Things I’ve Recently Learned from Kate

1. Circles aren’t round. They’re “ground.”

2. Despite what the American Academy of Pediatrics may think, babies should actually be put to sleep on their tummies, face down. Babies who “aren’t feeling well” should be completely covered–head and all–with several layers of blankets. (Kate practices this technique excessively on her dolls, leaving sleeping baby land mines on the floor all over the house.)

3. Elmo’s last name is McClusky.

Diary of a Dairy Addict

Criminy. Paigey’s skin is still miserable. Or possibly even miserabler than it was.

Given the apocalyptic heat wave we’re having it’s no surprise that she’s got a heat rash on her yeast infection on her eczema. She’s scratched the shit out of all of the above. Oh, and let’s no forget the cradle cap. The poor girl’s just a mess.

Oddly, she’s devoid of a diaper rash, but as I write this I’m sure the most unimaginably vile one is starting to fester in her diaper.

Of course I’d just be undone about the whole dermal nightmare if it weren’t for the fact that coming off of dairy has been my own personal torture. It makes the scene in Train Spotting when the guy gets off heroine look like mild discomfort.

You might think I’m being a bit dramatic. Actually, like any good addict I think I’ve managed the problem well by throwing myself head over heels into another compulsion–stuffing myself silly with soy. I’ve got the vanilla soy milk, the soy ice cream, and the little Tofutti ‘ice cream’ sandwiches. I was also poised to buy some soy cheese, but when Sacha pointed out that the package said “American cheese flavor” I had to toss it back onto the shelf. (Even I have my limits.) It’s neither delicious nor convenient eating this way, but better a shoddy stand-in than none at all.

So today, in the throes of this heat wave as I’m happily packing the beach bag to meet the Friday Mamas at the lake and thinking ruefully of all the poor saps sitting in their cubicles, I look down at the poor red blotchy baby and have a stunning moment of maternal maturity. This baby, thought I, needs to go to the doctor before the heat wave rages on through the weekend, exacerbating her dermal woes and leaving her indistinguishable from Rosemary’s baby. (Or why I imagine Rosemary’s baby to have looked like. Did they ever actually show it in the movie?)

And so, in our squeezed-us-in-appointment, before even taking off her clothes to show him the really awful parts, Dr. Robbins, (a.k.a. our friend Dan) takes one look at smiley crusty Paige and says, “Oh yeah. Wow. So we need to really deal with this.”

And by we, guess who he means? Me.

Like some John Hughes movie I’m sure it’s easy to see where this story line is going. No, the popular boy at school isn’t going to suddenly see past Paige’s pustules and ask her to the prom. The treatment is I’m being told to stop eating soy too. Apparently one-third of the people who have dairy issues eventually develop soy ones too. And it’s looking like Paige is in that unlucky third.

Dan asked me to be exceptionally strict and vigilant about it too. No soy or dairy at all, not even a little butter used for cooking. I’ve got to totally cut it out of my diet altogether, and in ten days take hopefully-improved Paige to a dermatologist, and we’ll take it from there.

The fabulous week-old espresso machine that I got for my birthday will now need to be squirreled away in the basement so I’m not taunted by it. I mean, I don’t want to pull some kind of Kitty Dukakis move by making myself a latte using nail polish remover instead of milk or something. That’d just bring shame upon the whole family.

I know, I know what you’re thinking. The poor baby is suffering a horrible bodily pestilence and all I can think about is myself. But really, I do feel sorry for both of us.

Now poor Paigey now has a second prescription funk-fighter that’s steroidal. Three times a day I’m coating her with two different stinky creams that are probably one-part nuclear waste.  You try to be all healthy and groovy and organic, then you have to use something like that on your sweet little infant. Steroids! She’ll be in a ‘roid rage throwing punches at innocents in a bar before you know it. (Hopefully she won’t develop that ridge across her eyebrows that looks all Cro-Magnon.)

Okay, Kate’s awake and we’re off to run through the sprinkler. Hopefully I’ll wash away my bad attitude while I’m at it. 

Sweet Solitude

When I was an editorial slave at a health magazine in New York ages and ages ago probably long before you were even born, I got to go on a couple amazing press junkets. One was a cruise through the Caribbean.

Cunard was trying to appeal to a younger demographic by billing the typical cruise–gambling, midnight gut-busting all-you-can-hork buffets, and oldsters bobbing in the pool like some scene from Cocoon–as some sporty excursion-based boat trip with a healthy menu and lots of other young active folks who can stay up late without having to modulate their pacemakers.

So here we were–about a dozen health writers in our twenties, mostly from New York–all feeling very cynical that the cruise would offer anything than overcooked food drowned in cream sauces (it didn’t) and all very smug that, starving journalists that we were, we were able to cruise around the Caribbean eating overcooked food drowned in cream sauces for free.

We flew from New York to Florida and then to Peurto Rico where the cruise ship was docked. Rather where she was docked. (I love any excuse to call a boat “she,” don’t you?) In Puerto Rico we had some time to kill so the turbo-chipper PR gal who was chaperoning us in a desperate attempt to ensure we were ga-ga over all things Cunard, took us to a little outdoor bar on the beach.

It was warm. It was sunny. There was no traffic, towering concrete buildings, burnt peanut smells from sidewalk vendors, or homeless men sleeping in the gutter. It was quiet, except for some tropically music playing on some crappy stereo. Manhattan and all its smells, sounds and stresses was worlds away.

But as they say, you can take the New Yorker out of New York, but you can’t–well, you know the saying.

Let’s just say that the service at this little cantina wasn’t exactly snappy. And although everything about this setting would have any other mortal content–happy even–our group was collectively busting a neck vein with stress. “Where the hell are our drinks?” one guy groused. “What in fuck’s name happened to our waiter?” someone else demanded. “This is totally unacceptable. They’ve got to be kidding if they expect a tip after this.” (I happen to have committed these actual comments to memory…)

I was right along there with everyone. Well, I think I was probably willing to give the waiter a tip, but anyway it was the first time I realized that it takes at least a few days for a vacationing New Yorker to decompress enough to even realize they aren’t in their office any more. I think for some people it takes longer. (Those men you see lying on the beach screaming, “Buy! Sell!” into the waves? New Yorkers.)

Once they do relax, let’s just say how one defines “relax” certainly varies. The state of relaxation some New Yorkers eventually attain sipping umbrella drinks under a palapa, may well put, say, a Californian, into cardiac arrest.

I have a friend whose family lives in Bermuda. You’d piss your pants laughing to hear him talk about what it’s like getting off a plane from New York and into a car there, where the speed limit is 25 MPH. For him it was the cruelest form of torture.

At any rate, I’m thinking about all this as I sit on our front porch with an iced tea and a baggy full of homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. It’s in the high 70′s today and there’s a slight breeze causing my new hanging plants to waft gracefully and send out a hit of jasmine-smell every once and a while. And aside from the intermittent crackling of the baby monitor, it’s pretty quiet here. Especially because both the girls are asleep.

I should put that in italics: Both the girls are asleep.

Yes, without having to invest in the Pottery Barn Kids monogrammed kelly green leather restraint straps, it appears that Kate is actually taking a nap. (This, if you can tell, hasn’t been happening very consistently despite all my desperate entreaties to The Man Upstairs.)

This lovely calm and aloneness is strange. I’m so unaccustomed to it I need some time to settle into it. I spend the first few minutes walking around in circles like a dog trying to find the right place to lie down. Something so rare, so special, must be appreciated and savored to the fullest extent.

But how?

After wracking my brain to determine what I need to do–no wait, what I want to do with this time–the realization washes over me like a warm gulp of bourbon.

I’m going to sit here with my feet propped up on the wicker chair, stare out across the porch, and do absolutely nothing.

And….begin!

Bad Mood Mother’s Day

Let’s just say that yesterday I wasn’t one of those Mamas who was at brunch serenely residing over perfectly behaved children in a state of maternal bliss. Mind you, it wasn’t anything that anyone did per se. We had a lovely day planned and took the ferry to SF and ate a delicious lunch at The Slanted Door.

I think with my birthday the day before and the expectation of a double-billed weekend of an all-about-me Saturday followed by an all-about-me Sunday, somewhere along the line I somehow lost steam. Imagine! It must be my newly advanced age… And, sure, maybe there was a bit of the it’s-my-party-and-I’ll-cry-if-I-want-to syndrome (something I’d hoped I’d outgrown after the weeping by the clothesline incident on my 6th birthday).

Whatever the reason, ooh-wee! I was unsatisfied, dehydrated, impatient, and willing to sell Kate on eBay for five cents. Thankfully I can’t get online with my cell phone.

Hindsight being 20/20, I realize now what I really needed to do was be curled up alone in bed with an IV drip of something renewing. It’s always a struggle deciding whether to spend Mother’s Day with the family or miles and miles away from them. And I think the solution is one part family time, one part alone time, and one part “something renewing.” You know, like whatever Keith Richards uses to reinvigorate himself.
 
I had a brief emotional upswing in the afternoon after the whole family managed to simultaneously nap, but it wasn’t until I got up with Paige at 12:30AM that I started thinking happy thoughts about Mother’s Day–how kinda weird and cool it is that it’s become a holiday that’s celebrated by my contemporaries now. It’s like after all those years as an underclassman, we’re finally the seniors. Woot!

So as it sometimes happens when I get up with Paige, I spend the whole time desperate to crawl back in bed to sleep, but when I get there I find that I’m wide awake. So I started thinking of all my Mama friends–quite a long list of them at this juncture in life–and how all of them really are rocking hard as moms in all different kinds of ways.

So here’s a shout-out to you gals. Toss your breast pads in the air like the hat in the opening sequence of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and take a long deep bow for an exhausting, harrowing, heart-warming, and hilarious job well done.

To Julie, Gianni and Tea’s mom, who realized what her family needed was (sniff!) no longer in SF, and like a protective Mama bear whose instincts are keen, moved the clan to a new family-fabulous life in Boulder. Some moms get practical short haircuts when they have kids, but Julie keeps it real by dying her hair bright red and being more likely to be mistaken for a rock star than a mom who brings home the bacon, wipes snotty noses, and writes a brilliant and funny blog.

To Megan, Mama of the delightful Miss Ella B and twins Kate and Wes. Twins who she not only gestated (which alone was an act of staggering bodily strength and heroism) but who she’s raising with incredible patience, love, and enviable organization, oftentimes solo due to a hard-workin’ hubbie. May the gods send you endless blessings for each diaper you’ve ever changed, Megan! You are a wonder, even when you’re way too tired to realize it yourself.

To Story, my homie from RI who is bringin’ up two male Savages–that being their last name. It’s an ironic name since these boys will no doubt be the ones you want your daughter to hang out with in college–the ones you hope she’ll be smart enough to date since they’ll not only be well-mannered and have hearts of gold, but they’ll be hot and kick-ass snowboarders.

To Sacha, mother of fearless Owen and future supermodel Ellie, who manages to make motherhood look like an effortless task on an endless To Do list. These children will never comprehend why other parents don’t consistently throw perfectly-appointed theme parties with clever give-away gifts and cupcakes so good the adults must resist wrestling them from the hands of children.

Speaking of hostesses, Shelley, mother of three beautiful kids who The Gap should be commissioning to model–has never once had her title of World’s Greatest Cook and Impromptu Hostess jeopardized with the birth of each successive child. (Don’t most other moms of three serve Tombstone Pizzas four nights a week and have a dinner party, say, once every three years?) May we always be able to drop in for dinner on a Tuesday night to see that you’ve made the recent Cook’s Illustrated recipe for Shrimp Fra Diablo and an apple pie, and have plenty to happily share. We are truly not worthy, yet we tuck our napkins under our chins with wholehearted amazement and appreciation.

And to Mary, my new friend and mother of the gorgeous doe-eyed sweeties Will and Skylar, who has taken sleep deprivation to an art form nearly as formidable as her photography. My wish for you is that the Sand Man not only pays you a visit, but moves in as an au pair, forever at your disposal. For each wakeless hour in which you should be in a deep REM cycle, may you someday bask lazily in the sun at the vast Italian villa your children eventually buy you.

Oh, there are so many other Mamas whose incredible accomplishments and myriad mundane daily duties I wish to salute…

Jennifer, the do-it-all working stay-at-home mom who doesn’t let the fact that brewing daily adventures takes time and energy stop her from doing it anyway.

Lisa who wrangles two big-brown-eyed beauties, has taken on some godforsaken tech consulting project that she’s effectively teaching herself how to do as she goes, and through it all is a devout reader of this blog!

And there’s Brooke, my neighbor whose mothering I’ve really just witnessed from intermittent sidewalk exchanges but from what I can tell has managed to raise two adult sons who are polite and sweet and who–from the looks of it over here across the street anyways–all seem to enjoy spending time together. (Mental note to interrogate her to determine how she did it.)

Oh, and Lori. Lori! Let’s not forget my sister-in-law who seems to be a made-for-the-job natural, and thank goodness as she often holds down the fort with Gavin and Olivia when her husband is out for days–sometimes weeks–Coast Guarding. All that and she still manages to paint every room in her house and make the world’s best homemade mac and cheese.

There are countless other Miracle Mamas who spring to mind who I’d love to mention–my sister Marie, for instance, who by now is no doubt washing the entire freshman class at Brown’s laundry–but if I enumerate each one and try to pay them justice I won’t have time to replant the flowerbed annuals, have a hot meal on the table when Mark gets home, wax my armpits, or finish sewing all the kids clothes…

So, in the imperfect but well-meaning way that many mothers take it all on, I salute you all, Mamas! Like some Oscar nominee I humbly declare that, shucks, it’s an honor to just be in your ranks. Happy belated Mother’s Day to you! Keep up the good work women, and here’s to hoping you didn’t have your grumpy on quite as much as I did yesterday.

xoxo,
kristen

Children as Chum

Monday when Paigey and I were tooling about the Mission after my doctor’s appointment I noticed a big series of flags/signs promoting a new exhibit at the SF Zoo called Grizzly Gulch.

After a teen-aged boy was mauled by a tiger there on Christmas day, you’d think their PR team would be working towards some damage control. Maybe they should be promoting exhibits with less threat-worthy animals, like Peacock Paradise or Seal Sanctuary.

One hopes at least that said gulch is deep and wide enough to keep the grizzlies on one side and the human snacks on the other.

Day 10 Off Dairy

This morning the cleaning lady didn’t cluck sympathetically when looking at Paige–or more specifically Paige’s skin–then cast me an askance look as if to say she’s not above handing me over to Child Protective Services.

It makes me think my abstinence from dairy may be starting to pay off.

Despite whatever progress we’re making it’s still a constant struggle to keep off the stuff. I feel like I should be in some church basement getting a pin for my 10 days “clean.”

Bras and Mamas

Kate came out of my room today wearing one of my nursing bras.

“You have a bra on!,” I said, stating what seemed to be the obvious.

“No, it’s a Moby Wrap,” she clarified. In other words, a baby carrier.

One of the bra cups was centered across her chest and she had a wooden toy orange juice bottle snapped into it. Or rather, a “baby,” as it were.

It was actually quite clever how she could snap in and remove the baby with the drop-down bra cup. Kate’s mothering skills and childcare innovation are on the rise every day. Nothing like being lapped at your job by your two-year-old.

In other news, Paige is talking. Well, only one word really–Mama.

Now, you might think that at three months she isn’t really saying Mama, and I’m just hearing what I want to hear. But Mark’s heard it too. A bunch of times! She only says it when she’s crying, and when she does say it, it sounds quite distinct.

Since I am willing to accept other explanations of what it is that she’s saying (if anything), I’ve considered the possibility that the word Mama was derived long ago from a sound that babies often make while crying. (Granted, I never heard Kate say it when she cried as a baby, nor have I heard this from any other babies I know. I prefer to believe Paige is a linguistic wunderkind.)

At any rate, if my theory is right–that the name Mama came from a common sound babies make–I guess us mothers should just be happy that what our children call us doesn’t approximate a fart.

Living in the Lap of Product Testing

Last night Mark came home from work and said, “I got a new car.” I looked out the window to see an $80,000 BMW SUV.

No, this isn’t where I wake up and realize that JR getting shot was all just a dream. It really happened! What’s more, when I was all excited and said I wanted to go for a ride he said, “Okay, but I need to take the TV out of the back of it first.”

The TV being a 42″ schmancy plasma flat-screen HD-type one. No joke!

Oh yeah, that’s how we roll around here at the McCluskys. A magazine editor and a stay-at-home mom just wallowing in the lap of luxury. At least until Mark has to return everything. Truth is, it’s all stuff he’s testing for the magazine.

In fact, the first TV Mark ever brought home to test offended my sense of decency. The thing was gargantuan, and when I sat on the couch in our modest-sized living room I felt like I had to brace myself and lean my head way back when it was on. It was like being in the front row at the movies, but times ten. I swear there was G-force coming off the thing.

Mark, of course, loved it. Thought that after struggling along with our old TV, this was the perfect size. “Perfect,” I said, “if we were sitting in Brooke’s house across the street and watching it through the picture window.”

That TV lived with us for several weeks, along with a handful of others that we’ve taken in like foster children since. I complained about it ruthlessly and was embarrassed whenever anyone walked in the door. I’d explain to them immediately why 40% of our living room was taken over by a piece of electronics so immense we were probably all being sterilized by merely being in its presence.

In the time the TV was with us the Olympics came and went. We watched a bunch of movies and several episodes of The Sopranos. We watched Food Network shows and with the HD fired up felt like we could see micro-organisms living on the food.

I continued to berate its existence, but then one day without warning Mark wrangled a huge box up the stairs from the basement and started to unplug myriad wires and cords. The TV was getting ready to leave us, and in its place Mark got out our TV where it was collecting dust by the washing machine.

He plunked it down on the TV stand and it looked like a postage stamp. The thing was dinky and pathetic. Even once the grime was cleaned off and the shades were drawn, the curved screen reflected light and shadows and seemed clouded and blurry. It looked utterly antique. We might as well have gathered around a radio to tune into The Shadow.

I was crestfallen.

Of course, I couldn’t admit it to Mark. I weakly offered up, “Now that’s more like it!” but afterwards ran to throw myself on the bed with tears in my eyes. How could we live this way?

Since then I’ve learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ve started to welcome the high-end cameras, the cherry red front-loading washing machines, the state-of-the-art vacuum cleaners, and the garbage can you don’t even need to step on to open–it just knows when you want to throw something away.

Our friends are used to seeing different gadgets gracing our home each time they come by. My favorite joke is that Kate isn’t really ours. She’s a toddler Mark’s testing, and despite how much we’ve come to love her we’ll eventually have to send her back.

It’s an ever-changing world we’re living in. Technology is evolving at a break-neck pace, and in the words of an astute German super model, “One day you’re in, and the next you’re out.”

I used to try to resist the change; to rebuff the progress. But eventually I came around. Now I actually delight in whatever it is that Mark strains to carry up the front stairs every evening.

We’re living in the lap of luxury here at the McCluskys. At least until it all has to be returned.

Kristen Bruno, this is your life!

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.

Doctor’s Orders

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.