Lullabies

I don't know any children's songs.  The three that I do know, I learned from V's baby music class.  They are three lines long and involve spiders and other vermin.  There is also one about a bus.

Right now, V's go-to lullabies are Dreams on Fire, that song from Slumdog Millionaire, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow.  SOtR was the audition song for the 8th grade show choir in middle school.  Every girl in school was in chorus, and every girl wanted to be in show choir.  It was the Glee of the 1990s.  When I was in 7th grade, they sang and danced to Good Vibrations.  OMG SO COOL.  But Ms. D only let 12 or so girls in there every year, and of course it was the group of popular girls (i.e., not I because I thought it was ok to wear a car windshield on my face as glasses).

And there was an audition.  One song you had to sing in front of Ms. D, and another song that you had to dance to with two girls already in show choir.  I practiced every day.  I was going to make it.
That day came.  I stood in front of Ms. D and the two show choir girls, and I opened my mouth, and my heart seized.  I was having a panic attack.  But I couldn't not sing.  So I tried to sing anyway, and it sounded like someone had cut my vocal cords, like I was freaking Don Corleone.  Ms. D was accompanying me on the piano, and she had this look of OMFG on her face and the two show choir girls were looking at me like I had pooped myself.  I don't even remember the dance part, but I could have done back to back handsprings and levitated and I still wouldn't have made it in.

So when I sing SOtR to V, I make it a point to SING it.  Like I'm in show choir--loud and with fake vibrato.  Finally, a captive audience!  I know lullabies are supposed to be soft and soothing but I am a performer damn it, and V no longer gets startled. 

SOtR doesn't always work to soothe her to sleep, such as last night when she woke up after I realized that the heat in her room was on too high and dashed in like a monkey banging two cymbals.  She was so.freaking.pissed.off at me, and screaming her adorable little lungs out.  I tried the standards, and then had to pull out a classic and one of my all time favorites -- All I Want to Do is Make Love To You (All Night Long) by Heart.  I remember seeing the music video for this song the first time when I was in middle school at my BFF's house, and thinking holy guacamole, are they allowed to sing that?  YES.

It was a rainy night, when he came into sight
Standing by the road, no umbrella, no coat
So I pulled up alongside and I offered him a ride
He accepted with a smile, so we drove for a while

I didn't ask him his name, this lonely boy in the rain
Fate tell me it's right, is this love at first sight
Please don't make it wrong, just stay for the night
All I wanna do is make love to you
Say you will, you want me too
All I wanna do is make love to you
I've got lovin' arms to hold on to

So we found this hotel, it was a place I knew well
We made magic that night. Oh, he did everything right
He brought the woman out of me, so many times, easily
And in the morning when he woke all I left him was a note

I told him I am the flower, you are the seed
We walked in the garden, we planted a tree
Don't try to find me, please don't you dare
Just live in my memory, you'll always be there

All I wanna do is make love to you
One night of love was all we knew
All wanna do is make love to you
I've got lovin' arms to hold on to

Oh, oooh, we made love
Love like strangers
All night long
We made love

Then it happened one day, we came round the same way
You can imagine his surprise when he saw his own eyes
[here I look deep into Violet's eyes]
I said please, please understand
I'm in love with another man
And what he couldn't give me
Was the one little thing that you can

All I wanna do is make love to you
One night of love was all we knew
All I want to do is make love to you
Come on, say you will, you want me too

All I wanna do is make love to you
One night of love was all we knew
All I want to do is make love to you
Say you will, you want me too

All night long ...

And it worked.  She shut up and went to sleep. 

Unconditional love

The other day, Violet pulled open my bathrobe, saw my sad boob and said "Ohhhh!" with delight and amazement. That is unconditional love right there. I love this little hell child.

I have a few hang-ups, one of which are my boobs (should that be two of which?). Obviously, since they have been mentioned in 89.6 percent of my blog posts. I think girls understand. Boys, imagine that your wonderfully large, tree trunk of a penis shriveled up one day, to become a bent twig. You.Would.Freak.Out. And you would think about your penis a lot. "Why did it shrivel? If I eat more, will it grow again? Or will my body just get fat, making my penis look even smaller?"

I know I have mentioned "penis" in 67 percent of my blog posts, but I have no particular issue with penii. I think evolutionarily speaking, the penis should have developed into a less fragile and less swingy thing, and it should really be contained inside the body or an orifice for better protection (such as our internal organs, our eyeballs, eardrums, etc.) but that's it. I swear, I don't actually think about penii ever, unless I am blogging. That is the only time it springs to mind. Blogging is making me a pervert.

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Location:Your butthole

Mom Friends II

I decided that I have to make more of an effort to make mom friends.  They were not going to come up to me, so I would initiate.

OK!  I told this dad who has this tiny little girl, "her feet are so cute!".  The girl is 15 months or a little older, but she is very petite and has feet the size of a 6 month old.  She basically looks like a walking 6 month old.  The dad said, "yeah, thanks!" and we went onto have a conversation about baby shoes, how expensive they are, and how there must be a black market for used baby shoes that we have been excluded from (his idea, not mine).  I gave myself a pat on the back and two gold stars.

But it ended there.  He and his impossibly tiny daughter left the sandbox and went to laugh casually with the other adults ("ha-ha-ha! Oh Roger, you are so funny"), while I sat with my outcast, sand-throwing daughter.

What went wrong?

Maybe I weirded them out by staring too much.  Would you be creeped out by the sight of this young woman, intently focused on you, day after day?

I was going for friendly.  "Come talk to me.  Come on.  I'm not a psycho killer.  We can share some of my daughter's snacks.  She's too little to fight us.  Come over here."  No?

Maybe they can sense that I am being fake.  Maybe I should have said, "Hey, have you asked a pediatrician why your daughter's feet are small?  Are you sure that is not a medical problem?  There is a reason why there is no black market for used baby shoes.  Have you seen used baby shoes?  They look like a dog chewed on them and got shoved up someone's butt."  Then we could have become best friends forever.  Me + Roger 4eva.

I want to grow boobies

I was getting dressed and she pretty clearly said, "Mommy, I want to wear a sports bra too."

I am Asian, so I was flat until I began taking the pill in college.

Tangent: whenever my friends started taking the pill, their boobs exploded. I haven't googled this, but I'm sure that it's the extra estrogen, tiny knives or whatever is in the pill that makes this happen. I am surprised that that is not listed as one of the side effects: "Caution. Taking this medication may increase your breast size by a cup or more. On the other hand, you will become very popular with the boys, and t-shirts will look hot on you."

I gained weight (double digits) at work because it was hard to cry if I was chewing. Then I had a baby and for 4 months I looked like a really fat Playboy model. And then my boobs got depressed, and they remain so to this present day. Taking the pill now does nothing, because my body is old. They still look like little frowny faces.

Anyhoo, I remember insisting to my mom when I was 11 or 12 ish that I HAD to get a training bra. My friends were white, and they all had things to put in their training bras. So we went to some store, and I picked mine out. It looked like a bra, but it was thinner than underwear, and the cups were flat triangles. Perfect!

It's very unfair to have to wear the mark of your puberty on your chest, so that every boy in your grade can see for himself if you are developing. Thanks, God, for that. In 4th grade, I once decided to feel my chest from over my t-shirt to see if I could feel any bumps. Unfortunately the whim struck me in the middle of class, and Joel R. with the blood clot in his eye saw me and sang "you were feeling yourself up!" while pointing every fucking time he saw me, and each time I had to lie and yell back, "no I wasn't!".

"you were feeling yourself up!"
"no I wasn't!"
"you were feeling yourself up!"
"no I wasn't!"
"you were feeling yourself up!"
"no I wasn't!"

All 4th graders know that silence is tacit agreement, so I had to respond every single time. Dick.

It would be different if boys also had to wear their parts on their chest. Then the girls could compare whose nads are bigger. And the girls would whisper about the best way to undo a penis cup with one hand, stare at the boys' penis cups and totally ignore their faces and hoot while outlining the shape of a large penis with their hands as the boys scurried away. And then the same man who invented the booby jail would have invented man-bras for men that would go on their penii. And then people in the 50s would have invented penis cup shapes that bore no resemblance to their body parts, like square cups, but were considered more visually appealing. And then people in the 80s would catch onto the fact that a lot of men were stuffing their cups with tissues and socks, and they would have invented padded and push-up penis cups, to enhance men's manhoods. And then people would come up penis cups that swooped lower, to show more penis, and then make cut outs in the fabric, which made no functional sense but was supposed to be alluring because you could see more penis.

Then I could tell Joel R. that his nads were so, so small, and life would be fair.



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Beds are for weenies

Lately I have not been able to get to sleep at night. Maybe it's because I want to watch three episodes of the Sopranos back to back but I don't sleep until past 1 or 2 am and have to get up at 7. 6 hours is just not doing it for me anymore.

I was at my parents' house today and I was feeling a little tired. I kneeled down in front of an ottoman in the living room and laid my torso and head on it.

I woke up an hour later with my arms and legs hanging off the ottoman and my face in a pool of drool, and my dad in the room watching tv.  Thanks, dad.  Why would I want someone to wake me up and lead me to a bed or sofa, when I can rest on this tiny, luxurious ottoman?

 

The demise of print

Newsweek magazine is ending their print publication and going completely online.

This was the one news source that I read regularly in high school, because my mom said I had to if I wanted to go to an Ivy League college. It was pretty good and I liked the pictures.

Recently I picked up an issue that was sitting on my parents' kitchen table, and the thing had shrunken to the size of a pamphlet. It was like meeting Ryan Gosling (who is medium-hot) and he opened up his pants to show you his small, flaccid penis. It was that sad.

I know some people have issues with newspapers and magazines going online, but have you tried to read the print edition of the NY Times? I would only buy it if it came with a free arm. Sorry but I don't want to carry 10 lbs of recycling, most of which I am not planning to read anyway.

Going online is the way to go. It's a more efficient and less costly way of distributing content. People can "share" and "like" things. Your fingers are not stained black and you will never have a "eat Cheetos or read the paper" dilemma again.

So, in conclusion, putting your content online avoids the problem of small, flaccid penis. I think I summarized that right.

** Edited to add a picture, because pictures make everything better:

                             "Please, honey, it can get this big when I want it to."

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Freshness

There are many perqs to being a stay at home mom (although not as many as you think). One of the biggest is being able to spend a significant part of the day without any pants on. In fact I am not wearing any pants right now. It feels fantastic and I encourage everyone to drop their pants at some point during the day. (Note: you probably don't want to do this if you are cooking or standing in front of a window. Unless you are an advanced no-pants-wearer like me.)


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Internet search history

Have you ever looked at your internet search history? Whoever you are, you end up looking stupid or perverted or both. Here are some of my recent searches (I'm not going to list all of them because my searches on how often the average person farts and whether a person can fart too much is private). I am more stupid than perv:


"tiny red bumps on baby armpit" (question--does anyone know what this might be? internet was unhelpful in this regard)

"not getting any interviews" (also, I'm looking for a job)

"what is complex litigation" (if I have to ask this question, maybe this is why I'm not getting any interviews)

"how to replace batteries in sleep sheep"

"can't remove battery cover from sleep sheep" (both of our sleep sheeps are totally effed. sorry V)

"play bloop sound"

"what are binders on women"

"how much should a baby eat" (you would hope that I would know this by now)

"joseph gordon-levitt"

"alex trebek life insurance"

Every time I see an older dog

I think about how sad its owner will be when the dog dies. I can't help it. I saw a Jindo at the park, and the owner said he was 10 years old. And I just smiled but it was like the dog and I looked at each other and we both knew that he was going to die soon, but the owner had no idea and when it happened it would hit him like a brick.

After Nikklibikkly died, I was so very sad. I realized that dogs have a pretty short life, compared to, you know, humans. She died at 10 years, and since the way you feel at 20 is pretty much the same as you feel at 30, it felt like her life passed in an instant. But at least I was already an adult. If you get a dog as a 5 year old, the dog will die before the kid goes to college. Poor kid. Better loved than lost or whatever that saying is, by Shakespeare or maybe it's Hallmark, but if I ever got another dog I think I would just look at her face everyday and think "one more day closer to death".

Yes, this is morbid. Time to read Abe Lincoln, Vampire Slayer and go to sleep.


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Mom Friends

I was really psyched to finally be done with school, if only because it meant that I didn't have to be worried about finding friends, wondering if I had any friends, who I was going to eat lunch with ACK!

I was never good at making friends. I was always very shy. Nowadays, it comes off as me just being a bitch, but I really had no other desire than to disappear when I was in a room full of people when I was little. I never had some huge traumatic event where some girl screamed NO I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND at me. I was just that way.

I can't remember an instance in which I went out and made a friend. Mostly people came and made friends with me. This happened in second grade, when I moved to a new school when three girls came to dance in front of me so that I wouldn't cry, in ninth grade, when two gangsta bitch looking girls came up to me and asked me if I wanted to be gangsta bitch looking too, in tenth grade when my parents abruptly put me in a new school because of said gangsta bitches and people were enthralled by my pants which were the ones my dad used to wear in the 70s, and in college when I reunited with my debaucherous friends from the previous summer.

I realized today that the friend-making is not over. At the playground, there are always little groups of women, and a few men. Some are nannies, and some are parents. They chat together and laugh and compliment each other on their children. I must have missed the orientation. I can't figure out if they were friends and that is why they came to the playground together, or if they met on the playground and are now friends. I have conversed briefly with a few parents ("I'm sorry that my daughter threw sand in your kid's eye") but nothing consistent. I am starting to get that I-might-have-to-eat-lunch-by-myself feeling. I may have to break out my dad's pants again.

Unibrow

I haven't posted in forever, but I was so PO'ed today I have to get it out.

There are a number of little playgrounds in Riverside Park, called "tot lots". We go to one on 110th. Little kids run about, play in the sand box, pick their nose, whatever. V has a little shopping cart that she pushes around sometimes.




When she goes in the sand box, other tiny humans commandeer it and totter around the playground. That is fine with me--we just take it back when we have to go home.

Today, a little girl was zooming around with it. I see her opening the gate to the playground and exiting, and her dad following behind to bring her back inside. I turn back to V and watch her pour sand on her own head like a little genius, and then look back to the cart, and I don't see it.

I crane my head and I see the little girl, pushing it outside of the playground along the sidewalk, where people walk and bikers bike. It also leads out onto the streets. Her dad is following her. Ok... I wait for them to bring the cart back.

They don't. They just keep walking. They get 4 blocks or so away, and I am starting to wonder if fat unibrow girl and her crappy dad are just going home with my fucking cart. I can barely see them, so I dragged V out of the sandbox, hoisted her under my arm, and started walking towards them. When we got 10 feet away, they turned around and started back towards me. I went up the dad and said in my best bitchy voice:

"That's our cart."

He said, "Oh we're just bringing it back.'

I said, "Please don't take it out of the playground."

He said, "Oh of course!"

I said, "Well if that is so obvious, why the fuck are you out here outside of the playground?" Well I didn't say it, but I thought it really loud, and pivoted on my heel and told Violet loudly that they were "so rude!"

On our way home I clicked some of the buttons on the cart and all I got back was a hacky death rattle. Unibrow had dumped sand into the crevices in the cart, disabling its delightful melody functions. Hey Unibrow! Does this cart look like a sandbox to you, stupid?

Now I'm going to go try to fix the damn cart, which I will no longer be bringing to the playground for others to play with. See how some dumb, fat kids ruin things for everyone?

Also, Crappy Dad, your daughter was walking around the park with no shoes or socks on. It was 50 degrees and this is New York City, ok? She could have stepped on a condom or dog shit.

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WTF

Today in baby music class, which is held outside in Central Park during the summer, a boy picked up a broken piece of glass and chucked it at me, flying by V's giant noggin and hitting me in the arm. It cut me a little and bounced off.

I picked it up and saw it was a piece of a broken beer bottle. The boy smiled at me and ran off. The nanny rushed over and and apologized. I said, "he picked up this piece of glass." and she said, "yeah from over there."

Dear nanny: I meant for you to instruct the boy not to pick up glass, not to tell me where it's from.

Dear boy: fuck you. You little shit.


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Boobs

I wasn't really able to breastfeed V. For reasons that are unknown to me, a woman's milk does not "come in" and populate her breasteses until day 3 or 4 or perhaps even more days after birth. Which really sucks for the hungry baby, who is sucking the shit out of an empty balloon.

My milk did not come in until day 5 if you count the day on which V was born. I woke up one day and I had BREASTS. Not breasts. BREASTS. By that time, V had already lost over 10% of her weight, coming in just above 5 lbs, and her pediatrician said formula was a must. I tried breastfeeding until V was 6 months old, but if you supplement with formula in significant amounts as I had to, it's a losing game. Your body will make as much milk as the baby takes, and so if the baby is not breastfeeding exclusively, your supply drops. By the end, I was pumping for 2 hours to produce 3 ounces of milk, when she was ingesting 24 ounces, sometimes more, of formula a day.

A lot of kids who are breastfed really like boobs. Because it's a source of food, and comfort. They pretend to breastfeed their dollies, and grab at their mommies' boobs when they are hungry.

I didn't think V would be in that camp since it's been a good 5 months since she has really seen my boobs, since I usually remain clothed around her. But as of a couple weeks ago, she has decided she wants to see them. All. The. Time. She is constantly peering down the neck of my shirt. I feel like I'm in high school again. If she can't see, she starts tugging. If I'm wearing a tank top, she can pull my shirt down, and watch out if I'm wearing a bra, because she will start wailing on that shit.

The other morning she woke up way before I was ready to, so I got her, plopped her in my bed, grabbed her foot and fell asleep. I woke up because she had pulled my shirt all the way down to my stomach, and was pinching my boobs. Good morning, weirdo.

It was funny until she tried to do it at the park yesterday in front of a guy parent. It's hard to keep smiling and look nonchalant as you are wrestling the front of your shirt away from the iron grasp of a little chub.

Mock turtlenecks from now on.

Sleep

This morning, V woke up at 5:40 am. I heard her on the monitor, and saw her sitting up. I turned down the volume and tried to go back to sleep--come on, it was not even 6 and I went to sleep at 2. But she started shrieking, so I stumbled into her room and dragged her to my bed, where she pulled my hair, kicked me in the face and ribs and threatened to fall off the bed while I tried to go back to sleep. Finally, at 6:30 ish she fell asleep in a little squishy heap in the middle of my bed. Leaving me wide fucking awake. Babies are glorious.


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My hair is trying to eat my face

Pregnant women don't lose as much hair as they do when not pregnant. I forget why, but their hair grows very thick. After they give birth, they lose the hair relatively soon after. I didn't notice my hair doing anything different, until a little while ago when I saw these little baby hairs growing around my hairline. I suppose they are growing to replace hair I lost. Except now with the humidity, the hair is sticking to my face, creating a nice fringed look. Which would be great if I were a leather jacket, or a pair of moccasins. Unfortunately, I just look like a hairy faced woman.


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Mom groups

I went to a mom group that met at a Whole Foods. It was okay except for the fact that it was 95 degrees outside and I couldn't feel any A/C and I was melting onto the chair.

I also saw a lot of boob. A few moms were breastfeeding their babies, and I kept on turning to them as they whipped out their nipples. I am a fan of breastfeeding, and doing it in public (everyone has a right to eat in public and not be told it is disgusting or, better yet, sexual (if you find the act of feeding a baby sexual, you have some weird fucking problems), and it is a protected activity under NY state law) but seeing nipple was an ACK! surprise.

I was not staring at your nipple on purpose. And nor was I staring.

I know in detail what the ceiling fans in the WF cafe area look like now.


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The next time

I get unsolicited advice from strangers about my baby, I'm going to shove my fist up their bunghole.

Today some lady yelled, "that baby needs a hat!" as she sped through a red light on her bike.

First, no she fucking doesn't need a hat.

Second, you need a gag for your mouth. You need to mind your own business. You also need to observe traffic laws, and you ran a red. May you get backed over by a truck and the city overlook it per their usual way.

I thought of a lot more to say but she can bike faster than I can put words together.


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Workers' comp

I have none, since I have no job, but how about the government cover injuries incurred by parents in the course of nurturing their children?

In the past few weeks, I have been repeatedly whacked in the forehead, stabbed in the eye, punched in the nose, and today, slapped in the face by my little princess. The slap in the face was weird because the other times, she was swinging something around or trying to grab something and accidentally gouged me in the face. But this time, I was lying back on the sofa with my eyes closed, Yanni playing on the iPad, getting my old person groove on, when she just reaches over and SMACK! I opened my eyes and looked at her, and she had this mean "Don't F with me" on her face. Or it might have been a "I hate Yanni, turn that F-ing shit off" face. It's difficult to deal with, because I have never spent more than 15 minutes alone with a child before I had V, and my instinct is to hit back. Of course I restrain myself, but my arm wants to go flying.

In case you skimmed all of that and only focused on "hit back", I DO NOT HIT MY CHILD.
But I do munch on her arms and legs.

Daycare

All I can say is, barf. For the amount that these places charge, I am tempted to open a daycare of my own. I would be rich. Also, are people really able to pick their kids up by 6 pm? Wherever they work, I would like to work there.

Where is the remote?

I hate it when V cries in her crib. It's so hard to hear the tv.


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Honking

V used to be a very mellow baby. Not anymore. Now she whines constantly. Because she has developed opinions and had no problem expressing them. Good lord. It's not even a wah wah noise. It's honk honk. Like a freaking goose.

I'm on the commode, door open. She drags herself around the corner, going honk...honk!

I go to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. Hysterical honkhonkhonkhonk.

I lovingly caress her face while she is playing. It sounds like a million geese have been shot in the foot. HOOOOOOONK!!&@$?!

Do bark collars for dogs work on babies? Just kidding. I have an old muzzle I can try. It's more humane.


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Fuck

I wrote a post but accidentally selected all and cut it. Create a fucking undo button, iPhone.


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I ran out of diapers today

My parents have a pool. So on this 90 plus degree day, we went. V kept trying to drink the pool water but all in all a success.

Until she pooed a huge poo just before we left. I saw it in her face. The concentration. Then, I heard it. I went to go change her diaper and then realized oh shit we are out.

Babies go into the pool diapered. Obviously, since you don't want them shitting in your pool. Hence, the swim diaper, which goes over the regular diaper. The name is misleading because it doesn't do anything but keep solids in. It is completely permeable, and so any time the baby goes into the pool, her diaper will swell up to the size of Neptuner. Seriously she was buoyant after 5 minutes.

Anyhoo, after multiple trips into the pool, and diaper changings in between, I realized too late that I had used all of the diapers. So we stuck a towel in her pants and put a doggie wee wee pad under her butt in the car. Of course she peed on the way home and when I picked her up, I knew what she knew but didn't tell me. Fun, really fun.


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Dear baby

My mouth is not a hand hold. Please stop trying to climb my face.

Autocorrect

Freaking iphone. I would like to know who is in charge of the autocorrect function. I mean, someone has to sit there and type in all of the possible misspellings for a word, right? I know that person is a guy, because my iphone just tried to autocorrect "playdate" to "playmate". No, no no. NO.

What the beep

She throws the block and cries. I pick it up and give it back to her. And she throws it again! And again! Um, if you want it so badly don't throw it. Duh baby. I guess her teeny mind can't grasp this concept.


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Baby music classes

Yeah I joined one. The baby needs to interact with other people or else she will become shy, and eventually weird, like me.

I went in expecting to see a bunch of moms with their babies but they were all nannies. We sat around in a circle while Andy stood in the middle and played his guitar and sang. He sang in the highest, happiest, squeakiest voice I have ever heard a male use, and he bounced around like he was on extasy. I kept thinking, I bet you never saw yourself doing this when you were 10 and wanted to be a pop star. At one point Andy had to check on the music player and when he thought no one was looking he put his head down into his hand. Ah, the veneer cracks.

All of the other babies laughed and ran around. They picked up the little shaking toys that Andy passed around and stuck them in their mouths while their nannies call watched. One baby crawled up to Andy and latched onto his legs. Violet sat and stared. And stared. And stared. Her little arms were like chicken wings and for the life of me I couldn't get her to straighten them. All the while her mouth hung slightly open. When she does this she looks a little delayed. I sang and did motions but she gave me nothing.

We're going back next week. Here is hoping she does more than drool.




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Sucks

Ever since I had Violet, I can't watch a simple baby killing on tv anymore without completely freaking out. I guess I am not your target audience, Game of Thrones. But I still love you.


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My babeh is a big babeh

She is 9 months old but looks like a one year old. I get a lot of "oh what a big girl!" "She's so fa--HEALTHY!"

What can I say? She eats like a trucker.



Mmmm cooky



COOOOOKY



chomp

Where she gets this I have no idea, I write while chowing down on some munchies.And that is a tv remote in her hand. I guess babies do in fact copy what they see.

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I am not handy

I used to have a glass shelf that hung on the wall near my apartment entry way. It is not wide enough to hold anything useful. I have also walked into it 244 times and finally had enough. Over 8 hours I removed the shelf and the supports from the wall, sanded the giant holes left by anchors, covered the holes with mesh tape and joint compound, sanded it again, primed and painted.

Aaaaand it looks like my wall has weird bumpy growths.




Why I thought I could do this from watching one DIY video I don't know but I'm calling a painter for an estimate tomorrow.

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P90x

I'm no longer fat, after spending a month ingesting only 1200 calories a day, no carbs, but I am mushy as hell. Trying to get up from a seated position on the floor means rolling to my side and getting on my knees before hoisting myself up. I am around 120 or 125 lbs but about 95 of those lbs are fat. And about 1 is muscle.

So I bought a 12 disc set of p90x off of eBay, realized that there is a disc 13, found that that single disc sells for way too much, and found some video of some dude who recorded himself doing disc 13. He recorded only himself and not what was playing on the tv so I have to watch and copy this dude to do disc 13.

The introductory disc said not to do the p90x program without taking the fitness test or approval from a physician. I didn't want to take the test, because if I failed then my grand quest to be superfit would be over before it began, and I was still waiting for my pull up bar to arrive (says the girl who has never been able to do a pull up in her life). Luckily for me my sister is a doctor and she waved me on as she fell asleep on the couch.

Despite the lack of pull up bar, I decided I would try the first disc in the program, called core synergistics. I figured I would need some practice considering my level of fitness (between rock and sloth) and this disc didn't need the bar.

About five minutes in I was feeling pretty good but winded. Then I realized that we were still in the warm up phase. The real exercises kicked my ass. I was sweaty in places where I am not normally sweaty, like my elbow. A lot of the exercises required rolling around on the floor, which I wish they would have warned me about before I rolled into my bedstand, night table and that wobbly little stick that is attached to the bottom of the door.

It appears that I may have been born without triceps, or whatever muscle group is required for push ups. There was a lot of flopping on the ground and "holy shit"s.

But I shall persevere! Until I start looking like a man. Then I'll stop.

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Yeeeeeahhh beetches

We got back to NYC last Thursday. Since then, we've been sleeping very late and getting up very late, and having fun not looking at smog.

The skies in Seoul are not blue. They are either light gray or dark gray, depending on the sun and the time. The air stings your skin until your cells die, and then you feel ok.

It is also incredibly humid. Maybe when the air is that saturated with pollution, it doesn't ever feel dry. But it can be 65 degrees and feel hot.

It is so awesome to be back, but I've forgotten what I used to cook. Last night I had PB&J saltines for dinner. Delicious.

Slowly our schedules are returning to normal. We woke up at 8:30 instead of 11:30 today, and Violet has been take awesome 2 hours naps to her usual blink of eye 30 minute naps.

One highlight from the motherland: Violet learned how to clap. I have to yell "baksu! baksu! bak-bak-su!" ("clap" in korean) for her to do it, but she'll do it.


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Measuring up

Baby websites abound, and teeming within are articles, Q&As and message boards about baby milestones. How much they should weigh, what they should be eating, how much should they be eating, whether they are smiling, crawling, talking, doing quadratic equations in their heads and signing the answers to you.

In the beginning of parenthood, this is all helpful. You are assured that poop should be that color, that your baby is not the only one projectile vomiting on you, and repeatedly shaking their head at 7 months old is not a sign of autism (yet). You check how you and your baby are doing against how everyone else is doing. And it's really all a matter of whether they are eating enough, peeing and pooping enough and sleeping enough.

As the babes grow a little older, the more complex milestone tracking begins. Are they holding their head up? Are they tracking you with their eyes? Do they respond to your voice? And the brag reports start coming in. "My baby smiled at me for the first time today!" "My baby rolled over!" Then the questions/concerns follow. "My 2 month old hasn't laughed yet. Is something wrong?" "My 4 month old falls over when I prop him up into a siting position. Is he developmentally delayed?" The questions sound a little ridiculous to the non-baby-website devotee, but when 324 moms who have a baby that is the same age as yours happily proclaim that their 9 month olds are walking and you look over at your baby and she is on the floor on her stomach spinning herself in a circle because she hasn't figured out how to propel herself forward, you can't help but worry.





Pianos are for eating. Right?

The worst is when you post a concern that your baby is not doing something and ask for suggestions on how to encourage them to do it, and someone responds: "My baby has been doing that since she was 2 weeks old!" Objection, nonresponsive. Also, this is not your forum to brag, bitch! Way to allay my worries. Also you are a liar. At 2 weeks all babies are little puddles of squishy and don't do shit.

But this is where the kiddie competition begins. At birth. It's a little insane and horrible, but you can't help but to become absorbed in it. You buy that baby sign language book and sign words to her all day. You get
the baby Einstein and leapfrog toys that will develop the foundations of her future geniushood. You read message boards that argue ferociously about whether cow milk or almond milk is the best milk for your child once she turns one. I mean, what the fuck is almond milk? Do almonds have udders? It becomes a little bit of a rat race and sometimes when I am signing "milk" to Violet and she just farts in response, I wish we lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere in another century instead of worrying whether she is going to turn out to be high school drop out Asian car model because I let her watch television and she has fallen off the bed three fucking times so far. And once off the couch. Apparently It takes four times for me to learn my lesson.

And this is only the beginning. Next it will be toddler gym classes, music lessons, tennis lessons, honors and AP courses. So that she can grow up, go to a good college, graduate school, get a good job that pays a lot and then quit so that she can maintain her sanity. Like moi!

I kind of hope she becomes a painter. Or an acrobat.

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Waaah bath time

At home we do baths in a tub shaped like a blue whale. She splashes around in it on top of the bathroom sink and munches on a duck.

I couldn't bring the tub to the motherland, and she's too big to stick in the sink, so we do baths in the big bathtub.




Which apparently is an experience akin to one of the nine circles of hell. When V realizes that I am going to stick her in this giant crevasse, she starts whimpering and clutching at me. As I lower her down she gets louder and more frantic, and initiates the grip of death. She remains at the whimpering level as long as I let her hang onto my shirt, hair, skin, eyelids, whatever she has latched onto while she stands in the tub while I am bent over at a ninety degree angle. I soap her down with one hand while maneuvering the detachable shower nozzle in my right hand. Once her body is rinsed off, it's time for her head and arms. For this she has to sit down in the tub, because I can't clean her hair when it's pressed against my face. So she starts screaming. In a tiny space. With ear shattering acoustics. Aaaack. As soon as I pick her up to dry her off and let her see herself in the bathroom mirror, she laughs. Drama queen!

I guess if someone lowered me into a large container that had walls as high as I was tall and sprayed me with water I might cry.

I tried showering with her once. I've read about all these women and their wonderful bonding experiences in the shower. Well I got soap into v's eyes and I almost dropped her about 80 times because she was like a little slippery fish and regardless of how I stood one of us was getting sprayed in the face. SO RELAXING.

So yeah. Blue whale tub. A must.

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Naked time

We hardly ever have naked time. I am paranoid about unexpected pee and poop. But the humidity here is making V chafe, so tada:





Of course, she peed on the floor pretty soon after. Paranoid I am not.

And yeah, she is going to kill me in 12 years or so when she finds a picture of her naked ass on the Internet. Hi big Violet--I love you.


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Purple nurples

V gives me these daily. Cue the howl. I'm going to have to fashion a bra out of those cups that guys wear.


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No more yogurt!

In this family we eat yogurt naked. It's the only way.

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Korean drivers

People (white people) stereotype korean drivers as bad drivers. It's a stereotype in the US because not all Koreans are bad drivers. But it's a fact in Korea. In fact the real bad Korean drivers in the US are probably ones that grew up in Korea and immigrated later in life.

There is no such thing as yielding to pedestrians here. I was pushing V in her stroller towards the curb to cross the street, and a car was slowly making a turn onto the same street. I continued to cross because I ASSumed that the rules of the road were universal. This car freaking rushed at me. I am pretty sure he accelerated. I squawked like a chicken and skeddadled across to the sidewalk while Jonker made angry alpha male gestures at the car.

Cars park on the sidewalk on the large roads. Where people are. I had to push V's stroller away because a car wanted to park where we were standing. Here you go, asshole.

There are no sidewalks if you are not on the main road. There are large roads the size of highways that criss cross each town. Most of the buildings in the towns are on the little roads that branch off of the large roads. These little roads are squirrely paths that twist and turn. Cars park alongside the paths, leaving just enough room for moving cars to go past. There are no sidewalks at all, which means you have to scoot along, looking behind you to make sure you are not going to get plowed down by a pedal happy motorist. And they have no problem trying to just squeeze past you.

The delivery men are fucking insane. They ride motorcycles that have little metal boxes screwed onto the back that store food, and they don't give a shit who else is on the road. They will run red lights, cut you off, run you over, etc. because THE FOOD MUST BE DELIVERED AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE. What the fuck guys. It is just freaking food. I don't think Koreans even tip delivery people. So these drivers are just trying to kill other people for fun. These guys should get recruited for ambulance driving.

U-turns. Jeezus. The large roads are as wide as highways (8 lanes across), but there is no overpass so that cars on one side can get to the other side. Instead, just before the intersections there are u-turn lanes. Cars go into that lane and do a U-ie before the light lets the oncoming traffic zoom on. Ok fine. Except here no one waits their turn. So you have like four cars doing u-turns at the same time, in the same space. It is like insane synchronized swimming, except none of the steps are choreographed, nobody knows what anyone else is doing, and we are talking about fucking cars zooming around with human beings inside of them.

It is amazing that Korea is so full of people, because they should all be dead.

.

Hark from the motherland

The little monster and I are in the motherland till May 31.

Here is some advice: DO NOT GET ON A 14 HOUR PLANE RIDE WITH YOUR BABY. Just don't do it. Or if you do, bring 140 ear plugs for all of the other passengers, hard liquor for yourself, and an anvil to drop on your baby's head to knock her into blessed unconsciousness.

There was a lot of yelling, crying and precious little sleeping. Some by me, mostly by the baby. Holy crap did she not want to sleep. The airline stewardesses would not let me let her cry it out. Why notz? Pouty face. So guess who had to soothe her for hours and hours while standing and wearing her in the ergo? I am that lucky winner. Korean Airlines should refund the cost of my seat and the baby's seat, because we did not use them. The plane was hot, but wearing her was the only thing that would keep her quiet. It turns out that her body heat + my body heat = 5000 degrees, which defies all natural laws known to man. If we could only harness the power created by my and my baby's sticky stomachs, the world would no longer need oil or coal or natural gas, carbon emissions would decrease significantly, and we would not die horrible fiery deaths when the greenhouse gases burn off the rest of the atmosphere leaving us to fry under the heat rays of the sun. If only.

Once we landed and got to our destination, I was certain she would sleep. So certain! But she didn't. She catnapped, in the ergo, waking frequently and wailing. I probably wore her for 36 hours in a 48 hour period. At one point I was trying to sleep sitting straight up, since any backwards leaning by me would instantly wake her.

She is now over her jet lag and sleeping normally. Lucky for me I get to do this again when I go home.

Does anyone know where I would go to buy an anvil in Seoul?

[Insert title here]

I hate titles. Requires thought.

Anyhoo, diaper changes continue to be a complete pain in the ass. The crying, screaming, kicking, trying to launch one's entire body off the changing pad continues. Trying to change V's diaper is like trying to put a diaper on a grasshopper. I can't wait till our 14 hour plane ride to Korea on Tuesday. I would just like to tie a giant garbage bag around her waist to avoid the inevitable blowouts.

The other day I got as far as taking off the old diaper and putting a new one on, but she would not let me put her clothes back on. The screaming was ferocious, and could only be stopped by a mum-mum, AKA baby crack.

Today I learned that I will always get my way by screaming. Score.

Already I am teaching V to create a connection between happiness and snack food. Awesome parenting!

But really, all of the things you swore you would never do as a parent before you were a parent will all come to pass. You will learn to compromise your beliefs and values for the sake of some peace and quiet. Because your eardrums cannot take that kind of chronic abuse and sometimes, you really need to poo and only the television will hold her into a zombie gaze for long enough to take care of that business.

Actually I just took a poo in the bathroom while playing peekaboo with V in the living room. So only a slight compromise of my dignity today.

Baby talk

The other day, at the park, I was pushing V in a swing next to a dude who was pushing his son in a swing. He looked over at us, and said, "Aww, I wike your headband. What a pwetty headband!" Blarrggghh.

I don't do baby talk. I understand that sometimes something is so cute you want to make inarticulate noises, but why persist in having a one-sided conversation full of mispronounced words? And guys, never ever ever do baby talk. It never really bothered me before, but that was before I heard a guy try to talk like a 2 year old and it turns out it makes me want to barf.

RIP

I can't go one year with the same pair of earphones. I lose them (once on the same day I bought them), or I lose all of the little earbuds which means I need to buy new earphones or stick pointy plastic spears into my ears, or in this case, I obliterate them.

We were strolling up Central Park when I feel myself kicking something. I look down, behind me, but see nothing. So I continue. Ladeedadeedah when my stroller comes to a squeaky halt. I glance down at the wheels and I see this:

My earphones! I look back up to the stroller handlebar where I had hung them minutes ago. Of course, they were not there anymore because while I was skipping along the path the earphones had slowly slid down, onto the ground, into the wheel thing and strangled the wheel.

Meanwhile, V is master crankypants, having been in the stroller too long for her taste, and is yelling. AHHHHH. AHHHHHHHHH. People are looking at me, as if to say, hey do you know your baby is yelling? YES I KNOW THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP HOW DID I EVER MANAGE BEFORE GO THE F*CK AWAY.

I drag the stroller off the path and onto the grass. I take V out and sit her next to me on the grass. The yelling stops; ah blessed silence. I crouch down and delicately try to remove the earphones from inside the wheel. After a few minutes it was obvious that the thing was really stuck in there. So I start pulling. Yank. Yank. YANKYANKYANKYANK. I realize that I'm just pulling the earphones tighter and tighter around the wheel, but I don't know what else to do, and we are half a mile from home and I can't just abandon this piece of expensive garbage here.

Meanwhile people are walking by on the path and cooing at V. "Oh she's so cute. Oh look at her." LOOK AT ME PEOPLE! I AM NOT STICKING MY FACE ON THE GROUND WITH MY ASS IN THE AIR FOR FUN! I AM NOT BREAKING OUT SOME FREAKING YOGA POSE AND DOING DOWNWARD DOG MY STROLLER HAS BROKEN DOWN AND WE ARE STUCK HERE FOREVER AHHHH!

And then I yank hard enough that the wheel falls off. Nice, glad to know that the stroller wheel can just fly off like that. Now I feel secure. I rip off the earphones, jam the wheel back on, hope it stays and scoot on home.

RIP poor earphones.

Oh and I lost my credit card. Yay saturdays!

No more noms

This is what happens when Violet finishes the last of her rice cracker and realizes that there is no more to be had:

Seeing the mess

When I was younger, I did not like to clean my room. Every horizontal surface would be covered with stuff. Tornados could drop the tons of shit they were whirling around in the funnels into my room and no one would have known the difference. My mom would go crazy. Clean your room. Clean your room. CLEAN YOUR ROOOOOOM MAWGGGRRRAAAWW. Then I would fake-clean (yeah you've all done it before, no need for an explanation). But really I didn't care because I couldn't really see the mess.

Then one day it changed. I blinked and saw dirty dishes left on the coffee table. Clothes on the floor of the closet. Mountains of sock left next to the bed. Stuff that had been left on the bathroom counter for so long that they had cemented themselves on. It sort of felt like when I first got my period (peering down, "what the f*ck!?!?"). And once you are able to see the mess, you have to clean it.

I'm not sure what triggered this. I think it is probably a part of the normal maturation process. Like second puberty. Unfortunately, Jonker is not there yet. He's a late bloomer. And what that means is that I find his used q-tips laying about here and there. Once, I found one on my side of the bathroom counter. He might as well have taken a dump and smeared it on the wall. If you could punch, strangle, stab or shoot a q-tip, I would have done all of those things at that moment. So I took those used q-tips and stuck them in his precious cufflink box. The man loves his cufflinks. Muhahaha, the ultimate revenge! I was gleeful. But the q-tips stayed there untouched for over a week. After which I couldn't stand seeing them anymore and I threw them out. HOW DOES THAT NOT BOTHER HIM?!

In any case, it's unfortunate that I am now able to see the mess. Cuz once you get a baby, the mess quadruples. It sextuples. It manymoreuples. It's hard to let go, but when baby is throwing rice crackers and yelling at you because she no longer has her rice crackers AND GET ME MORE RICE CRACKERS OR I WILL SMEAR MY POOP ON YOUR FACE, YEAH RUN, RUN FASTER YOU SLOWASS AND RIP OPEN THAT NEW PACKAGE OF RICE CRACKERS AND PUT IT IN MY MOUTH nom nom nom, then you learn to let go.

Every day at 7 when I put her to sleep, I come out to face this. And clean this. Every damn day.

Engage!

Engage! YEEAAAAHHH!

Questions? Watch Star Trek.

I saw Patrick Stewart perform in Macbeth. I fell sleep during the second act and snored. Out. Loud. There may have been a third act, but I'm not sure because I was asleep. After the show Joe told me that the guy on the other side of me was really annoyed. THANKS SO MUCH FOR WAKING ME UP AM I YOUR WIFE OR YOUR ENEMY. Then one of the partners at my firm asked me what I thought of some scene that I snored through. I was all, "Oh yeah, it was really great. Like, really, really great. Really." I suck at schmoozing.

Toga! Toga! Toga!

Why do we insist on dressing babies in miniature versions of adult clothes? Why not stick their bodies in a cloth bag, tie it off around their necks and be done with it? Dressing a baby is like engaging in a round of WWF. I win eventually.

When I do not have the strength to dress the baby, we do toga time.

That is greygoose in the nalgene bottle. I kid. It's ketel one.

Poop pose

I can never write enough about poop.

Before starting solids, I could never tell when V was pooping (unless she was sitting on my lap, in which case, I could feel the pressure of something soft and hot, like a creepy man's hand on your leg). Poop would mysteriously appear in her diaper, like some horrible gift from Satan.

Erm, hello. Merry Christmas. Here is a tree and some poop.


But I guess as babies grow older, they become more aware of their own bodily functions. E.g., a man and a woman were walking past us at the park, and the man turns around and says, "what is he doing?" I look up and there is a boy who was about 1 year old, standing with his back bent at 45 degrees, and his arms and hands hanging straight down. The woman looks and says, "That's the poop position." And then we all watched the boy poop.

The other day I was feeding V in her high chair, and she is usually very animated in it, constantly turning her head, waving her hands, etc. Then she stopped moving, looked straight ahead, and slowly curled her fingers into her palms. I thought, what the hell is this, a seizure? And then I heard it. Pffffft. Haha poop!

My girl is all grown up.

Holy crap

I almost killed my baby twice in the course of two days.

First, she fell off the bed in the middle of the afternoon. I had fallen asleep next to her, and I woke up to "THUD. AHHHH!" Two very bad sounds. She was on her back on the (wooden!) floor. She had a pink spot on her forehead, but I don't really know how she got to the edge of the bed, or how she fell, but there it is. ARGH. I took her fist and made her hit me in the face. Matching red spots!

Second, I was slicing up pears for a salad, and I gave her a chunk. There is a school of baby feeding called baby-led weaning. They don't believe in purees or stuffing the baby's mouth with food. Instead they put the food down in front of the baby, in pieces big enough to grab, and the baby picks up the pieces and sucks on it. I do purees, but I thought, hey let's try. So she's sucking on it, and then she starts coughing. And then making weird MRRRGGG sounds. I realize that the pear is getting stuck in her throat, so I try to think back to my Infant CPR class, and all I can think to do is pick her up, turn her face down and pound on her back. Which is correct, but not helping here. I tell Joe, "she's choking!" He comes over and says, "Well, if she is crying (which she sort of was, while making MRRGGG sounds) then technically she is not 'choking'." Wow, really, are we actually going to discuss whether a partial obstruction qualifies as choking right now? I said, "WTF F*CKING HELP ME!" Then he reached in her mouth and pulled out the pear.

Lessons learned: tie your baby to the bed posts if you are going to fall asleep with the baby on the bed. Or weigh her down with an encyclopedia or something else that is large and heavy. Also, don't ever try new things. Puree your child's food until she is 18.

Diaper changes

I used to think that the very fact that I have to wipe pee and poo off of someone else's butt is pretty bad. But I've recently learned that I actually had it pretty good for a while.

Because now, Violet cries everytime I lay her down to change her diaper. I have to change her diaper about 6 or 7 times a day, so this is bad. I don't know why she cries now, and why the prior 2000 diaper changes didn't upset her at all. Maybe the 2001th diaper change was the last straw? And she wriggles, turning from side to side, stiffening her legs and arching her back, all the while crying "please! please let me roll around in my poop! PLEASE! NO GIVE ME BACK MY POOOOOP DON'T TAKE IT AWAAAAAY!"

She also reaches down to touch what I'm touching. Like, her pee and poop. And then she wants to touch the wall, her clothes, HER FACE, HER EYES, HER MOUTH immediately afterward. It's very hard to simultaneously lift her legs, wipe her butt, pull her hands away from her crotch, out of her mouth, etc. I need 8 arms, but I only have 2. So she's probably ingesting bits of pee and poop regularly now.

And don't get me started with the poop getting on her clothes. Violet's day is not complete if she hasn't gotten some poop on her clothes. This world doesn't have enough Purell.

I am thinking of adding restraints to her changing pad. Little baby restraints on her wrists and ankles. Furry ones, in pink. With little bear faces on them. You know, to make them cute and stuff. We can call them "baby huggers" or something. Good idea, yes?

Caption this

"This Nigerian says he needs my help moving a large sum of money to the US. He just needs a few thousand dollars from me, and I'll reap millions! I'M IN!"

"What if I don't want to have a freaking Timeline... Ugh I hate you Facebook."

Typing into google.com: "How to crawl"

My Friday

From 12 AM to 11:59 PM:

12 AM: I engage in my night time ministrations and go to sleep.

3:45 AM: baby cries in co-sleeper (mini crib) next to me. I grab bottle from beside the bed and feed her. Half the time she drops off back to sleep after the bottle. Half the time she doesn't. She hates me today so she starts whimpering after she finishes the bottle. Ugh. She stops. Ahh. The whimpering starts again. Fuck. And grows louder. Nooo, pleeeaaase. She begins to wail. I feel around her bottom and feel wetness. NOOOO. I turn on the light and zip open her sleep sack. She has pooed and it has leaked. AWESOME. The room is too bright and now the baby is really pissed off. I try to remove a poo filled diaper from a screaming, kicking baby without smearing poo everywhere. Then I take off her clothes, wipe her down and get a new diaper on. Finally I get her to calm down, grab a clean sleep sack and lay her down next to me in the bed. I am afraid to put her too close to jonker, who would surely roll over and crush her without so much as a snore, so we lay side by side on my half of the bed. I wedge a stuffed animal between us so that we don't roll into each other, and lay stiff like a mummy to prevent inadvertent crushing of baby. The baby reaches over and pulls my hair. I twist my head out of her reach, and we fall asleep.

6:20 AM: baby cries. When I sleep like a mummy my muscles tense up, as if to remember not to loosen and roll about, and I wake up in incredible pain. My neck also hurts from putting my head at a 90 degree angle to my neck. I try to soothe the baby but she continues to cry. Jonker was in the bathroom at the time, and comes out and takes baby. I fall back into bed and drift into unconsciousness.

7:00 AM: I am woken up by whining baby who Jonker has brought back to bed. I try to go back to sleep for 30 minutes but it's like trying to ignore gentle stabbing in my ear. Jonker begs me to take her so that he can go back to sleep. UGH fine. I give baby a bottle with one hand surf the net on my iphone with the other. I prop the bottle up with trusty stuffed animal so I can go brush my teeth and wash my face. I check my email and the interwebz to find out what is going on in the world.

8:15 AM: Diaper change. I take off the sleepsack and dress her while baby tries to lunge and knock down everything within a 2 foot radius and tries to head dive off the changing table.

8:25 AM: I clean up the empty bottles from the bedroom and we play on the couch. Or, she stands next to me on the couch, gleefully pulling my hair and trying to scratch my eyes out, while I pretend to eat her stomach. NOMNOMNOM.

8:40 AM: Nap time! I put her down and watch her make out with Pengypengypengy (her penguin doll) through a monitor. I can't do anything until I know she is asleep in case she freaks out and refuses to nap.

9 AM: She falls asleep. I now have 30 minutes to do whatever I want. Oh the freedom! This is what dogs feel like when they go to the park and get taken off the leash. I consider also taking a nap but now I am wide awake. I decide to do laundry and make coffee instead. I guess I am not as awake as I thought I was because I just poured the water for the coffee into the funnel where the coffee grinds go, and have drowned my coffee grinds.

9:45 AM: The gods have shone me their favor. The baby has taken a rare 45 minute nap. I bring her into the kitchen where I sit her down on the counter, anchor her down by putting a full plastic gallon water jug between her legs, and put away the dishes and utensils on the drying racks. Baby gets another bottle and I change her diaper. I google whether it's possible to burn the nonstick coating off of a pan. What I really want to know is whether that will cause the pan to burn your food thereafter. Because this is what my pan appears to be doing. But my google skills suck and this is still a mystery to me. I google our pan to see how much a replacement would cost. Hrm, more than I am willing to spend to replace a pan that may or may not be burning my food.

10:30 AM: I stick the baby on the middle of our bed and turn on the tv so that I can vaccuum the other rooms. Yeah yeah, bad mom, whatever. But clean apartment! I retrieve baby and google dinner recipes and settle on chicken marsala.

11:30 AM: My mom calls and says she would like to come over. She'll be here in an hour. Cue me cleaning like mad. If there is one thing I can't stand, it's my mother's passive aggressive comments about the state of my apartment.

12:10 PM: Shit, the baby goes down for a nap every two hours and I am late by 25 minutes. No wonder she's been acting like a beeyotch. Down for a nap she goes. I jump in the shower, start getting ready in the bathroom, see the baby wake up on the monitor, go get the baby and plop her down on the bathroom floor so she can watch me move like jagger.

1 PM: I hear my mom at the door, go out, supervise the grandma/baby reunion to make sure the baby doesn't freak out and go back to the bathroom to finish getting ready. I go out to Subway and the supermarket to buy us lunch and come back. We eat and gossip while baby gets another bottle. My mom mentions that she changed her while I went out and her pants are wet but she didn't take them off because the baby was going kamikaze on the changing pad again. I change her pants and try not to think about every place the baby sat that now has microscopic bits of pee on it. Mom watches me feed the baby zucchini and butternut squash.

2:15 PM: Mint.com alerts me to some nonsense that AMEX is doing to me and I call and fix it. Mom leaves and I prepare for our outing to the park. I need: stroller, wallet, keys, diaper, wipes, changing pad, outdoor blanket, bottle and formula, earphones, toys, purell, plastic bags to hold dirty diapers and other garbage, hat. We get outside and I realize I forgot my water bottle. Sigh. On the way to the park we stop at 16 Handles, which after 2 PM is full of little kids. I usually avoid going after school lets out and I think from now on I will continue to do this because the place smelled like a poo diaper. The 16 Handles guy who was monitoring the froyo machines even asked me if I smelled something bad. As I wait in line the little kids with their huge buckets of froyo sit and chatter and I watch America get fat.

3:00 PM: We get to the park and go to the playground. I stick the baby in a swing and push her a little too hard and a little too high. Eff you, she likes it. The weird looking baby in the adjacent swing is staring at me. I try to ignore it. We leave the playground and start trekking down the loop headed downtown. The baby falls asleep. I stop at a grassy spot about half a mile down, spread out the blanket and collapse. I want to sleep but have to make sure that no one steals my baby. I surf the net on my iPhone until the baby wakes up 30 minutes later. I change her, feed her, she plays with her toys, she throws up on the blanket, I clean up the throw up, pack everything up and head back home, picking up groceries on the way.

5:30 PM: I try to mash nectarines up for the baby and realize that the nectarines suck and taste like shit. I give her a mum-mum (baby cracker) while I make another bottle, and grab her bath stuff. I undress her, clean the poo off her butt and put her in the bath, during which I talk to her in my fake French man voice ("ehhmmm welcome to le spa, little bebe"). Then it's lotion time, and I dress her and into the bedroom for her bedtime stories and last bottle.

6:50 PM: I put her in her sleep sack and put her down in the co sleeper. She starts wailing. She used to make out with her sleepytime friends and then just go to sleep but this stopped at some recent point and has been replaced by shrieking. I have no idea how to fix this. She cries for about 10 minutes before I go and pick her up. After she settles down I try to put her in my bed. Again, great big tears and screams, but this time she stops after 10 minutes and goes to sleep. Can't wait to sleep like a mummy again tonight.

7:30 PM: I fold laundry, clean up the bath stuff, unpack the stroller, load the dishwasher with dirty dishes/bottles. I pack the baby's diaper bag for a trip to a friend's tomorrow (change of clothes, diapers, wipes, changing pad, bottles, formula, meal of apple/pear, purell, plastic bags). I put away the folded laundry. I plan to bake a sweet potato for the baby to eat, but I get tired, eat chinese food and reluctantly watch NCIS with jonker (hate that show), read a few pages of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (at my current rate, I will finish it in 2014), lay down on the bed next to the baby with my arms straight down by my sides and go to sleep at 11.

Being a stay at home mom

Last night (this morning?) I went to bed at 12:44 am, and was woken up at 3:45 am, 5:30 am, 5:44 am, 5:52 am, 6:04 am, 6:10 am, and laid on my back in a zombie daze from 6:20 am to 6:40 am, when I could no longer take the kicking of my ribs and the pulling of my hair.

I hated my job (is there a theme today?) but at least I got to sleep in continuous stretches. When my blackberry buzzed, I could ignore it. Or rather, I could ignore it and it wouldn't shriek and yank at me. And let me tell you. Waking up to the sound of a baby crying in the middle of the night is like waking up to someone driving a spike in your ear canal. It is piercing. It is horrible. And for some reason, although you are completely dead tired and don't want to put on pants, your baby is wide awake and wants to play. And you have no other choice but to put on pants and play (aka, obediently fetch the toys that she throws again and again and again).

Before my current incarnation, when I was a working woman of the world, I jokingly referred to maternity leave as vacation. I dreamed of being a stay at home mom, so I could sit on my ass all day and watch tv. I was joking but also kind of not. Because staying at home is so easy, right?

SURPRISE! Babies need constant attention. It's not like your job, when you can set aside your work for 5 or 10 or 45 minutes to surf the interwebz and google chat with your similarly delinquent friends. If I ignore V for 5 minutes, she will whimper, then whine, then yell, then CRRYYYYYYY. This means that if I have to leave the living room to go to the bathroom, I have to sing DO-RE-MI from the Sound of Music from the top of my lungs so that she knows I haven't abandoned her forever. If I have to go into the kitchen to wash dishes, I have to sing. If I have to go into her room to get a bib, I have to sing. You get the picture. I have sung that song 843,277 times. I am Julie freaking Andrews.

Anyhooz, being a SAHM is not all shits and giggles. Well, there are lots of both, but there is no sitting on my ass and watching tv all day. Right now for example, I am blogging and also yodeling for V. Have you ever tried typing and singing at the same time? It is hard. This is also work. It is work that is sometimes mind-numbing, tedious, and that I don't get paid enough for, but what job isn't?

Mommy, you are my bitch and you know it. Squeeee!

Modeling

I hated my job. And I'm not going back muhahah! Why should I, if I can just send my kid to work instead as a child model! Earn your keep, you chunky munkey.

We've been practicing our modeling poses.

Looking mysterious:

This was a bit too literal. We're going to work on that.


Looking fierce!

Perfect.

Surprising fact

A baby kick to the crotch hurts just as much as an adult kick to the crotch. It is unfortunate that I am familiar with both experiences, but there it is.

Caption this

"I'm wearing WHAT?!"

"This damn tricorder is not working again. I'm going to the Apple store and putting my foot up someone's ass. Get me my stroller."

"Wait, don't they put the red uniforms on the guys who are supposed to die in that episode? Get this off of me."

Felt dahlia

Burnt my fingertips last night. Warning, don't touch hot glue before it's dry!

Warning

What is it that they say about plastic bags and children? Do not let your children play with plastic bags? Or is it, DO let your chidren play with plastic bags? V and I discussed this at length, and after some debate we came to the conclusion that it is the latter. After all, they are so delicious!

And they fit so snugly around the neck. Next we are going to try household cleaners.

Caption this

"Crawling is overrated. I quit."

"You are the one I want, Playmat. You are my love. Forget Donkey, forget Pat the bunny, and all the rest. There is only you. Let me cover you with my sweet kisses."

"Exhausted from bearing the weight of her giant head, the child set her burden down and rested."

The night before labor/delivery

I went to get my haircut for the first time since August P.V. (pre-Violet) yesterday, and talking with my haircutter/dresser/stylist reminded me of the night before I delivered and how contrary it was to my expectations.

I was admitted around 7 or 8 pm, and by the time I was actually put in a room, it was around 10 pm. The lights were nicely dimmed, the bed had the blankets turned down, and the only thing missing were candles and chocolate on the pillow. I was ready to settle in! Then my doctor came in and said, "we'll start your pitocin (magic stuff that accelerates contractions) now." "Now?" I said. "We're not going to wait till morning?" I am not sure what I expected, but I guess I thought this was like a hotel, for a work trip, where I would typically get in on the last flight of the night, go to sleep on a nice fluffy bed and start work the next morning. What's the rush? I got an "Um, no" in response, AKA "where do you think you are, a hotel? This is a hospital stupid."

I got in bed, and they stuck me with a needle the size of a watering hose, through which lots of stuff in bags dripped into me. They also slapped on the fetal monitors, which are basically two little discs that they wrap around your stomach to monitor heartrate, and the blood pressure cuff. After the nurse tightened the last strap, she said, "Everything ok?" I said, "Yes, great. Can I go to the bathroom now? Wait, do I have to bring all this shit with me?"

Note: Try to go to the bathroom before they tie everything on you, or else you will need to be helped out of bed and wheel half of the room machinery into the bathroom with you.

I settled back into my bed, and I noticed the blood pressure cuff tightening by itself. Ah, automated cuff, how sweet. It got tighter, and tighter, AND TIGHTER ANDTIGHTERANDTIGHTERANDTIGHTER. "WTF IS THIS!!!???" My sister, Dr. anesthesiologist, said, "yeah, that will happen every 15 minutes or so to make sure your pressure is ok". OK, wonderful, thanks for checking little cuff, but there is no reason why you have to squeeze that tight. It sort of feels like someone is slowly closing a car door on your hand, and they press it harder and harder and harder, until the door clicks shuts. On your hand. Totally unnecessary.

There was also a lot of beeping from the various machines that were attached to me. Why, who knows, because it's not like they could be heard by the nurses on call, who were monitoring from outside of my room. Only I could hear them. At 3 am. While I was lying in the dark trying to prepare for a human to rip out of my body.

Then the nurse came in to check on stuff at regular intervals. Checking on what exactly? I don't know. Maybe she was just walking in and out of my room for the hell of it. "Does your monitor say what I see that it says on monitor outside? Yes. Good. See you again in 30 minutes."

I think I fell asleep a little after 3 AM, and woke up around 6 AM, because Hurricane Irene was being a real loud bitch outside. Then all of a sudden, it was 9 AM, and time to have the baby. I got the "last chance to review your purchase before you place your online order" feeling, and the rest is history.

Drinking

I bought a bottle of wine in preparation for the Mad Men premiere on Sunday. Before la bebe, I used to drink, like, a lot. I would drink along with Don Draper, as in, whenever he had a drink on the show, I poured myself a drink, team spirit and all that, and I would end up crazy drunk by the end. Usually I had no memory of what happened that episode, so I would have to rewatch it before watching the next week's episode so that I would have a clue as to what was going on. So I have basically watched all existing episodes of Mad Men twice. Then the freaking show goes on a hiatus for over one year, during which time I forget everything again. Damn it all.

Any hoo, once I got pregs I didn't want to drink and the urge never really came back (covered infra). I cracked the bottle open today, just to have a glass, and WHOO I am near drunk off of one glass. Actually after the first sip my esophagus and stomach felt all nice and fiery. Ah, memories of high school when I first got drunk! I actually didn't know what was going on. I was at Daewon (Palisadium, in Pal Park NJ) with a group of older FOBs from my high school that I never ever hung out with before. I only knew one of them, and he had convinced me to come out with them that night. Stupidly I said yes. At the restaurant, the FOBs ordered soju, which they seemed to drink all the time. Not realizing how strong it was, I had three shots and I was drunk out of my mind. One of the FOBs I didn't know had to drive me home, and the only thing he said to me the whole night was, "don't throw up in my car." So I didn't. I got home, to be met by my mom at the door. "Oh you look pale," she said. "Yeah, I think I'm sick," I said. I wobbled up to my room and laid in bed and drunk dialed the guy I wanted to go out with. Winner!

Mormon women blogs

Have you seen these? If you google the phrase, I'm sure you'll find them. The blogs are written by these young, thin, stylish looking women with adorable, pink cheeked children and anthropologie-styled houses. They take fantastic pictures and write heartwarming things. They also happen to be Mormon.

*FYI my only exposure to Mormonism comes from: (1) the really nice but naive Mormon guy who was briefly in my law school study group, who referred to "The Heavenly Father" like I refer to my mom or dad, the mailman, the dood across the street, etc.; (2) Big Love (I cried during the finale and felt like I actually lost something--I heart you, Bill Henricksen); and (3) The Book of Mormon, the musical. In sum, I don't know much about it, it seems kinda weird, but the people seem nice.

An excerpt taken from one of these blogs:

hope your weekend was beautiful!

we stayed around the house for most of the weekend. josh made us a delicious brussel sprout and pancetta dish. some darling teeny tiny hunter boots arrived for miss eleanor (i couldn't help myself from ordering them since they were so marked down on gilt the other week). we went to church meetings on sunday (and saturday! hello stake conference) and took a long peaceful nap together as a family on sunday afternoon. josh and i stayed up late one night just talking. it's been a while since we've done that. and i don't think it's possible to count how many books little lady eleanor read.

josh and i also saw jim gaffigan's show over the weekend. i had gotten tickets for josh's christmas stocking back in early december so we had been anxiously awaiting february 24th for a long time! we really love that guy. but what's not to love when he's cracking jokes all night about raising babies, big families, hating the gym, taking 6,000 pictures a day of your life and then spends 30 minutes straight just on the topic of mcdonalds alone? a comedian right up our alley. ;) i mean, you've seen this, right? so good.



Hello, perfect life. My weekend is never like that. It's more like this:

As per usual, Jonker worked on saturday, so I spent the day with V careening around the park in our stroller trying to speed-walk the baby weight away. Our route deliberately goes right by the bathroom, so that I can go pee in there, and not leak in my shorts. Ah, the wonder of having carried a great weight upon my special lady parts for far too long--stress incontinence! I made dinner and Jonker and I sat in front of the television watching Gold Rush on Discovery channel, which is about a bunch of guys who are trying to mine for gold in Alaska. We had a conversation: he said, "These guys are f*cking idiots." And I said, "yeah." Then we went to sleep. Or he went to sleep, and I took a series of naps, courtesy of V.

On Sunday we trudged to his dad's church, where his dad preached in Korean words that I cannot understand, and I wondered what food they were going to serve after the service and whether it was going to be good. That is about as much of a live show that we ever get to see nowadays. My favorite performer, Eddie Izzard (British cross dressing comedian), hasn't had a show in NYC for a few years, but I can't wait to see him trot across the stage in his ruby corset and knee high boots once more. One day, I hope. One day.

Losing weight

Losing baby weight is hard. I lost 12 or so pounds right away after I gave birth. That left 20 (TWENTY!) pounds that I had put on in the past 9 months that I still had to lose. And that did not include the 30 additional pounds I've been carrying since 2007 (also known as the year in which the firm completely claimed my life and soul).

But I refuse to be a fat mom. Fat moms make me sad. They pant after their children. After a while, they just give up and sit down on their fat asses and watch their children run amok. They buy clothes that are supposed to slenderize but really only magnify the fact that they are fat, they know they are fat, they bought clothes to look less fat, and their efforts were futile.

But losing post partum weight is really freaking hard. I'm sure it doesn't help that I am in my thirties and no longer a nimble youth. Teen mom I am not. And post partum hormones may have something to do with it too. All this means I have to work at it like a m*therf*cker, and me no like!

I've been speed walking in Central Park with V, like from 107th St to 63rd St, and back for months, and I dropped like, a pound. What the FREAK is that about. I bought a jogging stroller, thinking jogging is just like speed walking but faster, but I was wrong. I hate jogging. I haven't jogged for over 10 years, and I had forgotten how much I hate it. The tightening in my lungs, in my legs, can't get enough air, throat burns, need to stop! Ah nice, I have jogged a whole 4 blocks.

I'm now back on the South Beach diet, which worked for me in 2005, and using a weight loss app to track everything I eat. The app wants me to eat 1200 calories a day. One walnut is like 50 calories. Let me nibble on thee, tiny walnut. Le sigh. There is an abundance of salads in my diet. Of course, I eat salads out of the bowl on the left, instead of like the normal sized ones on the right.

Yeah, that's a mixing bowl. You can't expect me to survive on a handful of grass.