April 2008 Archives

It's just like they say in the book. At Kate's age kids get really interested in hearing stories. Stories about when they were a baby. Stories about when you were a kid. Kate has even asked us to recount endlessly the story (if you can even call it that) of when our neighbor Matt came over after Paige's birth to bring us some cookies and a rattle.

More often than not when we're driving in the car these days if we're not singing Farmer Jason's arrowhead song, I'm telling (or retelling) Kate some tale about my youth. The one about when the cop drove me home from first grade being one of her--and sure, one of my--faves.

So it only seems fitting that in the past couple weeks my youth is catching up with me. In part, due to my attempts to make that happen. Every now and again I get to wondering what happened to my friend Sydney Smith--my beloved ally and cohort from 4th grade until her parents ruthlessly decided to move to Texas before 8th grade.

Turns out that Googling the name Sydney Smith doesn't get you very far. Especially when names are changed through marriage. I need to get the good folks at Google to crack that nut. Search: Sydney Smith. Search results: Did you mean: Sydney McCann? 

I'm sure everyone has their own Sydney. A friend who had a comforter with peach-colored fuzzy lining that you envied? Someone you did an elementary school gymnastics routine to the theme song of Rocky with, and then forgot what you were supposed to be doing part-way through? The person you used to walk to the downtown pizza parlor with, and would see the crazy man with the dime on his forehead?

You know. That friend.

It was my wise old dad who brilliantly offered the best way to track Sydney down. Ask the school where we both went for her contact info. It's true. Any time I've ever moved it seems some school or other that I've attended sends me mail hitting me up for money long before the thought of telling anyone my new address has even crossed my mind. If anyone would know where Sydney landed, it was Wheeler.

But it turned out that even The Wheeler School had lost touch with her. Lucky for me, they got their crew of former CIA agent PIs on the case, because within a couple weeks of my inquiry, I got an email from none other than Sydney herself. 

Of course I imagined that if we ever crossed paths again she'd still have that strawberry blond bowl cut and like to pass notes in class. But turns out some twenty-odd (!!) years later, she's all grown up with a husband and three kids. What's more, her braces are even off!

After some email exchanges and phone tag we finally connected, and amidst Kate's endless interruptions managed to skim through some of our major life events from the past two decades. Now she and her hub are planning a trip to the Bay Area at the end of the month. Before I know it we'll be sitting across the table from each other drinking wine! I hope our husbands don't mind if we pass a few notes too.

Damn it, I want to call my mother and tell her all about this. I'm sure she'd remember some funny thing Sydney and I did together that with my dementia-grade memory I've forgotten all about.

So, on top of Finding Sydney (soon to be a major motion picture), after a Friday morning latte run in the 'hood with the girls--back when I was still 'on dairy' (sniff!)--I got home to hear this message on my machine:

"Hey, if this is Kristen Bruno, this is Leah Katz. I think I just drove past you pushing an orange stroller on College Avenue at Hudson. Oh wow, I really think it's you! If it's you will you please call me back? And if it's not you, I hope the McCluskys are doing great!"

Leah was one of my dearest friends at Kenyon, and my roomie sophomore year. She was a great integrating force for me when I moved to SF 16 years ago, but along the way we managed to fall out of touch. Last I saw her was at our ten-year Kenyon reunion and I think she was living in Berkeley and teaching. We still haven't managed to connect over the phone, but I'm dying to talk to and hopefully see her, and learn all the details of her grown-up life.

It seems like it's only a matter of time before my ornery second grade teacher, Miss Vermette, jumps out of the bushes at me. And when she does, I'll be totally ready for her.

Today Kate and I took Paige for her three-month well-baby appointment. Aside from her weighing 14 pounds and 7 ounces--putting her in the 90th percentile for baby weight--the biggest take-away was Dan's directive for us to focus on Paige's "skin management."

Well won't my cleaning lady be happy.

We got some tips on wrangling the cradle cap. No mention about the acne, actually. Then Dan mentioned that I should cut down on my milk intake. (Okay, so he might have said cut "out" the milk.)

Evidently my drinking milk is triggering the light rash on Paigey's arms and shoulders. I can't remember how he described the exact effect it has. He also said something about eczema--either that it is eczema now, or maybe that it could develop into it. I was a bit stunned and preoccupied. Cutting off my milk supply he might as well have asked me to disconnect an artery.

Mind you, I'm hardly the type to pour myself a tall glass of cold milk. That kinda grosses me out actually. But decaf lattes, cocoa with mini-marshmallows, and Dove Bars make up my primary food groups. If it weren't for the fact that my Midwestern husband cooks a well-balanced dinner for us every night, I'd likely subsist on this holy trinity. They're convenient comfort foods that also fill me up when I don't have time to make something more substantial. And thus far at least, there's no evidence of pitted fingernails, hair loss, or dementia to indicate I have scurvy or any other form of malnutrition.

In case for some reason the milk in my lattes wouldn't count as "milk" per se, I needed to double-check on this directive with the good doctor.

Me: "So, no milk, as in, no lattes?"

He: (casually, as if he's not dropping a bomb on me) "Yep!"

Ah well, I guess from now on out I'll be getting my daily dose of comfort from admiring Paigey's sweet skin.

My oldest sister Marie has 12 years on me. And like 97% of America, she married and starting reproducing at a younger age than I did.

So when Kate was a newborn and I was adjusting to a break from office life, living in a new city, and caring for an infant 24x7, Marie was working through some domestic changes of her own. Hers was on the opposite end of the parenting spectrum though; the oldest of her two sons had just left for college.

With Mom gone, my sisters and I call each other when there's something we want to tell Mom about. It's not as good as the real thing, but given the situation you need to make do. Marie will call: "Since Mom's not here to brag about this to, I'll just have to tell you that John made the Dean's List!" Or Ellen will just leave a message, "I miss Ma! I really wish I could call her right now."

Anyway, being at home with a baby increased my calls to Marie exponentially. I needed someone other than Mark to prattle on to about Kate's dazzling beauty and brilliance, and to celebrate her most mundane accomplishments and grocery store interactions. And with her Nearly Empty Nest Syndrome newly engaged, Marie had her share of stuff to talk about too.

Oddly, more often than not, our conversations turned to the topic of laundry. I was living through what everyone forewarns happens when you have a kid--an alarming increase in washing, drying, folding, and putting away clothes--and endlessly repeating this process. For Marie, her laundry had fallen off dramatically. She'd often say that with just one son at home and always off doing things with his own car and friends, there was so much less for her to do--and God knows, there was also less laundry.

Call it wacky, depressing, or weird, but I've come to see how the cosmic cycle of laundry (no pun intended) creates a bit of a natural and calming rhythm to things on the home front. Laundry is rarely stressful. It's not demanding or physically taxing. And it's often satisfying in the way that something dirty becomes clean and renewed, and a pile of disorder moves towards order and harmony. It's ever-present in some state of completion--and there's nothing you can do but accept that. The moment you finish a white load you end up dropping a white t-shirt into the hamper. And so it goes. There will be another white load soon enough. (I'd also say that there's that great clean laundry smell, but these days we're a no-dye no-fragrance kinda family.)

I mean, don't get me wrong. I can think of a million things I'd much rather do than laundry, but of all housework crap that must get done, it's not half bad. And it beats emptying the dishwasher by a long shot.

So here I am again, home with a newborn and having pressed the pause button on my work life once more. And now with two kids--oy the laundry! And by sheer coincidence, Marie's in a new place too, this time with her youngest off at college as a freshman. No one at home but her and her husband, generating a relative dearth of dirty clothes. Once a bustling hive of activity, a place she'd pop into several times a day, all is now quiet on the laundry room front.

But in our recent conversations she's outed herself a bit on how she's managing the change. Her son's at Brown--an easy drive from their Boston suburb home. At first she'd mention having to go there to bring him something--his blue blazer for an upcoming formal, his mouth guard. More recently she's been attending his lacrosse games. She started mentioning how bedraggled he looked when she'd see him. "His North Face jacket reeked. I think it had been soaked in beer."

It was her entree to admitting that he was clearly in need, so she'd say she took some of his laundry with her when she'd go visit Dad who lives nearby. "I just ran a few loads while I was having lunch with Dad," she'd say.

The other day she mentioned having brought Rory's dirty clothes home with her. She went so far as to say how satisfying it was to soak them for a while and see the water turn gray. How good it felt to really get them clean. It made me remember there was a pair of Kate's poopy panties awaiting me on our laundry pile downstairs.

But I didn't want to show off.

Last week Marie called to check in. They'd been to Brown to one of Rory's games, and she mentioned she dropped off the laundry that she'd taken from him on her last visit. And in the peaceful voice of a woman who's come to terms with what it is that makes her happy, she told me when she was there she offered to do Rory's roommate's laundry too.

I managed to swallow saying, "No fucking way!" because I knew she realized herself it was utterly wacky. And who am I to get in the way of that other kid getting the yellow stains out of the armpits of his t-shirts?

Besides, it's impossible to know what things I'll be clinging to when Kate and Paige are off to college. God knows there's an inner Smother in me just waiting to come out.

One thing I'm fairly certain of is when it comes to unloading dishwashers, they're on their own.

After tucking her in and kissing her goodnight Kate looked at me solemnly and said, "Remember. There is a ukulele at preschool."

Uh, okay... Noted!

In your elementary school, did your local version of Les Dunbar and Danny Palumbo run around the playground one day stirring up a frenzy of confusion and embarrassment by cattily informing each kid that their "epidermis is showing?"

Oh, well maybe it was just a Rockwell School thing.

At any rate, without knowing what your epidermis is, this can instill in a young'un a fair amount of insecurity and shame.

Well, it's all I can do to not whisper into Paige's ear that's hers is showing. In fact, since her second day of life her epidermis seems to have been doing absolutely everything it could to make its existence known. Well, short of spelling out "bitch" on her stomach.

The poor lass has been plagued with baby acne the likes of which has caused a woman in the Safeway parking lot to exclaim, "That baby has hives!" and our house cleaner to ask, "Have you taken her to the doctor for that?"

Her cradle cap is like some Zen life challenge that has been presented to Mark and I. We scour, scrub, pick and peel at her head. We apply salves, ointments, oils and tinctures. And yet every morning it's returned without fail. Sometimes it evens doubles its strength.

And then, though it's hard to notice when you're taking in all the other maladies, I recently discovered that her shoulders and arms are covered with a thin scaly rough rash. Nothing that jumps out at you with the look-at-me drama of the whiteheads or head crust, mind you. But it's there. Just something lurking there un-seen by most--another secret dermatological war that's raging.

A few days ago when the acne outbreak was taking a temporary break in intensity, I got her from her crib after a nap and saw she'd gouged a small hole out of the corner of her nose with a hand she freed from her swaddle. Despite the sea of vitamin E I've applied to it, the dark red scab is still there today, doing its part to mar whatever Gerber-like baby qualities she might ever dream of possessing.

But really, all this is superficial. The fact is, I did talk to her pediatrician about it and he promises it's normal, it'll be short-lived, and won't affect her chances of getting into Yale. But still, my inner pageant mom wants my sweet baby to look better. 

My dearest friends peek in at her in the Moby Wrap and encourage me with strength-seeking sayings like, "This too shall pass" and "It's always darkest before the dawn." Some even look past the scales and coo over Paige's cuteness. God bless them.

I can only hope that Paige is paying out a lifetime of dermatological penance right now, and that in her teen years, when all these other peaches and cream babies are considering derm-abrasion, she'll glow with a perfect, radiant complexion. She'll be able to walk around the dance floor on prom night kindly informing everyone that their epidermis is showing.

So tonight we are going to this gallery opening. Or is it called an art opening at a gallery? See? It's clear I'm totally baffled about how to approach this. I'm not even sure what to call it.

The thing is, my friend John from RI sent me an email saying his friend, Josie, was going to be out here showing some of her paintings in this group show, wittily entitled Group Sects. We know Josie from our annual pilgrimages home for Forta July, and she's a groovy gal.

So, I take to looking at her website, and it turns out she's an amazing painter. Who knew? I mean, I knew she was a good heckler at the Bristol parade, and I was satisfied with that being the extent of her offerings to society. 

What's more, she paints birds, which aligns quite nicely with my chicken obsession. (The topic for a whole other blog entry.) She and I send a few emails back and forth with me  saying things like, 'Hey I heard about your show.' And her saying, 'Yeah you guys should come and where can I get the best burrito in SF?' She also mentioned that she'd never been to the gallery before, but she's seen it a bunch in "her art magazines." She didn't know what it'd be like but she'd be getting her hair cut just in case.

This from the platinum blond pixie with sleeve tattoos. Somehow I think she'll pass fashion muster, even with her old haircut.

As for me, I'm anticipating someone suddenly pointing to me in my high-cut Costco mom jeans and shouting across the crowded room, "What's she doing here?" Then a spotlight will move over to me, revealing me shamefully shoveling large chunks of orange cheese into my mouth and guzzling wine from a plastic cup.

What's worse, we're bringing Paige with us since, like her big sister did, she refuses to take a bottle despite Mark's most valiant and ceaseless attempts.

So not only will I be outed for my lack of hipster-tude, I'll also likely be trying to quiet/hide a squalling baby by breastfeeding--while balancing my cup of wine (yes, drinking and nursing--in public no less) and trying to not topple my paper plate of cubed cheese and crackers.

All this aside, the worst of it is I'm desperate to buy one of Josie's paintings. So through this all I'll be doing my best to convince Mark that despite the fact that I've just quit my job, we really should spent several thousand dollars on an immense 4x4 foot painting of a rooster. (Seriously.)

Thankfully, the one thing I am kidding about is owning jeans from Costco. I think I need to rack up a few more years at home with the kids before the nexus between value and fashion  that they afford me starts to make sense.

"I'm already against the next war."

How excellent is that?

It's so weird not working. Somehow I haven't managed to purge the subconscious corporate brain activity from my psyche. So, when I'm not actively engaged in diaper changing, toddler taming, or maternal mammalian activities, I find I have this subtle nagging feeling that there's something else that I should be doing.

Do I have a presentation to write? Employee to lambaste? Meeting that I'm somehow extremely late for?

I wrack my brain. Truly. Isn't there something I should I be doing right now, while I have the chance with both kids sleeping? Are there voicemails from ornery clients on my cell phone that I've neglected to check? An issue of Ad Age I forgot to read? HR forms to fill out? For the love of God, isn't there something other than this?

I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure I'm just coming down off of a stress addiction. And man, it sucks. I don't feel it all the time, but it's like the no ciggie after a meal thing. When I do remember I want it, I want it bad. I sweat and slap the inside of my elbow staggering around the house. Where's my next hit going to come from? Certainly there's some shit storm brewing ugly revenue-loss implications somewhere. Or an employee who is right now saying the exact wrong thing to a client?

But no. Often there's nothing. The kids are fed, the house is tidy and often actually clean too. And I'm caught up on my People Magazine reading. Nothing is bearing down on me.

The best I get is a load of laundry I'll find that's lingered in the washing machine forgotten. I open the door, crouch down, and sniff to see if it's gotten mildewy. Maybe I'll have to re-do the load! Maybe it'll all happen when Kate needs me to tie her shoe! Oh the challenge of it all. But, no luck. It's just fine and I sigh and heave it into the dryer.

My heart races slightly when we're dangerously low on milk. Only a quarter of the carton left, I think! I'll need to get to the store quickly before we totally run out and Kate is standing forlorn--worse tantrumy--demanding "milkie" in her "new Sigg cup with the cars smiling on it." But deep down I know that even if we're suddenly milk-less, it won't rock Kate's world too extremely. Nor is it too hard to get to a store to buy some. There's a glimmer of stress I work up around it all, but it's hardly the hit off the pipe I'm needing, if you know what I mean.

The other day, while racking my brain for what it could be that I need to attend to, I remembered my long-neglected scrapbook project. It was something I decided to delve into when I was home with Kate as a baby. It would have been more efficient to simply sit on my front steps and burn wads of cash. But going to the scrapbook store and browsing at "papers" (all part of the "scrappers" lexicon) seemed to fill some void in me at the time.

After putting together about seven scrapbook pages chronicling Kate's life--I barely covered events beyond the first days in the hospital--I decided the world of scrappin' was not for me. I'd toiled and fretted so much over each page, working painfully to achieve supreme cuteness and creativity and never committing to using the permanent double-sided tape to adhere all the nostalgic crap down. When I wasn't working on the book, I berated myself with guilt for letting life's little and big moments pass us by without photos, collages, and puffy stickers to commemorate them. Like watching Leave it to Beaver as a child, where I internalized stress over every of the Beave's misdeeds to near the point of bleeding ulcers, I knew this hobby was no fit for my OCD innards. It just wasn't healthy to be cutting colored paper with scalloped scissors over and over again to make the perfect oval border to showcase Kate's umbilical stump when I could be spending her babyhood engaging with her instead.

But now, with my anxiety level so dangerously low and my days filled with plenty to do but all of it mindless busy work, I can't help but wonder if I could practice scrapbooking moderation.  It might just be the antidote to the What Now? Blues I've been having. Maybe I can control my scrapbooking--dole out just enough to myself each week to boost my blood pressure slightly and get me chewing my cuticles again?

It's something to consider as I daydream during my next meeting with Paige's poopy diaper.

Just when I consider cheating on the Bay Area with another city, it busts out a weekend like the one we just had. Glorious blue skies and temps in the 80s. It even stayed warm late into the evening on Saturday.

And on top of an exceedingly pleasant picnic at Lake Temescal, a fun and productive foray into front porch sprucing, and some classic neighborhood moments--including a swarm of kids sitting on my porch eating strawberries and watermelon and jumping off the wall into my friend Jennifer's arms--on top of all that the fabulous weather afforded me an opportunity to bust out my Longs sun hat. Kate, in turn, got a chance to wear a swim diaper. As such, we were both decked out in some of our favorite attire. We were happy as clams, us two.

It seemed that, in mid-April, Summer decided to stop in early for a spell.

For all I know they're having a fresh snowstorm in Minnesota right now, and Chicagoans are still pulling the hoods of their down parkas up around their faces when they venture outdoors. And God knows it's pissing rain in PAWT-lend.

All I can say is, "Bay Area, I'm sorry!"

Last night we returned from four delightful yet rain-sodden days in Portland. Oregon, that is.

At 9 weeks old, it was Paigey's maiden air-travel voyage. She was a week older than Kate was when she had her first flight to Aunt Terry's in Kentucky for Thanksgiving. And despite the absurd number of bags, car seats, portable cribs, lap tops, and strollers that we brought, we managed to get both children there and back without mistakenly having left one on a parking shuttle van.

So much about Portland is extremely cool. Lovely neighborhoods and big old houses that aren't staggeringly expensive. Restaurants serving local organic foodie-grade food in a hip setting, and hostesses that crouch down and hand your toddler crayons when you walk in the door. World-class coffee and wacky donuts, and some of the best independent toy stores I've ever been in. And heck, the folks were downright friendly--even after having found out we're Californians (who many of them have disdain for as if we're illegal border crossers).

Kate was all hopped up about our vacation destination. (Well, vacation for Kate, Paige and I, and work for Mark, who had some press thingy at Nike early this week.)

On the plane there were a lot of questions. "They have toys in Portland? They have books there?" And Sunday morning after ferreting a pack if instant oatmeal out of our bag like a truffle-sniffing pig, she asked hopefully, "They have hot water for oatmeal in Portland, Mama?" 

We were totally into how much her mind was blown by the concept of a rental car. "What this car?" "We not take the Subaru?" Once we explained that our cars were at home and this was a rental, there needed to be commentary on it every time we'd get in: "Dada have someone else's keys." "We take someone else's car." "This not the Subaru."

When she'd hear someone on the radio say the word Portland she got all hopped up. "They say Portland, Mama!" As if the fact that they call this place Portland was something only we were hip to. 'No way! The person on the radio knows this is Portland too!'

I guess it all could have been annoying, if it weren't for the fact that seeing her try to grapple with these concepts was hilarious and sweet, at least to her adoring parents. Even the way she pronounces the word Portland--"PAWT-lend"--is excellent.

In Mark's four weeks of paternity leave we had the old if-not-here-then-where-would-we-live conversation one morning when we were out for breakfast. Pondering the Utopian place where we aren't but should (or could) be has become a bit of an obsessive hobby, at least for me. Of course, Mark loves his job, so my arm-chair pondering isn't really steeped in any imminent plans to uproot. But that doesn't stop my wheels from turning.

At that breakfast one city Mark tossed out as a possibly cool place to live--probably just to shut me up--was Portland. So it was fortuitous that he suddenly had a work trip up thar which gave us occasion to check the place out. Again, just something to feed my hobby even though we ain't going nowhere no time soon.

Well even if we wanted to move somewhere tomorrow, four straight days of rain with only occasional "sun breaks" (as they call them) was enough of a taste of Portland's nine-month rainy season to start mushrooms growing on my psyche. And, as anyone who's ever had me over for dinner knows, I don't do mushrooms. It is a great place to spend a weekend, but for the love of God, how do people live there?

On the traffic-clogged drive to the airport I proclaimed our foray into the great Northwest a success, but determined that I was one Californian the locals didn't need to worry about moving in on their turf.

Me: "Yeah, so with this rain I could never live here. Though the way Kate says PAWT-lend is pretty damn cute. Maybe we should just move here because of that."

Mark: "Well sure."

Me: "But then, it's probably one of those short-lived pronunciation things that we love, like the way she used to say apple and before we know it she'll learn to say it normally and won't be saying PAWT-lend any more, and then we'll have made this whole huge effort to move here just for that and it'll have gone away."

Mark: "Yeah, you're probably right. And then we'd just have to pick up and move to another place that she says cutely."

Ah well. At this point it's probably just prudent to stay put in Oakland. At least until the next time Mark and I get to talking at breakfast.

It's official. I am a stay-at-home mom.

I went to Sunset today and told my team I'm not coming back, and even though they were sad (which was flattering) and I was sad in the moment of looking at all their faces and just being in that building with all the beauty and flora and creative energy, I know it's the right decision.

And, considering my day yesterday, that is saying a lot.

Yesterday was marked by two major poop explosions. First was Kate's which came shortly after the nap she allegedly takes each day. The thing is,  the diaper that they'd put on her at preschool was scooted over to one side--kinda like a thong, but only over the left butt cheek. Suffice it to say it was ineffective at trapping the poo. And without diving too deeply into the minutiae of scatology, a poop explosion with a toddler is a much different situation than it is with a baby.

So, when Paige took her turn, she had to throw in a twist. We were out for what was to be a short walk to the dry cleaner. Kate saw the library and decided she wanted to go in, and since Paige was crying and hungry I consented and decided to feed her on a couch there. After Paige nursed for a while and we all read some books, Paige was staring dreamily out into the middle distance looking as satisfied and content as a baby can be. I should have known something else was brewing--if only for the fact that I, of course, had no diaper bag with me.

Let's just say Paige's project was so loud that it shattered the silence in the library. And when I dared to look, her entire back was sopping wet and bright orange with poo. Thankfully my pants were black, and the wrap I eventually tucked Paige in--poop-strewn as she was--was navy blue.

I'm happy to report that on our walk home I didn't bump into any old boyfriends or anything. Paige and I were wet and stinky. It's no surprise Kate was lagging half a block behind, feigning interest in the front gardens she passed by and trying to look like she didn't know us.

Mark walked in the door last night five minutes after a calm that followed both girls totally melting down and losing it. Things suddenly got miraculously quiet right after several minutes of mayhem, and I should have known Mark was about to walk in. Sick as it is, I wished that he'd gotten there in the high (or low?) point of it all so he could witness what that witching hour is sometimes like.

To be fair, Mark does know and appreciate that the going can get tough. He was great about taking the baby, jumping in with Kate's dinner, etc. But when Paige needed to be fed he had to apologetically hand her back over.

I sat in the rocking chair in Paige's room. Still wearing my likely shit-stained black pants, and nursed Paige with my tired head literally held up by my hands.

Paige ate her fill then stared up at me. And before I knew it was coming, an immense arc of vomit came rushing out of her mouth covering her, my shirt, and the 80% of my pants that were devoid of her earlier shared fecal matter. All I could think of was, "Of course."

Back in my office-work era I certainly had some stressed out times, but--in the literal sense--yesterday took the cake for shitty days.

Ah well, it was nothing that my fourth load of laundry for the day couldn't wash clean.