Skipping Town

….You’ve got to know you’re going to wind up at the hospital. Here, at least. It seems in CA I could call the nurse hotline with anything at all when I was pregnant and simply get some good advice; here, the few calls I’ve made to doctors or our new nurse hotline have led to doctor’s appointments (Lucia’s cough), the ER (Lucia’s tick), or the labor & delivery floor of the hospital (me, last week). But I suppose it’s different with my pregnancy this time around, since I have this pesky complete placenta previa. A call to my doctor to just get some reassurance about some very, very, very minor spotting on Thursday led to an order to go immediately to the hospital. Of course, Andrew was out of town for work. Fortunately, Mom and Dad had come to help out for a few days. So Dad and I headed to the hospital, where I got an IV with fluids and lots of monitoring and examining and, on the bright side, got to spend a few hours in sublime AC. Everything was fine, as I knew it was all along. B...

What a disappointing issue for Lucia. Her excited cry of “Babies!” soon weakened as we turned page after page only to find very, very few pictures of babies. On the other hand, there were pictures of Kelly Ripa, Mark Consuelos, Julia Roberts, Sofia Vergara, Nicole Kidman, and someone named Brooke Burke. Her boredom was relieved only by a large advertisement featuring Elmo. I recount this anecdote as a way of underscoring the problem that seems to be worsening in this magazine month after month: any actual parenting advice is sneakily being sidelined to make room for watery celebrity and “style” nonsense. I like celebrity gossip as much as anyone, but that’s not why I subscribe to Parenting . It’s why I’d subscribe to Us Weekly , as I happily used to; but, alas, I rarely even recognize whoever’s on the cover these days, such is my immersion in Toddlerland. But I digress. Let’s begin. The main cover headline this month was “Best. Birthday. Ever. A year’s worth of fresh ideas.” And the op...

Dear Little One, Because I am about 22 weeks pregnant to your 21 months of existence, I’m going to have to make your letter shorter this month. Shooting pains in my lower back, general exhaustion, and mild worry over my current diagnosis of placenta previa (move, placenta, move) are leaving me pretty much ready for bed. So I will focus for now on your current love of water, which infiltrates all aspects of your current life. Whether it’s the ocean, a kiddie pool, a puddle at the playground, or even just a watering can or soup pot of water placed for you out on our front stoop, you are engrossed in splashing, wetting your hands, submerging your feet, and filling and emptying whatever vessels are handy at the moment. Washing your hands in the sink here at home is a time of high excitement. And you would love your bath if it weren’t for the pesky bathing part of it. Your angry protests of “NO NO NO NO NO NO” don’t end until the soap, shampoo, and washcloth are safely put aside and you can...

No series of New Hampshire posts would be complete without a few sneers. We really need to teach this child how to smile.

Andrew, Lucia, and I were alone for our final three days in New Hampshire, and Andrew and I set about indulging in some of the country luxuries that make leaving Holdenfield (we’re still trying to come up with an affectionate/irritating name for the property) so difficult. For the second summer in a row, Andrew bought and cooked a live lobster, which he then turned into amazing lobster rolls. We’d gone out to dinner in Hanover for a date night a few days prior while his parents stayed home with the sleeping baby, but the place where we always have lobster rolls had, for some reason, removed them from the menu. So we made them ourselves, and they were delicious. We ate them by candlelight. We could do this in New York, but it just wouldn’t be the same. We also bought a fire pit and set it up behind the house, where we sit to look out over the fields and sunset. Saturday night we had a dinner of fruit, olives, crackers, and cheese, then built a fire and made s’mores. We sat and talked in...

I’ve been behind in my blogging because we spent the past nine days in New Hampshire, and though the days of being internet- and cell-free are over, I choose to limit my computer time as much as possible to enhance the off-the-grid feeling I savor there. And there was much to savor: Stars There are always incredible stars. On the clearest nights the Milky Way is visible from the front yard; we saw that, and a bright shooting star, and, thanks to the telescope a family friend had brought, Saturn and its rings. The Big Dipper tilts just over the top of a tree behind the house. Stones Hands-down, Lucia’s favorite activity all week was collecting stones in her bucket, which she (and, consequently, Andrew and I) calls a “bubbik.” The road past the house is unpaved, awash in tantalizing gravel; and the drive up to the house, which is just a worn path in the grass, also has its share of stones. Each morning, barefoot Lucia would traipse down to the road and spend a long, long creating her col...

Looking big. Feeling bigger.

Lucia, as I’ve written many times, is a sweet, fun baby, and for the past few months our days—with few exceptions—pass smoothly, full of outings and toys and books and giggling and the regular appearance of squealing, running Silly Baby. This was not the case two weeks ago when my parents came to keep me company while Andrew was in California for work. Molly had come for the first part of the week, and Lucia immediately intuited her role of Easiest Baby in the World to speed the arrival of cousins. Molly was amazed at just how long Lucia can spend collecting stones at the playground. We even had an outing to the Brooklyn Bridge Park, where Lucia bravely mixed in with bigger kids to play in the amazing water area. I had an hour-long call to take on one of the days, and Lucia played splendidly with Molly the whole time. By the end of the two days she was saying Mol-wee, and asked for her when she left. Unfortunately, to get back to her normal-baby state, Lucia felt the need to overcompen...

On July 1, I went for my 20-week ultrasound, which I’d been eagerly anticipating. Unfortunately, Andrew was in California and couldn’t go with me, which meant I’d find out the long-awaited sex of the new baby alone. At the suggestion of a friend, however, I decided to not let the technician tell me—instead, I brought a blank notecard and an envelope and had her write it down and seal it so Andrew and I could open it together when he returned later that day. Tantalizing missive tucked in my purse, I took advantage of Mom and Dad’s babysitting to go to the Met to see an exhibition called Open Windows, which was wonderful. It was my first time to the Met since moving back to New York. Andrew managed to get an earlier flight home, so after Lucia’s bedtime we went to a nearby restaurant for the big reveal. As soon as we ordered, we opened up the envelope…and found out we’re having a girl! I screamed and then cried. I couldn’t help it. I was convinced it was a boy—had even felt certain I’d h...