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! 

High Heels for Little Girls - what are we teaching our daughters?

While sitting down and watching Spongebob with my one year-old daughter, Clara, I saw 2 advertisements for Skechers shoes – one aimed at little girls, one aimed at little boys.

The advertisement for girls featured little girls pretending to be rock stars while wearing sneakers that hid a 2-inch wedge heel.  So these little girls could be taller and no one would know. The ad starts by saying: “Do you want to get taller?” and “have a secret wedge that only we girls know about?” Throughout we watch cartoon girls in short skirts sing on stage.  This is it: Skechers Wedge Commercial

In the next commercial block I watched a second Skechers ad for Air-Mazing Shoes.  It shows cartoon boys doing all kinds of stunts and sports.   It asks: “Are you a kid who runs fast, jumps high and plays hard?” At the end of the commercial two girls dressed as cheerleaders swoon over the boy in the cool, athletic sneakers.  This is it: Air-Mazing Commercial.  

This prompted me to visit the Skechers website to find out more about these shoes.  The Air-Mazing sneakers are only available in boys sizes – preschool through grade school.  The Secret Wedge Seakers are only available to girls – preschool through grade school which sport a 2-inch hidden heel.  There is also an adult woman version with a 3-inch heel.

Does anyone else have a problem with the fact that Skechers is marketing shoes to little girls by asking them if they want to be taller?  I know that as a parent I don’t consider teaching my daughter how to navigate in high heels as a toddler a priority or something that should be encouraged. Doesn’t this feed into the media obsession with super tall, size 0 models – an ideal that is almost impossible to imitate?

I was equally disturbed by the fact that Skechers is marketing an athletic sneaker solely to boys.  Aren’t there plenty of little girls who can run fast, jump high and play hard?  This commercial also sexualizes the boys by showing scantily clad cheerleaders swooning over the boy.  Clearly sending the message that if you have cool shoes, pretty girls will love you.

I would have less of a problem with the commercials if they were more inclusive.  I am sure as a teenage girl I would have liked the idea of a wedge sneaker but I also would have wanted a real sneaker to play basketball in.  And why isn’t there a male version of the wedge shoe for all the insecure boys out there that wish they were taller?  You might laugh at that marketing campaign but I would argue that we should be laughing just as hard at marketing a wedge sneaker to little girls.

In both commercials the girls are dressed in close-fitting outfits that show off incredibly healthy curves and busts for pre-pubescent girls.  Conversely the boys are depicted wearing comfortable clothes appropriate for playing sports.

As a woman who played sports as a little girl I am offended by this marginalization of young girls. I guess only little boys can be “amazing,” the little girls have to worry about learning how to walk in high heels.

In a discussion on this very subject it was pointed out to me that Skechers is only selling what the consumer will buy.  They wouldn’t be selling the shoes if people weren’t buying them.  True.  I think we as consumers have to consider what we are exposing our children too – especially our little girls.  If we didn’t buy the products they wouldn’t be made.  But I think these companies have to be more aware of the narrative they are telling with their product.

I remember that talking Barbie doll that said: “Math class is tough,” reinforcing the stereotype that girls have trouble doing math.  When consumers complained, Mattel removed the doll from the market.  We are all responsible for what we expose the malleable minds of children too. I would hope that Skechers might feel the same way.

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.

Bubble.

So two days ago, Clara decided it was time to try walking.  She toddled towards her Daddy in the hallway of our apartment while I was upstairs visiting the newborn twins of our neighbors.  I guess she didn't want a big audience.  But she happily gave an encore of her solo toddling when I came back downstairs.  She was exactly one year and one week old.

As if that wasn't enough, the following day Clara decided to take her first word out for a spin.  She crawled into the bathroom, pulled up on this little storage unit we have, picked up the bubbles that I have been entertaining her with at bath time, handed them to me and said:  "Bubble."

This time it was Gerald who wasn't home for the amazing event.  Clearly, Clara is relishing divvying out her milestones to her amazed parents.

The old saying: "They grow up so fast." has taken on new meaning this week.

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.

Birthday.

After a wonderful party with family, Clara ended her birthday with a much needed bath. Celebratory bubbles were in order, much to Clara's delight.

Birthday.

Tomorrow Clara Jane will be one year old.  It's been an amazing year of firsts.

Not only did Gerald and I get to be parents for the first time, Skip and Susan and Debbie are first time grandparents, and Samantha, Becky and  Margaret are first time Aunts. Everyone gets to join in the  'firsts.'

Clara is constantly doing new things for the first time.  Smiling, clapping, waving, sitting up, crawling, cruising, laughing, being ticklish, babbling, playing, and most recently, standing on her own.

As the year went on Gerald and I got more sleep, and so did Clara. Watching her grow over the past year from a newborn into a sturdy little kid has been incredible.  I now understand what parents mean when they say: "there is no greater gift than your children."

There are many milestones for a baby, and for her parents.  One year.  That's pretty big.

Happy Birthday, Clara.

Worms.

I have fond memories of digging for worms in Riverside Park with my sister Becky.  We dug to find the worms and look at them wriggle.  I loved watching how they dug themselves back into the dirt.  I did not, as in many a childhood memoir, revel in cutting them up to see how many parts could survive.  I just loved to dig in the soil, discover them, and set them free. My mother, probably knowing how much I liked to do this, put some worms in a large potted rubber plant she had in the house.  That way, Becky and I could dig for worms in the comfort of our own home.

The building I live in in Washington Heights has lovely front gardens.  I have noticed recently, that when it rains the earthworms rise up out of the soil and strand themselves on the cement walkway.  I don't know why they do this but I can't stand to see them struggle and eventually die away from the moist soil.  So, I rescue them.  I pick them up and put them back in the garden where they belong.

Today when I was coming home from a Long adventure in the park with Clara I saw two lively worms in the path looking for a way home.  I scooped up the first and deposited him in the dirt.  Then I paused.  What would Clara think? Before returning the second worm to the garden, I scooped him up and showed him to Clara.  She was intrigued by this tiny, wriggling being.  Finally, someone smaller than her.  She reached out a tentative finger and touched him with a gentle 'hello.'  I explained to her what I was doing and returned the little guy to his home.  

I have succeeded in creating a second generation of worm excavator and protector.

What Just Happened!?

So this happened today while Clara was playing at my mother's house...

Without any prompting or encouragement, Clara stood up and let go of the furniture.  For a little over a minute she shook her hourglass toy while standing, perfectly balanced.  I felt like whooping and screaming but instead tried to imitate Clara's nonchalance. (I snapped these pictures with my cel phone when she wasn't looking) Here she is doing something amazing, something she has never done before, and she's cool as a cucumber.  Not only that, she ups the stakes by playing with a toy at the same time. 

After she finally sat down, my mother and I applauded.  Clara looked at us like: "Seriously?  You're clapping at this?  You guys are sooooo EASY."

I am amazed.

Awesome.

Clara will be one year old in a little over three weeks and she continues to amaze me and her dad on a daily basis.

Yesterday, while getting her ready to go out I said to Clara: "We're going to see you friend Amado and your friend Billie."  To which, Clara replied: "Billie!"  Does she actually know Billie's name?  Was she just repeating what she heard?  If so, I have never head her say anything close to those sounds before.

After I left for work this morning, Gerald was sitting in the glider chair in her room while Clara played with her toys.  Without any prompting from him, Clara picked up the chicken puzzle piece from her Melissa and Doug farm puzzle, held it up for her Daddy to see and said: "Cluck. Cluck. Cluck."

Needless to state, Gerald was thunderstruck and immediately called me to impart the news.  Now, Gerald and I do a lot of holding up the pieces for Clara and saying things like: "The cow goes Mooooo." But up until now it has been just the adults saying the "Baaaaaaas, Neighs, Oinks, and Cluck Clucks."  All I can say, is it is much more impressive when Clara does it.

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.

She looks like...everybody.

As Clara approaches the 11 month mark, I am constantly amazed at how much she changes on a daily basis. I feel like I can almost see her growing - it's that fast.

As she plays, and crawls, and cruises around the apartment I catch glimpses of other people.  Sometimes when she smiles, I see my twin sister Becky.  Just the other day I was marveling at her eyebrows which have just a tinge of red...(where did that come from?) and in that instant I could see my sister Sam.  Her eyes - a deep blue-green hazel eyes are her own unique color but they are shaped just like her father's.  In fact, all of Gerald's family seem to share that slightly cat-lidded look.  Happily, she also seems to have inherited  her father's toes but her tiny mouth is pure Mama. My mother is convinced the swirl of hair on top of her head in from me, and just this morning Gerald showed me a baby picture of his father and it turn's out, Clara has Skip's cheeks. Clara loves listening to music and people singing and she's getting that gene from both sides.  Directly from her father, and more distantly on my side from my two sisters.

As she crawls around using her left leg as a propeller I wonder if she will be left handed.  Myself and her paternal aunt and grandmother are all left-handed. Gerald scoffs at this and points out that she usually uses her right hand when eating.  We'll see about that!

For all her similarities to her family, Clara's personality is one-of-a-kind.  I love watching that grow the most.  She constantly makes me and her father, and everyone around her smile - and that trait is unique to Clara.

Babyproof House

In my ongoing quest to baby proof my apartment there is one thing I have been trying to give Clara. Freedom.  I want the entire apartment to be her domain.  Apart from crawling inside the stove or the fridge, or putting her finger in a outlet,  I want her to be able to go anywhere and do anything.

My mother's biggest piece of parenting advice was "Never say no." I will addend this to "try to never say no."  I will have to say "No" if she foils my childproofing of the stove and tries to crawl inside.  Seriously. But I have made it okay for Clara to do some things in the apartment that I could try to forbid. 

Clara's current favorites are:

1) Pulling out shoes from under our bed and making piles of them all over the floor.

2) Pulling all the stacked diapers off the changing table shelf, and flinging the diapers everywhere.

3) Pulling books off the bookshelf.

4) Opening her one of her drawers and pulling out all of her hats.

5) Pulling open a door on our dresser and pulling out all my stored maternity clothes.

6) Pulling colanders and bowls off a lower shelf in the kitchen and playing with them while I am cooking.

Does it get a little boring putting the books back on the shelf, or re-stacking the diapers?  Well, yes. But judging by her laughs and coos and the tiny rebel gleam in her eye, she is having a good time and I can save my "Nos" for bigger, more serious things.

Winning!

I have been looking for a lightweight umbrella stroller that I am able to carry up and down subway stairs.  I found a perfectly serviceable one on my local parent listserv for twenty dollars. After alot of elbow grease it looked, well, sort of dingy.  It had been extremely well-loved by it's prior, now five year old, occupant.  But for twenty bucks I wasn't complaining.

Flash forward to last Wednesday.  I received an email from Diapers.com.  Now usually I skip these emails or delete them.  Who really cares that baby wipes are on sale this week? But for some reason I read it.  It said: Be one of the first 100 people to respond to this email and win a brand new Quinny Yezz stroller.  I looked - it was a chic, lightweight, and most importantly, new umbrella stroller.

I responded to the email.  I was so sure this was either a scam or that 50,000 people had already emailed that I didn't even put anything in the body of the email.  I just responded.

Imagine my surprise five minutes later when I received an email applauding me for being quick on my feet and telling me I had won a new stroller!  The one caveat - I had to buy a ticket to the New York Baby Show and pick it up there on Sunday.  I immediately grumbled - here was the catch.  The ticket was going to cost 100.00 or something.  But no - I went to check and tickets were only ten dollars.

I bought a ticket for Sunday, fingers still crossed that this wasn't some sort of scam to get people to buy tickets to the New York Baby Show.

So on Sunday during my lunch break I went over - and there they were - it was true.  I chose purple because it was CLEARLY the best color. It weighs ten pounds and has handles made for tall people, and best of all, Clara loves it.  I actually enjoyed walking around the show talking to vendors and finding out about new products.  I will probably attend it again next year.

I used to win raffles all the time when I was a kid.  School raffles, Girl Scout Penny Socials - I was guaranteed at least two wins per event.  But I guess raffle opportunities diminish with age (or at least until Clara starts school), so it's good to know I'm still lucky.

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.

Babbles that sounds a lot like words.

Clara talks a lot.  Or makes noises.  Or both.  From the time she was very little (to be honest, she's still little) she has been very focused on me and her dad and her other family when they talk.  She intently watches our mouths moving and I can almost see her brain learning and storing away the information for future use.

I believe that babies can understand a lot of what we say.  They can interpret tone of voice and understand words.  At nearly 10 months, Clara responds to the sound of her name and whenever Gerald or I exclaim: "Yay!" in response to something  she has done (which is pretty often), Clara takes that as her cue to smile and start clapping her hands.  She has connected the word "Yay" to applause.  I think that is pretty awesome.

Clara also says "Wow" a lot.  It's one of her sounds.  Does she know it means "an exclamation of surprise, wonder, pleasure?"  I don't know.  But it seems like she does.

She also says Ma for me.  And happily says Dada whenever her Dad isn't around so Gerald has yet to hear it from her directly.

But then there's the more advanced words she seems to be saying which I think she's too young to be able to do.  Is it happenstance?  Once, yes.  But she has said most of these words more than once, so the mystery lingers on.

When her grandmother said: "I'm sorry" after dropping a spoon.  Clara said: "Uh-oh."

Clara often says: "Hello" when you say hello to her.  Or sometimes initiates it on her own.  Is she repeating a sound she's hearing or comprehending that "hello" is a greeting?

Then there's the more ridiculous instances, one where her Nana said, when handing her a toy: "Here you go." and Clara handed it back and said: "Here you go."

Or yesterday, when my sister caught her on film apparently saying: "Thank you."

She's so little it seems ridiculous and wonderful...and it's a mystery only she knows the answer to. Maybe I should just ask her.  She might surprise me and answer.

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.

I Missed It!

Yesterday I decided it was time to install the safety guard in the window of Clara's room.  I set Clara down by her toy storage across the room.  She happily cooed to herself while pulling out toy after toy.  

I became engrossed with installing the window guard correctly - measuring and remeasuring.  Drilling pilot holes and finally attaching it.  I was so caught up in finishing the job that I didn't turn around to look at Clara for a couple of minutes.  I could still hear her happy little voice and that was fine.

As I attached the final piece of the window guard I was startled to feel a tiny tug on my pants leg.  I looked down - and THERE WAS CLARA!!!!  Her tiny fist tugging on my pants.  She was smiling up at me - totally unaware of the fact that she had just crawled across eight feet of floor space for the FIRST TIME EVER!!!!!

Needless to state, I dropped what I was doing,  swept Clara up in my arms and carried her around in a victory dance.  We then called her dad on the phone to relate the news.

Clara seemed inordinately pleased with herself.  I get distinct impression that she was waiting for me to turn my back in order to try out her new moves and surprise her Mama.

Well, little girl...mission accomplished.

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!"

Baby Food

I knew I wanted to make all of Clara's food when she finally started to eat.  For the most part she loves everything.  Parsnips, carrots, peas, green beans, yellow and green squash, sweet potato, bananas, and apples.

There have been a couple of things she did not like.  I tried broccoli, thinking to myself "Hey, if I like broccoli....".  Little six month old Clara took one bite, made an absurdly cute "what the heck is this" face, and promptly projectile spit the broccoli all over her Mama, accompanied by a loud raspberry noise.  Clara is nothing if not totally clear about what she thinks.

I recently introduced Avocado and from the cross look on Clara's face I was bracing myself for another vegetable shower.  But after a moment's thought, Clara decided it wasn't so bad and swallowed it. I find a little banana mixed in with the avocado lightens up Clara's expression considerably.

But for the first time this week, I was put off by something I was feeding Clara.  Since she has only three teeth her food still has to be pretty smooth.  At nine months, she was ready to try meat.  I cooked up some ground chicken in some broth and threw it in the blender.  As I was portioning it out into my specialized one-ounce portion compartments  also knows as "ice cube trays" I  realized that blended-up ground chicken looks exactly like adult vomit.  Had I had a mouthful of anything at that moment I would have replicated Clara's projectile spit take.

"Times have Changed"

Last week I was riding the 1 train down with Clara strapped to my chest in her Ergo to visit her Nana.  I was seated next to an older man with a stern expression on his face.  Clara decided that she was delighted by him and proceeded to stare at him with her wide, two-toothed smile.  He kept trying not to look at her but Clara and her smile were relentless, He finally cracked a smile in her direction.

He looked at me and said gruffly: "I can't tell if its a boy or a girl."

Clara was wearing a blue striped fleece suit and a pink hat.  I understood.  Here is the rest of our conversation.

Me: A girl.

Him:  Humph.

Me: Her name is Clara.

Clara: Ba.

Him: I'm 76 years old.  When I was a kid there was a double decker bus down fifth avenue you could ride for five cents.  And if you got on and didn't have the five cents the bus driver would let you on and just ask you to pay next time you rode.  Times have changed.

Me: I didn't know there were double decker buses.

Him:  There are a lot of single mothers these days, having babies and not married.  Times have changed.

Me: (nods)

Him: There are also a lot of mothers now who work.  Can you imagine?  Things were different in my day.  Women stayed home with the children.  Now they're working.  Times have changed.

(A long pause while Clara reaches out her mittened hand to him.)

Him: Do you work?

Me: Well, actually I work two days a week, then I'm home with her the rest of the week.  Her father takes care of her while I am at work.

Him: (thinks for a minute) Times have changed. 

Yes, they have.

Stand Up.

My entire life I have ridden NYC Public transportation.  When I was a kid and teenager mostly the bus because the subways were still kinda dangerous, and since then the subway. I don't remember being taught to offer my seat to the elderly, the pregnant, and moms with young infants but it is an ingrained trait of mine.  I also stop to help women struggling to carry strollers up and down the subway stairs. Gerald independently of me, has the same feeling.  Coming off a train, we once both reached down  and offered a woman help with her stroller at the same instant which made all three of us laugh. As I was 6 weeks pregnant at the time, Gerald won the brief struggle to help the mom up the stairs.

Until a year and a half ago, I had no personal experience being pregnant or being a new mom.  Now I do - and what I have found out is that the people living in New York City seem to have forgotten how to take a moment to help someone.

Being pregnant gets tiring very quickly.  There are a lot of wonderful things happening to your body.  My  hair and nails grew really fast, and I had that "pregnancy glow" people talk about and I totally dodged the morning sickness thing.  But after about month 4, the whole standing and walking around thing started to get really tiring.  I made a joke to a co-worker during this time:  That the answer to the question: "So you want to sit down?" was always going to be yes.

At the time I was living in Jersey City with Gerald and commuting five days a week to my job in Midtown.  This involved a twenty minute ride on the PATH train which is sparkling clean and puts the NYC MTA to shame, (and ironically, costs less to ride), a brief walk, and then the B or D uptown to Rockefeller Center.

I naively assumed that because I always offered my seat to pregnant women that I would be offered one on every ride. Some sort of karmic payback.  Now I understand that there is a window of time in a pregnancy where people aren't sure you are pregnant and don't want to offend you but from month five to delivery I looked really, really pregnant.

Riding the 2 trains for the four months I was visibly pregnant, on 20 train rides per week, I can count on both hands and feet the number of times I was offered a seat.  That, my friends is appalling.  Now there were plenty of times where a seat was available.  But there were many more times on crowded trains where I stood for the duration.

The people who  offered me a seat those times were most often Latino women, then Latino men and  once and male Irish tourist who actually said something to the train car at large when no one would stand up and offer me a seat.

I was uncomfortable asking for a seat but after a while with my swollen feet barking up at me I would try to catch someone's eye.  The one's who most quickly averted their gaze were the well-heeled men and women  in power suits reading the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times on their way to their banking or finance jobs.

One time I rode a car that wasn't that crowded but had no seats available.  I was standing next to a man that had to be a 100 years old.  We were the two standing and no one stood up for either one of us.

I want to know when New Yorkers stopped looking each other in the eye.  When I was a kid here I knew all the store owners and all my neighbors.  Now it seems like no one is here to stay and they would rather step on you than hold out a hand. Everybody is so busy trying to "make it" here they don't have time to talk or even look at anyone else.

One positive is that now when I ride the train with my impossibly cute gurgling baby, her smile seems to crack the composure of even the most hardened subway rider.  I have had some great conversations with strangers on the train thanks to my little Clara.

Drive by Advice

Clara was five months old and I decided to try her stroller out for a spin in the neighborhood.  Up until that point I had been using her car seat in a stroller contraption.  It was a brisk but mild day in late November.  I planned to walk ten blocks to my sister's apartment, take her dog for a brief walk, then head back home.  Clara seemed happy - in her coat and blanket, stroller in the recline position.

Six blocks into my walk, I saw a middle aged woman walking down the sidewalk.  As she apporached me she started yelling a blue streak.  It took a minute for me to realize she was cursing me out - for not having a wind/rain protector on my stroller.  You know - those clear plastic shields they put over strollers to keep the rain or wind out? As she kept getting closer, her  yelling rose in decibels: "WHAT ARE YOU CRAAAAAZY, LADY!  YOUR BABY IS GONNA FREEEEEEZE OUT HERE - YOU DON'T HAVE A WINDSHIELD PROTECTOR WHAT'SA MATTER WITH YOU, BITCH!" 

The amazing thing was that she didn't even slow down - she just marched past me, still screaming - her voice fading with the Doppler effect.

I was shaken to the core - and promptly began crying.  Here I was, a new mom trying out a new stroller and I had apparently made a serious, baby-killing mistake. I spun the stroller around, sniffling, and headed home.  As I walked I called Gerald and found some solace in his outrage on my behalf.  He assured me Clara would be fine.  By the time I got home  Clara had fallen asleep in the stroller.  I left her their to nap and started doing some paperwork at my desk.

Not fifteen minutes later the doubts began to creep in.  What if Clara had in fact been freezing?  What if...she wasn't alseep in her stroller but was in fact suffering from extreme hypothermia? What if she wasn't sleeping but was in fact, in a cold-weather induced coma?

I tiptoed over to the stroller and watched Clara breathing...or was she breathing?  I gave her a tentative poke.  No response.  I blew air on her face and her eyelids quivered then stilled.  I tired to convince myself to no avail that Clara was just sleeping.  I ended up taking her out of the stroller, trying to say in a happy voice: "wake up, wake up, wake up."

She did wake up - she was fine, if unhappy and grumpy from being woken from her peaceful baby nap. She was not frozen.

Did that cursing woman envision the ripple effects her yelling had on me?  That it would affect me for hours? That it would make me cry?  Did she think for an instant that perhaps I was an inexperienced, sleep-deprived, emotionally fragile first time mom? Did she think to stop and offer a bit of advice?

Since that time, walking with my now  wind/rainshielded stroller I have seen strollers with and without the plastic protective shell. It seems to be a judgement call on how much it helps with cold weather. It is certainly not worth screaming at a stranger on the street over.

Coming Up for Air

Clara is almost 9 months old.  Two nights ago Gerald and I were discussing a dinner invitation we received and he said:  "Let's invite more people over.  Let's be social.  Whoever - old friends, new friends. Let's start entertaining."

I thought for a second, and amazingly, the idea made me happy.  It made me excited. Yes!

For the previous nine months it feels as if Gerald and I have been operating in a mind fog of exhaustion coupled with a hundred new experiences as new parents we have to assimilate and incorporate into our lives each day. 

For the pat nine months : I haven't slept past 5:30 or 6 in the morning. I haven't had more that four hours of connected sleep. I have had a baby with me pretty much 24 hours a day.  Gerald and I have also watched an amazing baby grow and learn something new every day and I hope we have something to do with that.

One night while giving Clara a bath, Gerald said: "Clara smiles so much.  She smiles all the time because we're smiling at her.  That's a good sign, right?"

Right.

But in all those nine months I have also felt like Gerald and Clara and I were living in this cocoon of "this is exactly as much as we can handle right in this moment."

Any time I was asked to extend myself past my new family I felt overwhelmed.  A train trip to visit Gerald's parents left me shaky and coal-eyed with fatigue. Friends who visited me at my apartment got to see me, if they didn't - I certainly didn't accept any of the offers I got to visit them anywhere. 

Sometimes staring at the week-old pile of laundry made me want to weep, and after another day spent figuring this parent thing out, the idea of cooking dinner was just too much to handle.

Like a light going on, things have turned around. Gerald and I are enjoying cooking nice dinners for ourselves, alongside the endless supplies of blended fruits and vegetables for Clara.  Suddenly, I don't dread the idea of being out in the world anymore.  I want to crawl out of my cocoon...and apparently, Gerald does too.

I am sure, Clara (who just learned to clap) will be clapping her hands in delight for all the new people she is about to meet.

Stranger on the Bus.

One day after I moved uptown to Washington Heights I decided to try taking the bus downtown.  I have a lot of fond memories of riding the bus around with the various kids I babysat in New York City from the time I was 13 until I was about 23.  

I had Clara in a carseat fitted into a stroller contraption.  It was a hot day in early August.  The bus pulled up to my stop and the doors hissed open and I prepared to board.  The bus driver held out his hand, stopping me. 

"Miss, you gotta fold up that stroller or you can't board."

What?  Fold up the stroller carrying my one month old and do what with it? It took my new-mom muddled brain a minute to process these new bits of information.

Turns out that stroller policies have changed on New York City buses since I last babysat in the mid-nineties.  You now have to take your child out of the stroller and close it up.  In my case involved taking the car seat out of the stroller, holding the baby/carseat while trying to fold up the stroller part.  A nice gentleman standing on line helped me out with all these machinations while the patrons already on the bus glared in fury at the delay. 

After that ordeal I got a seat on the bus, with car seat Clara in my lap.  I realxed a little - enjoying the air conditioning and the view as the bus meandered down Broadway. 

A few stops later a middle aged woman gets on and sits next to me.  Without preamble, and without acknowledging my presence, she starts talking to Clara in a baby voice:  

"Hewooo wittle one…what is your Mommy doing taking you out on a hot day like this? Is she cawazy?  She should  be inside with such a wittle baby on a hot day. It's too hot for wittle babies.”

Another round of unasked for advice - this time directed at my baby daughter who hadn't even learned to focus her eyes yet.

I turned to the woman and said: "She’s on her way to visit her grandmother.  And she’s fine.”

The woman said: “I guess New Yorkers do things differently.”

I said: “Yeah – they do.”

The conversation ended there.

Drive by Advice on a Subway Platform

When my baby was 2 weeks old, my partner and I had to take her to the 2 week pediatric checkup.  We were living with his parents because we had only closed on our apartment the week before I gave birth.  Our trip entailed taking the subway from Murray Hill to Washington Heights…where we would have been already living if our co-op board hadn’t taken 4 months to schedule our Board approval meeting. 

Standing on the platform a pleasant looking woman in her late twenties smiled down at our little baby girl in her car seat stroller said: "I have a six month old…how old is yours?"  When I answered "2 weeks" the woman's smile disappeared into a  gasp of horror.  She half-shrieked: “OHMYGOD you can’t have such a little one on the subway it’s so dangerous all the germs and their tiny immune systems I wouldn’t let MY nanny out with her until after three months an then I got the germ net for the stoller. It’s a meshnet that keeps out the germs from the baby. You shouldn’t be on the train with her yet or ever! You could take cabs or a car service.That’s what my nanny does.”

Needless to state my heart started pounding.  Was Clara in danger from subway germs?  Though I immediately questioned the efficacy of mesh netting in keeping microscopic airborne germs off my baby…did this woman have a point?  Why hadn’t my What to Expect Book detailed the dangers of public transportation? I certainly didn’t have a nanny or a car service or even own a car, so my options were limited.  Mentally shaken, I smiled and thanked this apparently well-meaning stranger while silently vowing to ask a doctor for advice. 

Frazzled and already sleep-deprived, Gerald and I rode the train uptown.  I eyeballed the subway atmosphere looking for free-floating germs that might attach themselves to Clara's tiny face. 

When we finally made it to the pediatrician, I unloaded my worries onto her is a garbled stream that ended with: "Is she allowed to ride the subway?!"  The doctor’s advice was simple: “As long as Clara isn’t holding onto the handrail in the subway she should be fine.”

Did I ask for your advice?

Have you ever wanted strangers to come up to you, unannounced, on the streets of New York City and strike up a conversation? Would that change your stereotypical view that “New Yorkers are Assholes?”  As a native New Yorker I have to admit that apart from the occasional exchange about delayed trains with another passenger or being asked for directions, total strangers didn’t often come over to talk to me. 

That all changed after I got pregnant and then had a baby.

Turns out, pregnant bellies and babies attract strangers like bees to honey, in all the good ways (honey), and in all the bad ways (BEES!).

Some of the attention is positive. Faces softening into a smile as they asked: "When are you due?," or “How old is she?”or “What’s her name?” reinforced my faith in humanity and the everlasting cuteness of babies.  

But a lot of the attention was and is negative.  While I was pregnant I heard a lot of unsolicited scary pregnancy and birth stories that my forgetful "pregnancy" brain was very unaccommodating about deleting from my mind.  And these days, pushing a baby stroller around apparently gives people the impression that they can walk up to you and just say anything. When was the last time someone walked up to you on the sidewalk and judged you?  It's incredible and I plan to share some of these experiences.

I remembered I started a blog.

I never read blogs. I should but I don't. But this week I read a few blog posts from friends that were interesting and inspiring.  Like this one by Libby Emmons: www.li88yemmons.blogspot.com.

And that made me remember...didn't I have a blog once long ago?  The answer is yes.  This one.  After a few harried minutes trying to remember what and where my blog was and re-authenticating my account after  (it turns out) an unintended 8 year absence, I found it and have decided to reactivate it.

I read over the old posts - and you should too.  I cringed a bit  and considered editing them but I have decided to leave them alone for posterity.

A lot has changed in 8 years. 

 I am older. 

That and I met and fell in love with Gerald Schultz and 8 months ago we had our first child together - Clara.. We bought an apartment together and are living in Washington Heights.

I have been wanting to write about the experience of being pregnant and being a new mom.  I think a blog will keep me writing.  Of course, I probably thought that 8 years ago too.

Here's to the girl who once danced on the bar at Hogs and Heifers with her sister Sam.

(I actually forgot this happened until I looked at this blog.)

Jeannine.