Girl Detective

Once Drake turned two, I needed a diaper bag less and less. I enjoyed my return to a normal purse with one or two kid essentials tucked inside. With a new baby, though, came the need for a diaper bag once again. The chaos factor for babies is less about behavior, and more about physical realities. Babies need diapers, wipes, burp cloths, changes of clothes and distracting toys. Toddlers still need these things on an occasional basis, but not nearly as often or as immediately as do babies.

With Drake, G. Grod and I used a Timbuk2 messenger bag. After two years of diaper duty, it was the worse for wear. I debated what type of bag to get as a replacement. Another messenger? An actual diaper bag? A purse that was roomy enough to hold diaper-like essentials?

I came to similar conclusions as I did years ago. Actual diaper bags charged a premium for things like usefulness and fashion. They were very expensive because they were very specialized, with things like a built-in changing pad and insulated sections for bottles. See an example here. I found the special sections not very helpful. Either I could buy them cheaper and include them in any bag I wanted (the changing pad) or I never needed it (insulated section.) Plus, once you were done with babyhood, you’d be done with the bag.

I found opposite issues with subsituting a conventional purse for a diaper bag. See example here. Most bags were just not sturdy enough to stand up to the abuse that a diaper bag has to endure, and the fashionable ones were expensive enough to warrant more careful treatment.

So I returned to my middle ground of a messenger bag, though this time I opted for the more ergonomically correct backpack, since it distributes weight across both shoulders. It’s sturdy, it’s not ugly, it’s reasonably priced, and it will be useful once Guppy moves into toddlerhood when we can once again, and finally, give up the big bag. And I can always opt for using one of my existing purses in those rare instances in which I need a bag that’s fashionable and fabulous, rather than utilitarian.

Before I had Drake, I read some birth and baby books, some parenting articles, and took some classes. Once labor began, I quickly determined that most of that stuff was utter crap. That feeling continued through Drake’s babyhood. I was bewildered by the chasm between reality and what I’d been led to expect.

The books said Drake would have intense sucking needs that a pacifier would help. He never kept one in his mouth. They said when he made mouth movements he was hungry. He made mouth movements all the time, and only a few of them resulted in feedings. The books also said that Drake would sleep a lot at first. This was just not true. Guppy, though, barely opened his eyes for his first several weeks, and still sleeps away a good portion of the day. Guppy has also progressed to a six hour interval at night. (Don’t congratulate me; it starts at 8 p.m.) Early on with Guppy, I noticed periods where he’d be still and wide eyed. “That’s ‘quiet-alert’, I thought, remembering it from our birth class. I never saw Drake in that mode.

Guppy is the baby I was expecting when I had Drake. All the books and resources weren’t full of shit, but they weren’t useful the first time around. And I’m not sure they’re much more useful this time. What was useful was learning to ignore them and try to figure it out myself. That gave me at least some occasional insight into Drake, and has meant I’m continually appreciative of Guppy, the laid-back Buddha baby.

A couple weeks ago I had some friends over. Looking at our wedding picture, one woman gushed that I was so lucky to have a husband who was so much in love with me.

I paused. “Huh,” I said. “That makes me feel really guilty for how enraged I got at him this morning for not stacking the measuring cups when he put them away.”

When we travelled the other week, Drake refused to sit in his wheeled car seat, and instead insisted on pushing it himself. It was hard for him to steer, so he made very slow progress. Drake and G. Grod were the last people off the plane, and I’d been waiting, with Guppy in the sling and a heavy backpack, for some time. Both G. Grod and I were grouchy and tired, and Drake had screamed for a lot of the flight. But a guy standing next to me while I waited looked down the tunnel, and saw Drake coming up pushing his own car seat. “That’s so awesome,” he laughed. My mindset suddenly shifted. “You’re right,” I agreed.

I saw my husband and my kid through other people’s eyes. It didn’t make me a better, more aware person. But the occasional reminder helps prevent me from becoming a worse one.

I am remiss in that it has taken me so long to write a follow up to my original post on Grups, or grown ups who have kids and dress and act young.

My friend Blogenheimer astutely pointed out that New York magazine has a habit of running articles that purport to detail a trend, but that are actually just vague, and whose only references are friends of the author’s. His wife Queenie pointed out, also astutely, that most of the people in the Grups article didn’t sound very nice.

I was quick to identify with the article, but think that Mr. and Mrs. Blogenheimer’s points are well-taken. In fact, the urge to identify with the article reminded me of the gazillion online quizzes that will tell you what book you are, what personality your blog is, and on and on. These things, as the Grups article was, are entertaining. They are not meant, though, to stand in for the complex totality of a person, and should not be mistaken for anything scientific or even very meaningful. I want to apologize, then for jumping on the Grups bandwagon. I’m off it now.

Cutting baby finger and toe nails is hard. I have to wait till Guppy is asleep, and not care if I wake him, which is hardly ever the case. But I just trimmed his nails on Friday, and I used the regular scissors, not even the safety ones. So why does he look like he’s been in a monkey knife fight today?

We took our first plane trip as a family of four last weekend. I took 3-month-old Guppy in the sling, while my husband G. Grod took nearly three-year-old Drake in his car seat on wheels. It had been several months since Drake flew. A few things had changed. One, he didn’t want to remain in the wheeled car seat, and he wanted to steer it himself through the airport. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t make swift progress that way. Two, he was very excited to be on the plane, though he looked somewhat frightened as we left the ground the first time. Once we were airborne, though, he was very excited, laughing and saying “whee!” with great delight, even for our descent through lightning clouds and turbulence that had me giving him a rictus grin and clutching my arm rest. The flight home was less felicitous. Not only did we have the delays as Drake navigated his own seat to our gate, but he melted down in the middle of the flight, screaming so loud and continuously that people halfway up the plane kept turning around with WTF looks on their faces. I couldn’t help, because Guppy and I were not even in the same row, but G. Grod (and some of the Tylenol I produced from my well-stocked new diaper bag) got Drake somewhat calmed until the descent, when the screaming re-commenced until landing. Everyone was the worse for wear after that flight. Guppy was his usual, Buddha-like self. I nursed him discreetly in the sling, for takeoff and descent, to help his ears. He cried a little on the flight out, and not at all on the flight home.

I’m taking both boys on a flight by myself in a few weeks. I’ll avail myself of some of the tips from this helpful article. Even though G. Grod and I ran a man-to-man defense this trip, we still had difficulty. By myself, I’m going to have to go to zone. I only hope Drake has a good day. I will also not hesitate to rely on, ask for, or perhaps even demand, some kindness of strangers.

Also, as un-PC as it is, I think it might be helpful to get this.

When Drake was a baby, he cried a lot. I was very frustrated at baby books, articles and other parents who said that after a few weeks, I would learn what his cries meant. I never did get that kind of spidey-sense. I took my best guess, and spent a lot of time longing for him to talk, so that he could TELL me what he was crying about. Now that he’s been verbal for over a year, I see how misguided I was. When Drake is upset, he has a hard time using words. Further, he doesn’t yet seem to understand cause and effect, so “why are you crying?” doesn’t compute. Finally, when he does answer, it doesn’t always make sense. Does “bug in the air conditioner” mean he saw one, he dreamed one, or that he’s afraid it might happen? And might his extreme response be due to illness, even if he says he feels OK?

I wish I could go back in time and tell my former self I was wasting my time wishing. My almost-three-year-old boy is an unreliable narrator.

I’m afraid in my fatigue fog of last night I may have made my two-page goal sound somewhat easier to achieve than it actually is. The good thing about two pages is ….

Please, excuse me while I go up and comfort Guppy for the–wait, wait, he’s stopped crying.

I just finished my two pages. They were first-draft ugly, and probably would be considerably shorter if I applied any editorial effort at all. If they come across as disjointed, it’s likely due to the three or more times I ran up two flights of stairs from our basement (current writing haven) to Guppy’s bassinet to re-insert his Nuk and pat his tummy to get him back to his nap.

Yesterday was even more of a challenge. Drake woke screaming, so loud and so long that he eventually woke Guppy down the hall, who added his voice to Drake’s. I tried to calm Guppy and learn what it was that had upset Drake. Over the course of 45 minutes, I administed some Motrin, nursed the baby, held both boys on my lap to read books, and convinced Drake to get back in bed to finish his nap. Neither boy was able to go back to sleep, but they were able to stay quiet for a total of about fifteen minutes within thirty so that I could finish my two pages.

The good thing about writing two pages is that they’re short enough to withstand numerous interruptions, and can likely be completed even if one or both boys has trouble during naptime.

Children’s author and Newbery Award winner Kate DiCamillo used to say at readings that for years, she called herself a writer but didn’t write. When she finally got serious about it, she set herself a two-page-a-day goal, and has been doing that, with eventual great success, ever since.

My own fiction writing habit has tended to follow a feast-or-famine pattern. It is only recently, in the months following the birth of my second child, that I realized I had to set a small, realistic goal (oh, Freud, why do I always type it as “gaol”?) to make any progress, post-Guppy. I borrowed Kate’s 2-page-a-day idea. And it’s working.

On many days I have just enough time while the boys nap to write two pages and a quick blog entry. Some days I even write–gasp!–three pages. I’m making progress, and the confidence I’ve gotten as the page numbers pile up is very heartening in my current state of sleep deprivation.

Of course, the house is a mess, and there are piles of things everywhere. But I’m writing. I’m also proving what I’ve found in the past, which is that writing begets more writing. I’m at no loss for things to post about on the blog, and my current draft of novel #2 is coming along nicely in its 2-page increments.

This draft is my third start of novel #2. The first draft and first start was during NaNoWriMo 2004. I let it sit till I felt ready to send out novel #1 to editors, then picked it back up. My writing group and I agreed that parts of it had potential, but it wasn’t a sequel to #1. I started again, trying it from the point of view of a new character. It still didn’t feel right until I introduced a second voice, then a third and a fourth. Now I’ve got four characters telling the story, and I feel a fifth is on the way. Parts of my original draft are salvageable, but most of the current draft is new. Right now that feels fun and exciting, not like work, so I’m pretty sure this draft is heading in the right direction at last.

Lately Drake insists that every book is what he calls a song book–one that contains something that can be sung. Some of his regular books fall into this category, like Sandra Boynton’s Snoozers, and They Might Be Giants Bed, Bed, Bed. Now, though, he’ll pick up my copy of Kathryn Davis’s The Thin Place, open it and sing Frere Jacques. He’ll pick up G. Grod’s book on Texas h01d-em p0ker (trying to avoid increasing my spam hits) and start singing along, pointing to the pictures of cards as if he’s pointing to musical notes in a hymnal. He’s also continuing to sing entire songs by himself. Interestingly, though, he likes to be sung to, but refuses to sing along, either when I sing to him, or in music class. I think he might be shaping up to be a diva.

Drake, like many boys his age, loves cars. While I never set out to teach him the names and brands of cars, he asked, we answered, and he learned. (Quick parenting aside–I never know what he’ll pick up, and what he’ll ignore. It’s an awesome lesson in how brains work individually. I’ll try to remember that the next time I’m fretting about potty-learning.)

The first few cars he learned were distinctive looking–Beetle Bugs and PT Cruisers. Lately, though, he’s able to identify cars by their logos. The first type he learned was Mercedes–”a Y car, Mom.” “Uh, yeah, kind of.” Next were Volkswagens, which he initially called W cars. He calls Pontiacs triangle cars, and he learned that H cars were Hondas.

Last week we were walking when he started talking agitatedly. “The H is falling! The H is falling, Mom!”

I backed up a few steps to take a look at the car we’d just passed. It was a Hyundai.

A friend who reads parenting books (I don’t) told me recently about a tendency to avoid discussing emotions with boys. The next time I read with Drake, George and Martha Round and Round by the late, great James Marshall, I pointed to a picture of George looking happy, and asked Drew what George looked like. Silence. I asked, “Does George look happy?” “No.” Further silence. “Well, Drake, what does George look like?” A pause. “Good!”

OK, I thought, “good” is close enough. Then I pointed out a picture of Martha looking unhappy, and asked Drake what she might be feeling. Silence. Then, “Does she look unhappy?” “No.” “What does Martha look like?” A pause. “Cranky!”

Later in the book when one of the characters had their eyes closed, Drake pointed to it and said “Sleeping!” (of course, with his lisp it was more like “Fweeping”)

Further reading of books has only reinforced these answers. According to Drake, there are two emotions: Good and Cranky. And if someone has their eyes closed, they’re Asleep.

You know, it’s not a bad world view.

It was a while back when I decided that I wanted to steer clear of the usual purview of Mommy blogs and instead focus on how to keep my brain engaged and learning, while also instilling a love of learning in my then kid, and now kids. Caitlin Flanagan’s recently published book, To Hell with All That, has re-ignited a lot of Mommy bitterness. A lot of copy has been spilled, so I’ll keep my remarks short.

There have always been jerks. And there have always been people, mommy and otherwise, who try to make themselves feel good about their life decisions by criticizing those who choose differently. Further, it is often a luxury of class (economic or intellectual) that enables folks to mount their high horses. (Akin to the phenomenon described in this article on urban sprawl; link via Arts & Letters Daily.) Finally, it is infighting like this that distracts us from real problems.

So I’ll offer some advice I struggle to follow myself:

Don’t be mean. To each her own. The only person you can know well enough to judge is yourself.

For the third year in a row, Drake didn’t get the memo that it was Mother’s Day. He threw a monstrous tantrum before church. We did eventually get there. Afterward, as I was loading Guppy in the car and telling Drake to get in his seat, he ignored me and splashed in a mud puddle. Suddenly he yelled. “Fell in puddle!”

His pants were covered in mud. I had to finish with Guppy and hustle over to Drake, then remove his shoes, socks and pants. He rode home in his diaper. Here was the exchange in the car:

Me: Why did your pants get muddy?
D: Fell in puddle.
Me: Why did you fall in the puddle?
D: Didn’t listen to Mom.
Me: What happens when you don’t listen to Mom?
D: Bad things.

Please allow for a brief departure into “kids say the darndest things.” I try hard to be an un-mommy blog, and focus on books, movies and other things that I feel contribute to a thriving life of the mind, but occasionally things happen that I feel it would be remiss to keep to myself.

My husband and I were discussing possible candidates for the next presidential election. He named someone, and I asked, “Isn’t that person evil?”

Before he could answer, Drake chimed in.

“_I’m_ evil,” he grinned.

My husband and I paused and stared at him, mouths agape.

After he recovered, my husband said, “No, Drake, you are a force for good. Say, ‘I’m a force for good’”

Drake’s grin grew wider. “I’m evil, Dad!”

I shook my head and sighed. “He’s gonna be a Republican, isn’t he?”

After I had my first child, I had to buy a bunch of new clothes because nothing fit. I was a size or two bigger, thicker in the waist, and larger in the chest due to nursing. Once I started exercising again, those post-partum clothes eventually became too big. But I saved them, figuring I’d need them again after Guppy was born.

Lo and behold, they were now too small. I am two or three sizes larger, with an even thicker waist. What to do? Revert to wearing maternity clothes? While I’ve done that a few times, some other things have worked.

Once I determine something doesn’t fit, I take it off the hanger, so I don’t try it and get depressed again when it doesn’t fit. Skirts with unstructured waists fit, since they can sit a bit higher than they used to. The only pants that fit have Lycra, and not even all those still work. The best tops are one that cover the waistband and don’t ride up.

I found a few inexpensive items at Old Navy and Target that should help until I can either buy for my new shape or exercise my way back toward my old stuff. (I’m not holding my breath for the latter.) I won’t win any fashion-forward awards, but I hope to avoid plumber’s butt and other behind-the-back, wince-inducing faux pas.

Old Navy Just Below Waist Jeans
Old Navy At Waist Jeans (online, but no longer in store)
Old Navy Tiny Fit Tees (tight but longer length)
Old Navy Long Layering Tank
Target Mossimo tank
Target Mossimo tee

A few weeks ago, in what was either a moment of weakness or bravery, I registered to attend the Loft’s Festival of Children’s Literature, a day of general sessions and smaller workshops led by writers, illustrators, and editors. As I contemplated the eight-hour day, I realized I’d have to take Guppy with me. The logistics of being away from him that long would be complicated. So I planned to wear my Maya Wrap sling and bring along a diaper bag with the essentials*. I figured I would attend as much as I could, and leave any session, or the festival, if things went badly.

As it turned out, Guppy was astonishing. He snoozed most of the time in the sling, woke to eat, then snoozed again, lather, rinse, repeat. He was quiet in his brief waking periods, and I was able to attend almost every minute of every session. And if you’re ever having a low day (as I was–recent nights have had lots of interrupted sleep, and the weather has been bad) bringing a baby to an event can be very cheering. Loads of people want to talk with and smile at you.

As I’ve written many times before, the Loft is a wonderful resource for Twin Cities writers. The festival was full of useful information, and I got a lot out of it. I nearly didn’t sign up, and then strongly considered not attending after I did sign up. I’m glad I overcame my doubt and inertia.

*Wallet, phone, PDA, lip balm, tiny notebook, pen, 2 diapers, wipes, burp cloth, Nuk, extra outfit and socks, book (for me), distracting toy (for Guppy).

Toddler won’t listen
My clothes neither match, nor fit
Baby cries and cries

There is nothing my toddler does that is so annoying that yelling at him can’t make it worse.

The speed with which my toddler moves, and his ability to listen to me, vary in inverse relation to how loud the baby is screaming.

My ability to feel like a competent parent is directly related to the amount of sleep I’ve had, and to how nice the weather is.

I spent today and one day last week in an uncharacteristic manner: driving around. I was in and out of the car with both boys all morning, and in the car for a long time. Drake did very well, and Guppy slept the whole time, but it isn’t an experience I want to increase in frequency.

We only have one car that G. Grod and I share. He can take the bus to work or drive. One of the reasons we like where we live is that we’re within walking distance of several parks, a coffee shop, restaurant, two libraries, our grocery co op, and more. I enjoy walking to these places. I get exercise, and my sons get fresh air and a scenic stroller ride.

Running back and forth in the car felt only like it was a means to an end. I know lots of people for whom driving is an everyday event. They live in suburbs and have to drive to everything. I also know people who live near me and drive their kids around to museums, gyms, and other kid venues. I know those has value, but for me and mine, so does avoiding time in the car. The park down the block may be smaller than one I can drive to, but I don’t think Drake enjoys it any less, and I know we’re both better off not having to negotiate getting in and out, and in and out, of the car to go someplace further away.