Skipping Town

This weekend, Andrew, Lucia, and I continued our potential-new-home explorations by going to a few towns in New Jersey. We went to Montclair, Maplewood, South Orange, and Summit and really liked what we saw—beautiful houses, nice little downtowns. The yards seemed on the small side, but we were only looking from the street as we drove by. It wasn’t hard to imagine us living in one of these places. Of course, it’s equally hard to imagine leaving Brooklyn, though who knows how we’ll feel in a year or so. On the way home, I gave Lucia a bottle of milk, hoping she’d fall asleep in the car. She didn’t, and she didn’t really drink the milk, but I heard her babbling like crazy to herself, saying “Hello, hello, hello” over and over again. When I snuck a look back at her reflection in the baby mirror, I saw that she was holding the bottle up to her ear like a phone, saying “Hello,” and then giving the bottle/phone to her corduroy cat to “talk”—which is exactly what we do at home with her actual...

Lucia looked especially cute today in a little skirt, sitting in her chair eating apple pieces from a bowl, but as soon as I got out the camera, she hurried over to see "Baby! Baby!" (herself on the camera screen). She's been showing an increased ability to understand "first this, then this" lately, so I told her first she had to sit down and smile, and then she could see babies. She accepted this, returned to her chair, sat down, and proceeded to give me a huge, fake grin, sometimes tossing her head over her shoulder glamourously. It was hard to even take these pictures because I was laughing so hard. Finally, Lucia as herself:

Lucia has begun a love affair with peas. It began last week, when Barbra and Baby Alex came over for lunch. We had Chinese food, and Lucia wanted a taste of my fried rice—and became giddy when she spotted a pea. Barbra and I subsequently picked all the peas out of our rice, and Lucia devoured them. Each time she picked up a pea was a triumphant celebration: “PEA!” she’d announce before eating it. The next day for dinner, I cooked up some frozen peas, which she ate as a side dish with her scrambled egg. She was simply thrilled. “PEA!” she cried before each bite. “PEA!” As you can imagine, dinner went on for quite a while. This weekend, I made some shell macaroni with butter, cheese, and, of course, peas. This was mind-blowing. Peas were inside the shells! She ate the entire bowl I’d cooked, though I’d intended it for two meals. Of course I made another batch the next day. Today she had it for lunch, a vast quantity, and when she woke up from her nap, she wanted more for a snack. Peas an...

Last Friday, Lucia and I went to the Prospect Park Zoo with a friend and her son. Lucia was thrilled to visit the “barnyard” area, where fifty cents bought us a handful of food for feeding to goats and sheep. Lucia fearlessly poked her fingers through the fence, not flinching even when the animals put her whole tiny hand in their mouths. For days afterward, when I asked her what the sheep did when she fed them, she said “Num num num” while nibbling on her fingers. Saturday, Andrew, Lucia, and I drove through some towns in Westchester, doing some very, very preliminary reconnaissance for our house search next year. We believe it will be easier to do such trips before we have a newborn. However, this trip—though only an hour’s drive—proved far from easy, as Lucia got carsick on the way home and threw up all over herself and her carseat. We were on the highway with nowhere to pull over; eventually Andrew found and exit, and we parked illegally while we stripped Lucia in the trunk and clea...

Weren’t we just here? This issue arrived unusually close to the last, thrilling Lucia (“Baby!”) and adding an unexpected blog post to my weekend. First, a shocker: I actually used something from this issue. Though I usually roll my eyes at the recipes in this magazine—they’re either ridiculous (make your kid’s dinner into a 3D fantasy moonscape!) or full of off-the-shelf ingredients we generally don’t use. This time, however, there was a selection of recipes using blueberries, and I—on the spur of the moment—used the recipe for blueberry compote as part of Andrew’s Father’s Day breakfast. It was pretty good, too. I could point out that compote is little more than fruit, water, lemon juice and sugar simmered to high heaven, and that one barely needs a recipe for it at all, but I’ll let my little compliment stand. On to more pressing matters: chicken lollipops, p. 56. The imagery of a chicken lollipop is clearly disgusting, but more pertinent is the tip on how to “get the kids in on the ...

Dear Little One, Four months to go until you turn two! That’s insane. Pretty soon I’ll be referring to your age in years, not months, leaving this last vestige of babyhood behind. Well, not last. You’re still a baby, and you proudly point to yourself and say “Baby!” when I ask you who you are. If I’m in any doubt all I have to do is look at your small bare babyfeet when you’re sleeping to remind myself that you are, still, a tiny little one. You love the water—sprinklers, wading pools, the ocean, water in a watering can, washing your hands in the sink. Today—a cool day—we went to the playground, and the sprinklers were off, and you kept pointing confusedly, saying “Wawa? Wawa?” Over the past couple of weeks, you have otherwise lost a good deal of interest in the playground, preferring to draw with chalk or find and collect small stones rather than climb on the equipment (though you still love to swing). In this way, you are very much my child. I remember long summer days when gangs of ...

First, let me get this out of the way: flying with a toddler is hell. Pure hell. It is stressful and awful in every way imaginable. When the toddler companion is coupled with an inability to take Dramamine because of pregnancy—and, because of said pregnancy, an increase in the intensity and length of motion sickness—flying becomes…a nightmare. For everyone involved. Especially me, as I teeter on the verge of vomiting pretty much from takeoff through landing; and for Andrew, who must bear the brunt of an overstimulated Lucia as I try my hardest to not get sick. Fortunately, we don’t have to do it too often. Unfortunately, we can’t swear off flying entirely since Andrew’s family is in Florida. For Katherine’s October wedding—already dicey for me flight-wise, as it’s six weeks before my due date—I’m tempted to drive regardless of what the doctor tells me. And now on to more pleasant topics. The good thing about the horrendous flying portion of the trip is that it got us to Florida for a d...

Testing! Testing! This is a toddler speaking. And I have decided to go on a testing spree that is driving everyone a little batty. Lucia is a sweet baby. She makes the snuggle motion when she sees dogs and cats (or squirrels or birds or even ants) outside. She feeds food and milk to pictures of animals in books. She has blankie and other favored friends take bites of her food while she says “num num num.” She gives kisses to me and Andrew. She kisses her two favorite cat toys. She (usually) doesn’t steal other babies’ toys. But we are coming up on twenty months now, and she has started to test. She’ll do something we don’t want her to do—like start pushing her toy stroller toward the street—and we’ll tell her not to do it. Then, watching us the whole time, she’ll slowly, slowly, turn toward the street again. Once again we’ll tell her not to do it. And so on. It’s the same with coloring on the table (“Lucia, stay on the paper”—and a long, testing gaze will follow as she slowly, slowly p...

Just had to report some of the amazing deals we got this weekend at local stoop sales, the browsing of which is at the top of my weekend priorities whenever we’re in town. Little People farm set (with all animals except the sheep) Little People bus (with lots of people) Little People plane (with lots of people) amazing leotard-with-poofy-tutu ensemble for Lucia’s future dress-up box five Matchbox cars small firetruck Brookstone white noise machine Total expenditure: $19. Plus a few free books and two nice melamine plates left by the curb. There’s no place like Brooklyn for great trash. The only problem with all this (besides our swiftly filling-up apartment) is that I’m pretty sure I bought the farm set out from under the hands of a little boy who was still playing with it. When I asked the price, the mother told me and then admitted that selling the Little People was a big deal for her, since both of her kids had loved them. As she spoke, her little boy was on the ground, still playin...

There’s one person in this house who greets the arrival of Parenting with unabashed glee: Lucia. “Baby!” she cries out, and we then spend some time turning the pages of the magazine, pointing out pictures of babies. “Cry,” she says seriously whenever she sees an infant, even if the infant is not crying. If she sees a picture of a toy similar to one of hers, she excitedly points it out. We name things on the pages and all around it’s a good fifteen-minute activity. Unfortunately, as usual, that was all this month’s issue was good for. If possible, this issue was even less informative than usual—providing not only no useful information but also very little absurd information. In fact, it gave…very little information at all. Seems the editing staff (except for the overzealous copyeditor, as we’ll see) has taken their summer break a bit early. It’s hot today, so enough chitchat. Let’s get right to it. The first “article” or “column” or whatever after all the front matter is always somethin...

We spent the holiday weekend in New Hampshire, excited to be heading up to Holdenfield for the first time this year. (We are trying to come up with an annoyingly pretentious name for the house that we can use when we tell people we’re going. “We’ll be spending the weekend at Lamb House.”) The drive up was easy, and Lucia didn’t even wake up when we transferred her to her crib; but she was up bright and early—just before six—the next day, and not much later the next couple of mornings, unable to put herself back to sleep in a new place. But that was okay. There’s nothing to do there but relax, which is what I did from the moment I set foot in the house. I read a whole book. I occasionally napped. I sat on a bench in front of the house and looked out at the fields. I read an out of date local paper. Lucia, too, had fun, especially splashing around in the pool we brought up for her. She swam twice in a bathing suit, twice in her clothes when a trip out to visit the wa-wa turned into stepp...