Doctor, Doctor

Just came back from the doctor. One more two week follow-up, and then I'm on an every week basis, so we just went ahead and made the rest of my appointments. Very disturbing to make an appointment for AFTER my due date. I know, I know, I'm likely to be late, but still. You get that date in your head as the finish line and yet, there's still more doctor's visits! I did refuse to schedule one for the week after that - if the kid is still in there by then, I'm pulling it out with my trusty salad tongs.

Apparently, I misunderstood the kick count instructions - my Type-A self was doing three times a day, and she only wants twice, and she doesn't care about start and end times, only that he's kicking 8-10 times in the hours I count. A little easier to manage. So far, so good for both me and the baby - doc says everything looks good.

Now, if only we could find time to paint and get carpet for this kid's room!

Gifted Mermaid Magnet Schools

Apropos of Diva's preschool commentary this morning, I just found this Dave Barry column. The last paragraph is, as we here in Urban Mommyland like to say, something of a diet-coke-out-the-nose moment.

Five Things

Thanksgiving is a great holiday. No religious obligations, no foregoing of normally enjoyable foods, things, or pastimes, nothing. Just good food, time spent with family and/or friends, and reflecting on the things that make life wonderful.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that everyone who hangs out here in Urban Mommyland is thankful for their offspring (or offspring-to-be) and spouses. Here are five specific things that I am particularly thankful for this Thanksgiving.

• I'm thankful for my daughter's uncontrollable laugh when we play "drop the cap from the milk carton" and for her enthusiastic hugs and kisses.

• I'm thankful that I have the opportunity to watch her grow and develop and take on characteristics that so clearly derive from my husband's and my own personalities.

• I'm thankful for these undoubtedly fleeting days when I am the central person in her life.

• I'm thankful for a husband who considers me the central pillar of his life (a view that I suspect will be less fleeting than my daughter's!).

• I'm thankful for friends with whom I can laugh and talk and share stories about this interesting world in which we all find ourselves living (and I'm thankful for email, without which I would be able to spend much less time with said friends!).

What about you?

More Bizarre Baby Dreams

The baby dreams are getting stranger.

I don't recall all of it, but last night's dream involved me running around an airport trying to get someone to go to the parking garage and get my baby out of the trunk of my car, so that I could make my flight. Apparently my big concern was that I wouldn't get him in time to have him checked in as baggage.

You think I might be having some anxiety as to my preparedness to be a parent?

More Random Thoughts

- What did we do before baby carrots? Somehow they taste so much better than the carrot sticks that ended up in my lunch throughout my childhood. Did you know that they're just pared down carrots? Really - they are. So why do they taste better?

- The very same people who produce a large percentage of America's baby carrots also make the best thing I have discovered during my pregnancy. I don't get nearly enough fruits and veggies, and had a lot more trouble during my first trimester when they made me kinda sick (yes, more so than other things). Bolthouse Farms makes these smoothie drinks in a quart bottle (much more economical than the single serving sizes) and I'm completely addicted to the Strawberry Banana flavor. You must get these. Nothing but fruit, but so, so yummy, especially this time of year when any strawberries you find in the store cost $5 each and taste like cardboard. Makes getting my 5-a-day so much less painful.

- Mr. Banana finally showed signs of weakness the other night - he's actually concerned about getting his pre-baby to-do-list stuff done in time. True, his is very different than mine - mine involves making a drugstore run to stock up on diapers and Desitin just before the kid shows up and stenciling cute patterns on the kid's walls and the like. His involves painting two rooms, orchestrating carpet replacement for two rooms, redoing some electrical stuff in the bathroom, replacing molding and moving a lot of furniture. So I guess he's pretty reasonable. But I'll admit it actually made me feel a little better not to be the only one worried!

- My mom is coming this weekend. It's a very good thing. Odds are about 50-50 that she'll cry when she sees me in my large-belly state.

- It's getting more and more uncomfortable to sit at my desk. I like to sit up close and can't really do that any more.

- Two people have said something today about me waddling, yet two other people this week have seemed surprised when I've told them I'm pregnant (and one guessed I was about 4 months along when I told her). Do I look pregnant or don't I?

- Must resist buying everything on my own baby registry.

- On The West Wing episode this week, Leo makes several comments about being on Vicodin. The man is a recovering alcohol and pills addict - is there any way they'd let him have Vicodin?

- Are kick counts just another way to make pregnant women paranoid that something is wrong with their babies?

Attention All Internet Shoppers

So it looks like one of the keys to being an Urban Mommy is the all-critical reliance on internet shopping.

I myself have a whole spate of sites that happily take my money and send me constant streams of boxes with books, toys, clothing, and other essentials for the Metropolitoddler. And the daily emails from UrbanBaby and Daily Candy Kids provide constant inspiration as to other places to drop the Metropolitans' hard-earned cash. (Sign up for their email list if you aren't already on it!)

Clothing: Obviously, there's the old standby: BabyGap. (BabyGap online always seems to have a better selection than any of the individual stores, but that may just be because I live in Manhattan, home of teeny-tiny storefronts.) I also like Babystyle and Janie and Jack, particularly for really special outfits, with a soupcon of Old Navy thrown in. For baby sports attire, try Best Sports Apparel, which has all manner of sweet little baby sports jerseys, hats, socks, and dinnerware.

Toys: My new discovery is Baby Scholars, which has all sorts of great toys -- particularly of the more creative and less-battery-operated variety -- that I haven't seen on Babies R Us. Leapfrog and Fisher Price are good websites to get the lay of the land as to product offerings before zipping over to Babies R Us to make the purchase.

Miscellaneous: Personal Creations is a nice place to get those little personalized doodads that grandparents seem to love getting for birthdays and festive winter holidays from their new little angels. Poshtots is good for when you need a $19,000 Victorian playhouse for the backyard or a $15,000 lighthouse bedroom set. They actually do have some really cute reasonably priced artwork for kids' rooms. Little Folks is great for an array of baby accoutrements (but obviously compare prices with Babies R Us and the like if it's a fairly standard item). For a cute baby gift, Lilypad Baby does monogrammed blanket/bib/burp cloth sets in a variety of adorable and fun fabrics, and Kate's Paperie has gorgeous fabric-covered baby books and photo albums.

And it goes without saying that without my patronage, both Amazon and Barnes & Noble would go under tomorrow. I'm not as frequent a patron of Target and Walmart, but each has its place in my Toddler shopping milieu.

Where do you go to shop for your beloved offspring?

Somebody Come and Play

Fascinating article in the Chicago Tribune today about how pre-schools and kindergartens are increasingly about getting kids ready for first grade instead of focusing on that all important concept: play. Given our various pre-school conversations here, I thought it was worth posting. You can read it here. (alas, it requires registration, but it's free).

It got me thinking about fantasy play time with kids. The article talks a lot about Play-Doh, pretend kitchens and dolls - all of which were around when I was a kid, and (in some form) which were around for my grandmother's childhood (taking the concept of the pretend kitchen broadly into playing pretend with mom's kitchen stuff and extrapolating modeling clay for Play-doh). Is there anything new under the sun? Is fantasy play the same as it always was - playing house, playing doctor, making things out of clay, singing along with the Grease soundtrack and fighting over who gets to be Sandy and Rizzo and who gets stuck playing the boy parts?

Is there a toy for fantasy play (not educational play - obviously LeapFrog is miles ahead of Speak and Spell) that your kid has that wasn't around when we were kids that's better that what we had? Or even really different?

Options Options Options

For the past few months, Mr. Metropolitan's job has required him to travel a great deal -- usually three or four days per week. Most of it has been cross-country travel, which means that if he's got business on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, he has to leave on Monday afternoon and arrives home at 7 am Friday morning, sleeps for a few hours and heads into work on Friday afternoon. Weekends aren't much better: usually he's able to hang out with me and the Toddler for half of a weekend day and spends the rest of the weekend's daylight hours in the office.

This is the kind of schedule that usually involves having a stay-at-home wife. The Husband is off working his manic schedule and the Wife is home cooking and cleaning and running the errands and caring for the Offspring. (And, of course, this is why so many men in the professional workplace don't really understand the challenges of working motherhood: their wives are home doing the stay-at-home mommy thing, so they don't see what's so difficult about working and having kids simultaneously.) But the full-time-work and full-time-mommy thing is challenging enough without also having a husband who's full-time-on-the-road.

In terms of actual blocks of time that Mr. Metropolitan is supposed to be covering, it doesn't look like much. His slot is supposed to be the 60-90 minutes in the morning after I leave for work and before the nanny arrives. But that means that either I arrive at work 60-90 minutes late, or else I split the difference with the nanny and get to work a mere 45-60 minutes late. Plus let's not forget that I already leave work earlier than everyone else in order to get home by the end of the nanny's shift. So basically, for the last month or two, I've been physically at my desk from about 9 am until 5:30 pm. Which, in the world of high-powered Manhattan professional life, frankly doesn't look so great. And, as we've seen, they don't even react so well when presented with a 7:30 am to 5:30 pm schedule.

Other than losing the ability to get to work on time, I also don't have any backup. "Hey, honey, something cropped up at work, can you go home to cover for me for an hour?" Or "hey, honey, I'd love to go meet a friend for a cup of coffee after work." Or even "hey, honey, I'm losing my mind a little today, can we order in a pizza and watch a movie together?" The answer to all three of these questions is no.

But what are the choices? Not so many, and they're not so enticing. Option One: get more help. I could hire someone to cover the early morning or evening slot on a daily basis. This is far from ideal, as it means that the Toddler ends up spending a grand total of maybe one hour a day with anyone who's related to her. I know people who manage their households like this. A woman I work with, whose husband has an equally high-powered job, has a weekday nanny, a weekend nanny, and a backup nanny who covers for Nannies #1 and #2 and doubles up on certain days. (Unsurprisingly, she's very highly regarded at work.) Why even bother having kids? As it is, I'm starting to hire weeknight babysitters about once a week so that I can attend a few of the many weeknight events that seem to pop up in November and December. That much I'm okay with, but not more.

So screw Option One. Let's look at Option Two: become a household with one working parent and one stay-home parent. Either I or Mr. Metropolitan could quit and stay home full-time. Two problems with Option Two. First, I'm not sure that our household finances could sustain the total loss of one person's income. I think we could manage it, but it would require a pretty substantial lifestyle change and would put a lot of pressure on the working Metropolitan -- whichever Metropolitan that might be -- to be Sole Bringer-Home of Bacon. And in any event, given that we're both decidedly underwhelmed by our jobs at the moment, this isn't a meaningful choice right now. Second, neither of us really wants to be a permanent stay-home parent. It might be fun for a few months, but I know I would need something else to occupy some of my time. (Remember that Visa commercial where the husband realizes that his stay-home wife has been reduced to speaking in babytalk 24/7 and has lost all sense of the adult world? He uses his Visa card to buy threatre tickets so they can have a romantic and intellectual evening sans kids and babytalk. They're watching the show, and the wife turns to the husband and says in a deep throaty voice: "Marvelous use of iambic pentameter . . . wameter." This summarizes the issue nicely.)

So this leaves us with Option Three. One or both of us could try to find some job that requires less of a time commitment, be it full-time or part-time. I'm not sure which jobs these are, exactly, but I assume they exist. Part-time isn't really an option for either of us in our current jobs. So I'd have to find a brand-new job on a part-time basis or else find some sort of lifestyle job that would cut my compensation by at least two-thirds but would be sufficiently personally fulfilling to make it worthwhile. I'm not averse to either of these possibilities, but (a) have no idea what they might be and (b) would have to strongly consider leaving New York to make that kind of pay cut work. Again -- no aversion, but no clue.

I guess there's also Option Four: persuade my parents or in-laws to move into the apartment next door. Believe me, if it comes to this, I have bigger problems than I thought I had.

I guess this is what it means when they say that women have more options these days then they ever had before!

Be careful what you wish for....

I spent the first 6 months of my pregnancy wanting to "feel pregnant." I'm now less than 60 days from my due date and boy do I feel pregnant. Today is a new milestone, however. My boy is kicking so much that I literally cannot concentrate on my work. Feels like the little guy is doing kick boxing in there!

Pregnancy is cool.

Passages

When Mr. Banana and I got married, there was one part about the whole experience that was bittersweet. My father passed away 9 years ago, and although he never would have been a huge part of planning my wedding or anything, the notion that I would be spending my life with a man who never met my dad was very odd to me. My parents are a huge part of who I am, as with most people, and the experience of losing my dad in my mid-twenties was extraordinarily formative for me. And the man who shares my life knows only what I (and others) have told him about my dad.

This is compounded, somehow, by the fact that I quite obviously married my father. Mr. Banana and Papa Banana have an extraordinary amount in common - they even look somewhat alike. Their personalities both tend toward the strong, silent type, they are both among the extraordinarily small group of men known as "Jewish guys who know which is the business end of a power tool," they are both meat-and-potatoes eaters, etc. etc.

And now I'm having a baby. A baby who will bear something similar to my dad's name, and who I will be wishing, under Jewish tradition, will be like my dad. This somehow seems terribly wrong. I should be naming my children for people who were very old when they died, who had opportunities to have their own grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, who lived long, long full lives. Not for my dad. No one should have to do that.

Of course, my father had to do it. I'm named for his dad, and my dad was the same age when he lost his dad that I was when I lost him. Vicious cycle.

There's a small (very small, thankfully) part of me that can't fully enjoy this coming baby because my dad won't be here to meet his first grandchild, and because my first born won't get to know the man he's named for except through stories and pictures. I certainly don't feel that I "knew" my grandfather at all. And some days it just makes me really, really sad.

The Rat Race Beginneth: Preschool Admissions

The Metropolitan family recently had its first preschool interview and lived to tell the tale.

By way of brief background for those of you who are not familiar with the Manhattan preschool process: remember applying to college? Imagine doing it when you're between one and two years old. That's the process. (I exaggerate only very slightly.) Here's some background reading: a New York Magazine story and a Washington Post story on the fun of preschool applications.

For us, the "where to apply" quandary wasn't much of a quandary at all. There are two factors: age and location. The Toddler's birthdate is such that she is only eligible for certain schools offering a "young twos" program. And we want the school to be within walking distance of our apartment, both for convenience of drop-offs and pick-ups and for ease of playdate scheduling. So between the young twos issue and the location-within-20-blocks-of-our-apartment issue, the schools pretty much selected themselves.

Now, of course, we need a school to select the Toddler!

Diva (who is also going through this process) and I have discussed this at some length, and have concluded the following. Let's say that 10% of all toddlers are wildly unmanageable or otherwise unadmittable. And let's also say that 10% of all parents are deeply unlikeable or otherwise unsuitable for the social circle that is that school's Parents Association. Even if you assume that those two groups are mutually exclusive (that is, that the unadmittable toddlers don't belong to the unlikeable parents), that still leaves you with 80% of the applicant population that is perfectly acceptable.

So how exactly are these preschools distinguishing between my perfectly acceptable Toddler and any of the other 80% of perfectly acceptable Toddlers? Beats me. At the end of the day, I have to take it on faith that some school will find all three members of the Metropolitan family to be exactly what they're looking for, and that we will find that school to be similarly perfect for us.

As for the interview itself, the Toddler presented herself as well as we could have hoped for. She was poised, friendly, independent-minded, cheerful, curious, and inquisitive. Oh, and really darned cute, too. I have no ability to gauge how well Mr. Metropolitan and I did, except to say that I think we were at least reasonably likeable. But if the Toddler gets dinged, she can always blame Mommy and Daddy.

One Track Mind

I've turned into those people I hate. Everything is about the kid. Always. I don't want it to be this way. I'm an intelligent woman with things to say on topics of importance, but the only thing anyone ever asks me is "How are you feeling?" And for seven months, I've been good - I've answered "fine" and tried to change the subject to anything of interest to the other person, especially if that person doesn't have kids.

But this weekend, it somehow became all about the kid. I couldn't manage to hold a conversation without it turning to my pregnancy. I thought about it constantly, and talked about it constantly. I'm playing the pregnancy card with Mr. Banana regularly and getting out of housework or climbing to get things in the kitchen - even to get out of chopping an onion, which I find completely intolerable in my 3rd trimester. And I went to an event this weekend where things were happening that I was completely interested in and spent the entire time I was there talking with a friend who is due shortly after I am about which crib furniture we ordered.

I don't know how this happened, and I don't know how to make it stop.

On a lighter note, the bathroom floor is progressing nicely (and my precious toilet should be back in place by the end of the week), The Incredibles was fantastic, all the eBay baby clothes have been washed and put away without losing a single sock or mitten, and I'm still having a remarkably easy pregnancy. Plus, I get to have another ultrasound next week! Yay!

There's a Land That I See....

Listening to LaunchCast today, the wonderful Carole King Really Rosie CD came on. Always been a favorite album of mine, long after I wore out my LP as a kid (had the Sendak books, too!). Got me thinking about kids music. I've already collected up all my kid-oriented CDs to put in the bambino's room, but I know there are other good ones out there that I should know about.

I have: Free to Be You and Me, Really Rosie, all the Animaniacs CDs, two Trout Fishing in America CDs, the soundtrack to Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Sesame Street 25th Anniversary CD, the entire Schoolhouse Rock oeuvre, and probably a few other things.

I know I need: They Might Be Giants kids CD, and a bunch of stuff by Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer.

What else do your kids like? What do they like as toddlers and what did they like as babies? I'm not looking for standard kids sappy crap that isn't decent music - I'm looking for stuff that they'll you like listening to as adults as well. Good, fun stuff, or stuff to put them to bed with that isn't going to drive me crazy.

Because if you don't give me some ideas, Mr. Banana is going to sneak in the kid's room and play him a steady diet of 70s classic rock.

Doormat or Despot?

Feeling a little aggravated and thought I'd share with the class.

Earlier this week, Leta the Nanny asked me if she could take off a couple hours early on a particular day next week to go to an evening class she was interested in attending. Leta is all about self-betterment, and as best I can tell, has an array of various workshops and classes that she goes to during her free time. I checked my calendar, and it's actually not a terribly convenient day -- I have an evening doctor's appointment that day, and Mr. Metropolitan may have to travel that day as well. But I said I'd check with Mr. Metropolitan and let her know.

The next morning Leta called to tell me she had the flu and wouldn't be coming in. Other than the emergency childcare crisis this precipitated, I had no problem with her absence. I am all in favor of nannies staying home when they're sick. The last thing I want is for Leta to pollute the Toddler with whatever's ailing her. All that being said, it was an inconvenience for me as well as the Grandmother.

So I called Leta tonight to see if she was feeling better and to check that she'd be on time tomorrow morning. She said she was much better and would be in on time. And then she asked me again whether she could take off two hours early for her workshop next week. I deferred the question until tomorrow, saying that I hadn't had a chance to discuss it with Mr. Metropolitan yet, but I have to admit that I was a little pissed off that not only did I have to scramble to find someone to mind the Toddler this week, but now, unless it turns out that Mr. M won't be leaving for his trip until the following morning, I have to either reschedule my doctor's appointment (and leave work early to boot) so that Leta can make it to her class, or else tell Leta that she can't go and end up looking like an evil dictatorial meanie of a mommy.

Doesn't logic dictate that if you miss a few days of work one week, you perhaps decide not to press the issue of whether you can take off early for a non-emergency event the next week? Isn't something here not quite right?

Deep Thoughts, or at least Random Ones

- The Incredibles is getting great reviews. I already have my tickets for tomorrow night. I'm very excited to have a kid so that my passion for kids music, kids movies and kids books will no longer seem odd to my friends and family.

- My crib linens, along with the requisite cute matching accessories, have arrived. I have bought Dreft (Mr. Banana: "Isn't that just Perfume Free Tide with a higher price tag?" Lola Banana: "Shut up, I'm nesting.") and washed said linens. I have also washed the various baby items I have purchased on eBay. I'm feeling more ready. Mr. Banana thinks I'm crazy. He's likely correct.

- My baby's heartbeat is my favorite sound in the world. I cry every time I hear it, as I did at my appointment on Tuesday. The relief it gives me that all is well makes me irrationally happy.

- Am contemplating the issue of banking cord blood. Several of my friends have done it, but all have had some reason (getting it for free, history of nasty diseases in the family) that override the main issues here - high cost with low potential usefulness. All thoughts on the subject welcome.

- Mr. Banana is currently working on our latest condo-improvement project - ripping out our bathroom floor (which was hideous and in disrepair due to a hundred years of bad maintenance and boneheaded decisions by previous owners) and replacing it with nice new tile AND a radiant floor heating system! I'm very excited. My entire home is filled with concrete dust, but I'm thrilled that my husband knows how to do this, that he enjoys it, and that I'll be getting such a lovely bathroom out of the deal. There's only one drawback - this bathroom is the one right next to our bedroom, and it's off limits for a few weeks. This 31 weeks pregnant woman now has to go all the way to the other end of the house in the middle of the night, often several times, to pee. So far, it's totally worth it. But I'm very, very glad that once Mr. Banana starts a project, he works furiously until he completes it.

- Baby socks are cute, but how the heck to do you keep from losing them in the laundry?

Ubermommy

It seems to me that even in the most egalitarian of two-working-parent households, it still falls to one parent to be the Manager of the Household. It's just more efficient, insofar as there's one person who is the repository of all procedural knowledge. And at least in my household, that Manager is Mommy.

Efficient though this system may be from a management perspective, it can be both exhausting and deeply time consuming for She Who Manages. See, for example, Diva's recitation of the events of her morning a couple of days ago. I go through that sort of thing at least once or twice a week, where an entire half day is entirely consumed by a variety of phone and Internet-based errands.

This week's particularly complicated and time-consuming crisis involved the arranging of substitute child care due to a sick nanny. Even after the child care was arranged, the complications -- only somewhat abated -- continued. Why? No one knows the System the way I know the System. So even though the Grandmother, who is both very capable and very enamoured of the Toddler, is substituting in for Leta this week, I still ended up being late for work today so that I could help the Grandmother out with the assorted shenanigans that are part of the Toddler's morning routine these days. The grandmother wanted to take the Toddler out for breakfast, but of course had no idea where the bibs, sippy cups, baby forks, and other restaurant distractions were located. And she decided to put the Toddler into the stroller while looking around for these various restaurant necessities. Seems logical, except that any full-time Metropolitan Household Manager knows that the Toddler hates sitting in the stroller by herself when it's not moving, so I had to rescue a very upset Toddler as well as finding all of the assorted paraphernalia for the Grandmother. And so on. It takes a long, long time to get out of the house in the morning when I have to get not only myself ready for the day, but also the Toddler and the Grandmother. (And let's not even get into the lectures I had to contend with in the midst of all this about how I should revise the System so that it more resembles the Grandmother's idea of what the System should look like.)

Mr. Metropolitan happens to be traveling on business this week, so that complicates matters a bit further, but even Mr. Metropolitan doesn't completely understand the System. He is very helpful and useful when presented with a particular task, but at the end of the day, he's not the Manager.

Looking back over this post, it seems to me that an obvious response would be: "Why not give up on the whole notion of a System and just let the chips falls where they may?" There are a couple of answers. First: is it not clear that the Urban Mommies are all Type A control freaks? Second: as I led off by saying, all households have a manager. And at least in my experience, that manager tends to be the wife, regardless of how busy she is in her non-household career. But when you add a third person -- a person in diapers -- to the husband-and-wife relationship, the number of household tasks increases exponentially, and the only way to get anything accomplished is to have a System.

I guess I could outsource the whole thing and hire a true household manager, but (a) it's not clear to me that I could afford such a luxurious concept, and (b) come on, where's the fun in that?

A Banana By Any Other Name

"So, I read your blog today," says Mr. Banana after our pre-natal class last night.

"And?" I said, nervously.

"Cute," he says, "but this Mr. Banana thing? I don't know. Sounds a little obscene, doesn't it?"

Well, dear readers, does it? And if so (and if obscene is a bad thing) how should I refer to my darling husband?

Humpty Dumpty? I Don't Think So.

Went to a Halloween party this weekend. Since I have about 5 clothing items that fit me at all, I figured I was exempt from wearing a costume. I mean, really. Can there be such a thing as a maternity Halloween costume?

Apparently yes.