Skipping Town

Yesterday I realized that Lucia's willingness to smile and stare at anyone and everyone on the street has rubbed off on me--and that I should perhaps take this as a warning and return to my eyes-down, alone-in-a-crowd city ways. As we walked past some men at a construction site yesterday afternoon, Lucia gazed up at a man, and I, in turn, gave him a smile--a "Yes, I know my baby's cute, how charming that she's looking at you" smile. Instead of returning the smile with a similar subtext, he said loudly, "Can I get in the stroller, too?" I gave a fake laugh, and then frowned when I was past him, but really I have no idea what this was supposed to mean. It just seemed a bit creepy, akin to the time when I was an executive assistant (and why is this old, old job once again popping into my head?), sitting in the office with the pampered Maltese (smuggled into the building in a Pottery Barn bag) on my lap, and the CEO's personal driver came up behind me an...

Lucia and I had an adventure this afternoon: we rode the subway to 116th Street, and I took her all around my old stomping grounds at Columbia. We walked through campus, and then we walked past my old apartment on W. 118th. We then walked back through campus and down Broadway, where I saw that although some familiar places were still there, much had changed. I’d planned to have a snack at an outdoor table at Nussbaum & Wu—and was surprised to see there were no longer any outdoor tables. (Perhaps it was just today?) So we walked back over to Amsterdam and I had an apple streudel at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. I felt like I should have a stack of papers in front of me—I spent many long hours there grading essays, drinking endless cups of coffee as I marked up comma splices and dangling modifiers and leaps in logic—but instead I had a baby, crunching on a Mum-Mum. Though I spent four years in the neighborhood (three years in graduate school and then, after I finished my coursework, sta...

I made a slight error in judgment today. This weekend, after perusing the farmer’s market on Columbus, Andrew, Lucia, and I went to the terrace park of the Natural History Museum—I’d read about it, and I wanted to scope it out to see if it was someplace I could take Lucia this week. (i.e., I needed to know if there was an elevator option to avoid the large stairway.) The terrace has greenspace, a small café, and a large paved area with streams of water jutting out, to the delight of many small children. The water pools at the bottom of the slightly sloped space, creating a little stream that I thought seemed perfectly Lucia-sized. And there was an elevator. So today I dressed Lucia in a little bathing suit, and we headed to the terrace. I imagined she’d have a wonderful time scooting around in the water; during bathtime now, she squirms onto her stomach and splash/crawls from one end of the tub to the other, oblivious to water in her face. I sat her down by the spot where the water was...

Before Lucia was born, I got an offer in the mail to get a three-year subscription to Parenting magazine for $12. I bought it; I didn’t have any other parent-themed magazines, so I thought, why not. But now I wish I’d kept that $12 and used it to buy three cupcakes at Crumbs, a delicious bakery on the UWS. Parenting , like the equally hideous Family Circle , which my parents, for some reason, still subscribe to after what must be twenty-odd years, caters to the lowest-common-denominator of parents (i.e., moms), the ones who seek out articles that promise that you’ll LOVE YOUR BODY—NAKED! and who seek you-go-girl marriage advice at a newsstand. These magazines are so desperate to produce content month after month after month that they resort to absurdity cloaked as earnestness, going on faith that readers won’t pick up on the fact that the suggestions are completely insane—so insane that, in a different venue, they’d seem clearly tongue-in-cheek. My dad recently shared a tip he’d read ...

What a social day Lucia and I had yesterday. First we met a friend for lunch in Union Square; and, later, had a spur-of-the-moment playground meet-up with two friends and their baby, in town from Berlin. Andrew, too, has been having lunches and get-togethers with old friends and new. We’ve always been happy being just us, together, but it is wonderful to be back in a place where our world consists of other people, too. And Lucia, unwary of strangers, loves meeting new people, especially other babies. She seems to be becoming the sort of child who is going to run happily off to play with whatever children are around—making her as unlike me as a child as she could possibly be. But, of course, we shall see. Lucia continues to detest peaches. I’ve been giving her small pieces of fruit to eat—blueberries, plums, bananas—and got some delicious peaches to try. These peaches were perfectly ripe, perfectly soft, perfect for little toothless gums. Lucia gamely picked up a piece of peach and put ...

Lucia’s precious babyfeet have become workin’ feet. Yesterday, when I put her in a stroller for a walk, I noticed a red welt on the big toe of her left foot—a blister. That’s the toe she uses to push off in her non-crawl crawl—and her maneuverings around the apartment have finally taken a toll. Her smooth, perfect little babyfeet are no longer just cute, extra appendages, there for singing songs about. (“Hey feet / Hey barefeet / Hey little feeties now / Hey barefeet / Hey toes / Ten little toes / Ten little toes / On two barefeet”—that’s for you, Beth and Nate, in case you’d managed to get that ditty out of your heads by now.) Now they’re workin’ feet, propelling her from bedroom to living room to kitchen to hallway, to the forbidden bathroom and the corner of the hallway where I try to put the stroller with its filthy, forbidden wheels (her current Holy Grail) out of her grasp. Today we met Barbra for lunch in midtown—we walked there to meet her, striding through tourist throngs and ...

Occasionally, very occasionally, like when we have a guest in town or when we have a frantic, eleventh-hour errand to run, Andrew and I find ourselves out in the world past 7:00pm. This is rare. Lucia’s bedtime ritual begins promptly at 7:00pm with Baby Spa, itself a ritual that involves undressing, clearing her nose with the nasal aspirator, administering vitamins, splashing around with Pig Duck and her other toys, and then lifting a grinning baby from the water with cries of “Naked baby!” Then comes drying off, lotioning, dressing, blanket-sleepering, and feeding the bedtime bottle of breastmilk. Then comes rocking and singing. Then comes pumping so I have the next night’s bottle. It is a lengthy process. But on rare occasions, we do find ourselves out there, among childless people, families with babies and kids with later bedtimes, couples with babysitters, older people whose kids are long grown, and crazies who fall into step with us and advise us not to let Lucia out of the house ...

Little Lucia, You’re nine months old today—you’ve now been out in the world for as long, more or less, as you were in my womb. No longer more familiar with your uterine home than with the world—and your independence, your person-ness, is coming through more and more. You are a beautiful, happy, hilarious child these days, absolutely devouring the world around you—figuratively, as you lean forward in your stroller and stare unabashedly at passersby, and literally, as anything that crosses your path is fair game for being raised to your mouth. You babble, squeal, giggle. You communicate your likes and dislikes clearly—a book you don’t wish to read is often pushed to the floor, while the one you have your eye on is lunged for. You are a mini-person, with a mind of your own, and that is thrilling to see. You, still wordless, inspire others to say kind, complimentary, and often strange things. In the elevator just last night, a man with a spaced-out smile and a ready “dude” on his lips talk...

Lucia and I have walked miles and miles since moving to New York. We take walks every day—at least one, usually two, sometimes three if the day is nice. There are so many places to go, so many things to see; even walking the same route yields countless new sights and sounds. Just yesterday, on our usual walk in Riverside Park, along the Hudson, near sunset, we watched a man set up a tall speaker that soon began emitting music—a waltz? He was joined by a woman, and they began dancing, right there, by the trail, on a small plaza jutting out into the water. The woman, middle-aged, stick thin, had long frizzy hair held back from her face with a wide headband; she wore a tight tank top, no bra, and red satin dancing shoes. She danced with her face serious and set, her eyes closed, and I knew right away she was a Dancer—capital D—spending her life waiting for music to start. She danced earnestly, as though something were at stake. Maybe it was. Maybe it was. Lucia gets so much attention on o...

When I was pregnant, I learned pretty quickly that there were two things I should avoid completely: Googling pregnancy “symptoms” and unborn baby fears, and reading any message boards on said subjects. The information (“information”) I dug up was always terrifying, confirming whatever fears I’d unwisely set out to investigate. Really, pregnant women should just talk to a couple of good friends who are moms, maybe get a book or two, and leave it at that. I’ve taken my own advice, refraining from any of that after about the first trimester. But I seem to have forgotten myself now that we’re in NYC. I don’t read message boards about babies, health, etc.; but over the past few days I’ve been perusing a variety of “city baby” websites, clicking on random topics—how much household income do you need to live comfortably in NYC? Where should I send my child to school? Is it possible to have a child’s birthday party in NYC for less than $1,000?—and, subsequently, feeling a low simmer of panic d...

We’re in a heat wave. I thought we’d left triple-digit temperatures behind when we left NorCal; but no. It was just over 100 this week, and it has been brutal—hot and muggy. I’d forgotten about that sticky city-feeling one gets after walking around on such a day. For a couple of days, it was too hot to spend much time outside, which upsets the new daily rhythms Lucia and I have been developing—rhythms that depend, largely, on being outside, walking or playing in a park. Fortunately, my parents are here all week—Andrew’s actually back in California for several days of orientation at his company headquarters—so I have lots of entertainment support. Although Lucia’s really been the one entertaining us. She is, if it’s possible, cuter than she’s ever been, more smiley and silly. She’s rediscovered her ability to roll over and now spends long periods of time on our bed (well-supervised, of course) flopping from her back to her tummy to her back to her tummy, squealing and occasionally pausi...

This weekend, Andrew and I found ourselves adhering to one of our favorite traditions: spending the Fourth of July at the Littells’ ancestral home in New Hampshire. Andrew left work early Friday afternoon, we loaded up the car, and we were off—missing the NYC holiday traffic but getting stuck in Hartford. Nonetheless, by nightfall we were there, sweeping cobwebs from the doorway and mouse droppings from the countertops, putting together Lucia’s crib. Once she was asleep, Andrew went into town to get us some groceries and a pizza, which we ate in the dining room, nothing but stars and darkness outside the windows. We were lulled to sleep by bullfrogs and crickets, just as this house’s inhabitants have been for almost three hundred years. Over the next three days, we reveled in the extreme relaxation that only comes from visiting this house. We read, wrote, played outside on a blanket with the baby, took walks along the unpaved road, filled a plastic sled with water for Lucia to use as a...

Now that I’m living in a place with yoga studios on every block, there is no excuse not to get back into it. I was doing yoga about twice a week before getting pregnant, and I did prenatal yoga, but once Lucia was born, I barely made it out of the house for a mama-and-baby exercise class once a week. I hope this will change now that we’re back in New York. Last night, I went to a free yoga class held at sunset on a plaza right on the Hudson, part of a summer program at Riverside Park. (Andrew met me there on his way home from work, and we did a stroller hand-off.) As over a hundred of us did our downward-facing dogs and cobras and trees and were encouraged by the instructor to give thanks to Father Sky and Mother Earth, I could hear the rush of traffic on the West Side Highway, the lapping water of the river, the scattered conversations of people walking on the path. It was really fun. I like doing yoga in unusual places, though I have but two experiences so far (three, counting last n...