She Bows Down Before Me

Some of the changes in Kate are fairly subtle, but since we’re constantly inspecting her every move with a fervor and fascination that’ll likely dissipate with any of her future siblings, we’re able to pick up on even the slightest development.

Just last week if you handed her a teddy bear she’d just try to gnaw its ear off. But in the past few days she’s developed some kind of nurture reflex. So, if you hold the big frog puppet (which actually scares Mark since it’s so realistic looking) in front of her, she’ll watch you make it dance around for a little while, then eventually she’ll lunge for it and give it a hug. It’s so damn cute Mark had her doing it about a dozen times on Sunday. And the cool thing is, she keeps doing it! I love a baby that does tricks when she’s supposed to.

So a not so subtle development is that she’s crawling now. (Relief! She’s normal!) Well, in all honesty, she sometimes crawls like a normal baby, and sometimes drags one leg straight out to her side as if it’s a wooden appendage that’s just coming along for the ride.

This morning as I was drying my hair she was playing with some toys on the bathroom floor. All of a sudden I felt her lunge at my feet. She’d crawled up to me to have at my big pink flamingo slippers. I stepped back a few feet and she zoomed back in, pouncing down on them for another hug.

Good stuff, that.

Aunt Flo Returns

In this family we’re huge fans of the Dr. Seuss book Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?. Not for its soul-affirming feel-good message, but for how totally funny and over-the-top weird and frankly kinda trippy it is. The copy we have is one that Mark got from his Grandma and Grandpa Kohl in 1977 before his family moved from Ohio to Franklin, PA. A few months ago I found it in a box of our books, and was amazed that I’d never read it before, and it’s soooo good. I know I’m not the first to have noticed, but Dr. Seuss’ imagination is brilliant! I want to sit next to that guy at a dinner party, though I think he might be dead.

So yesterday we walked to 4th Street in Berkeley with Adam for the sole purpose of requisitioning ourselves some first-rate ice cream at Sketch. (They make better ice cream than they do websites, btw.) Along the way something caused either Mark or I to refer to that book, and if you’re talkin’ books it seems the odds are good that Adam has read whatever it is you’re talking about. And his son Raulie is one year old today (happy birthday, Small Man!) so one would assume he’s done some solid work reading or rereading the kid stuff. But, sadly and shockingly, this Dr. Suess oeuvre has managed to evade even Adam.

If you too haven’t read it, seek out this book immediately. Until then, I’ll share the section Mark was recounting yesterday:

And poor Mr. Bix!
Every morning at six,
poor Mr. Bix has his Borfin to fix!
[The illustration is of an exhausted old bald man getting out of bed and to confront a big wilted-looking Rube Goldbergesque machine]

It doesn’t seem fair. It just doesn’t seem right,
but his Borfin just seems to go shlump every night.
It shlumps in a heap, sadly needing repair.
Bix figures it’s due to the local night air.

It takes him all day to un-shlump it.
And then…
the night air comes back
and it shlumps once again!

So don’t you feel blue. Don’t get down in the dumps.
You’re lucky you don’t have a Borfin that shlumps.

You think that’s good. Wait til you get to the part about the pants-eating plants in the forests of France!

At any rate, my Borfin–or more precisely I–just could not get un-shlumped today. From the moment I blearily slung my legs off the side of the bed like a paraplegic, and gave myself a couple minutes to tap into my usual wellspring of energy and sass before standing (it was oddly un-locate-able), I was clearly off to a bad start. After one look at me, Mark valiantly offered to take my waking-up-with-Kate shift, sweetheart that he is. But no, I persevered. I need to hone my maternal matyrdom eventually, and this morning was as good a time as any. Besides, I can generally shake off most anything in the morning, even without caffeine or drugs.

And for an hour or so, I managed to deal with Kate in a fairly high-functioning mode. But by the time Mark woke up my backache was back in full throttle and I’d suddenly detected a headache worming its way into my cranium. With just ten minutes to go before I had to nurse her before her nap, I crawled back into bed laughing as I called out to Mark that quite suddenly I fell like sheer Hell. Could he wake me up in 10 minutes?

Despite a short shopping trip to buy Mark a new suit (God, he looks cute in pin stripes) in which I experienced a moderate period of un-shlumpedness (Nordstrom can have an amazing Perking Effect, I’ve found), I was not myself, and got to wondering what was going on with me. I napped twice when Kate did but still couldn’t wake up. I’ve been eating sugar non-stop but still have a bottomless craving for it. And I have a small approximation of a zit between my eyes (whenever I say I have a zit, Mark says, “You call THAT a zit?”). It looks like a bindi that nature intended.

No, no, I’m not pregnant. Though it did seem like pregnancy-type symptoms.

By the end of the day I went to the bathroom and realized (d’oh!) that I’d gotten my period! After a nearly two-year pregnancy and post-pregnancy hiatus, Aunt Flo was back for a visit. As I dusted off my Costco lifetime supply-sized box of Tampax, I called out my news to Mark. “I’m not crazy! There was something going on with me!”

Heck, I feel like a school girl again. It made me remember the first time I “got it.” My mother had taken me to Brick Market Place in Newport to get a wooden-handled Pappagallo purse. It was Middle School couture at the time. I think that day I got a hot pink one with my monogram on it, and a Kelly green one. Later, I amassed a small legion of covers, most likely with matching headbands. Anyway, that day I had a lower backache which was a totally new and weird thing. It was bothering me, but I thought nothing of it until we got home and I realized why. (No matter how many health filmstrips I’d watched, I still missed all the warning signs.) When I walked downstairs to where my mom was standing at the kitchen sink (I can picture it really clearly, actually), she responded to my news with little surprise or fanfare. It was in keeping with her New England roots, and I frankly wouldn’t have wanted her to react any other way.

Which is funny because I can just picture how I’ll be when Kate gets her period for the first time. I’m sure I’ll be all crying and hugging her, and then when we’re out at the grocery store or something, I’ll feel compelled to put my arm around Kate and announce to the check-out lady that my little girl became a woman today. I know it will annoy and embarrass her to her core, but sometimes you just have a feeling about what you’ll do in a given situation, and you just can’t deny it.

One Year Clean!

Today marks one year that I have been out of work. I haven’t not worked for this long since high school, or possibly before then. I feel like I should be getting a pin in some ceremony in a church basement where other stay-at-home moms clap and cheer on my progress.

My Big Girl

Today Miss Kate is 11 months old. And even though in some ways I ask myself the age-old “where’d the time go?” question, in many ways I see how she and I have changed in that time and gotten more accustomed to these mother and baby roles.

Today for instance, we were at Ikea taking in all the Ektorps, Glinns, Fleeborks, etc., and I was hurrying us through since we were ‘threading the nap needle’ as it were. (We’d ventured out in the small window of time between the morning and post-lunch nap.)

Back home I made myself tomato soup and grilled cheese, and Kate had an assortment of various foods (cheese, tofu, spinach, chicken and stars baby food) that she was alternately eating and casually catapulting over the high chair tray when she thought I wasn’t looking. And there was just some weird air to it that we were like every other mother and kid eating lunch at home in the middle of a sunny day where not much is happening but sometimes no excitement is just fine.

And what’s weird about it was that it wasn’t weird to me at all. Sometimes my realization that I’m a stay-at-home mother comes at mundane times like those, and not when I’m doing something Hallmark like staring lovingly down upon her as she sleeps in her crib. (For the record, Mark and I are not Sleeping Baby Watchers, since we are too fearful we’ll be Sleeping Baby Waker-Uppers.)

So just that. It’s Thursday and God willing the lawn mower guy won’t wake Kate from her nap. When she gets up we’ll go to Chap House to visit Rose, and then we’ll come home and do the dinner-bath-book-to-bed routine.

The baby who everyone was certain was going to be a boy is getting to be a big girl and I still love her like a crazy lady. By this point I’m convinced it’s not just a new baby honeymoon phase kind of love, and that it’s how you end up loving your kid throughout their lives. But I’m holding out for the teen years to really put that concept to the test.

The People in My Neighborhood

So I’ve been interviewing for jobs (yeah yeah, haven’t even skimmed the surface here of all my thoughts on that). And I go to this one interview for a job and I’m feeling some interest and then they tell me about this other bigger, better job that gives me that whole “I still got it!” adrenaline rush and next thing you know I’m driving home thinking about hiring a full-time nanny and moving the whole family to the other side of the Bay.

Of course, when I woke up the next day all these thoughts had me breathing into a paper bag and I was hugging Little Miss Kate and kissing her head as if I’d just sold her on eBay and immediately needed to hand her over to her new owner. So, I stopped and thought (thanks to much great advice from Mark, Lisa and a host of other friends), let’s just take this one step at a time. I don’t even have an offer yet, and if I get one, maybe we don’t need to move. Ah…

Well, that lasted for 3 minutes until I bounced back into a frantic housing quest on Craig’s List while compulsively asking myself, do I like living in Oakland enough to commute? Do I like our house? Am I happy? Is chicken parm really my favorite dinner?

All this was exhausting. And so as I was sitting at the very desk where I’m sitting now, checking email and conducting other such electronic busy work, I saw my neighbor walk out of her house with her yoga matt tucked under her arm and realized that was exactly what I needed. It was evening, Kate was asleep and Mark was home. So I stumbled into the kitchen while pulling off my jeans and wondering where my matt was and asked Mark if he’d mind if I ditched dinner for a dose of physical and spititual well-being. Within 7 minutes I was unrolling my matt at the fab yoga studio that’s a block from our house and chatting with my neighbor. I was settled in on my sit bones and breathig deeply by the first Om.

After class my neighbor and I walked home through the tree-lined streets and I felt like I was floating–a totally different human then two hours earlier. How great that we live here. How great that my neighbor is a friendly yogini. This is something I might not get somewhere else, right?

Sunday I went to a meeting to help plan an event at a local kiddie park. They’ve added some new things–swings, picnic tables, etc.–and are having a community party to unveil it all. Another neighbor has been entrenched in this project from an architectural/design standpoint pro bono for years. So I sat in some woman’s cool family home–a beautiful Craftsman that I’d admired on walks before–and ate grapes and cookies and drank tea and met some other cool people who really love and care for and work hard on making Rockridge a better place to live. The spirit was contagious.

At the meeting’s end, the hostess walked us to the door and said to me and my friend Jacqueline (whom I’d enlisted) how good it was to have a new crop of young mothers working on this family/community stuff. She’s been involved since her now-15-year old was a toddler.

I am happy to carry the baton for the next generation! I pledge my allegiance to all things Rockridge!

And Monday. The night before Kate was up three times, which sucks because that means I was too (and will she EVER sleep through the night?), but also because I was having a, say, stomach affliction that had me running to the bathroom between tending to her. The next day I was pale and still sicky. I had no plans (unusual), and a baby who I’d be hard-pressed to deal with if she started to get fussy. The most distraction I could muster for her was a walk to Safeway, and as I’m slowly getting us ready to go out into the gloomy day, the doorbell rings. It’s Architect Mama Neighbor who smiles and hands over an armful of cute baby clothes for La Kate–hand-me-downs from her toddler. Our 5-minute visit was neither an intense bonding sesh, nor super interesting in any way, but it was a perfectly timed drop-in on a day when I was convinced there was no one else in the world but sicky me and little Kate. Hooray! If I continue to live here I may not ever be one of those people who dies and is discovered weeks later just because of the stench.

Yesterday, my kumbaya experience was capped off by Yoga Lady Neighbor who I saw at the schmancy local market. She was in a hurry–off to get home and eat before heading to the corner coffee shop where her knitting group meets weekly.

Do I knit? Or would I like to learn how? It’s a really fun and mellow group. Or, if I didn’t want to learn there, she’d’ be happy to teach me another time one-on-one. She has a bunch of extra needles I could use.

Well, as evidenced by my lame-assed attempts to contribute to the afghan that friends and family made for Kate, I don’t know that I’ll ever be a knitter. But I will be happy knowing that on Monday nights there is a group of friendly woman who are a’knittin’ and a’perlin’ just a stone’s throw away, who’d welcome me even if I were to walk in and profess my utter ineptitude.

So we are here. We live in Rockridge and it’s our home. For a while, I was lured into forsaking it, but then it became clear to me that there are so many reasons–some that I don’t even know yet–that it’s good and right to be here. So if I take a job that’s not in my backyard (or at this very desk!), I drive a little bit to get there. At least at the end of the day I’ll come home to the all the great people and places in my neighborhood.

Bad Movies, Bad Jokes, and Good Eggs

Today we had a brunch for the old Bad Movie Monday clan. The BMM posse is one I’ve been a proud part of since, well, the lion’s share of the 14 years I’ve lived in SF.

Through the years the core contingent has been whittled down due to members selfishly moving to other coasts and cities for reasons like “jobs” and “family” (harrumph), but we’ve never lost anyone out of dissipated interest. And as much as we’ve toyed with the idea of getting some fresh blood when our numbers dwindled, of the “funny friends” that one or the other of us has invited at times no one has really stuck to form a next gen. We operate now, when we do operate that is, as a lean machine. Generally a quorum is required in order for a screening.

At any rate, Hlinko, one of the BMM posse who now lives in DC (which, were it on the big screen would be it’s own bad movie) was in town with his new-to-us wife. So we brunched.

I was supposed to be on early Kate-up duty, but Mark graciously offered to jump in, and made a fruit salad, the fruit of which was all perfectly, uniformly diced (as he does), a bunch of bacon, and a huge delicious frittata. Everyone arrived late and stayed late, and silly gifts were exchanged. (I got a Styrofoam wig form and a plastic rain bonnet, and Sue got some garlic shampoo.)

It’s amazing to think there was a time when we all had the ability and the discipline to meet nearly every Monday. One person would host at their house, which required them to rent a movie and provide food for everyone. (One needs strength for heckling.) In the early days when we’d order pizza we’d all chip in $5 or whatever so the host didn’t have to pick up the tab, but over the years our intermittent inspirations to cook for each other became more the norm. No gourmet meals, mind you. More like pasta shaped like Santa Clauses (seasonally, of course) and bottled sauce with salad and a cheap red. After a long day at the office, there was nothing like it.

The movies we’ve seen have ran the gamut from the classic B movies like Strip Tease, to the more rarified Mac and Me (a MacDonald’s branded spin-off of ET), to Can’t Stop the Music (the story of The Village People). Add to that some creepy twisted movies with rapist midgets, village-swallowing pancake batter, and Italian Romeos who used olive oil in their seductions.

Movies featuring a now-respected actor or actress who’s likely mortified by the film today, are especially delightful. Grease 2 (Michelle Pfeiffer), The Island of Dr. Moreau (Marlon Brando), Popeye (Robin Williams), and Evel Kenievel (George Hamilton), to name a few. Okay, so maybe George Hamilton isn’t the best example of a respected actor, but you get my point. We’ve also enjoyed some quality made for TV movies about people like Amy Fisher, or with really any actor playing someone with mental retardation. (I know, I know. We should burn in hell.)

The Politos were the first of the group to procreate making Gianni the premier BMM baby. They made a strong showing of still attending even in his wee months. Then Tony had the twins–or did Sue have Georgia first? At any rate, babies took their toll on our time and energy and bad movies fell low on our priority lists. Damn those kids.

It’s still a hoot to get together when we do though. Thankfully becoming a parent doesn’t totally eat away at your sense of humor. In fact, these days I think we all appreciate more than ever how indulgent it is to waste time with a truly terrible movie.

Of course, seeing everyone today has renewed my desire to get together more often, which means I need to start racking my brains to come up with a really good bad movie.

All This and a Pinching

Why don’t your friends who have babies before you tell you about The Pinching Phase?

It’s like the final few weeks to Kate’s due date when I was compelled to go to Target once every 48 hours. (Buy curtains, return curtains, rinse and repeat.) Mark and I just thought this was my own breed of pregnancy madness, but when I called my friend Sue to tell her I’d be late to her house one night–since I was in traffic coming from Target–she said, “Oh yeah, I remember that Target phase.” Well why the hell don’t they write about that in What To Expect When You’re Expecting?!

So, the pinching. A few weeks ago Kate starting in on it with a fervor. And man, she is a good pincher. She just takes the smallest amount of skin (no fat) and gives it a nice hard squeeze. And they come out of the blue, in moments when your guard is down, like dozily nursing her, or holding her while trying to empty the dishwasher.

Mark was undressing her for a bath a couple weeks ago and strarted screaming for me to come check something out. Of course, I envisioned that the devil had spelled out BITCH across her stomach, but no. Mark was flipping out over the fact that she was pinching herself. Making her way up and down her stomach, and coming oddly close to her nipples a couple times.

Why doesn’t this hurt her? Is her desire to perfect her pincer grasp (one of the skills that is all part of the first year child dev journey) so great that she is willing to overlook her pain, and the pain of others, to practice?

When my mother’s group met last, Megan was holding young Ella and saying her goodbyes when all of a sudden she let out a little cry. “Agh! What is UP with the pinching?” she wailed. Ah well, at least Kate is not alone.

Aunts and Uncles Everywhere

Growing up on the Least Coast as I did, there was a certain amount of formality that’s not present in Cali. And I guess it was Different Times then, as they say. So when it came to addressing my parents’ friends, or anyone a few decades or so older than myself, I referred to them as Mr. or Mrs. Oh, and I guess I used Miss too. My second grade teacher, the crotchety Miss Vermette, was never married (Ye Olde Stereotypical School Marm) and lived with her sister (another bachelorette) into her decrepitude. So she was a Miss.

At any rate, the thought of having my friends’ kids—or anyone else frankly—call me Mrs. McClusky, is laughable. In these times and these parts we go by first names, or Aunt or Uncle.

Sunday we had the pleasure of attending Lisa and Jackson’s co-birthday party. Last year instead of doing something like getting a massage for her birthday, Lisa got an epidural and gave birth to the sweet dark-eyed Jackson. I tell you that boy will be a lady killer. Oy, is he cute!

When you have the same birthday as your one-year-old and you are as clever a hostess as Lisa is, you have a Cocktails and Cupcakes party. So once Kate and Mark woke up from naps and we all got clean diapers and/or clothes on, we headed to Burlingame. The shindig was in their lovely yard, a warm, sunny afternoon—and it was one of those parties where the true-blues stay a little later than everyone else and you leave feeling all lucky to have the friends that you do.

At one point when I was on the blanket the babes were playing on I think I was trying to give little miss Ella an Oatio (organic Cheerio, if you’re not down). Her dad Jason said something like, “Ella, Aunt Kristen is trying to give you something,” and although it was a blip on my mental screen then, I thought later (just about now, in fact), that I had a little flicker of pride for getting the Auntie title. I fully intend to live up to it.

In our world of bringing our kids everywhere (my mother asked once, “Does anyone in California ever get a sitter?”), and relaxed “I wipe your kid’s nose, you wipe mine” friendships, we’ve dispensed with the formality of the Mr. and Mrs. titles entirely and opted to keep it all in the family. Maybe, probably, these crazy Californians have been doing it that way for years, but be that as it may, I’d like to think the fact that our friends’ kids call us Uncle and Aunt is something that’s more unique to our brand of friendship, or what some would call our “urban tribe.”

I think there’s also one part that’s a recognition of the importance that these kids—be they mine or yours–have in our world today. The children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard era is ancient history. We care deeply about what these kids think, feel, say. The profusion of parenting magazines, books and websites out there may make some think we care too much. And sure, it bugs me when I hear parents be overly precious with their kids instead of letting them tough out some things on their own. But net/net I’d like to think you can’t really care too much when you’re talking about your kids. And if you could, it wouldn’t be the worst thing.

So real Aunts and Uncles be damned! It’s the families we’ve assembled intentionally that deserve a little credit. I’m right here and plan to stick around to watch you grow up, Little Missy. You can count on me bawling at your wedding some day. Aunt Kristen is here to stay.

Maternal Career Crisis #683

It seems like nearly every Mama I’ve spoken to these days has been wrangling with the whole work and kid issue. Or more likely I am, and I’m projecting.

The How to Be a Mother and Have a Career Struggle™ is nothing new, God knows. And it’s like heartburn. It’s an incredibly common ailment, but once you have it yourself you want to curl up and die. You are the first person ever to have heartburn. It sucks.

All mothers working or not struggle with whether they’re doing one or both jobs well enough, whether their mothering will suffer if they work, or their career will suffer if they don’t work. Or they feel guilty that they aren’t working and don’t want to, or feel bad that they can’t imagine ever not working. And no configuration of work and parenting ever seems to strike the right balance for terribly long. At least, this is the case for many of the women I know.

I am the former workaholic maniac who cried for two days a couple weeks into Kate’s life that I couldn’t do this and we needed to get a nanny. I felt a sudden crushing need to flee back to the stringent, stressful halogen-lit, mother ship agency where, even though I’d complained about it incessantly at times, I was secure and comfortable and competent to perform the tasks given to me. Despite the pressure and the politics I did experience intermittent adrenaline rushes of job satisfaction, mixed with smugness that English majors really can make a lot of money. Being at home with a crying newborn did not provide any of those things.

But the two days I cried over fear of the unknown as a new parent were infinitesimal compared to the crazy, painful, and at times terrifying love that I had for this little human Mark and I made. Any panicked desire to run back into the arms of my old job was followed by a tsunami of anguish over the thought of someone else caring for Kate. It must be what it feels like when you are hypnotized to quit smoking. You still get that habitual urge, but then you’re overcome with sudden, strong negative association to barf, or cluck like a chicken, or whatever thing it was your guarantee-to-quit package bought you.

So Mark and I decided that for whatever amount of time made sense financially and emotionally for us, we’d instate Kate as my new boss.

Aside from the fact that she was sweet and beautiful and smelled like buttered toast and I was overcome with crazy mama-bear love, my new gig was not without its hardships. Being a new mother has an ass-kicking learning curve that kept me on my toes. And I love a good challenge, so I jumped into the new role with gusto.

I set the bar high, and usually met my goals. I showered every day. I kept the house OCD tidy. I stayed on top of the mountains of laundry. I wrote thank you notes, bought groceries at Costco, Safeway and the farmer’s market, lunched with friends, and even baked for my mother’s group. And of course I nursed, and loved, and diapered, and burped and kissed little Miss Kate on a relentless round-the-clock schedule. There is a culture shock to having a baby that no friend, no matter how gifted their powers of communication are, can adequately express to you. There is a lot to do, you feel like you’re operating in a hazy alternate universe where everyone’s voice sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher, and there are no scheduled coffee breaks. (In fact, coffee, which you need now more than all your exam weeks combined, you fear will keep the baby up so you avoid like the plague.) All this said, I love my new mama life.

Anyone from my past work life who asked me over lunch how it is being at home I’m sure went back to their offices and made gagging motions when describing to others how I’m doing. My new job with Kate has exceeded my expectations in every way, and I’ve felt the urge to shout it from the rooftops. I know it’s obnoxious, but I can’t help myself. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in a life that’s been characterized by unfailing happiness. (I think that makes me meta happy.) Shocking as it is, I’m the poster girl for staying home with your baby. I’m the consummate Happy Homemaker. I even had a dalliance with scrapbooking that I’ve since abandoned, but still. Scrapbooking! Me!

So just when I have a handle on this new life, I’ve recently been experiencing these little urges to get back to doing some kind of work. I mean, it kills me that I even have these thoughts, because I’m still so happy being home with Kate. But they have kept cropping up, and I can’t repress them. It’s made me at times a bit schizophrenic.

A typical scenario: I frantically scour Craig’s List for jobs while Kate is taking a nap. When I go to get her out of her crib when she wakes up, I look down at her smiley cuteness and practically sob and clutch her to me like a deranged wild woman. I feel like Help Wanted ads are my secret lover. I am cheating on Kate with Craig’s List.

But can’t there be some kind of balance? [Insert Motherhood/Career Balance Quandary Rant ™ here.] Can’t I start to contribute to the financial health of the McClusky family, lessen the moneymaking burden on Mark, find satisfaction in using my brain in the way that my parents spent $80K on my college education for, and still be an excellent mother who somehow gets to always be there every time Kate wakes up from a nap? I mean, isn’t there a way to do this without resorting to a phone sex operator career?

Sacha, my dear mother’s group cohort, and one of the few of the 11 of us who didn’t return to work post-baby, just accepted a job and is putting her money on making the mom/career balance work. Her job sounds amazing and enriching and rewarding and fun even, and I wish her the best of luck in making it work. I think it can be done. I want her to make it work for her sake and for Baby Owen’s and for women everywhere. But I also selfishly want her to be around for me so we can take the babies swimming together on weekdays, and plan myriad other when-the-babies-wake-up jaunts, and continue to share notes on our Neo June Cleaver family-focused existences that nearly a year into our children’s lives are no longer quite so novel.

On the other hand, because I’ve now started to explore some intriguing job options of my own, maybe Sacha and I will just move onto a new and different level of comraderie, emotional support, and friendship. I never imagined that an office would be a strange, foreign realm to me. My next challenge might just be reacquainting myself with that once-familiar place—most likely in a fashion that’s far different from my past work life. In the same way that I needed a team of women to help me process making the leap into motherhood, I imagine I’ll need a similar support group for wrangling with re-entering the workforce while keeping the home fires burning.

If that is what I decide to do, hopefully Kate will understand that my need to set one toe back into the work world doesn’t mean I love her any less, or won’t desperately miss always being the one to get her out of her crib when she wakes up from a nap.

The Sweet Taste of Success

Today there was much rejoicing throughout the land, or at least throughout our kitchen. Just when I was envisioning what effect the fact that she only ate Cheerios would have on Kate’s social life at college, Miss Thing gobbled up every last morsel of food that I put in front of her at dinner.

The Menu:
Tofu Squares Marinated in Soy and Garlic
Scrambled Organic Egg Yolk
Fresh-Cut Pineapple
Spinach and Potato baby food (1 jar)

Note: No Cheerios were required to whet her appetite, stop her from crying, or ensure that she at least consumed some foodstuff prior to going to bed.

I’m not sure what I did differently, but I can assure you I’ll be wearing this brown shirt and khaki shorts and positioning her highchair in the exact same longitude and latitude for future meals.

What was so amazing was Kate just chugged it all down totally casually. Every once and I while I’d look over and try to stifle wild screams of delight, and excited arm flailing and heel-clicking. My self-control was impressive. She ate on, undeterred. It was mysterious and beautiful.

At the end of the meal she looked up at me with a calm and reasonable expression. I’d call it a look of satisfaction. No tears. No hysteria. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin, folded it and set it down, while proclaiming the meal, “Simply delightful. Just lovely.”

Tomorrow night, as a special treat, I’ll be draping a tablecloth over her highchair tray and setting a rosebud in a vase on top of it. Nothing’s too good for my little eater.