, when you take Tylenol because you're sick, the tylenol depletes your body of it's ability to keep you from getting sick. And it ages you. Which is kind of funny-- everybody is looking for a magic pill to keep them young, meanwhile popping a pill that makes them old. Ha ha, mmm, sigh.

But it's hard to find the information about this. I want to put links for this information, but I'm finding it in hard to read and digest medical texts or doctor blogs. Here is one fact sheet that spells out the dangers of Tylenol, but often the discussion is about toxic overloads, rather than damage caused by regular doses. Also, liver corruption directly caused by tylenol use is downplayed or not discussed in most texts, although I did find it here, citing tylenol as the #1 cause of liver failure. Number ONE! I guess I can keep drinking my gin and tonics-- just cut back on the morning after meds.

And look, you can't avoid medicating the kids sometimes. The night I was watching Moxie's fever, I lost my game of Chicken. The fever won. I medicated at one am when her temperature got to 102.3. I think we just need to have all the information before using a medication so we can make a good decision for our long-term health. And the pharmaceutical companies aren't going to give us that information, the FDA apparently isn't concerned, and we get lulled into believing that 'safe' is the same as not harmful to our health rather than the FDA's true meaning: approved over the counter medications won't kill most people if used within recommended dosage. A friend of mine medicates when her kids grimace, just in case they might have an ache. Why would it be over the counter if it wasn't safe, she asks. Good question.

My next question is: what's up with the red dye #40 in the children's liquid Tylenol? Because I promise my kids don't give a shit what color the drug is when they take it. The corn syrup makes sure of that.

The full moon

We're still having behavioral issues with Tallulah, as evidenced by her behavior yesterday when her Grandma stopped by our house. Tallulah was excited her Grandma was coming over and prepared by coloring a picture and putting on her favorite dress. Unfortunately, Grandma was with a friend and could only stay a minute. Tallulah begged her to stay, and then jumped in the back of Grandma's van. When I reached back to grab her out, she hopped over the seat into the way back where I would have to climb over things to get her.

Now, I didn't want to embarrass Grandma in front of her friend with a screaming, disobedient granddaughter. I decided to move quickly and get Tallulah out of the van by reaching in and yanking her out of the car. I knew otherwise we would be talking and negotiating too long.

So I was pulling her out of the car and in the process she flipped upside down, yelling and giggling at the same time, when her dress flew up over her head revealing....somebody remembered her favorite dress, but forgot her underpants. And grandma's friend got a full moon AND a gynecological review.

Parenting is not for the weak of heart. Apparently neither is grand-parenting.

What the Hell Wednesday: The Joys of High Fructose Corn Syrup

Have you seen the new ad campaign about high fructose corn syrup? Let's defer the obvious by first noting that the girl in the commercial linked here was really cute in both a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode and in Desperate Housewives as the nurse who failed to see Carlos' mom waken from her coma and run around the hospital trying to narc on Gabrielle for her hot affair with the gardener. I'm so glad she's got a national ad campaign. Maybe the dairy industry can hire her next to talk about how eating more dairy can make you lose weight.

Because we all recognize this PR campaign as total bullshit, right? I mean, everybody and their grandma knows that high fructose corn syrup has been linked to increased diabetes, lowered insulin sensitivity, obesity, and, combined with a high fat diet and a sedentary life style, liver damage. The corn industry had to hire really good actors for these commercials because who else would be able to say those lines without rolling their eyes? And I LO-OVE that the commercial specifically talks about feeding that red food dye #40 and high fructose corn syrup cocktail to kids. Why wouldn't you feed that shit to kids? Hmm.

The Mayo Clinic recommends limiting consumption because "animal studies have shown a link between increased consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and adverse health effects, such as diabetes and high cholesterol." The article goes on to say that there isn't a definitive link between human consumption and these health risks because not enough studies have been done. Perhaps our government could spend fewer dollars subsidizing the Corn Refining industry and more dollars protecting its citizens with studies analyzing the health consequences of consumer products. Perhaps if we had universal health coverage, interest in keeping citizens healthy would be higher. But not only is the government subsidizing unstudied refined sugar, they also recently allowed high fructose corn syrup to be labeled "natural". That's right, check your products with the tag 'natural' on the front because you may be getting more than you think.

But let's say high fructose corn syrup is fine. No worse than consuming table sugar hidden in everything from ketchup to spaghetti sauce to bread to yogurt to toothpaste to fruit juice. What about the environmental damage caused by corn refining? Corn, according to a recent Washington Post article, requires more pesticides and fertilizers than any other crops and the runoff has long term effects.

Maybe if the Corn Refinery Association has $30 million for an ad campaign to tell consumers that we're stupid for not wanting their product, maybe they can afford to have their subsidies and governmental sponsorship slashed. In the meantime, we'll be checking our 'natural' products and continuing to keep the refined corn out of our kitchen.

One last thought: If you can't live without Coke, try getting it from a mexican market. Apparently imported coke, particularly from Mexico, is made with cane sugar. I haven't checked it out myself, yet, but that's the rumor. I hear the cane sugar really enhances the other chemicals in the soda.

Perfectly Imperfect

At the park last night, after giving Tallulah the ten minute warning, I told her it was time to go. "No!" she screamed and ran away from me. I caught her, threw her over my shoulder and left the park while she screamed and tried to kick my head. Kent pushed the stroller with Moxie.

"I want a drink of water," Tallulah wailed.

But when I set her back on her feet, she immediately made a run for it back to the playground so up on my shoulder she went again. We cut across the baseball field and I tried setting her down again. She dug her heels in and leaned back so I was dragging her. "I'm going to let go of your hand and you're going to go Plop! right down in that orange dirt. Mm hm, you are gonna be one orange behind-ed four year old," I told her. But then I let go of her hand and she made a beeline again back to the playground. Kent and I alternated carrying her squirmy, wiggly, kicking body the quarter mile back home. She screamed the entire time. "No! No! I want water! I want to play more! Put me do-own!"

Of course we passed neighbors on the way. Of course they stared at us disapprovingly even though we smiled and waved and pretended we weren't related to the screaming growth on Kent's shoulder. (What, this? Huh, you're right. It is a screaming child on my shoulder. How did that get there?) When we got home, Tallulah was sent to her room where she kicked the door--repeatedly-- so hard I thought she would probably put a hole in it. Rather than allow more drama while Kent prepared dinner, I made Tallulah a peanut butter sandwich while she screamed and kicked in her room. When I finished making the sandwich, I went up to Tallulah's room, took her by the hand, wordlessly brought her downstairs to the table. I set the timer on the oven and said, "You have fifteen minutes for dinner. When the timer goes off, it's time to go upstairs, brush your teeth, and go to bed whether you've finished eating or not."

The timer went off, Tallulah ran for the couch cushions to hide. I picked a couch cushion up off her head and she started screaming, "No! I'm not going to bed!" I picked her up, took her to the bathroom for teeth brushing. She stopped screaming and declared, "I'll brush my own teeth!" I gave her the toothbrush and waited. Waited as she looked at herself in the mirror, waited as she twirled a few twirls, waited as she examined her toenail. Then I took the toothbrush and brushed the front two teeth for two seconds while she-- you guessed it-- screamed. Then to bed.

Normally I would have gotten angry with myself: we went to the park too close to dinnertime, she didn't get a good nap, I could have brought a snack. Then I would have gotten angry at Kent: why didn't he bring a snack? Why are we having dinner so late? I'm realizing that I've always believed that if I plan well enough, have enough foresight, I can set my family up to succeed. To behave perfectly. And let me tell you-- this is a lot of pressure.

For the past few months I've been getting an inkling of how destructive and counterproductive this outlook is; I've been short tempered, exhausted, scatterbrained. I spend more time making my to-do lists than actually doing things. By the time I finish thinking about the things I need to accomplish, I'm depressed, tired, and anxious. Instead of bringing the control and sanity I wanted, my to-do lists were keeping me from my activities. And worse, I spent all my time figuring out how to do the next item on my list instead of paying attention to the task immediately in front of me. So I would schedule play time with Tallulah, but I would be thinking about the phone call I needed to make or when to start dinner instead of the pleasure of our game.

So I've been working on it. Last night when Tallulah was acting like a crazy woman all over our neighborhood, I forced myself to stop thinking about how it could have been avoided. Getting the family home was the activity of the moment. An embarrassing, sweaty, annoying moment. And instead of being angry with myself and snarky with my husband, we put Tallulah to bed, congratulated ourselves on not strangling our child, and had a grown up dinner with wine and no conversations about Iceman and Firestar's secret identities. And we even finished our meal and a whole conversation before Moxie woke up with a fever and commenced her own screaming.

Tonight=Happy

Tonight we went to Siesta Key Beach to scout out a spot for Tallulah's upcoming fifth birthday festivities. We left the house late to go to the beach-- 7pm!-- and the sun was setting as we got there. The night was perfect, truly. Big fluffy clouds glowed pink in the sunset and a breeze blew in from the water, cooling everything down until it almost felt like fall. Or summer in a much more northern climate.

Tallulah immediately ran off to the playground. She's always had tricks for making friends immediately in new situations. When she was younger, she would run in circles. Literally. She would run up to, and then around, any child who struck her fancy while laughing hysterically. Have you ever tried to not respond to someone who is running and laughing and circling you? Impossible! Tallulah's new, more sophisticated tactic is to play near the children she fancies and do stuff. Loudly. Tonight she climbed the monkey bars and attempted to flip off. When the first attempt failed because she slipped sideways off the bars, she tried once more then started doing a crazy dance. The crazy dance clinched it and then she was climbing the slide with a couple of older girls.

Moxie tried out the baby swings and spent most of the time leaning back in the seat and staring up as the clouds rocked back and forth. Then out of the corner of her eye she spotted me behind the swing and sat up and forward, her long legs dangling like an airborne frog.

Maybe it was the fresh air or the sand or the pink and orange sunset, but I was struck by the vibrancy of my family. So glowy and happy with their sparkly eyes. We walked down to the water with Tallulah chattering all the way about her new friends and Moxie humming a happy little song, then Tallulah and I went for a short swim while daddy and Moxie played in the sand.

"Let's catch the wave, Mommy!" Tallulah encouraged in waist deep water. We jumped when the miniscule bump of a wave hit us and pretended they were huge and overpowering. "Whoa! That one almost knocked us over!" It quickly grew dark and we started out of the water at preschool speed. Tallulah had to examine every step in the sand, every piece of seaweed, every shell crunched beneath her foot. "Let's run to daddy!" I suggested, wanting to speed her up. And of course it did. She ran, head down, elbows in, fists clenched to daddy and tagged him first. "Let's play in the sand!" And she plopped her wet butt down in the sand. "Noo!" Kent and I said simultaneously. Tallulah and I headed back to the water to wash off the sand. Quick dip and back to daddy, racing. But just as we got to him, he darted off to avoid the tag and Tallulah tripped and landed-- again-- in the sand. Back in the water, then back to daddy and Tallulah threw herself down on the sand to put on her shoes. "Noo!" Kent and I said simultaneously, laughing. Another trip back to the water, and finally we were ready to walk to the playground and parking lot.

Looking up, Kent pointed out the stars beginning to show in the night sky. "Look, there's one," Tallulah pointed. I recited the poem ending in "wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight." When asked, Tallulah's wish was, "Candy! And being able to fly!" Moxie agreed by leaning in to my chest and biting me hard on the clavicle with her puppy teeth.

Being rich is for suckers

Having a discussion with some girlfriends the other day, we were bitching about celebrity moms who pull themselves together after having babies in no time flat. The consensus was that, with enough money, anybody could do it.

"After all," my friend said, "they get a personal chef, a hot trainer, and a wetnurse for the baby. I'd be skinny as shit if I had that kind of help."

I, on the other hand, realize that if I were rich enough to hire that kind of help, I would also have the good cable-- with Tivo-- and spend my waking hours watching this season's lineup of Project Runway, Dancing with the Stars, the new Joss Whedon Dollhouse, and TrueBlood-- the new HBO show based on books by my favorite vampire novelist Charlaine Harris. I could also hire a personal chef, but she would quit when she realized that all I really wanted was Breyer's ice cream and a bottle of wine. And my trainer would quit when the only exercise I got was kicking his ass when he tried to pry the ice cream spoon out of my hand.

Thank god for poverty. Sigh.

I'm a vegetable, bite me.

I received a crate of vegetable toys today for reviewing in MOMMY Magazine's nutrition issue. They are from Under the Nile and made with organic cotton-- even the stuffing is organic cotton. The veggies are adorable with bright colors and tiny little faces. Not that I usually pay attention to such things, but two of the veggies are decidedly Waldorf with little dot eyes and dot shaped mouths. In Waldorf-land, toys with faces are supposed to have neutral expressions so the child can imagine whatever expression they want. The carrot and mushroom have blown it all to hell, however, with their cheery grins. I understand the carrot's good humor, but what does a mushroom have to smile about?

Tallulah immediately claimed them, although I intended them for Moxie. "They have faces!" Tallulah exclaimed. "They are grow food!" (In our house fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods are 'grow foods' and junky foods are 'slow foods.') Tallulah's great joy in life is playing friends and family with objects. She lines up nuts and bolts and has them get married, make baby screws, and hunker down in a house formerly used as a paperclip holder. Moxie's bottle accoutrements are taken out of the silverware drawer and lined up into families of nipple, screwtops, and bottle covers. The new vegetables fit into Tallulah's worldview as they belong to a category and come with their own 'house': a wood vegetable crate that Pea Pod immediately takes over with his long, supposedly pea-filled legs. The vegetables reflect Tallulah's personal preferences: while Carrot gaily sings, "I'm a carrot. I'm orange and crunchy," Tomato seems to spend a lot of time defending itself against the others. "You have seeds!" they accuse.

Despite the interpersonal conflicts, the vegetables are decidedly on the side of good; they quickly capture and imprison a Star Wars bad guy figure received in a --gasp-- McDonald's Happy meal. And while the vegetables talk a little trash to the bad guy, their techniques would be considered tame by LAPD standards. Tallulah doesn't see the poetic justice in villianizing a toy from McDonald's-- she only knows he is a bad guy because of a conversation with her dad, the expert on all things geek-- and I wonder if I can use this good guy/bad guy dynamic to demonize the junk food Tallulah increasingly prefers. I imagine stuffed chocolate bars, cupcakes, and cookies brutalized by the vegetables and crammed into a graham cracker box jail cell.

Moxie examined the toys in the same way she approaches all objects. She picked them up, looked at them from every angle and both in close proximity to her eyes and as far away as her pudgy baby arms can extend from her body. Slowly, with eyes slitted in pleasure, she tastes each one, running her tongue along seams and gumming the notched stems of the carrot, tomato and bean. Shaking them viciously, she checks for rattles. Sadly, not one makes a peep and they are ready for the final test: gravity. Flinging them from the overhead position, they fly from her fingertips and take a quick downward trajectory. She watches them fall until them are firmly on the ground, then reaches for the next until all four vegetables lie in an organic heap on the kitchen floor. She peers over her highchair tray at them, then bangs her tray in her self-declared baby sign language, clearly communicating, "Those were great, mom, but it's time for some real veggies! Chop me up a snack!"

After years of spending time with vegetarians who refuse to eat anything with a face, it amuses me to see faces added to vegetables to make them more appealing for consumption. I don't know how Tallulah will rationalize it-- she hasn't yet understood that the 'Bock Bock' of a farm chicken in our rousing 'Old MacDonald' song is the same animal on her plate-- but I look forward to using the stuffed carrot to encourage Tallulah to eat her dinner carrots, a process my husband and I are calling 'carribalizing.' With the stuffed carrot in hand, I'll lean it's organically stuffed face down to the dinner plate where it's orange siblings lie steamed and awaiting their fate. "What was that?" the carrot will say in my puppet voice. "You say you want to be eaten? That your life will be a waste if you are thrown in the garbage? You love Tallulah and can think of no better ending than to be masticated between her teeth and ground into little tiny bits? You look forward to her pearly teeth, the gates to the heaven of her tummy? Hmm. Well, Tallulah?"

What the Hell Wednesday: Martha Stewart and cooking with kids

I am a cooking voyeur. I love looking through recipes and cookbooks, thinking about food and making meals beautiful and delicious. But I'm also a realist: I'm not going to spend a lot of time on fussy recipes. So when I see the cooking section in Martha Stewart's Kids magazine, I assume the recipes will be dumb-downed so kids can actually be involved in the preparation.

I am such a sucker.

I forget that the Martha Stewart franchise taps into the desire to create a beautiful, tranquil home but not the reality. Who would ever, for instance, hand sew linens into a cover for trivets? Do you know what I'm even talking about? The pads you put down on the table to keep hot plates and serving dishes from burning the table. She has a how-to make linen covers for trivets entry on her website. I remember a few years ago she had an idea in her magazine about hosting a dinner-- she suggested slicing rings from a tree for placemats. Like, chop down a tree and slice it into thin slices of round wood to put under your table settings. How do you even hostess a party like that? I assume making people comfortable is a large part of being a good hostess. How do you make hand-hewn placemats welcoming? "Oh, the placemats? It was nothing. I just hacked down a Redwood before I diced the tomatoes for the gazpacho."

I do get sucked into it, though. Even now I'm wondering if it would really be all that hard to sew a few linens together.

Tallulah, too, has been drawn into the Martha Stewart spell. She likes to flip through my Martha Stewart Kids magazines and talk about the things she wants to make. Somehow she resists the linen covered crafts and goes straight to the sweets. When my sister came to visit, I told her to pick out a recipe we would make together to celebrate Auntie Kimmie's visit. She chose this:




Adorable, right? Looks easy, right? I mean, I'm not expecting Tallulah's decorations to look like Martha's, but with the candy as the main flourish, how hard can it be to make something that resembles a clown?

This is what we came up with:



I fully admit I used candy corn instead of gumdrops because candy corns are more delicious than gumdrops. Which can explain why our cupcakes don't look exactly like Martha's. But how to explain the fact that my clown cupcake looks like the Stephen King psycho killer version of what a clown can be? We had to eat them-- fast-- just so we wouldn't have to look at them anymore.

And you know what, Martha? Your recipe sucked.

On the other hand...

the girls have been amazingly cute lately. Moxie is giving kisses, saying and waving bye-bye, and creating her own sign language: banging on the tray of her highchair means, "cut that fruit faster, dammit, I'm HUNGRY!"

And Tallulah's kid logic is fast becoming Kent and my favorite form of entertainment. Like today when we went to the YMCA, we got to a grassy area in the parking lot that was roped off, presumably so people would walk on the sidewalk. Tallulah looks at the rope and, in the same tone I use when I give her choices ("would you like to run to the car or skip to the car?") says,
"should we go over the rope or under the rope?" Then when we got home she farted at the dinner table, looked at us and asked, "wasn't that cute?" When we told her that not everything she does is cute, she let another one rip and asked, "how about that one?"

I know, I know. These are annoying stories found in the back of parenting or religious or old people magazines and amusing only to the people writing the story and related to the kid. But so what? Look at these pictures. They're freaking adorable.

Because typing doesn't leave bruises

This month the Holistic Mom's Network meeting was about positive discipline and we started off the meeting by going around the oddly shaped circle and telling the group what we remembered about our parents' discipline style when we were children. Each mom talked about the spankings or the time outs or the belts used to ingrain parental lessons. And then they would add "...and I don't want to parent like that." Or "and I'm afraid of doing that to my kids." Every mom said something along those lines except for one solitary and brave mom-- particularly in that group-- who said, "We use corporal punishment in our house. And it works."

What struck me was the panic and anxiety written on the faces of all the moms. (Except the corporal punishment mom who looked a little defiant and flushed as though she was thinking, why did I just say that? And I know where she's coming from because for some reason I always get the urge to say shit like that at the HMN meeting: "Hell yes we eat meat. I can't get through a day without eating at least four different animals!" "Diapers? I use the disposable, extra long life in a landfill type. Those babies can suck up some pee! Sometimes we lay 'em on the floor and pour our beer into them just to see who can chug more-- the diaper or Uncle Earl.") Everyone was leaning forward, listening intently, pencils and notebooks at the ready, looking for answers to their discipline problems.

And I was right there with them. As a child, it was understood that my sisters and I didn't talk back. Adults were to be respected, not questioned, and disobedience wasn't tolerated. I really didn't have a problem with that, personally. I tried to get out of the way of grown ups as much as possible anyway so I could do my own thing (this generally involved tree climbing and long hours of spinning around and around in a futile attempt to turn into Wonder Woman.) But as a parent-- now-- requiring Tallulah and Moxie to accept adults as sacred authority figures would leave them defenseless. How do you align it with lessons in Stranger Danger and 'No means No'? I want my daughters to think for themselves, question the dictates that make them feel uncomfortable or unduly bound. I want them to fight and be mouthy and question everything. Except me. I am sick to death of them questioning me. (I'm talking specifically about Tallulah. Moxie hasn't actually questioned my authority yet, although she does like to rip up my magazines, turn around to make sure I'm watching and then shove bits of pages in her mouth while I frantically dash across the room to swipe my finger through her gums for retrieval. Then she giggles and slaps my glasses off my face.)

Here are common Tallulah statements:
"I'm not going to help set the table unless I get a different vegetable than green beans."
"I'll only pick up my room if you read me a comic book."
Wailing, "You're not listening to me!!!"

My skin crawls when I hear any of these statements. I. Am. Her. Mother. How dare she try to negotiate for a different vegetable or refuse to do what I ask her to do? I would never have spoken to my parents like that and it makes me feel like a bad parent when she talks to me so disrespectfully.

When Moxie was around 4 months old, I was carrying her around in the sling when a friend was over with her kids for a playdate and Moxie nursed, watched the activities, then fell asleep without a whimper, all while sitting in the sling cuddled up on me. My friend said to me, "Bonifield babies have the best life." And that made me feel really good. Yeah, I thought, Bonifield babies do have a good life and I'm doing a good job. But that evening, when I tried to put Moxie down for the first time the entire day, she started screaming in protest and I realized, she has no idea that she has a good life. No idea that being carried around next to momma all day is the good shit and that I deserve a bathroom break every now and then.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm saying here. Point one: all moms are anxious about parenting even, or maybe especially, good moms who think hard about the parenting choices they make. Point two: there is a disconnect between my ultimate goal for Tallulah as a person and my expectations for her behavior towards me now. Point three: parenting well is hard and my kids will see it only as parenting, not as good parenting.

Wait , wait. Point three needs more clarification: my kids will expect the standard of care that I give them. If my standard of care is low and they don't get their needs met, they will assume this is how life is, that their needs are not important and they are not deserving. If I meet their needs they will assume that their needs are important and they are deserving of having their needs met. I'm not trying to say 'desire.' I certainly don't buy Tallulah a bunch of crap just because she says she needs it. But emotional consistency, day-to-day predictability, food, safety, you know, the big stuff.

I'm writing all this down to clarify it for my own brain. To remind myself that Tallulah's sassiness is really the rudimentary forms of negotiating her desires, verbalizing her needs, and demanding others to treat her respectfully-- all skills I want her to possess.

And not techniques to drive me crazy or make me appear incompetent as a parent in front of other people.

The tooth fairy, however, is lovely and gracious

After all my bitching and whining and negative reviews, it's time to blow sunshine in the ear of Tallulah's new dentist.

I started to worry after Tallulah's medical experience where she was identified as colorblind, blood pressure challenged, and buck-toothed. We got rid of the binky, but a gnawing doubt rolled around in the back of my brain. Have we allowed her palate to be permanently damaged by the binky? Was my binky laziness going to be paid for in years of orthidontistry? Is orthidontistry even a word? I guess I'll find out when Tallulah gets fitted for her first in a series of multiple sets of braces. I made an appointment with a dentist I'd met at the Holistic Moms Network, Dr. Glori Enzor.

Let me preface this by saying, Tallulah has been to a dentist before. I took her to Dr. Ronk, a pediatric dentist in Sarasota when she was two. His office was good at easing Tallulah into the cleaning-- they showed her what they were going to do and did a thorough job. But then they told me she needed to stop nursing and showed me multiple pictures of children's mouths with rotting teeth. See this? they said. And this? Which pissed me off because, hello? I'm taking her to the dentist at TWO YEARS OF AGE! She didn't have any tooth damage and we brush teeth daily. Is it necessary to try to shame me for nursing my toddler by showing multiple pictures of rotted teeth? So we didn't go back and, pissed off as I was, I neglected to take Tallulah back to the dentist until now, when apparently I've ruined her teeth with the binky, not the titty.

[sidenote: I received a lot of pressure to wean Tallulah during the year between two and three. It came from surprising areas like the dentist and always there was this underlying idea, stated or unstated, that Tallulah would never wean on her own unless I did something drastic like coat my nipples in jalapeno peppers. Then, shortly after she turned three, Tallulah decided she was done and never tried to latch on again. It was a good lesson for me in natural child progression: when a child is ready to move onto another developmental stage, they will. Pushing before they're ready is painful and exhausting and leads to excessive swearing and alcohol consumption. Of course, parenting itself leads to excessive swearing and alcohol consumption...]

So we went to see Dr. Glori Enzor. I like Glori. She's plain spoken and easy to talk to, has three or four children including a set of twins, and when she spoke to the HMN group, she told us she encourages her patients to bring their children to their dental cleanings to get children accustomed to going to the dentist. Her office is set up with a playroom in the back-- the same playroom her twins used when they were babies and she kept them and a nanny in the office so she could parent, play, and nurse in between patients. Talk about my kind of worldview! When we got to the appointment, the receptionist directed us back there immediately and Moxie and Tallulah played while I filled out paperwork. When the hygienist came to get us for the cleaning, she chatted up Tallulah for a minute obviously gauging T's mindset. She quickly ascertained T's comfort with all things new and exciting, and soon they were chatting about their mutual favorite color; purple.

The hygienist did everything right: she showed T. the instruments quickly and efficiently without giving T. room to worry, but familiarizing her with the instruments. She asked Tallulah to demonstrate brushing teeth and flossing and encouraged her to let Mommy and Daddy help with the back teeth. She even gave her sunglasses to wear so the overhead light wouldn't hurt her eyes. Then Dr, Enzor came in and chatted up Tallulah while she examined her teeth. Then she sent T. out with the hygienist while she talked to me about Tallulah. Everything looks good, she said. She wasn't worried about her overbite or the long binky use. She said Tallulah's spacing was good and the overbite would probably resolve itself before the permanent teeth came in and, anyway, she wouldn't worry about it until then.

I would like to insert here that although it sounds, and my mother would say, that I only like doctors and and dentists when they agree with me or tell me my children are perfect, I would disagree. I don't actually have any proof that it's not true, but I'm positive I'm not that egocentric.

Then I asked when she likes to see kids start to see her because I was thinking about Moxie and her new bottom teeth coming in, and she told me to just bring her when I bring Tallulah for cleanings and if I start to see her as my dentist, she'd do cleanings with Moxie on my lap or in the sling (what do you think about that, Du-ude Hairstylist Brian? Your baby phobia seems a little ridiculous now doesn't it?) and at some point, probably when Moxie was around two, she would ask for her turn in the chair and Wa La! Moxie's first dental appointment.

What I love about finding the perfect dentist is how easy she makes it. Like finding the perfect couch for your living room. You sit down and it just feels like home.

How fairies have been pissing me off

I wrote about fairies pissing Tallulah off, but really it was about me being pissed off by Tallulah's pediatrician. So let me continue the theme and tell you more about me being pissed off by fairies.

Tallulah goes to her Grandma and Grandpa's house on Friday which is great for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is giving me some time away from playing superheroes. Kent has perfected playing Sleepy Guy, the superhero with magical powers of being able to sleep anywhere, but Tallulah doesn't buy my Clean the Kitchen Woman or Super Chef-- able to make dinner with magical tummy filling properties. She prefers me to be SpiderWoman-- and I get that. I'd prefer to have phermone and wall climbing powers, too, but unless that's a radioactive spider in your pocket....

Anyway. One Friday I decided on a whim to get my haircut after seeing a great short haircut in a magazine. A woman I know recommended a salon she goes to and I call them up, make an appointment for the late morning and head off for my day. I was feeling pretty smug because I had arranged my day so I could 1.) drop Tallulah at Grandma's 2.) take Moxie to the Selby Library baby storytime and 3.) get to my hair appointment with time for a nap in the afternoon thereby taking care of everyone's needs including-- for once-- my own. Good on me.

I get to the hair appointment with Moxie in my sling and ready for a nap and she drops off to sleep just as the hairdresser walks up. Damn, I think. I'm gooo-oood. Because I have timed it perfectly to have her nap for the entire haircut. She'll sleep for a solid half hour in my sling-- and no where else.

The hairdresser, however, does not seem as impressed by my magical feats of timing and organization. He gives a scathing look to me and my sling, but I'm so happy I misinterpret it as regular dickhead hairdresser behavior. The guy is a Du-ude. But after he pushes some paper around on the front desk he turns to me and says, are you ready? as though he expects me to whip a nanny out of my back pocket. Um, yeah, I say. What are you going to do with The Baby? he asks, all snotty. And I begin to realize that my morning is not going to go as planned. What do you mean, what am I going to do with the baby? I ask. You have a stroller or somewhere to put The Baby? he asks. No-o, I say slowly, she'll stay in my sling. Oh, you can't do that, he says. It's not safe. What if my scissors slip and fall on The Baby? Um, I say, it wouldn't be a problem for your scissors to slip and pierce my abdomen except for the fact of my baby sitting there? It's different with A Baby, he says with finality. So, I ask incredulously, you are refusing to cut my hair? Yes, he says, I wouldn't feel comfortable.

So I leave completely pissed off and end up going to get a haircut at some shitty place that fucked up the cut I wanted and gave me a shaggy, Q-tip Momcut. Bitches.

Now, to be fair, the salon called me back within fifteen minutes and the owner offered to cut my hair herself on Tuesday. Which pissed me off even more because I'm a woman with a baby strapped to my chest for a haircut. Does it look like I've got a lot of time and energy to be driving around back and forth for a goddamn haircut? Like I told Tallulah when she was a toddler, I don't fucking think so. And before you piss me off by writing a comment about how haircuts are the third leading cause of childhood dementia or blindness or gout, let me just say, I've had my hair done at Scott Thomas salon and Marmalade without anybody flinching or stabbing my baby. So what's up with Little Salon? And the du-ude hairstylist, Brian? Him and the Binky Fairy-- they're on the Bonifield Shit List.

How Fairies Have been pissing off Tallulah: Part 2

So the nurse weighs Tallulah, takes her blood pressure and moves her to the eye exam chart with barely a word to either of us, except to say with an eye roll to me, "My, she's a chatty one." Really? You speak to her mother like that? Anyway, her blood pressure sounds high to me and when I ask the nurse about it, she shrugs her shoulders and says I should talk to the doctor about it. Then she runs T. through the eye exam and when she's done, very casually says, "20/20 vision in her left eye, 20/25 vision in her right eye, and she's colorblind."

Huh? The girl is not colorblind. But the nurse insists she is colorblind because T. said the blue bar was green. "Is there another test we could do? Because the bar does look blue-ish green to me," I say. And the nurse looks at me scornfully as though I was one of those kinds of mothers-- the kind that can't hear anything bad about my child. Which is very unfair. I can hear bad things about my child-- can I help it that my daughters are gorgeous, smart, talented, well-behaved, and all around perfect in every way? So when Dr Sevilla comes into the room I ask him about the colorblind thing and he says I can take her to an optometrist for further testing or do those online tests. {of course we did the test as soon as we got home and Tallulah dragged herself away from her toys for long enough to tell me the numbers with an eye roll, as if to say, "Duh"] Then he takes a look at her mouth and begins to give me a lecture about her binky. Oh yes, there is an overbite, oh that binky has got to go, she is much too old for a binky.... completely oblivious to Tallulah lying on the exam table listening with tears in her eyes and beginning to roll down her face. Finally, Tallulah hops up off the table and climbs in my arms, buries her face in my shoulder and mumbles, "I AM going to give up my binky. When I'm 16!"

Then Dr. Sevilla does this cursory exam, tells me her blood pressure is a little high, and we should come back for a re-check in two weeks. And yes, we have to pay for a visit when we come back in for the blood pressure test. At this point my blood pressure is a little high. But, being the rockstar mom that I am, I use the opportunity to talk to Tallulah about the Binky Fairy who comes to visit and exchange old binkies for new toys. And by rockstar mom, I mean, conniving lowdown briber. Because as much as I disagree with Sevilla's bedside manner, he's right and I've known that we need to ditch the binky for awhile. And since we'll be going back to Weinberg next time, might as well let her blame Sevilla for stealing her binky.

And before I move onto the Binky Fairy, let me just say that my needs in a doctor have changed. I need a doctor who has holistic mindset, doesn't push drugs, is calm, AND KNOWS HOW TO TALK TO CHILDREN. Because if he can make Tallulah feel like shit at a well-child visit, what is he going to do when she's sick? And how am I supposed to trust him when he's getting bijjigity about a blood pressure that is still within a normal range when Tallulah is dancing and jumping up and down while her blood pressure is being taken? And labels her colorblind with a minimum of testing? Piss me off. Plus, because Tallulah is such a healthy kid, we've got one shot at it per year. One shot to make an opinion about a doctor because we only go to our well-child visit and haven't needed a sick visit in two years. I need to have confidence in a doctor before she has some crazy disease or wildly irregular symptom.

Sigh. Luckily, I have found the perfect preschool teacher, Karen Leonetti of Earth Angels Preschool (she doesn't have a website or I'd put a link-- contact me if you need her info) and I immediately got on the phone with her to ask her opinion about the binky. She's perfect because she likes this sort of thing-- not just contacting her when something big is going on in her kids' lives, but also talking parents through a discipline crisis. She helps us weave the discipline style between school and home and incorporates the kids' interests with school. When our house got broken into last year she had a police officer come to the school to talk to the kids. When the kids go on vacation, she pulls out maps and talks about the destinations. She agreed about the Binky Fairy and helped me figure out how to approach the situation (let Tallulah wrap up the binkies and choose between two nights for the binky fairy to come. Give her some control about how it happens but not whether or not it is happening.) and talked me down from the cliff. Because, frankly, with everything else going on in our family right now, I had no desire to deal with the sleeplessness and tears of ditching the binky. But I do it because that's what a good parent does. Sigh.

And Tallulah managed the transition really well. She loved the princess dress the fairy left her (blame Cinderella for Tallulah's belief that fairies leave pretty dresses as gifts) and got to sleep well the first two nights. It was only the third night that Tallulah confessed to me, "Mommy. I don't like that Binky Fairy. She should have stayed home."

How fairies have been pissing off Tallulah: Part 1, the doctor dilemma

We've been having a hard time finding a pediatric doctor. Hmm, let me amend that: we've been having a hard time finding a pediatrician I like. I'm picky, particularly when it comes to my kids' health.

My parameters, when I was pregnant with Tallulah and interviewing pediatrians, included a holistic mindset and calm manner. I'm not big into medications-- I like using gentle techniques like good nutrition, herbal supplements, and homeopathy rather than antibiotics and pain killers. And I very smugly read the articles coming out to support the validity of this. But despite the articles and the research, it has been very hard to find a doctor that will not only keep their hands off the meds, but also know supportive treatments. For instance, one of the doctors I interviewed told me, "oh yes, I practice natural, holistic medicine. Why just the other day I had an autistic patient prone to ear infections. After four rounds of antibiotics didn't work, I prescribed chewing xylitol gum and it worked!" I wasn't impressed with this story and didn't choose her as our doctor because, Holy Shit! Four rounds of antibiotics before you try something else?

Finally we found Dr. Weinberg and we loved him. Kind of. He's calm and gentle and actually prescribes natural remedies as well as conventional, like when Tallulah got an ear infection he told us to put garlic and mullein drops in her ear. He also gave us a prescription for antibiotics and told us what symptoms would make him give antibiotics to his kids. Very helpful. Plus he uses his same gentle demeanor with Tallulah and always asks her first before touching her or listening to her chest or heart. He did this even when she was a baby. He's respectful of her as a person and patient-- lovely and rare in medicine which either ignores the child and speaks only to the adult or does that weird babytalk thing with big eyes and simplified words. The problem I had, ironically, is that I didn't feel he worried enough. He runs a family practice and sees a lot of old people, so his "let's wait and see" response to my concerns made me worry that he wasn't looking closely enough. Wait and see? Wait and see what? If her nose will fall off? If her head explodes?

When Moxie was born, I called to make our first appointment after having a home birth. You have to take a homebirth baby into the doctor within 48 hours after birth so they can check the baby out and make sure the midwife accurately counted the toes, fingers, limbs, and heads. Intercoastal, the group practice Weinberg works with, is huge and the receptionist answering the phone and the nurse responding to her both apparently don't work with Weinberg very much (he has a reputation in town for being holistically minded and many of the homebirthers I know see him.) Anyway they both freaked out and asked a bunch of insulting questions before scheduling my appointment ("Did you have prenatal care? The baby was born when? Why didn't the midwife schedule the appointment? Do you have any record of the birth?" Luckily, I didn't have to worry that they would accuse me of stealing the baby from a hospital-- I have a video proving my ownership. And who was in attendance at Moxie's birth. ) Annoyed, I decided to look into another doctor who was promoting himself as a holistic pediatrician.

This year, with Moxie's visits, I loved Dr. Sevilla. He answered all my questions thoroughly, talked a lot about nutrition, and when I had a concern that he answered with a "wait and see" he also talked in length about why we wait and what we look for if there is cause for concern. I wasn't a fan of his nurse: on our second visit she took off Moxie's diaper to weigh her-- in a cold room-- and then screamed when she peed. Screamed! The woman needs to have a reality check about being a nurse. A nurse who works with children. I was a nurse who worked with old crazy people and let me tell you, baby pee should NOT make you scream. Plus she smells like smoke.

I decided to take Tallulah to her annual check up at Dr Sevilla's office instead of Dr Weinberg. I was concerned at Tallulah's four year old exam that Dr. Weinberg hadn't done a genitalia exam. Everybody else's doctors had done it and followed it up with "the talk." You know the one-- only doctors and parents need to look or touch and only to keep it healthy and clean, yadda yadda yadda. It seemed a symptom of the bigger, nonchalant or incomplete exam problem.

So we get to the appointment and the smelly, screamy nurse is there as usual. She weighs Tallulah with barely a word to her. If you've ever met Tallulah, you know that not talking to her is practically impossible since she will ply you with questions until she hits upon a mutually acceptable topic and then continue talking long after your eyes glaze over. But this nurse managed, with a few well-placed "uh huh"'s to completely avoid talking to T. except when she told her to hold still and be quiet.

Well, damn. I'm out of time and I have yet to tell you about Tallulah's fairy problem, her high blood pressure, color blindedness, or buckteeth. Stay tuned!

Naval Gazing

I was going to apologize for not blogging in over a month or try to explain why I haven't been writing. But I kept putting it off and in the meantime, have been writing other entries in my head like about how fairies have been pissing off Tallulah. But I think, "I can't just write an entry without explaining why I haven't written in a month." And then I think, "But who wants to read a lame entry about not writing? It's like people calling to tell you they're never going to call again." And then I tried to write a non-lame explanatory entry in my head which actually went pretty well because it was two in the morning and I had drunk a bottle of wine by myself. I was clever and witty and interesting. Then I passed out without writing anything down and when I came to, I mean, woke up the next morning all I could remember was something about babies being like pink parasols. Which makes me think I wasn't being as clever or witty or interesting as I imagined because babies are nothing like pink parasols.

So the truth is, I've been going a little crazy lately, the crazy is not yet over, I may or may not write consistently, I may or may not write about what exactly a) is making me crazy or b) I do when I'm crazy because, honestly, I'm having a hard time nailing that down.

Let us proceed with the writing, shall we?

Returning to work; the marriage

"...Like yesterday when you added the wet laundry from the washer to the almost dry diapers in the dryer. That made me so mad."

"Yeah but I separated the diapers after everything dried."

"After I told you to."

"But I did it"

"yeah, but I thought about the ten minutes it would take to sort the diapers and that made me mad. Then I thought about telling you to do it and that made me feel like a nag. And feeling like a nag made me mad."

He giggles.

"Uh huh. See, I want to see this as funny. I know I'm being insane. But I can't even see this as a little funny. Even though, theoretically, insanity is very funny."

"What do you want exactly?"

"I want you to be me when I'm at work"

"I promise you I will never be you."

"Shut up"

"It's like you want everything to go exactly perfectly when you're gone, but you also want everything to go insanely wrong when you're gone."

"No. I want everything to go perfectly as long as you do things exactly the way I do them. And the second you deviate even an iota..."

"The house implodes."

"Right. And I come home to you, Tallulah, and Moxie sitting on the curb with big puppy dog eyes and a charred square where our house used to be. And I get to say, 'What did you do wrong?'"

"Yep. And then Moxie would start howling. I can see it; it could be a comic titled 'What happens when you don't do it my way'.

He giggles. And, finally, I do too.