Sometimes It's Nice to Have a Blog to Rant to

On the whole, my parents are lovely people, who worship the ground the Metropolitoddler walks on and treat me fairly well to boot. But every once in a while I would happily toss them out a window. Of a very tall building, preferably.

Today's defenestration candidate: my mother.

Today I had the first real shouting match with my mother that I've had in quite a long time. The background: yesterday she asked if she and my father could come over today, as they hadn't seen my daughter in a couple of weeks and wouldn't otherwise see her for a couple more. I said sure. So they came up and hung out -- took her to the candy store (fine), played here in the apartment (fine), took her out to dinner (at the diner, after I vetoed McDonald's), and then brought her home to me, where we all hung out until bedtime.

In the 90 minutes we were together, my mother managed to (1) give me grief because I didn't love a couple of the outfits she'd brought for my daughter, (2) tell me that I had no fashion sense because the outfit I'd bought for my daughter wasn't all made of the same coordinated fabric and thus couldn't really be an "outfit," (3) while we were reading our quiet bedtime books, try to talk to me -- really loudly -- about some entirely unrelated topic, (4) literally take my daughter out of my arms when I was changing her clothes and diaper because she could do it better (never you mind that I've been putting my daughter into her pajamas all by myself for her entire two years of life), and (5) loudly insist on goodnight kisses even though my daughter was demanding "no kisses! no kisses!"

So then I finally get my kid into bed, and adjourn to the living room to try to have a pleasant adult chat with my parents before they hit the road for home. The conversation turns to the country house we've rented for the end of the summer. (Mr. Metropolitan and I will go for long weekends, and the Metropolitoddler will spend two weeks in the country with her grandparents.) The house has a pool and lots of land, and the theory has always been to let my daughter have some quality outdoorsy time.

So my mother starts talking about how she doesn't want to spend much time in the pool, and how they'll take the Metropolitoddler to restaurants and shops and walk around in the town. I comment that I'd really like them to try to spend as much time outdoors as they can, because the point of this endeavor is some outdoorsiness. My mother then says "well, but if the weather isn't nice, we can take her to the movies." I say yes, if it's raining, then by all means go to the movies. My mother then says "but what if it's hot out?" "Then go in the pool." (The problem here is that my mother is only comfortable in a narrow band of temperatures, between about 68 and 72 degrees.) So I'm getting these visions of my parents and my daughter sitting in the house while the pool and the trees and the grass lurk about outside the walls. We can sit in air-conditioned splendor in New York-- I don't need to have rented three acres for that.

I then get a whole lecture about how I'm too bossy, and I give too many instructions about how to handle my daughter, and how they raised me their way and I turned out just fine. (I neglected to point out that the way they raised me is precisely why I do certain things differently than they did.) At this point I announce that their visit is over, and that I'm pleased to have enabled them to see their granddaughter, and walk out of the room. Visit over.

Obviously, this is not a Mommy Dearest scenario. My mother isn't evil, or rotten, or even a particularly bad mother. She's a lovely grandmother (most of the time), and my daughter adores her (most of the time). But it just drives me apeshit when she insists that she knows better than I do on -- well, anything, but especially on matters relating to my kid. Because you know what? She's my kid. And thus I get to make the decisions.

This ought to be the one area in my entire thirty-something years for which my word is the final authority and if she disagrees, tough noogies. But she doesn't see it that way, naturally. And if I try to explain that this is my kid and these are my choices, I get the lecture about how we all turned out just fine back in the 70s and thus her choices are equally valid and entitled to equal weight. At which point I'm shouting in my head, "MY KID! MINE! MY DECISIONS ARE THE FINAL WORD! YOUR VIEWS ARE NOT RELEVANT!"

(It's probably worth noting here that I didn't announce my pregnancy to anyone until I was 18 weeks along, so that I could put off having to deal with my mother for as long as possible. We've gotten along much better since my daughter was born, but clearly I have some issues.)

It is of only small comfort that I'm confident that her own mother drove her crazy in precisely the same way back thirty-something years ago. It is of greater comfort, however, that I know that I, for the first time in my life, hold an all-powerful trump card: I don't have to let her see my daughter if I don't want to.

At least not until we all convene in the great woodsy outdoors so that my mother can take my daughter to the movies.

Kid Be Nimble Kid Be Quick

So the Metropolitoddler is now two, and as such, it is her God-given right to climb anything and everything in sight -- or so she claims.

The trick seems to be striking the right balance between letting her zoom about freely and making sure that she doesn't fall and get hurt in some serious manner. She's pretty nimble, all things considered, but there are obviously some feats that are beyond her abilities -- even if she doesn't know it yet! So I try to stay close enough to catch her in the event of an emergency, yet far enough away so that she's absolutely positively doing it herself.

I'm assuming that my child isn't the only one who is busy testing her newfound strength and agility. I probably err a bit on the side of freedom, and I regularly chuckle at my father, who keeps his hands precisely two inches off the surface of his granddaughter at all times. (It looks like she has a force field or something.)

As for weekdays -- I have actually made a point of not asking my daughter's nanny how she handles the playground. I figure that she loves my kid plenty, and so she's got her best interests at heart, so why stress her (and me) out by grilling her about how far away she stands from the jungle gym or how she handles the slide? What I don't know won't hurt me -- unless, of course, I get a phone call telling me to come quick.

Graco Stroller Product Recall

If any of you are using an older Graco Metrolite or Graco Duo Tandem stroller, there's a new product recall out today. See Graco's site for details.

Brought To You By The Good Folks at Medela

So as I've mentioned before, I bought a new breast pump. I figure if you can't read a breast pump review here, where can you read one?

I've been using a borrowed Pump in Style Original for a while now, and although the one I have is nearing the end of its useful life, it served me well. Medela has redesigned the Pump in Style Original (so much for the meaning of Original) and I have a brand-spankin'-new one of that redesign. Medela has made some changes for the better, but some for the worse.

Let's start with the better. First, the plastic tubes connecting the horns with the pump fit considerably more securely over the ports, meaning you're less likely to pull one out by accident. (Of course, pulling one out at all is a bit of a chore, but I'd rather have that than having them pull out easily when, say, your 6 month old grabs it...) And my favorite modification, the little cover for the port that you use when you want to single pump is now attached to the machine, unlike the little white one from my previous incarnation, which I've been deathly afraid of losing. The case now has much more room, and the cooler part is now a separate piece, so if you don't use that, you can have much more room in the top to store bottles or work-related items or whatever. And the cooler has a handy ice-pack that nestles bottles into it nicely. The pull-down shelf and removable pump are nice touches that I don't have much need for, but I'm sure someone does.

The negatives, however, are somewhat annoying. First, and most importantly, the pump now has a cover that is removeable. I can't imagine why I would need to remove it, but even if I might have reason to, the downside is major. The cover must be on very tightly or the thing won't pump at all, and it didn't arrive fully on when I got it. The instruction manual contains nothing about how to put it on properly - I had to call the company thinking something was wrong with my pump (see previous post). Just in normal carting around the thing loosens pretty regularly, but you can't tell until you try to pump and it doesn't have the normal suction. So there you are hanging out with your breast exposed fiddling with your pump...not fun. Please, Medela, fix this in the next incarnation!

Other minor issues: The on-off switch and the speed are now one integrated dial, meaning you can't set the speed, and then just turn on and off the pump. You have t get up to the highest speed by going through the lower ones. Not a big deal, but slightly uncomfortable when you're rapidly turning the dial through the speeds. More importantly, I no longer have the ability to turn it off with my elbow or foot while holding the horns on my breasts. Sounds silly, I know, but it's much easier for me to prevent spilling if I can do that, particularly when pumping into bags rather than bottles. The pump is now tucked back into the bag so you cannot seep the speed dial unless you're at eye level with it, making it a little less convenient to know what your pump is doing. And finally, the power cord pulls out of the pump really easily.

In all, I'd trade all the nice little changes to get that pump cover to not be removeable. But it's still a good pump for the working mom.

One final tirade. In an old issue of Child magazine I was reading, there's a note about how freezing breast milk eliminates some of the health benefits of breast milk. Can someone tell me what good this study does? None of us *want* to freeze breast milk - we do it because even the most attached mothers occasionally have to be away from their children, and working moms do it all the time. First they tell us that breast milk is best, and then they make us feel guilty for the serious effort we have to put forth to keep nursing after we return to work??? This little news item has some doc quoted as saying "Mothers often have to store breast milk and that's fine. We don't want women to feel guilty about it." Then why tell us this? What good does it do? Do they think we're all going to be able to say "ooh - then I guess I'll stay with my child every minute for at least a year so the kid never gets any formula and never gets any breast milk from anything but my own fabulous boobs??? The article says they're going to do studies to see how infant well-being is impacted by having less anti-oxidants in the milk. So they can make us feel even worse!!! Can someone please tell me why anyone feels the need to do this kind of research? What good is being done for anyone here?