Room with a view

Most city dwellers, and almost all high-rise inhabitants, must address the unfortunate physics of traditional glass: in order to allow light in, it must let it, and the potential retinal imprints it carries, out.  Translation: unless you cover your windows people can look all up in your shit.

My first New York City apartment functioned much like a car.  It was cramped, expensive, and difficult to share.  Of greater relevance, the walls afforded an illusion of privacy.  From the eleventh floor of the tallest building in the area, I couldn’t hear street noise or look into anyone’s eyes.  Just like a driver absentmindedly picking her nose, however, one evening I made like a popsicle and froze when I noticed a figure peering directly toward the backlit window in front of which I stood changing into my pajamas.

Four years later, lulled into complacency by a series of apartments with windows facing brick walls or abandoned lots, I upped the mortification ante when walking by the bedroom window in our Beacon Hill walk-up.  I could have sworn it looked out over nothing inhabited by man.  Usually it didn’t, but this particular afternoon, a group of about eight college-aged men clutching red plastic cups populated the rooftop, and about half of them stood pointing at me, clad only in the Victoria’s Secret-issue excuse for what my grandma would call unmentionables.

I could hardly underestimate the risk of exposure when we moved from one of Seattle’s in-city suburbs to the heart of Downtown.  The Olivian apartment building runs along the east side of 8th Street.  On the west side of 8th Street stands the chic new, enviro-friendly Hyatt.  Window to window we’re talking spitting distance plus about fifteen feet depending on the skill of the expectorator.  As a result, we kept the blinds in our bedroom and the nursery permanently drawn.  At the other end of the hall stood The Line of Nudity beyond which one’s movements were clearly visible through the unobstructed kitchen and living room windows.  We could have pulled those shades down too, but Seattleites must soak up any and all available Vitamin D.  Plus, what blocks the view in, generally obstructs voyeurism as well – and we couldn’t have that.

At first I found the promise of a 24-hour variety show captivating.  I hankered to see a hotel guest “nudie-petunia” as Viv calls it (now we use “nudie-pa-Stu-nia” to describe her baby brother in the buff), but somehow Ian, who is home far fewer hours of the day, spotted a disproportionate number of disrobed travelers.  Trying to calm his self-righteously indignant wife (I mean, really, just one more unfairness piled onto the already heaping plate of the stay-at-home mother in America), Ian delivered in a factual monotone:  “Babe, they’re like deer.  They mostly come out at dawn and dusk.”

At first I cackled with glee after spotting contenders for the award “best dressed, birthday suit.”  But then it all got real.  Hosting a dinner party one evening, I caught sight of a man wearing a ubiquitous white hotel robe and clutching two champagne glasses.  He drew the flimsy and entirely transparent outer curtain, but not the thicker blackout layer; always a promising sign.  “This looks like it’s leading somewhere!” I jested, using the grid system we’d devised to direct our guests’ attention to room G5.  And when the room’s female occupant came into view, it did.  For hours.  Frustratedly unable to focus on anything else despite our repeated attempts to divert collective awareness back to conversation, one guest exclaimed, “How on earth can he carry on this long?”  From across the room her husband chimed, “Don’t you mean, ‘What a perfectly normal amount of time for a man to perform’?”  I went to bed feeling guilty for both our initial rapt attention and subsequent bored irritation, but an encore showing the following night with even the filmy curtain pulled back exposed the sexhibitionists for what they were.

After a few similar incidents and months of eating my breakfast across the way from men standing in their boxers, gazing out the window, and talking on their cell phones while scratching themselves, I’d legitimately grown tired of the spectacle. One afternoon I decided to make the most of Vivi’s daycare hours by settling down to catch up on my scrapbooking.  When a repetitive flashing appeared in my peripheral vision, I thought my border-trimming perfectionism might be giving me a migraine.  I looked up and straight into the eyes of a stark naked (well, if you don’t count the stilettos) barely legal looking young – ahem – lady, contorting herself at the direction of a photographer.  She shot me a glare laced with such moral disapprobation that I almost blushed, as if scrapbooking in plain sight in the middle of the day were the indecorous behavior.

When we began looking for a new home, we paid particular attention to visibility.  One unit we toured looked directly into the halls of the fancy new federal courthouse.  No thank you.  I wouldn’t want any “scrapbooking” I do to endanger my bar memberships.  Another carried no threat of revelation, largely because it featured the ever-popular shoe box with almost zero windows floor plan.  Finally, about a month ago we settled into a fabulously located, light-flooded 24th floor apartment with a view of Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains, the Space Needle, and . . . only a sliver of the Westin.

Dieting for love

Unrestrained by the current standard of beauty, my diet would consist almost entirely of cheese, cheese-flavored processed food, and chocolate.  That may be a bit of an exaggeration; I do genuinely enjoy ripe tropical fruit, and from time to time I’d also eat a heaping pile of rice (doused in butter and cheese), pasta (saturated with pesto and cheese), or potatoes (submerged, temporarily or permanently, in butter, oil, and cheese).  Since the minute-on-the-lips-lifetime-on-the-belly rule governs both my Abbey and Plumb lineage, it’s only by exercising willpower that I generally manage to maintain an average-sized physique.  I subsist largely on egg whites, tofu, lean ground beef, fish, turkey breast, mozzarella (low-moisture of course), yogurt, protein smoothies, power bars, and brown rice (including brown rice pasta, brown rice tortillas, brown rice bread, etc.).  Plus, my commitment to daily exercise is so intense that Viv and I once found ourselves unjustly ejected from the mall when I tried to run laps through its corridors after a torrential downpour washed away all hope of an outdoor jog.

And yet, when it comes to my emotional overreactions and their impact on my loved ones, self-discipline has been nowhere to be found.  All my life I’ve told myself that the silvery clouds of my fiery personality and over-achiever’s ambition have a dark lining, and I just have to surround myself with those who love me the way I am.  Nothing I can do about an immutable trait, right?  And, it’s not like I yell or scream at people.  The scenario usually plays out as follows:  (1) I get frustrated by my inability to do something perfectly (regardless of the enormity of the task or, say, physical impossibility), (2) I blame someone else for said failure, and (3) I punish that person with a snide remark, a curt tone, or my departure.  The most memorable examples include reliably castigating my brothers for “messing me up” when playing video games as a kid, even if they abode by my rules of total silence and no movement (even to breathe), and repeatedly haranguing my ex-boyfriend for his poor ski-run choice and other imagined offenses when I couldn’t maintain my intended line through a mogul field, trying to keep up with him and his pro-level skier friends, during my second season on a snowboard.

The stress of Viv’s infantile illness and perpetual sleep deprivation intensified the tendency to lash out.  I maintained unfailing kindness toward my baby girl – that is, until a strategic error called my mommying skills into question.  Usually I handled a day’s initial incident – like her failure to eat a proffered meal or a “bonk” to the head following a moment of parental inattention – with dispatch and kindness.  But self-flagellation and worry undermined my ability to deal with subsequent challenges.  My emotional cup runneth over with frustration, and I lost my cool at the drop of a hat (once literally, when I let Vivi hold her beanie and she dropped it into a goose poop-laden puddle).  Don’t get me wrong; nothing remotely approaching physical or emotional abuse transpired.  But when she fought yet another (apparently ill-timed) nap, I lost it, with “it” being my maternal filter.  Seeing red, I’d ask my then ten month-old “what is the matter with you?” or say “I don’t understand what your problem is,” dump her in her crib, and storm out of her room to calm down.  Whenever I lost my temper I tended to find it quickly and apologize to my little one shortly thereafter, but the damage was done – so done that little black flakes crisped off the brown rice tortilla of our day.

I realized that I desperately want to keep fatigue and annoyance from getting the better of me when interacting with my daughter, at least until she’s a teenager.  How is it possible, I asked myself, that I can resist the siren call of processed cheese and preserve the privilege of wearing spandex through sheer determination but I won’t expend the same effort to shield the people I love from hurtful incarnations of my dissatisfaction?  I’m reminded of a quote adorning RFK’s memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.  When I first lived in D.C. during my junior year of college, it inspired me so much that I ate my lunch and studied next to it every weekend (okay, maybe having only a few friends and being a complete nerd also had something to do with it).  ”Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”  Clearly he had matters of greater import in mind, but I figure if the quote fits, share it.

Finding myself unwilling to accept my natural response to frustration, I began my snapping diet around Viv’s first birthday.  I started with a cleanse, trying as hard as I possibly could to infuse my words with the adoration I feel for my daughter.  Then I gave myself a pat on the back for each day I made it through without blowing my cool and climbed back on the wagon whenever I stomped off it.  A full year and a half later, Lord knows I’m not always a tenderness size 2, but I’m proud to say that I’ve become at least a little less emotionally fat and lazy, and I’m still exercising restraint on a daily basis.

I know what you did last play group

Watching movies, I almost always think the characters should have seen violence coming.  There’s a palpable crackle in the air.  The area’s deserted.  It’s usually dark.  The creepy music really ought to tip them off as well.  In real life, unfortunately, attacks occur in even the most innocuous of settings.

I settled my eight month-old next to a small box decorated with large colored beads sliding along sturdy metal wires in the children’s section of the Seattle Public Library.  A two year-old boy promptly plopped down on the opposite side of the box.  When Vivi reached toward his side of the toy, I restrained her.  Even though we’d never had a problem, I instinctively treated older children like dogs: little beasts that I’m sure someone loves but that nonetheless carry the potential to maim.  I therefore asked the boy’s mother whether I could shift Viv a few inches closer.  ”Sure, of course,” she replied with a carefree flip of her long brown hair.  In a movie, this is the part where I’d yell “honey, are you home?” and bend over to untie my running shoes, lulled into complacency by the satisfying beep of my home alarm system and totally oblivious to the hulking shape only partially concealed by shadows a mere arm’s reach away.  No sooner had I placed Vivi down than the boy began furiously flailing his limbs, kicking and hitting my infant.  ”Sorry,” his mom said, “sometimes he does that,” like he’d just picked his nose or something.  Vivi and I stared at each other with identical expressions of shock, though her “what the heck just happened” quickly faded to “ohhhh, green bead” while my “what the heck just happened” rapidly darkened to “I could sue if the bitch were a dog owner.”

After Vivi learned to pull herself up to stand and “cruise” (walk along a piece of furniture or wall by facing it and bracing herself with both hands) about six months later, I let her stand at the Seattle Aquarium’s seal exhibit alone.  She loved to wobble before the big glass tank, banging her little fists on the photo of the fur seal pasted to it.  Out of nowhere one day, a pigtailed five year-old raced up to Viv, yelled “NO!  Don’t hit the picture!” and began administering a spanking.  I suppressed the urge to execute a little corporal punishment of my own and waited for the girl’s parents to spring into action.  In the past, whenever a child so much as grabbed a toy from Vivi, a blaze of maternal indignation streaked across my field of vision, righting the wrong and administering a reprimand before I’d even had time to think about whether or not to intervene.  Watching my 14 month-old stare up in confusion as a looming giant’s hand approached her bottom for the fourth time, I heard myself say, “Excuse me.  We do not hit one another.”  This apparently finally caught the attention of the girl’s father who roughly grabbed her by the arm, dragged her three feet to the left, and smacked her upside the head.

When these stranger attacks were followed by repeated incidents involving frequent play pals, I ended up chatting about kiddie violence with a group of stay-at-home moms.  One person declared no problem disciplining the offending child, regardless of whether she’d given birth to it (I often deprive children, including my own, of gender when they anger me; compare “isn’t she adorable with her little two-tooth smile?” with “why the hell won’t it nap?”).  But the interventionist, like Churchill before her, soon became the black sheep.  Almost everyone else espoused the “kids will be kids” approach, counseling parents to just butt out.  Finally another mother spoke up to say that she doesn’t sit idly by.  No, not her.  She jumps up to chastise her assaulted son for crying.

I understand growing concern about “helicopter parenting” (see http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/) and how it prevents kids from developing the social and emotional tools needed to lead a happy life, but I nonetheless disagree with the pure laissez-faire approach.  Let’s be clear here.  I’m not the mom who gasps and whisks her kid away when an excited little one accidentally throws an elbow.  When Viv falls down or gets inadvertently pushed, we go with the “brush it off” approach, telling her she’s “a tough cookie.”  These days she bounces right up, often smiling with pride as she says, “I felled.  I’m okay.  Vivi a tutt cuh-tee.”  But when another child intentionally hits, kicks, bites, or mauls her like a feral ferret, I seize the teaching moment.  In a voice loud enough for the other child to hear, I look into Viv’s upturned face and say, “We don’t hurt each other on purpose.  It’s wrong that s/he hit you.  Being hit made you feel sad.”  On the rare occasions when she’s the one committing the battery, I make sure to acknowledge and validate the motivating emotion – usually frustration or jealousy – but point to her victim’s distress.  In both cases I further clarify that she needs to use words to express herself (either, “no, stop, please don’t hit me” or “I want that toy; please share it with me”) not only to avoid violence the next time around but also to keep her from simply wilting when she’s on the receiving end.

Why such an extensive protocol?  I’d like to say my pacifist religious upbringing plays a role, but at base, it’s just because I’m a giant, unusually coordinated toddler.  You see, my best predictor for how Viv will respond to a particular stimulus is how I would in her shoes.  First, I like clear, explicated rules.  I tell Viv things like “we don’t put our feet in the potty because we don’t want poopies and peepee on our feet,” since I agree that the toilet looks like a great place to cool down feet and enjoy a little afternoon splashing.  Second, when asked to restrain my natural impulses I want to know why I should give an owl’s hoot and what’s in it for me.  I dislike sharing immensely.  I do it because I like the gratitude and gratification.  Accordingly, I tell Viv that “we share toys because we get to make other people happy.”  Third, I can’t stand hypocrisy.  Monkey see, monkey demand free rein to do.  As a parent that means I don’t think yelling at my kid is a remotely productive response to her own verbal outbursts (although that can often be easier believed than executed).  Finally, I don’t simply forget.  Awesome birthday gift (2011), three points Curtis; chair thrown at my head hard enough to splinter the wooden door I slammed closed as a shield (1996), negative three points Curtis.  Admit to wrongdoing and apologize, slate wiped clean.  Try to move forward without appropriate discussion, and, like a two year-old, I’ll never let it go.  Roll all these impulses together, and you’ve got my golden rule of parenting: acknowledge events (including others’ transgressions) and the emotions behind them and discuss them in relation to consistent, clearly explained and justified rules.

As Viv gets older, I increasingly stay on the sidelines, interjecting only when the kids aren’t of evenly matched size or age.  (Since I generally consider myself a post-feminist, I was surprised to realize that I’m also more inclined to intervene when a boy hits a girl.)  But even as she grows, if my periodic voice-over starts to sound more like dubbing, I stop playdating the offender’s mom.  After all, I’d be seriously pissed off if every time we flew down to San Francisco my mom invited me out to do something fun, all the while knowing full well that someone was going to smack me and take my purse as the theme to “Jaws” played over the loudspeakers.

The devil you know

Sometimes you’re better off not knowing what’s headed your way.  Picture an arctic mariner who finds himself abandoned on an iceberg.  If he knows he’s destined to spend weeks of polar winter freezing, lonely, and slowly starving, he may very well take off his gloves for a last look at his wedding band, finish off his rations in one gluttonous go, and lie down for an eternal nap.  Game over.  If, however, he catches sight of a superior mirage, he’ll likely keep moving long enough to greet rescuers as something other than a corpsicle.  The illusion provides life-perpetuating solace.

For this reason, a new parent routinely hears that her infant’s sleep patterns will normalize “at the two to three week mark.”  After four weeks the phrase “certainly by three months” gets bandied about.  Rather than losing faith, a first-time mom redoubles the ferocity of her investment in the next magical milestone, trudging down the tunnel of parenthood toward the imaginary gleam provided by the six-month, one-year, and eighteen-month marks.  With luck she pops her head above ground and breathes clean emotional air just before her little one’s first birthday.

If parents truly comprehended at the outset the degree and duration of sleep loss required, we’d probably quit, farming out the first six months to some type of baby boarding school (like Andova or Eggseter).  But we don’t, and we don’t.  Experienced parents either forget what those first months entail (after all, scientists have shown that a biological imperative produces hormones which make mothers disremember the difficulty of pregnancy and child birth), or they rationalize that the next baby will be different (a slip of the mental wrist that’s even easier for those who started with a sick kiddo).

I labored (literally) under the misconception that my second infant would be healthy and happy – sleeping for more than an hour at a time at night, going down for a nap without Herculean efforts (yes, I call toting a 10-pound boy in a Baby Bjorn for hours at a time a feat worthy of the ancient demigod), and allowing us to place him in a bouncer or swing without screaming bloody murder.  After just a few weeks, when I realized that even our ridiculously fabulous new double stroller couldn’t turn our second go-around into a walk in the park, my hormones began leveling insults and accusations.

“What the hell have you done?” screamed the hypercritical, melodramatic demon that lurked inside my postpartum mind.  “The girl child finally felt good!  She slept!  She listened!  Now she’s totally exhausted thanks to her little brother’s nocturnal bellowing, and she’s challenging long accepted boundaries just for shits (on the living room floor) and giggles (as she removes a morsel of three-day-old ground beef from the crack in her highchair seat and shoves it in her mouth despite my vehement protestation).  Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone?  You didn’t like having time and energy for yourself?  You decided activities like showering and sleeping were optional?  You fool!  You ruined everything!”

But then there are times when knowing full well what lurks around the bend provides the consolation.  Once I was able to silence the Internal Monologue of Darkness and take stock of the situation, I recognized the beast possessing our newborn for what it was.  In the middle of a nighttime nursing session, some organized thinking (piecing together my own observations and comments made by my MIL and husband) revealed that our new addition drifted off to sleep only to wake minutes later with a start accompanied by a sound in his throat that Ian describes as “the gurgling brook setting on a noise machine” often followed by regurgitation, coughing, and wheezing.  Hello, GERD.  I remember you.  You terrorized our daughter for months.  Welcome back to our home.  We missed you like Lady Gaga misses obscurity.

I emailed our pediatrician at four a.m.  Twelve hours and several desperate phone calls later, I’d taken Stuart to the Occupational and Physical Therapy department at Seattle Children’s, given him a dose of reflux medication, and put him to sleep on a large “wedge” designed to keep him propped upright with a straight back.  (Therapist: “I’ve been working here for 30 years and have never once seen someone get a referral and a wedge in the same day.  You’re a pushy person, aren’t you?”  Me: “Yes, yes I am.”)

As of Stu’s six week check-up, we’ve turned the corner.  Vivi largely stays true to the avowal she makes every time she asks me for something special (like an M&M, a trip to the Pacific Science Center, or the privilege of helping change Stu’s diaper):  “I will, I will, I will be a good listener, Mama.”  The addition of a second noise machine enables her to sleep through the night, she’s mostly come to terms with the fact that she can’t take the baby off to her room to play with her other dolls, and she clearly adores him (When he cries: “It’s okay, Shtu Shtu.  We hear you, honey.  Hushy hush.”  When he “talks”:  “Really?  Is that really, Shtu-Ert?”).  Thanks to a trip to the GI specialist and two more prescriptions, Stu has begun to nap well, sit quietly for prolonged periods of time, and share his happiness through some seriously top-shelf cooing.

Hopefully sleeping at night will follow shortly.  Certainly by three months.

Curves

Have you ever heard the one about women’s basketball?  It goes something like: women’s basketball really is just like men’s basketball . . . played underwater.  The highly overrated second trimester of pregnancy always reminds me of that joke.  There’s usually no acute dysfunction to complain about, just a decrease in efficiency, almost like a computer struggling to function with a big program running in the background.  Corporeally speaking it’s actually more like fighting a cold than running underwater.  A fog clings to your day, making every task slightly more difficult and draining; plus you’re tired because you have trouble falling asleep and can’t stay down very long at a stretch thanks to clogged and/or overactive nasal cavities and muscular soreness.  I hear a lot of talk about how wonderful the middle portion of pregnancy is, but after experiencing it twice, I’m forced to conclude that the much hallowed period largely gets graded on a curve.

The second trimester is clearly better than the first – which I’ve previously described as two months of the worst hangover you’ve ever had.  Picture near constant dehydration, oily skin and hair, frequent headaches, such intense exhaustion that you’d give up tickets to a Madonna concert to spend a few more hours in bed, and, to top it all off, the distinct impression that you will throw up if you turn your head too fast.  We’re not talking a Sunday hangover either since you can neither laze in bed all day nor tell anyone around you what’s afoot.  No, the first trimester is a middle of the week, suck it up, go to work, do your best to wipe the dazed look off your face, and pretend to drink at social events type hangover.

The second trimester also beats the third, which most closely resembles obesity.  Your feet, ankles, and other joints hurt from bearing increased amounts of weight.  But that discomfort pales in comparison to the irritation of varicose veins, leg cramps, shortness of breath with only minimal exertion, fluid retention, acid reflux, bladder issues, restless legs syndrome, worsening sleep problems, and the constant vigilance required to avoid displaying belly cleavage.  Then there are unexpected embarrassments, like waking up your mate by snorting and gasping like a stuck pig as you try to roll over in bed, waddling down the street with an increasingly extreme amount of lateral movement required per foot of forward progress, and looking down at the elliptical you mounted in a desperate attempt to stem the tide of growing girth only to realize that the machine reset its program after deeming your best effort officially insufficient to qualify as exercise.  And that’s only referencing healthy pregnancies; I’m sure a gestational diabetes sufferer would add cruelly restricted diet and a variety of other parallels to the list.

In fact, in many ways the third trimester unfolds like a season of “The Biggest Loser.”  At the outset you only get more understanding of your intense health woes, but after months of hard work and a climactic event (that often drags on for far longer than desired) you no longer have to pop pills daily, avoid stairs at all costs, and wear textiles originally designed as temporary housing (e.g., tent dress) or table linens (e.g., maxi dress).  (The final three months also feature BL-esque emotional storyboards complete with initial feigned toughness that dissolves in a forced teary collapse followed in rapid succession by sunny conclusions about new-found inner strength, but – in the interest of brevity – I’ll save discussion of the hormone-driven psychological symptoms of pregnancy for another day.)

At least this time around I didn’t let the curve ball fool me.  I lowered my expectations, remembering that pretty much any day of being not pregnant beats the best day of mid-pregnancy and calling the mythical second trimester burst of energy what it is: relief at no longer feeling painfully hungover and denial that an existence akin to morbid obesity waits around the next curve.  For me that is.  For others I know the imaginary second trimester respite is nothing but a cruel joke.  Their descriptions make the nine months of pregnancy sound more like successive rounds of chemo, except without the breaks in between.

I know many a man who would gladly take over the burdens of pregnancy if he could, but I also know that it’s the rare man who can suffer from a cold without declaring, by word or deed, that he’s on the brink of death.  Which brings me to the one about fatherhood.  It goes something like: if men got pregnant, condom sales would skyrocket and Republicans and Democrats would join hands in an Obama wet dream of bipartisanship, amending the Family Medical Leave Act to require paid leave starting the sixth week of pregnancy.

Fitness witness

About a year ago a simple action made a tremendous impact on our daily lives:  I joined a gym with child care.  The daily adrenaline hit transforms me from a sleep-deprived zombie into a slightly more optimistic and energetic sleep-deprived zombie, losing myself in a trashy gossip magazine on the elliptical each morning proves incredibly restorative, Viv thrives with the added structure and socialization, we found a new activity that allows us both to enjoy ourselves at the same time, bla bla bla.  Enough about us.  Scenes from the gym.

*    *    *

Anyone who’s ever joined a fitness center will recognize the introductory up-sell.  You research your options, pick the gym with the best location/equipment/class offering/price combo (or if you’re single and looking to mingle, the market that features your favorite cut of meat – think man shank or chickie breast), and try to sign on the dotted line.  Inevitably, the person working the desk says you must speak with Tony/Kyle/Tyrone (the name just needs a “y”) in order to become a member, please have a seat.  Tony/Kyle/Tyrone pretends to be busy for a few minutes and then asks you to take another seat, this time at his desk.  Tony/Kyle/Tyrone is very pleased with his desk and is unimpressed by your protestations that you can execute the membership agreement for the plan you’ve already chosen standing up, thank you very much.  Tony/Kyle/Tyrone looks over your name and address, checks a box or two on the paperwork, and takes the credit card from your outstretched hand.  Just as you think Tony/Kyle/Tyrone will swipe the card and initial in the little box on the upper right-hand side, he leans back in the chair of which he is equally proud, draws in a deep breath, and, using a confessor’s hushed tone, asks, “What are your personal fitness goals?”

My personal fitness goal was to join a gym, quickly.  This answer did not satisfy Tony/Kyle/Tyrone, whose name turned out to be Ryan.  He waited patiently for me to try again.  “Um, I plan to do about thirty minutes of cardio a day.  I just need a gym with day care so that I can exercise when it’s raining.”  Ryan’s reply:  “You can’t lose weight doing cardio alone.”  Egads, did he really say that?  I bit my tongue, clutched my temper like it was Viv’s hand and a bustling thoroughfare lay ahead, and reminded myself of the purely mercenary motivation for this line of questioning:  “I don’t want to lose weight.”  He smiled.  “Okay, but surely you want to tone up?”  I did not smile.  “No,” I said, rocking Viv’s stroller quite a bit more rapidly than necessary to keep her calm, “I want to look the same as I look now.”  “Well everyone can benefit from working with a trainer.  We have a number of qualified personal trainers with degrees in health fitness and human nutrition who can optimize a diet and exercise plan for you.”  I stood up:  “Ryan, I don’t want a personal trainer.  I want to use the elliptical while my daughter plays with the toys in the day care room.”  He nodded, his features finally arranging themselves into a look of total comprehension.  “I understand, and I definitely see where you’re coming from.  You don’t have to worry though.  We’re running a special right now for ten hours of training for only $600 if you sign up today.”  My mouth dropped open:  “Um.  Let me rephrase.  I don’t want a trainer, even if it’s free.”  Ryan screwed up his nose and swished his pursed lips around, almost as if he needed to chew something smelly in order to think, then grinned:  “Well, it’s not quite free, but close to it!  If you sign up today . . . .”

*    *    *

One day, a hulking former athlete of a middle-aged man dressed in the light blue shirt and navy pants characteristic of the Seattle Police Department lumbered into the 24 Hour Fitness lobby just after Viv and I arrived.  ”You guys called?” he demanded of the man at the desk, infusing his words with annoyance.  As the gym manager’s tongue stumbled and tripped over an opening line, a smile tugged at the creases of the officer’s eyes and then quickly swept across his formerly stony visage as he blurted, “What, did someone try to work out for 25 hours or something?”  He then grabbed a small bottle of water – the likes of which had cost me $2 on a previous occasion – and took several swigs in lulls between the chuckles that shook his large frame.

*    *    *

A rack of ribs.  Shoulder blades that look like they could actually cut something.  Pointy parts where there ought to be round parts.  For the first few months, I shared the 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. window with three anorexic women.  Not just too skinny.  I’m talking straight-up sick.  As someone who once struggled with an eating disorder or two (I’ll save that story for another day), I can’t look away.  I also can’t keep my mouth shut – true as a general matter, but particularly in this situation.  I wouldn’t calmly pedal away on my elliptical if a guy clutching an AA chip guzzled Jim Beam in front of me every morning.  If a teenager sat between the racks of dumbbells banging her head against the wall repeatedly, I’d find it tough to focus on the wardrobe choices of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (née, Waity Katie, whom I would also like to “feed a few cheeseburgers,” as my friend Sheryl recently put it).  When I emailed the gym’s manager asking whether he’d noticed the problem and taken steps to help the women, he replied:  “[U]nfortunately the American Disabilities Act requires that we do not discriminate/not allow access based on disability, medical condition etc.  Only if they are fainting, passing out, or vomiting, can we require they have a Dr.’s clearance before they come back.”  Freaking lawyers.  I approached one of the women, and it turns out she’s undergoing treatment.  The second woman, who perches astride the elliptical for so many hours that she brings her own mini-Vortex fan on warm days, switched to an evening time slot, clearly outside my moral jurisdiction.  It turns out the third one didn’t just spend six hours a day working out; she spent six hours a day working out totally drunk and also tried to move into the locker room.  Apparently the gym finally felt comfortable banning her when she began dancing in the middle of a Power Sculpt class.  Maybe the ADA would protect that kind of behavior in a Zumba class, but Power Sculpt?  The 24 Hour Fitness Risk Management Team thinks not.

*    *    *

Observation:  the people who look the most ridiculous also appear to be the most fit.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  Arabesques on the stair climber?  Simultaneously jumping frog-like from a wide squat, throwing a medicine ball at the floor, and emitting a guttural roar?  Totally laughable but apparently effective.  Conversely, the folks who spend excessive sums of money on their workout gear always strike me as the most uncoordinated and in the worst physical shape.  Except for women wearing lululemon.  I swear you could put that brand on a prize-winning hog and Wilbur would look like a Wilhelmina model.  I’m certainly counting on it as I drag my lululemon clad, seven months pregnant behind to the gym every morning and type increasingly large numbers in response to the machine’s weight query.

Sharing labor

The term “stay at home” mom annoys me.  It connotes a sort of luxurious relaxation far from the reality of my daily life.  I prefer “constantly out attempting to entertain and educate a human with the attention span of a sparrow and running household errands mom,” “director of plant operations and dean of student affairs,” “domestic specialist,” “ethologist of immature primates,” or “in-house counsel.”

Before giving birth, I sided with the archetypal dad.  It made complete sense that the last thing he wanted to do after working all day was to help clean the kitchen after dinner or tend the garden on the weekend.  And why should he have to?  Washing dishes and providing food fall within the non-working parent’s job description after all.  Sure, household chores bleed into the evening, but even cumulatively they’re hardly as intense as a grueling day at the office, right?  Using this frame of reference, when my daughter first arrived I forced our family to stick to the traditional division of labor and ran myself ragged trying to feed and clothe the three of us, keep our home tidy and clean, serve as family historian, pay the bills on time, and maintain contact with friends.  I jumped out of bed whenever Viv stirred and refused to allow Ian to help with nighttime feedings, reasoning that he needed the rest to perform optimally at work.  I didn’t just lose sleep, I dropped it off the 14th Street subway platform straight into a pile of discarded burger wrappers and rat urine.  Struggling through a fog of intense fatigue and the emotional susceptibility it breeds, I suffered, and – here’s the kicker – as a direct result my husband and baby did too.

At first I felt like an unmitigated failure.  Then I stepped back, discarded my assumptions, and examined the situation anew.  Though I don’t draft documents or draw up PowerPoint decks, my management of first an infant’s and now a toddler’s supply needs, entertainment, energy level, and interaction with other children is as intellectually demanding as I imagine consulting, military strategizing, or advertising to be.  Luckily for me, I don’t have to rely upon supposition.  I can confidently say that my 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. standard shift caring for Viv while Ian is out of the house tops every job I’ve held in the difficulty department – physically, emotionally, and mentally.  Walking into two classes of over 30 hormone-infused, poorly prepared, intensely distracted, and perpetually disappointed and disengaged ninth graders (plus a theoretically fantastic, practically disastrous class composed half of honors students and half of special education students) literally breathless thanks to my status as a “floating” English teacher (meaning that during the passing period I pushed a cart with all my supplies between borrowed classrooms)?  Nowhere near as challenging as being a domestic specialist.  Working 12 to 14 hour stretches five days a week and 8 hour days most weekends as a law clerk trying not to disappoint one of the most prestigious, demanding, and inspiring federal judges in the country?  Almost relaxing compared to ethology of immature primates.  Hustling to make billable hours litigating for a large commercial law firm?  Total cake walk next to directing plant operations and governing student affairs.  If I know for a fact that I’m working just as hard as a professional in an exacting, high pressure position during the day, it makes no sense that my duties alone extend into off-hours as well.

My husband acknowledges my data, accepts my logic, and arrives at the same conclusion.  Together we devised a system that works, both psychologically and practically, for the whole family.  When Ian is home, I’m off the clock as well.  We split the remaining chores and neither of us rests until both of us can.  On a typical night, he and I load the dishwasher together after dinner, the three of us clean up Vivi’s toys, Ian bathes Viv while I finish tidying up, and I read her stories and tuck her in as he takes out the trash, waters the plants, or performs any other lingering domestic task.  Most nights I exhale and sit down within five minutes of my husband’s tush touching the couch.  If Ian has to hop on his laptop for some late-night emailing, I get out a basket of laundry that I otherwise would have saved for the next day.  When he stays at work late, I do all the childcare and housework.  If the baby wakes at night we alternate getting up with her unless Ian has a particularly important meeting scheduled the next day or I need to recover from an especially grueling afternoon or, say, pregnancy.

Our modus operandi embraces one of the most important pieces of advice we received on our wedding day: you must both aim to give 100%; if you each set out to contribute 50%, not only will you often fall short as a couple, but you’ll constantly be thinking about whether your spouse is putting in the effort rather than focusing on giving your all.  Ian and I both give 100% until there’s no work – professional or domestic – left to be done.  Looking back, we can’t fathom how we could have expected any more or less of each other.  I know I lucked out big time with my wonderful husband, but I truly believe that sharing after-hours duties shouldn’t be seen as some grand act of selflessness on his part.  It’s only fair.

Happy trails

“Like most people who have had one baby, I am an expert on everything and will tell you, unsolicited, how to raise your kid!” – Tina Fey

Life after birth often feels irreparably altered – mostly because it is.  For example, I’m rarely allowed to bathe alone.  I only swear in writing.  Sleeping in finds itself sharing a category with slip and slides:  things we remember enjoying when we were young.  But one activity we’d presumed had gone the way of the lazy Sunday resurfaced recently.  Travel!  Not trekking to the park or sojourning to the fancy children’s museum in the suburbs, mind you.  Actual, international travel, complete with looking at historical things, eating interesting foods, and absorbing local culture.

Forced by two dear friends’ wedding and the promise of dinner and dancing in an authentic French castle, we recently undertook a trip abroad with a toddler.  We left Seattle early in the morning, flew to New York, and caught a red-eye from JFK to Barcelona.  We spent four days exploring Barcelona, rented a car, checked out Costa Brava, spent a night in Aix-en-Provence, resided in a château in Aups for a week, and luxuriated in an afternoon and evening in Cannes.  We then flew from Nice to Paris, Paris to Chicago, and Chicago back to Seattle.  And we truly enjoyed ourselves.  All three of us.

This is how we did it (warning:  readers who aren’t currently raising children will probably find the remainder of this post less interesting than watching popcorn pop, those who have already devised their own system will likely recoil with annoyance, and even folks who specifically seek advice on this subject ought not try slogging through all my recommendations in one go):

Airport/plane strategy

- We talked about the airport in embarrassingly excited tones the day before leaving and en route.  Ian and I feigned the enthusiasm we would feel for a full 24 hours alone in bed together with two extra-large, gluten-free pepperoni pizzas, a television, a New Yorker, three issues of US Weekly, an Economist, and a fantasy/sci-fi book written for twelve year-old girls.  (I’ll leave it to you to figure out who reads what.)  We maintained the facade even as one of us got slammed with a morning/motion sickness one-two punch on the train ride from Downtown Seattle to SeaTac Airport and stumbled off the train only to vomit off the side of the platform.  We discussed boarding, pushing back, taxiing, and take off with similar ardor (e.g., “Oh my goodness!  We’re going to walk down that long tunnel and then STEP ONTO THE AIRPLANE!  Woooooooow!).

- Ian and I did not book adjoining seats.  We requested an aisle and a window on domestic flights and the two center aisle seats on international flights.  After reserving the seats online, I called the airline, explained that we would be traveling with a “lap child” (an infant under 2 who isn’t required to sit in her own seat) and asked “are you sure there’s nothing you can do to help us, Kathy?”  I find that the average customer service representative responds well to a personal challenge that implicitly questions the extent of her authority.  “I’ll show you, Mrs. Cornwall,” her rapid change in tone and newly efficient assistance shouted, “here’s exactly what you need!  Didn’t think I could do it, did you?”  After arriving at the airport, I told the same sob story to the ticketing agent while faux absent-mindedly rubbing ye olde pregnant belly and confirmed that the seat between ours would remain “frozen” on every leg of the trip.  Translation:  three seats for the price of two.

- In every airport along the way, we followed two rules.  First, we encouraged Viv to walk, run, jump, and dance through the halls like a devout Roman Catholic would suck down a chocolate milkshake on the eve of Ash Wednesday.  The play area in SeaTac and the Children’s Museum in O’Hare aided operation physical exhaustion immensely.  Second, we paid the exorbitant airport food prices.  After this trip, Viv has taken a whopping 31 flights (counting each leg separately).  No matter how carefully we pack a mixture of her favorite snacks and novel ones, she always prefers recently purchased foodstuffs.  Scrambled eggs from home?  “No, day du.”  Twelve dollar scrambled eggs from New York Deli?  “Mmmmm.”  A bag of previously untried chocolate chip animal crackers that I bought on sale last week?  “No, day du.”  An identical pouch at more than twice the price?  “Hold dis?  Hold dis?  Hold dis?  Peeeeeeeeeeas!  Day du, Mama.”  I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised; I feel exactly the same way.

- We politely declined the gate agent’s offer of bulkhead seats.  The extra leg room does not outweigh the cost of enhanced visibility.  Whenever we fly, we set out a few blankets on the floor, making sure to cover the metal bars.  We march through Viv’s nap and bed time routines as per usual – complete with outfit change, three books, and “singies” – and then lay her down in the space intended for my legs.  Viv sleeps almost as long as she would in her crib since she can roll and otherwise reposition herself.  Lowering our trays both dims her little area and conceals this non-FAA approved behavior from hyper-vigilant flight attendants.  The method earns massive extra credit points for keeping our hands and laps free so that we can read a book, fidget, and even use the restroom without disturbing her.

- My mom taught me my single most effective strategy:  “presents.”  Before we flew, I trolled Ross, Marshalls, Bartell (Northwest version of CVS/Duane Reade/RiteAid), the Japanese dollar store (where it turns out everything actually costs $1.50 unless marked up to $4.00), and toy store clearance bins for small, light, and intriguing items costing less than $5.00 apiece.  Some of my most successful finds include:  a tube of chapstick, a pack of five doggy figurines one of which appears distinctly rabid, several different wallets packed with business cards I collected around town, a wind-up toy, a bifurcated pouch-like object with a zippered top intended to be a storage unit for phone chargers, and a box of generic brand Kleenex.  I then wrap each item in tissue paper.  Correction:  I entrap each item in tissue paper, swaddling it with layer after layer of scotch tape.  On the plane, every thirty minutes or so Viv started to get fussy, was reminded that good girls who stay in their seats and use their inside voices get presents, politely asked for her “peasant” less than thirty seconds thereafter, gleefully shifted from bum cheek to bum cheek as one of us ceremoniously retrieved her backpack from under the seat, stuck her little paw into the atrociously princess-and-ruffle-encrusted $4.99 satchel, spent at least four minutes extracting her chosen present from the tissue paper wrapping, and played quietly with the new item for at least three additional minutes.  We left home with about 30 “presents.”  The night before we left Nice we realized that our supply had dwindled to dangerous levels.  No panic, no problem.  Hotel shower cap, plus shot glass and change purse from the airport souvenir shop, plus TSA-gifted latex gloves, plus chocolate coins from the gourmet chocolate kiosk equals one happy flier.

- When Viv started to become a real handful, we alternated focusing all our attention on her while the other slipped away in ten minute shifts.  Parents, like fruit, are best fresh.

- Finally, we refused to let Viv touch anything she wouldn’t be permitted to play with the entire flight.  That means the tray never came down when she was awake (despite her best efforts to be gentle, if permitted Viv would infuriate the person in front of her by shaking his chair with each little step her rabid doggy took).  She didn’t get to touch the TV screen on the back of the chair (another seat manhandling hazard).  No phones, Kindles, headphones, etc. that Mommy and Daddy might want back later.  Leave the window shade alone, thank you very much.  These rules go over like a lead balloon at first, but once firmly introduced and reinforced make for much smoother flights.

Packing

- Four years ago, Ian and I traveled to Spain and Rome for two weeks with one small carry-on roller board and a backpack.  When we travel to New York, California, and Missouri to visit grandparents we still manage to carry-on most of the time thanks to the elder generation’s generous re-invitation of baby products into their homes (in other words, cribs, high chairs, and car seats grace the closets of Manhattan, Portola Valley, and St. Louis year round).  Our strategy for international travel:  pack heavy.  We experienced the wonder of the ultra-light portable crib thanks to a loan from our friends Christine and Cedric (Bjorn brand).  We easily fit Viv’s “special chair” (a Chicco Caddy Hook On High Chair) into a standard size reusable grocery bag and hung it on the handle bars of our excellent umbrella stroller (UPPAbaby G-lite) when venturing out for food.  Speaking of food, we packed almost 10 pounds of it.  Though we’ve tried to cut back on purees now that Viv chews solid fruit and veggies, in a pinch she still reliably eats from Peter Rabbit Organics pouches (these ingenious handheld bags of puree minimize mess, eliminate the need for parental assistance, and allow for feeding on the go; Plum Organics and Ella’s Kitchen also produce them) and Earth’s Best Organic Apple Butternut Squash jars.  A week’s worth of these two plus a stockpile of graham crackers, Ritz, and healthy-ish cookies adds up quickly.  Sure we had to check two enormous bags and Ian’s shoulders may never recover from lugging them between transportation hubs and hotels, but not once did we find ourselves fretting over Viv’s sleeping and eating preparedness.

- I’ll allow myself one last product plug.  Addicted to the massive storage space underneath my giant BOB stroller (if you’re looking to buy one, I recommend REI for the unparalleled customer service), Mommy Hook enabled diaper bag and purse hanging from the sturdy handlebar (long ago dubbed my “stroller scrotum”), and extra cup holders and zipper pocket on the BOB handlebar console; I responded to the idea of traveling with an umbrella stroller with the same horror others would reserve for the loss of a beloved drug dealer.  Munchkin stroller organizer and cup holder to the rescue.

Adjusting

- I ordinarily do not drink caffeine.  Since it works like a drug, turning me into a hungry squirrel on crystal meth, I treat it like a drug and use it as sparingly as possible.  Our secret for beating jet lag on pre-Viv trips:  Ian and I both drank coffee when we landed at 7:00 a.m. local time, did our best to stay awake into the early evening, and slept about 14 hours the first night.  Done.  Adjusted.  Not so much this time.  Probably because she slept only 45 minutes on the flight from JFK to Barcelona, by 10:00 a.m. local time Viv couldn’t take it anymore.  Out.  Then she didn’t want to wake up.  We let her sleep for only three hours, selfish beasts that we are.  We put her to bed at 7:30 p.m. that evening, patted each other on the back, and settled in for what we assumed would be our usual post-flight hibernation followed by breakfast at 9:30 or 10:00 a.m.  I laugh in the face of my former self.  Viv woke at 1:00 a.m. and didn’t go back to sleep for five hours.  We roused her around noon, much to her chagrin and ours.  We needn’t have fretted.  Though we didn’t manage to get her onto her normal schedule (waking between 7:00 and 8:00, napping from 2:00ish to 4:00ish, going to bed at 8:30, and falling asleep between 9:00 and 10:00), we stumbled upon a solution that worked even better.  After that first crazy night, she reliably woke at noon, leaving just enough time to get to restaurants as they opened (2:00 p.m. in Barcelona), napped from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., and went down at around midnight.  We enjoyed late night strolls admiring the city’s twinkling lights and sizzling evening vibrancy (including a real life madam hanging out her window and whistling as a police car came into view, causing the women wearing colorful high heels and hungry looking men around us to scurry away in all directions).  And thanks to hotel blackout shades, we too caught a full night’s sleep before rousing for lunch and play the following day.

- In order to interfere with her sleep cycle again in response to the more familiar restaurant hours in Provence, we simply skipped a nap.  Moms everywhere gasp in horror.  Okay, fine.  The three moms who read my blog gasp in horror.  It worked!  I swear!  She went down at 10:00 p.m. that night, woke up at 9:00 a.m. the following morning, and accepted the 3:00 p.m. nap time without protest.  Voila!

Exploring

Parenthood means sacrifice.  In order to enjoy exploring a new city, we found it necessary to make two major adjustments.

- We swallowed our foodie pride and ate at second and third tier establishments fronting on plazas.  Kids simply aren’t used to savoring their food and lingering over multi-course meals, let alone at European speed, two or three times a day.  To have any hope of feeding the three of us without brandishing a cattle prod at the wait and kitchen staff, we had to choose meals accompanied by entertainment.  On plazas a steady stream of capoeira dancers, cross-dressing opera singers, mariachi bands, and older men playing relatively unpopular instruments accompanied by an animal (e.g., accordion and monkey or sitar and cat), performed to Viv’s delight.  No standing room only tapas bars or experimental kitchens tucked away behind alley entrances for us.  No searching out the “real” culinary Barcelona.  Fine.  We survived.  In fact, once we gave in and accepted the loss (a wild goose chase for a hip, authentic option located on a tourist-packed plaza caused some angst), we sat back and enjoyed the show.

- Second, we reigned in our sightseeing ambition.  Sitting in her “special chair” for two long meals a day left Viv with little patience for stroller time.  Whereas the ghosts of Ian and Gail past would tick three or four tourist attractions off the list each day, doting (read either “totally whipped” or “realistic”) us embraced destination modesty.  We visited one exciting locale each day and spent the remaining hours playing in parks, wandering through street fairs, and perusing the wares in outdoor markets at Viv’s walking pace.

If I’d gotten a glimpse of this post in 2008 would I have scheduled a trip to Japan or even put off having kids a bit longer?  Maybe.  But despite the inconveniences, concessions, and expenditures described above, my primary emotion upon returning home was one of wonder.  I’m absolutely amazed and exceedingly grateful that world travel and little ones are more like oil and vinegar than oil and water; shake it up a little and you’ve got a healthy, tasty treat for the whole family.

On fire

We depend heavily on fire for cooking, sterilization, power production, and much more; but the same Godsend that supports life can turn on it in an instant, voraciously consuming its master and bystanders alike.  It should come as no surprise then that flame and temperature idioms are all over the place, carrying any and every connotation on the spectrum of positive-negative (i.e., to be “en fuego” is very good, a “cool” hat is good, a “chilly” reception is bad, and going “down in flames” is very bad).

One day at the beginning of May my stay-at-home mom fire burnt like I was a shorty “hotter than the sun in the South of Spain” on Sean Kingston’s dance floor.  After allowing Viv a few pediatrician-recommended minutes to adjust to wakefulness, I sauntered through her door with a perfectly heated bottle.  I played it cool when she rejected the milk after little more than an ounce, and I feigned a lazy contentment as I read her books when in truth I yearned to light a fire under her little bottom to pick out an outfit (let’s not kid ourselves, I’ll never be entirely chill; she gets to pick one item and I coordinate the rest of the look).  When she politely asked for an extra diaper (“Dipe, puh.”), I repressed the urge to refuse the odd and wasteful request, then smiled as I watched her carefully wrap her stuffed bunny in the diaper, her own jammies, and “pink” (the blanket she sleeps with) saying, “Ni ni, I luf, Mommy Daddy check on ooo.”  I made up the lost minutes by using a reflective kitchen appliance to insert my contacts while cooking Vivi’s eggs and toast.  I responded to her initial rejection (“No egg, NO TOAT!”) with a gentle “okay” and busied myself with the dishes rather than pressuring her to eat.  She quietly devoured her breakfast.  The tardiness of the grocery delivery service set us back another ten minutes, but I still didn’t get all hot and bothered.  Even when Viv dissolved in hysterics while helping stow the almonds in the cupboard (she wanted to drink the balsamic vinegar, naturally), I kept my cool, maintaining brain function throughout her performance and remembering to remove sausage and spinach to thaw for the evening’s meal.

Walking from the gym to my OB’s office, I continued to bring the mommy heat.  When Vivi demanded a snack and then refused the six options I’d packed in quick succession, I didn’t get fired up; I simply segued into a fascinating game of naming fruits by color (Me:  “Yellow.  Banana.”  Vivi:  “Banna.”  Me:  “Lemon.”  Vivi:  “Yemen.”  Me:  “Blue.  Blueberry.”  Vivi:  “Boob-berry.”).  As we entered the doctor’s waiting room, Viv began to howl at high volume and all heads swiveled to glare at me.  She barely utters a peep at her own medical appointments but gets scared when she thinks I’m in danger from a menacing threat, such as a blood pressure cuff.  I could have melted between the two fires, taking whatever steps necessary to quiet her and end the embarrassment – like offer her a pacifier when “binkies” are reserved strictly for sleepy time or issue a draconian condemnation of her “outside voice” usage – but I try hard not to let my sensitivity to others’ opinions render my parenting inconsistent.  Her cry was frightened, not temper-induced.  I soothed Viv and let her express herself until she bought into my assurances that no one would hurt Mommy.  Inconsiderate of other patients?  Maybe.  Harmonious with our considered approach to child-rearing?  Definitely.  Grace under fire.

After throwing together a costume for daycare during Viv’s nap (The email from her teacher exemplifies a new type of occupational performance pressure:  “Good morning Gail!  Tomorrow will be Cinco De Mayo and all the children and staff will be dressed up for it.  If you would like to have Vivienne dress up we are all looking forward to seeing her outfit since her superhero outfit was ADORABLE!  See you tomorrow.”), I felt a rare, in-the-heat-of-the-moment confidence.  As a student, clerk, and lawyer – even as a teacher – my ability to respond quickly and proficiently to challenges often left me feeling down right sizzling (imagine me finishing a draft, licking the tip of my finger, touching it to my bicep, and saying “tsssssss” as if my upper arm were a hot skillet).  Even socially I often thought I’d see smoke rising from my clothes as I offered an impeccably timed, witty comment.  And I generally forgave myself in short order for professional missteps as well as jokes that fell flat or landed a foot in my mouth.  In fact, I’ve pretty much always felt a deep-seated confidence (placing body-image and a few tween years aside) that manifested itself multiple times a day in self-congratulation for completion of even the smallest tasks.  “Nicely done,” I’d think, “you read 108 pages of Twilight today when yesterday you only made it through 97!”  “Sweet, three ten minute miles IN A ROW.”  “Excellent turn of phrase for closing that motion.  Rocked it.”  “Superlative sock-bracelet-scrunchie matching.”  “That’s one small color-coded binder for Gail, one giant leap for organized kind.”  “Bam!  Another perfectly cooked bag of microwave popcorn for this lady.”

That unwavering aplomb disappeared during the last two years.  Don’t get me wrong, I never thought someone else could love and care for Viv better.  The two of us get on like a house on fire, and I’m proud of the little person she’s becoming.  But Viv’s pain-ridden first six months, the feeding tube dependence of the next six months, and the weaning struggles of her third half-year swept through the warehouse containing my stores of assurance and pluck like a massive fireball, and the normal trials of motherhood simmered and surged as flames continuing the incendiary destruction.

I constantly took fire from myself for minor tactical errors.  “If we’d left the park five minutes earlier, we could’ve caught the trolley and gotten home in time for an early nap.  Instead she had to sit in her stroller forever and got her second wind.  Way to go, genius.”  “Really?  You brought the pink swimsuit?  How many searing shoulder indents must you see before you relegate that thing to storage, jackass?”  “Rush her to bed much?  You could have read another book, enjoyed a few snuggles, and gracefully departed from a drowsy angel.  But no, you’re right, a hyper, angry toddler and a bad taste in your mouth is totally worth the extra six minutes to yourself.  Well played.”  Then there were the times my blood truly began to boil, usually during a prolonged nap battle but even over something as silly as Vivi removing her shoe and kicking it onto the sidewalk for the fourth time in a one-block span.  I very rarely got angry at her; my own inability to fire on all cylinders all the time – sensing and responding to her tiredness cues or keeping a cool head (Helllllooooo, just stick the damn sneaker in the diaper bag!) – infuriated me.  And of course my frustration only left me more ill-prepared to make the next judgment call.

Never once before in my professional life did I feel so overwhelmed as to contemplate quitting or getting myself fired; but this job repeatedly left me thinking, “I can’t do it.  I just can’t f*#$ing handle this anymore” – mostly during Viv’s illness, but on more than one occasion since she’s been well.  I know I’m not alone, and I know it’s not just other type-A folks fighting this fire.  What is it about parenthood?  Why do we hold ourselves to a standard more exacting than those at play in the most prestigious professions?  Why do we suddenly focus on our limitations rather than our achievements?

One could argue that parenting causes such heightened self-doubt because it doesn’t allow for perfection or definitive best practices.  I don’t buy it.  A term paper, bench memo, legal brief, or lesson plan can always be improved upon; and both teaching and the practice of law admit of no unambiguously correct course of action in most cases.  When I worked, I accepted those facts, did my best in the time permitted, and got on with things.  I also reject the theory that stay-at-home parents play with fire when they combine their work and home life into one sphere.  I’ve seen my husband and other members of the paid labor force burned by the same phenomenon.

To properly communicate my working hypothesis, I need to put aside the half-baked colloquialisms and images (just for a second) and provide a metaphor that harnesses fire’s complexity.  Picture, if you will, a forge fire driving production up until the moment its flames surge out of control, escape the hearth, destroy the smithy’s shop, and scorch his neighbors’ outbuildings.  Now call that blaze – with its potential and threat – human passion or ambition.  My theory is that new parents are more invested in this project than any previous one.  Because we’d go through fire and water for our kids, we develop a yearning for perfection that doesn’t recede in the face of our cognitive understanding that precision and flawlessness cannot exist here.  In practical terms, we want so desperately to give our children the best that we continuously question whether we could be doing better.  Our intense love for our offspring and unending desire to help them on their way literally sustain hominid life on this planet, but the same impulses allowed to run rampant produce a fear of imperfect performance that can compromise parental decision-making and emotional well-being.  We start with the most promising of intentions and end up holding a bill for charred outbuildings.

Does this mean I’ll be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire by giving birth to a second kid?  I don’t think so.  The feeling that my parenting had set the world on fire continued the last two months.  It survived even when my attempts to care for Viv misfired.  Both the newly effective communication between us (i.e., the fact that she talks) and the break I get on Tuesdays and Thursdays definitely provide a coolant for the engine behind my maternal drive.  But our minute-to-minute existence really hasn’t chilled out that much, particularly not with Vivi’s fuse growing shorter as her official “twos” arrive.  I think the real change was a mental one:  after a totally fortuitous day of feeling like I absolutely could not have done better by Viv, I accepted that my best efforts are enough.  Since that day, even when I know I could have attained greater parenting success with a different course of action, I don’t give myself hell over it.  I don’t stand paralyzed by regret and anger.  My best in each moment is my best in that moment, and, as previously established, my best is enough.  My unparalleled passion for this job continues, but my ambition finds itself tamed; I truly believe that I’m achieving at the highest level, as is, imperfection and all.

After deciding that I can take the heat, I find myself once more dancing around the kitchen in my skivvies to the sound of my own applause.

Pick me up

Traditional sitcoms catch a bad rap for being stale, slow, and shallow.  Juxtaposed with smart, tight shows like “30 Rock” and “Modern Family” the criticism seems well-deserved.  Yet sitcoms still excel at certain things, such as identifying common behavioral patterns and caricaturing them so frequently that you’d think there could be no more horse left to beat until another episode arrives on the scene with a baseball bat, further reinforcing the behavior.

Case in point:  single men using puppies to attract other singles.  The shtick definitely has life beyond providing a trope for the writers of “How I Met Your Mother” and “Will and Grace.”  In college I personally witnessed many a young man’s four-legged chick magnet scheming, and I recently stumbled upon a how-to article providing fairly detailed instruction (see http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Use-A-Dog-To-Pick-Up-A-Woman&id=808719) which concludes:  “Finally when you are ready to leave, make sure you tell her how much your dog enjoyed meeting her.  Women find this endearing and it may make them want to see you again.”  For sure.  There’s nothing a woman hates more than being forthrightly complimented on her engaging conversation and/or appearance.  Much more effective to use a canine intermediary.

One family, order, genus, and species removed, there’s the “pick up babes with babes” gimmick (see generally http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PickUpBabesWithBabes, including Raven Simone’s assurance to Will Smith’s character on “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” that “[w]hen you take me to the parks, I can pick up more babes than a puppy.”).  Though hugely popular in the sitcom universe, this dramatic vehicle never seemed to have any basis in reality.  Sure, it has become clear to me that for those in their thirties, toddlers are the new cigarettes.  “How old is s/he?” replaces “got a light?” as the number one socially acceptable starter of conversation between strangers.  But doesn’t custody of a child generally suggest that the guardian already possesses a mate?

Apparently not.  Executing a permutation not yet made infamous by sitcom adaptation, a random late-30-or-early-40-something recently stopped me on the street as Viv and I left the gym.

Guy:  She’s adorable.
Me:  Thanks!
Guy:  Is the father involved with you two?
Me:  Yup!
Guy:  That’s great!  (Bows head and scurries away.)

Like an unwittingly campy sitcom, he picked me up all right, just not quite in the intended manner.