Girl Detective

While my son Drake napped today, I took to bed, and snuggled up with a short story and a chunk of Don Quixote. Sometimes Drake can sleep through cacophony; other times he wakes at an inopportune creak of the floorboards. To increase my chances of a long nap, I try to do just one thing. Today it was reading, and lots of it.

What is your definition of luxury?

Yesterday my nineteen-month-old son Drake and I welcomed five other toddlers and moms into the house. The gathering was one of mediated chaos. As the morning waned and things ostensibly wound down, the little ones discovered the front porch, with its mini-slide. Wild delight ensued as they went up, down, and around. Drake introduced two of his compatriots to another feature of the front porch, the mail slot. The three of them stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing out with rapt attention, as Drake held up the flap. Light from outside played across their faces.

Seconds passed. Another mom laughed. “What a picture that is.”

I looked over at her and smiled. “I was just trying to remember where I left the camera.”

Then the boy on the end shoved the one in the middle, who screamed, causing Drake to pull away.

The moment was gone. We made our separate ways into the afternoon.

I wrote previously here on why I blog. Simply put, blogging has enabled me to adopt a consistent writing practice. A tougher question, though, and one I didn’t become conscious of for a long time is this: why do I blog about those things about which I blog?

For the long time my topics were whatever leapt out of my head and onto my keyboard. Often, this was a hyper stream of consiousness, or worse, a daily list or diary without commentary or insight. Provoked by something I read at Mental Multivitamin, though, I took a long look at what I’d been writing about. Why was I making private things public? I reaped a benefit from blogging of writing practice, but what potential benefit to readers was some mundane snippet from my life?

I wrote at length here on my decision not to chronicle any further gripes about motherhood. Since then, I have become increasingly aware of mothers who use their kids as grist for their writing. Meg Wolitzer, who has a new book out, wrote on this at Salon here.

The notion of parents mortifying their children is nothing new… But the children of writers are given a mortification all their own. It reaches beyond the hokeypokey and deep into regions unfamiliar to the children of management consultants and travel agents.

In its most common form, the embarrassment occurs when a writer is simply doing his or her job: describing the world in an unflinching, candid manner, and casually borrowing recognizable bits and pieces from real life. Occasionally, a writer borrows much more than that. This was the case with A.A. Milne, who used his son Christopher Robin as a character without asking. The child grew up and was left to languish in bitterness, loathing the father who left him frozen in a kind of twisted, eternal moppethood. It seems clear that writers who use their children to advance their own work are guilty of some kind of unsavory pimping, and that those children — those trapped-in-amber, beloved figures from picture books and novels — have a right to feel furious.

While this quote has not scared me enough to stop writing about Drake at all, it did confirm that I can keep the grumbly bits, both his and mine, to myself. No need to immortalize those in ether. So writing in detail about my kid was no good. What, then, of my measly life was worth putting out there for public inspection? At this point, I was reminded of a story.

I was a junior in college, and begged my parents to let me have a car at school. They relented, perhaps based on the “it’s for my job” part of the argument, which was actually true. I drove that car hither and yon. After a while, its performance waned. I took it to a service station and received a call soon after.

Knowing how inadequate my answer was, I doubt I kept the upspeak out of my 20-year-old voice. “Uh, no one ever told me I had to do that?”

The spirit of that story is why I blog what I blog. I can’t know something till I learn about it. In the spirit of my girl-detective forebears, I like to follow clues and links. I blog about things that I find informative or interesting, in the hope that someone else will, too. I’m hardly an early adopter, so most of what I write here won’t be ground-breaking or trend-setting. Perhaps it will simply be one more small voice that helps you make a decision about what movie to watch, what book to read, or what have you. There is a danger, though, that I might state the obvious, which I’ll illustrate with another story.

I was visiting my sister Sydney some years ago. She had just gotten a kitten, sleek and black with bright green eyes. He zoomed about her house, provoking the dog and charming me by pouncing around my room and sneaking up into the box spring under my bed. I was impressed by how cute, spirited and clever he was. Later, I related his antics to friends of mine who have cats. They looked at me oddly. “Uh, Girl Detective? All kittens do that.”

Please forgive me, then, when I post something obvious. One person’s kitten is another person’s oil change.

I am just busting out of a prolonged (nearly four weeks) writing block on my novel, which I have to present to my group next week, so blogging may get short shrift for a while. It is HARD not to spend time blogging, because it goes so much faster than work on the novel.

My 19-month-old son Drake is up to fascinating stuff. Earlier in the week he climbed to the slide in the jungle gym by walking up the steps holding onto the rail, rather than by crawling. At home, he stood up while going down our front steps holding the rail, rather than waiting for my help.

Drake has a little dance of excitement, in which he stays in one place and hops his feet up and down and laughs. It is very like a Snoopy dance.

And during our readings of Edward Gorey’s The Epiplectic Bicycle, my husband G. Grod and I read the story, and Drake is able to say the word bubbles, like “Ho!” and “Whee!” Last week my husband G. Grod and I did a tag team reading of Bread and Jam for Frances, in which G. read the story and I sang the songs (for all of which I’ve made up tunes.) The three of us enjoyed that reading very much.

Before our son Drake was born, one of the things on my husband G. Grod’s and my long to-do list was to get a lawyer and set up wills. We got a recommendation from our financial guy, then met twice with the lawyer, once to discuss what types of wills we wanted to have, and to get paperwork to go over so that when we met the second time we’d finalize the wills.

A lot of the paperwork was about what each of us wanted to be done if we were incapacitated. I was surprised to learn how differently we felt from one another. One of us wanted to be kept alive if at all possible, the other wanted no extraordinary means. We’d talked about these things in generalities before, but filling out the detailed questionnaires made each of our views very clear to one another. When we met with the lawyer the second time, we put those wishes on paper, and got them signed. We also chose who would look after Drake, in person and financially, if something were to happen to us.

We had a zillion things to do in the days before Drake was born, but getting our wills was one of the best expenditures of time and money I can think of. Do you have a will? Does someone know for certain what your wishes are if something unexpected were to happen? It’s a little time, and a little money. But it’s nothing when you compare it to the wretched alternative unfolding in the news.

Lisa Schmeiser of The Rage Diaries, on how to deal with the recent glut of mommy-related media:

Consider it the editorial form of non-violent protest — non-attention protest. Ignore these spurious mommyfestos. Acknowledging them only gives them what they want, most likely at your expense.

So no mommyfestos from me. Instead, two of the things I’m wrestling with today.

One, how to celebrate the fact that my child is a unique individual, while also acknowledging, to myself and to him, that he’s just like everybody else. The former without the latter means a skewed sense of oneself in relation to the world, like Zaphod Beeblebrox and the fairy cake, from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe.

Two, how to hold the difficulties lightly and free myself to enjoy parenthood. When my husband and I moved to Minnesota, some of the first advice we got was, “Learn to like winter. Don’t hide inside, or you’ll hate it here.” Those words have stood us well for the nearly seven years we’ve lived here. Now I just need to figure out how to do the same thing with being a mom.

Both things are simple, but neither is easy.

I read several parenting books before and after my son Drake was born. Almost without exception, they would make me feel anxious, incompetent, or both. I got rid of the What to Expect… books because they aggravated me so much. I kept one or two others, but over time I hardly refer to them at all. There was only one baby book that I liked, Baby 411 by Ari Brown and Denise Fields. It was a reference book, not meant to be read cover to cover. It was practical and often funny. Best of all, I never felt anxious or incompetent after reading it. Just better informed.

One of the problems I had with the baby books were the lists of developmental milestones. Reading these usually led to me feeling anxious if Drake hadn’t yet achieved a milestone by such and such an age. One of the great things about ignoring the books, though, is that I can now appreciate new skills of Drake’s that don’t get mentioned.

Recently, for example, he is experimenting with walking backwards, on level ground, and up and down stairs. When he does go forward down the stairs holding my hands, he alternates his feet, clearly wanting to do it like we do. Periodically, I see him in a yoga pose, like Bridge, Hero, Downward Dog or Locust. The other night he did Upward Dog in the bathtub. I have never done yoga in front of him; I have not taught him these poses.

Yes, he’s not talking as much as other kids his age. Our doctor told us not to worry and to keep an eye on it, so we are. Not worrying lets me keep an eye on the cool stuff, like baby yoga. I ignore the parenting books and instead try to nurture the small voice of my own parenting instinct. I’m much happier that way. I’m pretty sure that Drake is, too.

My toddler Drake is eighteen months old this week, and has finally worked his way up to listening to every word of both Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton, and Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Garth Williams. Bedtime for Frances is especially fun for me to read. I get to make up tunes for Frances’ made-up songs, and I very much enjoy reading the voices of Frances and her father, one timid and the other grumpy, in this exchange toward the end. I have a hard time not laughing as I read it. Drake also finds it funny, and laughs at the same place every time. He has a wonderful, gurgly, delighted laugh. It is a joy to hear.

Frances stood by Father’s side of the bed very quietly,
right near his head.
She was so quiet that she was the quietest thing in the room.
She was so quiet that Father woke up all of a sudden,
with his eyes wide open.
He said, “Umph!” [Drake laughs here.]
Frances said, “There is something moving the curtains.
May I sleep with you?”
Father said, “Listen, Frances, do you want to know
why the curtains are moving?”
“Why?” said Frances.
“That is the wind’s job,” said Father. “Every night the wind
has to go around and blow all the curtains.”
“How can the wind have a job?” said Frances.
“Everybody has a job,” said Father.
“I have to go to my office every morning at nine o’clock.
That is my job. You have to go to sleep
so you can be wide awake for school tomorrow.
That is your job.”
Frances said, “I know, but…”
Father said, “I have not finished.
If the wind does not blow the curtains, he will be out of a job.
If I do not go to the office, I will be out of a job.
And if you do not go to sleep now,
do you know what will happen to you?”
“I will be out of a job?” said Frances.
“No,” said Father.
“I will get a spanking?” said Frances.
“Right!” said Father.
“Good night!” said Frances, and she went back to her room.

I was away for a week, but it’s still taken me some time to put together my own response to the 01/30/05 New York Times piece on mommy blogging, “Mommy (and Me) by David Hochman.

Many of the responses to Hochman’s piece have been angry and defensive. They see his piece as the latest attack in the mommy wars. I used to consider myself a mommy blogger; I even wrote here and here against those who would write against them. I didn’t find Hochman’s piece to be an attack on mommy blogs, though. There was critique, but I also found empathy, e.g.,

Daniel J. Siegel, a psychiatrist on the faculty of the Center for Culture, Brain and Development at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-author of “Parenting From the Inside Out,” said that what is being expressed in these Web sites “is the deep, evolutionarily acquired desire to rise above invisibility, something parents experience all the time.” He explained, “You want to be seen not just by the baby whose diaper you’re changing, but by the world.”

and

But perhaps all the online venting and hand-wringing is actually helping the bloggers become better parents and better human beings. Perhaps what these diaries provide is “a way of establishing an alternate identity that makes parenting more palatable,” said Meredith W. Michaels, a philosophy professor at Smith College and the co-author of “The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women.” “You’re turning your life into a story that helps answer the question, ‘Why on earth am I doing this?’ ”

Yet many of the responses to the piece, some written by the bloggers quoted in it, were unhappy with it, and disagreed with statements like

Today’s parents - older, more established and socialized to voicing their emotions - may be uniquely equipped to document their children’s’ lives, but what they seem most likely to complain and marvel about is their own. The baby blog in many cases is an online shrine to parental self-absorption.

I found that Hochman’s piece contained both empathy and criticism and I appreciated both. Yet the responses relayed mostly a perception of criticism:

Andrea Buchanan of Mother Shock grumbles here that her book but not her blog was named, and disagrees that parental blogging is anything “remarkable.”

Alice Bradley of Finslippy calls it “faintly damning” here.

Melissa Summers of Suburban Bliss says here that it’s “vaguely insulting.”

Ayelet Waldman of Bad-Mother gripes here that she was only quoted on the second page. Read down to a comment by “metacara” that is critical of Waldman’s comments in the article.

Heather Armstrong of Dooce notes here that

I had a hard time containing my glee � not because I and some of my fellow women writers were made out to be selfish, resentful, overreacting pigs in search of validation; funny that none of us were informed that the article would run with that notion when we were interviewed � but that my child�s green eyes were staring at me from the pages of a national paper.

T.O. Mama of MUBAR writes here what most other mommy bloggers say is the best and most balanced response to Hochman’s piece. She says “the article was not troubling itself but it raised some tricky issues.” Yet what’s interesting is the string of comments that follows her post, most of which criticise the NYT piece, and don’t acknowledge it as complicated.

Jen Weiner (pronounced WHY-ner, not WEEner, FYI) of Snarkspot clarifies, with her tongue firmly in cheek, here that her blog “isn’t just an ‘online shrine to parental self-absorbtion.’ It’s an online shrine to authorial self-absorbtion, too!”

I think Weiner’s comment is interesting, because she acknowledges on her blog, as she did in her quote in the NYT piece, that the parent blogs are self-involved. Her breezy tone, though, refuses to let this stick as a judgment. She goes a step further to say that her blog (a journal/diary type of blog) was self-involved before her daughter arrived, and has remained self-involved beyond her daughter since she became a mother. Weiner’s quote implies, correctly, I think, that many blogs are self-involved. And it’s that point that T.O. Mama took issue with from the NYT piece. Not that mommy blogs were being questioned, but that they were being questioned while other blogs weren’t; why are moms singled out for special attention and criticism?

Perhaps the most prevalent gripe about mommy blogs is that many are poorly written. True, but there are a lot of poorly written blogs out there, mommy or not. And while some are poorly written, others are both well written and funny.

So what’s the harm, then, if they’re well written and funny? They can be entertaining, and, as noted in Hochman’s article, they can also help struggling parents out of isolation.

One harm is noted by Hochman, who wonders about what the child in the future will think, “But the question is, at whose expense? How will the bloggee feel, say, 16 years from now, when her prom date Googles her entire existence?”

Hochman further quotes blogger Ayelet Waldman, “Fundamentally children resent being placed at the heart of their parents’ expression, and yet I still do it.”

Additionally, much of the content of mommy blogs is venting. Venting, in short spurts, can be a good thing. It releases pressure so that a system can function in equilibrium. But venting as a matter of everyday practice isn’t healthy, for either the ventor or the ventee. It devolves into bitching. Griping. A lowest common denominator of discourse.

The author of the weblog Mental Multivitamin noted the harm of such venting in an email she wrote in the wake of the NYT piece that she quotes here:

…if, in fact, weblogs are a historical record of the everyday (as the NYT suggests), [then] angst-soaked entries about the flu or potty training or whatever will be prevailing message of our time — not, for example, the pursuit of a rich interior life via reading, thinking, learning; that child- and spouse-bashing, however cleverly written, will represent the common experience of the ordinary mother, not celebration, wonder, merriment….

For more on parenting and mommy blogs by Mental Multivitamin, see her response to the Hochman article here. Interestingly, she also focused on the criticism rather than the empathy in his piece; unlike the other writers I’ve noted, she applauded his critique.

I have a further concern, though. Even if books and blogs contain both “angst-soaked entries” as well as “celebration, wonder and merriment”, then I believe that the former is what leaves a more lasting impression; I don’t believe a reader gets a balance of both. When writers detail the drudgery and the joy, the drudgery gets more print. It’s more concrete, it’s more physical, while the moments of joy and wonder are more fleeting and often emotional. The response to Hochman’s piece mirrored the difficult, if not impossible task, of creating a balanced portrayal that includes both difficulty and joy. His piece contained both, yet the negative got the most attention.

I wrote on one of my previous sites, Mama Duck, here, about how telling the truth about the difficulties had been a trend in recent motherhood books that I found myself unwittingly repeating in my mommy blog. I vowed to try harder. That was last June. Even with that awareness, I still feel like I failed to overcome the focus on the mundane that Mental Multivitamin decries.

In the 1950’s, we had a June Cleaver portrayal of motherhood as noble and tidy. Then there was the antithesis of telling it like it is, starting in the mid 1990’s, perhaps most notably with Ann Lamott’s memoir Operating Instructions. Now that antithesis is reaching a fever pitch with the mommy blogs. Again, we have a backlash, the unfair criticism that T.O. Mama questions. The backlash means that the antithesis of the truth-telling is no-better than the fog filters of yesteryear. I take this as a challenge to move toward a synthesis: something that celebrates the joys, tells the truth about the pain, but doesn’t dwell so much on the latter than the former is effaced.

Like many others, I was blogging before I became a mom. I blogged about pregnancy, birth and motherhood because I was so gobsmacked by the experiences. I felt unprepared and very alone. What the New York Times piece and what the multitude of responses to it have done, though, is to make it very clear that while I felt alone, I never was. There is an ever-growing number of books and blogs that proves that many women (and men) are surprised and frustrated by the challenges of parenthood. The point I have reached, then, is that there is no need to add my voice to the crowd. I no longer care to participate in the “motherhood is hard” discussion. This is not just true of writing, it’s also true of reading. What I write is inextricably tied to what I read. Reading and writing about the tough stuff just encourages me to focus on the difficulties, instead of keeping my eyes open for the moments of joy and surprise.

I became a parent because I wanted to learn. What I want to write about is that learning process, both in being a parent and in general. I will still write from personal experience, which includes motherhood. But I’m going to write in a way that emphasizes the learning and the joys. I’m not going to pretend that the tough stuff doesn’t exist. But I think I’m going to share that privately, rather than with all and sundry online.

It has been fascinating to see Drake develop as a reader over the less than 18 months he’s been alive. Over the past six months he has become more involved in reading all the time. If we hold out two books, he will imperiously push one away. Once we have finished reading a book, he will shut it, flip it over and return it to my hands, indicating that he wants to hear it all over again. When he’s done with however many times he wants to hear that book, he’ll slide off my lap, toddle to his shelf of the bookcase and return with another selection. His favorites shift and change. There are certain books that we haven’t read in months, and others that we suddenly see returning to the rotation. He has an extensive collection of board books, but over the last few months I’ve been supplementing those with paper picture books as well. When he first listens to a new book, especially a longer picture book, he doesn’t make it all the way through. He’ll bring the book over again and again throughout a day, and day after day. Over time (not even necessarily each time; it’s more gradual than that) he will listen to more words on each page, and listen to more pages out of the entire book. Yesterday he sat through more of Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton than he ever yet had. Tonight he listened to nearly all of Bedtime for Francis by Russell Hoban, after which he insisted on two times through Come Along Daisy by Jane Simmons, followed by Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. We finished with Mike Mulligan, after which I spirited him into his bed before he could ask for another. It is clear that his mind is growing and stretching with each reading. It’s also clear that he wants this exercise; he brings the books to us again and again. While we have been guilty of occasionally “misplacing” certain books that we’d read past our point of tolerance, my husband and I almost always follow Drake’s lead, reading the books he wants as many times as he wants to hear them. Yes, occasionally it can be tedious. But really, truly, watching a person come into being as a reader? It is stunning.

That isn’t entirely true. Just last week I bought him two toys: a bouncy plastic ball for $2.49 and a baby doll. I couldn’t stomach buying the blond, blue-eyed girl doll, so instead I bought the non-white, potentially gender-neutral doll. (The doll came with a purple headband, which I threw in the trash.) The doll came with a toy bottle and a rattle. We handed the baby doll to Drake and he lunged for the bottle, then put it immediately to the baby’s mouth. We didn’t show him, I swear. Is it innate, or just painfully obvious?

But, back to the originally intended topic of this post. I try not to buy toys for Drake. Obviously, sometimes I do not succeed. He has friends and relatives that have been very kind to him, and he really seems fine with the toys that he has. Occasionally, I feel as if I should be buying him developmental toys, or fun toys, or arts and music toys. I fret that perhaps he isn’t learning because we don’t have what he needs.

And then, he starts to play with the empty mustard bottle. And won’t let it go. And wants to sleep with it. Later, he takes the mini-loaf pans out of the cupboard and stacks and unstacks them.

He will find what he needs, when he needs it. And it does not have to cost money and be colorful and have batteries.

But a mustard bottle?

Oh, for the love of Mike.

I saw a blurb in the February issue of Lucky magazine about a product I just had to try: California Baby’s Overtired and Cranky Spritz. According to Lucky, it’s a perfect pick-me-up for both babies and grown ups during that dead zone in the afternoon between 3 and 5 p.m. I guiltily plunked down $12 because even the possibility of relief during the dead zone was too much to resist.

Verdict? Well, it doesn’t make me crankier. I think the phsyical shock of getting something cold and wet spritzed on the back of the neck might be what derails fatigue and crankiness as much as the fragrance itself. It may not be so much a calming thing as a distracting counter-irritant. Is it worth $12? Probably not.

My Chrismas gift from my thoughtful husband was an overnight at a nearby hotel. I left during Drake’s nap on Friday and returned 24 hours later. The short trip couldn’t completely reverse the upheaving effects of a tough week that was short on sleep, but it certainly helped, and was a lovely little interlude before jumping back into the fray.

I had a plan before I left, and it was to focus on things that are tough/impossible to do with Drake around. I took a lot of reading material, then picked out a movie to see and a closeby restaurant for dinner.

I saw In Good Company, a quiet little flick that was balm for my ruffled soul. It wasn’t high art, but it was charming, and smart in a subtle way. The ending didn’t feel surprising, but looking back on the movie, I thought it was easy to chart more predictable paths for it that would have left me at the end saying, “That’s stupid,” or “That’s obvious.” The movie adroitly sidestepped several trite possibilities and instead ended on a note that felt sweet and satisfying. I felt somewhat restored after the movie, as I did when I heard the uplifting notes of Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” on its soundtrack.

At dinner, then breakfast the next morning, I was deliberate in my choices of what to eat and my pace in eating. I also did not read or do anything else but eat. It was truly a luxury to eat what I wanted and at my own speed, which is slow.

I revelled similarly in the luxury of having several hours in which to read. I brought a novel, a collection of short stories and essays, several comic books and a couple graphic novels. I felt like I had the literary equivalent of tapas. Continuing this multiplicitous reading has left me a bit at odds, as I wrote about yesterday, but for a short period of time it was quite heady.

I had hoped for a stupendous greeting from Drake upon my return, but it was not to be. He woke from his nap, as he often does, in good spirits but raring to get back on the ground and get moving. I’m not sure he even noticed that I’d been gone.

One thing marred the overnight. Even in a very quiet hotel, I had trouble sleeping. The last time I went away, I also was not able to sleep, so this time I’d taken the precaution of taking a sleeping pill. Alas, even on drugs, no dice. I think that the last 17 months of oft-interrupted sleep have permanently damaged my ability to sleep deeply. Even with restless sleep, though, I still returned home in better, calmer spirits.

And I don’t just mean outside where we’re experiencing a relative heat wave; it’s almost 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Drake was up and down constantly last night between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., finally sleeping in to the ripe old hour of 6:30 a.m. The last week has been one of escalating white-knucklehood, as he gets more fussy, more screamy, and more difficult to care for each day. I don’t know who I should thank that the onset of his increasing fussiness coincided exactly with me getting a set of stitches in my lower back, but someone, somewhere seems to have a nasty sense of humor.

I stupidly thought that having a baby would be hard at first, but would get easier over time as the baby slept longer and as we got the hang of being parents. There has been no linear progression, but rather ups and downs, forwards and backs. It feels like every time we slog through a rough patch–teeth, illness, travel, what have you–it’s followed by about four days of good times. These four days are heaven. Drake is in a good mood, he sleeps well, he eats well, he is fun to be around. Four days are just long enough to begin to shed the memory of whatever the last rough patch was, and to have a small germ of hope sprout that, hey, maybe this parenthood thing is pretty good after all.

Then, WHAM, we’re right back into shrill screams, arching tantrums, and sleep hell for everybody. It’s happened several times lately that G. Grod will be holding Drake and I’ll move near for a hug and Drake will push me away, annoyed. It’s not enough that he’s not cuddly, but he actively rebuffs me.

I’m not sure, but isn’t “dribs of hope alternated with weeks of difficulty” a well-recognized torture pattern?

Stuff for babies is a fast-growing and profitable market. Note how Babiesrus is one of the few big-box retailers to have survived the Wal-Mart and Target growth-fest, while its parent company Toysrus bit the dust. There’s a lot of stuff out there, and it all costs a lot of money. Some of it is good, some of it is mostly harmless, and some of it can make a poor, sleep-deprived parent feel even stupider. Buying needless baby junk is a nasty bit of business. Not only are you wasting time to shop, but also scarce money and finally, once you get the thing, even scarcer space.

We’re recently retired an item, and I’m feeling pretty strongly that we probably could have gotten along without it just fine. It’s his high chair. We’ve had to retire it because the straps have gotten too tight and because he can detach the tray himself and send it and all the food on it flying. As I was readying it for retirement, though, I became very aware of how hard it was to clean, and how many features it had (multiple heights, recline) that we’d never bothered to use.

Instead, we’ve moved our toddler Drake to a booster seat, which attaches to any regular chair. It is small, portable and easy to clean. Best of all, Drake cannot detach the tray himself.

The high chair was big, unwieldy, hard to clean and able to be defeated by toddler tricksiness. It cost about $60 and we only got about ten months of use out of it.

The booster seat is small, adaptable, can be taken to restaurants, and is still immune to Drake’s machinations. It cost about $25.

If I had it to do over again, I’d skip the high chair completely. They’ve over-supplied it with features and upped its price past the point of utility. The booster seat is the way to go.

This morning when my husband G. Grod and I went in to get our toddler son Drake out of his crib, we were met by an unpleasant smell. Drake was sitting calmly in his crib, and had been awake for some time, babbling happily to himself while G. Grod and I had finished our coffees. Perhaps this morning wasn’t the best one to delay going to get him, though, because our attention was soon drawn to the wet stain on the sheet, and his lovies (loveys?) Duckie and Mouton. We’d been calmly finishing our coffee while Drake sat wallowing in his own filth.

I keep waiting for the authorities to show up at the door, shake their heads, grab Drake and hustle him into a waiting dark car, and say, “You know, they really should make people like you get tested in order to be parents.”

A flurry of excitement ensued. G. Grod hustled the bedding and lovies (loveys?) to the laundry room in the hope that we could get the latter washed and dried by naptime, while I got a bath running for a very confused Drake. In addition to routine-breaking morning bath, we let him have a post-bath naked time, for which he rewarded us by peeing several times. Sigh.

Drake’s screams have increased in frequency over the past week, and there is a new, shriller edge to them than before. His appetite, especially at night, is off. His naps are shorter and he wakes unhappy. He has been waking frequently at night and has been difficult to calm. In addition to this morning’s, he’s had several very messy, poopy diapers in the last few days. While it’s tough to get a good look in his mouth, I think his gums look to be bulging; his incisors may be on the way in.

I find teething, like so much of the rest of parenthood, to be maddeningly vague. It is not something that follows a linear, obvious progression. He hasn’t been drooling or biting things lately. He did those about a month or two ago, well after his last set of teeth came in. His recent messy diapers could be teething related, but they could be a virus. Often, he’s continued to act fussy and irritable even after the teeth have punched through the gums. And, since he continues not to talk, (oh, all right, he can occasionally say touchdown or moo, but those aren’t really helpful in a discussion of whether it hurts and where) we continue to have to follow the multiple-guess method of childcare.

This afternoon he barely ate anything for lunch (he even refused PUDDING!) and was twitchy and screamy. So before his nap and based on my best guess that he’s in pain, I gave him some ibuprofen. (I feel like I’m on the medical show House: “I don’t know what he’s got, but his symptoms point to this, so I’m going to give him meds as if he definitely has what I think he has.”) And voila, he went right to sleep after I calmed his screaming fit, and has been sleeping now for perhaps an hour and a half.

I feel very foolish because it was just last week that G. Grod and I were stupid enough to say aloud, Wow, he’s really been sleeping and napping well, hasn’t he?

Cue the ironic, hollow and bitter laughter.

I find all the girl muppets on Sesame Street annoying. There’s Rosita, the aqua, Hispanic monster whose voice has a grating whine. Then there’s Zoe, the female counterpart to Elmo. Elmo annoys because he refers to himself only in third person, but in general he’s a pretty nice, friendly monster. Zoe, on the other hand, can exhibit quite a mean streak, especially when she’s defending her pet rock, Rocco. She also sometimes exhibits behavior that is so flaky that she seems almost stoned. There’s one other recurring female muppet, Prairie Dawn, who is bossy and impatient.

I don’t have the same problem with the female humans on the show: Susan, Maria, Gina, and Gabrielle. These are all fine characters who are kind and interesting. I find the boy monsters–Grover, Cookie Monster, Telly, Elmo, even grouchy Oscar–cute and engaging. All these monsters were there when I was a child, though.

Sesame Street is a show that I like and respect. I hope that it will inspire the same feelings one day in my son Drake. Is it me? Do I dislike the girl monsters because they’re new and different? I didn’t grow up knowing the characters of Gabrielle or Gina, though, and I still like them. Do I dislike the girl monsters for the same reason that teachers favor boy students over girls? Or have the creators of Sesame Street, in their efforts to round out their cast of monsters, created girl monsters who are less likeable than the boys?

Last week, our toddler Drake woke up from his nap fussy; things just escalated from there. Soon he was in a full-on raging tantrum, and nothing we tried would calm him. We sang, we rocked, we walked, we offered him toys, we took him out into the fresh cold air, I even broke down and offered him both the regular phones and my cell phone, but nothing stemmed the screaming. After twenty minutes, I remembered that this had happened to me once before, only I’d been alone and the tantrum had gone on for forty minutes. I’d put Drake in the car, figuring that he’d be safe in the car seat, and the driving calmed him quickly. Again, putting him in the car calmed him. His screams subsided to quiet hiccuping sobs and sniffles and finally disappeared altogether. Then the rest of the night he was fun, happy and charming. It was a freaky, upsetting little interlude.

My husband G. Grod and I have pretty much given up on making or receiving phone calls while we’re in our toddler Drake’s presence or earshot. Drake doesn’t appreciate that our attention goes elsewhere, but what really pisses him off is that we’re using the phone, which is obviously HIS toy that we cruel parents never let him use. Screaming, tantrums and general misery ensues, for all involved.

On one hand, this makes sense. If I had a friend over, I wouldn’t take/make a call without excusing myself. Drake understands many things, but it’s not like we can say, “Oh, please excuse me for a minute.” When we’re there, we’re supposed to be on call for him and him alone.

Oh the other hand, this is one of the many tiny but exhausting things about parenthood that can be so wearing. Before having a child, I steeled myself for lifestyle changes like not going to movies or out to dinner. Those changes haven’t been a big deal. It’s things like not being able to use the phone or the toilet that get to me, things that I naively used to think were inalienable rights.

I was in Barnes and Noble yesterday and noticed that the Boynton books were buy two, get one free. They had a similar promotion last year, during which I exercised restraint, then later regretted it. Yesterday, I did no such thing. I bought six books so we have a complete collection: Doggies; Fuzzy, Fuzzy, Fuzzy; Blue Hat, Green Hat; Hey, Wake Up; Barnyard Dance; and Birthday Monsters.

So far, my toddler Drake’s favorites are Fuzzy, Fuzzy, Fuzzy and Hey, Wake Up. For reasons neither my husband G. Grod nor I can comprehend, he very much enjoys the lines about broccoli stew in the latter book, and laughs with hilarity each time.

If your Boynton collection is not complete, get thee to a bookstore and take advantage of this deal. Unlike some other children’s books, they weather repeated readings without inspiring bitterness, fatigue or nausea.