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?

Well, Duh . . .

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

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.

Reunited and It Feels So . . . TBD

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!

Getting Acclimated

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.

My Incredible Shrinking World

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.

All We Need Is Just a Little Impatience

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.