Skipping Town

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...

Another month, another issue of Parenting , another selection of inane activities for children. This month, I wasn’t sure I’d find anything suitably ridiculous to blog about until I came across this suggestion for an activity that’s “perfect for pairs,” in the monthly “Play” column: Bash the trash. Encourage the kids to go through the recycle bin and create ways to turn the (non-glass) items into musical instruments, castles, or doll cribs. So many things about this give me pause. First of all, I’m a careful, protective mom myself, but there’s no way on God’s green earth to create a satisfying musical instrument out of garbage unless glass bottles are in play. With a glass bottle you can blow across the top, tap it with things, fill it with things to shake—and, yes, break it and slice a little hand open. Which brings me to point number two. Really? This activity is all this writer could come up with for a fun thing for a couple of kids to do? Digging in the trash? I don’t know about a...

Tonight, Andrew, Molly (in town for a few days), Lucia, and I went to a bar in Chelsea to meet a couple of my and Andrew’s old work friends. This was my first time bringing Lucia to a bar, and she immediately got attention. Molly, Lucia, and I arrived first and were immediately accosted by an older man who offered to buy Lucia a beer. Later, when the bar got too noisy and I’d run out of things to feed Lucia, Molly took her for a stroll outside, where she was hit on by a guy who said, “I think it’s really cool you bring your baby to a bar.” They then discussed (Molly, in faux earnestness) how important it was to teach a baby how to be social in a bar. Once we were all back outside, the older man reappeared, approached us once more, and said, “That baby’s smokin’! She’s smokin’!” Granted, she looked adorable in a little plaid dress. But smokin’? I apologize, but I have to cease writing this post. I’m so tired my eyes are spasming. Lucia woke up for the day today at 5am again, after wakin...

Last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about "The Two Carolines," so I decided to see what I could rustle up online about it. And even though I use Google every single day, I was still amazed by what I found. Within minutes, I’d not only found that it’s a story, not a book, but I also discovered the name of the story collection in which it appears, the website for the publisher of the collection and the other volumes in the series, the complete text of the story, and cover images from the series. It turns out that “The Two Carolines” is part of a series called, somewhat creepily, Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories , by Arthur Maxwell. The first stories were created by Maxwell in 1924, and he went on to write and publish forty-eight (!) volumes, ceasing to write them only when he died in 1970. Incredibly, most of the volumes seem to be easily available. You can purchase the first twenty for $748.00. This is all interesting information. But there’s a dark side to such Googling, the d...

Yesterday, I planned to write a blog post discussing my and Andrew’s decision to search for some sort of boarding daycare for Lucia. She’s too young for sleepaway camp or boarding school, but surely there’s someplace we could simply…send her. This idea took root at approximately 5:00am Monday morning, when Lucia decided it was not only time to get up but also a perfect time for FUSSKINS (no teething required this time). It was a trying morning. Boarding daycare seemed like the thing to do. But as the day went on, Lucia came around. She took a good morning nap; we had a playdate with a new friend, and she and the other little girl played happily for almost two hours; and she had a good afternoon nap. Because she had this nap, we were able to go out to dinner at Brooklyn Fish Camp with two friends, where Lucia, seemingly knowing that these friends are expecting, put on her “perfect baby” act—the one that gives as-yet-childless people the idea that having a baby is easy. She sat in a high...

Moving from a big house to a smallish apartment has been a challenge, but we did pretty well in selling most of our big unnecessary stuff—refrigerator, enormous dining room table, etc.—before leaving California. Nevertheless, a lot of small things managed to get packed and moved, and we keep stumbling upon them as we complete our unpacking and organizing. A few nights ago, we opened our big Igloo cooler (yes, this made the move) and found the following assortment of items, which had both of us laughing out loud: a bag of 100 Ikea tealights wire clippers (they look like giant scissors) an Energy Smart 60W lightbulb bottle of Turtle Wax bottle of wood glue can of WD-40 swimming goggles a small battery-operated fan that also mists water window-screen cutters, for making your own window screens air-mattress inflater bottle of fabric glue an iron We hurriedly put everything (except the iron) right back into the cooler. Seems as good a place for such things as any.

Lucia has started crawling on her hands and knees, finally. She’ll go five or six paces before plopping down and resuming her Army grunt crawl, but she does it. She does it particularly when she’s not paying too much attention to what she’s doing, like when she’s trying to reach a particular toy. It’s very cute. She is also pulling herself up on things. She can actually get to standing when she pulls herself up on our ottoman from Marrakech. On higher things, like the coffee table, she just kind of hangs there, with only her eyes and nose visible to anyone looking on from the other side. She also now enjoys reaching her arms up—the signal for me to take her little hands and help her into a stand. We do this many, many times a day. Sometimes we take a few steps together, but it’s really more me lifting each side of her body than her actually walking. Nonetheless, it seems to please her. God help us, I think there’s another tooth coming in. There’s no visual evidence yet; but she was FUS...

Perhaps going to Connellsville is the baby equivalent of heading to Swizerland to take the waters or retreating to a week of pampering at the Golden Door. We’ve returned from our five-day trip refreshed and, more importantly, non-teething—for now, at least—and it’s such a relief to once again see Lucia’s happy, dimpled smile and hear her pleasant babbling. Lucia spent the week surrounded by adoring family members wishing to do little but play with her, feed her, sing to her, and hold her, so it’s no wonder she’s a happy baby. We saw even more people at the Orlando family picnic on Sunday—it was a whirlwind trip of showing off the baby. The flight home was tough—we were forty-five minutes late, and those forty-five extra minutes were spent on the plane, either sitting on the runway in Pittsburgh or circling around JFK. It was quite torturous with a wound-up baby who was increasingly difficult to entertain, and we left the plane a bit battle-weary (and covered in teething biscuit slime)....

Little Lucia, You’re ten months old today—and you’re on the move. Though you haven’t (yet) transitioned from your inchworm-style crawl into a more traditional hands-and-knees crawl, this doesn’t slow you down, and you have explored every corner of your new Brooklyn home. You are an expert now at going from a crawl to sitting and back again, and you have such an ingenious, and amazing, way of doing it: you stretch your legs out on either side of your body, forming a straight line of leg from toe to toe, and simply work your way upward or downward, depending on how you want to move. When your legs are stretched out that way, you look like one of those gift-store sandbaggy items meant to stop drafts from coming from the bottoms of doors. If we sat you there, you’d be quite effective at it. I’m still amazed that you taught yourself how to go from lying down to sitting—you just did it one day, with no prompting or coaching or practicing. You wanted to do it, and you did. You are now waving ...

Scene: Greensburg Gabe’s. There was a young girl working the fitting room, obviously a bit out to lunch. Every time I came out to retrieve more clothes, she had a comment or question. “Is it s’posed to rain tomorrow? Cuz it’s my day off.” “D’ya like this shirt? Cuz I’m goin’ to m’ boyfriend’s tomorrow and it’s s’posed to rain.” Once when I came out, she was holding her head in her hands. “Aargh,” she moaned. “Aargh.” I approached her to let her count my items, and she looked at me seriously, a bit close to my face. “I hit my head last night,” she confided. “I fell.” She thought for a moment. “I can’t believe I didn’t split m’ head open.” Looking at me intently. “Seriously, I can’t believe I didn’t split m’ head open. There’s nothing’ I hate worse than gettin’ m' head split open.” A laugh rose up in me so quickly I almost didn’t catch it in time. Discombobulated, I tried to hand her back my number tag, confusing her; she handed it back, and I headed to the fitting room. “My head’s n...

Losing it. I’m seriously losing it. Lucia has stripped my synapses of all remaining connective tissue. I’m lucky I can remember where she is—but anything else? Forget it. A couple of mornings ago, I threw a little fit because I could not find two skirts and a shirt that I knew for a fact I’d put in the laundry. But there were no skirts or shirt in the laundry basket I’d just retrieved from the basement. Eventually, I remembered washing those items at Trump Place, not here, and became convinced Andrew had left them in the Trump Place basement. Conveniently, after half an hour of my manic searching and ranting, Andrew had to leave for work. Sure! Work! Just go ahead and leave! Then, that night, searching once again, I found the shirt right there in my shirt drawer, and the skirts on a hanger in the closet. I hadn’t remembered hanging them. Seriously. Losing. It. What I myself didn’t lose are my kitchen implements. All our spatulas, serving spoons, lemon juicers, vegetable peelers, meat t...

One of the fun things about moving to a new New York apartment is getting to know the neighborhood characters. We had no “characters” per se in Roseville—just very nice neighbors who brought us tomatoes from their gardens and a kind, wonderful landlord and landlady who actually surprised us by returning a portion of our June rent since we left mid-month. But here—there are characters to spare. Could it be any other way in Brooklyn? Park Slope has more than its fair share of stylish moms pushing thousand-dollar strollers and shops selling $80-a-pound charcuterie, but the pre-gentrified neighborhood still exists thanks to the many residents who have lived here far longer than the young-family newcomers. Among the characters we’ve met so far is a woman I’ll call Nellie, who’s lived on the block for fifty years. She’s clearly the queen of the block, knows everyone, everyone knows her. She doesn’t so much talk as yell—though the volume, one senses, is simply part of her natural voice. Now t...

A baby! A baby! I’m selling a baby! First come, first served. Must be willing to sing infinite rounds of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” and have ears that can withstand high-pitched shrieking. Kidding. Sort of. I’m not selling Lucia, but I might be forced to give her up when I’m carried off in a straitjacket thanks to a teething-baby-based crack-up. I’m serious when I say I’m about two steps shy of that. Where, where, is my sweet little one, with her constant dimpled smile, her playfulness, her reliable eating and napping? I think it was just earlier this week or last week when I actually told someone that I couldn’t remember the last time she’d had an all-out sobbing fit—that’s how rare it was for her to cry. But now? But now. Oh, but now. She does nothing but cry. She cries when she tries to nap. She cries when she doesn’t nap. She cries when she wants to eat, and she cries when I try to feed her. She cries when she tries to play. She cries when I hold her, and when I put her down. And t...

We’re in it. One bottom-center tooth has appeared, with a second not far behind—one the size of a small grain of arborio rice placed lengthwise against her gum, the other not more than a sharp speck. And Lucia is miserable. Though the first tooth came in with a minimum of fuss, this second one seems to be doing her in, and for the past two days she has been FUSSKINS—all caps. FUSSKINS refuses to nap, and refuses to nurse, and cries when I try to make her eat. Yesterday—armed with baby Motrin instead of the useless Tylenol—she was been slightly better. She refused her morning nap, but nursed well before it, but then refused her lunch, wanting nothing but a teething biscuit. Granted, I was trying to feed her tofu mashed up in yogurt, but still. She didn’t even want sweet, quartered blueberries or her beloved puffs. She has no interest in teething rings or frozen washcloths. Yesterday all she wanted was bananas. And now we are out of bananas. And when I went to the grocery store this morn...

Will there ever be a move in which we don’t have to buy out Ikea’s shelving department? Will there ever be a move in which we don’t have to sell things in a last-minute fire sale? Will there ever be a move that does not involve purchasing a great quantity of window coverings? Will there ever— Oh, hello. You seem to have caught me with my move-in brain in hypermode. Really, I am absolutely astounded that a move in which we had to do next to nothing—not pack, not haul, not store—can still be so exhausting. Yes, we moved cross-country, but I somehow thought that being moved would make it all so much easier. It did, in many ways, but the unpacking was still left to us, and it’s a doozy. Moving day was Saturday. Thank goodness Andrew’s mom came up for a few days to help—she was able to stay with Lucia at Trump Place while Andrew and I drove down to Park Slope to meet the movers and orchestrate the move-in. It took five hours for three burly Ace Moving men to unpack the truck and then reasse...