The Dungeon

Shout out, German speakers!

So, my big outing today with Milo was going to buy special low-fat dog food for Olivia at the vet and renewing my driver's license.  Woo hoo!  Because this entailed a trip out to the Main Line, I was glad to be able to catch up on my favorite NPR show, the inimitable Terri Gross' Fresh Air (closely beating out This American Life).  One thing I miss about commuting: NPR.  I know, I know, I'm a huge nerd.

None of that is really the point of the story, "story" being a generous word for what is about to transpire.  So, I'm in the car and listening to a podcast of Fresh Air in which Terri is interviewing a woman named Melissa Febos, whose memoir, Whip Smart, is out in paperback, a podcast that I wouldn't be able to listen to if Milo were much older/able to speak, because then I'd have to deal with the question: "Mommy, what's a dominatrix?" 

Febos, currently an Assistant Professor of Writing at Utica College, wrote a memoir about working her way through college (Sarah Lawrence, weirdly, or perhaps eminently appropriately? Those chicks are a bit out there, I've heard) by working in a midtown Manhattan "dungeon" as a dominatrix.  She was concurrently a heroin addict, although the interview didn't really focus on that aspect of her experience.  She graduated from college, earned an MFA and is now a professor, so she's obviously a very bright woman, and the interview was kind of interesting in that she took a more cerebral approach than one might have expected to writing about her experiences -- essentially the slant seemed more linked to identity politics than pure shock schlock.

But: the whole thing got me thinking, and then feeling a little bit inadequate, and then not at all inadequate.  Wait, no, not inadequate because I've never done heroin or worked in the sex trade; inadequate because if someone ever optioned the movie rights to my nonexistent memoir, that guy who does the voice-overs for film trailers would have to say dramatically: "She's a high school teacher on maternity leave...she blows raspberries on her baby's stomach...she knows the names of characters on Sesame Street...[even lower pitch] and she likes it."  My life consists of the sort of domestic stuff that people don't really write books about, unless somehow the story turns towards a hot-blooded affair or homicide or a meteor headed for the house.  Or, better yet, all three. 

And yet, I figure, this is nothing to feel lame about.  Day in and day out, I get to experience all of the outstanding pleasures of life -- Milo's engagement in his surroundings and his sweet, joy-making smiles; laughter and tenderness with my kick-ass husband; excellent relationships with family and friends; the best dog and cats on Planet Earth.  And yes, these pleasures are tempered by the ear-splitting sound of Milo crying when he's hungry, rainy days, and periods of alternating monotony and frustration, but would I trade in this blessed life for one that a movie studio would be more interested in?  Never.

Disco Inferno

What happened to my neck?

Milo is changing by the day, especially in terms of his likes and dislikes.  Some new likes: Elmo videos on Youtube, spitting up for no apparent reason, and the bear chair you see at left.  He used to have it bad for his swinging chair, and the movement could often calm him or at least let him enjoy a nice lull if he was already calm.  Now, it seems to just piss him off.  So for kicks (i.e. I had to go brush my teeth and the bear chair was in the corner of his room looking sad, abandoned, frankly: betrayed), I put him in this chair, a great hand-me-down from friends of ours that I had tried unsuccessfully when Milo was just a tiny baby and he didn't even fit in it safely.  I come back, toothbrush in mouth, and he's basically dancing in the chair, having the time of his life.  It's like Studio 54 in that chair, but without the cocaine and trannies.  Now, it doesn't swing, but it does have a pretty awesome massaging low-key jiggle.  It also has lights and a music option, which can be activated if the baby moves, which Milo does a lot, ensuring that he will get his fill of Pop Goes the Weasel and Three Blind Mice.  I will leave for another day a discussion of frank violence against animals in children's songs.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

Would you look at this?  It's like my son is some sort of Romanian gymnast or Martha Graham enthusiast.  Ben lifted Milo up several times in a row yesterday, and almost every time, Milo made himself completely horizontal, with toes pointed.  And every time, I must admit to thinking about the scene in Dirty Dancing where Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze (may he rest in peace) are practicing the jump in the lake.  Sometimes it makes me sad that Ben doesn't have the same Dirty Dancing frame of reference that I have for basically everything, although I guess that's just proof that he's a heterosexual male.  But seriously, is it wrong that virtually everything that happens in real life has some sort of DD counterpart?  I suspect that it's just my demographic, because whenever something awkward happens and I say, "I carried a watermelon?" and slap my forehead, my peers seem to get my drift.

Yeah, I Rolled Over. Ain't No Thang.

Ok, so somebody rolled over for the first time today, and it wasn't me.  Yes, it's true, Milo rolled over at nine weeks and one day and it's a four-month landmark, so obviously all of my suspicions about his precocity have come to fruition.  The weird thing about it was that he did it at the doctor's office.  It was as if I had brought my car to the mechanic for an oil change or something and then it started rattling and shaking as soon as I pulled in.  But in a good way.  

The pediatrician had placed him on his stomach on the examining table to see how well he could raise his neck, and she said that it looked almost as if he wanted to roll over, so she suggested we give him a minute.  He kept pushing with his right arm, once, twice, thrice, four times (maybe more; I don't actually remember how many tries it took him), and then, just like a beetle who gets himself off of his back, he rolled himself over -- except he started on his tummy and landed on his back.  I almost cried, and our pediatrician was visibly thrilled, and commented on how methodical he was about it.  I joked that Milo was planning on taking the SATs next week, but jokes notwithstanding, it's a pretty incredible feeling to watch him making these developmental leaps.

I see it with him in other ways, too.  He's much more engaged these days, and in addition to smiling, he now stops crying -- or at least quiets down -- when Ben or I enter his room to give him a bottle in the middle of the night; he anticipates being soothed, which is soothing in and of itself.  Curious phenomenon.  I'm also trying to pay attention to the ways in which he is beginning to make more sounds.  It's not just crying these days; there's the "bwah" noise that he makes when he's pouting but not really crying.  There's a "guh" noise that he makes when he's interested and alert.  There's a noise that sounds like a proto-laugh that I enjoy very much.  He also clearly has a command of some consonants -- M, B, W, and G, for example -- and I suppose that they are linguistically and anatomically easier than, say, sibilants or plosives, and it's fascinating to watch how a little human acquires sounds, if not yet language.

Ben and I were talking about it the other night: how strange and wonderful it is that everyone who has a child gets to conduct this sort of anthropological experiment in his own home, watching this little being move from basically being a helpless little marsupial to a full-fledged person with likes and dislikes, with personality traits and prerogatives.  I'm so looking forward to whatever the next step is.

Ready For My Close Up

Say Cheese

So, this picture is not the best demonstration of it, but Milo has begun smiling, and when he does so for real (as he did both before and after I took this shot), it is a joy to behold.  There's nothing like this kid's toothless grin to make me laugh out loud, and luckily, it's a not-so-vicious circle, because when I laugh and tickle him more and make some sort of goofy rhyming song or waggle his arms and legs around, it makes him smile more.  Which is a relief.  Because it sort of seemed to me as of a couple of weeks ago that he might just be a fussy, sleepless kid who farted a lot, and I would've hated for that to be his personality -- for him to be, like, that kid in his first grade class.  The fussy, farting kid.  We all had one of those, didn't we?  Mine was a kid named Andrew Weiss who used to bring live cicadas to school in a shoebox and the librarian would have to roll her eyes and tell him that was not kosher and who I once had to pair up with in a square-dancing unit in gym class.  Not good.  Not one bit good.  As it turns out, I am pretty sure Milo's not going to be that kid.  Whew.

On Sleep

I will swaddle you, swaddle you wherever you may go...

The first question that strangers or acquaintances ask upon meeting Milo is inevitably, "How's he sleeping?"  It's a fair question, as most new parents struggle to get long stretches of sleep with an infant around.  It's a generic question, too, and meant in the spirit of somewhat jolly but detached interest; it's less invasive than "How are his bowel movements?" or "How is his penis healing after you genitally mutilated him in the name of tradition?" but it's actually kind of fraught if the answer is "Crappy," or "Only intermittently."

As you can see from the picture, Milo will take a catnap almost anywhere, including on his grandparents' couch.  He is also starting to take pretty solid naps in his crib and will sleep two to three and a half hour stretches in the night in his nursery.  But at seven weeks and counting, most people seem to want to hear that he's sleeping through the night, and grimace awkwardly when they hear his personal best, which was close to four hours...once.  I'm pretty sure he'll be fine; his circadian rhythms will kick in for realz, and he'll start pumping his own melatonin soon, and we'll be good to go.  Until then, it would be nice if people would just comment on his pretty eyelashes or his solid head of hair or his rose petal mouth (don't worry, Milo's a sensitive new-age guy, you can compliment him on that, he doesn't mind).  Until then, we'll just continue putting little deposits in the sleep bank, and keep on truckin'.

Serious Business

Milo and Olivia Have a Snuggle

I like to imagine, sometimes, living and raising a child in, say, Chauvet, France 30,000 years ago.  They didn't have cars, so they couldn't have had any incredibly heavy infant car seats that a five foot three woman would look ridiculous carrying into a CVS (at least the cave paintings don't bear that out).  They wouldn't have had pharmacies where the formula is kept behind lock and key.  They wouldn't have had formula because that's what boobs were for.  And babies wouldn't have had milk protein allergies (or peanut allergies or what have you) because: survival of the fittest, bitches!

I am by no means suggesting that all of the enormous strides that have been made in medicine, technology, and food science aren't valuable.  They are.  Helping kids and families is good work, and I'm grateful for the people who do it, however, the ubiquity of items and services that are available is often confusing, redundant or useless and, in the end, just plain overboard.  It's hard enough for a new parent to maintain her sanity on very little sleep without trying to navigate the world of problems and the products that exist to 'solve' them.  Just sayin'.