Well, friends, if you're still out there, I'm going to give this whole blogging thing another shot:
[www.afterwordsblog.com]
I hope you'll join me while I find my footing. [...]
Well, friends, if you're still out there, I'm going to give this whole blogging thing another shot:
Yeah, I pretty much did C, D, and E (but minus the bloody Mary as I was getting over the stomach flu). I might have been more brazen (who am I kidding) if I had extended more energy cleaning up before people arrived.
I am not a tidy person, and [...]
More on the hosting dilemma tomorrow. In the meantime, let me repeat the following conversation which just occurred in BrooklynGirl's non-Brooklyn home after a morning in which I had indulged The Boy in his baser pleasures of chocolate milk and a special viewing of The Jungle Book:
The Boy (sighing contentedly): [...]
You are throwing a small Sunday brunch for some friends of your husband's and their families. It is an extremely casual affair--bagels, lox, some bloody Marys if you happen to have the ingredients on hand to make them. You don't know these friends particularly well, but you feel generally positive [...]
When your daughter is recovering from the stomach flu--nay, when you think she has recovered as it's been 4 full days with no vomiting and 3 full days with no diarrhea and she has been happily ingesting all sorts of BRAT foods--you may want to wait a few more [...]
As my nom de blog has become inappropriate, I've been casting about for a new name and virtual identity. I haven't made much progress.
The apartment closing was today. I am no longer a resident of Brooklyn in even the vaguest sense.
We went back to do a final clear out of the apartment on Sunday, and I was surprised by how hard it was to say goodbye. So much of my life [...]
Wow. The near unanimity is striking.
You are whiling away a cold and rainy morning doing the Hokey Pokey. Your 3 year old son has been very enthusiastically shaking it all about, so much so that he has collided with the corner of the coffee table mere minutes before you are to take him to school. [...]
Sorry for the interruption. I turned 39 last week and needed some time to brood about it, but now I'm back, perilously close to 40 and still pretty much up in the air about what I'll be when I grow up. Ack.
The Boy sidles up to me and puts his head on my shoulder. "You're the best mommy," he says, patting my cheek.
"Thanks Buddy, you're the best son."
"I love you Mommy."
"I love you too, Buddy."
He looks up at me and smiles. Then the smile becomes a smirk. "Can I watch a [...]
This has never been my favorite holiday. My earliest memories of Thanksgiving are of my grandmother chain-smoking Merits and swilling VO Manhattans while my brother and I tried not to bump into anything in her house that was jam-packed with breakable tchotchkes.
The Boy is developing an obsession with the toy catalogs that seem to arrive in the mail daily. He calls them present books. He flips through them for hours (okay, minutes, but in toddler time, it seems like hours) and makes demands about what he wants for Christmas. Right now [...]
The 18 month sleep regression has begun.
After an arduous morning at home, you have persuaded your children to get in the stroller and go to the playground. Minutes after you arrive, your underpants-wearing three year old announces that he has to pee. There are no restrooms on site.
I went to bed before they called the election. I was tired, and fighting off a cold (the cold appears to have won), and apprehensive about the eagerness with which Democratic victories were declared with zero percent of precincts reporting (I'm looking at you CNN).
It was hard to hate the suburbs this weekend. Halloween was lovely: a small and manageable parade "downtown" and user friendly trick or treating in the neighborhood (with full size candy bars the norm for treats!). The Boy was hepped up on sugar; The Girl was largely oblivious; and The [...]
It's time for the election to end. This kind of shit needs to stop.
Apologies for my absence: I've been potty training. These past few weeks have tested my parenting mettle like none other: how to encourage without pressuring yet subtly conveying to The Boy that he HAD to use the potty if he wanted to keep going to school (and he really likes [...]
I am still confused about the balloon thing. I spend a truly bizarre amount of time contemplating balloons tied to people's mailboxes. I am missing something.
I have been remiss in thanking you all for your advice. I've read everything you had to say and more, and I've done...nothing.
All the pre-schools in our new town are affiliated with churches. Sometimes this relationship seems more significant than other times, and though The Boy's upbringing has been deliberately secular to this point, I didn't consider the God issue very much before signing him up for pre-school.
We are just back from The Girl's 15 month check up at our new pediatrician's shiny and clean office. Good Lord, I can't tell you how much nicer this doctor's office was than our one at home. They had separate sick and well patient waiting rooms, clean toys and books, [...]
Under which of the following circumstances is it acceptable to leave a sleeping child in a car alone (assume the weather is temperate and the car is parked in the shade):
Okay, I’m just going to jump back in here, and let you know that things are better.
Here are some things that are good:
I remain completely overwhelmed. It's not surprising or interesting, but it's true.
Ultimately, I think we're moving in the right direction for our family, but maybe leaving the way we did--so quickly--was a mistake. We need to find our groove here and move on because right now every day is about [...]
I was only without Internet access for about 24 hours, but I was twitchy the whole time.
So yes, we have arrived. There is still a crazy amount of unpacking to do, but all of that is pre-empted by The Boy's 3rd birthday, which happens tomorrow. When I think back on [...]
We're on our way to the playground (by way of a few errands) in the late afternoon. The Boy has not napped (he's giving them up) and is tired and cranky. I peer over him in the Phil & Ted's to see if he's asleep and he reaches out and [...]
The last two days I went out to the house to do some exploring. I went once by myself to do the mundane stuff: you know, measure for curtains, find the nearest grocery store, figure out how to turn on the hot water heater.
I went to the Town Hall [...]
It's amazing how quickly you can dismantle your life if you really set your mind to it: we move on Sunday.
I've moved a lot in my life, and I'm pretty good at adapting--though I've never had to adapt in full view of two young children. When I first moved to [...]
Ah, the beach. It was lovely. The Boy and The Girl got to run around with their cousins and splash in the waves. No one slept much, but I don't think I've ever seen grins quite so wide.
Now it's time to do everything on the "worry about after vacation" list: [...]
For the next week, I'll be at the beach with my nearest and dearest. I hope August is treating you well.
[...]This morning I fell asleep while I was getting my hair cut--sitting bolt upright in a loud and crowded salon where Kate Perry's "I Kissed a Girl"* seemed to be on a constant replay and my hair guy was giving me his review of "Dark Night," which I was actually [...]
As it turns out, the prophylaxis for Lyme disease exposure in children is amoxicillin, and as it happens The Girl is already on that for the ear infection she was diagnosed with last week. Hooray for ear infections!*
*****
I think we found a rental house. It is small, but has [...]
"I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations--one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it--you will regret both." --Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or
Either: You can live in the city where the deli on your corner is robbed [...]
Yes, I grew up in the suburbs, but I never planned to go back so I wasn't really paying attention. Now that we're thinking about moving there--thinking about it long enough to spend a significant chunk of our days on realtor dot com--it all seems like such a mystery. A [...]
I keep thinking of part of a speech that Izzie Stevens (that 21st century Hippocrates) gave when she said that surgeons who prefer staples to stitches are just lazy. I think about it as I poke gingerly at the staples in my stomach.
I am recovering and I am mostly happy [...]
A laparoscopy is what drove me to start this blog four and one-half years ago, and here I am again with another hole in my belly button--and 3 secondary incisions this time. Believe it or not I just had my gall bladder out.
I was just fine on Tuesday [...]
Well, some details are still being worked out, but for all intents and purposes, we are bound for the burbs. I don't know where to start to prepare for this enormous life change, but if you happen to know of an affordable 3 bedroom/2 bath house for rent in Westchester [...]
Like many city dwellers, we started contemplating a move to the suburbs as soon as we had a child. Mostly it was a space thing: our 800 square foot apartment could barely contain us, The Boy, and The Boy's stuff. Once we added The Girl, things got...insane. Especially in the [...]
When you write something like this, you worry about repercussions: what happens if, at some point in the future, your kid stumbles upon what you wrote and is driven into therapy by this evidence that there were times that you preferred to have a distance from him?
Or, in [...]
The Boy started camp today: 3 days a week, 6 hours a day, for the next 4 weeks. We kept trying to explain the idea of camp--he would see some of his friends from school (but not be at school) and get to play and have a snack and some [...]
Don't you hate it when your client tells you he absolutely, positively must have something by the end of the week (and this being a holiday week, the end of the week is on a Thursday), and you stress yourself out to get it done (on Wednesday, no less). You [...]
We're recovering from our various illnesses in these parts, but I'm too wiped out to write anything of substance. Instead I give you this:
We've been working a little on social niceties, you know, saying excuse me when you burp or fart (which I genteelly call "tooting"). Yesterday, The Boy tooted [...]
The Girl recovered from her stomach virus as predicted on Wednesday, and we were an illness-free household for almost 36 hours. Then The Boy came down with coxsackie. I kid you not. It presented with high fever and listlessness, and about 18 hours later the mouth sores showed up (conveniently while we were in [...]
So now The Girl's got the stomach bug The Boy had last week (the one I thought she already had back in April). If she runs the same course as he did, it's 2 days of diarrhea, followed by 4 days of lethargy and occasional diarrhea punctuated by vomiting. We're [...]
I used to work for this crazy woman who liked to humiliate her employees whenever she felt they'd failed. Her victim--and the victims pals--would hide out in someone's office until the storm had passed. "What's the big deal?" someone would ask because invariably it was a whole lot of fuss [...]
My kids are not big barfers, which is a good thing because barf is one thing about which I remain fairly squeamish (when many pregnant ladies were worried about pooping on the table during delivery, I was worrying about barfing from the anesthesia). Nevertheless, both kids have had the stomach [...]
For the first time in months synchronous napping has been achieved in this household, and I am experiencing a rush of parenting endorphins. Hoo yah!
****
In the park today we ran into a teen aged boy I know slightly (he claimed not to be skipping school, but I'm not so [...]
I miss plastic toys. I mean, we have plastic toys because I'm cheap (and apparently don't love my kids enough to protect them from PVC and BPA and other scary letter combinations), but I miss the social acceptability of plastic toys.
For The Girl's birthday party, I vacillated about appending [...]
Lately, I feel like my demographic has been getting it in the teeth. First, there's the general unease about mommy bloggers, that we're somehow whoring out our families if we write about them publicly and (God forbid) make money from that writing.
Second, there's the latest and [...]
The Boy has nightmares--every few nights or so, he whimpers, then quiets down, then cries, then quiets down, then screams, then quiets down, and every now and again he shrieks these blood curdling shrieks that give ME nightmares.
He doesn't really wake up, and if you wake him up, he's disoriented [...]
Apologies for not posting last week, but I was trapped under two snotty children and one large freelance project, but today the snot is receding and the project is done. Done. Done. Done.
The work thing, well, I still don't know. I don't think I'm doing very good work, whether because [...]
Apparently, Darren Starr (of Sex & the City fame) is thinking about creating a "dramady" set in my neighborhood.
Oh dear.
I find the notion hilarious. In New York City, "Park Slope" is code for all kinds of things: overly earnest helicopter parents, maternal entitlement (it's always the mothers who take [...]
That last few weeks I feel like I've been in survival mode. If I could just get through this emergency room visit, this round of vomiting, this trip to the pediatrician, this tantrum, this freelance assignment, this bedtime, this dinner that The Boy refuses to eat, this nighttime through [...]
Thank you, internets, for talking me off my ledge. The Girl was diagnosed with a UTI and is now medicated and learning to like the taste of cranberry juice. If only she hadn't developed that mysterious rash this evening (before we administered the antibiotics)....
I don't keep up with the news [...]
Things are not good. The Girl is not bouncing back from her illness as one might hope. She still has almost no appetite (and the nursing, while constant, is desultory) and she's very fussy. She has a random fever that comes and goes--usually in the middle of the night--and though [...]
Thank you for your well wishes. I don't know whether it was rotavirus or just some other pernicious stomach virus, but The Girl is getting better. Slowly.
I had all but weaned--The Girl really loved her solids and bottles of formula and wasn't especially interested in nursing except as a [...]
I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be basking in the glow of a family visit, silently seething and composing blog posts in my head about how my family just doesn't get me or how I don't get them and how absurd that is since I'm almost 40, but instead I'm [...]
I got my period over the weekend and for the first time in six years that means...absolutely nothing. I'm not digging out the thermometer or the pee sticks. I'm not calling the RE or filling my prescriptions for Clomid or Lupron.
Once upon a time, without any planning or forethought, I [...]
Next week, I become a freelance editor for real. The sitter will watch The Girl on Monday and Tuesday mornings while The Boy is at school. It's 10 hours of babysitting, and I should be able to break even with 8 hours of work per week (after taxes).
There's some [...]
Tonight at dinner:
"No, you can't have any more apple sauce until you eat one of your tater tots."
Yes, they're organic, no trans fat tater tots, but they're still tater tots. Lunchables here we come!
[...]When The Boy was a colicky baby, I would often grouse to my friends about how hard the newborn phase was. "But it'll get better!" I chirped in the end, eager to demonstrate that the girl who was so desperate to have a baby was indeed happy to have a [...]
I thank you for your thoughts on working. I knew you'd get it. In the last few days, people have started returning my calls and emails, I've signed on to a new (small, short-term) project for an existing client, and a blogger who shall remain anonymous until she's given me [...]
As happens from time to time in these parts, I've started to think again about work.
I am just happier when I'm doing something outside the home. I have sympathy for parents who have to work for financial reasons but really would prefer not to, but I'm on the other [...]
Often, when people see The Girl, they comment on her size. "Oh, she's big!" they say and take note of her full cheeks or ample thighs. Since I still tote her around in the Ergo when I can't bear to load her and The Boy into the double stroller, I'm [...]
A week ago, before this insanity, we moved The Girl into The Boy's room. I was filled with trepidation: The Girl was still waking up several times a night and if she was left to cry long enough, The Boy would hear her and rouse himself. But the husband [...]
The other day my husband and I were talking about all the ways The Girl suffers from second child syndrome: we don't take enough pictures of her, give her hand-me-down toys from her brother instead of new things we've picked out specifically for her, don't consult the baby book every five minutes to make [...]
The Boy is obsessed with apple sauce--he can finish a 23 oz jar in one sitting if left to his own devices. I tend to buy Santa Cruz, because it's unsweetened and organic and because we are always running out of it, I tend to buy it everywhere. Since [...]
Yesterday we got home from picking The Boy up at school and everyone was cold and crabby so I suggested a movie viewing. The Boy looked through my old collection of Disney tapes and demanded The Lion King.
He's seen bits of it before, but I had to ride the fast [...]
It's a cliche, really, to talk about how easy it is to let yourself go when you're a stay at home parent, but man, am I just...gone.
My standards were not that high to begin with. I mean, yes, before kids, I showered every morning, blew my hair dry, put on [...]
We have an open door bathroom policy around here--mostly because we have just the one bathroom and because The Boy is surprisingly adept at turning door knobs.
This weekend I happened to be taking a shower when I heard the door swing open and soon enough The Boy threw back [...]
It's been a busy week. I've started and abandoned a dozen posts so I'll try to get by with bullets:
The last two nights have been better. It never fails that whenever I bitch and moan about sleeplessness, I hear stories about people who've had it much, much worse, and then I’m embarrassed. So consider the below a gigantic change of subject, courtesy of Rebeccah:
Here are the rules to the game:
1) [...]
I thought about giving her some Benadryl just so I could get some rest. She's never taken it before and with my luck she'd have a paradoxical reaction that would make her even more lively, but we didn't have any in the house so it was moot.
But, fuck. I [...]
I couldn't wait to vote for Bill Clinton. It was the first time I voted in a presidential election, and I thought he was going to change the world--truly I did. He was so inspiring, so charismatic, so smart.
He did some amazing things while he was in office: establishing FMLA [...]
The scene unfolds over dinner...
The Boy: Can I have some chips?
BrooklynGirl: Some what?
The Boy: Some chips.
BrooklynGirl: No, no--we don't have chips.* Chips are a treat, not dinner.
BrooklynGirl continues spooning pureed carrots into The Girl's mouth when she notices The Boy's not eating.
BrooklynGirl (exasperated): What's the matter?
The Boy: I'm sad.
BrooklynGirl: [...]
Recently, we had some friends and family in town and because it was so damn cold outside, we spent a lot of time cooped up in our 800 square foot apartment. And any 800 square foot apartment that contains a jumperoo gets small very quickly--and then it starts shrinking.
No [...]
Four years ago tomorrow I started this blog. Things were not good. I had been trying to get pregnant for almost two years and had begun seeing an RE--Clomid hadn't worked and a laparoscopy hadn't discovered anything useful. I was beginning to think that I would never be successfully pregnant. [...]
As I have mentioned before, I am a badly lapsed Catholic so until we sort out a religious philosophy, Christmas seems to be about presents, Santa, and evergreens. Right now I'm okay with that--and The Boy marked his first Christmas as a sentient gift recipient being very okay with [...]
We let The Girl cry it out.
Things had gotten bad--oh so bad. She hadn't slept longer than a 3 hour stretch in 3 months and most recently, she wasn't sleeping longer than a hour and a half. Even co-sleeping had lost its appeal--she would nurse fitfully for hours, not sleeping [...]
In 2008 I hope to:
1) Suck up the sleeplessness;
2) Be more adventurous in activities with the kids;
3) Find a way to make some money;
4) Cook more, eat better, and help my kids do the same;
5) Keep the apartment cleaner--either by figuring out how to do it myself or paying someone [...]
Shannon MacElvaine was the one who told me about Santa. She was older and an object of fascination for us younger kids , and one day when we were playing in her backyard (she had a great jungle gym), she gathered us up and told us: there was no Santa.
I [...]
You can't leave your apartment because you can't find your keys. Also, your cable is out.
[...]It seems like she's been teething for months, but The Girl's first tooth finally poked above the gum line yesterday. It feels like a few more are not far behind. She is miserable and fussy even when dosed liberally with Motrin. She's sleeping less than she was before, which is [...]
In the last week I have had two evenings out sans children--once with the husband, once with some girlfriends--and I'm beginning to feel like myself again. I knew I was in there somewhere. It's hard, this parenting business, but then you already knew that.
What I was trying to get at [...]
