Skipping Town

Last weekend, we drove down to Maryland to meet Luca, our new nephew. Lucia was very excited to meet Cousin Luca, especially since the trip also included time with Aunt Molly, Uncle Ian, Gra, and Pop-Pop. This was the first big trip we’d taken with both kids, and it wasn’t easy. Lucia was great in the car, but Greta spent much of the time screaming. In the middle of a long screaming session, Andrew made a left turn in a bus lane when we got to Silver Spring and got pulled over instantly; I leaned over to the window and told the cop that please, we really couldn’t stop, we had to feed the baby. It wasn’t even a lie; Greta was desperate. He told Andrew to be more careful and let us go. In the hotel, however, things were better. We’d gotten two adjoining rooms and put the two pack-and-plays in one of them—and Greta slept better than she has for weeks, waking up just once at 3:30 to nurse. It was bliss. Cousin Luca was, of course, the star. He felt as light as a feather comp...

Dear Littlest One, Have you really been with us for six months? It seems like we just brought you home from the hospital, a squalling (or, in your case, snorting) newborn. Because you are the second child, I see you as a baby—a much younger baby than you actually are. You surprise me constantly with the things you do. There is no time for me to guide you through each milestone; you just get there on your own, casually. You’re going to crawl across the room one of these days, before I know it. This month has, unfortunately, brought about a disastrous turn in your sleeping. From the very beginning, you were a good night sleeper—but in the past six weeks or so, you’ve started waking up more (two or three times a night), and, worse, staying awake. You’re in a mini-crib right next to our bed, so if you’re awake, I’m awake. You kick your legs into the air and slam them down; you toss from side to side so that the zipper on your sleep sack bangs against the crib; you shriek and ...

Saturday we spent the morning at Prospect Park; we got lunch at the farmer’s market, set out a blanket on the Great Lawn, and just enjoyed being outside. Lucia and Andrew kicked a ball around; Lucia collected various things; Greta chewed on various things. Saturday night, we bravely ventured out for dinner—not too far, of course, just to a nearby pizza place. It went pretty well, though as the meal progressed and the restaurant got busier, Lucia got a bit overexcited. Happily, this restaurant has a big window where kids can watch the pizzas being made, and the chefs hand over small balls of dough for the kids to play with. Of course, Lucia loved this. We’d taken the double stroller, and Lucia refused to get on for the walk home, solidifying our resignation that we’re going to have to buy a “real” double stroller at some point (i.e., a stroller into which we can firmly strap an uncooperative child). By the time we got everyone home and bathed and in bed, we were exhausted. We both had a...

Dear Little One, Two and a half! Halfway through two! This is a big one. You’re getting so grown up. You have a mind of your own, which is usually fun (the things you say!) and occasionally enraging (the tantrums you throw!). We have high highs and low lows. There are days we spend playing and giggling, and there are days that leave me weary. Twice in the past month I’ve had to turn the TV on in the morning or afternoon to calm either you or I out of a rage. You can be insistent and intense, and usually I can handle it. But your little sister hasn’t been sleeping very well, and sometimes I just can’t get past the exhaustion. Fortunately, most of the time, we have fun. I say “we,” because we do plenty of playing together—tea parties, reading books, Play-Doh, play food. But this month you have really been playing a lot on your own. I’m always near you, in the same room, ready to comment or participate; but you are very often completely absorbed in your own little world. This world involv...

It was a fun Easter this year. The holidays keep getting more entertaining as Lucia becomes more aware of them, and I know they’ll only get more fun once Greta gets into them, too. This year’s Easter celebration started on Friday, when some friends and I organized an egg hunt for our two-year-olds at the park. Lucia had a great time. While a couple of the other kids preferred to just run around the park, Lucia set out with a singular focus: to collect eggs in her new bunny bucket. She loved finding them; she was less interested in opening them. And, of course, an interesting stick was the best thing of all. Saturday, we went out to Coney Island with friends to play in the sand. Lucia was so excited to be at the beach, and she immediately pulled off her socks and shoes and ran to the water—only to find that it was painfully cold. Once we warmed up her toes and got her shoes back on, she had fun playing in the sand and collecting shells in her bucket. Saturday night, I put together the g...

Today was a big day in our household. First, it was a big day for Lucia: the first time we’ve left her with a babysitter for a long period of time. We had to go out to NJ today for our home inspection, definitely not something a toddler could sit peaceably through, so I found a sitter for her. I was extremely nervous about this event. I had the sitter come for two hours yesterday, so Lucia could get familiar with her. I typed out tons of instructions. Early in the week I ordered a DVD of Olivia episodes to make sure Lucia could watch her show as usual without the sitter having to figure out our ridiculously complicated on-demand cable thing. I showed the sitter where everything was both yesterday and today. I emphasized, many times, the importance of keeping track of Bibi and paw-paw, so much so that before I left today she looked around a bit nervously to make sure she knew where they were. We were leaving Lucia for six hours. (We took Greta with us.) To my surprise, Lucia was fine. S...

Greta’s interest in food has intensified lately to a degree that is almost ridiculous. This morning, Lucia and I were sitting at the table, eating breakfast, and Greta was sitting near us in her activity saucer. She was watching us so intently that she was barely even blinking. Just staring…staring…staring at us as we lifted food to our mouths. Later today, I sat near her as I ate a yogurt, and she looked at me with such a doleful expression on her face that I actually felt guilty for eating it in front of her. And later, as I had yet another snack—this time a meal-snack of two large pieces of quiche—while sitting next to her on the couch, with her propped up on a pillow, she made a lunge for the quiche, so forcefully that she toppled over into my lap. If I hadn’t been right there, she would have fallen off the couch. When I eat in front of Greta these days, I feel like I’m stuffing my face with cake and ice cream and fried chicken and fresh bread while a Dickensian beggar-child looks ...

We got the house, our glorious house, and here it is: My lesson in real estate: let’s not do this too often. We got the house, but we had a couple of weeks of craziness to get here. After a day of seemingly normal, successful back-and-forth with the seller on a Tuesday two weeks ago (we offered; they countered; we countered back), negotiations went haywire, and suddenly no one was responding to our bid; it seemed the sellers were trying to find another buyer and that we would ultimately be forced to make a blind bid. It was all a lot of real-estate jostling, with our broker angrily threatening to withdraw our offer, accusing the seller’s broker of acting deceitfully, and the seller’s broker responding with a lot of explanations and mild panic. All we knew by late the next night was that we likely weren’t going to get the house unless we offered asking price or higher. Which we just couldn’t do. So I spent that night crying on the couch, feeling robbed, because if we’d just accepted the...

Lucia, when I went into her room after she woke up from her nap today: “A bat was in my nursery. It scared me while I was sleeping.” There was no bat. But all the vestiges of Halloween—bats, ghosts, witches, pumpkins, and monsters—have become regular characters in Lucia’s world lately. When we make a house with a blanket draped over her crib, ghosts and witches regularly come to visit, usually bearing a gift of “new markers.” Bats fly all around her nursery and the rest of the apartment. “I see a bat!” she’ll exclaim at random times. She’ll dramatically whip her head from side to side, as though following a bat as it swoops wildly around the room. Much of this is just her leftover—and lingering—interest in all the Halloween decorations she saw in October. Some comes from books we read, and some comes from the Olivia episodes she’s most fond of. The pure, scary ghost sightings are a thing of the past. Now she’s as likely to say “There’s a ghost coming through the window!” or “I see a wi...

Dear Littlest One, Five months! If I were miscalculating your age, as I did with Lucia, I’d probably be starting you on solid foods right about now. I haven’t miscalculated, and you’re not starting solids, even though you’re verging on being ready. When I eat now, if you happen to be nearby, you watch me so avidly that it’s like you’re willing the food into your own mouth. I was holding you yesterday while eating a banana, and I really though you were going to reach out and grab it. Also, you’re getting up at least once a night and eating for a long time, and during the day I feel like I nurse you all the time, so I know you’ll be ready soon. I’m in no hurry, though. Six months will be our starting date. If possible, you’ve gotten even cuter over the past few weeks. You are screeching, shrieking, cooing, gurgling, and babbling all the time. You have a riotous laugh, which you bestow almost exclusively on Lucia—you especially love when she jumps up and down. You have an intense, penetra...

Whew. Knock on wood, it seems we’ve turned a corner in the paw-paw withdrawal. We hunkered down at home on Saturday—played on the stoop for a while, but that was it—and by Sunday Lucia seemed more her old self. A couple of funny, funny things from the past couple of days: When we were out on the stoop on Saturday, a woman in a black burka walked by. “OH!” Lucia said at the top of her lungs, perking up and staring after the woman avidly. “A GHOST!” Andrew and I were speechless, mostly because we were laughing too hard (silently) to say anything. Hilarious. (I finally told Lucia that no, it wasn’t a ghost, it was just a woman wearing a special robe.) Lucia continues to sing more or less continuously throughout the day. Today, however, for the first time, she decided to join me in my lullaby-singing as I put Greta down for her morning nap. Greta was on the brink of sleep when I laid her into her crib, softly singing to her. Lucia, who was, of course, playing in the room the whole time, ra...

Friday was one of the hardest days I’ve had as a parent. First of all, Lucia’s paw-paw withdrawal has intensified in the past couple of days, leading to extreme meltdowns in the morning when she gets up, more acting out during the day, and some nap- and bedtime resistance (though she has, knock wood, ultimately slept each time). Friday dawned with an epic meltdown that just wouldn’t end. By the time Andrew left for work, she’d been crying and/or screaming and/or whining for two hours. I’d planned an outing for us that day: the zoo with a friend. Through her tears/screams/whines, she kept saying she wanted to go to the zoo, so I felt sure getting out of the house and to a fun place would snap her out of it. Indeed, once I’d lugged the double stroller down the stairs, loaded it up, carried Greta out to put her in, and corralled Lucia outside and gotten her to stand on the stroller’s riding board, Lucia was in a much better mood. She loves the double stroller and each time she gets on say...

The phasing out of paw-paw continues to go surprisingly well, knock on wood. Lucia carries it around with her, putting it near her at her art table or with us on the couch when we read, but more often than not she just forgets about it. A couple of times today she said she needed a new paw-paw, but she said it calmly and didn’t push the issue at all, as though she felt she had to say it but wasn’t really invested in the answer. It took her about fifteen or twenty minutes to fall asleep at naptime; I heard her in her room, singing to herself a song from Music Together: “My lady wind…My lady wind…” She had a meltdown late this afternoon over her desire to simultaneously have and not have honey-graham bunnies, and she refused to even begin her bath until I was done putting Greta down, but otherwise we had a nice day. Before she went to bed tonight, as we talked about all the things we did today, she said she wouldn’t cry about paw-paw because she was going to get a new toy. “That’s right,...

This is a sad post to write. After gearing up for weeks, I finally did it: I snipped holes in Lucia’s paw-paw. A few days ago, I poked holes in her orange one with a needle; she didn’t notice. The next day, I put very small cuts with scissors in her green one; she peered at it a moment, then just went on with her day. Finally, yesterday in the late afternoon, I put two dramatic snips in her orange one. She put it in her mouth, spat it out, studied it, repeated that process a few times, and then said clearly, “I need a new paw-paw.” And I, feeling like an evil traitor, had to tell her that this was her only paw-paw and it was time for her to carry it instead of put it in her mouth. She is handling this unexpected turn of events with surprising equanimity. Yesterday, she said a few times that she needed a new paw-paw but seemed to accept my ridiculous explanation that now that she was older, it was probable that paw-paw just felt different in her mouth, and that was okay, she could still...

On Sunday, we headed to Montclair, crossing our fingers that we’d find something we loved that would turn our eyes from the Maplewood fixer-upper. We saw five houses, and, alas, none were perfect the way that the (unperfect) fixer-upper is perfect. We saw one beautiful home that had an inground pool (terrifying to me, with babies around), no garage, and no playroom. We saw a large, newly renovated home that was on a very busy road and had a tiny yard. We saw an interesting farmhouse with nice woodwork and a great yard, but the ceilings were low, the upstairs felt very tight (no hallway), and the whole place smelled intensely like the dog that was barking at us from the screened-in porch. (Note to future self: When selling your home, get it thoroughly cleaned first.) We saw a gorgeous, charming Victorian that had everything we wanted—but it was surrounded by apartment buildings and two-family rentals. It’s been on the market for six months, so clearly we’re not the only ones scared off ...

Fueled by urgency to see as many houses as possible in order to get our minds off the fixer-upper—or to decide definitively that that’s the house we want—Andrew took Friday off and we headed to Maplewood to continue our house hunt. First we went back to the fixer-upper and looked at it with one question in mind: Could we live with it as it is, for a little while? We were surprised to find that the answer was yes, with the exception of the second-floor bathroom. Our love for the house renewed, our broker took us to several more houses. The most promising one was a four-bedroom, fully renovated home with all the high-end finishes a home buyer could want. The rooms were quite small, but there was a large finished basement and a decent-sized yard. Beautiful kitchen, wonderful bathrooms, even a master en suite. And…we didn’t like it. It felt airless, suffocating. It was too perfect, too done, just too finished. Our broker said there will likely be a bidding war for his home, but we won’t be...

There are so many reasons why we’re moving to the suburbs. As the weeks and months go on with our search and eventual move, I thought I would document these reasons in a series of posts called Reasons. I’ll start tonight, after a particularly grueling late-afternoon playground trip. Going to the playground in the morning is great. Lucia is energetic and excited; Greta sleeps; there are snacks to eat, lunch to have, friends to run into. We almost always go to the playground in the morning, unless we have music class or are getting together with friends. Of course, now that the weather is nicer, every single nanny and mom in Park Slope also goes to the playground, and it is just ridiculously crowded. For two mornings in a row we failed to snag a swing even after an hour or two, unwilling as we were to wait in the swing line. (The line for the swings will, perhaps, be its own Reasons post.) But I digress. Crowded or not, it’s still generally fun. The late afternoon is another story. The d...

Dear Little One, Well! So close to two and a half, you are. And you have become just unbelievably funny and cute. It’s a rare day that you don’t make me laugh out loud. The things you say, your facial expressions, the funny things you notice and do—it’s all just fun and great to witness. Our days are often long, especially on the (now-rare) days when you’re in a surly mood, but each one really is unforgettable. I always expected you to be talkative, and you are. You pick up new expressions all the time, and are becoming very skilled at expressing your thoughts and feelings. On Tuesday, we were invited to a friend’s house for playgroup, but you’re getting over some sniffles and had a pretty tiring weekend; when I suggested we go, you gave me a serious look and said, “I just want to stay home. I want to stay right here.” So we did. Lately, when I ask what you’re doing or if you want to do something other than what you’re engaged in, you say casually, “I’m just playing with sticks, Mama.”...

We returned to New Jersey today to see some houses in Maplewood and South Orange. It was not a successful day. We saw three houses, and we didn’t like any of them. One had a weird sunken living room with two or three stairs to all other rooms of the house—a true toddler death trap. And there was a new addition off the kitchen with depressing-looking linoleum that just seemed bleak and soulless. We didn’t even look upstairs. Another was enormous—like something out of Gone with the Wind—with all the ornate details that go along with a “period” home. Our Ikea furniture would look just…silly there. And the realtor said the heating bill is probably around $15,000/year. It's rare when even I will admit that a house is too much house for us. The third was sterile, too newly done, and though it was pretty in the technical sense, it left me cold. The realtor said it was on the market because of a divorce, so perhaps that was part of the unhappy feeling of the place. The dislike was purely o...

Greta had her four-month checkup last week, and it seems my scant few months of having a "robust" baby are over. She is still quite tall--25 inches, 75th percentile--but is now 13 pounds, 25th percentile, down from the 50th. The doctor said she's slimming down and was unconcerned. I wasn't surprised. Lucia was in the 25th percentile for most of her first year, until she plunged into string-bean territory, where she (cutely) remains. I have no doubt Greta, too, will be long and lean. For now, however, her cheeks remain so chubby that sometimes when I look at her in profile I can barely see her little nose. She's just so roly-poly. I kind of want to pinch these words, since she's sleeping and I can't pinch her actual cheeks.