Tuesday, September 30, 2008

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.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

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.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

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.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

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?"

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

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.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

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.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

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.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

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.

Friday, September 5, 2008

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!

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

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?