Girl Detective

“What’s this book called, Mommy?” said Drake, holding up a book at Grammy’s house.

“Mimi’s Toes,” I replied, trying to keep the disdain out of my voice. I think the book’s rhyme scheme is forced, which makes it unpleasant to read. I’m also not a devotee of the Baby Einstein line in general.

[Yes, yes, I know it's wildly popular, and to each her own, etc. But I can't help suspecting that Baby Einstein's success is based on a canny brand name. Would the products sell so well if the brand was Virtual Babysitter, or Wishful Parent?]

“It’s not That Stupid Monkey Book?” he said, wide eyed and innocent.

I sighed, feeling guilty for having been overheard. “No, that was something mean I said. It’s called Mimi’s Toes. Would you like to read it during your bath?” I offered.

“Yeah!” he exclaimed, grinning, then clutched it and ran out of the room. I suppose I should be glad he’s developed his own likes and dislikes, rather than simply internalizing my prejudices.

For a recent trip, 3yo Drake’s loveys got lost in the shuffle of packing and were left behind. I worried that he would have trouble falling asleep away from home and without his bedtime friends, so I asked my husband G. Grod to send them. He went to the Fed Ex office. Overnighting the duck and the lamb would be $33. He paused. $33 was well beyond the “might as well send them” realm, and into “must be done” territory.

I know if I send them, he’ll be fine without them, he mused. But…

The woman behind the counter looked at him sympathetically and shook her head. “You gotta send them.”

G. Grod nodded. And paid $33.

I gave Drake a teddy bear at Grammy’s house, and he slept fine. His friends arrived the next day in their $33 box. I can only hope that his good night’s sleep was due to his certainty that the friends were on their way. I’m sure he knew his dad would not let him down.

A few days ago, I heard Drake pass gas loudly. My husband heard it too, and he and I looked up together. Drake gazed calmly back at us, and asked, “Who’s at the door?”

I take two things from this event. Lying about farting is innate behavior, not learned. It’s also probably a developmental milestone the childhood books neglect to mention.

Mom: Hi, how are you?

Me: OK, but busy. Drake and Guppy are pretty demanding lately.

Mom: (starts to talk)

THUNK (Guppy’s large head hitting wood floor, after Drake has shoved him)

Guppy: WAAAAAH! (wail of outrage)

Me, dropping phone: DRAKE!

Pitter, patter (Drake running away)

Me, gritted teeth: Sorry Mom, gotta go. (Hang up)

Our little family continues to be laid low by viruses. My husband and I were supposed to go out with friends on Saturday. Guppy had vomited, but then went to sleep peacefully, so we thought the babysitter would be OK. (Or maybe we weren’t sure, but it had been so long since we’d had grown-up company that we were willing to believe it might be.) But when the babysitter called to say that Drake had also vomited, we turned the car around. Clearly, we were not meant to have a night out.

I’m doing all the right things for us: periodic fresh air and sun, vitamins, rest, fluids, healthful and sustaining foods, staying in. Yet the sniffling, barfing, coughing, and excessive pooping continues into its FOURTH MONTH.

Please forgive the lack of posts. And think healthful thoughts in our direction. I’m convinced it’s because we haven’t had a proper freeze, and the weather keeps bouncing up into unseasonably warm. I don’t want warm. I live in MN. Bring on the cold, already.

3yo Drake and 10mo Guppy are at two important developmental stages. Unfortunately, these stages are not complementary. About three times a day, I have to decide between unsupervised baby in high chair, or unsupervised three year old in bathroom on different floor.

Guppy is learning to feed himself small pieces of solid food. He needs constant supervision in case of choking.

Drake is learning to use the toilet, but we don’t have a bath on the main floor, so he has to go upstairs. Not only does he insist he needs help, he actually does, to keep things in their proper place and to ensure he washes his hands and doesn’t run the water for fifteen minutes. Also, I don’t like to refuse him help when he asks, to encourage both his communication and his bathroom use.

Unsurprisingly, I mostly stick with Guppy: choking trumps bathroom disaster almost every time.

I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am that I bought Merry Christmas from the Chipmunks last year. I had a fit of nostalgia, and wanted to share something from my childhood with Drake. He ignored it. Until this year, when he plays it over and over again.

The Chipmunks do not get funnier, or less annoying, with repeated listenings. Mommy madness, indeed.

To me, a Christmas carol is something from a hymnal. This is in contrast to a holiday song, like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or “Jingle Bells”. My husband G. Grod wonders if those might be carols, though, because they’re sung by carolers. He suggests that “Santa Baby” is a holiday song, but “Silver Bells” is a carol. I still think that a proper carol is religious, and about the birth of Jesus. I think it’s interesting whenever I see interviews asking people what their favorite holiday music is. Few name carols; most name songs.

I think my favorite Christmas carol is “Gabriel’s Message“. I also like “The Coventry Carol“, (coincidence only that both are covered on A Very Special Christmas) and the alternate tunes for “Away in a Manger” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem”.

My favorite Christmas song, though, is a guilty pleasure that reminds me of the big hair and bad fashion of the 80s–”Do They Know It’s Christmas”. I bought the LP for my sister as a gift that year.

Drake is enamored of our library copy of Tomie DePaola’s Book of Christmas Carols, which I was sad to learn was out of print. It has many carols, lovely illustrations, and music as well. Drake’s favorites, thus far, are the first two in the book, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “The First Noel”. He has been delighting relatives by singing these over the phone.

Why am I so tired today? Because I have a cold, and have been caring for my two sons who also have colds? Because baby Guppy woke before 4 a.m., wanting to be fed?

No, it’s because yesterday was new-comic day, and my husband G. Grod and I stayed up late reading comic books in bed.

No wonder we can’t get Drake to turn out the lights and stop reading. It’s his birthright.

My husband and I have done such a good job of imparting a love of books to our 3yo Drake, we have trouble getting him to put them down. This becomes a problem when he needs to go to sleep. G. Grod and I will turn out the light and leave the room. When we get downstairs, we’ll hear the sound of turning pages, so ten to fifteen minutes later one of us will go up, turn off the light and tell him to get in bed, and we’ll repeat till it works. Kinda like letting him cry it out, but with books. During one of our many recent viruses, though, I decided to lock his book closet again to encourage him to get rest. The books were away, but unfortunately, the Aquaphor was not. I found Drake in his room with petroleum jelly product in his hair, on his chair, and on his bed. He was asleep in his chair, with his hands clutched around the jar of Aquaphor. Since then, the tub of Aquaphor is out of reach, and the books are always available. I’d like to say that if he chooses not to nap, that’s his problem, but of course it’s not. His irritability and meltdowns become all our problems. But I think I’d rather deal with those than with petroleum jelly smeared hither and yon.

Children’s singer Justin Roberts was in town on a recent weekend, and I took my 3yo son, Drake. We knew some of Justin’s songs, but I thought that would be enough to engage Drake. It was, sort of. Drake listened, and enjoyed, but he also insisted on wandering to the lobby, and dancing by himself out there. Justin and his band are energetic performers. They gave suggested hand, finger or body motions for many of the refrains of his songs. I knew that enthusiastically doing the motions was a good example not just for my kid, but also for others. It does signal a kind of death of dignity, though. Any vestige of my teenaged self who was snotty and above all that just packed up and left for good. Drake didn’t feel compelled to follow the body motions, so I felt extra goofy doing them on my own. What he did feel a strong draw to, though, was the green room. He kept sneaking, running, or otherwise sidling back to it and trying to get in. At first, I wondered if it might be an omen that he’d be in a band. Then I realized it was behavior more characteristic of a groupie.

Thankfully, Drake has continued to sing the songs after the show, so the groupie thing wasn’t my final impression. Drake named his toy whale Willy today. And I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of the refrain of “No” from “Doctor Doctor”, attempting to dispel tension when Drake is being “oppositional”.

Baby Guppy is ten months now. He is crawling and pulling himself up. He has teeth and loves to eat. Additionally, like any growing child, he’s decided that the toys I think are best for him are too babyish, so he’s ignoring them and pursuing 3yo Drake’s toys, which are chock-full of chokable bits. He is also fascinated by the top of the stairs, and can get there very quickly. He also isn’t fooled a bit by the “pretty little house” we got to keep him contained and safe from the attention of his older brother. He screams if we put him in it. Even if he didn’t, Drake either climbs in and shows affection in the way that causes G. Grod and me much anxiety. Or Drake opens the door and lets Guppy out. Guppy then crawls to some of Drake’s toys, Drake starts to cry, and takes defensive action, then Guppy cries and needs to be picked up.

I miss my cute, toothless baby who stayed where I put him, and played with the toys I put in front of him. That stage was awesome. Don’t get me wrong; this stage is fun. But it’s a great deal more work for my tired, virus-ridden self.

The new favorite picture book in our house is AlphaOops! by Alethea Kontis, illustrated by Bob Kolar. (If you follow the link to amazon, be sure to check out the reviews by Alethea’s father and grandmother. They endeared this book even more to me.) It is the kind of book that editors talk about at writing conferences when they say they would never take an alphabet book, unless it were by an established author (like Betsy Cronin’s Click, Clack, Quackity, Quack) or were something fresh and different. This is a great example of taking a completely saturated type (alphabet book) and turning it on its head. The subtitle is “The Day Z Went First” but the book doesn’t simply go backward. The letters have differently personalities and get in fights that are remarkably similar to those of toddlers, especially re: turns and fairness. There is a band along the bottom keeping track of which letters went in the revised order, and many of the example props take an active role in the visual storytelling. The art is clear and engaging, but also so detailed that it compels one to go slowly to read all the visual jokes. This book is funny and clever, and the text and art are a joy to read. For more AlphaOops!, go to the author’s website.

Chowder, by Peter Brown, is another recent favorite. Chowder is an iconoclastic bulldog, who acts more like a person than a dog. When he tries to befriend the animals in a petting zoo, he fails initially but goes on to save the day. Brown’s art is distinctive and well executed, and the typesetting is varied and skillfully done. It’s a good story about finding friends and making family.

Helen Oxenbury’s Tom and Pippo books are out of print! As a lifelong fan of children’s books, I know I should be accustomed to the out-of-print thing, One of my family’s favorite holiday tales, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, has long been out of print even though it was turned into a quite decent holiday special by Jim Hensen. Even so I haven’t become sufficiently inured to learning that a book I want isn’t easy to buy.

The Tom and Pippo books were recommended by a reader, who said that she had an entire collection. Lucky reader! The copies at our library are quite ragged, but they’ll have to suffice for now. I can hope that they come back into print, as sometimes happens with popular authors and illustrators. The simple text coupled with the charming drawings, and the sweet relationship between the boy and his toy monkey should have a wider audience than those of us that comb library shelves and used-book stores.

I gave myself reading challenges last year and this year because I felt like I was not making enough time for one of my favorite pursuits. I demonstrated, at least to myself, that having one small child, and then another, did not mean I had to stop reading. I kept reading, though I did have to make changes, like lowering my expectations on how clean my house was, how frequently laundry was done, how many magazines I subscribed to, how much time I spent on other hobbies, and how much television I watched.

But after a year and a half of devouring books at a healthy clip, I’ve been brought up short. It’s discouraging and humbling. I returned two books from my library request list unread, and am probably going to return an unread new purchase to the store as well. I’ve been plodding through the same book for over two weeks now, and probably only read one book before that this month.

Our family has been hard hit by viruses and sleep deprivation, plus there was a business trip and family visit. I’m hoping the sudden downturn is circumstantial, and will pass. There are too many books I want to read for one book a month to feel like it’s much better than nothing.

One of the memorable sequences from the movie Reality Bites was when the main character, played by Winona Ryder, is asked to define irony. Stymied, she finally blurts, “I know it when I see it!”

A few years later, Alanis Morrissette would have a hit with “The Ironic Song”, though many people commented correctly that some of her examples weren’t ironic, they just sucked.

Dictionary.com says “The essential feature of irony is the indirect presentation of a contradiction between an action or expression and the context in which it occurs.” Wikipedia quotes the American Heritage Dictionary that irony is not “unfortunate coincidences or surprising disappointments that ’suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly.’”

This all leaves me wondering. Last week I commented to a friend that I was feeling ground down by the ongoing viruses in the family, as well as the menial childcare tasks like changing poopy diapers. A few days later, Baby Guppy had to go to the emergency room, and was prescribed an antibiotic that caused diarrhea. As I wrote earlier, it likely was a virus, so the antibiotic was probably not necessary.

So which, if any, of these is ironic? I think the new virus and increase in soiled diapers are ironic; I learned that I didn’t have things so bad beforehand. The probably-useless antibiotic, though? I think that one likely just sucks.

Baby Guppy had a cold. Then he got an ear infection and was treated with amoxicillin. Then a week went by and he spiked a fever. I assumed he’d had a recurrence of the ear infection. But his ears were clear, as was his chest, but his white blood cell count was high, suggesting a bacterial infection. While we waited for the results of various cultures, he was treated with another antibiotic. He kept being feverish and waking at night, but was happy during the day and when he was fever free. Yesterday, the doc said if he was still feverish today to bring him in. He was at midnight, so we gave him ibuprofen. And that seemed to end the fever.

And then, I spotted some spots. A rash.

D’oh.

Roseola. A virus. High fevers for 3 days or so, then fever breaks, a rash erupts, then goes away, the end. That’s what it probably was.

Still no explanation for the high white count, but the rest seems to be explained.

Drake had this once, and I feel like I should have recognized it again as the non-serious virus it was. The problem (ha! as if there’s only one) is that there is never one cause. Is the fever viral? Bacterial? Is the night waking due to teeth? The answers are rarely clear and definite, though the roseola rash provides a quick retro-diagnosis. I feel like I’m on an episode of House where they never figure out what’s wrong.

Life seems to be leading me lately, rather than me leading a life. Sometimes, I end up with pie. Other times, I end up in the emergency room.

Bad news first. I’ve been telling myself that I’ll get rest once the family is well again. One or more of us has been sick since the end of September. Normally good-natured baby Guppy seems to have an infection, cause unknown. He’s been feverish, fussy, and has long periods of only wanting to be held, and only by G. Grod and me. We didn’t dither on getting him to the doc, but after an ear exam and a chest xray, he had to go to the ER for further tests, which are so far inconclusive.

But about the pie. Last week, I prepared to roast a butternut squash to then puree and freeze for Guppy. But I figured I might as well roast the other two squashes I had, which I’d been using as decorations. One was a hubbard, the other a small pie pumpkin. So I roasted them and pureed the butternut, and the hubbard, and added pumpkin pie spices to the pumpkin when I realized that there was so much of it that I could freeze some for the baby and make a pie with the rest. So I did. And the good news and the bad news are that the pie was awesome. Moist, smooth, silky. I did not, though, want to learn that making pumpkin pie from scratch results in a delicious pie. I’d lived my life up to this point operating under the blissful assumption that making pie from canned pumpkin was just as good and far easier than using fresh pumpkin.

In the case of the pie, though, at least I had a delicious dessert as consolation for hard work, lots of mess, and the disintegration of a life-long belief. But unless Guppy is fever-free by tomorrow, there are more doctor appointments, waiting rooms and tests in our future. I’m having trouble seeing the upside.

I like to invent theories about things. One recent one was that babies aren’t ready for solid food till they get their first tooth. Yet baby Guppy took to solids immediately at six months and only recently got his first tooth at just over nine months. So that theory was disproved. But I noticed that even though he scarfed down purees, he wasn’t able to handle soft pieces of solid food, like banana or Os. He gagged the few times I gave them to him prior to the appearance of his tooth. But after the tooth, he’s had no problem. So my new theory is that babies aren’t ready to move beyond purees till they get a tooth, which signals the ability to chew, or at least actively gum, bits of solid food.

Baby Guppy is no longer content to stay where we put him, and this is also true for his changing table. I put him on his back to change his diaper, and he flips over to his tummy, then tries to crawl off the table. Diaper changes are an unpleasant fact of life, made more difficult when I have to employ strong-arm tactics.

And yet another example of how ridiculous it is when people insist that babies have built-in survival mechanisms. Babies don’t always act in their own best interests, which is why it’s good they have these things called parents.