Skipping Town

I never write here about writing. Some of you readers might not even know I’m a writer (beyond the writing-random-freelance-stuff-for-pay kind of writer). But I am, and just usually keep it to myself. But I’m breaking my silence today to announce some good news and to provide a warning about the direction this blog may take for the next few months. The news is that I now have an agent—a good one, from a great agency well-known for its literary-fiction-writing clients. I met her a few months ago at an event I forced myself to go to at Columbia—an alumni/agents mixer. I say “forced” because this kind of event is a pretty perfect combination of everything I hate most in life—small talk; entering a roomful of strangers alone; seeing familiar faces from what seems like a completely different person’s past life; pitching work to steely-eyed professionals, some of whom cut you off mid-sentence; the expectation that you are there to sell yourself as much as anything else. But I practiced my pi...

Today we took Lucia on a nice afternoon walk. First, we went to a shop and bought her a new pair of shoes. Her cute little sneakers with the silver stripes—her first “real” shoes—are now too small, so we got her a pair of cute purple sneakers that cost more than most of the shoes in my closet. But they are high-quality Japanese sneakers that I trust will not hurt the growth of her feet and will enable her to traipse all over Brooklyn this spring. One of the best parts of buying new baby shoes is getting the baby shoebox. Worth the price right there. Our shopping trip successful, we headed to the Brooklyn Lyceum—a multipurpose performance space—for the Brooklyn Mutt Show. Dog-owning friends of ours who know about Lucia’s mania for dogs alerted us to it, so we decided to check it out. It was a huge hit. Dogs were everywhere—small, big, dressed up. Lucia scrambled out of our arms and just took off, running up to dogs and barking, squealing, waving, blowing kisses, even (once the dog’s chi...

I’m busy. Really, really busy. And so when I received this month’s Parenting I crossed my fingers that there would be no material for my monthly post, thus sparing me the time I’d have to spend writing it. Alas, here I am, compelled by a few choice nuggets to continue this monthly tradition. Let’s dive in. I’ll turn first to the FAMiLY section, to an article called “Finders Keepers: Resurrecting the lost art of the scavenger hunt.” Nothing inherently wrong with scavenger hunts; but there is something inherently wrong with this suggestion for a “cool, kid-friendly theme for the hunt”: “Knock, knock. Include everyday items like pennies, paper clips, and sandwich bags on your list and ask kids to ring neighbors’ doorbells. More often than not, folks will happily give you as many as they have on hand. Sure, you may bump into a Scrooge here and there, but at least you’ll know whose house to avoid next Halloween when it’s time to trick-or-treat.” COMMENTARY: I almost don’t even have to write...

Just had to snap this picture this morning: pacifier, blankie, a favorite book, beloved snack cup, ottoman perch. Baby bliss.

We have a mini stroller now, but one thing has still been an object of yearning for Lucia lately: a new ball. “Ball” is one of her very favorite words, used to refer not only to actual balls but to pictures of anything round—the Earth on Atlas’s back, polka dots, a full moon. And at the playground, she is fixated on balls—the basketballs being tossed by the teenagers on the basketball courts and, of course, the many different balls carried around by other children. “Ball, ball,” she always says, pointing. This afternoon at the Tot Lot, she made off with another child’s dinosaur-printed ball. Well, “made off” isn’t a very Lucia action; she saw it, picked it up, and clutched it to her chest for pretty much the rest of the time. She, too, had a ball with her—her spiny purple ball—but what she wanted more than that was a smooth ball printed with some sort of picture. And so this afternoon we went to a nearby toystore and I bought her a ball, which she held tightly the entire way home. The ...

Where can you go where you are forced to sit for four hours—forced to sit in a lazily reclined position, eyes closed, and relax to the sound of endless highway rushing past? The answer is a Greyhound bus. And as Molly pointed out, this scenario sounds restful only to parents of toddlers. And sure; the bus is awful. While waiting at Port Authority, a woman approached the Greyhound person taking tickets at the gate next to mine. English was not coming readily to her. “My in the station! My in the station!” she said. The Greyhound person tried to quiet her. “Ma’am, what’s yours in the station?” he said. After several more exclamations, it became clear that she was announcing that there were mice in the station. “That’s the Port Authority’s problem, not mine,” said the Greyhound person. A man standing nearby said loudly, in a satisfied voice, “Welcome to New York.” And the bus has that terrible bus-smell; and people talk on cell phones; and the woman in front of me reclined her seat so tha...

Dear Little One, What a joy you’ve been to usher in your seventeen-month birthday! Over the past week or more, you’ve been silly and fun, playful and calm, with nary a tantrum in sight. It’s been wonderful. You are doing your best to out-cute yourself each day. Your newest thing is kissing, and blowing kisses. You blow kisses to dogs on the street. You kiss your stuffed animals and you kiss pictures of animals in books. You’re especially fond of a picture of a cat in a book called Passing By; you kiss the picture, but you also do your snuggle-snuggle-snuggle motion whenever we turn to that page—snuggling so violently that if you’re in my lap I have to lean back to escape your elbows. You make a real little kiss sound with all of this, and it is exceptionally cute. You are sleeping well and eating okay. You surprise me sometimes—like asking for forkful after forkful of asparagus risotto—and frustrate me as well, such as when you refused the chicken fingers I made for you from scratch. I...

Yesterday, we had our usual Monday playgroup, with three other babies. Lucia has grown to enjoy this group more and more, and now that she’s getting familiar with everyone, she’s been getting a little more engaged. It helped that it was at our house yesterday, her own turf; and she immediately began offering her toys to everyone. Later, she even sat down in one woman’s lap a few times, unprompted! I nearly got jealous. My clinging little one was nowhere to be found. This morning, Lucia and I headed to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum with friends, a little boy and his mom, whom we see each Tuesday for a playdate. Lucia always has a great time with this particular little boy—though he’s several months older, he’s not a giant compared to her, and he’s extremely gentle and giggly. He’s the only baby we see regularly with whom Lucia actually has squealing, laughing-out-loud fun. It’s pretty cute to see them together. Last time, he even hugged and kissed Lucia several times. We had fun at the...

Last fall, when Andrew, Lucia, and I were in Mountain View for seven weeks, we had no complaints about our corporate apartment—except for the kitchen table and chairs. It was a high table, with high, barstool-like chairs, which made both feeding Lucia and working at my computer a challenge. Lucia solved her problem by refusing to eat at the table, launching our period of chasing her around the apartment with forkfuls of food. I had no solution to my problem, however, since the apartment had no desk. Very quickly I developed back pain. And that pain has persisted, with no relief, to this day. Tonight, fed up, I finally saw a chiropractor. He ran his fingers up my spine and immediately identified the exact spot that was hurting—and confirmed that a vertebrae was out of place. Though it’s Molly, not I, who is the hypochondriac of the family, I felt a certain satisfaction in having my complaints to Andrew—“It feels like a vertebrae is jammed!”—confirmed. With some intense heat and violent ...

Lucia was pretty cute yesterday, doing things designed to make her Grandparents Orlando desperately miss her. She enjoys looking at the “Team Orlando” baseball cards Molly and Ian gave us for Christmas, and she can now pick out all nine of us. (Well, Franny and Zooey are kind of interchangeable for her, but she can do all the others—Mama, Dada, Uncle Ian, Aunt Molly, Papa, Grandma, and Baby/Lucia.) Yesterday, she carried Mom’s card around for a while, occasionally snuggling it. Later, I talked to Dad on the phone, and I held the phone to her ear while he said hi to her. Not long after this, Lucia hurried into the kitchen carrying Dad’s card, saying “Papa! Papa!” Once she had my attention, she pointed to the phone and walked over to it, still saying “Papa!” Lots of connections being made there. I, for one, was impressed. Not to worry, Littells. One of my weekend projects is to have pictures printed of all of you, too.