Acceptance

Just a quickie:

Catching up on my blog feed reading, and I came across this little gem which had me nodding my head. In it, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits reiterates what has been floating through my mind since Sweet Dub got laid off: in essence, this too shall pass. This happened to us, and it was neither good or bad, and something else will happen tomorrow, and that too shall pass. And life will go on.

“A weed is only a weed when we don’t like it. Children are only naughty if we don’t like their actions. Life only sucks if you judge it as bad.”

This is very hard for me, this dropping of judgment and expectations. Very, very hard. But it’s a great exercise in retraining your brain.

Back from the Doldrums

Well! I just dropped a bomb on you and then skedaddled away, even though so many of you so kindly took the time to comment and commiserate.

That’s not cool, and I apologize. What’s happened is that Sweet Dub got laid off and that very same day, our modem decided to die. What with one thing and another (oh, the intricacies of health insurance and COBRA and such, and by the way: SUMMER CAMP! You gotta start thinking about it! And by the way: cell phone! Sweet Dub’s was a company phone, so he suddenly didn’t have one and lost all his contacts! And hey: pinkeye! The baby got it! And T-ball! We are smack in the middle of T-ball season! And sickness! Sweet Dub and I are both neck-deep in phlegm! And exhaustion! And, scene.) – well, what I’m saying is, I’m pretty invested in keeping my job right now, so I’ve not been blogging at work, and I’ve had no Internet access at home, and I don’t have a Smartphone, so I’ve been somewhat off the grid in terms of blogging.

But here we are, and ten days post-layoff, we are managing to stay positive. I am trying to avoid thinking about health insurance because it makes my eye twitch, so I won’t go into that, but just know this: the Blah Blahs can’t ever catch a break with something like that. Every avenue I tried came back to this: I must pay through my employer for health insurance, and it is $1,100 a month. COBRA is not cheaper, and we don’t qualify for the federal subsidy because Sweet Dub is eligible for health insurance through my job.

But enough about that. (Already I can feel my blood pressure spiking and my heart rate increasing, just in writing those few sentences.) At least one of us has a job. And we have some severance pay and we have some savings (partly for the hypothetical house which is impossible to buy in Los Angeles anyway) and if worst comes to worst, we have credit lines that are not being used. But I would hate for it to come to that.

Here is where I should insert something pithy and somehow poignant and inspirational. But instead I want to tell you a silly story, because it’s finding the humor in the everyday that’s keeping me going right now, and maybe it will make you laugh, too.

Earlier this week, I discovered that if I said, “Ready, set –“ to Miss Celie, she would say, “GO!”* But she would say it with such force that she would literally rock forward on her toes and the vein in her neck would stand out. And then she would break into a huge grin, as pleased with herself as could be.

Last night, I was talking to my mom on the phone and I figured this was a perfect “show off to Grandma” moment, so I said to Miss Celie, “Ready, set –“ and she said, “No.”

Ready, set – NO. It’s kind of appropriate, I think.

* And she doesn’t pronounce it plainly, “GO,” it’s more like “Goh!” which for some reason is more endearing and harder to convey on the page.

Holy Crap

Sweet Dub just called me. He got laid off today.

Holy freakin' crap.

Seven

It was a Tuesday morning. Sweet Dub was working horrific hours at his job. When he left for work at 6 AM, he asked if I was okay. My hips had begun hurting pretty bad at about 4 AM, but I said, “I’m fine, go to work.” And then I said, “But if I call you and ask you to come home, it’s not an April Fools!” and I went back to sleep.

About an hour later, I woke up with the distinct feeling of being wet. “The final indignity has happened,” I thought. “I’ve peed myself.”

I hefted myself out of bed and padded into the bathroom, where I peed again. As I was washing my hands I felt like I was peeing on myself again. I could feel fluid running out.

“Did my water break? I think my water broke,” I said out loud to no one in particular. “Is that what this is? This is not what I thought it would be.”

And, seven years later, that pretty much sums up my journey of motherhood. It is not what I thought it would be. It is so much more of everything, I can’t even explain it.

That day, my life changed forever. At 7:22 PM, Viva rocketed into the world.

A few hours old

A few weeks later

And she’s been rocking my world ever since. But enough about me, because after all, it is her birthday. Here are her specific birthday instructions/requirements:

(1) I must sleep with her, in her tiny little bed, so we can wake up together all snuggly-like
(2) She does not care what she has for her birthday dinner, as long as there is cherry Jello for dessert
(3) She is having a class field trip, so no party at school (huge sigh of relief here)
(4) HOWEVER, she is inviting her entire 1st Grade class over to our house for a party next Saturday (insert nervous breakdown here)
(5) She must also sleep over at Auntie Lola’s Saturday night, so as to wake up at her house Sunday morning for an Easter egg hunt and thus, maximum birthday/Easter-type leveraging of wonderfulness

Ah, my girl. Was there ever one so amazing and superb? Her legs are ten feet long and she can tell you the plot of every SpongeBob episode EVER and sometimes she still does that thing where she says, “Remember when--?” and it’s about something that happened when I wasn’t even there, but she always assumes I am with her, all the time. It’s like she thinks I can see everything she is doing. Not quite in a creepy way, but like we are so connected that I must be able to see everything she does even when I’m not there. Like we are twins or something.

She is slow as molasses on a cold day, and quick as a whip, and all other kinds of similes and metaphors that I won’t bother employing here. She wants to be like all the other kids, and at the same time she wants to be different, and I get it, I really do. She is a complex little person. The other day she said:

“Mom, Ms. C only lets me get CHAPTER books out of the library.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I’m the only kid that has to read chapter books. No one else has to read chapter books.”

“I thought you get to choose whatever book you want,” I said.

“No, Ms. C picks our books,” Viva scowled. (Actually, I believe the process is that the teacher has to approve the books they’re checking out.)

“So what’s wrong with chapter books? Is she picking ones that are too hard for you?”

“NO,” Viva said.

“It’s just that you’re the only one who’s reading them?”

“Yeah,” Viva said. “The other kids get the easy books.”

I finally realized that she thinks the teacher is being hard on her, rather than recognizing her skill level and having her read what’s developmentally appropriate. I then tried to explain to Viva that it’s because she is so good at reading that Ms. C gives her the more advanced books, because she might be bored with the easy books. Viva was still skeptical, and still kind of pissed at being labeled different in some way, even though it’s because she is way beyond her grade level.

She has an innate sense of fairness, and she really could not give a damn what she looks like. Except she better have some cool sneakers on. If she could wear whatever she wanted every day, it would be basketball shorts, a T-shirt and some badass Adidas. She protests having her hair “did,” but refuses to get it cut. She loves the way her hair looks right after she gets out of the shower, and right after it’s been oiled and braided. She has a much higher tolerance for fuzzy edges than I do, and ducks when I try to swipe at her hairline with a brush in the morning.

She hates it when she is not excellent at something the first time she tries it. I mean, she hates it to the point where she will burst into tears and throw a racket down and say, “Tennis is so STUPID anyway!” I mean, like in the moment if she could she would take a flamethrower to the tennis racket, the tennis ball, and all of Wimbledon, Serena Williams be damned. I know that it is only time and a moderate level of maturity that make me a bit more mellow about things like this than she is, but at the same time, it is exasperating.

Three weeks later, she will be bouncing a tennis ball with her racket like she is a pro, rage forgotten. She is a tough cookie, and still a little girl who screams for her parents in the night when she has a bad dream. The Tooth Fairy is no fiction to her. Yesterday, we had a serious conversation about cartoon duck voices (from Donald Duck to the baby duck on Tom and Jerry, we covered the whole pantheon).

She is so distinctly herself. I really lucked out. So happy birthday to Viva, my sweet, smart, ever-growing knockout of a girl.

Sleep: The Last Unicorn*

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
- Leo Burke

I was reading about sleep deprivation last night. And although I was reading a book** about child development, the book mentioned as part of its chapter on children and sleep that studies performed on adults who were averaging about 6 hours of sleep a night functioned similarly to individuals who had not slept in 24 hours.

I can’t remember the last time I had a full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I feel that I am irritable, prone to weepiness, and not ever functioning at optimum capacity. Not surprisingly, it’s not a good feeling.

One of the best ways, I have read, to ensure that you get enough sleep is to establish a bedtime for yourself. Before I became a parent, I pretty much just went to bed whenever I felt sleepy. This meant that some nights, I could get ten hours of sleep, or, if I was feeling particularly peppy, that I could stay up late and get by on five or six hours. Right now, with my sleep debt, the concept of eight full hours of sleep seems like the most heavenly thing imaginable. I told Sweet Dub last night that we need to get to bed by 10 PM. He thought that was really hilarious, and not really helpful, since we are being awakened every night in and around the 2 o’clock hour by Miss Celie. It takes at least 20-30 minutes for her to get back to sleep in the middle of the night, so even so we will not get a full eight hours of sleep.

We are the Crabby Blah Blahs. Hear us whimper.

P.S. it looks like Miss Celie may have another ear infection, so we’re heading back to the pediatrician this afternoon. (The screaming you hear is just inside my head.)

* By which I mean: it's rumored to exist, but has proved elusive. Have you ever read that book? I went through a Peter S. Beagle phase when I was about 15, but that is a tangent which I am cutting short --hmmm, right now.

** The extremely popular NurtureShock! Read it and weep! No, actually, it’s really fascinating, in the “I know I should go to bed but I just got sucked in to read the next chapter” kind of way. It pokes holes in a lot of assumptions we have about modern parenting. I’ve been wanting to read it for months, was waiting for it to come out in paperback, and finally just gave in and bought the hardcover. I regret nothing!

Skinny Mini

At our last pediatrician visit a couple of weeks ago, we discovered that Miss Celie had a “raging” ear infection (the doctor’s words, not mine), and that although she’d grown two inches since her last checkup five months ago (yes, we’re off schedule), she actually weighed less at 17 months than at 12 months. I know Celie is a horribly picky eater, and I had been dreading the appointment, because the list of foods she will eat is quite small, and lately she had begun rejecting certain foods that she previously would eat.

Dr. H said we might need to take her to an occupational therapist to work on her food aversion. (This is an actual thing, this food aversion!) But then she conferred with one of the other doctors in the practice and they came up with a plan whereby we are to offer Miss Celie food once an hour while she is awake. We are only to offer her foods which she actually likes, although they do want us to try giving her PediaSure or Carnation Instant Breakfast as a supplement. (It turns out she hates PediaSure and will only tolerate about one tablespoonful of Carnation Instant Breakfast in her milk.)

If she doesn’t gain weight on this plan, by April 21st, they will send us to jail. No, no, I kid. They will refer us to a nutritionist and possibly also an occupational therapist, who will re-teach her how to eat. (I am serious.) I don’t know if this comes through in my regular blogging, but we are actually pretty healthy, balanced-meal eaters. Viva has even commented that her teacher says she is the only kid who brings healthy snacks to school. (That is rather alarming and fodder for a whole post of its own.)

We are educated, middle-class, blah blah blah, which I hate even writing, but I feel like we have all the tools at our disposal for our little one to be healthy and flourishing. Is our kid failing to thrive? In all honesty, I walked away from the appointment with a giant lump in my throat, feeling like a terrible parent.

Sweet Dub’s reaction was similar: “I feel like we let her down,” he said.

Celie doesn’t look underweight. She has a layer of baby fat, and she has curvy little arms and legs. She has a little potbelly, as most healthy kids her age do. She isn’t fat, but her genetics are going to predispose her to that. Sweet Dub and I were both skinny kids and we are not large adults.

She’s also been teething, this time with molars, and she’s caught every cold that’s come down the pike. Her appetite has not been great. At the moment, she eats most kinds of fresh fruit*, cheese, some yogurt, applesauce, peanut butter, crackers of all types, some pasta, and that’s really it. Oh, and air, in the form of any kind of puffed veggie-type food item like Pirate’s Booty or Snapea Crisps. She won’t eat baby food, she won’t eat potatoes (except the occasional French fry, her one food vice), she won’t eat rice or bread, and she won’t eat any kind of meat. She also won’t eat tofu. She eats green beans and sometimes broccoli.

It’s tough. Sometime she will eat things they offer her at daycare and then she won’t eat the exact same thing at home. Months ago she tried peas from a classmate's plate, and ate a bunch of them. She would eat them at home, but then one day she refused and hasn't eaten a pea since.

She is often crabby, and I am quite sure she is just hungry. But if you offer her a food she doesn’t recognize she will turn her head away and screech until you remove it from her sight, or at least from her highchair.

Someday I will look back on this and shake my head at how overly concerned I was, as I watch Celie eat a bowl of ceviche or something. But for now, I’m in the thick of it, and feeling pretty bad.

P.S. My doctor even suggested feeding her ice cream to fatten her up. Not sure that’s the road I want to take – first of all because of the sugar, and second of all because I don’t want her to grow up thinking of ice cream as a food group. Talk to me in a couple of weeks if she still hasn't gained weight.


* Except bananas. What kid doesn’t eat bananas?

Avoidance

In direct contrast to the last couple of posts, today’s post is a bit fluffier. Think cotton candy. Sprinkled with just a light dusting of exasperation. Read on…

Well hey, it's that time of year again. What’s that, you say? Well, it’s Viva’s birthday! (Almost.) She will be seven in just nine more days – that’s right, she’s an April Fools baby. So I sent out birthday party invitations by email to some friends, and one emailed me back that she won’t be able to make it but by the way, she ran into the mom of one of Viva’s bestest besty friends in the whole world at the farmer’s market last weekend and the mom asked my friend to give me her phone numbers and call her because bestest besty friend misses her so much.

If they are bestest besty friends, you ask, why are we not in touch?

I’m so glad you asked. Viva and her friend (let’s call her BeBe) used to attend preschool together and were inseparable, and then her mom elected to take her out of private school and put her in a charter school. I’m not mad at that – if I could get Viva into a charter or magnet school, I would probably do the same.*

What I am mad at, and long-time readers (all two of you! Hi there!) may remember this, is that two years ago, we had decided to let Viva pick one friend to take to Disneyland for her birthday, and naturally Besty Best was that friend. I ran it by BeBe’s mom first, and told her no pressure, she didn’t have to decide right away. But I made it clear that we would pay for both of them to go with us for the whole day, and that food/treats/etc. were all part of the deal. Basically all they had to do was show up. And then I called her. And I called her. And she never took my calls. And I never heard back.

And you know, try explaining that to your 5-year-old. She was very upset, and I was all mama bear furious. (How dare you snub my kid? At least have the decency to call and say you can’t go, for whatever reason - make something up if you have to, for heaven's sake.) We ended up taking my sister and nephews and had a lovely time, despite my morning sickness and fatigue.

At any rate, I know what I should do. I should do the right thing, do what would make my kid happy, right? I should suck it up and call her. I know that. I just don’t want to!

* Just found out Viva got waitlisted for second grade at a charter school for the second year in a row. She is number 83 on the list. I love public school,** oh yes, I do.

** I’m not being sarcastic, I really do love public school. I just wish the ones in L.A. weren’t so hit and miss. And that the school-year schedule made sense for parents who work full-time and have no family support. I can’t really have my kid out of school for three weeks at a time at Christmas.

Sorrowful; Grieved; Sad

On Monday, a hospice liaison came to visit my Nanna. In light of the spread of her cancer, they discussed the options: radiation, chemotherapy, or palliative care. My grandmother chose palliative care, so a nurse came on Tuesday and brought a wheelchair, oxygen, a bench for the shower, and morphine; and came back on Wednesday to review her medication schedule with my mom. A hospice nurse will visit on a regular schedule from now on.

So those are the facts. My head is all awhirl and I feel kind of sick and sad. I'm trying to think positively. I don't want her to suffer. I feel horrible that my mom, an only child, is experiencing this long, torturous process all over again - my grandfather died of metastasized prostate cancer nearly 6 years ago, at home, with hospice care. It was awful, horribly awful.

Trying to think of something positive to say, but right now - I got nothing.

Tongue Tied.

I keep starting posts and deleting them today. When I re-read them, I feel they are hardly worth the effort of reading. So I delete. And then I rebuke myself sharply. And then I go sit in the corner and weep hot tears of futility. And then I think to myself, man, that salad I had for lunch is just not cutting it. I wish I had some chips or something. And then I realize that part of the problem is that I am so easily distracted these days. And then I go back to daydreaming about chips, and vacation, and the upcoming Macy’s sale.

Now that I am out of the habit of blogging it seems I can barely string two words together. Oh, noes!

I’ll try again tomorrow.

Mmm, chips.

Simple

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
-Confucius

I have a family member who insists on making huge grand life decisions with (seemingly) nary a thought to the consequences. I don’t understand why, when faced with two possible routes on the road of life, this person invariably seems to choose the one which is clearly marked, for all to see, “Train Wreck.”

It is very frustrating to get a phone call with details of the wreck after such a decision has been made. I am never sure what to say. I try not to be judgmental (I know! Laughable!). It is difficult.

Keep things simple, I want to say. Address one problem at a time. Don’t create additional drama when you already have enough going on.

And if you can, eat a piece of red velvet cake. It may help put things in perspective.

Something's Gotta Give

“Something’s gotta give,” we (as in Sweet Dub and I) keep telling each other. And yet it doesn’t.

We are stretched kind of thin these days. Work, for both of us, has been extremely demanding. We’ve been working on the weekends at times, trading off childcare with each other. For Sweet Dub, it looks like there will be no relief until June 18th, when the final project of the four he has slated must be done. Note that well, my friends. June 18th. Not to mention that whenever I can, I am driving up to visit my grandmother, who--it should be noted--has three kinds of cancer and is apparently too frail to have any treatment beyond pain medication.

We are a little fried, if you want to know. This morning, I went online to check Viva’s school schedule, and then I called Sweet Dub to tell him we need to make sure and schedule a vacation in late June.* And then I went online and did a little summer camp research. Have you noticed that it’s March?

Don’t wish your life away, I tell myself. These moments are important. Your kids are still so small. There must be time to sit down on the floor of the closet at the end of the day and take a little warm person into your lap and read “Please, Baby, Please” for the hundredth time. Or to sneak into bed with the Big Girl—the one with the legs that are ten feet long—and wake her up with raspberries and tickles. Is there anything quite like the giggle of a little kid?

I think not. And then there is Ella. I just can’t be too down when I listen to her.

When an irresistible force such as you
Meets an old immovable object like me
You can bet just as sure as you live
Something's gotta give, something's gotta give,
Something's gotta give.

Indeed.

* And not to be morbid or anything, but with my grandmother this sick, scheduling a getaway is probably not all that practical. What if something happened while we were away?

Still Snarky, Still Sleepy

Wow, so here I am, off to a raging start with this blogging thing in 2010. It’s February already and I’ve posted only 3 times this year. Three cheers for mediocrity!

I meant to post, really. But I am being eaten alive by work, have been semi-obsessively watching the catastrophe in Haiti, and had horrible medical news about two people I am very close to (okay, one who I am very close to, and one who I work with – we are friends, but not like we vacation together or anything. But still I wouldn’t wish what he’s going through upon anyone.)* Oh, and Sweet Dub has taken on a new project outside of work which necessitates a commitment of more free time than he has, and I have these two small kids (have I mentioned them to you, ever?) living in my house who seem to need me for things like food and laundry and cuddling. When I have a moment to myself I like to maybe read a book or go for a walk or even watch TV. So there’s that then.

Last night, Viva had a total meltdown when she was told she needed to stop playing Wii (which she never does on weekdays, so it was a special privilege to begin with) and go take a bath. She said some things! She stomped her feet! Sweet Dub said some more things in a loud and angry tone! She was sent to her room! Much loud crying and screaming commenced from behind the closed door!

And then Sweet Dub came to me, where I was feeding our pajama’d Cily her bedtime bottle and said: “You know, we didn’t think about this before we got married. Your mother and my mother? Oh my God, we have fused them together to get the perfect drama queen!”

Yikes. We are smart in so many other ways.

P.S. Do you remember this post? About the Overnight diapers? And maybe that’s why Cily wasn’t sleeping through the night? Yeah?

No. No, that wasn’t it. It was just a fluke. She still wakes up Every. Flippin’. Night. at sometime between 3 and 4 AM. You can call that morning if you want to be technical, but to me, it falls very squarely into the time when I want to sleep, hence NIGHT. Gahhhh. When 6 AM rolls around, I am too through!


* My grandma’s tests came back even worse than before. Her lung cancer is not operable; it has spread too far, which is a very bad sign, because even a couple of months ago doctors thought that if they could just get her healthy, they could perform surgery where they would resection her lung. Since it has spread that quickly in just a couple of months, I am very scared that this means her time here on earth is much shorter than we anticipated. Never mind the cancer in her stomach and whatever the hell is going on with her liver (inconclusive).

As for my work friend: his newborn baby has a one-in-a-million type of disorder for which the only solution is brain surgery. My heart breaks for him. I can’t even imagine. This is going to be a long and difficult journey and I can’t even crack any jokes about it, which is my default way of dealing with things when things are not going well. So you see the situation I'm in.

It’s the Economy…

Okay. So in reading here and there about my work life you may have surmised that I work in the nonprofit sector, and I do my best to raise money for the organization that employs me. In the down economy, this has been none too easy. The head of our department is preparing to be out of the office for a couple of weeks, and this morning he fixed me with a Look and said, “I was going over the numbers last night, and we’re in trouble.”

“I know,” I said. “We are in the hole.”

“No, we are really in trouble,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “We have been doing well raising money in certain areas, but for our annual fund [which provides general operating support], we are way down.”

“We need to get some more requests out,” he said. “And can you give me a list of everything that’s pending?”

I feel like we have been knocking ourselves out to prepare well-thought-out requests for support to funders who have an interest in what we do. Yet we keep getting declined.

Am I concerned about my job? Well, yes, I guess so. Common sense tells you that they’re not going to keep paying someone to TRY and raise money. They want to pay you to actually raise money. The past year or so has been disheartening to say the least.

So that’s where I am today. And I’m working on about four hours’ sleep. Dub and I stayed up talking until 11:30, Cily woke up at 11:50, and I didn’t get to sleep until close to 2 AM. And then, at 4:50 Dub came out and found me on the couch snuggled up with Cily and woke me up, insisting that I should come to bed. Can you imagine? How can I be married to this person?

My fury at being awakened was such that I could not get back to sleep for nearly 30 minutes. Dub woke me again at 6:25 to say he was leaving and I should get up or I’d be late. I wanted to hit him in the head with something but it was just too much trouble to move.

I miss my imaginary fantasy life, in which I’d get a full eight hours of sleep and wake up looking fabulous, to a clean house and children who would eat anything I put in front of them before we hopped into the mom-mobile and drove merrily off down the road, singing in perfect unison.

Did I mention how much I miss sleep? And how I’d like to keep my job? I guess those are the themes of the day.

An Unintentional Feminist Critique of Marriage

This morning:

Viva: Why can’t chickens fly?

Mama: Their wings are too small for their bodies.* So even though they’re birds, they can’t fly.

Viva: Oh, like bees! Bees really shouldn’t be able to fly but they do, even though their bodies are so big and their wings are so small.

Mama: Yeah, that’s right. They say that it should be impossible for bees to fly.

Viva: I’m glad I’m not a bee. They only live for three days, you know.

Mama: Yes, I do remember hearing that somewhere.

Viva: Yeah, one time? I was at M’s house and this bee did not like him, and every time he would go outside this bee would go after him. And after three days, like on the third day? The bee started slowing down because it was dying you know? And you know what M did? He buried it!

Mama: Really? I don’t think I’ve heard this story before.

Viva: Yeah, he took a cough drop box and he put the bee in it and then he dug a hole and he put the bee in the box in the hole and then he had a funeral for it? He sang like this: “Duh duhn da da…”

Takes a minute to realize that Viva (and/or her cousin) apparently believes that the “Here Comes the Bride” song is funeral music. Hilarious.


* Because they’ve been selectively bred to be extra-big in the breast for human eating purposes. Kind of gross when you think about it.

Feliz Ano, Internets!

So I'm posting. Anything to get the basset hounds off the screen!

Well, hello. Let me share with you the marvelousness of 2010 that has thus far overtaken me. For quite some time now, I have been sleep-deprived. I attributed my baby not sleeping through the night as not eating enough solids during the day. She wakes up because she's hungry, I thought. So she would wake up at around 3:45 or 4:00 AM every day, and I would change her diaper and feed her a bottle and put her back to bed, and I would eventually fall back to sleep and then when 6:00 AM rolled around I could not get out of bed to get to work on time. This went on, this ridiculous pattern, for eons of time.

Yesterday, I broke down and bought some Overnights diapers in despair. Lo and behold, the baby slept from 8:30 PM to 5:30 AM. Hey, guess what - she was waking up because she was wet, and cold from the wet! Poor thing.

Now that I have had one night of uninterrupted sleep, there's no telling what I might get up to. I have all kinds of ambitious plans. I might blog more regularly, even (though I won't recap my holiday season for you, because I just won't do that to you. There was family drama and that's all I wish to say.).

Consider yourself forewarned, is all. And to all a good night!

What on Earth Would Jesus Think?!

Basset Hound Nativity Set

Wow. I mean, WOW. I don’t even know what to say.

Um.

Oh.

Image brought to you courtesy of my new favorite site, Regretsy. Go now, trust me. And scroll through their archives. It's comic gold.

Oh, wait. Before you go: I thought I was struck speechless before, but now I may never talk again:

Poor Baby Jesus Meerkat. He looketh sore afraid.

Yeah. Wow. I’m…I just…wow.

Birds, Bees & Ogres

The Scene: it is Sunday night. I am doing Viva’s hair, a long process of sectioning and oiling and combing through each section and twisting each section down into one long plait, secured with a barrette. Because this is a long process, we generally watch a movie while it’s going on. It doesn’t take me the whole movie to finish her hair, but it’s a nice ritual involving microwave popcorn and lemonade.

The Movie: we are watching Shrek the Third. There is a point at which (spoilers ahead! For a movie that’s at least a couple of years old!) Shrek (the ogre, in case you’ve been living under a rock) is leaving on a quest in a large ship going out of the harbor. His wife Fiona is on shore and she calls out, “I’m pregnant!” Shrek is completely freaked out, and as the boat pulls away, the following conversation takes place:

Shrek: I can't believe I'm going to be a father. How did this happen?

Puss In Boots: Allow me to explain. When a man falls in love with a woman, he is overcome with powerful urges—

Shrek [yelling]: I know how it happened! I just can't believe it. [stomps off]

Donkey [to Puss]: How *does* it happen?

Viva [to me]: How *does* it happen?

Mama: Oh, well – you know, we’ve talked about this a little before. You know the daddy kind of plants a seed in the mommy and it grows into a baby.

Viva: But HOW does he do it?

Mama [biting the bullet]: Well, the daddy puts his [clinical term] into the mommy’s [clinical term] and—

Viva: Oh my GOD.

Mama: Yeah, that’s pretty much everyone’s reaction when they first find out. It sounds unbelievable, but that’s how it happens.

Viva: That is WEIRD.

Mama: Well, when two people love each other, it’s kind of like – it’s a very special kind of hugging that they do.

Viva: You mean a very WEIRD kind of hugging.

Mama: Okay then.

And by then we were on to the scene where Shrek is having nightmares about ogre babies projectile vomiting and crying and having multiple near-accidents, and that was the end of that.

I’ve shared this story with a few people since then, and the reaction seems to be: “Wow, I can’t believe you straight out told her like that.”

I’m really not sure what else I was expected to do. She asked me a question and I answered honestly in a spur-of-the-moment way that I hope was age-appropriate. I want her to feel she can ask me anything, and I don’t want her to feel like the Big Topics are off-limits. And it seems to me that 6 is a pretty reasonable age for her to be curious about where babies come from, and that now I can go ahead and get a book like this, or this, or this, for us to read together and talk if she wants to. (I think when I was little I read this. I wonder if it’s held up over the years or if it’s dated.)

At any rate, I would love to hear from you about your experiences talking with your own kids, or your own “birds and the bees” talk with your parent(s), if you ever had The Talk. My mom was always very frank with me and my sister, and I’d like to be the same way with my kids. Curious to hear other people's experiences! PG only please!

Burning the Candle at Both Ends

You should write a book, they say.

Oh my God, that’s hilarious. When are you going to write about it?

If you don’t write all this stuff down, you’ll lose it.

At the same time: work, sickness, two small kids. November started with the flu and ended with some gastrointestinal horrors, sandwiched around but not related to or caused by Thanksgiving. A small girl who is lonely and whose tummy hurts and who wants her mama. An even smaller girl who wants to be in the middle of where everyone is, who repeats over and over in the sweetest voice imaginable, “Uh-oh!” about everything.

And the holidays! They are upon us. Good grief.

Where will I find the time?

I lost a week of work this month to illness. I am so terribly behind. I worked at home during the Thanksgiving weekend. I worked this evening after putting the kids to bed. Speaking of which, the baby (soon-to-be-toddler) is waking up three times a night. It is like she has regressed back to the early days. And, exhausted, my sweet husband has passed out next to the baby. He is snoring softly. And just in thinking of him I think, his birthday is coming up. Yet another twinge of guilt and despair! How will I get it all done?

I need time for myself – time to exercise, time to write things that aren’t for work, time to get my hair cut. I am feeling a bit raggedy. I breathe. I am thankful, don’t get it twisted. My little family is such a swirling tide of love. I just feel like I am constantly pulling together a shawl that is unraveling and getting smaller all the time. It just won’t cover me.

And in taking the time to write it down, at least I can look back and remember what on earth was going on. And find the humor in it. Ha. Ha. Yes, and ha.

Thankfully, Los Angeles does not disappoint. Last week, I was driving south on Crenshaw Blvd. and just as I reached the red light at Jefferson, I saw a bright orange ice-cream-type truck turn left onto Crenshaw. That truck, my friends, was the Grilled Cheese Truck. Now, THAT is fabulousness made real. The Grilled Cheese Truck just made its debut in October of this year, so I feel I am almost somewhat on the cutting edge in reporting this to you. They tweet and publish a schedule of when the truck will be in various locations so you can go get a fresh grilled cheese sandwich when the mood strikes. Among other things, they do a Gruyere melt, which sounds divine.

Yup, Grilled Cheese Truck. You heard it here first (maybe). Now I must arise from the laptop and collapse into bed, at which point no doubt the Babe will awake and I will suppress the urge to scream. One love, all. One love.

On the Mend

The Blah Blahs are recovering from whatever horrible ailment that was. And thus and so we have all returned to “normal” life, off to work and school and day care. Cily did not seem so sure about day care this morning. She had a rough night and her cheeks are kind of swollen, indicating to me that teeth are about to break through. Cily would not eat breakfast, and neither would Viva, and I fretted a bit about it in the car as we tootled off to begin our days, but then Viva could not stop telling me the entire plot of the Captain Underpants book she read last night, and Cily chimed in loudly here and there cheerfully, at times talking over her sister (she is not quite clear on conversational concepts yet, but would feel right at home with some of my closest friends who, and they know who they are, can’t quite ever let one get a full sentence out without bursting out with an exclamation) and so I managed to get over it, letting Viva out of the car at school with a Tupperware of dry cereal to munch on and handing a bottle to Cily’s day care provider as I handed her over. And then somehow I drank two cups of coffee at work and got to lunchtime and realized I hadn’t eaten breakfast either.

Soup is the answer. I think it cures all kinds of ills.

But Not the Flu

Today I am sick.

Darling Sweet Dub is sick.

Precious Cily is sick.

Viva: healthy as all get-out and raring to go. What adventure awaits her today?

I am at work, having come in just to make edits and print and mail out a project so I can cross it off my “to do” list. It is quiet here today – about half the staff in our department are out at a conference. I am enjoying the calm.

Soon I will make phone calls, and I will sketch out my next assignment, and I will leave here and pick up Cily from the lovely and loving women who care for her all day. Cily, sweet Cily gives kisses to all of us without pursing her lips. Sometimes they are open-mouthed kisses, and she chews a little bit on your face, kind of thoughtful-like, before moving on to smear her spit on your cheek. I am guessing this is how both Sweet Dub and I got sick, since who can resist her?

I will try and work from home for the rest of the day. Cily, I know, may not cooperate. But I will first make my phone calls and see what avenue to take next, and then maybe once we get home she will nap. And I may sneak some pictures of her because she is so scrumptious.

And that other girl, Viva, will come home victorious from whatever she has done today and declare that I am the best mom ever because when I make myself a cup of tea I automatically make her a cup of hot cocoa. And I will try not to give her my germs, but it will be hard, because who can resist her?

And maybe for Sweet Dub, I will make some chicken soup to share. He too is at work. (What a crazy life – we all have “too much to do.”) So he will come home and all of us will collapse in bed together and he will be so sweet with the children as we all loll about that I might have to kiss him and share his germs too, because how can I resist him?

So that is the plan for the day. Be well, my friends.