Something to look forward to June 27, 2008

In Say Anything, Ione Skye gives a graduation speech in which she says “I have seen the future, and all I can say is….go back.”

I had a moment like that yesterday.  But for better or for worse, there is no going back.

I got a glimpse of the future yesterday at lunch, when my friend Danielle and I went to a nice Indian Restaurant for a great buffet.  A few tables over was a couple with a small child in a stroller.  After a while, there was some commotion at their table, and the little girl started to cry, and the parents whisked her off to the bathroom.  Both parents went in, and I forgot about it.  Until the husband, a large, balding man, came out of the bathroom with no shirt on.  He gave an understandably embarrassed glance around and left the restaurant.

Now, several years ago, if a man and a woman had entered a restroom together, and after some time passed the man exited in a state of some dishabille, I would have waggled my eyebrows and assumed something rather risque.  But, now that I know better, I know better.  I went to the restroom myself (luckily it was the ladies room) ostensibly to utilize the facilities, but really just to satisfy my own morbid curiosity.  Indeed, it turns out that projectile vomiting had been involved (“This is only the second time she’s ever thrown up,” the mother told me), and they were from Florida visiting grandparents (who were still sitting serenely at their table, munching naan).  Said vomit had gotten all over daddy’s shirt, and he had to leave the restaurant shirtless (and ridiculously hairy, I might add) to go buy a new shirt.  I would like you to imagine what this would be like.  You are a man.  You have to leave the restroom — the ladies room — in a nice restaurant without wearing your shirt.  Then, you have to walk down Michigan Avenue at the lunch rush, go to the Gap — still shirtless — and buy a shirt.

Admittedly, this would be a much more daunting prospect for a woman.  However, I can’t imagine a large, bald, yet hairy, man enjoys it much either.  One more reason for Joe to stay in shape.

What my last 12 hours have been like. June 24, 2008

9:30pm — I fold laundry and put it away, so that I can feel as though I have accomplished something for the day at least.
10:15 — I go to bed, excited for sleeping, with a lovely breeze coming in through the open windows.
10:20 — Teenagers begin cavorting across the street. Yelling, laughing, screaming and cursing ensues.
11:00 — I think I fall asleep.
2:15am — Someone (see “cavorting,” above) sets off a firework in the street.
2:45 — I go back to sleep.
3:20 — Leg cramp wakes me up. Cat is sleeping on my head. I stretch my legs and shoo cat away.
4:30 — Darwin wakes up, upset and crying heartily.
4:40 — I give in and get up to take a shower before getting Darwin up for the day.
4:50 — Darwin goes back to sleep while I am in the shower. Score! I lie down on the couch and go back to sleep myself.
6:00 — Darwin wakes up again, but this time less grumpy. I get up and wash some dishes, and start to finish getting ready, while he babbles and fusses a bit.
6:10 — I sleepily knock over the (metal) shaving cream can and the (metal) toothbrush holder, creating such a racket as to escalate Darwin’s urgency.
6:12 — I get Darwin up for the day.
6:14 — There is blood on Darwin’s onesie! Oh my god! Is he hurt?? It’s near the snaps — perhaps it is a horrifying penis malady! It’s all over my hand — oh, wait, it IS my hand. Apparently, in knocking over the shaving cream, my wedding ring somehow gouged my knuckle and I have now gotten blood all over Darwin’s (white) onesie and sleepsack.
6:15 — I finish changing squirmy Darwin while trying to hold a towel to my bleeding knuckle.
6:20 — My nipple begins bleeding during my morning pumping, while Darwin slurps away on the other boob.
6:30 — Darwin spits up every ounce of breastmilk ingested thus far, all over my outfit for the day, creating a pool in my lap that is slowly absorbed by my skirt. I sigh, and try to see if he’s still hungry.
6:40 — I stand up from nursing and almost take a digger when I slip on the puddle of spit up on the floor.
6:45 — Darwin goes back in his crib for some “quiet time” with a book and his mobile, while I put pumped milk in the freezer, finally finish getting ready and heat up a couple cubes of applesauce.
6:50 — In the hoopla, I wake up Joe late. He begins getting ready while Darwin and I play on the floor for a while.
7:00 — Still trying to feed Darwin, since he spit up everything. Now his mouth is bleeding! Oh, wait, that’s just my bloody nipple. I switch him to the other side.
7:15 — Joe finishes getting ready and comes to relieve me from Mom duty. I find a new outfit.
7:18 — I apply nipple cream to bloody nipple.
7:20 — I put on bloody wedding ring (on the wrong hand, since it won’t fit over my band-aid)
7:25 — I finally get out the door, 25 minutes late.
9:00 — I am sitting at my desk with a large (but not large enough) cup of coffee, feeling like I have already worked 8 hours.

Hiatus June 22, 2008

Mom Mom and Darwin

Mom Mom and Darwin, Feb 2008

[gallery]Sorry that I’ve been absent for a while. My grandma died last week, and I spent the week with my parents hanging out. She was a tough lady, my grandma, and died at 96 after dropping out of school in the 8th grade and working on her feet in a steamy, loud shirt factory her whole life. I’m so glad that Darwin and I got home to visit her as often as we did. When Darwin was around, it was one of the few times I saw her seem to be carefree and giggly. I guess when you work in a shirt factory your whole life, “giggly” isn’t really an option a lot of the time.

Being home for my grandma’s funeral made me both glad and sad that I decided to have a baby. Darwin is so sweet and cute, and it was so great to see him with my parents, and how happy he made my mom when she was so sad. But, at the same time, the pessimistic part of me couldn’t help thinking “Sorry I got you into this, Darwin.” I thought that some day, my mom would be me, going to my mother’s funeral, and then someday it would be Darwin, at my funeral, and so on and so on. And he didn’t really have much choice in the matter — we just decided he should be here. Mostly though, I was so happy to be with him,and with my parents. We spent a week together, just hanging out, and Darwin is getting so much more fun. He’s crawling, and loves to climb around on people, and sits up, and has just started pulling himself up to standing. Spending a week with him really made me wish that I didn’t have anything to do with my life except roll around on the floor letting Darwin pull my hair. But, that would only work if I really had nothing — like, no dirty dishes, no laundry, no books to read, etc. No wonder Bradgelina can have so many kids! I could too, if I didn’t have to worry about doing my own laundry. I sure never thought I’d feel like doing nothing but hanging out with an 8-month-old. I guess when my life before was hanging out with a 5 and 6 month old, it’s all relative…

It was kind of an up and down week, but I’m feeling much better now. As a matter of fact, I’m having a lovely evening — Joe is out, and I’m spending the evening watching Sixteen Candles, eating brownie mix and drinking beer. I love Darwin’s 7pm bedtime! The 5am wake up I could do without, but I’m going to accentuate the positive.

Here’s a picture of my grandmother (Mom-Mom) and Darwin on our visit in February. I can’t figure out how to make just one display, so sorry to post duplicates.

Two points for reversal June 6, 2008

I’m realizing how, in many ways, Joe and I have somehow switched gender roles with this whole having a baby thing.  Especially when Joe was at home for a few months, I felt like an absentee father — Joe would give Darwin a bath on the weekend, and I’d realize I have no idea how hot the water should be, or If Darwin likes his little floaty toys or not, or whatever.  I’ve still never given him a bath on my own, or cut his fingernails, even.  Joe is so much more a baby person than I am, and knows what he’s doing, and takes the time to figure things out.  I just kind of wing it and if the baby isn’t crying, score!.  So, I’d come home from work, get a kiss from Joe, and immediately set about the task of feeding Darwin and getting him ready for bed, while Joe cooked dinner so that it would be ready when Darwin went down (which, by the way, I find a very creepy saying for “go to sleep.”  You “put down” a horse.  Not a baby.  But, I digress), and we would eat what he cooked, he’d apologize if it wasn’t as tasty as he had hoped, and ask me about my day at work.  It was all very Leave it to Beaver, only Joe was wearing the pearls.  In a figurative sense.  Pearls don’t go with his Asian complexion, really.

Even now that Joe is back at an office, we’re still kind of in this weird and kind of nice gray area, where he still mostly makes the dinners, I take out the trash and scrub the bathtub, and we both change the diapers. It really hit home to me when Mothers Day and our anniversary fell in quick succession.  Joe gave me a really sweet Mothers Day gift — a hardcover printed, professional-looking book of Darwin photos called “Darwin Loves Mommy!” (love that MacBook and all the bells and whistles Apple offers!).  Then, for our anniversary, I turned into a total guy, and completely forgot — no card, no nothing, not even a “happy anniversary” on the day of.  Joe, on the other hand, got me some beautiful earrings, saying “Well, it’s our fifth anniversary, so I thought I should do something special.”  Somehow, I had turned into some neglectful husband who needs an assistant to take the dry cleaning (seriously, I need to take the dry cleaning.  Eeesh.) and to buy a spouse a gift for our anniversary.  Oops.  The nice thing is that Joe still IS a guy, and doesn’t take offense when I don’t remember these things.

Sometimes, I find myself longing for the simpler days of the 1950s, when I would have a clearly delineated role (“do everything, but never sweat or swear or complain”) that I would do all the time, instead of something that seems to morph every day (the Edith Bunker “goyles were goyles and men were men” reminiscence).  But, I realize that I like this much better — I am able to define myself, rather than be defined, and I’m really glad that Joe is happy with that, too, and is also comfortable in the gray area.  I don’t know how people can do it without those lines becoming blurred, how one person could be solely responsible for all finances, all discipline, all worrying about the mortgage and the car insurance and the scotch drinking, and one person could do all the cooking, cleaning and baby-rearing.  I mean, I know it got done, but I just don’t know how.  I’ll be interested to see how the pendulum swings balance out on women balancing family and career.  I think that it’s becoming more do-able, as companies begin to realize it behooves them to make it easier for mothers to stay on as employees, but we’ve still got a long way, baby.

But, I will count my blessings, and go to the lactation room now, since I have to work a 13-hour day and Joe will be reading Goodnight Moon, and singing songs, and putting Darwin to bed.  It’s a nice balance that we can do that.

Weekend update, with Darwin Kim June 2, 2008

What a weekend!  Darwin got his helmet, and it doesn’t seem to phase him whatsoever.  When the OT first put it on, he kind of felt it and explored it, but then quickly lost interest.  Thank goodness for short attention spans!  He’s still pretty cute, but he does look a bit like he should be in Tron.

The first guilt-inducing comment has been made, as well.  After aquababies — which Darwin totally dug, and really seemed to have fun in the pool, and no one had to be evacuated because the swim diaper didn’t work (and yes, we do take the helmet off for swimming.  Although it’s just styrofoam and plastic, so it would probably help him float!).  Anyway, after aquababies, Darwin and I were waiting for Joe.  Because of course Joe had to get an attendant to open his gym locker for him.  The lockers are the kind where you put in a 4-digit code to lock and unlock it, and when Joe was putting his coat in, he thought someone was watching him.  So, to thwart this would be robber, Joe cleverly entered in a different code than he usually uses, thereby confusing the robber.  Or something.  But all it did was confuse Joe who of course forgot said code and had to get someone official to open it for him.  You’ll have to excuse him — he wasn’t working with all his brain cells on Saturday, since he had gone to Mayfest the night before, which resulted in 1) his lying naked on the kitchen floor, 2) his waking up the baby because he turned him “from his cranky side” — which, when asked sober, Joe has no idea what that means, and 3) throwing up in our bathroom trash can.  So you can understand why it was a difficult day for him, and one during which he could not complain, as I had been up several times in the night looking after the baby and/or Joe, and had then started my day by taking the cat to the vet at 8am where she had to get her anal glands released.  Eeesh.

Anywhoo, there we were, hanging out and waiting for Joe, and an older woman came over and started cooing over Darwin, as so many are wont to do.  After a couple minutes, she looked at me sympathetically and said “Does he have seizures?”  No, I said, he has a flat spot that we’re evening out.  She looked confused for a split second, then “Oh — did you adopt him?”  I knew where this was going.  No, I again explained, he had a hip brace and so he couldn’t go on his tummy very well when he was younger (not mentioning the whole “back to sleep” campaign and the skyrocketing flat spot, but lower SIDS rates).  “Oh,” she said, relieved.  “Because I have a friend who adopted a baby, and the baby had a flat spot.  From neglect.”  Yes — thank you for pointing out that flat spots can be caused by neglect.  I appreciate the thought.  I don’t have enough guilt about working full time, or the fact that I’m not using SAT vocabulary during every interaction, or that I just leave him lying on the floor while I go pee.  It’s helpful when strangers also point out that I could be neglecting my child, causing permanent deformity.

But, other than that, it’s been fine.