Worry

You seem so excited about your new baby sister.  You kiss my tummy and say “hello” to her.  You tell me how you’re going to teach her how to walk, and feed her bottles, and change her diapers.  You want to teach her how to laugh.

You also just turned three.  You sometimes throw things when you don’t get your way. You confuse me sometimes.  Like when you ask for an apple and I go to get it and you yell” NO APPLE!” but when I move to put it away you start crying and want the apple back. You love to help set the table and empty the dishwasher but usually put up a fight when it’s time to clean up the toys.

You amazingly take new things in stride.  When we took the side off your crib, you happily got in bed at night and didn’t constantly climb out. You switched into the bigger bedroom for you and your future sister, and slept through the night the first night and every night since. The tooth fairy “took away” the binkies the same week you independently decided to give up naps. At night you were overtired and binkie-less and yet you slept through the night. A few days later your “big-girl” twin sized bed arrived and you had no trouble sleeping in it, even with your “old bed” - soon to be your little sister’s crib - across the room.

I remember the first three months you were alive and how tired your Dad and I were from feeding you every two hours.  We got through it and every day was a little better. I worry about those first three months with a newborn and an active, inquisitive three year old. I don’t want you to feel lost in the shuffle and I want to be able to focus on you both equally but I worry that you’ll be sad or think I’m ignoring you. I don’t want you to worry.  About anything.  Ever.

At 35 weeks pregnant I am tired now but you seem to understand when Mom needs a break.  Like yesterday when it took us a half an hour to go one block because I had to keep stopping to sit down from stabbing cervical pains.  You patiently sat beside me on building stoops and stairs while I caught my breath.  Each time we stopped you would quietly sing me the Doc Mc Stuffins song: “I know you’re scared. Tell me what’s wrong. I know there’s something we can do.”  You waited patiently for me to collect myself and keep walking.

Maybe I should just trust in the fact that you’re taking everything in stride.  A three year old is showing me how not to worry. Ok...I’ll stop worrying. Really. OK...I’m stopping worrying….

Solo-Duplo building.

Silly face time while Mom lies down on the bed for a minute.

A funny thing happened...

Last night, Gerald, Clara and I were having a lovely evening together.  Clara and I played while Gerald made chicken parmesean.  I made a salad and we had a nice family dinner together.  After cleaning up the kitchen, I thought to myself:  Gerald is home.  I could actually take a hot shower with the bathroom door closed.  And that's exactly what I did at 6:20 last night. It was such a luxury to know that I didn't have to peek out of the shower every few minutes to see if Clara was unspooling the toilet paper roll, trying to open the toilet bowl lid, or pulling things out of the trashcan.

I got out of the shower and into pajamas - shorts and a tank top.  (this becomes relevant later)  Clara was already in her nightgown and overnight diaper and the three of us were watching a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while Clara took occasional sips out of her bottle. Clara toddled over to me and held up her arms: "Mama, Up?"  I picked her up and snuggled her in my lap for the final fifteen minutes before her bedtime.  Gerald took this opportunity to go into the bedroom for his version of what we call: "letting our brains fall out," which is basically any mindless (yet entertaining) activity we no longer have time for.  In this case - Gerald had to go send the heroes of Marvel Avengers Alliance out on quests.

6:58 PM.  Time to pick up Clara and take her to her room. She has handed me her giraffe doll and as I pick her up my thumb touches the inside rim of her diaper and comes away covered in poop.  Now I have a poopy thumb I am trying to keep away from the giraffe doll and the task of changing her into another overnight diaper.  But then I realize there's not just poop on my thumb.  There's poop squished up all up the inside of Clara's nightgown. That is enough to send my poopy thumb directly onto the giraffe doll's face as I reflexively flinch in horror. Poopy giraffe, poopy thumb, poopy baby.  All this I could have handled until this thought invades my mind: "Why do both of my legs feel wet?"  Yes.  There's poop running down both of my legs.

I call to Gerald for help and we go into action like a crack commando team who have been training for this for years. Ignoring my poop covered legs - Gerald takes the giraffe and nightgown to set them to soak in the sink and has the unfortunate task of wiping the poop I had been too distracted to see off the couch. At this point there is more poop than baby. I wipe Clara down with about 400 baby wipes and change her into a new pair of pajamas.  Through it all Clara is happy and cooing...I lie her down in her crib, pull out the spare giraffe from its hiding place, give her some milk and head to the shower to finally clean myself off.

Clara went to sleep without a hitch and that's all she wrote.

Except I am somehow ridiculously proud of us.  A year and a half ago we were bleary-eyed neophytes in the ways of parenting.  Everything was new and required instant learning curves.  Our world had narrowed to the minute details of Clara's every move.  Is she wet, hungry, or tired?  Is she sleeping?  Is she breathing?  Is she too cold or too hot? Does she have gas?  Is she sick? Is she happy?

I don't remember even once asking Gerald if he was okay, hungry, happy, or sick. It was the 24-hour Clara reality show.  

Fast forward to last night and Gerald and I are the A-Team.  Cool, calm and collected in a firefight that would send everyone else running for cover. It's been this way for a while and  it's nice to be able to have thirty seconds to string together to appreciate it.

Happy New Year, Clara.

It's January 1st, 2014.  Clara ia just a few days shy of a year and a half.  What a year.

Updates on Clara.

She likes to blow kisses and hug her dolls.

She still loves to pick up rocks and carry them for blocks.  Telling me quite clearly: "A rock."

She likes to count in a haphazard non-sequential kind of way.  "Two...three...two...two...three...one."

She loves singing songs and can sing the melody (if not all the words) on key...which I find amazing.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, The ABC song, and The Hello Song are some of her greatest hits.

She loves her new Picnic basket toy.  Today she took out the orange and the cookie, held them out to me and said: "Circle."  I think she's a better abstract thinker than I am.

She likes to pour water on the coffee table.  Until recently she waited for me to come and clean it up. Yesterday I was busy on the computer and Clara walked in talking a blue streak.  I told her I would be with her in a minute and noticed out of the corner of my eye that she was draggin a pair of my pants out of the bedroom.

When I went out into the living room I was greeted by a delighted Clara who having poured water all over the coffee table, had tried to clean it up with the tiny tablecloth from her picnic set.  When that failed to do the job she went in search of a bigger piece of cloth. My pants as it turned out, were perfectly suited to the task.  I thanked her for her help.  

As a mother I am amazed by the parents whose children know the "Clean up song" and can put away their toys.  I think Clara was trying to show me that she doesn't need a Clean Up song to get the job done.  

Next week I plan to show her the mop.  Just kidding....I think.

I look forward to another year of amazing Clara.

Purple and Turtle

Clara is full of energy and getting into everything which is why I was dreading the idea of being shut inside all winter with a toddler bouncing off the walls.  Going anywhere in the freezing cold is daunting with a small child and it turns out there are not a lot of structured activities or classes for under-2's.

Over the Spring, Summer and Fall I organized a meetup in the park for local moms with babies. We have a local yahoo group for parents and I posted there to see who might show up. I got a nice response - some became regulars, others drop-ins.  We spread out blankets and brought some toys to share.  It was a great way to meet other parents and have some adult conversation while the babies played.  I also thought it really helped the babies.  I could see Clara watching older kids who had mastered things she hadn't yet, and I could almost see the brain synapses firing.    Inevitably she would start doing something she had watched another baby do a week or so later.

But with the cold weather closing in around us, what could be done?  Along with a few other moms we have organized a weekly toddler playtime once a week in the Inwood Library Children's room.  We sing some songs, read some books and watch the toddlers play.  It is parent run - we came in and cleaned all the toys.  We set up the toys and clean up at the end of the hour.  But it's a huge success and Clara loves it.

This past Friday she amazed me by picking up a turtle figurine, bringing it to me and saying: "Turtle."  Then she picked up a dinosaur with purple spots, pointed to one of the spots and said: "Purple."  She smiled after each one, knowing she was rolling out something new for her Mommy. Just a little impressed with herself - and so she should be.  I applauded.

I think there should be more activities like this for children under two.  And not necessarily classes that cost money.  All of us parents want our children to grow and challenge themselves to do more. Organize something - you'll be surprised how many people show up.

Potty Time = Party Time

After reading endless suggestions and idea of how to introduce children to the potty and toilet training I decided to embark on the potty journey while suppressing shudders of dread at attacking this new, vital hurdle.

I started this with no knowledge of potty training.  Seriously, who does have experience with these things?  It turns out my mother felt boondoggled by the idea of potty training and passed that task off to my grandmother, Mimi.  I have heard vague stories of how she enticed us not to pee in our pants by giving us fancy underwear to wear.  But my grandmother passed away, taking her magical secrets of potty training to her grave.

There are many ways to approach potty training.  I understand that Clara is only 15 months and has quite some time to go before actually being able to reliably control her bowels.  But I did read about how children sometimes get afraid of the potty if it is introduced abruptly and that can  delay toilet training for months.  This made sense.  How is Clara to know what this new, child-sized chair/bowl thing that magically appeared in the bathroom one day is?

 First  you have to understand that since since Clara has been able to crawl I have had to throw bathroom privacy out the window, which means that Clara is always looking on with interest as I drop my pants to use the toilet.  As embarrassing as this is, you get used to it.

The introduction of the new potty has added a wrinkle to the "Mom and Clara go to the bathroom together with the door open" episodes.  When I sit down, I ask Clara if she would like to sit down and go pee-pee and then I sit her on the potty.  The first few times she sat down she immediately stood up and took the potty apart and threw it in the bathtub.  

A week into this process, she will sit and try standing and sitting back down herself.

Today, after getting home from a long walk in the park and feeding her lunch I decided I was too frazzled to sit Clara down and do the whole song and dance.  Lo and behold...Clara walked over to me and squatted like she wanted to sit on the potty, all with no prompting!  I moved her to the potty and she happily sat there while I finished up my business.

Of course...there are the situations that make me think she really isn't getting it.  Like this one - last night.  She had pulled all of the dollar bills out of my pocket and I found her in the bathroom doing this.

As my friend Sindy said when she saw this picture:  "Well, there's money down the toilet."

Clara Meets A Cactus

Clara spends every day exploring the world around her.  She is bold and brave and gives me heart palpitations when she tries to climb up the crumbling cement stairs in the courtyard of my building. She has a very fuzzy sense of depth perception and seems to think walking off the edge of the slide works as well as sitting on her butt and going down.  It's all terrifying - but through it all I am trying to limit what I actually say no to.  For example - I say "No" when Clara reaches up and tries to fiddle with the oven burners.  I explain about it being hot and that she will get burned but I do not allow her to play with the oven knobs.  That's a firm "no."

I don't mind if she chews on sticks or leaves in the park but I do take away unfamiliar berries, small rocks, and pieces of garbage which she seems to want to chew on with equal enthusiasm.  I watch her carefully while she explores her environs.  I let her lead the way...unless she is leading us off the edge of a cliff or into the street.

Sometimes this relaxed parenting style bites me in the ass.  Take the other day.  I was showing Clara the herbs in our co-op's garden.  Anyone who lives in the building can take a few clippings of mint, rosemary, basil, oregano, or thyme to cook with.  I was bruising the leaves so Clara could smell the different herbs.  And then Clara's attention was inexplicably diverted to the one plant I didn't want her to touch - a cactus.  She squeezed past three pots and a dangling prism I hoped in vain would distract her to get to the dumpy looking cactus.  

ME: "Clara - don't touch that it will hurt - "

I should have saved my breath.  She reached down and snapped off a plump piece of cactus and held it out to me.

ME: "Clara - give that to me."

CLARA: "Hee..."

ME: "No really...give it to me"

CLARA"  "Hee hee..."

Laughing, she squeezed past the pots and toddled away, cactus in hand.  Luckily she quickly dropped the cactus in favor of a more interesting, much more squishy rotting tomato she found.

I wiped off her smelly tomato hands and picked her up.  She seemed unhurt and happy. The Cactus gods were smiling down on us.This was great.  Or so it seemed until I put Clara down and discovered a bunch of almost invisible cactus thorns up and down my arm.  The upside was almost all of the barbs seemed to have transferred themselves to my skin.  The downside - cactus barbs hurt and looking closely at Clara's hands I saw she still had some in her.

I carried her upstairs to our bathroom and proceeded to get the barbs out of her hand with  tweezers.  Tears pouring down her face, Clara looked like a bereft Hummell Doll. She was very mad at me, though she recovered quickly. 

I am torn between giving Clara the freedom to explore and trying to protect her.  Has she learned not to touch thorny plants?  Probably not. What have I learned?  Get to the cactus first.

Hi...My name is...

Gerald and I have been subscribing to the theory that if you talk to your child a lot, then she will be verbal.  Or more verbal.  I don't know.  But it has seemed to work.  So far, Clara has learned to say: Bubble, Up, A-Cup, Bye Bye, Hi, Woof Woof, Quack Quack, Yes, Mama, and Dada.

I have to credit Gerald with the Mama and Dada part.  Anytime Clara said "Dada," Gerald would respond with:  "Yes. I'm Dada.  That's Mama. And you're Clara."  I take all the credit for Woof Woof and Quack Quack.

Yesterday while I was at work, something amazing happened.  Gerald was sitting in the chair in Clara's room as she played.  Gerald said: Yes, I'm Dada and you're Clara."  And Clara looked over at him and said: "Clara."  And then proceeded to respond to the question: "What's your name?" with "Clara" quite a few more times.

When I got home that night I asked her:  "Is your name Clara?" and she said: "Clara."

I wonder how long she's been thinking about saying her own name.  It's as if I can see her brain synapses firing and building the neural pathway that means: My name is Clara." along with the ones that mean: "One foot in front of the other is walking." and "This is how to drink from a cup."

Every day with a child is a revelation.

Hi!!!!

I have always been a morning person.  I hate rushing out the door.  Pre-baby, I would get up an hour and a half before I had to leave for work so I could sip coffee, read a book, get ready at a human pace. I am also wide-awake and cheery in the morning.  In college I woke up five days a week at 4:15am to row crew and then worked in the theater department all night.  It was great. 

It comes as no surprise that Clara is a morning person too.  She happily chirps in her bed in the morning (usually sometime between 5:30 and 6) as the dawn light streaks into her room and smiles at me when I walk into the room.  I wonder if her chirps are her discussing my impending arrival with the elephant, seahorse, and Yankee Bear that inhabit her crib. 

In the past week she has added something to the routine.  Now when I walk in I am greeted with a happy, smiling baby who says: "Hiiiiii!" to me in her tiny, piping voice. It made me laugh out loud the first time she did it.  It seemed so adult.  And it takes the sting out of the fact that, though I am a self-proclaimed morning person, having only one or two mornings where I have slept past 6 am in the past 14 months can wear a little thin.  But my reward is a beautiful little girl who can't contain how glad she is to see her Mama. What more could I ask for?

No, Mom - I don't need your help.

Clara is 14 months.  She is a steady walker and very coordinated.  But she is still only 14 months.

A few days ago I put her on a bouncer-car thing in our toddler playground.  I showed her how to hold on and rocked it back and forth.  She like it but seemed worried and wanted to get off.

Today, she walked right over to it.

Me: "Clara, would you like to try this?"

Clara: "Esh."

I picked her up.  She immediately grabbed the handles.  I began to rock her back and forth and she yelled loudly and batted my hands away. I let go to see what would happen.  Would she fall?  Would she get scared?

Nope.  She grabbed on and rocked herself wildly back and forth, laughing her head off.  I even had time to snap a picture.  Look how her feet don't even come close to reaching the footrests.

I am amazed how independent she is becoming.

Birth Stories

I was incredible moved when I read this blog post written by the very talented Libby Emmons. (click here to read)  It wasn't about her playwriting - it was her birth story and her struggles  with her expectations of herself as a mother and the reality of being a mother.

I have organized a semi-weekly meetup in Fort Tryon park for new parents and their babies.  It's great for the children to interact and I think it's even greater that the new moms and dads get to talk with other people that are going through the same thing.  I have heard a lot of birth stories - some wonderful, some harrowing, some with a bit of both - but all of them share the fear of the unknown and how quickly we have to learn to adapt to these new, tiny lives we have been trusted with.

I think it's incredibly important to share your birth story and your experiences as a parent.  There are too many voices that scream: "If you don't do THIS you are a terrible parent." Instead, I like the women and men who say: "This is what happened to me - maybe something I did will work for you." Maybe it will.  

I went into labor at 11 am on.  Gerald and I were staying with his parents in their one bedroom apartment because the closing on our new apartment had been delayed until the week prior.  Gerald was getting ready to go into work.  We ate a nice breakfast and I said: Hmmm.  My back is really sore."  10 minutes later my back was really sore again.

Our slightly ridiculous but pretty much informative birthing class had told us to expect laboring at home for most of the day before going to the hospital.  They also said the contractions would start gently and be about an hour apart.  Mine quickly left the "uncomfortable" stage and progressed to the pretty intensely painful stage.  They were ten minutes apart for about 40 minutes.  Then they were six minutes apart.

At this point Gerald had called out of work and we decided to call our OB/GYN.  I talked to her and explained that the contractions seemed to be very intense and six minutes apart.  She thought we were probably wrong but should go to the hospital if we felt strongly about it.  The worst that would happen would be that the hospital would send us home.

Gerald started zooming around the apartment looking for what to bring but it was all already packed in a suitcase so he was just zooming around to blow off some steam.  I wasn't sure about leaving for the hospital - I didn't want to make the trip to be sent home again.  Contractions were 5 minutes apart.  A friend called to offer me free tickets to a performance of Nice Work If You Can Get It on Broadway that night.  I said: "Well, I don't think I can go.  I'm pretty sure I'm in labor."  Another friend called to catch up - and I finally ended the conversation with: "I think I need to go to the hospital now - I'm in labor."

I waddled to a cab with Gerald, hissing in pain.  In the cab ride over my contractions started getting extremely painful and were now 4 minutes apart.

We got to the hospital and went to Triage.  They whisked me inside and when Gerald tried to come with me they told him he had to wait outside for a few minutes.  They got me into a curtained section and I promptly threw up into a sink and all over the floor.  Gerald came in a few minutes later and they checked my cervix - 6 centimeters dilated.  I was taken up to labor and delivery.

At this point it had been about 2 hours.  For the next 4 hours my contractions were incredibly intense and 2 minutes apart.  I couldn't get comfortable and the pain was becoming unbearable.  I was naked except for that ridiculous hospital robe - all my sweaty lady parts flapping in the wind.  I was embarrassed for about  thirty seconds and then just gave up.  I was exhausted.  I was so sure I didn't want an epidural.  But the Doctor thought I would labor through the night.  If it was going to be this hard for that long I knew I couldn't do it.  

I sat still for the epidural for a half an hour.  The intern or resident mis-threaded it and someone senior had to come in and do it.  Blessed, blessed relief.  

A few minutes later the OB/GYN came in.  She told me my labor had slowed (it hadn't, the belly monitor had fallen off unbeknownst to both of us), and though she thought I would labor for another 10 or 12 hours she was going to check me out.

She looked inside and said:  Forget what I just said.  You're going to give birth in the next fifteen minutes.  Would you like to know what color her hair is?"  

10 sets of pushes, an episiotomy, and a slight poop accident later, Clara was born - lying on my chest while we waited for the placenta to stop pulsating before cutting the cord.  I wish I had known I was that close to giving birth, or that they had checked me out before giving me the epidural.  I would not have gotten it had I known I was that close. 

It took five days for my milk to come in.  Angry night nurses yelled at me that I was doing it wrong as I tried to breast feed every two hours.  When we took Clara home when she was three days old she spent the entire night crying.  Nothing was coming out of my breasts.

At our first doctor's visit the next day Gerald and I were jittery with fatigue and worry.  The pediatrician said: "She's hungry.  Why don't we give her a bottle? "  And we did and our little girl stopped crying and promptly fell asleep.  We gave her formula until my milk came it two days later and then I was in full on breastfeeding mode.

All those feelings they describe in books of your breasts feeling full enough to burst never happened to me.  Those pads you put in our bra to sop up milk leaks collected dust in the linen closet.  I seemed to be making enough for Clara but that was it.  I couldn't ever pump enough out for a bottle.  When I went back to work part time when she was three months old I couldn't pump more than a couple of ounces at work.  We had to supplement.  I met a lot of mom's who were exclusively breastfeeding and not using bottles.  They crowed: "My child has never even seen a bottle" or urged me to only breast feed with vague fears: "breast milk is the only way to go or their development will lag." They were very critical and it worried me.  What choice did I have?  What was the point in making me feel bad?

I had the intention of breastfeeding Clara for a year.  But one day, at nine and a half months - Clara walked away from my boobs. Well...she crawled.  She refused to breastfeed.  She was done.   It didn't matter that I wanted to breastfeed for another two months.  She was good to go.  "Bottle, please, Mama."

Every child is different and we all have become experts in our own children.  I have used quite a few tips proffered by other parents.  Some have worked: (a bowl of pacifiers by the bed so you don't have to hunt for the one that ended up under the bed in the middle of the night) and some haven't.  (Endless recommendations for sippy cups have all been rejected by Clara who would prefer to drink from a grown up cup at all of 13 months."

We need to do more of this for each other.  I want to hear your story.

Milestones They Neglect To Mention

For the most part I have tried to stay away from the books and blogs that inform you (in excruciating detail) what your child should be doing at this or that age, and whether the vaguely alarming rash on your baby’s butt means “allergic to laundry detergent” or “symptom of smallpox”.  I have to admit,  I have occasionally  flipped through my What to Expect in the First Year and gotten some good tips out of it. 

For example: I never would have thought to start playing catch with Clara as soon as I did had the book not recommended it. And I got some good ideas about how to transition Clara from our room to the crib.  Other than that – any other reading I do seems to be of the alarmist DON’T DO THAT! OH NO! variety and I try to avoid it.

Occasionally, though, something happens to me that I think they should put into these books because my 37 years on earth have not prepared me - in any way, shape or form -  how to respond.

Take this example.  The other night I was giving 13-month old Clara her nightly bath while Gerald put the dinner dishes away.  She was happily splashing and drinking bathwater out of a cup.  I was sitting on the edge of the tub talking to her. She moved into a semi-crawl position, and I chuckled to see a tiny air bubble fart rise to the surface and pop.  Before my chuckle had a chance to fully emerge from my throat – tiny baby turds started shooting out of Clara’s butt with machine-gun rapidity.  Suddenly she was surrounded by at least twenty, floating poop balls.  I shrieked incoherently for Gerald and stood up – flapping my arms in horror. Gerald arrived to help.

 “What?” He asked.

“Poop!  There’s poop!  Grab a towel!”

I scooped up Clara and handed her off to Gerald and the towel.  Clara’s shrieks of displeasure at a bath cut short faded away as Gerald carried her off to her room and I kneeled down and spent the next ten minutes fishing poop out of the tub with my hands.  Yes – my bare hands.  I wasn’t thinking – I was operating of some basic animal instinct to clean.  I guess. Where is that in a book, What To Expect people???!!!!  I would have like a little heads up for this horror show.

But after I gave myself a chance to stop hyper ventilating, I began to think about what had just happened.  In a weird way – it was kind of awesome.  Here is this little baby – totally uninhibited -  totally incapable of controlling her bowels – but she doesn’t care.  She’s cool with it.  It’s Mother Nature, man. 

When was the last time you felt uninhibited and relaxed enough to poop in a pool of warm water? (A long time, I’m betting)  Here I am – someone who would rather die holding it in than go to the bathroom in the woods – and I have a little girl who just rolls with it.  Good job, Clara.  Never be embarrassed by anything.  I mean, please don’t poop in the tub again, but don’t get held back by societal inhibitions! 

Will Walk for Carrot

So after Clara's epic first few toddling steps she happily reverted to cruising, standing, and crawling.  It seemed that she would ony brave freestanding steps for Gerald until he let me in on a little secret.  Clara totally toddles towards his glowing smartphone.  She is entranced by the lure of the glowing button on the touchscreen she has figured out how to swipe and unlock.  She giggles and walks faster when Gerald turns on the camera and she can see herself walking towards herself.  

Baby.  Carrot.  Toddles.

The other day I was sitting at my desk drinking out of a one liter bottle of seltzer.  Clara happens to love drinking out of anything that's not a baby bottle.  She was hooked.  I rolled about five feet away and held out the bottle.  Clara exclaimed:  "Ticka gooey ticka AGOOOO!" and miraculously took ten steps towards me, all by herself, to get a swig out of that bottle.

Baby Carrot. Toddles.

D is for Drum.

Here's a picture of Clara playing with some vintage toys. The TOMY typewriter was mine when I was little. The typewriter actually advances and dings when you reach the end. When you push it to return it advances to the next letter. Clara is learning valuable skills with a manual typewriter that will come in handy when the technology grid shuts down in some future apocalypse where our Ipads no longer work. Note the wind-up Fisher Price Clock radio in the background. Sure, that toy only plays Hickory Dickory Dock but Clara will know how to hand-crank her portable radio when the zombies come.

Fall Down Go Boom!

Clara has been crawling and cruising for a month and a half now.  It wasn't enough for her to just crawl - she had to start pulling up and walking along the walls and the furniture the same day she showed off her crawling skills.  She's incredibly fast.  My (so far) successful attempts at childproofing the entire apartment have created a large space for her to bullet back and forth in.  I will walk out of her bedroom where she's busily playing, traverse the apartment to the kitchen and  30 seconds later Clara will appear in the the doorway of the kitchen.  She is that fast.

She's so good at the crawling and cruising it's easy to forget that she's a baby who's only been doing this for 45 days.   She sometimes is in such a hurry her oversized baby head gets too much momentum and topples over her arms resulting in a bumped head on the floor and many tears and cuddling.  The advent of two front teeth also resulted in a cut lip during one of her quick-crawl head over arms mishaps.  Seeing Clara bleed for the first time was a heart-stopping moment.  Clara was less upset and recovered more quickly than I did. 

Babies are resilient and babies do everything so fast.  Clara was 19 inches when she was born.  Today she's 30 inches.  That means she has grown 11 vertical inches in 11 months.  If I grew 11 inches in 11 months I think I'd just stay in bed in my pajamas and watch romantic comedies.  But Clara takes it all in stride - except for when she naps. She goes from an energized baby doing laps around the apartment to flat-out sleep in about 30 seconds. These are her power naps.  Restocking up her supply of super speed for the next few hours of the day.

It takes her a while to wake up from these deep-sleep naps.  This is her, sporting great nap-hair, yesterday afternoon.

Hand to Mouth

My sister Becky and I used to run around Riverside Park on the Upper West Side when we were kids.  Usually unsupervised, we dug for worms and poked sticks in anthills to see what would happen. (Exactly what you think would happen, by the way.  After your sister tells you its not a good idea, you do it anyway.  The ants swarm up the stick, covering your hand.  You drop the stick and run away screaming with your sister helping to smush all the hapless ants running up your arm.) We also hunted around for edible plants.  How did we know which plants in the park were edible you may ask?  Advice from other itinerant children, my mother, and my father.  Becky and I climbed a tree and at crab apples.  We called them "May Apples." We also ate the stems of what we called "Onion Grass" but were the green shoots from wild onions.  Our favorite was something we called "Sour Grass."  Not sure what it is really called even today - but I can still identify it.  It tastes a lot like an actual lemon - enough to pucker your mouth.

If we had grown up in the country or even the 'Burbs no one would gasp at this story - but we grew up in Manhattan and went foraging for sustenance in the same park where dogs (and the occasional bum) pee.  Not to worry - we only ate secluded onion grass and sour grass, as far away from dog pee as we could get.

Which brings me to my little girl.  With the great weather I find myself in Fort Tryon Park almost every day with Clara.  She crawls all over the place and I follow her.  I don't really blink when she picks up a stick or a handful of grass to put in her mouth.  Earlier today I showed her a piece of clover. (also tasty).  I was trying to distract her from eating an old brown leaf instead.  It worked.

I know I survived years of eating grass.  Becky ate handfuls of sand out of the sandbox and she's still alive.  But because Clara is my baby I worry...then try not to worry and let her explore.  Babies are very resilient, and they do have some common sense.  When Clara put a small piece of dirt in her mouth today, she made a disgusted face, and spit it out.  Bravo, Clara.  I will try to find you some Sour Grass one of these days.

The Baby You Can Handle.

While I was pregnant the most comforting piece of advice I got from veteran moms and grandmothers was: "You get the baby you can handle."  I wasn't sure what I could handle so if these wise women were right I would give birth to a self sufficient, walking and talking baby preferably with her own income.

Instead, we got totally helpless, totally reliant on two adults named Gerald and Jeannine,  totally beautiful Clara Jane.  Since becoming a mom I have commiserated with many other moms about the trials and tribulations of being a new parent and all the issues that come with caring for a growing baby.  So if it's true that you get the baby you can handle, this is the baby we could handle.

Clara had no problem switching from the breast to the bottle, which allowed Gerald to help me at night when we were feeding newborn Clara every two hours and we were trying to give each other each a connected four hours of sleep each night.

Clara hated tummy time with a passion and did not learn to roll over very well which is a milestone pediatricians look for but has become an early crawler an creeper regardless of missed tummy time.

She has had relatively little trouble with teething (knock on wood), and is currently cutting teeth number four and five.

She had no adverse reaction to vaccinations and I think I was more upset about her getting shots than she was.

Apart from one day of sniffles, she has not been ill.

She did have a terrible time with gas for about 3 months - crying, leg pumping woe.  But we found a homeopathic remedy called Colic Calm and it eased her trouble considerably.

She has taken to solid food with a passion.  Apart from an abject hatred of broccoli she pretty much will eat anything we give her.

We transitioned her into her crib and her own bedroom at 3 and a half months, and she was fine with it.  I, on the other hand, had the separation anxiety and heart palpitations in her stead.

It has taken her longer to sleep through the night than most babies I have heard about but as of 2 weeks ago she has begun to sleep through the entire night.  7pm to 6 am.

So if the old saying is true, the baby Gerald and I could handle was (and is) an easy baby.   Not sure what that says about me and Gerald, but I am forever grateful.

Nightmares realized...

So in all my well laid plans about childproofing, Gerald and I decided that we would make the entire apartment baby-crawler friendly.  The only room I wanted to keep off limits for a while was the bathroom.  My logic was that Clara is still a bit wobbly and I didn't want her falling down in a room full of hard surfaces.

So I have been practicing remembering to keep the bathroom door shut.  It was working pretty well until yesterday.  I got home with Clara and Gerald had to go out and find his mother, Susan who was lost getting to our apartment.  I was a bit distracted and ended up leaving the bathroom door open.

Clara was in her room playing (so I thought) and I was picking up around the apartment.  I walked back towards Clara's room to check on her and was presented with this scenario:

Clara was standing, in the bathroom, holding onto the rim of the toilet bowl.  One hand was holding on - inside the bowl - (UGH!) and the other hand was happily waving around the toilet brush!!!!! (DOUBLE UGH!)

If all my free-from fears of Clara getting sick or hurt due to some negligence on my part could resolve themselves into one picture - this would have been the picture.  Instead,  it was my reality in that moment, and what I did was laugh really hard.

I swopped Clara up in my arms, divesting her of the toilet brush in the process and shut the bathroom door.

Lesson learned? Babies will get into whatever it is you don't want them find/touch/eat.  And they will smile while doing it.

From Zero to Pro.

One day, Clara started crawling and she's suddenly a professional crawler.  There was no testing the waters - say, crawling a few steps then stopping and taking a break.  Nope.  Clara immediately was able to crawl all over the apartment, following me from room to room.

I was positive she was going to skip crawling all together because she loves standing and pulling herself along the coffee table and the rungs of the crib.  But somehow she has seamlessly intergrated crawling into her repetoire.

I also thought my house was pretty well childproofed.  All it takes is a crawling, inquisitive baby to poke holes in all your artfully laid plans.  Oh well.  Now I'm running around the apartment adding more childproofing with a zooming baby close on my heels.

Milestones

One thing I have learned being a mother, is that your baby will blindside you with milestones.  One day they're happy sitting on the floor - the next their pulling themselves up to standing, and you're left wondering "when did you teach yourself that?  I am with you all the time and I never saw this before."

At this morning's breakfast Clara suddenly insisted on feeding herself with a spoon. She grabbed it right out of my hand and put it in her mouth like a pro.  I guess she's been watching me feed her and finally decided it was time to try it out herself.  She also yelled at me whenever I pried it out of her fist to refill it.  She wasn't to clear on how to refill the spoon and watched me each time I dipped it into the bowl and handed it back.  Maybe she'll be doing that herself tomorrow.

Wow.

Traveling

This past week Gerald, Clara and I took a trip up to Hudson, New York to visit Gerald's parents.  For days leading up to the trip I found myself fretting about what to pack for Clara.  Clothes, spare clothes, food, formula, socks, diapers, wipes...the list went on and on...in my head.  I kept meaning to write out a list but somehow never managed to put pen to paper.

Sunday night  I got home from work.  Gerald had managed to pull out one small suitcase and pack half of it with some clothes for himself for the three day trip.  For the next hour Gerald and I wandered around the apartment with an aimless sort of purpose trying to remember what we had to pack while Clara said "Wow" a lot and tried to pull herself up to standing before toppling over again.

After an hour I looked happily at the one small suitcase now packed with all my clothes, Gerald's,  and Clara's.  We were doing good.  Then I looked at what else we had.  The rest of our packing for our short jaunt out of the city consisted of: An overstuffed diaper bag with diapers, wipes, toys, extra binkies, and spare bottles.

Another medium sized bag held the baby monitors, formula, adult toiletries, three days worth of handmade frozen food for Clara, a couple of more toys, and our cel phone chargers.

My purse - an oversized messenger bag held my kindle, Ipad and other various woman detritus.

Then there was the carseat and the snap and go stroller it attached to...and a blanket.

Gone were the days of me, Gerald and one small suitcase.  How could one little baby need so many things?

Gerald and I got all of our things and Clara to Penn Station.  Happily, Amtrak is very baby-family friendly.  The Red Caps helped us skip the line down  to the boarding train.  Two elevators later we were the first to get on the train and find comfortable seating.  

On our return trip, having magically sprouted another large bag full of gifts from Gerald's parents, we were even more loaded down. At the train station, the stationmaster called ahead to the arriving train and alerted them that we would need assistance.  When the train arrived, one of the ticket agents went through the train cars and found us seating with room for the stroller so that we did not have to go car to car searching for ourselves.

All in all a successful trip.  In the future Gerald and I will know to be loaded down like pack mules while Clara exclaims: "Wow!"