Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump Pump Your Milk

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.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

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.

Gender Equality My Ass

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?)

Pregnancy Parking

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

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

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

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.

Some Songs are Too Damned Catchy

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

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

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

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

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.

Cool Non-Kid-Related Gadget

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.

Cookies are Yummy!

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

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

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.

A Love Letter to Flea

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 . . .

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?

My Mommy Takes the Morning Train

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.

Economics 101

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?

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

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

Today's defenestration candidate: my mother.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kid Be Nimble Kid Be Quick

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

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

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

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

Graco Stroller Product Recall

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

Brought To You By The Good Folks at Medela

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a racket....

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!

The League of Mommies

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 . . .

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

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?

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

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

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.

Lights, Camera, Grandparents

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?