The Big Roll

You can do it!

Never thought I'd say it, but sometimes I feel like Bela Karolyi, the famously mustachioed Romanian-turned-American women's gymnastics head coach.  As Milo hangs out on his little mat thingy with the dangling animals, lurching his way towards turning over from his back to his stomach -- a more difficult move by far than the belly-to-back roll that he's already mastered -- I find myself clapping and saying wildly encouraging things that he probably can't understand but seems to respond to with happy little groans of effort.

Actually, Milo's attempts to gain momentum for The Big Roll also remind me a bit of The Metamorphosis, with its notoriously grotesque and heartbreaking first line: "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."  If you've ever watched a beetle try its darndest to get its torque on, there is a sort of tortured futility to it.  Milo, however, seems to know he can do it, and hasn't been particularly frustrated by his epic failure.  No, just kidding.  I still kind of assume he's ahead of the game if turning over is, as our doctor explained when Milo turned over for the first time at his two-month check-up, a four-month landmark.  The kid is obviously going to be a world-renowned athlete of some sort.  But no pressure.  As long as he doesn't, one day, inexplicably turn into a cockroach, I think we'll be plenty pleased.

If My Kid Were Any Cuter...

...I would actually have to consume and digest him.  Is that weird?

The Shortest Day of the Year? Really?

This was the longest shortest day of the year. 

Very early in every school year, I teach my students what the word "ambivalent" means, because it's a reaction that pops up all the time in the works we read (or in most literary works, I guess); so little in life is ever black or white, and we so often feel multiple ways about the same thing at once.

So, on this first day of winter, or the day when, as the eminently reliable Wikipedia says, we begin "the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days," I thought I'd share what I'm thinking about caring for a baby in winter.  It's hard.  With that said, I certainly recognize that I have it very easy.  Like, I lead a totally charmed life.  I'm crazy-lucky to be able to take this school year off to hang out with Milo.  He has, generally speaking, a wonderful disposition; my home is comfortable and warm; I have an incredible help-mate in Ben, and family members and friends who take such an interest in our daily adventures.  But these short, cold, grey days challenge me to find things to do that are fun, stimulating to the senses and active.  We can't necessarily take all the walks I would want to.  Going to Target does not count as a particularly enriching experience (although Milo is actively engaged in the sensations he feels when going through the automatic doors or listening to the guy banging the shopping carts he's rounded up from the parking lot).

Oh, and I don't really know other ladies with new babies.

Here's where the ambivalence really comes into play.  I love spending time with Milo.  He's a happy little boy, and smiles at everything.  He can be pissy, as everyone can, when tired, hungry or bored, but he's easily soothed and can re-engage in an instant.  So it's fun to be home with him, but...we really ought to be out doing stuff with other new moms and babies.  But: I'm so not a joiner.  I'm wary of people I don't know.  Stranger, danger, right?  Right?  And engaging with strangers in baby yoga seems particularly awful and ridiculous, but I guess people need a pretext to be out and about with their kids instead of trapped in the house all day.

Perhaps I should start my own group for new moms.  Cynics Anonymous?  M.W.S.A.D. (Moms With Social Anxiety Disorder)?  The I'm-Going-To-Lie-And-Say-He's-Sleeping-Through-The-Night Club?  Erghhh.

A Quick Question About John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt

How on earth could his name be your name, too?

Telling Secrets

Shh, don't let on, but our family is weird...

Milo met his grandparents' new kitten, Ginger, this weekend, and was talking some nasty trash about Ginger's new peeps.  Nah, not only wasn't he sharing any hot dish, but he wasn't even interested in the kitten, unlike his mom, who was, yeah, I'll say it: smitten.  This picture makes it look like the kid is completely into her, but I don't even think he understood her as a living thing.  In fact, the only animal around our house that he connects with at all is Olivia, our dog, because she's big and barks loudly at the mailman and moves in a way that registers on his radar.  Our two cats are basically just hairy throw pillows to him; he could care less.

And now for something completely different.  Please take note of the huge patches of missing hair on Milo's temple(s); this expansive forehead is why Ben and I independently came to the conclusion that our son looks like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein, a comparison my mother simply loathes.  I don't know why.  It's funny to us.  We're sort of over it by now, but when we realized that we both thought that Boyle was the celebrity Milo most resembles, we had a lot of fun propping him up on our laps and singing Putting on the Ritz.  Gotta hand it to him, though, he's been a good sport about it. 

Harvard or Yale?

Go Team!

So, it's obviously not a choice like which college to attend, who to marry, where to purchase a home, but somehow, choosing a day care seems like an epic decision.  I think back to the scene in Baby Boom (hells yeah, I just threw down a reference to Diane Keaton's fantastic 1987 turn as a Manhattan yuppie go-getter who -- and here's where the movie sort of breaks down -- randomly inherits a baby from some dead distant relative) where she has to get her adopted daughter into a snooty nursery school by having the kid correctly identify the people (like Gandhi and Einstein) and things (like sushi) on a bunch of flashcards.  Sam Shepard as the hot country vet?  Anyone?

Now, we haven't run into any competition as such while looking at day cares for Milo.  In fact, we just visited two places yesterday, and when I asked one of the directors whether she anticipated a "registration crush," she was like, no, if we get a couple more kids in that class for next September, we'll just add another adult as needed.  And the director at the other place seemed kind of desperate for us to enroll him.

In any case, I don't expect that any of the places that we're thinking about sending him next year will A) have him on the fast track to one of the Ivies or B) send him home to us on any given day with a five o'clock shadow and smelling of whiskey and cigarettes.  However, there's a lot of middle ground in terms of Milo's engagement, the engagement of his caretakers, the general atmosphere (is it quiet and organized?  loud and chaotic?  does it smell like orange-scented Lysol?  exactly how egregious is the visible booger situation or V.B.S.?), and this is where visiting each place and going with one's gut, rather than a predetermined matrix of price/distance/comfort/expertise, seems like a good move.

There's a big decision in the offing.  Stay tuned...

What Do You Do When...

I hasten to add, this is not actually my child

Mothering Question Number 56: What do you do on days when you have plans (miraculously) and the weather is fine and you finally have an opportunity to get out of the emming-effing house, but these plans, benign as they are -- lunch and travel time, 2+ hours max -- get in the way of your child's nap and then he becomes an insane, maniacal beast in the manner of Grendel's mother for hours after the fact?

What do you do when feeding him, walking around and holding him close while murmuring reassurances, "winding him down," as it were, don't work, and instead, he is doing that cry in which his mouth forms a rictus of frustration and rage, his tongue quivers like a manic eel, he's screaming right in your ear and he looks like he wants you to suffer as he does?  For hours?

There are pauses, of course.  And this is what brings on the madness.  During his second bottle in forty-five minutes, he will smile at you, causing him to stop drinking entirely for a minute and charming you into a false sense of security.  Sometimes he will actually appear to begin a successful nap, and this charade will last for fourteen minutes, long enough for you to invest in the middle of Kenneth Branagh's awful 1993 adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, which actually has Keanu Reeves in it, and you feel like, OK, things are going to be OK.

But. No. No. They. Are. Most. Decidedly. Not.