Urban Mommies

With nothing but birthdays and parties on my brain...

2006-09-05T18:02:00.000-04:00

I have just been internet shopping for a birthday present for my nephew (turning 8 next weekend) and for Divaboy’s classmates (the birthday parties will come fast and furious, so I wanted to find something I could buy in “bulk” for everyone and just pull one out of the closet for each event). I found at least these three really fun web sites for great toys. I know Felicity is the internet shopper extraordinaire; but since I am not, I was tickled to death to find this stuff. Interesting, different, educational and just plain cool. So I just thought I’d share.

www.copernicustoys.com
www.fatbraintoys.com
www.babyscholars.com

Where do all of you get cool, interesting, toys for your loved ones?

Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump Your Milk

2006-09-01T13:49:00.000-04:00

Pumping breast milk at work isn't perfect under the best of circumstances. But of course, not everyone enjoys the best of circumstances, as discussed in this New York Times article. Law professor Ann Althouse has some interesting thoughts on the subject as well.

As for me, when I return to work following the birth over the summer of Metro Baby #2, my pumping options will be more limited than they were at my prior employer. At Prior Employer, I enjoyed the availability of a dedicated nursing suite with a telephone, fridge, and fairly comfy chairs. New Employer definitely wants to be nursing friendly, but isn't terribly equipped for it. My office manager has promised to install a set of shades to cover the glass door of a conference room so that I'll have a bit of privacy, but it's not optimal. Even so, it's infinitely better than perching atop a toilet in a public restroom.

2006-08-31T10:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had a formidable to-do list, including bringing mounds of old kid clothes that no longer fit (and old grown up clothes that I can no longer stand) to charity. So Divaboy and I packed up as many bags as we could carry and set off to give our old clothes “to other people who need them and can use them.” I really think he understood the notion that we were doing something for others (yes, yes, I do it for the tax deduction too, but so what).

I love spending time with Divaboy teaching him about things he shows an interest in…which may include reading, writing, or adding and subtracting numbers. But, obviously, that stuff he will learn eventually in school if not from me. If anything is a parent’s responsibility, it is teaching one’s kid to be a good person and a productive member of his community. He should and probably will to some extent learn that in school as well, but yesterday’s activity was extremely gratifying, and I guess I really believe that in the lessons of how to live one’s life, nothing can substitute for the parents’ teaching, time and example. (Aahhh!!!! Pressure!!!!)

And incidentally, these activities are a great way to spend family time together that mercifully neither cost money, nor involve any iteration of "let's pretend." Next weekend, we plan to participate in a volunteer family event to meet and clean up a section of the park (raking, planting, painting) and we can hardly wait to go.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

2006-08-26T19:22:00.000-04:00

So how exactly are we all supposed to explain to our children that Pluto is no longer a planet? "Sorry, sweetie, Pluto was too small to be a real planet." That should go over big. Clearly the community of astronomers neglected to consider the impact of its decision on the toddler and preschool population.

Screw it

2006-08-24T09:57:00.000-04:00

I have decided to bag the outsourcing (see below) and do the Diva-boy's birthday party myself, in the Park, on a Friday afternoon. Some kid games, pizza and cake. Old-fashioned, convenient, less expensive, warm, personal and, more to the point, likely more fun. And, yeah, likely more work.

So...ideas??? tips??? tricks??? Really looking for help and input!

Happy Birthday Diva-boy and Christopher Columbus!

2006-08-22T16:36:00.000-04:00

My son will be 4 at the end of September. In a perfect world, I’d have his friends over to our house, play duck, duck goose, pin the tail on the donkey, eat cake and ice cream and call it a day. Maybe get a clown, but probably not. Unfortunately, his class has 14 kids in it and I can’t fit them all in my apartment. I certainly can’t fit them all if each has a parent or nanny in tow. So I thought I’d do a sports party – get the “coaches” from his sports class to have them play for an hour, then do pizza and cake. Simple, right? Not so much.

I started trying to get the date settled as early as the last week in July. And I felt ridiculous doing it. I wanted to secure a weekday afternoon after school. Ha! Apparently, Sept-Nov was all booked as of last May. May! Who is thinking about October parties in May? Answer: everyone except me. There was one time slot available. One. The Saturday of Columbus Day weekend. After much suffering, I finally decided to do it then and hope for the best (most of my son’s classmates have weekend houses – and on a three day weekend, I’m a little nervous).

And then, in between the stomach cramps and the tension headaches, I finally realized that somewhere along the way, without making any affirmative decisions or noticing that I have in any way changed course, I have become the person I used to laugh and shake my head at. I can rationalize most of what’s going on here. I don’t have any more realistic options for a mellower party because I just don’t have the space. I’m afraid of an outdoor party in the park (summer maybe, but who knows what the weather would be like in the first week of October). I’m overly anxious about the date because I don’t want my son to have his feelings hurt if his classmates don’t come if their families are away. But at the end of the day, the facts are the facts. Here I am, spending a lot of money for a 4 year old’s birthday party, planning it 2 months in advance (and castigating myself because in reality, it wasn’t early enough), and worrying that the date selected isn’t good enough and the party won’t be a success.

So I’m left wondering, what do I do, now that I am fully aware of the absurdity of the situation? I don’t have a mellower party option, short of bagging a birthday party altogether. Should I? Should I forget his friends and just do a family party? If I go ahead with the current plan, am I jumping off the deep end?

Gender Equality My Ass

2006-08-07T12:40:00.000-04:00

I'm a daughter of the 1980s. I believe that girls can be good at math and science, that I can bring home the turkey bacon and fry it up in a pan, and that men can be fantastic stay at home dads. I want my son to grow up knowing that girls are smart and fun to be around and that it's not a threat to his manhood to marry a woman who makes more money than he does. I want him to know that his Daddy is not only not less of a man, but more of one, because he cleans the house better than Mommy ever could or would, and that Mommy worships the ground Daddy walks on for his spectacular, homemade, from scratch, Sweet and Sour Chicken.

So why is the American toy industry conspiring against me?

My kid doesn't yet know that the world thinks that there are boy toys and girl toys, or boy colors and girl colors. But the world knows that if something is pink, it's for a girl. And if it's frilly, it's for a girl. I don't really mind that too much - I don't have a burning need to put him in a frilly pink shirt.

But I DO have a burning need to buy him a doll stroller.

He plays with doll strollers all day at school. When the little girls bring them to synagogue on Saturday all he wants to do is play with them. He puts his teddy bear in them and pushes them around the room. When a doll stroller is unavailable, he'll push around his umbrella stroller, no matter how unwieldy it is. I really, really, want to get him one.

Every last one I can find is pink. Really pink. Majorly, monumentally pink. We have had this problem once before, when we wanted to get him a play kitchen. They were all pink. And frilly and stereotypically girly. (Thank goodness for Step 2.)

Here's a word to the toy industry. My kid is 18 months old. He doesn't know that kitchens and strollers are for girls. I know I should be enlightened enough to get my kid pink toys and not care, but I'd like to get him something that says it's ok to be a snips-and-snails-and-puppy-dog-tails kind of boy and still like to cook and play with dolls. (Have we learned nothing from Free to Be... You and Me?)

Can You Still Be An Urban Mommy If You Drive A...

2006-03-29T00:42:00.000-05:00

Minivan!!!

It was time. Four years ago, when I leased a teeny tiny little car, I had a teeny tiny little lifestyle that matched it. Now that I'm hauling around 2 kids and enough gear for an entire little league team, it was time to move to something bigger.

For those of you who are already mocking me (and you know who you are), let me just say that today's minivan is not the weirdly shaped car of our youths. This thing looks and feels like a regular car on the inside, just with tons o' room and lots of cool things like a dvd player, six cd changer, rear seats that disappear, and fifteen, count 'em FIFTEEN, cupholders. So now if any of Spaceboyfriends or even Spacebubbe want to come along for a ride, they will not have to wedge themselves between 2 honkin' big carseats in the back. And all for less than the price of my old tiny, impractical and prone-to-breaking car. What could be better than that?

So what's making YOU feel middle aged these days?

Pregnancy Parking

2006-03-24T18:22:00.000-05:00

Nightline recently did a short piece on a proposed New Jersey ordinance allowing pregnant women to park in handicapped spots. While I certainly agree that there are issues with labelling pregnant women handicapped, I also agree that waddling all the way across a huge suburban mall parking lot in my 9th month left me too tired to even remember what I'd come to the store for by the time I got inside.

What to do? The story showed a grocery store that had parking for pregnant women or parents with infants or toddlers in tow. I think grocery stores could gain a loyal following of parents that way. And the Babies 'R' Us that's semi-near me has "Stork Parking" for expectant or new mothers, which I was thrilled to take advantage of and kind of miss. So long as daddies with infants in tow get the same treatment, I think these stores have the right idea. But do I think it should be mandated? There I'm not so sure.

Your thoughts?

To TV or Not to TV

2006-03-21T08:36:00.000-05:00

So Sesame Street has entered the Baby Einstein age, releasing a series of Sesame Beginnings DVDs aimed at the 6-24 month demographic. Children's health and psychology experts are apoplectic.

In a world where there are zillions of videos aimed at the baby crowd, I really don't have a problem with the Sesame Street gang entering the fray. I will confess, though, to being a bit conflicted on the whole No TV Before Age 2 debate. On the one hand, I find it appalling when people park their children in front of the TV for hours at a time. But I will be lying if I said that I didn't turn on a Baby Einstein video or Sesame Street to permit me to take a shower when Metro Girl (I can't really call her the Metropolitoddler at this point, can I?) was a baby, and she now watches Dora or Blue's Clues or a Disney movie pretty much every morning upon awakening so that Mommy and Daddy can (a) shower or (b) squeak in a bit more sleep. And then there's the odd half hour of Noggin she watches as an activity at some point or another during the day, plus whatever TV is employed by nannies and mommies out of my control when she's out on a playdate . . . . granted, she's above two and therefore outside the scope of the edict, but it wasn't like she never watched any TV before she was two.

So I guess I'm obviously not a big supporter of withholding all TV -- but all things in moderation. All that being said, I still don't have a problem with Sesame Street getting into the act.

Formula Fed and Ivy League Bred

2006-03-09T12:15:00.000-05:00

Here's an enjoyable and sensible piece on breastfeeding from the Boston Globe. Apparently it spawned a fair amount of debate -- sadly, however, the Globe's archives are pay-only, so I can neither read nor link to the resulting firestorm.

Already Past Our Prime

2006-02-23T16:35:00.000-05:00

It seems that we're already passe. The hip, new thing is podcasting, of course, and parents are podcasting everything from conversations on parenting techniques to live recordings of births. Makes what we do here seem positively tame. There's a full article about it here.

Now it seems that "Mommycast" has a $100K sponsorship from Dixie - making it the first non-technology-oriented podcast with major sponsorship. Hm. Double Hm.

The Conversation I Dreaded More Than The Birds And The Bees

2006-01-09T21:00:00.000-05:00

I'd been dreading this conversation for two and a half years. The vW preschooler was having trouble falling asleep this evening, and I was trying to persuade her to close her eyes and drift off to dreamland. This conversation ensued:

Me: "You have to go to sleep, sweetie, or you'll be too tired to go to school tomorrow."
vWPS: "Will [Nanny] take me to school?"
Me: "Yes, like she always does."
vWPS: "Why does she do that?"
Me: "What do you mean?"
vWPS: "The other kids' mommies take them to school. Why don't you take me?"
Me: "Because I have to go to work, honey. And most of the other kids' nannies take them, too."
vWPS: "But Livvy's mommy takes her."

Livvy is one of about three kids in my daughter's class whose mothers do take them to school. (Interestingly, I recently learned that Livvy's mom works full time, but she carves out the two hours twice a week to take her daughter to school. That, however, is neither here nor there.)

I feel horrible. I knew that eventually my daughter would figure out that some mommies don't work, and that her mommy is making a choice that keeps her from spending as much time with her as some other kids' mothers do. I did not think that day would arrive quite so soon.

Has anyone already been through this? Any constructive advice for me?

This Year's Resolution

2006-01-01T20:18:00.000-05:00

We had a lovely, lazy New Year's weekend here in the vW household. Tonight after dinner, the Mr. and I were lolling around on the couch, and the vW preschooler was playing on the floor with some of her holiday loot. I said, "Do you want to come up and sit on the couch with us?" And she replied, "Sorry, Mommy - I'm too busy right now."

Ordinary as that response was, it got me thinking: It won't be long before I lose my status as her favorite person, before she stops thinking of spending time with her parents as the most fun thing she could possibly do. One of the things I always try -- and frequently, frequently fail -- to do as a parent is to be in the moment with my daughter. For us, the best family times often come not on the carefully-planned outings (with the attendant heightened expectations and missed naps), but rather when we're just sitting around hanging out together. But too often when I'm sitting on the floor playing with the preschooler and her dolls, I start thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner, or what came in the day's mail, or that phone call I have to return, or (worst) what messages are making my blackberry blink at me from across the room.

I know that promising to stop and smell the roses is as much of a resolution cliche as vowing to lose five pounds or to make it to the gym four times a week. But I really would like to develop more of an ability to focus fully on my daughter when I'm with her - regardless of what other concerns may be tugging at various parts of my mind.

Some Songs are Too Damned Catchy

2005-12-28T16:44:00.000-05:00

Hey Victor (hey Victor)
Hey Freddie (hey Freddie)
Let's eat some (let's eat some)
Spaghetti (spaghetti)
Hey Victor (hey Victor)
I'm ready (I'm ready)
To eat some spaghetti with Freddie!

Damn you, Laurie Berkner! I have been listening to Laurie's Under a Shady Tree since Felicity Metropolitan got me a copy when Baby Banana was born. And sure, I've wandered around singing the title track, I'm Gonna Catch You, Song in My Tummy and others. Catchy, but at least I don't find it insipid or mind-numbing, like some other children's singers. Then a few weeks ago we got Buzz Buzz, which they also play a lot at BB's day care, and I wandered around singing Pig on Her Head and The More We Get Together. Still not a problem. The More We Get Together is featured in BB's music class, and singing Pig on Her Head at work gets me odd looks that I kind of like.

But then BB got the other two Laurie albums for Chanukah. Upon our return home I popped in Victor Vito. I want you to know that I have listened to this album precisely twice. Twice. That's it. Apparently, that was more than enough to find me singing the above lyrics perfectly, over and over and over again in my office today. This is despite the fact that I have listened to four different recently-purchased Christine Lavin albums at my desk today in hopes of driving Victor and Freddie out of my head. Four. And still Victor and Freddie haunt me. Catchy does not begin to describe this song, never mind the rest of the album. Yeesh.

I'm afraid to go home tonight and put in Whaddaya Think of That?

Embarrassment of Riches

2005-12-28T11:01:00.000-05:00

Happy holidays to all (both?) of our readers! We here at UM hope that you are enjoying a joyful and relaxing holiday season, and that the New Year brings you health and happiness.

I am very much enjoying Baby Banana's first Chanukah. He loves candles (which is sure to cause me serious problems later) and so Chanukah is a big thrill for him. And latkes have been a major success - fried potatoes and onions, what could be bad?

Of course, not only is it Baby Banana's first Chanukah, it is both sets of grandparents' first Chanukah as grandparents. So there are presents. LOTS of presents. Baby Banana's aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and, of course, grandparents went a little overboard. BB, needless to say, really only cares about the wrapping paper and is a little unhappy that I won't let him ingest it. Thankfully, boxes are endlessly amusing. I have to say, I'm amused by all this. At this age, gifts are just as much for me and Mr. Banana as they are for BB. I am thrilled to death that we have some new board books and toys that skew a bit older for BB, since Mr. Banana and I are going a bit batty playing with the same stuff with BB day after day. It never occurred to me how much WE would want some new toys after a year!

But the absolute best part of this holiday has been realing that when someone asks me what BB likes, or how he likes a particular gift, I have an answer! He's showing actual preference for certain toys (like his new Elmo cellphone) and types of toys (things that make noises, things that can be taken out of and put into containers), as well as certain activities, like banging on things, opening and closing cabinets, and pulling books off of shelves. A year ago, this kid was inside me. Nine months ago, he couldn't sit up or play with a toy. Six months ago, he wasn't mobile. Three months ago, he wasn't interested in specific toys. And now, this little person lives in my house and has likes and dislikes, and eats latkes, and laughs, and babbles, and chases cats and dogs. Amazing.

Happy holidays to all, and I wish you a year of amazing discovery with your children.

Two Red-Letter Days

2005-12-20T13:41:00.000-05:00

I was perusing one of the more-than-a-few blogs I read regularly and happened upon this company called Red Letter Days, over in London. Basically, they organize all sorts of cool experiences -- you can buy them for yourself or as a gift for someone else. Helen over at Everyday Stranger received a gift certificate for her choice of a range of experiences from her employer as a thank-you for her good work on a significant project. Take a look -- the experiences are pretty cool. Everything from a full day at a two-Michelin-star county restaurant to a Wedgwood master class to a day of jousting to a two-night teepee retreat to a day of spy training -- and that's not even the so-called "VIP Experiences," which are just cool.

Reflecting on the niftiness of Helen's reward, I got to thinking. Working as I do in financeland, I receive the lion's share of my compensation in a single bonus check at the end of the year. This tends to be a little nerve-wracking, as the base salary is insufficient on which to support my family -- bonuses are multiples of base salary, not a percentage thereof. I myself had an okay year for an organization that itself had a decent-but-not-mindblowing year, and as such my bonus was all of the above -- okay, decent, and not mindblowing. (I should note, however, that it was an improvement over Prior Employer, and thus should be regarded as a success.)

I bring this up as background to what was a more interesting turn of events: on the day of our office holiday party, the head of the company handed out envelopes to every single employee -- envelopes containing a not huge but certainly noteworthy amount of cash. I was thrilled. I immediately called Mr. Metropolitan, who was equally thrilled with the news.

Thinking about it later in the day, I decided it was kind of weird to be so excited about the cash relative to my level of excitement about my (rather more significant) bonus. I think it's because it was an entirely unexpected windfall. I know what my bonus is being used for -- mortgage, school, nanny, insurance, other living expenses, some savings -- but this little pile of money had no designated purpose other than to make me happy. And so it did.

Helen's Red Letter Day and my envelope tell an important workplace lesson, I think: doing random nice things for one's employees gets one all sorts of brownie points from said employees. I think it speaks well of both our bosses that they understand that. Speaking for myself, a bit of cash got my boss much more in the way of employee goodwill than would an additional 5x that amount in my bonus check. And Helen? Well, Helen's going to ride the Orient Express. I think that warrants a warm fuzzy or two, don't you?

TiVo: The New Generation Gap

2005-12-13T13:43:00.000-05:00

Interesting article in WSJ Online today: The basic gist is that our kids experience TV completely differently than we did because of TiVo (assuming we have it). I'd never thought about it before, but it really will change things in any TV-watching home. Kids growing up in TiVo households will never experience the frantic call of the sibling, "Hurry up, it's on!" when they go to the bathroom. They'll never experience sprinting to get something from the kitchen or clean up part of the room during a commercial. They'll never tell their parents that they'll do something at the next commercial, nor will parents tell them that they have to go to bed at the next commercial. Kids won't have any need to complain that they need to stay up late because all their friends watch St. Elsewhere and they'll be left out in the discussions at school the next day. And it's possible to let kids watch commercial TV without watching commercials.

It's fundamentally different than when we got a VCR, or when we got cable. It's a change in the way kids experience televised media. Is it for the better?

Books, Books and More Books

2005-12-08T11:03:00.000-05:00

Went to Baby Banana's school book fair today, and was pleased to see that I'm up on the latest kid books, even if Baby B isn't quite ready to be read to without chewing on the book yet. They had the usual complement of Mo Willems (who has a new one coming out in April), If You Give a..., Caldecott winners, etc. i dont' look forward to when my son wants books about Captain Underpants, but so be it.

Got me to thinking about what off-the-beaten path books I'm missing. It's easy enough to populate the library with recent award winners and the stuff everyone else is reading, but what am I missing? What are the books from your childhood that are must-reads? What book is your great little discovery that no one knows about? Mine is a book called So Do I. It's one of the few books I actually remember my mom reading to me. It's by Barbara Bel Geddes (yes, Miss Ellie) and it's a delightful, if totally dated, book about friendship. The pictures are colorful and wonderfully weird. I bought a copy from a used book dealer so Grandma Banana can read it to Baby Banana. Well worth your time if you see it in a used book store.

Oh, and for your amusement (I hope), this warning about the dangers of Goodnight Moon from the New York Times.

Behind Every Successful Man . . .

2005-12-06T20:46:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine made partner at his firm last month. He's a great guy, he loves his firm, the promotion was richly deserved, and it's all a happy story. Except that there was one part of it that left me feeling a little queasy: when his mentor came to his office with the good news, he said: "Buy your wife a nice piece of jewelry." Now, my friend's wife doesn't much care about jewelry -- and the mentor has met her many times and knows her quite well. So my friend just looked at the mentor quizzically, waiting for an explanation. One was quickly forthcoming: the mentor said, "It's just a tradition. We've said that to new partners for generations."

I can't quite put my finger on what bugs me about this story. It's not the notion that the wife has made sacrifices so that her husband could succeed; that notion is probably true, regardless of whether the wife has a career outside the home or not. And it's not the notion that it is much easier to succeed if you have a supportive partner at home -- again, true in all marriages. And of course it's not the idea that one should be grateful for such support.

I guess what bothers me is that there seems to be a tacit presumption that the jewelry-receiving spouse doesn't have a career outside the home -- that behind every man at that firm is a wife at home keeping his dinner warm. And also a presumption that the person making partner is a man; what do you suppose they say to the (very few) women who make partner at that firm?

Or am I just being grinchy about a sweet and sentimental tradition?

Cool Non-Kid-Related Gadget

2005-12-01T12:22:00.000-05:00

This really has nothing to do with kids, but I have to plug this gadget! I have an iPod, and I adore it, but my use of it has been limited since I had Baby Banana, because I don't listen when I go out shopping or walking anymore because I've got him with me and, after all, I wouldn't want to prevent our fabulous conversations. (Me: "What do you see?" Him: "AhgaGAgaGAGA! Uh oh!")

I wanted to use my iPod at work (I need background noise), but it's formatted for the Mac and my work computer is a PC. I've been listening to internet radio (WTMX's 80s station is great, but after 2 months, I've had enough 80s for a while). And speaker systems for the iPod have, until recently been fairly expensve things concerned with great sound quality. While that's great, I keep the volume quite low in my office, so I care very little about sound quality - I just want to be able to listen to the darned thing.

So I bought this cute little device. It's called an iTopper, Brookstone makes it (or has at least branded it), and it's perfect for a little bitty personal speaker. It plugs right into the top of the iPod into the earphone port. The sound quality is what you'd expect for something that costs $35, but it's just right for what I need it for. I've been happily using my iPod all morning to listen to music that wouldn't be broadcast on Noggin!

See? I managed to work in the kid several times.

Diva's Second Child Top Ten List

2005-11-25T11:05:00.000-05:00

Things at the Diva household are hectic, but extremely happy. We recently welcomed a new Diva Baby – a girl. This post is late to be put up, but was in fact written when Diva Baby was a mere 17 days old.

I always got a kick out of watching how friends treated the second child so differently than the first and I never doubted that we Divas would as well. But the extent to which it is different is mind boggling…mind boggling, I say! In particular:

Top Ten Things That Never Ever Would Have Happened With My First Child Within The First 17 Days of Life

10. Not washing my own hands every seven seconds until skin peels off;
9. Going out to dinner with husband on day 9 and leaving Baby alone with Baby Nurse, a.k.a. NEAR PERFECT STRANGER;
8. Allowing toddlers to come visit house and actually look at Baby.
7. Allowing nieces and nephews to hold Baby;
6. Taking Baby out for four hours of strolling about town doing errands and shopping;
5. Feeding Baby at the Home Depot;
4. Changing EXPLOSIVE poopy diaper (quite competently) at the Home Depot;
3. Microwaving formula (not holding under warm running water FOREVER while Baby screams);
2. Putting Baby down to sleep in crib and then going to sleep myself in my own room, in my own bed, without a monitor or anything;

And the Number One Thing That Never Ever Would Have Happened With My First Child Within The First 17 Days of Life:

1. Sitting down to write a blog post – or do anything else for that matter.

Obligatory "What Are You Thankful For?" Post

2005-11-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

As a mom, the first thing that comes to mind as you sit around the table, debating what to say when it's your turn to give thanks, is the health of your family and friends. In other happy news, this year I am thankful for, in no particular order: supportive friends who got me through 13 weeks of bedrest; the fact that Spaceboyjunior is being evicted via induction one week from tonight; Spaceboy's going from about 10 words to speaking in sentences that include hilarious kidisms in the space of 2 months; Gilmore Girls on Family Channel every day; Us Magazine, and I'm not even embarrassed to admit it any more; my Blackberry; our awesome nanny; and Spacehusband/best friend, who lasted through 13 weeks of "Honeeeeeeyyyyyy, can you please get me some more waaaaaaaaater" and only cracked a handful of times. And of course, the Urban Mommies. I'm a lucky girl.

What's making you weepy with happiness these days?

Cookies are Yummy!

2005-11-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

In general, I find parenting magazines to be a little, well, wholesome. A quick scan of this month's covers include stories on turkey-themed craft projects, how The Apprentice's Carolyn juggles work and family, how to avoid turning into a stressball when your bundle of joy has the sniffles, how to make sure you've hooked up your car seat properly, fabulous baby shower ideas, seventeen different perspectives on co-sleeping, and so forth. Yawn.

So imagine my surprise upon receiving the inaugural issue of Cookie magazine in the mail yesterday. It's got everything an Urban Mommy could want:

Reviews of various strollers, ranging from reasonably-priced to super-duper high end
Suggestions for chic haircuts for one's child, including what to tell the hair stylist to ensure that you get the look you want
An essay on the national obsession with celebrity pregnancy and childbirth
Three top chefs' suggestions for uncomplicated kid-friendly recipes incorporating spinach
Twelve recommended family beach vacations, including some in places considerably more exotic than Orlando
Unique gift ideas for both children and adults
Pilates-themed exercises for pregnancy
All kinds of amusingly high-fashion kids' clothes mixed in with cute-but-less-outrageous selections -- including store names and (more importantly) lesser-known websites from which to purchase said adorable items

I read Cookie cover to cover in one sitting (something I don't do so often) and found myself dog-earing pages and making mental notes all over the place. Finally, a magazine about motherhood for the slightly less wholesome mommy.

Go forth and subscribe while the subscribing is cheap.

The Gift That Keeps On Confusing

2005-11-22T11:06:00.000-05:00

The holiday season is upon us, and I'm left with an interesting question about gift giving. What is the appropriate gift for my son's day care providers?

A bit of background. My son has been attending since July, and it's five days a week, all day. It's a day care center (as opposed to a home based business) with multiple teachers, some of whom are full-time, some part-time. There are as many as eight teachers, and there are often subs from other rooms. To complicate matters, Baby Banana only moved into his current room two weeks ago - for his first 4 months he was in a different room with different teachers (6 of them). It's a Jewish day care, but most of the teachers are not Jewish.

I know that the rule of thumb with nannies involves giving them an extra week (or more) of salary as a holiday bonus, but I wouldn't know how to begin to translate that into this context (not only do I have no idea how much these folks make, and needless to say I can't give each of them a week's salary!). Is this a cash situation? A gift certificate situation? A gift situation? Some combination? Does everyone get the same amount/thing regardless of whether they are part or full time? Do I get something for subs who I've gotten to know? And perhaps most importantly, how do I deal with old room teachers and new room teachers? Thankfully, this year timing is not an issue as Chanukah starts on Christmas.

Thoughts are appreciated. Keep in mind that I want to be generous, but I don't want to go overboard and be seen as one of "those" parents.

I May Be Urban, But I Ain't Hip

2005-11-21T11:28:00.000-05:00

For those looking to do a little holiday shopping, Babystyle is doing a sale right now - 20% off everything on the site plus free shipping. Code is TWENTYOFF. (I feel totally comfortable posting this since you'll see it the minute you go to their site.) Babystyle's emails are worth signing up for - they're forever having good sales and they carry things you rarely find on sale anywhere else, like Robeez shoes.

Anyway, one of the products on Babystyle's "Top 5 Books" list seemed apropos for this blog. It's a book called "Urban Babies Wear Black" by Michelle Sinclair Colman. The description is this: "For hip mamas and urban babies everywhere! This adorable board book takes a sneak peek at the average day in the life of babies who eschew goo-goo, ga-ga for the Guggenheim instead! Posh babies and little latte drinkers will appreciate the fine dining, gallery-going, yoga-practicing babes in this book, as well as the fresh and fun illustrations throughout." If anyone buys it, let me know how it is... we're not even remotely hip enough to own it.

And confidentially wishing good luck to one of our regular readers who will, with any luck, be welcoming baby 2.0 to the family sometime today!

EDITED TO ADD: OK, the sale isn't quite as good as I thought - the aforementioned Robeez are excluded from the sales, and already-discounted items don't count either, but it's a great deal on their regular priced stuff, and you get free shipping on everything regardless.

So Where Is This "Work" Place, Exactly?

2005-11-15T20:31:00.000-05:00

So it seems that Felicity's daughter has a pretty good handle on what "work" means. Even if she doesn't know exactly what her mom does all day, she knows that it involves sitting at a desk, writing on paper, and telling people not to bother you. Actually, given that I practice law for a living, that's a pretty accurate description of my day.

My own little girl, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have a clue what it is I do at the office - but she does have a handle on the sartorial aspects. This past weekend, I had to go in to the office on Sunday, for the first time since she was born (it was a true emergency). After breakfast, still in jeans and a sweater, I packed my briefcase and told her that mommy was heading to work and that I'd be back in the evening.

"But you're not wearing work clothes."
"It's ok, I don't have to wear work clothes."
"No - you can't go to work in your play clothes. Go put on work clothes."
"It's really ok - today is special and I can wear jeans to work."
"No! No! No wearing play clothes to work!"

What could I do? I changed into a pair of black trousers, then left. Mothers of two-year-olds need to pick their battles.

The next morning, I left for work early and the Mr. stayed with the Preschooler until our nanny arrived. (That's our usual morning routine.) As the Mr. was getting ready to go, the Preschooler asked, "Are you going to see Mommy at work? She is already there."

So evidently work is (a) a single monolithic place - everyone who goes to work goes to the same work, and (b) a place where you don't ever wear play clothes, no matter what.

Reminds me of my first job, from which I was once sent home for wearing trousers.

Just Wondering...Is There An Off Switch?

2005-11-13T18:03:00.000-05:00

When Spaceboy was around 15 months old, I started to worry that he hadn't said his first word yet. Having read many, many parenting books, I was expecting a "mama" or at least a "dada" by then. When we got to 18 months and had only "nana" for his beloved bananas, I decided to have him evaluated for a possible speech delay. Everyone from our two pediatricians (that's including my pediatrician back home, who I consult on a regular basis) on down told me not to worry at all, that he would talk when he was ready, so I figured the specialist would tell me I was a neurotic first time mommy and that Spaceboy was just fine.

Instead, they put us in speech therapy 2 days a week. Everyone assured me that he would talk soon and not to worry, but that we'd better safe than sorry. So I decided to feel good about the fact that we were Doing Something, and I hoped that within a month or two, Spaceboy would get the message that he was supposed to talk (or at least start pointing), and we'd call the whole thing off.

Then another nine months went by. In that time, we added a few of the tiniest of baby words ("o'en" for open, "wawa" for water), but nothing much to put in the baby book. If you showed him a picture of his parents and interrogated him under bright lights, he might admit to knowing that it was mama and dada, but he never once called us by name. He never even said his own name. As one and a half turned into two and change, it became harder and harder to believe that he was ever going to speak.

And then one day this fall, Spaceboy decided to start talking. And talking. And talking and talking and talking. And within about 6 weeks, he had become one of those kids who just never shuts up, from morning to nap and from after nap to bed, and often during nap and in the middle of the night in his sleep. And he hasn't expressed a thought unless he's expressed it 25 times. And it is the greatest thing that has ever happened to Spacehusband and me, other than having Spaceboy in the first place.

The neat thing was that, to my untrained ear, he went through the same process as all the other toddlers I know, progressing from a few single words that only Mom and Dad could understand to lots of single words to very clear single words to suddenly using short sentences, singing songs, filling in words to his favorite books, and repeating everything we say (and nothing gets the whole family going like getting Spaceboy to do a few rounds of, "Oh, man, oh jeez!!"). Only because he was a lot older than most of our toddler friends were when they were learning to talk, it seemed to go a lot faster. So people would come over to visit, and then come back 2 weeks later and be blown away by the difference.

And like magic, once he could talk, everything else changed as well. Spaceboy went from trying to hide during Circle Time in his various yuppie classes to being Mr. Social, can't-wait-to-say-my-name-and-clap-and-sing-and-scream-YAY!!!! He started eating new food, including his first ever meat and his first ever post-Gerber vegetable. And, perhaps most significantly of all, he recently went through an entire haircut only screaming apoplectically and crying, instead of screaming and crying while trying to escape.

So in the end, everyone was right: he really did talk when he was ready, and it's almost hard to remember why I was so freaked out. It'll be so nice to someday be able to share my very own story of "My kid didn't talk until he was over two, and he went on to [astonishingly impressive accomplishment]!"

A Love Letter to Flea

2005-11-10T11:24:00.000-05:00

If you're not reading One Good Thing, you should be. Written by Flea, who is simultaneously the mother of 2 boys and the owner of a (now only mail order) sex toys shop geared toward women, this blog is a nice mix of perspectives from both of her worlds. The content is often very adult (of the "don't click on at work" variety), but the stuff she writes about parenting is both hilarious and heartbreaking. Her older son has sensory integration disorder and while he's doing quite well now, he's been a challenging child. Flea writes such passages as this:

I got an e-mail from a woman whose son got kicked out of preschool last week, asking if there was some club we could join, a club for mothers who cringe every time the phone rings, thinking it will be the school administrators telling us to come remove our hellion from the premises. A club with her, me, and Neal Pollack, sitting around saying things like:

"A biter. Yours?"

"A non-talker."

"Mine flips the light switches on and off until other children fall into seizures."

(Pause.)

"Other people suck."

"Yup."

"More beer?"

"Yup."

She makes me laugh all the time, and often makes me cry. Go enjoy Flea.

How We Gonna Pay . . .

2005-11-09T09:56:00.000-05:00

From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

"Renting Baby Gear
November 8, 2005; Page D1

"The Problem: You want to avoid schlepping a crib, highchair and car seat aboard an airplane.

"The Solution: Most travel destinations now have rental companies for baby gear, and not just in resorts like Orlando, Fla. There are baby-gear places from Lake Tahoe to Rhode Island, and most will deliver to an airport or your hotel room or rental apartment. Car-rental companies often rent a child's car seat, but they don't guarantee availability. And a folding stroller may be convenient to carry around, but parents can rent a jogging or beach stroller on arrival. Some rental agencies offer familiar brands, and for an extra fee many will drop off diapers and formula with the baby gear. To find a baby-gear rental store, travelers can ask their hotel ahead of time, or look online at sites such as www.BabyAway.com. Caveat: If you don't pay for set-up, you may find yourself erecting an unfamiliar crib without the original instructions."

I haven't decided if this is brilliant or ridiculous. Parts of it are fraught with problems. First off, the two big items that are safety crucial are car seats and cribs - the items that seem to be most dealt with here. I'm not sure I'd feel all that safe using a rented crib or car seat for an infant, although I might for an older kid. Also with infants, you're mostly going to be taking a car seat on a plane anyway so you have a place to put the kid during the flight. And if you don't have a car seat with you, there could be serious problems getting to and from various airports.

On the other hand, this would be great for pack and plays, jogging strollers and the like, and there's a lot to be said for not schlepping diapers and formula. The cost of all of this starts to get prohibitive pretty fast if you're expecting to rent baby's entire gear set - $12 a day for cribs, $7-15 a day for strollers, $7 a day for high chairs, etc. - but if you really hate schlepping, it might be worth it, and the prices to rent things like a jogging stroller for a fun day out are pretty reasonable. And they're smart about it - providing things like gates (great for rental houses), buckets of toys, beach items, and the like.

What do you think?

Looking The Pony Right In The Mouth

2005-11-08T13:28:00.000-05:00

I am going straight to hell, without passing Go, after I finish posting this. Now that that's out of the way, I feel free to begin the obnoxious complaining.

Why do my family members insist on buying presents for Spaceboy without ever asking me what he has or what he likes? When I have made him a fairly comprehensive Amazon wishlist that would take all the guesswork out of it? Yes, of course they don't have to buy him anything at all, but since they do, I think it's fair to assume they want to get him something he'll enjoy, so why don't they just ask?

We happen to live very far away from all family members, so it's not like they see him all the time and know that he's suddenly into robots and ghosts. They don't visit often, so they don't know that he already has the collected works of Mo Willems and an awful lot of Winnie The Pooh, plus most Thomas Trains and all the clothes he could ever need. They're really just taking a stab in the dark, and why would anyone want to do that when it's so easy to just ask the Mommy?

My mother-in-law has a total knack for bringing him things he already has whenever she visits. This has not yet posed a problem, because he has not yet learned to say, "Hey, I already have this!" So it's just a matter of scrambling to locate ours and hide it before she notices. Of course, I could do without her asking me, after she's already given it to him, if we have it already, and then acting shocked when I lie and say that we don't, as in, gee, he's so into trains, how could you not have bought him a book about trains? What kind of a mother are you?

Then there's my mother, who buys him a bunch of completely random things that he is not going to have any interest in at all. When he was about 21 months old, she came to visit and went on and on and on about how she'd brought presents, and wouldn't it be fun to open them and wasn't he excited for his presents? Which turned out to be three books about Passover, two of which said "Ages 8 and up" on them, and a pair of socks that (a) had Boston Red Sox logos on them and (b) were way too small. Now, of course, she didn't have to get him anything, but if she was hoping for a big reaction and a lot of excitement out of him, there are probably other things she could have done that would have gotten a better result.

So my mom is coming to help with Spaceboyjunior in a few weeks, and she just informed me that she's bringing all 8 of Spaceboy's Hanukkah presents with her. "Seven of them are books!" she informed me gleefully. Apparently she has decided that she is the Giver Of Books, although the failure to ask any questions about what books we already have leads me to think this is not going to go as well as she hopes. Sad for both her and Spaceboy, isn't it? And the 8th gift is "a toy, and I know you already have a lot of toys, but this is something much more educational." Yes, because the only toys we buy him are mindless button-pushing types of things; heaven knows we don't buy him educational toys. It's not that I mind having stuff to get rid of after she leaves. It's just that if she's going to spend the money, and she wants to get him something he'll like, why is she so opposed to the Amazon wishlist?

Hey, I said I was going to hell. Don't judge me. What's the worst gift your family has gotten your kid?

My Mommy Takes the Morning Train

2005-11-07T14:09:00.000-05:00

The Metropolitoddler has recently discovered the joy of playing "work." I knew this would happen at some point. The visuals are hilarious -- she pulls her little chair over to one side of the room next to a big storage tub containing outgrown clothes and the like, sits back on her chair, props her feet up on the tub, and settles in with a book.

"What are you doing, sweetie?"

"I working. Please don't talk to me right now."

"What are you working on?"

"I doing work. I very busy."

A variation on this is tub as actual desk, with markers busily scribbling important work notations on construction paper. "I writing work things, Mommy."

I'm just waiting until she gets to be old enough to have some concept of what I actually do for a living. Then I'll get to hear her shouting things into the phone like "Sell, dammit, sell! Hit that bid and get back to me!" I can't wait.

What Not To Say

2005-11-06T13:38:00.000-05:00

Hello! I'm rejoining the back-from-obscurity gang.

As someone mentioned earlier, one of us gals -- me -- has been on bedrest for the past few months. I was grounded by my doctor at 23 weeks because of a complication, and now, ten looooong weeks later, I'm at the point where we'd like to keep it going until 37, but if Spaceboyjunior should decide to come earlier, my doctor is pretty ok with that. A nice place to be. I spent a lot of time alternating between complete denial that there was any risk that he could actually try to exit at 24 or 25 weeks and complete terror that we would find ourselves with a little 25 weeker, which is too scary to contemplate. So, in short, we're feeling much better about the whole situation, plus it will be nice to have something to hold over Junior's head when he steps outta line ("I did NOT spend three months in bed to have a son who refuses to clean his room!").

Happily, most of my friends and relations were amazing about calling and/or emailing, coming to visit, helping out with Spaceboy, sending gifts of books and movies to occupy my rapidly atrophying mind, mailing specialty food long distance, organizing dinner parties at my house, and doing lots of other thoughtful gestures that made a huge difference. (Needless to say, the Urban Mommies were the greatest). The next time I have a friend in this situation, I will definitely know what really helps to make it easier.

Another benefit of this whole experience is that I have some insights into what is not helpful in this situation. Therefore, I now present a list of what not to say and do to the bedridden:

1. "Call me any time you need anything--I'd love to help out!" (intending to help version). There is no way your bedridden friend is actually going to call and say, "Gee, we really need milk--can you pick some up for me?" Instead, call her when you're already going to the market and offer to pick something up at that specific time, or, if she still won't cop to a need, just show up and drop off some supermarket take-0ut. She definitely needs it, and it's a major, major hurdle to ask for help.

2. "Call me any time you need anything--I'd love to help out!" (not intending to help version). The sinister cousin of "call me if you need me," this applies to friends and relatives who, even if asked, never, ever help in any way. We have one of those in the family. Of course everyone has busy lives and can't just show up at a moment's notice, but if ten weeks go by with multiple requests for assistance, with plenty of advance notice, and you not only say no with a different excuse every time but also fail to offer any alternative help, then let's face it, you would not love to help out. In that case, don't call and say, "Sounds like you're doing great and things are going really well!" Don't say, "Ooohhhh, I just wish there were something I could do!" And for the love of Mike, don't call and complain that you haven't seen Spaceboy in so long. Either help or don't, but if you're not intending to help at all, then please, please shut up about it.

3. "At least you get to be home--I'd love to have a break from real life like that!" There are definitely upsides to being forced to lie on the couch for months. I personally got to spend 24 hours a day with Spaceboy just as he was learning to talk, and that was a lot of fun. We were also forced to hire a lot of different people to come and help, and as a result, Spaceboy has really overcome his shyness and learned to hang out with anyone, to the point where the DirecTv guy shows up and Spaceboy thinks it's his new friend. I'm happy about these things. On the other hand, it is NOT a break from real life--it is a boring, painful, lonely expanse of days, almost 100 days in my case, that you just have to get through. Referring to it as a vacation, as one well-meaning friend did, does not do much to reduce the agony.

4. "Only 6 weeks left--that'll fly by!" See #3 above. It most definitely does not fly by.

5. "You're going to be fine. If your doctor were really worried, you'd be in the hospital." This is a tough one to criticize. Obviously it is meant to be reassuring and helpful, not annoying like, say, #2. The problem is that I had many hours to fill each day, and, in the early days of this adventure, a lot of anxiety about what could happen if I were to have a micropreemie. Sometimes I just wanted to talk about that fear, and "no way--you're totally fine" doesn't really help. It's like that one where Samantha wants to talk about her breast cancer, and Carrie just keeps saying that she's going to be fine, and finally Samantha is all, "Please just let me talk about what I'm afraid of." I get that now. Also, they don't take you out of work and make you give up your life and hire extra child care and tell you not to get up except to pee and eat if they aren't worried. Clearly there is a risk, and it just doesn't help to pretend that there isn't. Moreover, it kind of makes me feel stupid about being on bedrest at all.

That's it for my tirade. I will be eternally grateful for all the friends who were tremendously helpful and a huge source of comfort in what was a tough time. (Well, still is, but those last three weeks will fly by, right?). If you're ever bedridden, don't hesitate to call me--I'll be right over with some Whole Foods takeout.

Get Some Help!

2005-10-31T20:48:00.000-05:00

Faithful readers may recall that I was in a state of acute misery last March and April, when I was working on about six deals at the same time and doing a spectacular job on none of them (not to mention slacking on my responsibilities at home). At the end of that stretch, I went to the head of my group and said, basically: "Look, I need more help. I can't be the junior person and the senior person on the same deal all the time. It's not efficient, it's not economical, and it just isn't working."

Well, that was probably the most productive ten-minute meeting I've ever had. Since then, I have consistently had really excellent help on all of my matters, and it's made a world of difference. I had a very busy summer, work-wise -- lots of different things going on all the time. But it never boiled over into true chaos, because I was never in the position of having to do first drafts of the documents and manage all the details as well as handling the higher-level stuff.

I think that sometimes, in some cases, women do not delegate as naturally as men do -- at least in the workplace. Sometimes the cause is a fear of asking for more staffing; in other cases, it's a tendency to micro-manage. Either way, it slows down one's progress up the ladder. When you hand off some of the tasks that can more efficiently be done by someone else, it frees you up to handle the tougher (and sometimes more interesting) aspects of your projects. And it's good for the junior person, too, because he or she gets to step up to the plate and handle some of the things you've been hoarding for yourself.

Economics 101

2005-10-29T16:44:00.000-04:00

I read an article not too long ago talking about how many farmers, faced with declining prices for their crops, have turned to farm tourism as a supplement or even a replacement for regular-way farming. Corn mazes, petting zoos, and the like have become big business. Being an Urban Mommy, I can understand this -- we are willing to drive long distances to take the Metropolitoddler for a little agrarian interlude.

So I was a little surprised today when we took our daughter to pick a pumpkin. We drove about 90 minutes outside the city and arrived at a nice kid-friendly pumpkin patch / petting zoo / corn maze / food stand. We asked if we needed to buy tickets for the hayride that would transport us to the pumpkin patch. Nope, the proprietors said, just climb aboard. We hopped onto some nice friendly bales of hay and rode off to a very sweet pumpkin patch, where we selected a pumpkin of appropriate size and took the requisite number of cute photos. Then we rode back to the farm house where the Metropolitoddler played on the playground and oinked at some pigs (and a cow) while Mr. Metropolitan went to pay for the pumpkin. When he returned, he was shaking his head.

"Guess how much the pumpkin cost?"

I thought back to the article I'd read, and looked around at the playground (free), petting zoo (free), and corn maze (free). Clearly the purchase of the pumpkin would be subsidizing all of these other freebies.

"I dunno . . . ten bucks?"

"Nope," said Mr. Metropolitan, "a buck fifty."

This would explain why farmers are having a rough time of it.

Daylight Savings Time?

2005-10-28T10:39:00.000-04:00

Long time no see, everybody! Sorry we haven't posted in a while. In the UrbanMommyVerse, there's one gal on bedrest, another just had Baby #2, and the rest of us, well, we're busy trying to keep those two smiling!

That said, we're going to try to jumpstart our blog again. So I'm first - Daylight Savings Time. I'm starting to think it's all just a big trick to keep parents who have finally gotten their kids on some sort of sleep schedule on their toes. My son, now 9.5 months old, has become a great sleeper. He's 7pm to 7am, almost like clockwork, and rarely wakes up in the middle of the night (although lately we're having some difficulty getting him to fall asleep because he keeps sitting himself up in the crib and then not knowing how to lay down!). He's also moving to a new day care room next week where they have a more structured schedule, so we've been working on making the naps at 9:30 and 1:30, instead of whenever he's been awake for 2-3 hours. Just as we're all starting to feel somewhat scheduled and well-rested, along comes DST.

In the grand scheme of things, not such a big deal. But with starting the new room, I don't want his nap schedule to be totally off for weeks, meaning he'll be sleeping when others are awake and vice versa. And him going to sleep at 6pm would mean I wouldn't get to see him at the end of the day, which will not be fun for me.

We put him down last night at 7:30 and he woke up this morning at 7:20, and we'll try that for a few days. Any other suggestions on how to move this kid to 7-to-7 on the new clock with minimal torture (of us or him)?

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

2005-07-28T21:15:00.000-04:00

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

2005-07-07T16:24:00.000-04:00

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

2005-07-07T13:45:00.000-04:00

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

2005-07-06T17:02:00.000-04:00

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?

What a racket....

2005-06-20T15:15:00.000-04:00

In my next life, I'm going into the breast pump business. It only recently occurred to me what a great deal they have. Create a "single-user product" and make the product un-returnable once opened. There's no way to legitimately try it out in advance - you can't try someone else's pump, as that presents (according to the company) a health risk to your kid and the kid of whoever you borrowed the pump from, and you can't buy it and return it if you don't like it. Nice racket!

I've been using a borrowed Medela Pump-in-Style for a while now, and liked it fine, but started having issues double-pumping - the milk backed up into the tubing whenever I tried it. So I bought a new one. The Pump-in-Style has a new design, and I don't think it works as well - it took me nearly an hour to get it to work at all, due to the new removable faceplate on the pump part which won't create suction if it's not pushed in really, really hard (and it doesn't arrive that way). Now, I'm discovering that even with double pumping, I'm pumping less than I did when I used a single pump and alternated sides during a pumping session. So I now have a brand new pump that works worse than the old, borrowed, not-quite-working-perfectly pump. Sigh.

That's all - a little pump-vent. I'm sorry I haven't posted much lately - I have been back at work for two weeks now and hope to jumpstart this group into blogging again!

Please leave a message at the sound of the tone . . .

2005-05-01T14:29:00.000-04:00

As one might infer from the deadly silence around here, all of us have been insanely busy for the last few months. My own preoccupation has been work: from January through the end of April, I was busier than I've been since those early junior-associate days. I obstinately refused to give up much time with my daughter, so I continued to leave the office at six every night, but I worked every evening after she went to bed and during her naps on the weekends. Many things went by the wayside: exercise, blogging, dates with my husband, and -- the subject of this post -- nearly all contact with friends (apart from the few friends with whom I email regularly, which includes the urban mommies).

Back in college, law school, and my single (and even dating) days, I cultivated and maintained a fairly large group of really good friends who were, and are, tremendously important to me. And now look: since New Year's, I've seen almost nobody, failed to return calls, made no plans. And there are quite a few social things that I ordinarily enjoy doing but haven't gotten to recently: I haven't sent a baby gift, an engagement present, or a birthday card in about six months.

Over the last few days, as I have begun to dig out from under my desk, I've started to return phone calls that I received as long ago as January and February. People have been surprisingly understanding -- more so than I might be if the tables were turned. Because, really, it's not like I didn't have five minutes to return a call sometime between February and now; it's more that when I did have those free minutes, the idea of using them to catch up with someone was just dauntingly exhausting. The good news is, most of my friends are now mothers themselves. And whether they work or stay home, all of them understand that feeling of just not being able even to pick up the phone or compose an email.

Still, wouldn't it be nice if there were someone like Diva's closet guru who could come in and take charge of your social life?

The League of Mommies

2005-04-15T11:21:00.000-04:00

You know what the world is missing? A comic book / blockbuster film tie-in that focuses on that most super of superheroes: the supermommy.

As we all know, each member of a band of superheroes must have her own superpower. (Duplication gets boring, yo.) My superpower is the ability to stop time.

TIME-STOPPING FELICITY METROPOLITAN adds crucial hours to her busy day with the snap of her fingers. With the extra five or six hours a day she allots herself, she cooks! she cleans! she (ahem) blogs more often! she sleeps! she does all the extra number-crunching that she otherwise doesn't have time to do at work because of all the mommy household/internet errands she needs to run during her workday!

What's your superpower, fellow supermommies?

Personal Time Is Always the First to Go . . .

2005-04-04T10:12:00.000-04:00

I realize that the Urban Mommies have been a little lax in our posting duties over the last few weeks -- we've all just been very busy dealing with all those other things in our lives. You know, those things that actually give rise to the posts on this site.

We'll strive to do better over the near-future, but in the meantime, if anyone has anything going on in her own urban mommydom that warrants discussion, feel free to talk about it in the comments. We're all here to chat, even if we're too harried to concoct a formal post!

In the meantime: I've been reviewing my schedule, trying to figure out where I could save an hour per day (or per week, for that matter) to do some of the things I never have time to do. For me, I think the solution is probably to cut out a decent chunk of my evening internet surfing. That could be an easy hour a day. Anyone else have a readily identifiable culprit?

Ears Are For Hearing -- Unless They're Not

2005-03-29T14:36:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting article on the front page of the WSJ today (you may need to be a subscriber to get to the article online, but I'll summarize) on cochlear implants for toddlers and the conflict they have engendered within the deaf community. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they have engendered conflict among parents of members of the deaf community.

By way of background, cochlear implants are gizmos that are implanted within the ear, giving a deaf person the ability to hear. The devices themselves have been around for a while, their quality constantly improving, but implanting them in the ears of small children is a newer development. Essentially, a deaf toddler can get the implants and then learn to hear and speak just like any other child. In all likelihood, they won't ever remember having been deaf.

Sounds amazing, right? Like giving a blind person her sight back or giving new legs to a paraplegic. But some people say that it's not a solution for a handicap, but rather the elimination of a person's -- and by extension a community's -- identity. Deafness isn't a handicap, this view goes, but rather a culture, a way of life. An expert on the deaf community from Northeastern University says that many deaf advocates believe that the deaf community is akin to the black community -- an ethnic group with its own language.

You can see the argument from both sides: 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents. For these parents, their child's deafness is a handicap, one that leads him not to function smoothly in the world. Previously, the deaf child had to go to special schools, learn a special language, get special equipment to be able to communicate with the vast non-deaf majority of the population. I know someone who was born deaf to hearing parents -- his parents moved to another state to be close to a school for the deaf. His grandmother became a deaf education teacher. His father became an advocate for and consultant to the deaf community. He is now married to a hearing woman who is a deaf interpreter. If cochlear implants had been available 40 years ago, would this person have had the surgery to correct a handicap? I have to think he would have.

But then there's the other side of the coin. Two deaf people meet at Gallaudet University, get jobs in Sioux Falls, a town with a thriving deaf community due to the presence there of Communications Services for the Deaf, a Sprint partner that provides telecommunications services to the deaf community all over the country. They communicate with the world solely through American Sign Language. They fall in love, get married, and have a child. The child turns out to be deaf. The parents are now faced with a choice -- they can raise their child in their own community, speaking ASL, interacting primarily with other deaf people. Or their child can have cochlear implant surgery and effectively become part of an entirely different community -- a community where people speak and hear and live a very different life. They don't view themselves as handicapped. Why should they solve a problem that isn't a problem? Why rip their child out of the world they live in?

The article is an interesting one, and I encourage you to read it if you have a copy of the WSJ lying around. I can't think of any other physical handicap (and I do think of it as a handicap, even though I'm related to the deaf person I mentioned earlier and certainly don't find him to be deficient in any way) that engenders this kind of circle-the-wagons defensiveness among its community. Just to make my own views clear: if I gave birth to a deaf child tomorrow, you can bet that we'd be first in line for cochlear implant surgery. Not because being deaf is the worst thing that could happen to a person, but where a substantial physical handicap can be fixed, why wouldn't you fix it?

When Did I Start Needing Sleep?

2005-03-22T17:46:00.000-05:00

For me, one of the more impressive aspects of early motherhood was the extent to which I could lead a perfectly normal life with absolutely no sleep. Even when I went back to work, I was up at 5 am to pump before the then-Metropolibaby woke up, then went to bed around 10:30 or 11 pm, got up two or three times during the night to re-insert a pacifier or change a diaper or something, and was up for good again at 5 am. And I never really felt tired. Or if I did, I didn't notice.

So now the Metropolitoddler is pushing two years old. She sleeps like a champ, rarely wakes up at night, generally is a rock star in the world of sleep. But if she wakes up in the middle of the night with a bad dream or an untimely poopy diaper, I find myself dragging for the next day or two. I am just wiped out by a night that, 18 months ago, would have been deemed a fabulous night of repose.

Where did all those Mommy-Don't-Need-No-Sleep hormones run off to? And when did they skip town? Please come back . . .

When You Wish Upon a Fire Hydrant

2005-03-17T10:15:00.000-05:00

For the last few weeks, I've been telling my friends about the fulfillment of a wish I've had for a long time. The response to the fulfillment of said wish has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic, so I thought I'd share.

In some ways, it's kind of a silly wish -- not a deep wish or a better-the-world wish or even an impossibly-impossible-but-fun-to-wish wish. It's a rather simple wish: to have a personal shopper at Saks Fifth Avenue.

I'll be the first to confess that I have not exactly regained my pre-pregnancy figure. The women of my family tend to be shaped like buxom fire hydrants, and mommyhood has definitely nudged me a little bit in that direction. I haven't thrown in the towel -- I continue to entertain the somewhat pie-in-the-sky hope that my size 6 days aren't entirely behind me -- but I hate the idea of becoming one of those people who dresses schlubbily because they refuse to spend any money on clothing unless they can purchase it in their dream size. So, armed with the conviction that I would buy whatever looked good on me regardless of what size was listed on the tag, off I marched into Saks to drop some cash on a new wardrobe.

The flagship Saks store -- whose location on Fifth Avenue I trust will surprise no one -- is an impressive but overwhelming extravanaganza of clothing goodness. Unlike Bloomingdale's and many other department stores, Saks is pretty much nothing more than a shrine to Things That Go On One's Body. None of this "housewares on 6, linens on 7" business, although there is a bit of a giftware section on maybe an eighth of one floor. Just makeup and accessories on 1 followed by many many floors of clothing, organized by designer and generally grouped by level of schmancyness. I like to shop, but I find Saks to be something of a shopping catacomb. Without an experienced guide, all is lost.

Enter the personal shopper.

The PS and I meet in her office. She's stylish and well-put-together, but not a goddess. That's reassuring -- who wants to be taught introductory physics by Albert Einstein? We chat for a few minutes about who I am, what I'm looking for, how I normally dress. I'm wearing black pants and a sweater that I think is rather cute. She looks me over and says that the project will be to create outfits that won't look like I just yanked pants and a top out of the closet and threw them on together. (Um, isn't that the whole point of black pants, I wonder, but keep my thoughts to myself.) She praises me for having regained my pre-baby figure and recommends that I start wearing some sort of minimizer because that particular asset doesn't really need any more emphasis than it demands on its own. (I told you -- buxom fire hydrants!)

And then off we go into the wild Saks yonder.

The PS bobs and weaves through the many many aisles of clothes, pulling jackets and pants and skirts and tops off the racks, holding them up to me for color, discarding some, keeping others, shouting sizes to her assistant (a chic Russian woman with funky glasses who seems unfazed by all of the data the PS throws in her direction), tossing a mountain of clothing over her shoulder. We do one floor at a time -- at the end of each floor, another assistant materializes who totes that floor's haul back to the PS's office. She leaves me in the kind care of a man in the shoe department with 20 pairs of shoes to try on for size while she finishes perusing every item of clothing in Saks. We meet back in her office two hours after we started, where three racks of clothing await us.

Then I try everything on. Many things don't fit, and Chic Russian Assistant dashes back to the floor to switch sizes for me, often before I've even removed the ill-fitting item. Some things look fantastic, some look terrible. I'm surprised by some of the things that look great -- jackets that I would never have given a second look on my own, pants that should look like every other pair of pants I own but somehow lie a little bit differently and more flatteringly. Within another hour, we've assembled an array of jackets, pants, skirts, tops, and shoes that can all be interchanged -- and that are all fabulous.

Everyone then decides I need a little quiet time before finalizing what I'm actually going to buy. The PS heads back out to the floor to pick up a few more odds and ends, and Chic Russian Assistant fetches me a turkey sandwich and fruit salad. When the PS returns, she hands me a list she's drawn up of all of the outfits that can be created out of the various items of clothing. Literally everything can be worn with everything else. It's quite impressive. Then we start to cut things out. The PS exerts no pressure -- if I say something is out, she removes it from the rack. I eliminate a number of the little shirts to be worn under various jackets -- I may be a Saks girl now, but I don't need a $300 blue silk knit t-shirt when I can buy a $30 Banana Republic t-shirt in the same color blue. I go back and forth on a particular brown skirt, which is the most expensive item in the lot -- ultimately I decide to buy it because it's just so gorgeous, and decide that if I vow to wear it once a week, I'll amortize the cost down to mere pennies in no time flat. Something of a rationalization, but it's a really great skirt.

Ultimately I make the final decisions. Four jackets, two pairs of pants, one pair of jeans, two skirts, one very nifty dressy blouse, one sweater, one shell, and two pairs of shoes. A successful shopping day for everyone. Saks, me -- everyone wins!

Then the fitter is summoned to the room. She pins everything. Shortens sleeves, shortens pant legs, narrows waists and upper arms. I had also brought with me a suit I'd bought at an outlet a few months ago on the theory that it could be altered into something wonderful -- she transforms the jacket from full-length sleeves to three-quarter length sleeves, narrows the entire torso, and reconfigures the pants. A mere (!) 5 hours after my arrival at Saks, I leave with a large credit card bill, a huge smile on my face, and no clothes -- everything is being altered and shipped. Two weeks later I have everything.

I'm now in my second week of my new wardrobe. Admittedly, I don't work in an atmosphere where one's clothing is particularly relevant (it's a group of traders, not exactly known for their fashionistaness), but I feel great in my lovely new array of stuff. And I no longer feel like the frumpomommy with the beautifully dressed toddler -- an awkward thing to feel like here in Manhattan where one runs into Uma Thurman and various Uma Thurman lookalikes in Central Park, impeccably turned out with their equally impeccable kidlets in tow. I mean, I'm still a fire hydrant and all, but at least I'm a cute fire hydrant.

Now, of course, I'm looking at the rest of my closet with a critical eye. I suspect it's the case that once you go PS, you can never go back. But really, who wants to go back?

Dueling Baby Books

2005-03-14T11:39:00.000-05:00

I think Mr. Banana has one very important quality when it comes to child rearing that I wish I had - he generally doesn't care what anyone thinks, including the experts. I, on the other hand, have several baby advice books, and am referring to them quite regularly. When Baby Banana doesn't sleep, I read them. When he sleeps a lot, I read them. When he's getting his shots, I read them. When he misses a feeding, I read them. You get the idea.

These books are making me crazy, and I really should stop reading them, but I'm addicted. Dr. Sears tells me that if I don't carry the Baby Banana around with me 24-7 and let him sleep in my bed until he's 15, I'm a terrible parent, but doesn't give any advice for how I'm supposed to stay sane if I never put him down. Baby 411 tells me that I have to get rid of the pacifier (that we weren't supposed to use in the first place) and have him on a sleep routine by 4 months of age, but gives no advice on how to do this. The Nursing Mother's Companion says he's supposed to be eating less frequently by now, but gives no indication if it's normal that he's still eating 10-12 times a day, if this is harmful in any way, or if there's any way to get him to spread it out at all.

Basically, these books make me feel guilty for using a pacifier (even though it seems to be the only way Baby Banana will calm down and go to sleep at night), for having (much less using) a bouncy seat/swing/play mat so I can take a shower or go to the bathroom or answer my email or eat lunch, for wanting to spend time away from my child, for not finding nursing to be a religious experience, etc, etc.

But worst of all, the books never agree on anything. They contradict each other regularly, so I can't even feel guilty consistently.

I know, I know, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. Everyone has told me to ignore this book or that book, or all of them. I am fully aware that I should take all of this with a grain of salt and do what's best for our little family. But someone, some rational person, needs to write a real guide for real parents that gives the pros and cons of various styles and lets you decide for yourself, and most importantly, gives you the real-life implications of the decisions you plan to make. Even Baby 411, the most rational of the books, tells you you must do certain things, without telling you what will happen if you don't!

So anyone who has any real world advice about pacifiers, not wearing your baby 24-7, sleep patterns, nursing habits, how to figure out what size diaper your kid should be wearing, please feel free to let me know, or write a book. I'd really like to stop feeling guilty.

Vacation: All I Ever Wanted

2005-03-10T20:03:00.000-05:00

Before we had a child, the Mr. and I were champion vacationers. In the twelve months after we got married, we had a two-week honeymoon on an island in the Pacific; a week in a European city; a trip up the California coast with four days in Napa and Sonoma; and a week at the beach.

Then the Toddler came along. Since she was born, we've had a few breaks, and one nice week in the country at the end of last summer, but we haven't really gone anywhere. And we're pretty exhausted. So we've been doing a fair bit of soul-searching about what to do for a vacation. On the one hand, I definitely think of vacation as family time. On the other, though, traveling with the Toddler is not terribly relaxing, and the Mr. and I could really use some sleep and some grownup time. And though we considered taking her to a resort with a "kids' camp" where we could drop her off for a few hours each day, she's really too young for that. So here's the compromise we came up with: next month, we're going to take a week off and spend half of it on a beach without the Toddler (during which time she will happily be spoiled by her grandparents) and the rest of it at home, together as a family.

Any interesting vacation stories -- either with or without children -- to share?

Lights, Camera, Grandparents

2005-03-07T16:23:00.000-05:00

Mr. Banana's parents live near us, but mine don't. My mother, understandably, wants to make sure that Baby Banana recognizes her and knows who she is. To accomplish this (we hope), we have invested in some reasonably priced, yet truly wonderful technology - a web camera.

We've had it since Baby Banana was born, and have since convinced several other folks do get them, including Mr. Banana's sister (who will provide us with a niece in the near future) and the Metropolitans. Baby Banana seems somewhat confused by why we keep shoving him in front of the computer, but Grandma and Grandpa love, love, love seeing their baby grandson in real time, and soon, we hope that he will recognize and interact with them. We've also gotten the chance to see the Metropolitoddler and the expanding belly of my sister-in-law. Soon it'll be a great way for our niece to know us and her cousin!

For those who have long distance family, especially grandparents, I highly recommend investing in the technology. The cameras are under $150, and your computer likely already has the software in place (if you have a Mac, iChat couldn't be simpler). You'll make the grandparents very happy - and what could be better than that?

@$%#?!!

2005-03-05T01:42:00.000-05:00

I think most of us would agree that it's generally not a good idea to cuss like a drunken sailor (no offense) in front of our children. But what do you do when someone else launches a swear word into conversation in front of your kid? I have a friend who has a toddler the same age as Spaceboy, and she has no hesitation about dropping the f-bomb into casual conversation while the toddlers clutch at our legs.

Now, I myself have quite the potty mouth when Spaceboy is not around. I enjoy a good gratuitous expletive as much as the next person. And it's not as though I've never slipped in front of the kid. And it may not matter all that much for me, because the friend in question appears to be falling by the wayside. But it got me thinking the other day: what do you do when someone else repeatedly swears in front of your kid? We all know how to handle it with the kid (don't react, don't make a big deal out of it, etc.), but is there any value to trying to cut it off at the source? Or do you just have to grin and bear it? Frankly, even though Spaceboy doesn't usually repeat what's being said, I don't like the idea of this coarse language falling on his innocent little ears.

Female Bonding?

2005-03-03T22:14:00.000-05:00

I've been spending a lot of time over the past couple of weeks working on one particularly busy project. One of the lawyers representing another party to the transaction is a married woman in her early forties, a partner at a big law firm. The other afternoon I found myself sitting next to her at a meeting, so I asked her whether she has any children. Turns out she has a daughter a couple of months older than mine, and she lives in my neighborhood. Once we learned about those similarities, we were off to the races -- we started comparing notes on local preschools and kid-friendly restaurants, the virtues of FreshDirect, and the difficulty of finding a reliable Saturday-night babysitter. One of my colleagues teased me when he saw how much she and I were chatting: "What is this, the mommy corner?" And that term, of course, stuck.

Now, I was never the sort to think that I'd have tons in common with another person merely because she's female. And it's not as if working mothers are in particularly short supply around these parts. But when I meet another mom who works full time in a job similar to mine, I do tend to want to know more about her (particularly if she's more senior than I am), and I do often tend to like her. I think I'm curious as to how other people make it work -- and probably hoping to pick up any tricks of the trade that I don't already know.

Why all the teasing, do you suppose? Is this really any different from men discussing basketball? Is it odder (or less appropriate) for two women to bond over motherhood-related topics than it is for two men to find themselves in an in-depth conversation about golf?

Well, Duh . . .

2005-02-27T19:37:00.000-05:00

Eureka. Apparently scientific study has confirmed something that seems relatively obvious to me: the secret to happy marriage is for husbands to listen to their wives.

This article, discussing a study published in The Journal of Marriage and the Family, explains that the study revealed that "successful marriages have far more to do with husbands yielding to the influences of their wives" than the sorts of active listening techniques that marriage counselors normally advocate. (You know the type: "Yes, sweetie, I understand. You're unhappy that I didn't pick up my dirty socks before bed. Can we discuss this and talk it through?")

What's your secret to happy marriage?

Truly an Urban Mommy Now

2005-02-24T17:43:00.000-05:00

I've returned to work. Not full time, and not in the office, but I'm officially working. I've really been working since I got home, as I've been responding to work emails all along, but as of last Friday, it was official. A messenger came to my house to deliver a box of work for me to do, and the same day a package arrived in the mail with a different set of stuff to complete.

So now the guilt starts. Despite the fact that I am working from home so I can be home with him longer, I feel guilty for doing work while I'm home with my kid. Despite the fact that my husband goes off to work every day and loves being with his child, I feel guilty handing my son to my husband so I can get some work done. And worst of all, despite the fact that I have always like my job, and that I believe that Baby Banana will be much better off having a Mommy with outside interests, I fell horribly guilty that I am so happy to be working again.

It's really nice to be doing something with my brain again - it was starting to atrophy from simply nursing, changing diapers and watching TV. Of course, the work has started just as Baby Banana is starting to be more interactive. I only work when he's sleeping or with Mr. Banana, but still...I know none of this guilt is rational, but it's there. I was never cut out to be a stay-at-home mom - much as I admire them, it's not how I was built - but I never thought I'd feel this guilty about even this small amount of work. Going back to work full time should be interesting.

In more upbeat news I visited Baby Banana's future day care center today. Mr. Banana and I chose it without visiting because (a) they're really the only game in town for full-day non-in-home daycare for kids under age 2, (b) we have several friends whose kids have been through or are in there and have nothing but good things to say, (c) they're the only real Jewish daycare option near us, and (d) they get rave reviews from every source of day care reviews (the fact that we were 41st on the waitlist for a program with 12 spots tells you something). I had to go drop off a check today and took a quick peek into the room he'll be in and loved it. The caregivers all came over to say hi and oohed and aahed over Baby Banana, all the kids looked happy, and the room was bright and cheerful. I'm quite pleased we managed to get him in.

My kid is now six weeks old. That isn't very old - when I say it, I laugh at how short a period of time ix weeks is. And yet I can't remember very well what life was like without him. Very odd.

Apropos of Nothing - I just want to share...

2005-02-23T13:41:00.000-05:00

The Diva Nanny is in her early 40s and has only had one job before us. She lived in for sixteen years with a family in New Jersey (with five kids). I had a very long and very enjoyable discussion with her previous employer as a reference check (although what do you think a reference after sixteen years was going to say?) One of the things we loved about the Diva Nanny when we interviewed her was the way she sincerely got teary (but not maudlin) when she talked about how much she missed those kids. The youngest were twins and they were about fourteen at the time. It was clear that the Diva Nanny had become so much a part of their family that she stayed on long past the time that those kids really needed babysitting.

I know that she talks and e-mails with the twin girls often. This morning, she played for me the most wonderful voice mail she had received on her cell phone from the second youngest boy, now nineteen, who is living in Israel this year. He sounds very nice and very “I’m just a tad too cool for own good” – the way most nineteen year old boys do. “Hey, Diva Nanny, it’s me. Just calling to catch up and find out what you’re up to. I guess you’re busy – probably taking care of the new baby – just the way you took care of me – you know -- when I was baby (laughs). Just wanted you to know I’m thinking about you. I’ll try you again soon.”

Obviously, this is a very nice boy. But it warms my heart to know that this woman so affected these children and became a part of their family that almost three years later, a nineteen year old boy – who doubtless has other things going on in his life – still checks in to chat with her. From Israel, no less. I had a moment of imagining my own Diva Toddler as a teenager having this same sort of bond with her. She is a wonderful person and a wonderful nanny. I hope she is with us for as long as we can imagine. For the moment, however, I just count my blessings.

Bang For The Buck

2005-02-20T02:13:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I started looking into options for Spaceboy's second birthday party. Since that time, I have often been heard ranting to various friends, relations, and urban mommy comrades about the absurd cost of children's parties at activity centers in big cities. I was morally outraged at the thought of spending a small fortune on a party for kids who would be just as happy spending the afternoon running around the park. After going to a party at one of these places today, however, I am officially withdrawing my earlier complaints and surrendering to the big slides, climbing structures and mermaid sing-a-longs. Spaceboy had an absolute blast, and, of course, so did I. Even though I still think the prices are ridiculous, I can't think of anything else I could spend our money on that would produce the same dollars to happiness ratio. Watching Spaceboy run around in a frenzy of joy for two hours was almost as much fun as our wedding--and it's still a whole lot cheaper than that was, right?

Reunited and It Feels So . . . TBD

2005-02-18T23:01:00.000-05:00

My high school reunion is coming up in a few months. Ordinarily, this would not be a topic worthy of much discussion: I'd go, have some laughs, and come home -- end of story for another five years. But this one is a little different. You see, the organizers have put together a website with a message board, which has proven to be extremely popular. So essentially, we're having an online reunion for several months before we all actually congregate at the alcohol-infused venue of the organizers' choosing.

This chat board is basically a petri dish of human relationships. A guy who was a mostly unknown dork in high school -- but very bright and witty among the people who bothered to pay any attention to him -- has been the big hit of the last few weeks. He's been blowing everyone away with his humor and his trenchant observations -- to the extent that more than a few of the women who were the ditzy and hyperpopular girls in high school are falling all over themselves with enthusiasm for meeting him at the reunion. (I always thought he was a bit of a misunderstood diamond-in-the-rough, so I'm all in favor of his getting a little love from the ladies.)

As for me: I like to think of myself as a pretty well-rounded and socially ept person, and I think my friends think of me the same way (Friends, feel free to confirm or deny). It's clear to me from reading people's posts on the reunion board that I'm remembered primarily as that really smart girl who was voted most likely to succeed. I haven't thought of myself that way in a really long time -- ever since high school, I've been surrounded by other really smart people and thus my baseline has shifted. But to the folks who knew me when we were all students at a big suburban public high school, I'm that girl who went to the college where only really smart people go. Nothing wrong with intelligence, and it's certainly better to be remembered as smart rather than idiotic, but I do get the sense that a lot of people are expecting me to show up and report that I have accomplished great things with this large brain of mine.

Which leads to the existential question of the night: have I accomplished great things? Maybe, maybe not, but certainly not in a way that would lead the members of my high school class to say "Wow, yeah, she's done what we thought she would." The thing that niggles a bit is this: reading over other people's descriptions of what they're doing makes it clear that a lot of people figured out what they wanted to do, did it, and are now solidly ensconced at senior levels of whatever that thing might be. Law firm partners, experienced social workers, surgeons at research hospitals, stay-at-home-mothers of four, partners at private equity firms . . . so far I haven't seen so many of the career changers. Not so many of the people who have just started new jobs in an attempt to get their careers and home lives balanced in an acceptable manner. And that bothers me a bit.

Not being one to slam myself for any extended period of time, I will note that I've had a series of impressive jobs, each one a highly sought-after position with a widely respected organization. And while I'm pretty darned sure that if I'd remained a lawyer, I'd be a partner right now, you can bet that I'd be sitting here reading the reunion chat board (from work, no doubt, instead of from my living room) feeling wistful about the people who'd had the guts to take a flyer on something new and interesting. Other people's grass being greener and all that.

I will undoubtedly have more thoughts on this whole reunion thing as the day draws nigh. But for now I will just add one other thought. Mentally running through my list of classmates, I can't think of anyone else who I'd categorize as an Urban Mommy. And that is an accomplishment worthy of note, as we are a rare and honorable breed!

This Product Is Awesome And You All Need To Buy It

2005-02-18T02:52:00.000-05:00

I'm interrupting this blog for a quick commercial for my new favorite product. I have never successfully taken Spaceboy's temperature before. The ear thermometer never gave us a reading above 95 degrees (seemed unlikely), I couldn't hold the regular one still under his squirmy little arm, and if you think I was trying anywhere else, you are sorely mistaken. So we just had to guess whether or not he had a fever. Until now! In case you missed it in last month's Parenting, you can now buy a temporal artery thermometer on Amazon for $50 (or at your retailer of choice), which is basically a magic wand. You swipe it across your kid's forehead, and in literally one second, it gives a reading that is at least as accurate as the tushie reading, which was always known as the gold standard. I took Isaac's temperature at least twenty times the night we got it, and it was amazingly consistent. Tell everybody!

Mommy the Martyr?

2005-02-17T19:55:00.000-05:00

By now, I'm sure most people have either read or heard about a new book by Judith Warner, “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety." Warner's publicists must be working overtime: the book has been the subject of a Newsweek cover article and a New York Times op-ed piece in the past week alone. Her thesis is that the modern mother's lot is a miserable one, whether she works or stays home with the kids. Modern mothers overparent. When their children are small, they endlessly sing and talk and dance with them, turning themselves into "human television sets." When the children get older, their mothers become overinvested in their progress, involving themselves in every nuance of every child's day and "constantly look[ing] over their shoulders to make sure that no one [is] outdoing them in the performance of good Mommyhood." All this overparenting leaves no time for adult relationships, resulting in loveless marriages in which "real intimacy [goes] the way of bottle-feeding and playpens."

And why do modern mothers behave in this bizarre and unhealthy fashion? Well, because they are perfectionists. And also because they have to: mothers get no help from their spouses. They get no help from their children's schools, where the teachers are overworked and underpaid. And they get no help from the government, which refuses to provide appropriate child care. Nor do they get any support from their friends.

Nonsense. Are there women who are like this? Of course. Are all, or even most, families like this? Nope. I must say, I know only one or two women who fit Warner's description, and I know a lot of moms (urban and otherwise). Warner's thesis strikes me as yet another "theory of everything" -- integrating ideas about government, education, parenting, gender relations -- that has a grain of truth, but not all that much more.

Here's my own take: over-parenting is a choice. It's not an inevitable way of life that is foisted on women by their husbands, by the schools, or by the Bush Administration. You can choose to make your child the center of a tiny world. You can choose to agonize over every parenting decision you make. Or you can choose, as the very wise Anna Quindlen puts it, to be a "good enough mother," to have fun with your kids, and to enjoy their company. I'm not saying that parenting is not a serious and important job; it is. But I think a lot of the decisions that people, particularly mothers, agonize about and beat themselves up over are things that ultimately will come out in the wash. Your child is not going to end up living in a crack den because you didn't breastfeed her for three years, or because you let her watch Sesame Street, or because you failed to enroll her in the most challenging tumbling class in town. Conversely, admission to the "best" preschool will not guarantee admission to Harvard. And frankly, most of the women I know don't think otherwise.

While we're on the subject: one thing that Warner does get right is the idea that mothers can be incredibly catty and judgmental; we can be our own worst enemies. Is it because mothers' choices -- to work or stay home, in particular -- are so fraught with uncertainty that one must justify her own decisions by tearing apart someone else's? I hate it when I'm talking to a stay-at-home mom and she says that she could never work outside the home because she wants "to raise [her] children." Here's a newsflash: I'm raising my daughter, even if I'm not with her every minute of every day. I hate it just as much, though, when a fellow working mother complains about how boring it is to talk to a stay-at-home mom. That's ridiculous: the women I know who have left the work force to stay home with their kids have not fundamentally changed. The interesting ones are still interesting, and the boring ones are still boring. And believe me, there are just as many boring lawyers and doctors as there are boring stay-at-home moms.

Ok, I'm climbing down from my soapbox now.

New Firm's Got Your Back(up)

2005-02-14T16:15:00.000-05:00

New Firm has emergency backup childcare. This means that when Spacenanny calls in sick, which happens from time to time, I can still go to work, and I can feel comfortable knowing that Spaceboy is at an excellent day care a block from my office, where I can pop in for lunch. Or, if I prefer, I can call the second emergency backup option and have a substitute nanny delivered to my home, at no cost to me. Why don't all firms do this? Wouldn't they all rather that we come to work when our nannies can't? I love New Firm.

No More Skeletons II

2005-02-14T11:04:00.000-05:00

I’m happy to report that my closet project is basically complete. Everything is done except for the doors on my bedroom closet (which I am not really in such a hurry for because it give me great pleasure to sit on my bed and gaze at my fancy shmancy totally organized closet just the way it is). Almost everything has been put away in its nice, new spacious place.

So far, I really do feel more organized and in control. And a very cute anecdote: The Diva Toddler absolutely LOVES his new closet situation (which has double hanging on one side and shelves on the other so he can reach everything). Every time we came in from outside over the weekend, he ran right into his room, pulled off his jacket, and hung it up on a “hanger hook.” How long do you suppose that will last?

Getting Acclimated

2005-02-10T20:16:00.000-05:00

I know I've been a little MIA lately, but I recently started my new job and thus have been a little distracted. It's been a number of years since I was the new kid on the block -- I'd kind of forgotten what it feels like!

My various intrafirm moves at my Prior Employer were a lot different than this move: none of the groups I worked in were anywhere near as closeknit and team-oriented as the group I've just joined. It's a small organization, and everyone knows each other very well, so I'm working on getting used to everything -- not just the job itself, but also the vibe of the place.

Perfect example: a few days ago, a bunch of us went to go grab lunch. We ended up at a food-court-type-place, and everyone split up to get whatever they wanted. After I got my food, I didn't see anyone else, so I walked back to the office, sat down at my desk, and opened up my lunch. A few minutes later, everyone else came back to the office and said "Oh, Felicity, we were waiting for you!" "Oh, you were? Sorry, I didn't know." I turned back to my customary lunchtime blogsurfing and lunch-munching. The next thing I know, everyone has piled into a conference room to eat lunch together. I didn't even notice until someone called my name to come join them. After several years of eating at my desk, it never crossed my mind that everyone would actually eat together!

I'm going into the office earlier than I did at Prior Employer, so haven't seen the Metropolitoddler as much as I'd like, but this will ultimately be solved by waking her up ten or fifteen minutes before I leave so that we can hang out a bit before I head out the door. I feel a little guilty about waking her up, but better that she take a longer nap when there's no parents around than miss out on seeing Mommy in the morning, right?

All in all: so far so good.

. . . And Sometimes It's Just Embarrassing.

2005-02-09T19:33:00.000-05:00

In my inaugural post on this blog, I wrote that my life is an embarrassment of riches: I love my kid, my husband, and my job, and most of the time those aspects of my life coexist quite happily.

Sometimes, however, the pieces don't hang together as well as I would like. A couple of weeks ago, I persuaded someone I work with to pitch a piece of business with me. The good news: we landed it. The bad news: phase one had to be finished within two weeks. I am pretty enterprising by nature, and before I had a child I was Ms. Go-To Guy; I would promise the moon if it would give my firm a competitive advantage. That instinct remains, of course, but the follow-through is much tougher. Part of the issue is that I'm more senior, and it's harder now for me to drop everything in order to attend to a fire drill. And part of the problem is that "everything" now encompasses far more than "my other projects." It means my home life, which I can't and won't put to one side.

Adding this new deal to my plate would have made last week frenetic at work even if everything had gone smoothly at home. And everything did not go smoothly at home: the poor Toddler brought home a nasty stomach bug that made her miserable for two days -- and then she gave it to my nanny and to my husband. So things were a little bit chaotic around the vW homestead. I missed only one day of work, because my nanny is a valiant woman, but missing 20 percent of a frenetic week makes the rest of the week pretty stressful.

Partly as a result, intense work on the papers ran well into the weekend. The Mr. took the toddler out on Saturday morning; I worked from 6 a.m. until noon and then handed the document off to the senior partner. He called at 6 p.m., right in the middle of the dinner-bath-books-bed craziness, to discuss it. So the Mr. handled the evening routine, and I handled the call. The partner suggested major revisions -- which were probably necessitated by the fact that I'd rushed through the first draft. (I should note that he could not have been nicer about that.) So after kissing the Toddler goodnight, I worked for three more hours.

We finally finished the draft and sent it to the client midday Monday. About an hour later, I started feeling awful. Sure enough, my system had managed to fight off the stomach bug -- but only until I'd gotten through most of the project. I will leave the following 24 hours to your imagination; suffice to say, I wasn't of much use as far as the deal was concerned.

As law jobs go, mine is close to optimal, as far as compatibility-with-mothering is concerned: I work with spectacularly nice people; I leave at six every night and work after the Toddler is in bed; and I don't travel very much. (It's pretty optimal in other ways, too: it's very interesting and the pay is good.) But like any job in the law, there are times when you have to drop everything for a couple of weeks in order to meet a deadline, get a deal closed, keep a client happy. And those times can be very hard to manage with aplomb.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2005-02-03T23:14:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Ms. Felicity Metropolitan, today I too gave notice at my job. Starting next week, I will be at New Firm. It was pretty sad today, because I really liked everyone I worked with in the five and a half years I was there, and so saying goodbye was bittersweet.

Here's why I'm leaving: When it comes to part time employment, there are two kinds of firms. Some companies, like New Firm, have determined that associates who are urban mommies can still be good lawyers, even if they want to work only part-time, and that after investing years of time and tons of money to train these lawyers, it makes sense to work out a reasonable and fair part-time deal that both sides can feel good about. To that end, New Firm has a straight 65%-65% deal, as in 65% hours for 65% pay.

Other companies, on the other hand, resent the part-time thing but feel that they have no choice other than to offer it so that they can attract top recruits. They therefore grudgingly offer a really lousy part time deal. Hence my situation at Old Firm, billing up to 70% of the hours for slightly less than 50% of the pay. Moreover, when the firm is as hostile to part time work as that deal suggests, it shows in many other aspects of the part timer's work, in everything from the quality of assignments to respecting the associate's schedule to bitching by partners, often in front of a group of full time associates.

Whether firms like it or not, the reality is that we women are now becoming lawyers (and other professionals) in the same numbers as men, and many of us, though not all, want to go to part time after we have our kids. It's really time to suck it up and accept that part time work is becoming part of the culture, or face losing valuable, hardworking employees. I'm sad that Old Firm, much like Spaceboy's pushy playground friend, made the wrong choice, but I'm hopeful for a better deal and a happier environment at New Firm. A lot more money (more than 1/3 of my old salary more) and a chance to avoid being the office pariah, for the same work and fewer hours, sounds like a pretty good place to start.

My Incredible Shrinking World

2005-02-02T09:42:00.000-05:00

Yup, I'm a Mommy!

I have to start this post by saying that my son is amazing - despite the fact that he doesn't know who I am, doesn't react to me as an individual at all, doesn't provide any positive reinforcement whatsover, I love him immensely already. I can't believe we have a kid, and that we get to keep him.

But I'm coming to terms with the fact that I've been right about myself all along. I am NOT stay-at-home-Mom material. It's been three weeks, and I'm already going a little nuts. It's winter, I had a C-section, and those two things make it difficult to leave the house on my own. I'm breastfeeding Baby Banana every two hours during the day, tripling the difficulty of leaving. My world these days has shrunk down to my living room couch, where I sit most of the day holding, nursing, and talking to Baby Banana, and watching old TV shows on DVD. Most days, it's just the two of us - Mr. Banana is back at work, so unless a friend comes over, it's just us.

There's a part of this that's nice. I love having him sleep on my chest in the afternoons (even when my butt falls asleep from being in the same position for hours), I love that I can make him stop crying, and I love that Mr. Banana is so excited to see both of us at the end of the day. And Mr. Banana has been an incredible partner in all of this - he calls me at home during the day to check in, he takes Baby B in the evenings and overnight so I can get some rest, and he's an incredible Daddy.

But I'm tired, and I'm sort of bored, and I'm lonely. This is much, much harder than anyone ever told me, and so far, the rewards are pretty amorphous. I don't feel as though I'm building a relationship with my kid (even though I know I am). No smiles yet, no giggles, no playtime, nothing that makes parenting fun. I read and sing to him every day, but he certainly doesn't react yet. Mostly, to him, I'm just a source of food.

My friends tell me that this all gets better, and that by the time my maternity leave is over, I'll be miserable leaving him. In my heart of hearts, I know it's true. But I find myself very jealous of Mr. Banana going off to work every day, and I look forward to starting to do some work from home in a little while just to keep my brain active. In the meantime, I'm just waiting for my son to smile at me.

No More Skeletons (or other old, useless junk)

2005-01-31T13:04:00.000-05:00

We are redoing our closets. All of them. All of them, you ask? At the same time? Yep. And where will you put everything from the closets when the nice man comes to rip out the current closet interiors, spackle, paint and prepare for the California Closet people? Hmmmm. Good question. I’m working on that. Any ideas?

You see, this all started a few months ago when I had a tantrum (well, a few tantrums) because I couldn’t find any of my clothes in my cramped closet and when I did find stuff, everything was always wrinkled. Our bedroom has two closets right next to each other, each of which is tight and cramped and difficult to use. So my husband suggested that we break the wall through between them, replace doors with large bifolds, and have one large, well-designed “step-in” closet (nowhere near a real walk-in, but roomy enough to, you know, step in). So the California Closet woman came to our apartment to take a look, make some recommendations and help us design. She’s good. An hour later, we had plans for every closet in the whole apartment. Yeah, she’s really good. The popular justification theory of course is that because we own our apartment, this is actually an investment and we will get every penny and more back when we sell, capital improvement, blah, blah, blah.

But an equally persuasive justification is that this is so much more than "just a little work on the apartment". It’s not just new closet interiors. Indeed, no. When this project is done, I will be a thoroughly renovated, reinvented, organized and in control person. An Urban Mommy extraordinaire. I will have sifted through all my clothes and given away everything except for five or six lovely outfits that I will wear all the time, take beautiful care of, look lovely in, and that will hang refreshingly with six inches of space between each item. As for the hall closet, we will not have all that clutter and junk on the floor that wrinkles the bottoms of the long coats, everything will smell of pine, and every glove in the hat/scarf/glove bin will have a mate. The utility closet will have boxes of paper goods and supplies bought in bulk stacked up neatly and easy to see (no more of piles of fifteen huge containers of laundry soap and absolutely no dishwasher detergent.). The cleaning tools will all have a place to stand up comfortably; no more opening the closet door poised to catch the falling mop. The linen closet and the Toddler’s closet are actually fine as they are – but once I got on a roll I couldn’t stop – and anyway – now they will be better.

The point is, I will simplify my life and take ownership in my home. I will know where every last possession is, and whatever the cost of this closet overhaul, it will be dwarfed by the priceless benefit to my psyche! Wish me luck.

The greatest thing since sliced ice cream

2005-01-29T19:31:00.000-05:00

Let's take a moment to discuss technology. What technological device(s) have given you the most enjoyment over the past couple of years?

My personal favorites are both completely frivolous. As far as I am concerned, TiVo was a life-changing innovation: I dislike both commercials and schedules, and I am incapable of programming a VCR. My husband (an early adopter of all things technological) brought one home three and a half years ago while I was away for a bachelorette party weekend. When I (the Luddite) came home, I was annoyed that he had spent a small fortune on this silver box that was rendering me unable to figure out how to change channels. It took me a couple of days to master it, and from then on I was not merely an addict; I became one of those people who would wax enthusiastic about the thing at cocktail parties. (I'm not saying this made me more popular, mind you. But I will note that ultimately, all of our close friends gave in to my relentless nagging, and they were all happier for it.) We've since traded in our beloved, if battered, silver box for the DVR provided by our cable company. It has a far less adorable interface but has one major advantage: it allows you to record two shows at once. Which is key, because Alias now overlaps with The West Wing and The Amazing Race with Scrubs (which I don't much like, but the Mr. does).

The only downside is that the Toddler rapidly figured out that you can fast-forward through any parts of a show you don't like, because she saw me skipping through the ads for fast food and some beach resort that run at the beginning of every Sesame episode. Whenever she gets tired of a segment, she now starts demanding "Next one! Next one!" Sorry, around-the-world Grover.

The iPod runs a close second to the DVR. Prior to motherhood, I was a mixed-tape devotee; the ease with which you can create an iPod playlist makes it great fun. I am also a big fan of one- and two-hit wonders, and I find it very liberating to be able to download a single song for $1 instead of buying a nine-tenths-mediocre CD for $14. It has made my walking commute far more enjoyable and actually gives me an incentive to get to the gym every now and then.

What are your favorites?

Don't Go Changing To Try To Please Me

2005-01-27T23:46:00.000-05:00

Well, this is a first for us. I, Sadie Spacewoman, have long hair that happens to be very curly. Today, after my semi-annual trip to get it trimmed, I had the stylist blow it out all straight. It was the first time I've had enough time to get it blown straight in, well, I guess it must be at least 19 months.

When I came home from work, I was welcomed, as usual, by the pitter-patter of little Spacefeet coming to greet me. There he was, Spaceboy, running down the hall with his arms wide open and a huge smile on his face. Until he got within two feet of me and my long, straight hair. At that point, his face dropped, he turned around, and he took off running in the opposite direction.

I tried calling him back, but another glimpse of me convinced him that he definitely did not want to spend any time with Imposter Mommy. Finally, I put the offending hair up in a ponytail and called him back. This time, Spaceboy came running and gave me a huge smile and hug.

Spaceboy: Far More Observant Than His Dad.

The Wonderful World of Disney

2005-01-25T10:07:00.000-05:00

What is the deal with Disney’s obsession with killing off parents? How many movies start off that way? Bambi, the Lion King, the Fox and the Hound, just to name a few. Then the ones that presuppose a parent’s death: Snow White, Cinderella…or both parents’ deaths:…Aladdin. Even Dumbo has his Mother cruelly taken away from him and locked in a prison wagon with actual shackles on her legs. Is it simply not possible for a cartoon character to have a little adventure with the health of the parents intact? Even other kid stories: Babar not only has his own parents killed off, but upon his return to the kingdom of Elephants, the King of the Elephants has just bitten the dust. (And then, we have to address Babar’s announcement that he is engaged to his cousin Celeste…why make him marry his cousin? Was that necessary?)

And how are we supposed to explain all this a two year old? “The hunter was chasing after the Fox’s mommy…now his mommy isn’t there anymore”. That’s the best I can do. So far so good, but that won’t last forever…We are squarely into the “why” phase, and God forbid I get one more “why” and I’m screwed! Bad enough that they make you come up with some cockamamie (sp?) explanation for death, but we working mommies put a lot of effort into making sure our kids our secure and convincing them that even when we go away, WE ALWAYS COME BACK. And then along comes Disney and, lo and behold, sometimes the mommies don’t come back.

And I thought it was all going to be easy so long as we were still into cartoons - before we all start worrying about parental controls on violent TV images and purple web sites.

Anyone have any good ideas for how to put a two year old’s curiosity to bed – without nightmares?

Out of Sequence

2005-01-21T20:17:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday's New York Times contained an op ed piece by David Brooks entitled "Empty Nests, and Hearts." Brooks writes of women in their 40s and beyond who regret not having had children, and he presumes that they failed to do so because they were too focused on their careers.

His prescription, put in general terms, is one that makes a lot of sense: allow women more freedom to organize their lives in a way that is conducive to both familial and work satisfaction. His more specific suggestion, though, baffled me a bit. He thinks (as does Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who wrote a book called Creating a Life that made a big splash a few years ago) that women should focus, at a much younger age – say, their early 20s – on finding husbands and starting families. Then, in their mid-30s, these women would be in a position to select, train for, and embark upon their careers.

This advice, often called “sequencing,” strikes me as profoundly unrealistic and ill-advised. Most women I know – including and especially myself – were not in a position to select a spouse, much less begin raising children, in their early 20s. Between the ages of 21 and 27, I had a grand old time being quite selfish: I moved to New York City, went out most nights of the week, and dated men who (as a general matter) were not particularly good husband material. I wouldn’t have made a very good wife during that time, and I certainly wasn’t ready to be a parent. (Luckily, I met my husband when I was 27 – and even then I was glad that we dated for a few years before marrying.) During those same years, however, I was perfectly capable of figuring out what I wanted to do with my life careerwise, and of pursuing my goals with single-minded alacrity: I worked a lot, I learned my trade, and I had the luxury of putting in my apprentice years at a time when I had few other responsibilities.

Nor do I really see much merit in the second half of the Brooks/Hewlett plan: I think it would be very hard for a mother to go back to graduate school in her mid-thirties, graduate in her late thirties, and then start a career. Even if we assume away the societal obstacles to such a plan, it seems awfully daunting. First of all, she still has kids in the house. Even if they’re in school, they need help with homework, company at dinnertime, a presence at their soccer games. None of that is very compatible with the life of a 2L on Law Review or a junior associate at an investment bank. Second of all, would a 40-year-old mother really want to work the grueling hours required of a medical resident? And would she really have the stamina?

I’m not for a moment suggesting that women can’t do these things. My own mother did it – went back to school in her early 40s and then started on a career – and she’s been tremendously successful both as a parent and, later, as an executive. I’m just saying that for most women, it’s probably not the ideal path. And I think that if women are pressured to get married and have kids in their early 20s, they’ll end up dropping out of the career path, or at least the path of the most high-powered careers, altogether. (I also think they’re more likely to end up with the wrong spouses, but I have no idea what the statistics on that look like.)

So where does this leave us? I’m not sure. I certainly think Brooks et al. are on the right track when they say women need more choices in how to balance career and family. I’m just skeptical about whether the sequence they recommend is a viable one. Any thoughts?

All We Need Is Just a Little Impatience

2005-01-20T20:25:00.000-05:00

I'm not a person with a great deal of patience. In fact, I'm more of an immediate gratification kind of girl. I've shown a surprising amount of patience when it comes to dealing with my daughter, but that pretty much exhausts the supply of patience I tote around in my snazzy diaper bag. (Insert countless stories in which I harangue monumentally stupid retail salespeople, waiters in U.S. restaurants who don't speak English, and credit card company representatives who insist that my maiden name can't possibly fit on their credit card along with my first and married names.)

In light of the no-patience thing, it shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that I'm not a big proponent of hanging around and waiting for something to get better. It's just not my style.

So you remember that job situation that I've been ruminating about for the last few months?

I quit.

Mr. Metropolitan, who's reading this over my shoulder as I type, just pointed out to me that I didn't quit with the Fear. (You remember that Friends episode where Rachel has to have the Fear to goad her into pursuing her dreams, so she quits her job at the coffeehouse before she has her next gig lined up? That's the Fear he's referring to.) That's true -- I didn't quit with the Fear, because I didn't need it.

If there's one thing I've realized this year, it's that I can't thrive in an environment where I'm not valued. So while I was sitting around (impatiently) waiting for my bonus check to hit my bank account, I went ahead and found a new job. And so when I quit, it was far from hat in hand, admitting defeat at the hands of those who think urban mommies can't handle a high-powered professional career, but rather with my next job lined up and ready to go. A job, incidentally, that 99% of the people I work with would dearly love to have.

Wow, said one person who's been the bane of my existence for the last year, how'd you make that move? Everyone here wants to make that move.

Who needs Fear when you've got Impatience?

So here we go. Hold on to your seats, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

BABY BANANA HAS ARRIVED!

2005-01-13T10:18:00.000-05:00

We are happy to report that Baby Banana has arrived safe and sound! Lola, Mr. Banana, and Baby Banana are all doing well.

I'm sure that Lola will have a great deal to tell everyone once she's back online, but for the time being, we just wanted to let everyone know that we officially have an actual Urban Mommy in the Banana family!

Bedtime Strike Over

2005-01-11T13:24:00.000-05:00

Last week I was at my wit's end with the Toddler's bedtime, as you may recall. The other night at about 9:00, after reading a few stories out in the living room, I brought the sleepy Toddler into bed for night-night. I fluffed his pillow and he climbed in and curled up. I smoothed his quilt, gave him a kiss and said “I love you sweetheart. Now, stay in bed, close your eyes and … what, honey? Did you say something?” I heard a faint mumble beneath his passy. I leaned over and took his passy out of his mouth so I could hear what he said and in a tiny, tiny voice, he whispered: “...pretend to ssssslllll……” And pooof! He was out. I laid the passy right down next to his little hand so he could get if he woke up in the night and went about my adult evening.

I went with the “pretend to sleep” version thinking that if he was really having trouble falling asleep that telling him to sleep would be confusing and upsetting. Pretending he can always do. It worked like a charm. Thanks everyone.

Why Yes, I'd Love to Marry You, But Could I First See a Copy of Your SAT Scores?

2005-01-09T15:40:00.000-05:00

Citing a report about a British study of IQs and marriage rates that concludes that smart women have trouble getting themselves married off, Ann Althouse (a university of Michigan law professor who writes an entertaining and interesting blog) posted her own thoughts on the real losers in the marriage sweepstakes.

The most unmarriageable folks, in her (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) view? Stupid men, whose intellectual equals have been scooped up by men looking for women just a bit inferior to them, and whose intellectual betters won't give them the time of day, because women really aren't looking for men who are dumber than they are.

Althouse has a couple of fun follow-up posts on the subject here and here.

My own experience during my pre-marriage years was that the smarter the circle of people in which I found myself, the better my dating prospects became. High school was fine but retrospectively somewhat meh, college was an improvement, and law school was the dating jackpot, culminating in the gloriously happy relationship that would ultimately make me Mrs. Metropolitan. I couldn't tell you whether this upward trend was the actual result of being surrounded by smarter guys who were more inclined to date smart girls, or whether it's just a happy coincidence tied to the fact that my hair got progressively cuter after high school, hitting a peak of maximum cuteness during law school.

(And, incidentally, Mr. Metropolitan's SAT scores were 50 points higher than mine, a fact that he likes to mention at opportune moments.)

Her So-Called Life

2005-01-08T10:56:00.000-05:00

Being a working mother improved dramatically when I finally realized that if I’m going to be out of the house for a significant chunk of each day, I can’t control everything my daughter does, sees, and eats while I’m gone. For a type-A control freak like myself, this was a big adjustment. Having a nanny whose common sense, judgment, and values I trust implicitly has helped a great deal: I set the basic parameters, and within those parameters she pretty much manages the vW Toddler's life during the week. She keeps a calendar, so I know where they are all the time, and I get a ten-minute debriefing every night when I get home.

My daughter has a playdate every weekday. Her earliest, and still closest, friends were the children of my friends, but more recently she's also spending time with kids she meets in her toddler classes and the playground; the nannies generally set up these dates. I've met, or at least spoken to, the moms of all these kids, but I don't really know most of them. This has led to some interesting situations. When my daughter was a little over a year old, for example, I was quite surprised when a little girl I'd never seen before came up to her on the playground and hugged and kissed her. The child's mom came running over: "Julia, that's very sweet, but don't touch kids you don't know!" I started laughing, realizing that this must be the Julia that had come over to play a few days earlier; I'd been meaning to call her mom and introduce myself.

More recently, I called the local toddler-class emporium, where my daughter has been attending various kinds of activities for about six months, to sign her up for an art class. I was disappointed to find out that she missed the age cutoff by a few weeks. I sighed and said, “Ok, I’ll sign her up for music instead. Her name is vW Toddler; is there room in the Monday afternoon session?” The woman on the phone – whom I’ve never, of course, met -- suddenly became far more friendly: “Oh, hi! Glad she’s finally over that cold. Actually, she might like the art class, and several of her friends are already signed up; why don’t you skip the first few sessions and start bringing her when she hits the age cutoff?”

Now that she’s a bit more verbal, I’m getting an increasing amount of information from the Toddler herself. The problem is, it’s not clear how accurate these reports are. The other night she told me (in her toddler way) that she’d been to music class and played with Jake – both of which were true. But when I asked what she’d had for lunch, she replied, “coffee!” So I think I should probably put most of my reliance in the nanny’s reports, at least for the time being.

On some level, these are reminders that her life doesn’t stop when I’m at work, and that I’m necessarily missing out on some – ok, a lot – of the little events that make up her days during the week. But any melancholy at that prospect is (generally) outweighed by happiness that she does have a rich and busy life when I’m not here, and gratitude to my nanny for fostering it.

I Guess It's Different with the Second Child...

2005-01-07T13:09:00.000-05:00

I took the Diva Toddler to Mommy and Me class this morning, and one of his classmates is a proud, new big sister. Her Mom had taken the 7 week old baby with her (presumably because there was nothing else to do with him). Baby was sleeping in the stroller, but halfway through class, Baby woke up and Mom went to go get him and hold him. Naturally, all the toddlers were fascinated, and proud big sister wanted to show him off anyway. So for a good 7 to 10 minutes, immunity-free Baby was closely surrounded by six well-meaning pawing, clawing, fawning, giggling, sniffling toddlers.

OK. When the Diva Toddler was 7 weeks old, I still wasn’t letting toddlers into my apartment, even if they stayed in another room (with the very occasional possible exception of cousins, but even then, surely not if they were sniffling). They sure as heck weren't touching him! I was so tense this morning, trying to get the kids away from this Baby discreetly, until I realized Mom didn’t care in the slightest. Either she is far more laid back than any Mom I know, or it’s going to way different with a second child!

The Milkman Has Left The Building

2005-01-04T23:13:00.000-05:00

Apparently, January 4, 2005, was Spaceboy's last day to nurse. He's been acting funny with the nursing all week (pulling away and making the sign for "more" after a few minutes, which he's never done before, and then sucking down a bottle, which I finally caught on that he might want). Tonight, though, he didn't want any part of the nursing at night-night time. He just got up and went looking for a bottle. He then climbed off my lap halfway through his bottle to go sit on Daddy's lap instead. After we finished reading two chapters of James And The Giant Peach and Goodnight Moon, Daddy stayed to finish giving him his bottle, while I sat superfluously in the kitchen.

I know all about how you're not supposed to feel rejected, etc., and I have to say that it would be pretty lame to feel rejected. What I feel instead is just very ... sad. Spaceboy and I have had a good 18 month run, but my plan was to keep it up until he turned two. And sure, lately I have been thinking that maybe I would start trying to encourage the self-weaning a little earlier than that, but for him to do it so abruptly, after being such a, well, boob man for so long, was just strange and sad. I guess I didn't have time to prepare for the idea that I would never get to nurse him again.

Am I going to be this sad about never changing his diaper again when that happy day comes?

Bedtime Strike

2005-01-04T17:04:00.000-05:00

The Diva Toddler won’t go to sleep at night. Going to bed has never been his forte, but this is getting out of control. We used to think he had a pretty late bedtime at about 8:45 or 9:00. Lately we declare victory if he’s out by 10:00. For the most part, we’re looking at 11:00 or later. He just keeps getting out of bed and adorably shuffling into the living room where we are and saying he doesn't want to go to bed. Sometimes he is really trying to sleep, but after five or ten minutes, still gets up because he can't.

Our latest is “OK, you don’t have to go to sleep, you can just play quietly by yourself in your room.” That kind of works (if the goal is a minute to myself). But he really does stay up and play (occasionally hollering for us to come get a toy for him that is somehow out of his reach since he knows he’s not allowed out of his room). It doesn't seem to tire him out or bore him into sleep any faster than anything else.

It’s got nothing to do with not liking his bed. He does like it. He’s just genuinely not tired – or he's just excited that his M&D are home. I’ve thought we should give up his nap…but even though his naps are short -- only about an hour – he really can’t get through a day without it. (He gets up around 7:00 or 7:30). How much sleep are they supposed to be getting anyway? When do they give up the nap? And how do they give it up?

The upside is, of course, I get more time with him. And I'm not complaining about that. But this doesn’t feel right.

It's A Jungle Out There

2005-01-04T01:40:00.000-05:00

The Spacefamily has survived the first real Assault On Spaceboy.

We were at a very, very fun party on New Year's Day. Fifteen or so toddlers, one smallish condo, and a lot of chaos made for a very entertaining afternoon. We were especially pleased with how well Spaceboy did--he, who has tended to be a bit shy and fearful of large parties in the past, played right in there with the best of them. He worked the crowd, patting other toddlers, pushing a car in and out of crowds of grownups, asking for help with a shape sorter from a random parent. We were very excited to see Spaceboy turning into more of a butterfly.

Until...Spaceboy spotted a big exercise ball and ran over happily to pat it. Some other toddler decided that he would prefer to have it to himself. So he ran up to Spaceboy and slapped him right across the face. Hard enough that it produced a very loud slapping sound.

My kid has pushed another kid exactly once (at a Thomas table at Adventure City), and I was absolutely horrified and made a big point of apologizing to the other kid and other mom. The slapper's mom, however, simply picked up Slapper and said, "No slapping!" before she carried him off. Not one word to us, even as Spaceboy howled in hurt surprise. Not "I'm so sorry," or "Is cute and adorable Spaceboy ok?" Her total lack of surprise and ready response also suggested to me that Slapper is something of a repeat offender.

My question is: Am I wrong for thinking the other mom should have said or done something differently? This is so not the first time something like this has happened, by the way. I once had to stop another kid from literally trying to strangle Spaceboy, all while his mom looked on and said nothing. I guess I'm new to this playground stuff, but it seems to me that each parent should be closely supervising his or her own toddler and making sure that he or she doesn't hurt anyone else, at least at this age where they are all so unpredictable. And I don't think there's any need to make the kid apologize at an age where neither of them has any idea of what that means, but how can normal adults not feel weird just walking away from a big slap without feeling the need to at least acknowledge the crying slappee?

Anyway, Spaceboy survived, and so did we. It's not so long ago that I thought I would curl up and die if anyone so much as hurt Spaceboy's feelings a bit, so it's good to know that we can all recover from the heartbreak. It's enough to make you wish that there were more moms demanding that their kids make the right choice.

What Do I Do Now?

2005-01-03T15:39:00.000-05:00

The Diva Toddler is in first class imagination mode. It is such an amazing thing to watch. In the past three months or so we have gone from taking little blocks and pretending they are the members of the family, to acting out little everyday activities with those blocks (cooking, going to sleep, taking a walk with the stroller) to acting out larger scale scenes with stuffed animals. He then started referring to those animals as his friends and loves to tell us “what he and his friends did today,” relating simple but extensive made up stories about their activities (keyed off of his own experiences). His play with his character toys gets more complex every day, too – lately he will have two plots going at once and move back and forth between them. And where he had once exclusively demanded to be read to, he now will sometimes ask us to tell him a story. The story he wants to hear will concern the characters he knows, but he wants to hear about new adventures (heavily taxing my own imagination). And when we do tell such stories, he interrupts with his own two cents, just a little idea here or there about how he thinks the story might best develop.

In telling him stories and otherwise engaging in all this play, I am starting to think for the first time since he was tiny that I don’t really have any idea what I am doing. When they are tiny newborns, we rely on books and literature to tell us what to do and to give our instincts a reality check until we gain some confidence. (I could call it the new mother neurosis – but I don’t really think there is anything neurotic about acknowledging that you might not know very much about something you have never done before). Then we get the hang of it and, other than checking in with the books and literature and other Moms occasionally, we just intuit the way. After all, it’s just getting them to eat, to sleep, to laugh, to walk, jump, talk, run, sing etc…. Not that mothering is easy in practice at these stages – but the goals are pretty easy to identify and most of the time we can see without too much extrinsic help how to get from here to there.

Now it dawns on me that he’s gotten pretty complex underneath that simple exterior and his brain is working overtime. I am more than a little overwhelmed with the task of continuing to challenge him and help him learn and develop: Everything’s going so fast…what on earth is the next step supposed to be? How many possible next steps are there? Which directions should I focus on (and Oh my God! how many directions am I missing?).

I’m not freaking out that I am doing any damage or hindering his normal development in any way. He’s fine. But I not concerned with his being “fine” or “normal” or “baseline”. I am concerned that he become the best Diva Toddler that he can be, irrespective of how that may or may not match up with other toddlers his age (a surprising state of affairs, actually, considering how competitive and type A I am about myself). I am concerned with exposing him to as much as possible so that he has the opportunity to learn as much as might interest him, to experience as much as might engage him and to develop as much as his obvious curiosity, energy, and – yes - intensity can comfortably manage. I care both because I want him to have as rich an experience today as he possibly can and because I think that encouraging and fueling his exuberance for new experiences and ideas will somehow preserve that exuberance as he gets older.

Being surprised by your child is a wonderful, wonderful thing. But he surprises me so much, I’m afraid I am missing tons of opportunities. In any event, I’m out of my Mommy league. If anyone has any book recommendations about toddlers at this stage – I would be very interested to hear!

Choosy Mothers Choose Good Friends

2005-01-01T10:50:00.000-05:00

Felicity's New Year's Eve soiree was, unsurprisingly, a rousing success. The food was scrumptious, and both Mr. and Mrs. Metropolitan were delightful and gracious hosts. The Divas were, of course, excellent company. All of the children behaved beautifully, as is their wont. And Felicity made it all look easy. Thank you, Felicity!

And happy new year, everybody! Resolutions, anyone? I haven't finished my list yet, so I'm looking for inspiration. There are so many areas in which I could stand some improvement . . . . I'm generally in favor of relatively concrete, small-scale resolutions; none of this "find inner peace" stuff for me. The only one I'm sure of thus far is that I absolutely must stop swearing - it's an awful habit, and if I don't quit, the Toddler will sooner or later pick it up, probably at a maximally inconvenient time. At a preschool interview, for example.

Choosy Mothers Choose Takeout

2004-12-29T22:50:00.000-05:00

There are reasons why Urban Mommies do not prepare seven-course meals for their families with any degree of regularity.

On Friday, the Metropolitans are having two other families over for New Year's Eve dinner and ancillary festivities. So, since Tuesday afternoon, I have been menu-planning, shopping, and preparing whatever dishes can be prepared ahead of time so that Friday evening itself will unfold as seamlessly as is possible in a world where three couples and three toddlers are scampering about one medium-sized apartment. (Incidentally, the two other families in question are the Divas and the van Wainwrights, so this whole illusion of seamlessness has already been shot to hell for the purpose of entertaining you, our gentle readers.)

Tuesday night, after the Metropolitoddler went to bed, I made hors d'oeuvre #1. Tonight, I made hors d'oeuvre #2. I have a little bone to pick with hors d'oeuvre #2. The recipe, from a highly touted brand-new cookbook, claims that the entire shebang takes 40 minutes: 20 minutes of "active preparation" and 20 minutes of baking. Of the 20 minutes of active prep, 8 of them are supposed to be spent sauteing, leaving me with 12 minutes to chop up (and finely chop, no less) six different ingredients, mix them up with some other (blessedly unchopped) ingredients, and stuff the whole thing into individual mushroom caps.

This 12 minute project took an hour and a half. And I haven't even baked the little buggers yet -- that 20 minutes constitutes part of the seamless Friday evening experience. (Now that I think about it, hors d'oeuvre #1 took twice as long as the recipe indicated, too. Hmph.) Who has time for this on a regular basis??

None of this is to say that I haven't had a pleasant couple of evenings in the kitchen. I happen to enjoy cooking quite a bit. I'm not saying that I should start a new career as chef de cuisine in some four-star Manhattan restaurant or anything, but it's fun to try out new recipes and I find the kitchen a soothing place to spend a few hours now and then. I'm just saying, is all.

My mother, Mrs. Suburban, likes to give me grief every so often about how I have all this fantastic cooking paraphernalia that I got as bridal shower gifts but rarely use. These are some of the occasions during which I inform my mother that she's lost her mind. Come on -- what with the full-time job and the toddler chasing and the attempting to get a little exercise occasionally (and, admittedly, the somewhat excessive amount of TV I watch -- but I TiVo it all, so I watch it in an efficient and commercial-free manner!) and the occasionally trying to spend a little time with Mr. Metropolitan or some of my friends -- what with all that, when exactly am I supposed to find the time to whip up gourmet meals to delight my husband's palate several evenings a week? (In fairness to Mrs. Suburban, she doesn't actually expect me to cook up these fabulous meals for Mr. Metropolitan with any frequency. Except for holiday meals, I don't think she's cooked dinner more than ten times in the last five years. She just likes to tease me about all my cooking equipment. Of which there is quite a lot.)

My mother-in-law, Mrs. Midwest, has her head on straight concerning this topic. She got us a new Foreman Grill (with all the new bells and whistles!) for Chanukah to replace our old outmoded one. I can whip up a tasty dinner of grilled steak/chicken/fish, microwave-steamed asparagus/broccoli/squash, and a salad in ten minutes or less -- that's the everyday cooking of the Urban Mommy! (All ingredients delivered to my door by FreshDirect, naturally.)

Not to mention the genius of Manhattan takeout. We here in the Metropolitan household are devotees of at least 15 different restaurants that are more than happy to deliver dinner to our apartment in half an hour or less: Upscale Chinese, quick Chinese, really quick sushi, somewhat-less-quick-but-higher-quality sushi, non-sushi Japanese, Indian, Upscale Mexican, Burritos (3 different places), Steaks, Middle Eastern, Diner, Upscale Pizza, Quick Pizza, bagels, and a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Enough of this blogging nonsense. Who has time for it? I have 76 more hors d'oeuvres to prepare before Friday evening. Bon appetit!

Stiiiiiillllll Pregnant

2004-12-28T13:53:00.000-05:00

I figured someone might think my lack of posting was because I had the kid. Nope. I'm here. 11 days to the due date.

My various friends with due dates near mine, however, have all become parents in 2004. The friend due Jan 2 with kid #2 I always assumed would go before me, and she did. The friend due a week after me had her daughter on Christmas. And the sister of a friend who was due on the same day as me experienced some health problems and was induced early, and mother and daughter are doing fine. All three had girls, so maybe my son just has a thing for older women and wanted to make sure they arrived before he did....

So at this point, I'm feeling really large. Everyone at the office wants to know what I'm still doing here, and I keep asking where else I should be! I feel fine, I'm getting stuff done at the office, and I'll feel better if I wrap up lots of loose ends before this kid arrives. The only real issue is the inability to get close to my desk, which makes typing uncomfortable.

All is ready at home - the to-do lists are finished, the baby's room is ready for an occupant (except for the furniture), and we've packed our bags.

The best news of all is that the mad itching, which seems to have been a common pregnancy ailment called PUPPP (said as "Pupps") has almost completely cleared up. The belly is now simply dry again, and the arms are no longer ragingly red and painful. I'm back to simply moisturizing, and it isn't keeping me up at night. The last two nights, I've actually gotten some decent sleep. (Not uninterrupted, just decent.) Whew.

Wishing all of our readers (I know you're out there!) a very happy New Year!

Happy Holidays from the Urban Mommies!

2004-12-27T22:34:00.000-05:00

It probably would have been helpful to post holiday wishes sometime before the various winter holidays, but as a bunch of busy urban mommies, who has the time to think of these things and act on them in a timely fashion??

In any event, we wish all of our readers a most happy and fulfilling 2005.

Because I Said So

2004-12-21T01:42:00.000-05:00

Ah, Los Angeles. It never fails to bring the granola. In the mommy world, this means that you should keep quiet at playgroup rather than admit to things like giving your kid Tylenol for teething pain, or letting him watch a little Elmo and friends, or -- Gd forbid -- actually having had a birthing plan that involved the words "as many" and "drugs" and "as possible" in the same sentence.

One of my very favorite things about LA moms (who I love, by the way) is their need to say things in the most positive way possible. Even though I have the utmost repsect for Spaceboy and want to make him feel empowered and boost his self esteem and yada yada yada, I think he may hear a good old fashioned "Because I'm your mom, that's why," from time to time. I mean, sometimes your 17 month old really wants to take your credit card into the ball pit with him, and there's really just not that much to debate.

Today I met a very cool mom of a 23 month old boy and newborn baby girl at the playground. She was clearly on the same page as I am as far as playground etiquette goes (which is to say, parents have to watch their own kids and interfere if their kid is picking on a smaller kid), which I very much appreciate. What cracked me up, though, was her need to use PositiveMomSpeak to get her point across to her little guy. At first, when he was screeching about something, she told him to "Use [his] words." She then mentioned that he isn't actually talking yet per se, which made me think that the whole "use your words" thing might be a bit premature. One of the funniest things I've ever seen, though, was a few minutes later, when her kid was trying to push another kid off the slide. Instead of forcing her own views on him (as I might have done) by saying, "No, no, honey, we don't push" or similar, she went charging over, new baby in tow, frantically demanding that he "Make the right choice! Make the right choice!!!!!" Sadly, but not surprisingly, left to his own devices, Newspaceboyfriend made what turned out to be the wrong choice. And so home he went, with his cool and well meaning granola mom.

Pay Attention to Meeee!

2004-12-19T13:09:00.000-05:00

The vW Toddler is a very sociable creature. She adores her toddler friends, her grandparents, her nanny, and her cousins, and she seems to like her parents tolerably well too. She's especially excited when she gets to see her little friends; she is perfectly happy to abandon me or the Mr. in order to run around with one of her playmates. This is a wonderful thing, and I very much hope that my daughter retains this friendly quality throughout her childhood.

The only downside, as far as I can tell, is that she wants company pretty much all the time. She doesn’t really play by herself; she wants someone else, whether a child or a grownup, to interact with her. And this is fine, except when I’m alone with her and want to cook dinner or make a telephone call – my inattention, however temporary, triggers an endless round of MommyMommyMommyMommyMommyMOMMY!

I’m sure this is, at least in part, the result of the fact that on weekdays, her (excellent, kind, sweet) nanny’s only responsibility is to focus on her; and in the mornings and evenings and on the weekends, her Toddler-starved parents want nothing more than to spend time with her. If I didn’t work outside the home, I have no doubt that I would have taught her long ago to play independently a little bit more, if only so that I could read the paper, check my email, and have a peaceful cup of coffee.

I don’t think the solution is to cut off my nose to spite my face by ignoring her for chunks of time on the weekends when I would prefer to play with her, but I don’t want her to become totally dependent on others for entertainment. And maybe it’s just a matter of temperament or a phase, rather than a question of training; I know plenty of other kids of working mothers who are very attached to their nannies but who are happy to play alone with their legos or dolls for 30 minutes at a time.

There's a larger question, though, that occurs to me: at what point does the working parent's desire to spend time with, and on some level indulge, her child morph from caring into spoiling? The vW Toddler isn't a tantrum-thrower, at least not yet; at the moment she's generally a very sweet and obedient kid. But I am not sure how I will handle the twos if they turn terrible, because my reaction to tears is to soothe, placate, distract -- even though my pediatrician says that at this age, if the tears are not triggered by actual hurt you should really ignore them. I am definitely not a fan of the modern trend of hyperparenting, and I would never ever want to raise a spoiled kid, but I do think it's a little harder to set limits when all your time with your child is really precious to you.

Post Mortem

2004-12-17T23:22:00.000-05:00

A couple of months ago, I wrote my inaugural Urban Mommies post, in which I alluded to my dissatisfaction with my current employment situation.

Over the course of this year, it became clear to me that my particular foray into the world of balancing full-time working with full-time mommying wasn't working. Which was a bummer of a realization, since I had honestly believed it could work back in my naive days as a new mother returning to work from maternity leave.

It didn't work for a number of reasons, some of which are my employer's fault and some of which are not.

It didn't work because I joined a new business (at my employer's behest) partway through the year -- a group in which (1) I didn't really know anyone, (2) everyone worked very long hours and lots of weekends, and (3) we had clients whose needs often dictated the schedule. Of these three factors, #1 was the most critical to the ultimate outcome. For my type of "special" hours arrangement to be successful, my colleagues had to be comfortable with it. And for them to be comfortable with it, they had to understand that my early departures didn't make me an unmotivated slacker -- it made me someone who worked somewhat different hours than they did and in a different setting (my living room) during the evenings.

When I left for maternity leave, I left a group of people who knew me, knew my work, and knew that I would always get the work done. When I came back from leave and subsequently moved into a new business, I joined a group of people who didn't know me, didn't know my work, and didn't realize that a general lack of availability for 6:30 or 7 pm conference calls wasn't an ominous sign of slackerdom. That, combined with the fact that my new role was substantially different from my old role and required a fair amount of getting up to speed before I really felt comfortable with what I was doing, pretty much doomed me.

So what could I have done differently? I suppose I could have fought the move. I could have asked to stay where I was, to keep doing a job that I already knew how to do. But I don’t think that would have been the right decision, and I honestly don’t think it would have made a difference. The opportunity to join the new group was a good one – it was an excellent chance to learn a new skill set and to get involved in a high-growth/high-profitability area of the company. What’s more, even the people in my old group didn’t know me that well, because so many people had quit both shortly before and during my maternity leave. So the group I returned to was a dramatically different one, and one in which people might have had the same complaint about my schedule. On the margins, they might have cut me a little more slack, but it wasn’t like I would have been working with people who’d known me for years and would give me the benefit of the doubt.

Alternatively, I could have made the decision to increase my face time for the first few months until I was so good at my new job that I could then reinstitute my leave-a-bit-early-hang-out-with-kid-until-bedtime-then-continue-working-from-home policy. This could have worked, but only under one condition. I’ll admit that I was not – and am not – willing to have my daughter’s weekday parental contact consist solely of the hour or so in the morning between when she gets up and her nanny arrives. So for me to have worked later at night, Mr. Metropolitan would’ve had to get home by 6:30 or so most nights to hang out with the Metropolitoddler until her bedtime.

But as I indicated in another post about a month ago, my husband’s work schedule has been insane for – well, a long time. And truthfully, it wouldn’t have been any fairer to him to only be able to work from 9-6 at a job that demands long hours, late nights, and lots of weekend time than it was for me to work from 9-5:30 every day while he was traveling. I know that if he’d had the choice, Mr. Metropolitan would have been more than willing to do it for a few months to make my job work out, but we really didn’t have any choice.

So the only way to prove my mettle to my new colleagues would have been to increase my nanny’s hours significantly so that both my husband and I could stay at work until later at night. Not acceptable. At no point during this entire work debacle have I ever once questioned my conviction that as a general matter, my daughter should see at least one parent in the morning and at least one parent during the evening.

Could I have worked even harder during the hours I was at work to transform myself into a Tasmanian Devil of efficiency – so impressively intense and efficient in the workplace that my absence for a couple of hours would have never have been questioned? This is a tough one. The answer is maybe. I will confess that I have never been the kind of person who puts her nose to the grindstone when she gets to work and doesn’t remove it until it’s time to go home. I am, however, the kind of person who always gets her work done correctly and on time. When mania is required to meet a goal, I can marshal an impressive amount of it, but when a more casual attitude will get the work done in a timely fashion, I am more than happy to get a cup of coffee or kibbitz at the proverbial water cooler or chitchat over email. That’s just me, and there’s probably nothing much to be done about it.

But here’s an interesting fact. Not everyone I work with has issues with my schedule. The people who don’t have a problem with it generally fall into two categories: (1) people who worked with me before my maternity leave (a dwindling bunch, to be sure) and (2) women. What do you make of that? It’s interesting, is it not, that women – married or single, mommies or not – were totally cool with the fact that if you want to have an evening call with me, it has to be after 8 pm.

And this is the part that in some ways bothers me most, because I can’t figure out a way in which it could have been avoided. The ultimate problems I have encountered stem from a workplace culture in which one’s heart and soul are supposed to belong to The Job 24/7. That culture came into existence at a time when men worked and women stayed home with the kids. And it’s not limited to my employer – it applies to most high-powered jobs with most high-powered companies and firms.

But that culture is not compatible with a world in which women work at jobs that are equally as high-octane as those of their husbands. The solution should not have to be that one or both parents must exit the race. The solution should be that everyone recognizes the value of spending a couple hours with their kids and that everyone who wants to can take the time to do that and that everyone should be cool with that, recognizing that the work will get done two hours later than it otherwise would have but it will still get done. Because that’s a culture that makes sense. Women – not all women, but a lot of women – seem to understand that. Men – not all men, but a lot of men – do not.

I can assess my particular situation with a fair amount of detachment these days, having had a few months to make my peace with it. But the broader issue continues to trouble me, because I’m not convinced that I’ll be able to overcome it even in a new workplace, even with Mr. Metropolitan picking up evenings for me until I’m settled in, even in a smaller environment where everyone has vowed that they understand the constraints of my schedule and that they’re totally fine with it. I’m just not sure that I won’t be writing another one of these posts in another year. I do, however, plan to use whatever lessons I've learned from this whole experience to try my best to make the balancing act work.

TMI - Sorry

2004-12-16T10:53:00.000-05:00

Is there any remedy for ragingly itchy stretch marks? I don't care if the product minimizes their appearance, I just care that it will stop me from waking up several times a night due to having scratched my belly bloody. Currently I am Lubriderming 8-10 times a day, which has a temporary soothing effect, but no lasting one. Cocoa butter made it worse, and I'm not permitted to use hydrocortisone, as the steroids in it can apparently thin out my skin, making the problem worse.

Unfortunately, this problem seems to be spreading - my skin is drier (and thus painfully itchier) than it's ever been, despite regular moisturizing, sleeping with a humidifier, and drinking more water than I ever have. And I'm developing a weird rash on my inner forearms - at least I'm allowed to put hydrocortizone on that, which seems to be helping.

Any help would be appreciated. Sorry for having grossed you out, if I have. But I'm losing my mind here. This has been a remarkably easy pregnancy, but the itching is making me absolutely crazy.

All Snot, All the Time

2004-12-14T13:09:00.000-05:00

I read somewhere at one point that the average baby gets eight colds before he or she turns two. My kid hit eight colds somewhere around the one year mark, and the snot just keeps on coming.

For the most part, it seems to bother me more than it does her. I just don't love the notion that snot is dripping all over her toys, clothes, furniture, and family. Call me crazy, but . . . ! I quiver in my boots to think of all the additional snot that I'll get to experience when/if the metropolitoddler heads off to preschool next year.

Other than purelling every square inch of my daughter's body every ten minutes or putting her into a bubble and never letting her encounter another human being, is there anything to be done to prevent some of these colds?

M.Y.O.B.

2004-12-12T23:17:00.000-05:00

What is it with people thinking they can ask you anything they want, no matter how personal or how rude, related to your kids?

I thought I'd had all the offensive questions I was going to get when I finished being pregnant and hearing some variation of,"You're huge! Are you sure it's not twins??" 50 times a week. But in the past few months, I've gotten a question that is much worse, and, unlike the previous question, can't be answered with something of the "...but at least I'm pregnant!" variety. The question du jour is: "Is he yours?" or, even more heartwarming, the question we had yesterday, "He's not yours, right?"

Isaac Spaceman, my dear husband, is, despite his very Jewish name, not Jewish at all, but Asian. Thus, Spaceboy is also Asian (1/4, actually), so he tends not to look much like me (which does not stop second year law students who come into my office for interviews from exclaiming over how much the baby in the pictures looks just like me). So, whatever. He doesn't look like me. Does every Moe, Larry and Curly on the playground really need to ask me about it?

And what is the proper answer to that question? If he were adopted, would that make him not mine? How rude is that? And what does that say to the kid who is the subject of all this inquiry?

It's not just me, either. Spacefriend has twins and has complained about a whole host of stupid questions, ranging from "Did you use fertility drugs?" to "Did they have to spend time in the NICU?" I mean, if they did or the babies did, is this really something Spacefriend is going to want to discuss with some random woman in line at Baby Gap?

Where is Dave Berg to write me a list of Snappy Answers when I really need him?

Bread And Bananas

2004-12-10T15:37:00.000-05:00

There are two things that Spaceboy eats: bread and bananas. The bread takes on several different forms, including and limited to waffles, french toast, pancakes, and soft pretzels (plus actual bread). Spaceboy also LOVES bananas. That is all that Spaceboy eats, other than the occasional veggie corndog. Interestingly, Spaceboy does not eat banana bread.

As you can imagine, this is something of a problem for the Urban Mommy who wants her son to have a nice and healthy diet, especially the Urban Mommy who really likes to cook and would love to make her boy a meal of his favorite things. With a little more effort than dipping the bread in eggs and then frying it.

The list of foods that Spaceboy has been offered and as rejected is pretty long. Just imagine any food you could possibly give a toddler, and you have an idea of what we've tried. It's not that he tries things and doesn't like them; it's that he just won't put them in his mouth. Or, like today with a cupcake, I'll smoosh a little in there in the hopes that he'll finally taste a cupcake and decide it's delicious. No such luck. If it isn't bread, Spaceboy isn't interested. So when all the other kids enjoyed their cupcakes at Mommy and Me today, Spaceboy scored an extra piece of challah.

In case you're wondering, it's not a presentation issue. We've tried giving him bbq sauce, ranch dressing, and ketchup dip dip to play with, drowning it in cheese, giving it to him straight, making a big deal out of how fun it is to try new foods, making no deal out of it at all, showing him how much Mommy and Daddy like it, letting him feed it to Mommy and Daddy, mixing it in with food he will eat, keeping it separate, sending it in on an airplane, a choo choo train, a steamboat...nothing. Not even french fries, people. Not even ice cream.

The doctor assures me it's no cause for concern. The other moms nod knowingly and say, "It's a phase." But is it really a phase if it's lasted for 7 months? Or am I destined to go around saying, "You know, you're going to turn into a piece of bread if you keep this up!" the way Spacebubbie did?

If anyone has any other ideas, I'd love to hear them. In the meantime, I'll be looking for recipies to hide spinach inside a pancake. Oh, and in case you're wondering, no, he did not eat any potato pancakes for Hanukkah. He just knows.

Prepping for Post-Partum Paranoia

2004-12-08T10:46:00.000-05:00

OK, OK, so I'm a professional worrier. Quite good at it, too. Amusingly enough, one of my greatest fears is that having a kid will push me entirely over the edge into outright paranoia - I'm clearly going to be one of those parents who has the pediatrician on speed dial on every phone I have, and uses it until told that the doctor wants to refer me to a new peditrician so she can get some rest. Thank goodness for the tempering influence of Mr. Banana, or I'm pretty sure I'd get carted off to the loony bin pretty quick.

In any case, yesterday I got a little practice in this paranoia business. On Monday night, I noticed that Baby Banana wasn't moving around like he usually does. Generally, dinner makes him very active, and Monday night, nothing. So I had some dessert, which usually makes him move around enough to keep me awake, and was rewarded with only a few small movements. Those reassured me that it was likely temporary, and I figured I'd reassess in the morning. When breakfast yielded no movements, I called my doc. I was fully expecting to hear that this happens occasionally, and that I should monitor the movements all day and call the next day if no improvement. Instead, I got told to come straight to Labor and Delivery. Let's just say I did not enjoy the drive to the hospital.

Long story short, all is well. Baby Banana's heart beat is strong, he is moving up a storm, and I'm even having contractions. I just couldn't feel any of it. There seems to be no particular explanation, except that he likely is running out of room in there and the movements will now feel less like kicks and more like rolls. Sure enough, last night after dinner he rolled around a bunch, and this morning (as I type) he's doing it again. Whole lot of hoo-ha over nothing.

I do have to say that as panic situations go, this was one of the better ones I've had. Everything turned out fine and I got to listen to Baby Banana's heartbeat for over an hour while the monitored us. There are worse ways to pass the time. And I would much rather that I'm miserable from being panicky while he's fine than that I'm fine and he's not.

I suppose I've now learned that I can stay relatively calm in a perceived crisis regarding my baby, and was pleased to find that no one at triage pooh-poohed me for my nervousness. So maybe I'll get through the first few months of this kid's life without calling the pediatrician every twenty minutes.

Small Talk

2004-12-05T22:53:00.000-05:00

I've noticed since I've been back from maternity leave (about a year now) that whenever I run into someone in the office who I haven't seen for a while, they always ask how my daughter's doing. Not "so, you busy these days?" or "what have you been working on?", which I seem to recall were the types of questions I was asked back before I was pregnant. (When I was visibly pregnant, of course everyone asked me how I was feeling/doing, but that's par for the course when you've got a beach ball sticking out of your tummy, n'est ce pas?)

I'm obviously happy to talk about the Metropolitoddler as a general matter of public policy, but I do wonder whether I've been pigeonholed as The Mommy rather than as The Colleague.

I can't imagine that guys are asked about their kids all the time the way I'm asked about mine. I don't ask guys -- or women -- in the office how their kids are doing, with the exception of a couple of people who had or whose wives had babies right around the same time I did. I find it a little weird that people who I wouldn't characterize as anything more than acquaintances go right to the personal question rather than sticking with more work-specific chitchat.

Has anyone else noticed anything like this? Do all women find themselves being asked about their children while the men are greeted with a more professional array of small talk options --or am I the sole Mama Madonna of Wall Street? Or does everyone get asked about their kids as a friendly gesture and I'm just being hypersensitive given my level of, well, hypersensitivity where my workplace is concerned?

(It bothers me to a certain extent that I, who have never ever ever been concerned with gender issues in the workplace, am now turning into the type of person I formerly rolled my eyes at. But that's a topic for another post.)

Can You Tell Me How to Get . . .

2004-12-02T21:30:00.000-05:00

. . . how to get to Sesame Street?

I wish to take a moment to sing the praises of Sesame Street, which both the Toddler and I adore. It's the one kids' show I really like, because it's sweet without being saccharine. Oobi and the Wiggles both weird me out (albeit for different reasons), and I can't abide Barney. So Sesame (or, as the Toddler calls it, "Sess!") it is.

And there's something nice about sharing something with your child that you enjoyed when you were her age; they even re-use some of the old bits, so every now and then I can turn to the Toddler and say, "The last time I saw this I was no bigger than you are!"

The only problem is that the songs are a little too catchy; if the Toddler watches the 7 am show while I'm getting ready for work, I'm liable to get one of the tunes stuck in my head the whole day.

I love trash . . .

Drowning in Subscription Cards

2004-12-02T15:10:00.000-05:00

Anyone want to suggest a good parenting magazine I should subscribe to? There's a dozen or more at my doc's office and I can't tell which one will be helpful to me once I actually have this kid... Or do I not need/want this at all?

I Have a Headache...

2004-12-02T11:25:00.000-05:00

I have lately been suffering from what are apparently migraine headaches. At first I thought they were sinus infections. Then, when they got worse, I thought, sinus infections gone awry. Then, when I was occasionally incapacitated by them, I thought maybe sinus infections – maybe brain tumor. Then, virtually positive that I was the victim of a brain tumor, I put off going to a doctor for months despite acute suffering because frankly, I didn’t want to hear it from an expert. I am pleased to report that I finally went to a doctor (and had the outstanding input by e-mail from Felicity’s Dad, Dr. Metropolitan) and we are pretty sure it’s not a brain tumor.

Leave it to me to psych myself out enough about a life threatening condition to be delighted to hear that all I have are chronic migraines. The doctor says it’s possibly caused by a food allergy (seems very unlikely to me, but I’m the one who thought it was a brain tumor) so we’re looking into that before doing anything further. There are a few other possibilities to test for and if we can’t figure it out, I’m off to a neurologist.

Another common cause, I was told, is stress – but I poo-pooed this possibility because I do not have a stressful life. Unless I do have great stress that I am suppressing and it is thus manifesting itself physically. But that doesn’t sound like me; I’m not the stiff upper lip type. At all. Or at least I never was when I was in a position to indulge my every mood and engage in obsessive self-analysis. This was before I had to go right from professional demeanor at work, to cheerful, loving, in control Mommy, to spending a few precious late night moments with my husband (that I make it a point of using wisely and not complaining, whining or otherwise exploring negative forces in my life). You see where I’m going with this.

For the moment, I’ll take some ibuprofen and wait to see the food allergy test results. I do eat a lot of almonds and other nuts. And, to be honest, despite what the doctors say, I haven't really really ruled out a brain tumor.

Doctor, Doctor

2004-11-30T11:27:00.000-05:00

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

2004-11-29T12:31:00.000-05:00

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.

Other Stuff I'm Thinking About...

2004-11-29T10:56:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up very nervous. We have active applications at six nursery schools. They tell you that you are supposed to apply to at least eight. Of those six, at least one sucks so bad that I would probably home school the Toddler before sending him there. That’s leaves five. Two more I haven’t really seen in too much depth, but for various reasons, including extreme elitism, total lack of connections or non-existent rapport with school and administration, I feel as though I have a next to nil chance of getting in. Down to three. Of those three, I love one which is an incredible long shot, and like very well the other two which are very competitive at best (although one of those two was the first one I saw and I don’t know what I will really think when I go back again after having seen several others). These are not good odds.

And by the way, what is it about being home at night and trying (unsuccessfully) to fall asleep that makes me think and worry about all the unfinished, undone, overdue things I have going on at work? And what is it about walking into this office that makes me totally forget what they are, and compels me to chat with colleagues, surf the net, e-mail my friends and write posts about how I really should be working?

What Do You Folks Think?

2004-11-29T10:27:00.000-05:00

I just had the most impassioned, interesting water cooler conversation with both men and women alike (a married man, a gay man, a single woman and me). May I solicit opinions?

-What do you think about a woman starting a new job pregnant?