Fine Young Fauves

Because we're still celebrating Bodily Function Week chez nous, I pose a rhetorical question: What's more fun, helping a toddler vomit or having a toddler help you vomit?

Okay, it's not actually rhetorical and I know the answer from personal recent experience. It's WAY more fun to help a toddler vomit than to have a toddler help you vomit. This is because there's no way around the fact that when a toddler is helping you vomit, you're vomiting, and that is horrible. 

On Monday I came home from a very brief respite from four days mano-a-mano with Elias (Ben and Isaac on a dad-lad-granddad trip to NYC). I went to a coffee shop and read the NYT for an hour or so, while Elias stayed home with a baby sitter. When I came back, he was dressed in different clothes than I had left him in and slumped asleep on the couch. The babysitter said he had been sick… Hm. This was my first inkling that anything was amiss. I thought and hoped that perhaps he got something like a cracker down the wrong way and it made him hork up a little bit, as sometimes happens. But as the day wore on, indeed it proved to be the stomach flu. He threw up all day. He could not keep down even breastmilk (although he insisted on nursing as much as possible) and water. Indeed, these simple things flew from him with great force. 

But oddly through it all he retained his good humor. I remember one moment when he was simultaneously carrying me books to read to him AND throwing up as happy as you please. He threw up on three beds and many towels, sheets, clothes, etc., etc. Laundry! Oh, the heaps of it. He never gave warning and just went about his day occasionally spewing. I followed him like white on rice, carrying paper towels and other catching devices, and still he managed to elude me many times. I hovered over him for fear of dehydration. But over the next 12-14 hours it faded out, until by Mid-Tuesday he was keeping down simple things and seemed quite well.

Wednesday morning dawned well before dawn as it usually does. I opened my eyes with a single word: Uh-oh. Something was not right. Moments later I was in the thick of it myself. Ben had not left for work yet and I truly BEGGED him not to go. Don't leave me with two children while I cannot raise my head!! But he had been out of town and had an important meeting. He got on the phone and did some rearranging, pushed his meeting back a bit so he could take Isaac to school, and canceled his afternoon so he could come back and help me. I appreciated this. I understood that it was the best he could do. And yet, it still left me alone with a toddler for four hours when I was sicker than I've been since– when? I was trying to recall it. I think this illness was along the lines of the great salmonella ordeal of 1987, when I was in Kenya and which a few of my readers my remember being privvy to. THAT was worse. THIS was right up there.

My misery really scared Elias. I remember lying on the bathroom floor with my trusty bucket, and Elias patting my head. I remember him crying and screaming as I vomited– and pulling my hair in apparent effort to get me to stop– he was so alarmed by it! I was so miserable and it was very hard to reassure him that I wasn't actually dying. I had my doubts myself there for a while. I got on a schedule, vomiting every two hours: 6 a.m., 8, 10.. Ben came home and I stumbled upstairs to deal with it alone. MUCH easier! The vibration of baby DVDs and being climbed on between bouts was not helping. Nor the imperative to stay conscious to keep the baby from eating poison, falling from great heights, etc. Once Ben got back I was able to curl up. By then I was of course completely empty, and still the violent hatred coming from within… wow.

But after my 2 p.m. vomit, things began to abate. Ben brought me some ginger ale and I took a tiny sip, thinking that perhaps I could absorb some before hurling the rest out. I slept a while. I sipped a little more. Gradually I sensed that it was over. I was left a shadow of my former self, leached of color, sore and exhausted, but… done. Only 12 hours! Less! 

I give a shout out to my friends who have dealt with hyperemesis gravidarum , severe morning sickness, who went through this very thing for MONTHS!! How did you do it, ladies?? My god, I barely survived half a day.

Thursday was a fog, but I did my normal things, took Isaac to school and spent time with Elias. I progressed through the jello and crackers stage until Thursday evening, when Ben I have a standing date night. I felt very weak and tired, but decided to go anyway. Miso soup and bits of bland chicken helped much to restore my strength. Yesterday I felt normal and went on with my life.

Ben and Isaac have so far been spared. I hold out hope that it was something that Elias and I were exposed to over the four-day weekend and that they just won't get it. But I'm watching Isaac closely. Last night he claimed to have a tummy ache and I steeled myself for a night of misery. But nothing came of it. He seems fine and is off at "swimming school" right now.

And so, I hope that this closes this installment of Bodily Functions week, and that we won't have to celebrate it any time again, for years to come!  

Have you ever had a run of piss-related incidents that made you feel like a deranged installation artist has taken your entire house and dunked it in a giant glass of piss, like the infamous "Piss Christ" ? No? Just me?

On the up side, I can report that everyone's renal health is just terrific!

In a 24-hour period:

1) two stray cats, one who closely resembles Zane Grey to such a degree that we've been calling it "Zane Black" (although Zane Black has a tail), who have the ENTIRE WORLD as their latrine, for some reason decided to make a habit of stepping into our garage, pissing, and then heading on their merry way

2) The original Zane Grey was suddenly shown to have returned to her old tricks! I was searching high and low for a certain set of flannel sheets, and happened to look in the way back of my upstairs closet, and found a different dreaded piss soaked sheet as irrefutable evidence that her experience of having her tail crushed and almost starving to death did little to reform her. In her defense I should add that she's effectively trapped between Ben and Lena… Ben won't let us have a cat box on the second floor, and Lena won't let her move freely between the second floor (where she loves to sleep with her humans) and the basement (where her littler box is housed). But the upshot is that unless something else radically changes she is now a basement/outdoor cat for the rest of her life.

3) Trusty Lena dog lost her mind. It was a flashback to her youth when she ran under the sobriquet, "The Futon Pissing Bandit."  After I found different sheets and made a nice bed for my guests… with a woolly mattress pad, and a big down duvet… on a very absorbent futon… Lena leaped into it when no one was looking and drenched the entire thing in three quarts of piss! Ironically I had just yesterday laboriously washed the duvet because not too long ago ISAAC had himself… you guessed it… PISSED on it while sleeping in his "nest" on the floor! So I had spent half the day drying the fricking thing, and then, back to square one! The unpleasant surprise right at bedtime. The guests had to sleep in Isaac's bed! 

(I should add that there was a similar incident after Christmas when we brought Lena home from the vet's, where she had had minor surgery and boarded while we were out of town. In fact, I spoke to the vet about it and we decided to check whether she had a bladder infection. You know how they get a urine sample from a dog? Turns out they have a special device. It's a long wand with a forked prong thing at the end. Into the fork they put a little plastic urine sample cup. Then they take th dog out on a leash. If she squats to pee, quick as a wink they tuck the little cup thing under there. In Lena's case they took her out and came back with a sample in 30 seconds flat. It was really quite remarkable! But no, she did not have an infection. Only mental illness!!)  

So who's left to join the fun? I guess Elias is the likeliest candidate. He could easily try one of those diaper-change little boy surprises…  

…But I'm in the clear now because bad things come in threes, right?  

On a related note, there's a very nice yellow climbing rose that I keep coming across in my rose research. Really I like the rose, and would even consider it for our pergola around the front porch, but I can't get past the name: Golden Showers. 

On the other hand perhaps there would be no more fitting a welcome to this lucky home!

We came back from Minneapolis lo these three weeks ago, expecting the worst mouse-wise. The cat was literally away, after all. I dreaded especially little rotten mouse corpses in the "live" traps (I couldn't remember whether I secured them or not.) And of course, counters  black with  droppings. What we found was that we had left a cake of suet, filled with grain no less, on the counter. (For the birdfeeder, but in the midst of packing set down in the wrong place!) While we neglected to put a neon sign reading "MICE EAT FREE" on it, the effect was the same. Clearly the mice had been having a week-long blow-out. They put quite a dent in the suet, and left perfect trails leading to and fro. BUT, on the upside, there were no dead mice in the live traps, and the rest of the kitchen was unscathed. The suet had in fact focussed their attention so tightly, that it actually worked to our favor.

But since then, the mouse activity dropped like a stone. Each morning: no droppings. Each night: no scurrying. To the point that we thought, Hey– maybe the mouse problem is solved!  WE caught and released 8 or 10 (Ben grumbled about putting them out in a blizzard: "You're making me kill them," he complained. So Isaac and I placated Ben– this all seemed so backwards somehow– and made the mice a little rec room in a shoebox way down by the creek and released them there.) The cat in did her part, left me some furry dead presents in the basement, and probably ate her fill also. ANd then the weather pitched in, briefly becoming like mid-June and luring them outside again. It was amazing, really, how quickly we took leave of the reality-based community and became complacent. 

A couple nights ago, we were forced to look at the facts. It was "Daddy's-home!" time in the evening. I was getting dinner ready. Both boys were running around shrieking with delight "Daddy's home!" or "Da-da!" as the case may be. Lena was in the mix, too. I was walking towards Ben to join the Daddy's-home melee, when an appalling thing happened. Amid the chaos, a mouse somehow came running out from someplace. (the idiot!) Ran towards Ben. Did a 180, and ran back towards me. All this in the blink of an eye.

People. Are you sitting down?

IT

RAN

ACROSS

MY

FOOT

Yes. I have looked into the abyss and lived. The warm pink pats left an impression which still lingers, and perhaps always will. As an amputee feels the missing limb, perhaps I will always feel the route the mouse took over my left foot in his hectic search for safe haven. Thank god I was wearing socks, at least. But if only I had been wearing clogs. This is the complacency I refer to!! I wasn't wearing shoes– IN THE KITCHEN. 

It's like, everyone irrationally fears that one day a bat will get tangled in their hair. It's supposed to be an IRRATIONAL fear. And then one day it really happens. So too, you ask a chair jumper like myself why the dread of mice, and the reply invariably is "because they might run across my feet."

Honestly, after the fact, I still jumped on a footstool and stood up there for a few minutes, with my head resting on the wall like Charlie Brown, to collect myself.

That night I reset the live traps and caught one– probably the same dude who ran across my foot. He lives in the woods now, where one can hope that the owls/hawks/feral cats and coyotes will eat him.

On another note, I learned why the country mice here are so different from our city mice. I was at the Natural History Museum with the boys, viewing a veritable Who's Who of taxidermied local vermin, and I saw them both side by side. In Cleveland our mice were the standard gray "house mouse," whereas here we have the much more robust "white footed mouse." Bring your field guides and come over anytime! 

***

Allergy Chic

Isaac's school is so replete with nut allergy that the place has gone completely nut-free. Isaac has to bring a sunflower butter sandwich or a soy butter sandwich or something else entirely. Kids who have peanut butter for breakfast at home are supposed to wash hands to make sure there's no residue. A new girl has a life-threatening egg allergy also, and Isaac mentioned (although this has not been confirmed) that if he has a sandwich with mayonnaise, and he's eating next to her, her throat will close up. I was in charge of snack for the class last week and the dread of accidentally exposing something to eggs or nuts, or processing it on equipment that is also used to process… was making me quake with dread. We made bagels — from scratch!! Yes, we are not afraid of yeast around here, and this was how we celebrated MLK day– and I swear I read the recipe 400 times and mixed them all myself, but still when the teacher asked me "are there eggs in here?" and I said no, I still feared that somehow…

Anyway, so Isaac has taken to claiming he has an allergy too. He says that it was "his allergy" that caused him to be hospitalized back in March of 06 (read the full account in the archives). I say that in fact he had a bad virus, complicated by asthma, and he says that the asthma IS his allergy. This conversation has a way of going round and round, and coming back later completely unchanged.  FInally I said, "Isaac, I think you just want to have an allergy to fit in with the kids at school." 

He replied quite forcefully: "I already DO fit in! I DO have an allergy!"

I rest my case. 

****

Tips for Toddlers:

1) Let's say you find yourself freshly dressed in clean clothes. You're wearing your boots and down jacket, mittens and hat. Your mother is standing near the door, wearing her coat, holding her gloves and keys in her hand, carrying the diaper bag and three packages to take to the post office. Now is the time to vomit.

2) Like most 15-month-olds, you're probably vertically challenged. Make up for this by climbing everything. Don't be shy about modifying the environment to suit your needs. Want access to a sink full of knives, scissors and salmonella? Just get yourself a chair and get busy.

3) Speaking of busy, you know the old saying "A tired dog is a good dog?" The same holds true for mothers. The more tired they are, the happier. If you find yourself sitting quietly and doing a puzzle, we have one word for you: slacker.

4) Sometimes communicating with obtuse giants can be frustrating. Let's say you want some more yogurt, but the few words you can speak are not relevant. What do you do? Lead your mother to the fridge, nodding and smiling to encourage her. Sign "MORE." Be patient. She's very dense. Get her to open the fridge and offer you each item in it. Take your time, she'll figure it out eventually.

A while back a friend described herself, about one week after the birth of her first child. She said, "I stumbled into a La Leche meeting, crying, with breasts of granite…."' This phrase, "breasts of granite" ran through my head a lot more than I would have liked last weekend, as I was apart from Elias for the first time since his birth.

I went to Florida (only a week ago, and yet seems in the dreamlike past… perhaps this blizzard has blotted it all out…) to attend the wedding of my friend Elline. (The wedding was among the chosen few to be featured in the Ny Times Weddings/Celebrations page here. The photo editor insisted that they submit a photo in which their heads were close together "with eyebrows aligned"– you'll notice they are very nicely aligned.) The whole lactation piece was a lot more of an issue than I had expected. I did bring a pump, of course, but it really didn't seem like it would be all that big a deal. I mean, Elias is 14 months old and to my mind doesn't nurse all that much. What I forgot was that he really does nurse fairly often throughout the day and sometimes night. But it doesn't really register. He bumps his head, he nurses for five minutes and I forget about it. He wakes up and nurses for five minutes and we both go back to sleep. However, what this means is that I really don't go a full five or six or eight hours without at least SOME nursing happening. Also, the pump and the nursling are worlds apart in their efficacy. In any case, enough said. The breastal management was a huge pain, literally and figuratively, but other than that the weekend was really grand. 

Balmy! Palm trees! I really can't fathom, looking out at the arctic windswept vista outside my window here, that any of this really happened. But lo– not all that long ago I was striding around among the egrets, wearing a linen skirt and sandals. In between wedding events I managed to find my way to the Everglades. I had Saturday afternoon, and after strongly considering sitting by the pool and reading War and Peace (more on this project in another entry to be titled "War and Peace vs. Mommy Brain") I suddenly sprang into action! No! I will see the Everglades. When will I ever be in South Florida again? I should add that I spent the whole time lamenting my short-sighted refusal of the GPS the man at the rental car place offered me. $12.98 a day, and I was so wracked with guilt about spending the large sums involved in this whole endeavor that I was trying to save money! And so drove around in a state of stress about whether I had missed the faithful turn, knowing I had no plan B.

Anyway, I made it to the Everglades National Park by hook and crook, and there took a wonderful 2-hour tram tour on 15-mile loop through the river of grass. It was really stunning, green, endless, and also just chock full of real alligators. All sizes, strewn here and there as if pieces of lawn art. In fact our guide said that sometimes people ask whether they are real. I can believe it. They weren't exactly leaping up and catching a gazelle like they do on TV. They sleep, I gather, most of the time, and manage their temperature, and only eat once in a great while. They were beautiful, as were the birds. Lots of waders– several in the heron family, and cranes and egrets. A few bright song birds flitting by, anhingas, double-crested cormorants, all the usual suspects. And balmy? Did I mention the sunshine and breezes? 

Ah well. We're in a blizzard here and today I literally skied out my front door. (Ben got me cross country skis for my birthday and this was their debut.)

The wedding itself was, in a word, perfect. The bride could not have been more stunning, with creamy shoulders and pink rosebuds tucked in her hair. Monsoon-type rain played around the edges, creating a festive sort of suspense. Will they make it? Or will the skies open first? The rabbi noticeably accelerated when we started feeling drops. The wind rustling in the dark palm trees all around us sounded lush and cinematic. Like Key Largo? Like Hemingway and six-toes cats were not far away. 

At the dinner the night before I sat with some elderly Jewish relatives, straight out of central casting. They literally a) told me their brisket recipes; and b) complained about how the Hassidim are taking over the Catskills. One older lady mentioned using pineapples in a dish she was describing, and this old man across the table who didn't know her said, "But that's not Kosher." And she said, "You just tap yourself on the chest three times and then it's okay." And the whole table laughed uproariously– apparently this is common knowledge. Then this other old lady, who had been sitting there quietly for a long time, suddenly chimed in, "That whole thing is such a farce!" More laughter all around. An old codger, as they always seem to do, insisted that I rub Elias's gums with Jack Daniels.  

I missed Elias painfully, the whole time, and not just in terms of mammaries. Isaac and Ben come and go as they please, but my little dumpling is always near. I told Ben before I left that I defined success as the house is still standing and no one is hospitalized. I set the bar pretty low, but that wasn't necessary. Ben handled everything very well. I came home to smiling children, a tidy house, and a pot roast. (He really is the domestic god of all time.) Isaac and Ben reenacted Elias screaming his lungs out, right into the face of sleeping Isaac. Which is to say that Elias had a hard time getting to sleep without his favorite drink. (I left milk in the freezer, but Ben forgot to give it to him. In any case, though, I don't think it's really about the milk.) But he seemed none the worse for wear, really.

I didn't know whether he would actually consider this a weaning opportunity. Sometimes after a break like this, a baby will just move on. Other times, they attack like a tiger shark upon the mother's return. I felt the whole notion of weaning him was so bittersweet. I was leaving it up to him, but as my breasts throbbed through airports, through rental cars and luggage carousels, I hoped that he would help me as soon as possible. Luckily he felt the exact same way. I walked in, set my stuff down, kissed Ben and Isaac, and sat down. Elias climbed into my lap and set to nursing. "Thank GOD you're here!" was written in a shared thought bubble over both our heads. 

And so– on to Christmas. 

The other day Ben came home with a form of ice cream that contains frozen chocolate chip cookie dough. I'm not really a fan of it as I find it too grainy, but I ate a few bites anyway, just to be sure. Indeed I was standing up at the time, leaning against the kitchen counter. As the chilled grainy dough hit my tongue, I had a Proustian moment of recollection. I was transported back to December 3rd, 1980, my friend Nina's fifteenth birthday.

We were I think in Roseville, Minnesota, at a mall called Rosedale (all the Twin City area malls at that time ended with "dale"), awaiting our fencing tournament. She and I were on the Marshall-U High fencing team together, perhaps drawn to it by the interesting gear and the security blanket of its unfamiliarity among our peers. If we sucked it, it would be a lot harder to tell. Anyway, it was Nina's birthday and she declared that the fitting celebration would be to eat a roll of frozen chocolate chip cookie dough in one sitting, and follow that up with smoking a cigar. I thought this proposal over briefly, using my 14-year-old skills of reason, and immediately decided that it was an excellent plan.

Somehow in the mall we found both the items we needed. We sat down on a bench and peeled the dough and gnawed off chomps of it, passing it back and forth like a joint. Grainy! Cold and bland, yet sweet, yet not at all chocolatey. The worst part though was the heaviness of it, the way all that frozen dough landed in the stomach and sat there in gray leaden rawness.

Then the cigar. The one we purchased was by far the largest and cheapest one available and it took only a puff or two to recognize that this was leading nowhere good. I'm sure we didn't make it to puff number three before we both were green. Fortunately it was about time for us to fence.

As you may know, competitive fencing requires one to be light on the feet, strong, lithe, and lightening fast. Nothing about our training regimen before the match provided us with any of those qualities. I think it was pure luck that I managed not to vomit in my fencing helmet. I also think that I was eliminated from competition in about 35 seconds. Nina, taller and a more experienced a fencer, may have lasted a minute or two. And then we were benched again, to sit there clasping our stomachs, waiting through many more matches until the bus would take us back to school.

It's December 3rd again– this time, judging by the fact that I'm 41, Nina must be 42. Happy birthday, Miss N! We are separated by thousands of miles, and yet close in spirit.

Elias has neatly divided the animal kingdom into two groups: those who roar and those who meow. This is not as easy as it might seem. Sure, you say, lions roar. Sure, kittens meow. But what do you do about frogs? (they roar) And giraffes? (they meow) And birds? (they roar) And the back of Daddy's head on a pillow? (it meows). 

I'm not sure exactly on what basis he makes the call, but he always has a ready answer.  One of the funnier ones is the roaring cattle. I mean– they really are FEROCIOUS  with the roaring.  So too the vicious pigs. BBBRRRROOOOOAAAAARRRR! says the cow. The meowing  is along the lines of  a squeaky hinge.  No beginning or end, so to speak, just single high note. Bears meow like this and all need lots of cuddling. Perhaps fuzziness is one of the criteria for meowing…?

Elias also talks… a lot… with gusto. He often gestures, too, and comes off like a foreign motivational speaker. Sometimes he seems like John Belushi in the Samuri Deli. He has a karate sort of chop gesture that is like both hands coming close together, with great emphasis, but not meeting. He does this while lecturing vigorously. If only we could determine the topic of the speech I'm sure it would be very enlightening. Seems his language has a lot of th's and l's and w's thrown in and is a language of great fire and passion. 

Now and then he comes out with a word in English. Like "HOT!" he said one time, totally appropriately, never to repeat it. And occasionally he sees Daddy and remarks, simply, "Dad'n." He also now and then refers to Baden-Baden, which I believe is in Germany and perhaps is a good place to go if you have consumption. Anyway, it makes him seem all the more sophisticated, especially in light of his persistent downy baldness and incredibly short stature. 

The other night Isaac turned to Ben at dinner and fixed him in something of a cold gaze. "Daddy," he announced. "You are a hairless ape." Ben immediately glared at me, as if I was clearly at the bottom of this. Actually I had nothing to do with it. It's a prehistoric program Isaac has been watching. (The Walking with Dinosaurs series from the BBC is incredible.) IT told Isaac that we are all hairless apes. Anyway, I shrugged and agreed with Isaac. Long ago I was an anthropology major… "It's true," I said. "SEE?" said Isaac. Ben returned to eating with feathers slightly ruffled. 

I'm pretty sure that hairless apes would roar, given the options.  

There's no more room for denial: we have mice. Sure, you can tell yourself that perhaps… just maybe… someone has been playing with black licorice sprinkles on the counter. Or maybe, just maybe there's a tiny Thumbelina-sized Carmen, sneaking in at night, rolling tiny black cigars on her thighs. But when you actually SEE a mouse, there's no more room for fiction. The cold weather has brought them in perhaps. And it could be that the stumpy-tailed "L'il Pricey" the cat, who recently was released into the basement, has been driving them up through the floor into the kitchen. (On the other hand, one could hope that she's eating at least some of them…) But in any case, in the last few days I've seen SEVERAL mice. Scurrying from the defunct dishwasher to the stove, rushing about under the fridge, and worst of all disappearing behind the wooden knife block on top of the counter.

A sure sign we have, and have had, too many mice in our life: when I saw these mice– after the usual screaming and leaping on a chair, that no amount of familiarity seems to deter– I noticed, hey, these mice are really something. I mean, really FAT, and so sleek, and look how shiny their fur is! Wow! Country living must really be great for mice. These mice put our scrawny, bony little city mice to shame! And then at about 4 a.m. the other night a dreadful thought occurred to me: what if they're R—rrr — rats??? I mentioned this terrible notion to Ben, who had seen a rodent that morning near the stove. He said bluntly, "No. It was NOT a rat. It was just a mouse, maybe slightly medium-sized, but certainly a MOUSE." Then I reviewed some photos of rats, consulted with my mother (always such a great resource on these matters) and determined definitively that they are not rats. Healthy rural mice, yes. One can only hope that the cat is down there feasting on them. Soon we'll install a cat door such that she can come up to the kitchen and patrol at will!

Other signs that we live in the country:

— yesterday I saw my first coyote… in the yard. It started out near the play structure and strolled and trotted over to the garage, and then wandered over to the hammock (which needs to be brought in for the season), and then headed off towards yet more populated areas. Broad daylight too. Luckily I was on the phone with my mom at the moment, discussing rats, mice and other rodents, and so I was able to run through the coyote v. wolf v. dog identification issues, and also watch for signs of rabies or other concerns. But no, just a normal healthy coyote out for a walk! (My mother assures me that coyotes will not attack Lena dog, nor eat my children. Apparently they are extremely shy and will run off at top speed if approached in any way.)

— I recently got the local monthly bulletin, brimming with news of Bath, Ohio. It only comes out once a month, and is chock full of local doings. And there I found a full-page feature on an exciting event that took place… the pharmacy got a new sign! There was quite a nice photo of it… it's white with black lettering (surely a bold choice), and standing in a simply landscaped maybe six-foot-square plot that at this very moment features… pumpkins!! And cornstalks! I'm telling you, this is among the top news of the month!

— One of my greatest concerns of late: plowing. Who will plow this lengthy gravel driveway? I've called numerous plowing professionals and they all rebuff me. Seems they despise gravel… Snow flurries are taunting me even as we speak… will we have to get a dog sled?

Other topics:

Halloween went well. The boys were dressed as Batman and Robin. Elias as Robin… the tiny cape!!… was beyond adorable. Isaac took his role very seriously: we went to a Halloween party and there our kindly hostess, who did not know Isaac, asked his name. She said, "Hey, Batman, I'm going to have to call you Batman all night… what's your real name?" Isaac replied grimly, "Bruce Wayne." He also took to calling Elias, when not in costume, "Dick Grayson." As in, "I think 'Dick' needs his diapers changed…" and "Dick Grayson is crying because he wants to nurse!"

This time around we tried a different approach to candy management. Last year we did the painfully slow one-piece-after-each-meal approach, which made the candy last forever. It also made the constant fixation on candy last forever, at least through Christmas! And it built daily candy into Isaac's life, which was not a good thing, really, habit-forming, and just totally increased the VALUE of the candy. Oh, the negotiations, the bargaining, the fondling of the candy… arg! So this time, we tried a different approach: eat all you want. Have candy! It's Halloween!! This worked SO much better. Because Isaac immediately began to open candy, take one bite, and toss it in the trash. He began handing candy to others, sharing freely, and just all around enjoying it to the fullest… as its value plummeted. He did eat a ton of candy for about two days and then it was all over. Sweet freedom! He wasted and gave away much of it, and I think in the long run ate less, cared less, and enjoyed more. I know I loved not hassling over it all the time. Since Elias only has six teeth (or seven if you count the newest one), he didn't have any candy at all… but Isaac so generously suggested that we GRIND some candy up for the baby in our baby food grinder. How kind is that?

A final word about bears, as per Isaac:

"Bears look friendly, but they're NOT! They are MEAT-EATERS… and WE are made out of MEAT!"

Consider yourself warned.

When I was in grad school, my friend, internationally renowned poet and soon-to-be bride Elline Lipkin , and I both noticed a missing term in the English language. The term was for that sensation when you've been to the hair stylist that day, and gotten an amazing cut and probably glamorous color, and need to go out to have a beer and let people view the hair, and how irritating it is when you just have to go home. Using Latin roots, we coined "bellechevism"– (something like beautiful-hair-ism in French). (amusing how so bourgeois a syndrome sounds a bit like Bolshevism…) I was thinking about this today because I encountered another missing word that needs to be coined: male old bitty.

What do we call an old man who is nosy and intrusive? We don't really have such a term, do we? I was driving along today, after an experience at Starbucks that I will soon recount, and thinking… well, "old bitty" actually refers to chickens, so would there be an old rooster or perhaps (shudder) "old cock"? But no. And of course there's old fart, duffer, geezer, codger, coot, etc., but all of these seem to disparage the oldness, malodorousness and possible derangement of the man in question, and none seem to imply the particular prying, scolding sort of behavior of the bitty. I open the conversation– if anyone has a suggestion, let me know. Maybe there's something obvious that I overlook.

(Stephen Colbert's acute observation about our nation's seniors: "They look like lizards.") 

 You can't really go out in public with a baby for over a year and not encounter bitties of all ages. There was the young woman at an insanely crowded cafe, who took it upon herself to shriek to the entire restaurant, "HELLO??/ SOMEONE!!??? Your BABY is CRYING!!" At the very moment when I was running myself half to death trying to manage an unruly Isaac and get our tray cleared up and get a to-go box and GET US OUT of THERE, while, yes, the baby was crying… And there was the True Old Bitty, 100% bona fide right down to her heavy foundation and bony haunches, who admonished me for letting Elias toddle around an ice cream shop, occasionally dropping his empty, dry cone on the floor and picking it up and gnawing on it.  I told her directly that "he's supposed to eat a peck of dirt by the time he's five," which made her fellow crones laugh, but she only glared at me with pure seething hatred. And there was the young bitty, who skulked behind me while I was shoe shopping one day, as Elias slept a scant five feet away in his stroller, and muttered under her breath, "…leaving your baby unattended…"

To name but a few!!

But today I encountered that rare bird, a male old bitty, in a Starbucks, as Elias and I killed time before Isaac's school birthday celebration. (Our boys are now five and one!) He opened the conversation cordially enough, remarking on Elias's stunning cuteness and asking his age. We chatted amiably for a short time, and then he brought up this article he was reading about community colleges. He started blathering a bit about how back in his day you had to do such and such to get a degree, and blah blah blah. Then he said: 

"Where did you go to college?"

I said, "I went to Vassar."

HIM: "Really? And did you go on to grad school after that?"

ME: "Yes, I did– I went to Columbia."

[Little interlude about what did you study– yada yada–] then: "That's SUCH A WASTE. I mean, we educate these women and then they just have kids and SIT HOME and DO NOTHING."

ME: [Quite calmly, considering] Well, raising kids is not doing nothing. [Holding my ground! Poised, yet firm. And no obscenities.] 

HIM: [blather about his daughters, which seemed to be what he was really talking about.] then: Well, what will you do when they're both in school?

ME: [none of your fucking business] I'm not sure at the moment.

HIM: [getting up to leave– thank god] well, heh heh, enjoy your kids!

ME: [go to hell] Thanks!

This is all such a can of worms. And sort of a hot topic lately with the whole ruckus about the opt-out revolution (in which I am apparently a participant) and Linda Hirshman and her gratingly pompous "Get to Work!" manifesto. (Trust me: I have never worked so hard in my life.) What rankles me the most about her, and the "what a waste" comment, is that the truly menial work of housework is conflated with the truly important and non-menial work of child-rearing. Yes, I do hate scrubbing the toilets, the floors, the dishes, etc. And it IS menial. I hesitate to say it's "beneath me," because that surely implies that there are lesser people who should be doing it instead, but at the same time if I could delegate it I gladly would. (I'm very conflicted about the cleaning and have several times begun an essay entitled "the drudgery report," but not competed it.) But — whether it's changing the one millionth diaper or watching the baby's first steps– raising the children really is NOT menial. Not beneath me. Not mindless. Not a waste of my time or education. It's important. It's an honor and a privilege to get to do it myself, rather than having to pay some probably less educated, certainly less devoted woman to do it for me. 

This is dangerous territory, I know. I have so many friends who struggle with the work versus child-rearing conundrum, and I surely don't want to offend. The other day I went to visit this upscale preschool in our area, that bills itself as a wonderful, loving, child-centered, etc., etc. I had hoped that I could leave Elias there for two mornings a week, and finally go to the dentist– haven't been since the dislocated jaw of June '06–  get my hair cut (see above), and do any of the other millions of things I need and want to do without a speeding distructo toddler helping me. But when I went there I found… basically, a day care center. In the room for 12-18 month-olds, there were two women and TWELVE toddlers. Ee-gads. I had the ill timing to arrive just as the poor, well-meaning, kindly women were attempting to get coats and shoes on all twelve of them, and get them out to play outside. It was unreal– Sisyphus never had it so easy. At least eight of the tots were crying at once, and for every pair of shoes put on, two pairs were removed. Anyway, I came away thanking my lucky stars that I don't HAVE to turn Elias over to such a place. I spent the rest of the afternoon hugging him.

Oh, the "what a waste" contingent… arg. And who is this "we" he refers to, who took all that effort to educate me? I assure you– that old male bitty had nothing to do with my education and nothing to lose by my alleged wasting of my talents on two tiny and invaluable members of the human race.  I have to ask who is supposed to raise these children instead of us well-educated women? Just someone, anyone… doesn't apparently matter…

Anyway, ack. I won't go on about it anymore. When my children grow up into good and useful humans, whether they change the world or cure cancer or just are really delightful wonderful people (which they already are), I'll have the last laugh. 

One of the many benefits of being awoken two to three hours before dawn each morning, and then kept awake until well after sunrise, is getting to see Venus rising. It's really stunning. It's like, you take the five brightest stars in the sky and mash them together into one blazing ball of light. It pops up in the exact place the sun will rise, but 2 hours or so beforehand. It's the biggest, brightest thing I've ever seen in the sky in my life. I can't tell if this is just because I've always lived in cities and been afflicted with light pollution that we don't have out here, or whether it really is special this year. But in any case, it's remarkable. If you find yourself awake due to insomnia, a small child, strange working hours, or whatever, look east! You can't miss it in the 4:00-5:00 a.m. timeframe.

Perhaps this is how Gallileo got his start? Doubtful. I expect that Mrs. Galliei was the one tending the youngsters in the other side of the house, while The Astronomer did his work someplace else. Probably while running herself ragged with the babies, she took a moment to bring him a healthy snack! Damn that sexist Gallileo… couldn't he at least have gotten her a servant girl?

Anyway, I'm up now for the second time. It's ten a.m. Our first morning went from 4:30 a.m. to close to 8:00, at which point Elias finally began to cooperate with my sleep-inducing efforts. Yesterday we did the 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. shift. I don't know what's gotten into him, but it's damned inconvenient, especially since Ben and Isaac are in NYC this weekend, and part of the idea was that I would get a rest! Well, since Isaac had no school on Friday surely having just one was better than both all day.  But what could be more annoying that being dragged from bed well before dawn, when there's no reason to get up! I mean, no school! But babies apparently can't tell time, nor do they know or care about any other scheduling issues.

I think it's teething and a growth spurt at the same time. This kid has been eating adult-sized amounts of food all weekend. Like I make something and we split it. Except one of us is two-foot-one in his sockfeet (25 inches tall, literally), and tips the scales at all of 18 pounds. Sure, he throws more on the floor than I do… and then calls Lena with his adorable only word he knows "NNN-na!… NNN-na!" and she comes trotting over to snuffle around under his chair for goodies. (How people with kids get by without a dog I can't fathom.) But he still ingests a stunning quantity.

Another fun aspect of the weekend was a game I like to call "something is alive in the basement." This is a different game from my other favorite — "there's a tarantula in my kitchen!" In this game, you leave a bowl of cat food in the basement for three months, while your cat is hiding under the garage with a crushed tail. You notice it from time to time, but are "too busy" to do anything about it. (You've left the baby wailing in his pack-n-play and you're trying set the world speed record for laundry-doing.) Then one day, you notice that it's half eaten. The next day you notice that it's ALL eaten. And then you get to thinking, "What is consuming huge amounts of cat food in my basement?"  After ruling out the known animals in the house (no access), you have to admit that something… or things…are down there… and are hungry.

It's best to play this sort of thing in a big empty house when your spouse is out of town. Consider the options.. raccoons and possums of course, but there's always SKUNK. Make a policy of bringing the stupid dog downstairs to protect you when you must go down. (I say "stupid" because, as if she could be bothered to actually do some work for once? Like get off the couch and PROTECT someone??)

Ultimately.. I'm happy (?) to report it seems it was just (??) scores of mice. After all, we survived the great mouse siege of '06, didn't we? This shouldn't be any worse.  and now Zane "Pricey" (her new nickname) Grey can finally earn her keep.

Working as a team, I do believe our boys could totally prevent me from sleeping whatsoever. They tend to alternate, such that they each get plenty of rest while I get little. Last night, I was thinking about this while up with Elias. He's been teething, and we've all had a wracking cough, such that sleep has been a mess for probably a solid two weeks.

Isaac has been waking up for no reason at 4 a.m. (I think coughing and/or too cold) and literally starting the day, going straight into a full day of school, and then coming home and collapsing without having dinner. This situation tends to perpetuate itself. Last night to make matters worse, Elias also collapsed at 6 p.m. Which you would think– great– now I can sleep. But there was a lot to do and so I did what I could before collapsing also around 9. I gorged on sleep until about 11 p.m., at which time Elias woke up to start the day.

I struggled against this terrible reality for a long while, alternating between the baby wailing in his crib and running amok in our bed– stepping on my head, pulling my hair out in hanks, trying to break my nose with his bowling ball head, etc.. (Ben, in a coma, slept through all.) Then decided that it was hopeless, and I would be best off just accepting my total sleeplessness. I figured that Elias would be up until about 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., and then shortly after I got him to sleep, Isaac would wake up to start the day! (Did I mention my wracking cough and Victorian wasting disease and death rattle?) So I figured it would be best to at least get the housework done so that the morning wasn't quite as hellish. Thus I was doing the dishes and making Isaac's lunch and folding laundry and so forth from about 11:30 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.

At that time I noticed that I was sitting on the couch, like the woman in "A Glass of Absinthe," as a two-foot-one, adorable, Lena-obsessed Attila the Hun laid waste to the house, babbling cheerfully all the while. He emptied drawers, dumped out toy boxes, pulled books off shelves, etc., while I gazed emptily into the middle distance, drunk only on exhaustion, and felt nothing. I knew in some far off place that it would be I, today, left to face and put right the wreckage, but my shoulders were slack and I had no more cleaning in me. After a while I carted him upstairs to try again on the whole sleeping thing, and to my amazement he slept. To my further amazement, Isaac woke up briefly, ingested a small snack I'd left by his bed, and went back to sleep until morning!

Thus I wallowed in sleep gluttonously for a full four hours before having to get up and rush about madly all day, which brings me to the present. Yes, Elias is asleep. Yes, the sink is again full of dishes (where do they all come from?). Yes, I should do something like either sleep or dishes, but instead I'm sitting here and writing this. Don't ask me…

Also in other news it seems my moribund writing career is getting a kiss of life. This summer I met this remarkable woman, Rebecca Darwin, the first woman publisher of the New Yorker, while we were on vacation. We bonded as our children played with "Flarp!" fart putty, and ran about on the beach together and so forth. Although her lovely porcelain-doll little girls spent a lot of time on their grooming, Isaac got comfortable with the elder one by the end of the week. Anyway, she's now publishing this new southern lifestyle magazine, very beautifully designed and upscale (love the satin finish on the paper), called Garden and Gun. She gave out some copies to everyone at the inn and some tote bags and beer snugglies and so forth. I read the issues with great interest and then, a few weeks later, pitched her some story ideas. Meeting her was certainly the type of good fortune that demanded action. 

It's taken a while… this sort of thing always does… but at the moment she has accepted an idea of mine and I'm told a contract is on its way. This means that although it's only a 600-word piece, I will get PAID to do it, and surely it will lead to other things. The idea she's accepted is about the cherokee rose, the state flower of Georgia, and an interesting rose it is, too. It grows all over the south, and the legend is that wherever a Cherokee mother's tear fell, as she walked along the trail of tears, a cherokee rose sprang up.  

Anyway, when I was girl I fell in love with the rose during a year I lived in Louisiana on my grandma's farm. A few years ago, when I was getting somewhat serious about my rose cultivation in my postage stamp in Cleveland, I searched high and low to duplicate the rose my grandma had. Turns out it doesn't grow this far north, and also it's a huge brambly monster that only blooms (stunningly, it drapes itself over whole trees and dumps down torrents of lovely white flowers) two weeks a year. So then i began to seek out alternatives that I could actually grow in a tiny zone five garden, etc., and so this is the gist of the article. So you want to grow a Cherokee Rose, but don't have room for it? What should you grow instead? Or If you want one, what do the experts say about how to grow it? etc. It's very short, one page, and will have some beautiful image taking up space. I've been e-mailing the managing editor there and working out the details.

If this all comes to pass as it seems it will (falling through is always an option, and the contract is not signed yet) it will run in the Spring issue, out in March.

Meanwhile, I've been investigating these wonderful, brightly colored toddler-containment facilities around town, and am thinking of putting Elias in one a couple mornings a week. Then I can lie on the couch with a cold compress on my head unpack and clean. Or maybe even write– what a concept.