Girl Detective

The bad news is that I have post-partum depression. The good news is that I’m working with a doctor and a therapist to treat it and try to bring some balance back to life. It turns out that feeling tired, frustrated, and angry after having a baby may be normal, but it’s still a good idea to get it checked out.

On the theme of balance, I offer three depressing things (meta depression?) and three good things about depression:

Depressing things about being depressed:

1. I’m even more likely than previously to take things personally
2. Being on the wrong dose of an anti-depressant provides side-effects, but no benefits
3. Answering the diagnostic questions truthfully, especially those about whether I think about harming myself or my kids, makes me feel like a failure, and a deadbeat mom.

Good Things:

1. I’ve decided to take nothing personally unless someone says something to me directly.
2. Side effects go away, and the right dose of an AD builds my reserves, and reminds me of my former, more balanced state.
3. I have been heartened by how responsive doctor, family and friends have been. I am also proud of myself for not dithering about getting help, or quibbling about the advice I’ve gotten. All of these have helped lessen the severity of a discouraging situation.

I hesitated about writing about this here–too personal, too controversial, too trite. Yet writing helps at least me, and might even help someone else, too.

Some friends of mine used to joke that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing twice, and expecting different results. After spending yesterday in the kitchen and using just about every utensil and gadget, I think I have a new definition.

Insanity is making baby food from scratch.

Jars of organic food are easy, readily available, and not that expensive, though maybe not at the rate and volume baby Guppy consumes them. I don’t care what the books say, making it from scratch is time, labor and dirty-dish intensive. Plus I’m not sure I’m allowed to complain about being stressed and busy if one of the things that takes up my time is making baby food.

And yet, homemade peaches taste really good; homemade zucchini is very pretty; homemade green beans are a bitch to puree, but are way more appetizing looking and tasting than what comes in a jar. I shop for organic produce for the rest of the family anyway, and avoid packaged food when possible. Buying produce for Guppy and pureeing isn’t inconsistent from a quality of food standpoint.

But it might be inconsistent with a quality of life standpoint.

Some friends and I set aside a night for dinner out, and left the kids home with the husbands. What a luxury it was to eat good food prepared by someone else, uninterrupted, and at a leisurely pace. When it came time to pay the bill, I offered to put it on my card to simplify things. One friend wrote me a check (because this is MN, where we write checks for everything), but another realized she’d forgotten her checkbook, and had no cash.

“Would you accept a Target gift card?” she asked, holding out what she did have in her wallet.

I laughed and said yes. Moms are nothing if not adaptable.

My son Drake is recently three, and so far proving all those moms right who told me that three is far more difficult than two. My frustration is at an all-time high as he doesn’t listen and flouts my quiet, reasonable, polite requests to do basic things like get dressed.

Last night at bathtime, after I’d asked him several times to get in the bathtub, he continued to ignore me. I told him I was going to count to five, and if he wasn’t in the tub at five, I was going to lift him in by force. I counted to five, he hadn’t moved, I grabbed him, lifted him and plonked him in the tub, where he began to scream. I felt sad that the incident ended so badly, and I felt worse for him. He’s small, and at the mercy of grownups like me. Sure, he was being recalcitrant and ignoring me. But when I don’t want to do something, I try to reason my way out of it, plus I’m not usually physically forced by someone bigger than me. Yes, he’d been behaving badly, but I didn’t blame him for being outraged. It’s gotta suck being small, a lot of the time.

I type 1-handed, w/ baby Guppy in sling. He cries if I put him down. Soon Drake will be home from preschool. I’ve learned to do many things w/ kids around, but writing isn’t one of them. These last few weeks, with Drake not napping and Guppy napping sporadically, I’m wrangling one or both from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., with few, and all too brief, exceptions. My husband G. Grod gets home from work about 6 p.m., so the last hours of the day are tandem parenting, but it’s a struggle to get even the basics done lately, and I’ve had to put writing off again and again.

My boys haven’t been napping, I had to pack for a weeklong visit to family, and at the last minute I decided not to take my laptop, hence my lack of recent posts. I flew out with my husband and both boys, then G. Grod returned to work, and I stayed longer so the grandparents could have more time with the kids. While packing, I was daunted by the thought of taking my laptop, various liquids–baby Tylenol, children’s Tylenol, my eye drops, two containers of baby food, and two juice boxes–AND the boys by myself through security, so I left the computer behind. The flight back went mostly well, but Drake’s listening is sporadic, the security guy confiscated the juice boxes, and Drake cannily refuses to wear the monkey backpack/leash we bought. It wasn’t easy.

Before I left, a friend said to me, “Have a good vacation.” I responded that I find family visits different from vacations. While family visits can be enjoyable, they usually don’t have a high enough ratio of relaxation to obligation for me to feel restored enough to call them vacation.

or, Why I Didn’t Blog on Tuesday

Not yet up an hour
Caught in a gale of screaming
Both boys mad at once

This does not bode well
Can hold just one at a time
Peace does not come soon

Sometimes, a haiku is a good way to distill a hard morning. I got the idea from the book Haiku Mama, that rarest of things, a non-cheesy gift book. The author, Kari Anne Roy, has a blog, too.

At six months old, our son Drake refused rice cereal, veggies AND fruit, presaging the years since of picky eating. Twice I tried to make my own baby food. Twice he refused it, and I was stuck with veggie puree and tons of dishes. Forget it, I thought. He can eat out of jars.

When baby Guppy was waking frequently in the night after four months, I offered him a tiny amount of rice cereal. He slurped it down. This is going great, I thought. Then he was up with gas all night. I tried again after six months. He became constipated. So I mixed in a little prune juice, which caused gas. What to feed him, then? I unearthed my two baby food cookbooks, Mommy Made and Daddy Too by Martha and David Kimmel, and First Foods by Annabel Karmel.

Both books say cooking for kids is easy. As I found before, it’s not the cooking that’s hard, it’s the cleanup. The Karmel book is particularly bad for dirty-dish intensive recipes. While it’s pretty with lots of glossy photos, the more I spend time with it, the more I dislike it. Page 35 shows 12 panels of brightly colored infant purees. But they repeat three of the photos twice, identifying them as different foods, e.g., the same photo for carrots and sweet potato. Additionally, the Karmel book does not give details on what foods to introduce when. It simply recommends avoiding common allergens early.

The Kimmel book give details on what to introduce and when, but it’s not clear that the recommendations are from the American Academy of Pediatrics. And the website in the book is no longer owned by the authors. The Kimmel book swears that fresh baby food is far superior to jarred. I’m not completely convinced, especially because even conventional baby food doesn’t contain additives these days, and there are at least three readily available organic brands to choose among. Yet once again, I’ve been swayed into cooking my own baby food. I baked sweet potatoes and bananas, and steamed peaches and pears. Then I pureed them, and froze them in tablespoon dollops. I was reminded that sweet potatoes should be riced or put through a food mill; putting them in the food processor makes them gluey, which the Kimmel book doesn’t caution against. Guppy is mostly rewarding my efforts by being a good eater, but he doesn’t seem to mind the jarred stuff, either. And we’re still having bouts of tummy trouble.

Most of my 3yo Drake’s friends stopped napping every day a while ago. Drake, though, continued to nap nearly every day. One day I even wondered whether he was doing it out of habit, but then we skipped a day and he melted down that night. Still needs it, I noted. And within the last two months, I finally managed to get both Drake and his baby brother Guppy to take afternoon naps about the same time.

Then a few weeks ago it was getting close to nap time and Drake said, “I’m really tired. I want to go up for my nap.”

I picked my jaw off the floor, rushed him up for his nap, and he fell asleep almost immediately.

And that was the last real nap he took.

Since then, I put him in his room, and instead of napping he gets out books and “reads” them. While I could put a lock on his book closet door, that feels terribly wrong. How can I, in good conscience, stop him from doing what I usually do every day?

When I’ve told my friends that he’s stopped napping, they ask if he does “quiet time.” I grimace. Drake’s version of quiet time is reciting books from memory, singing loudly, kicking the wall by his bed, saying “mom, mom, mom” into the monitor until I go up and ask what he wants, or, last week, shouting the ABCs while stomping along on the floor till the walls shook, while I crossed my fingers that baby Guppy wouldn’t wake from his nap. Currently, he’s doing something (banging on the wall with a book?) that is loud enough to register on Guppy’s monitor, the next room over.

I don’t think this is just a phase. I think he’s given up naps. He goes to sleep faster at night and sleeps longer in the morning to compensate. Now I just need to find a way to get him to be quiet while Guppy naps.

I never knew how tricky pronouns were till I started teaching them to my son Drake, who is now three. At first, he had a lot of trouble with “you” and “me”. Recently, though, he demonstrated how far he’s come. He looked in the mirror while my husband and I held him and said, “Mom is looking at HERself, Dad is looking at HIMself, and I am looking at MYself.” His recent mastery, though, has been shaken by a book he got for his birthday, My First Truck Board Book.

I’ll say “Do you want me to read My First Truck Book?”

He’ll respond, “NO! I want to read MY First Truck Book, Mom!”

Me: “Yes, we’ll read your first truck book.”

Drake: “NO! MY First Truck Book, Mom!”

Me (realizing we’re in Who’s on First-ian territory and that it’s not worth trying to explain that the word “my” is part of the title, and not about actual possession): Sigh. “Ooo-kay.”

What’s funny is how the pronoun of the title is a stumbling block for him, but he’s memorized every single one of the gazillion trucks in the book, e.g., “No, Mom, that’s a track excavator, NOT a front loader!”

My personal favorite truck is the mass excavator, which looks like the Snort from Are You My Mother?.

Toys and books go in and out of favor without notice. Its hard to pick what is going to be a good inducement for 3yo Drake to go up for “nap” time, get his diaper changed, put on clothes, leave the house, or any number of other things that seem pretty basic, yet require lengthy negotiations. I was fairly sure that Mercy Watson Fights Crime, the third book in Kate DiCamillo’s easy reader Mercy Watson series, would be a hit. I was right. It is Drake’s new favorite book, supplanting Dooby Dooby Moo.

Mercy is the pet pig of Mr. and Mrs. Watson. She is very fond of toast with a great deal of butter. One night, she hears the sound of the toaster sliding across the counter. She goes into the kitchen to find out who’s making toast, only to discover a burglar. All the characters from the previous books appear. As usual, Mercy is in good favor at the end with everyone but her neighbor Eugenia, and everyone enjoys Mrs. Watson’s toast. Chris Van Dusen’s retro illustrations perfectly capture the simplicity of the stories, and contribute in no small way to how funny they are, and how endearing Mercy is, even though Eugenia is right–nothing with this pig is as it seems. In this series, DiCamillo has set aside her penchant for the sad and difficult. This book, like its predecessors, is a sweet, silly romp that’s fun to read aloud.

Dooby Dooby Moo is the latest entry in the Click Clack Moo books. Spurred by instigator Duck, the animals enter a talent contest at the fair. Farmer Brown knows something is going on, but he doesn’t figure it out until too late. As always, the humor is sweet, there’s good repetition for the read aloud, and Betsy Lewin’s illustrations are charming and funny. My 3yo Drake loves it, especially the singing phrases of the animals, which include Dooby Dooby Moo, and which we’ve heard many times over the monitor as he “reads” to himself in his room. Less successful are the footnotes in small type. They seem meant to be funny, yet I didn’t find them amusing. They only distracted me from the story, which I found rather slight. Dooby Dooby Moo is good, but my favorites remain Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type and Duck for President.

I did not think I would sign Drake up for preschool this fall. He just turned three a few weeks ago, and has regressed from any small progress using the toilet. I’ll deal with it in a few months, I thought, or next year. But then not one but two experienced moms waved their hands at my concerns, so I looked into it and was amazingly not penalized for my procrastination and able to sign him up for a program close by.

All weekend we talked about Drake starting school. This morning, as I struggled to get Drake, Guppy and me out the door, Drake was quick to do several things he usually balks at or refuses altogether: turning off the stereo, leaving behind his balloon, putting on a jacket, going out the door, getting in the car, and giving me back my (locked) cell phone. We arrived and met the teacher, who got out a bucket of trucks. Drake didn’t look up when I said goodbye, which I did twice.

When I picked him up, he was happily finishing his snack, and threw away his cup at the teacher’s request. He ran to give me a big hug, then we went home, where I marvelled that perhaps he was far more ready to start preschool than I’d thought.

Then he refused a diaper change, picked at his lunch, spilled his milk all over the kitchen (and Guppy), and is currently not napping, as is usual these last weeks. So things are back to normal. But the morning preschool was a success, so I’ll see how things go next time and beyond.

Twice, I have noticed Ugly Dolls–simply shaped, large-eyed, not-very-plush stuffed toys that come in various bruise-reminiscent colors–at friends’ houses. Both moms said the Ugly Dolls were gifts, and that the toddler recipient was largely immune to their charms. That has also been the case in our house. Our Ugly Doll(s), Bop ‘n’ Beep, gets more attention from me than from Drake. I think the doll is adorable in a jolie/laide kinda way. Drake, though, goes for the more traditional friends, like this giraffe, who was a gift for baby Guppy. My husband G. Grod surmises that the attraction of Ugly Dolls for adults is in their irony and backward cuteness, while toddlers don’t yet have the context to “get” them. I’ll be interested to see if the toddlers gain an appreciation for the Uglies when they’re older. Until then, though, I’ll take the advice of one of my friends: who needs to spend upwards of $13 at Paranoid Parent for a toddler crib pillow when we already have an Ugly Doll?

Three-year-old Drake has a habit of stating a question that he wants us to ask him. I went to get him up the other morning, and he said, “Is my nose itchy, Mom?”

“I don’t know, is your nose itchy, Drake?”

Sigh. “Yeah.”

Or he’ll ask a question that is more of a statement. “Mom, do you need a truck sticker?”

Apparently, that means that I do. I went out the other night, and returned home only to find I’d been out in public with a mass excavator sticker on my back.

He also is very clear sometimes about what kind of attention he wants.

“Mom, will you talk to me about playing with the cars?”

Or he’ll invoke a third party in one of his loveys.

“Mom, will you talk to Daisy about the trucks?”

He’s also getting very direct and demanding. I went into his room to get him up the other morning, and he greeted me with, “Don’t talk to me, Mom! Go back in the hall! Don’t come in my room!”

I covered my mouth to stifle a grin, as well as signal that I wasn’t talking, then backed slowly out of his room.

His capacity for imagination is growing, too. He takes his Ikea plush snake and spreads it out on the couch, and says it’s a car, then sits with his other loveys, asks me to get in the car, and says we’re going to their house, where there’s a pond for the fish and the ducks, and a meadow for his sheep. He says they’re going to play with cars there–do you see a theme, here?

And even though my husband G. Grod doesn’t carry a briefcase, Drake picked up his truck box the other day, clutched it in his fist and announced that he was going to work. I asked him how he was getting there.

“The friends’ car,” he announced matter-of-factly, and with a certain weariness, as if I were stupid for not knowing something so obvious.

#53 in my book challenge for the year was The Explosive Child, which our pediatrician recommended at Drake’s 3-year checkup after observing his interactions with us, and noting he had an “oppositional” personality. I like our doc; his approach is very factual and scientific. He’s definitely old school, though, so I take his advice with that in mind. From other parents and my own observation, most three year olds are oppositional, with low flexibility and frustration points. They’re testing boundaries, and learning how to share and compromise. I think the book is directed at parents of older children who still exhibit the type of tantrums more typical at three. As the doc warned, the parent and child examples in the book are extreme. Nonetheless, I found the book useful for its advice and reminders. One of its themes is that children do well if they can, so if they’re not doing well, it’s likely a lack of ability to handle frustration, not an unwillingness to behave. That’s why sticker charts and timeouts are not universal solutions. It also broke down parent/child negotiations into three types: parent enforces will, parent and child collaborate on problem solving, parent decides not to pursue issue. The case studies were a good reminder that many blowups happen when both parent and child are being inflexible, or when a parent is rushing a child through a transition faster than the child can adapt. The book’s focus is for parents to learn, and teach their children, collaborative problem solving. This requires both parties to bring a concern to the discussion. While I can certainly lay the groundwork for this, getting my 3yo to articulate his concern is far beyond where we are right now, which is largely just “No” on his part. The book was quick to read, and it made some good points that I still recall a week later, so it was worth the investment in time, even if it’s not exactly suited to where our family is right now.

Once, I noted how fun and smiley a friend’s six-month-old baby was. My friend said her mother warned her that six months is a dangerous time. Most six-month babies are cute and interactive, they don’t cry or spit up as much, and they usually stay where you put them. They sleep longer at night, so the crazed feeling of sleep deprivation and any miseries of colic have usually passed. My friend’s mom noted that it’s at this point that a couple with their first child often feels like they’re getting it. They’re loving parenthood, and it feels a good time to try for another kid. Don’t be fooled, though, the mom cautioned. Six months is the calm before the storm: crawling, teething, stinkier diapers, and the need for discipline are just around the corner, and you don’t want to go into that with first trimester fatigue and nausea.

I don’t recall what the mom advised as a better time to try to get pregnant again, but I have never forgotten her practical advice. I think of it lately, since my husband G. Grod and I are very much enjoying baby Guppy, nearly seven months old. He smiles, he laughs, he gurgles, he coos, he rolls, but he’s not quite crawling yet. We have no plans to further expand our family, but if we were on the fence, I can see how Guppy’s current beguiling ways could push us over to the other side. I’m going to enjoy this time while it’s here, and miss it when it’s gone.

G. Grod and I did our very first visit to the fair on our own as a family. Going with Drake and Guppy isn’t that much more challenging than going with Drake by himself, as we did last year. As usual, we eschewed traditional fair activities for my favorite one: eating. I tried several new foods, and sought out some old favorites. My wish list was, not surprisingly, too ambitious, but we did eat a variety of different things.

We began with breakfast at the Blue Moon Diner, near the Loop entrance. We had a strawberry waffle, sausage egg strata, and pull-apart cinnamon rolls. The latter were supposed to be gooey, but were instead overbaked, so crunchy but still tasty. This was a quite decent breakfast, and the diner showed The Andy Griffith Show and Three Stooges videos on a big screen in its eat-in area. This was good if you are looking for fair food with substance.

Next was Tom Thumb mini donuts followed by roast corn on the cob. Drake wasn’t that excited by the corn this time, but he loved the donuts. Drake likes to pat Guppy’s head, and G. Grod and I were amused to find patches of donut sugar on Guppy’s head. We next headed to the Food Building for fried cheese curds. G. Grod was wrangling Drake and collecting the curds when Drake twisted the wrong way, and the curds went flying. Drake found this hilarious, and the cheese curd people kindly gave us a replacement. I tried the Spiral Chips at Sonny’s, but they were only OK, and in typical fair fashion, they were expensive ($5) with a portion much too big for just two adults. Outside the Food Building we got a cup of my favorite root beer, 1919, which was sweet, herbal, and just bubbly enough. Drake had a hard time sharing it with me, but I persevered. G. Grod got a Red Bull push up, and then he and I shared a frozen mocha on a stick, my new favorite item.

Heading north, we stopped at Giggles and tried the porcupine meatballs of elk meat mixed with wild rice, in portobello mushroom gravy over mashed potatoes. These were good, but unseasonally heavy for the summer weather. Like breakfast at Blue Moon, the choices at Giggles were excellent quality for fair food, and good quality in general. They’re more like real food than fair food, so better for those who are staying for an entire day, or not looking to try a lot of different foods.

Drake surprised us by saying yes to a hot dog on a stick, so we got him a beef and wild rice corn dog in the food building, but he only wanted to lick the ketchup off, as if it were a condiment lollipop. The three of us then shared a cone of Sweet Martha’s cookies and a cup of milk before heading to the parking lot. At the car, we were boxed in by marching bands. Drake listened and danced in delight for quite some time, then wanted to go dance WITH the band, and was reluctant to go home. Even after a long, hot morning and lots of food, he continued his nap strike, which has been going on for about 2 weeks. It was a beautiful day, both boys enjoyed the trip, and we had some wonderful food, though, so the trip was certainly a success.

Way back, pre-kids, I tried to do the bulk of my grooming the same way I tried to do laundry and other chores: once a week. I’d reserve one day, usually Sunday, for a long shower, exfoliation, shaving, plucking, clipping and even sometimes finger- and toe-nail painting.

Those days are gone. Now I feel lucky if I get a medium length shower twice a week, and anything else is gravy. The fatigue of parenting plus the additional work makes it harder to muster the energy for maintenance work: ah, I’ll just get dirty again, why bother? Yet ever-increasing levels of filth (on me, rarely the kids) weigh upon my psyche. They’re like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Showering, then has become another of the several things (like writing and naps) that I have learned to shove to the top of the list. Because there’s not much that kills the simple pleasure of a shower like knowing Drake has the run of the house, or listening to the escalating screams of Guppy, who decides that shower time is EXACTLY when he wants to be held, or fed, or whatever.

And all that other stuff (shaving, et. al) just has to get worked into the crevices, like most things these days.

After observing my son Drake at his three-year checkup, our doctor commented “I see he has an oppositional personality.” He recommended a book, which I got from the library and have yet to read. My husband and I were talking about the oppositional thing yesterday. Drake was in the other room.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’d probably claim that the sun wasn’t shining on a day like today.” (The weather was clear and beautiful.)

Drake came running into the room. “The sun is NOT shining,” he stated.

I laughed. “Yes, honey, it is.”

“NO, it is NOT!”

Meaningful glance exchanged between parents.

Today we were walking home from church. The closer we got, the more reluctant Drake became. “Let’s cross the street to our house,” I coaxed.

“It’s NOT our house.” he shouted.

“Um, yes it is. That’s our house, right there, across the street. Let’s go to our house.”

But Drake was adamant. “That’s NOT our house!”

I tried a different tack. “OK, Drake, let’s go to our house. Which house is our house?”

He pointed vaguely up the street. “That guy’s house. I want to go to that guy’s house, Mom.”

I reminded him. “But if we go to that guy’s house, we can’t ring the doorbell. Why don’t we cross the street and ring the doorbell?”

That was part of what finally worked. Drake likes to push buttons, in more ways than one.