in case you're visiting for the first time...

This didn't start as a mommy blog. I hereby vow that my next post will not be parenthood themed. It will be an observation about life that is NOT viewed through Gracie-colored glasses. Who am I kidding, everything is now viewed through Gracie-colored glasses. But I should really make an effort to write about something that isn't a trite take on what is really a universal experience.

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OMG, I'm watching my first new episode of "How I Met Your Mother" in at least a year, and Marshall and Lily had a baby! Time to start watching this show again!

Something tells me that sending Gracie to full-time daycare, which officially starts this Friday, is going to be the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I now wish I had listened to all the well-meaning, yet annoying (at the time) people who told me months ago that I should start leaving Gracie with a sitter for short periods. Suffice it to say they were right.

Another thing I wish? That I didn't have to leave her for so very long. Starting Monday, I will likely have about four waking hours with Gracie per day. She sleeps from 7 pm to 5 am. I'll have to leave the house by 6:30 every morning, and will pick her up at 4 in the afternoon, at the earliest. Next quarter, I may not get home until 6! She'll either have to start being a night owl (yay! We can watch Parenthood and Revenge together!) or...well, there aren't any other choices. Other than us moving back to Seattle, which is currently in discussion. Another move with a baby. Time to stock up on Paxil.

I know that her time in the Polliwog classroom (so cute! but I dread the day she graduates to be a "Mini Muncher," so...dumb) will be enriching and ultimately for the best. Just watching her eyes widen in wonder when she sees another baby, and how much more alive and engaged she is when she gets home, is enough to convince me that spending all day alone with me has been stifling and boring for both of us at times. Like, yesterday she suddenly started clapping with her mouth agape after she did something remotely achievement-y (like closing the door of her pop-up toy), looking at me expectantly like I was supposed to shout, "Yay!" So I did, and she kept closing the door, then clapping. She had never done anything like this before, and I give credit to the Polliwogs.

If only I could make her experience this much glee every hour, I'd consider staying home.

But hearing her hoarse cry from the backseat as I drove her home today after her first four-hour Polliwog day--yes, she was hoarse from crying the whole time--was heart-breaking. I also live in mortal fear that she'll start waking up again at night from the separation distress, or because she's simply hungry, having refused to eat or drink anything at daycare so far, other than one chunk of peach. (The teacher reported, when I called to check on her, that "Gracie took a break from her tears to eat her piece of peach." AWWWWWWW!!!!!!!) So while I know the socializing and separation will be good for her development, I wish it could be more gradual, maybe a few hours, a few days a week. Not every single hour of daylight.

If only she'd do this at daycare.

But--another but--every minute that I do have with her will be precious. As a dear friend who is now also a new mother reminded me, love is not measured in time. Time seems to stop when I'm stroking her otter-sleek head as she burrows into me. And as her otter-sharp claws dig into my arms, or worm their way into my mouth (her favorite ways of showing her affection for me, or maybe she's just sharpening her claws). These moments are burnished in gold, like my mom promised me they would be, and we'll get through the other stuff somehow.

I guess this rollercoaster never ends

Things I never thought I'd do, but shouldn't be surprised at when they happen:

• cry at any NPR story that relates, even tangentially, to a child dying, a child leaving voicemail messages for her working mother, or a homeless mother and child
• cry at the final scene of tonight's Parenthood in which the daughter goes off to college and tries to be all nonchalant but leaves the airport security line to tearfully hug her parents
• cry as I type that last bullet point, ten minutes after the cheesy scene has ended

On a lighter note:

• try to make my nine-month-old child watch TV in a desperate attempt to let me clip her nails, squirt saline into her nose, or end a tantrum caused by not letting her chew on my cell phone (the old TV trick lasts five seconds, max, so I don't feel that guilty about it)

Uh-oh

I've reached the point in parenthood where I feel it's necessary to spend $30 on a padded cover for the shopping cart seat. (Hey! It doubles as a cover for those grimy restaurant high chairs.) The overpriced baby gear industry is kept alive by people like me. But when going to Target/Costco/Trader Joe's is my most frequent activity, and Gracie loves sitting in the seat but spends all her time gumming the cart handle, and I recently took a 7-hour class on pathogens in which I learned that MRSA can live on a surface for months--well, then, $30 seems like a bargain for an absolute essential!

I must remember that I thought the same thing about a bunch of things that are now in the bin labeled "take to consignment store"--cloth diaper wraps, the Bumbo chair she sat in for two weeks, the head and neck support for the stroller I never used.

But the plush picnic foods playset that enthralled Gracie at the wedding we went to last weekend? Now that is a true essential. I am tempted to ask Ben for it for my birthday. It's just that she so loved chewing on the squishy milk carton!

Then again, she got an even more excited look--of manic glee, really--when I let her chew on a box of crackers in the (unpadded) Trader Joe's shopping cart last week. What do you think is worse: ingesting paper pulp from a cracker box (which could be MRSA-laden) or sucking on plastic toys that are not certified phthalate- or BPA-free?

You're Gonna Miss This

Trace Adkins totally has my number. Cheesy country songs are my soundtrack now.

I sat down to make a list that I started while walking Gracie around this morning for two hours, up and down the same half-mile expanse of street that I have determined to be the only continuously-ramped, non-bumpy, shaded sidewalk in all of Tacoma. This oh-so-original list is called "Someday I will do these things again."

• Watch a full-length movie
• Plan my day around something other than naps
• Make my own salad dressing
• Okay, who am I kidding: Eat a salad (they take too long to eat! I now decide what to order in a restaurant based on how quickly I can chew and swallow it)
• View 7:00 a.m. as a reasonable wake-up time, not mid-morning; view 5:30 as an ungodly hour rather than "sleeping in"

Then I realized, I need to remember that in a few months, I will never do these things again:

• Hold a sleeping Gracie on my chest and end up with an imprint of her ear on my skin (she's getting heavy!)
• Get whacked in the face by Grace's flailing arms as she shrieks with delight when I let her hold a piece of paper
• Feed her a sliver of a new food from my finger and watch her face go through an array of expressions (concern, contemplation, satisfaction) at the novel experience
• Witness her pure wonder at: flipping a light switch, holding her hand under the running faucet, holding a cardboard box 
• Trying to figure out what made her giggle, and realizing it was probably that she just pooped or otherwise made herself more comfortable (okay, this one could continue for a few years, more if she has her dad's sense of humor)

This is the list I will be adding to. My Trace Adkins, "You're gonna miss this" list, intoned in a deep baritone with a faux country twang. Sleep training and sleepless nights will NOT be on the list, no matter what some well-meaning grandmothers say, however.

argggghhhhhhh

I got the "welcome packet" for OT school, and it is full of errands of the type that in another life, I would have plowed through in a day after three cups of coffee, and followed up with three glasses of Chardonnay. The tasks include: an 8-hour HIV/AIDS training, a 4-hour HIPAA training, a labyrinthine immunization record that will likely require faxes to my 19 former doctors followed by multiple injections, ordering about $1000 worth of books, and a million other forms to print out, sign, and hand-deliver to campus in Seattle.

What is most panic-inducing: realizing that however onerous this list of tasks may seem (and believe me, just the printing part is onerous enough!), it is a drop in the bucket compared to what my life will be like once school starts and Gracie is in full-time day care, waking up every hour again due to the trauma. What have I gotten myself into?

unsubscribe

For the past few months, I have been getting several emails a day containing passages such as this, from an email titled “More Help for Your Troubled Napper”:

Difficult sleepers don't necessarily outgrow their problems, so simply ignoring the issue can result in a lifetime of sleep deprivation issues, such as obesity, depression and behavior problems... not to mention the stress on you as a parent.  

Yes, I signed up for these. The Sleep Lady, Baby Sleep Site, etc.....each one lured me in with its success stories and miraculous testimonials. Each one made me feel like a failure every time I lay down for a nap with Gracie on my chest, or rocked her back to sleep in the middle of the night. This email’s nod to parental stress is ironic, as this approach to sleep causes more stress than it resolves, or so I have come to believe.

And only now am I beginning to question the wisdom and utility of such alarmist messages about the paramount importance of sleep. I had fully bought into this idea, which pervades baby books, blogs, and even the weekly emails I get from the hospital where I gave birth, that sleep is absolutely critical to your child’s development, so much so that it trumps all else. Without adequate sleep, the unrelenting message goes, her brain will wither, neuronal connections won’t be made, and because she was only sleeping an average of 10 total hours a day, Gracie would end up a moody, fat, insecure child with ADHD and learning disabilities (seriously!).  According to this logic, sleep is so critical that if your baby isn’t sleeping through the night and taking regular naps by 4 months of age, you should devote your every waking minute to figuring out the art, science, and magic of how to get her to sleep better. Half-hour naps, like Gracie takes, are called “disaster naps,” and lead to the cardinal sin of all sleep-obsessed acolytes: allowing your baby to become OT (overtired).

And the worst part is that every sleep expert contradicts another sleep expert. You can find equally compelling advice for: following your baby’s cues vs. putting her on a schedule; putting her to bed early vs. keeping her up later to make her sleep later; and, of course, letting her cry all night, never letting her cry, and everything in between.

I am finally starting to realize: This is crazy!

The “Teaching Your Child to Sleep” message board at BabyCenter.com is proof of that. There is a 500+-page thread on “early waking” alone, where SAHMs (they've gotta be) obsess over how to solve their babies’ problem with EWU. (There is also a big old list of acronyms that you are supposed to read and master before you even start posting.) Some of these ingrates actually have babies who sleep through the night and nap for hours, but are “desperate for help” because LO (“little one”) wakes at 5 a.m., before the textbook 12 hours of sleep have elapsed. They seem to spend all day micromanaging their LOs’ naps and feedings, trying to tweak ounces in bottles and nap start-times in 5-minute increments.

I just rushed into Gracie’s room and picked her up to comfort her after she woke up crying suddenly. I eventually saw a you-know-what (see previous post) on the wall, and think it may have been crawling on her and woken her up! AGGGHHHH!!!!!

My first impulse, after comforting her and putting her back down in the crib, was to rush to my Kindle (which contains five different sleep books) or the computer to look up what I was supposed to do, according to sleep training dictates. The sleep experts would’ve likely have had me wait at least 15 minutes before going in. The fact that I picked her up as soon as I heard her cry, because it sounded different than her usual wake-up cry, would have been described as a sure path to failure.

But guess what? I put her down, still awake, and she fussed a tiny bit before falling back asleep. She may wake up again in an hour. She may wake up again every hour all night. I’ll keep going as I have been, trusting my liberal arts education-imparted critical thinking skills (still paying off those loans, in case you’re wondering) AND the sleep training knowledge to help me figure it out. And then I’ll think of Mad Men, and remind myself that at least I’m not Betty Draper. I only let Gracie play with dry cleaning bags when she is closely supervised.

I promise this will be my last post about sleep. Next post will contain something about Ben. Like maybe how much fatherhood has changed him. No, wait, let's do it now:

Our lives are slowly getting back to normal. Ben made microwave popcorn again (his most guilty pleasure) for the first time since Gracie was born (the noise! Oh no, the noise!), but he muffled the noise by pressing a throw pillow against the microwave. 

Nooooooo!!!!! I just saw a you-know-what (it has eight legs) scurry under the covers of my BED! Ben got it, but I don't know if I will be able to sleep tonight. Now that Gracie has just started letting me sleep almost the whole night? Talk about bad timing. 

I guess we better start keeping the house a bit cleaner. So much for my last post. Boo.

real Real Simple

I used to subscribe to Real Simple magazine. With each month’s new issue, I would vow to start living the Real Simple way. I would scour the detritus of my life! Ban clutter! As Edie from AbFab would say, “Surfaces, darling! Surfaces!” For years now, I’ve made the same to-do list over and over, including:

• Buy big glass jars to store grains and beans. (Because storing your food in the package in which it came is so not Real Simple.) 
• Find the article that dictated how long to keep various documents, then purge our bursting files of unnecessary bank statements and other junk. (Because nor are filing cabinets in your living room Real Simple.) 
• Make my own cleaning products out of common household substances. (Tried this one, gave up, because it's too much work to scrub your bathtub with baking soda and then redo it with Soft Scrub when you actually want it to be clean.)

Now, I’ve entered a new REAL Simple phase, having realized that it takes hours upon hours each week to achieve the kind of aesthetic “simplicity” that is prized in today’s sleek, overly-influenced-by-media world. For the first few months of this phase--can you guess when it started?--I was ashamed and apologetic for the state of our house. Now, I’m ashamed to think about how I used to judge people who lived amid clutter or even--gasp!--dirty dishes. Now, I have made peace with the state of our house, which is unlikely to change anytime soon:

• A ten-pound bag of brown rice sits on the kitchen counter permanently, next to the rice cooker, even though we have cabinet space for both. Because the only way to cook rice while holding a baby is if everything is already on the counter.
• Piles of paper are everywhere, but they are meaningful. If a bill needs to be paid, it better get let in the middle of the dining room table. 
• While once I’d imagine tasteful woven-reed baskets housing Gracie’s toys discreetly amid our objets d’art and stacks of books proving our intellectualism, we now have a system of toy piles: the pile next to the sink needs to be washed, the pile on the kitchen island is there to divert Gracie long enough for me to gobble down a few Dove promises (whose wrappers I sometimes leave in the bowl), and the other piles are where they are because what’s the point? 
• When a kind friend asks, “Where’s your vacuum?” (hint, hint), the answer is, “wherever you last vacuumed” 
• In fact, everything is kept out wherever it is used. If something is in a cabinet, or a clever objet d’art disguised as a storage container, we’ll forget to use it. Like dental floss.

In other words, every household task is neglected (save those essential to not living in utter filth and squalor) if it will allow one second more to nuzzle with/dance for/ensure the survival of Gracie, or to be spent in pursuit of sweet, elusive sleep. That, to me, is the REAL Real Simple. And for now, it's kind of refreshing.

Coming out of the dark

Remember when Gloria Estefan’s tour bus crashed? People died, and she broke her back and had an amazing comeback with an album containing this song? Much like “Through the Rain” by Mariah Carey (lyrics: I can make it through the day....) ran through my head during much of my teaching career, this song is my latest earworm. I remember hating both songs when they first came out, but up they pop at crucial moments, apparently having taken up residency in my memory in the early '90s.

I guess I’m saying that I’ve finally turned the corner--months later than most new parents--in my motherhood (ew! break out the Mom jeans and flowered mugs of tea), from feeling utter panic at all times to feeling, and sometimes successfully ignoring, mild panic at moderately frequent times. This is huge for me. Up until very recently, the following things filled me with shame and hopelessness when I compared them to my inability to accomplish them:
* The cloth diapers I researched so meticulously are sitting in a bin, waiting to be sold on Craigslist, which I’ll probably never get around to doing, while our trash fills up with endless boxes of Huggies from Costco
*Our supply of nontoxic wooden toys and European cloth toys languish while Gracie gnaws on any BPA-laden plastic item she can get her hands on, and I let her
* All my friends’ babies were drinking from bottles, allowing such things as “dreamfeeds” (the husband feeds the baby a bottle late at night, to help the baby sleep humane hours like 10 pm to 7 am) and “leaving the house for more than two hours while someone else watches the baby”
* All my friends’ babies were gobbling down solid food--organic, homemade purees or chunks of meat and vegetables, depending on the mother’s stance on baby-led weaning--while I was lucky to get Grace to accept a milligram of Gerber (oh, the shame!) baby food, if I could find the will to make it to the grocery store to buy any. Assembling the food processor and peeling carrots? I might as well try to run a marathon after not exercising for over a year.
* All my friends’ babies were, variously: Loving being toted in their mei tais/slings/Ergos (while I was still putting Grace’s joint development at risk by letting her ride in her preferred Baby Bjorn). Going out for date nights while sitters (whass that?) watched their happily sleeping babies. Sleeping while their babies slept through the night.

Ah, there is the crux of it. Grace’s inability to sleep longer than two hours at a stretch--which, of course, turns out to be my inability to let her learn how to sleep--had the domino effect of making every single other thing about parenthood difficult for me. I have been getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night for the past six months. Turns out, that is not so healthy. I’d heard somewhere that Barack Obama only sleeps four hours a night, so I kept saying, “If it’s good enough for Obama, it’s good enough for me!” Now I think it was Jed Bartlett, but anyway. I’m no Obama, and proud of it.

And now that I’ve started getting occasional nights of 5, or even 6, hours of sleep, the world is sparkling and new!

I now understand the origin of “I love you so much that it hurts inside” (yet another song that exposes my bad taste), and why people talk about being in love with their baby. Today while I had Grace in the Ergo (which she finally likes) while shopping at Trader Joe’s, the checkout lady (sorry, sales associate) said, “Wow, talk about being in love with Mommy.” I looked down, and Gracie had her head hinged back 90 degrees with her wide eyes gazing up at me. Maybe she was thinking, “Damn, woman, get me the hell out of this kangaroo pouch!” or dreaming of getting back to the lead ink-tainted book I let her chew on for hours on end, but I choose to believe she was gazing in adoration.
At least, that is what I do these days.