Skipping Town

Saturday was a remarkable day. While Andrew and Lucia had some daddy-and-baby time, I got a haircut, walked in every aisle of DSW and tried on as many pairs of shoes as I wanted, then went to a yoga class. I had more time to myself on Saturday afternoon than I’ve had in months. Months! It was glorious. Of course, I was glad, later, to return to my cherished Ones. But it certainly did feel nice to stroll about Park Slope with a yoga mat slung over one shoulder, DSW bag in hand. It was amazing how rejuvenating a few hours could be.

Yesterday Lucia and I had our second Music Together class. It has been surprising to watch how much she’s changed over just two classes. Last week, though she sat raptly throughout the class, she stayed close to me—she scooted off my lap but stayed nestled right by me, letting the other kids swarm around the big drum at the beginning of class and excitedly approach Nicolai, our teacher. While the older kids (14-15 months) ran around during class, she sat still, dutifully holding onto her egg shakers or instruments when appropriate. At the end of class, when Nicolai invited the children to touch his guitar, I led Lucia’s long, thin fingers in a delicate strum—markedly different from the other kids’ banging and grabbing of strings. I returned home pleased that Lucia was so clearly a Good Student . This week, however, after a brief initial period of getting the lay of the land before class started, she scooted off my lap and crawled right over to the big drum, beating it with her little p...

As Lucia pulled herself up on every surface and object in our living room this afternoon, I scoured the latest issue of Parenting to find things to mock. I didn’t have to look far. On page 23, in a short bit called “A Better Day, Stat!,” I found the following pieces of advice for how to uplift my spirits without taking a weekend trip: “Lie down: Research shows that it’s easier to deal with bad news and criticism when you’re lying down versus sitting up. So the next time you hear ‘Mommy, I don’t like you!’ or “You’re so mean!’ fling yourself down on that couch.” “Color your world: Bye-bye, blues; hello, bright hues. Looking at things that are yellow or green can boost happiness, says research. Stock the fruit bowl with lemons, bananas, and apples or set your computer’s desktop to a grassy green.” COMMENTARY: Lying down and staring at a fruit bowl—it sounds relaxing, indeed. It also sounds a bit…troubling, especially if done for long stretches at a time while one’s screaming child is ru...

Can you guess who’s been here, keeping me company while Andrew was in California for work all week? Here are some clues: 1. My books are now alphabetized. 2. I browsed in a bookstore I’d never gone into before. 3. A newly cooked meatloaf is waiting in the fridge. 4. Lucia has been introduced to pasta fagioli. If you guessed “both of Lucia’s grandmothers,” you’re right! Andrew’s mom (see clues #1 and 2) stayed with us from Monday through Wednesday. We looked around Brooklyn’s oldest independent bookstore, played at the playground, swung, visited the Blue Sky Bakery for muffins more than once, and made BLTs with delicious tomatoes given to us by Kris’s friend in Massachusetts. And during Lucia's naps, I worked while Kris alphabetized my books; things feel right again. Thursday, Mom arrived (see clues #3 and 4), in the midst of a bona fide tornado; she was in a cab as trees were being ripped from the ground or snapped jaggedly in half, arriving in the aftermath. We walked down 5th Ave...

Dear Little One, Eleven months! Nearly a year! And even in the past month you’ve grown so much, leaving behind so many of your baby ways and becoming more person-like, more toddler-like, every day. For some reason I always felt I’d be sorry to see your infancy come to an end—but I see now I was crazy. You are—and I say this objectively—cuter every day. You are smiling all the time now, great grins, with your four tiny bottom teeth making you look like a little jack-o-lantern. Your laughing has escalated; now you spend good bits of time simply laughing big belly laughs—“Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha”—for no reason; it’s impossible not to join in, and we laugh together. You laugh hysterically, too, usually around Daddy, squealing and giggling when he makes funny faces and movements. You are, more often than not, joyful. But you are also a handful, especially now that you are mobile—and fast. You crawl only on your hands and knees now; the inchworming is completely gone. You crawl with abandon, you...

We were in New Hampshire again this weekend—a quick trip planned for the purpose of picking up Andrew’s parents from a reunion in Massachusetts on Sunday and driving them to their flight in NYC. We drove up late Friday night, and though the drive was easy and Lucia slept nearly the entire way, it is a long drive, and we arrived weary—and facing the prospect of two days with no water. The spring has, obviously, not been replenished over the past week, and our water tank is barely half full. So it was a weekend of no dishwashing, no laundry, no showers, and only-when-urgently-needed toilet flushing. Surely these are the lovelier aspects of living, albeit temporarily, in a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse. But we left New Hampshire this time without a trip to the ER. Saturday we drove into Woodstock, Vermont for lunch. It was a beautiful day—cool and sunny; the leaves were already beginning to change, peeks of red and yellow along the roadside. Though Woodstock tends toward the touristy, it...

It had seemed so idyllic: a long weekend in NH to recover from a chaotic week in a hotel room, nothing but silence and nature walks and wind blowing through trees, no more excitement than shooing spiders out of the corners. And it was this way, until Monday morning, when we realized we had no water. The farmhouse gets water from a spring, and the hot summer rendered the spring nearly empty. We were leaving Monday evening, but there was a day to get through, so Andrew made multiple trips down to the pond to bring water up to the house in empty gallon containers. Fortunately we had enough bottled water to get us through for drinking. We’d planned to leave just before Lucia’s bedtime, a plan that the water shortage set off-kilter since we couldn’t give her a bath. But we put her in pajamas and gave her a bottle and put her in her carseat at 7:15, and she seemed primed for sleep. First, however, we stopped at a gas station just over the covered bridge to fill our tank before she fell aslee...

Our chaotic week in Boston was, thankfully, followed by a long weekend in New Hampshire, where we recovered from our trying days in Boston but still, unfortunately, did not really sleep. We drove up late Friday afternoon, relieved to be out of the hotel and in our beautiful house, able to spread out, put Lucia to bed, and just unwind. I’ve said it before, but there is something about being in NH that is just restorative and good for the soul—the silence, the wind in the trees, every history-heavy floorboard solid under our feet. Despite warnings of Hurricane Earl, the weather was beautiful, sunny and cool—we wore jeans and sweaters for walks in the woods. Saturday night, after Lucia was in bed, Andrew cooked lobsters for us, which we ate at a newspaper-covered kitchen table with fresh corn and gin and tonics. We felt human again. Lucia’s sleep issues continued. Friday night, without neighbors to disturb, we let her cry a bit instead of rushing to nurse, and after seven minutes, she put...

Lucia and I accompanied Andrew on a business trip to Boston from Tuesday through Friday last week, and it is with horror that I realize it has gotten quite difficult to stay in a hotel with our baby. Though hotels for the first few months of Lucia’s life seemed to have a magical effect on her—for example, our nursing problems early on were resolved on a trip to San Francisco—they now seem to be places fraught with problems. We stayed at the Colonnade in Back Bay, and the loveliness of the hotel did not, unfortunately, guarantee a lovely stay. The first problem is the sheer amount of stuff that traveling with Lucia currently requires: travel booster seat (with tray); food, since she’d not yet eating a wide enough variety of “people food” to allow her to just eat from our plates; bibs and cloths and clothes; toys and books; stroller; Bjorn; and the infernal pump. Thank goodness we were traveling by car. The second problem is that feeding Lucia in a hotel room—preparing food, storing food...