It's kind of like showing up for that prototypal final exam naked

After an excellent but sleepless weekend in LA, I'm back at work with a cold. The commute was a little harrowing this morning so I experimented with feeding T. her breakfast on the train, and it went pretty well. She ingested all of the cereal and all of the fruit without spreading too much on us or our fellow commuters. A real feat. When I got here, I had just enough time to get coffee and pump before a meeting. I felt like I was in as top form as possible considering that I had essentially been awake since 4:30, but honestly, I walked into the meeting and realized that I had no idea what it was about. No idea. I pretty much knew everybody, but the person who invited me wasn't there. I kept saying to myself, if this was totally wrong, I would have showed up to an empty room, but there were six people there, they had an agenda (not the one I had expected), it seemed somewhat relevant to my job, so I just waited to see what happened. It's only now, hours later that I realize I've been "committeed." It's like I've been some wild horse, avoiding the confines of the institution for years now--pregnancy, a great way to avoid meetings!--but now people finally realize I'm back and I'm a warm body to take up space in a new working group. Just waiting to see how often we'll meet.

I feel really terrible, like a walking sinus. Just waiting for the first express train of the afternoon. If only I could go home, sleep, and pick T. up later, but the commuting gods won't allow it.

One definitely wonders if this upsetting of schedules, sleep, immune systems is worth it. This jaunt to LA was T.'s 4th pair of flights. We're going to see my mom in two weeks, and on another trip in March. I always imagined I'd be a laid back parent with a laid back, extremely tote-able kid, but it really takes a toll. She doesn't really well away from home, much better than me, but the aftermath is brutal. I will go home and look at the cute pictures of T. with family and friends and LA backdrops and remind myself why we do it.

Grandma Fay's legacy

My brother and sister-in-law came to visit this weekend and brought some things that my grandmother knitted for us when we were kids. T. can look forward to wearing this excellent beret with matching belted sweater when she gets a little bigger.































There was a time when I was seriously considering Fay as a girl's name, but it just didn't stick. At least the little one can learn about her through the knitwear. She hasn't noticed the blanket yet, but the cat has...

Sticking the landing.

Something about the red unisuit made us call this her "Mary Lou Retton" pose.

why my new tv show can't be a crime drama:

When I was a kid, my dad managed a department store. The store had a fancy flagship location in New York, and some less grand suburban iterations scattered outside the city. His store was on Long Island not too far from our house. My mom and brother and I would stop by and see him when he worked on the weekends, have lunch in the employee cafeteria, that kind of thing. We only shopped for clothes twice a year on special employee discount days, so on these other visits, we would run around the store visiting with the career salespeople who'd known us most of our lives, stopping in at the ye olde candy store for free samples and doing our own version of Eloise at the Plaza.

On one particular visit when I was around 8 or 9, just my mom and I made the trip. Before going up to Dad's office, she went off to browse in the shoe department and said I could go one floor below to ogle the toys. I don't remember our meetback plan, but I'm sure there was one. Anyway, this was in my kitten-obsessed days (I really wanted one), and I was admiring the stuffed animal versions in the toy area when this man approached and said he would buy me the stuffed animal if I helped him carry his bags to his car. This was the '80s and I had seen enough afterschool specials to recognize the "never take candy from strangers" situation. I don't remember my exact response, but it was a pretty brief decline of the offer.

Probably also influenced by television, I can't explain my next decision: my head said "no sudden movements." So walked away slowly, into the next area which happened to be children's clothing. Maybe I figured my favorite salespeople would be there. Unfortunately it was eerily empty. I felt like I was being followed but didn't want to look back so I made my way to the stairs at a snail's pace, glancing at the clothing racks along the way. I got upstairs, hightailed it to shoes and told my mom what happened. She took my hand and hustled me up to the top floor to find my Dad and tell security. It was a wide, curved staircase and as we hit the first landing, I turned around and saw the man behind a display of socks. By the time my mom had turned around, he was hidden.

We got upstairs and I described him for the security folks: Grandpa-aged, plaid pants, cap. They combed the store and the parking lot but never found him. I remember asking my mom what would have happened if I had gone out to his car. She replied: it's a really good thing that you didn't. Like so much of life when you're a kid, I couldn't really comprehend the details of the situation, but at the same time, I knew it was bad.

So, last night we were watching our Prime Suspect netflik. It's the Helen Mirren BBC crime drama that has run off and on since the '80s. It's both more graphic and more subtle than anything CSI could throw your way. Last night's episode dealt with a supposed child abduction, but eventually led to a single mother driven insane and a "reformed" pedophile. You can read the details if you want, but honestly, I am done with Prime Suspect. It is incredibly good tv drama, but it is not the recipe for a good night's sleep. The heaviness of parenthood looms large.

pajama day

Today is pajama day at daycare and I really wish I had my camera because it is so damn cute. Some of the kids essentially wear pajamas everyday so it's not much of a switch, but not T. She looked really sweet in her one piece feetsie number tapping away on the xylophone when I left her. Finally got me brought me back from last night's shock:

I was so pleased to watch the Gilmore Girls "live" on our new computer/tv adapter gizmo that C. picked up at MacWorld. The Gilmore Girls has become my guilty pleasure, even more so since T., my own little dottir, was born. I hadn't seen the show since the last time I had a tv with illegal cable back in 2001 or 2002, but I've been loading up on the netflix backfile lately. Until last night there was still one season separating me from realtime GG, so there I was thinking Lorelai and Luke were about to get married, only to find her with her ex, Christopher. I spent most of the hour between commercials googling around for explanations. I still can't make that mental leap. E., can you help? I find Luke almost as irritating as the default background music (La-La, La-La, Lahhh-La), but still he seems so much better for her than Christopher. I suspect that I really need to watch all of season 6 to understand...

It's Friday

and what a nice one. In another era, I'd be wrecked from waking up at 5:40, but not today. We retrieved the girl from her prune-induced sadness, C. cleaned her up, I fed her and then tried to minimize my presence so that she would fall back to sleep (as if) and I could sneak out the door by 6:30. The result is a ridiculous outfit cobbled together in the dark--because I couldn't linger in our room, I made my choices from the closet in the living room, the one that holds my hanging clothes, the business attire I normally shun. And now, after more than a year apart, I'm sporting my favorite bird shirt, the type of shirt a mother can only wear on the one day this week she isn't spending with her child. Some of you my remember this as my latter day party shirt, and it still gives me a little celebratory boost. The bird shirt was not much help with this morning's east coast style chill, but the bus was warm and the new hand drip coffee place by the train station gave me a nice place to wait. The thing is, I really love the girl, and can't wait to get home and am so jealous that C. got to see her claw her way to standing first, but a day without baby and with a fancy shirt can really do some good.

Post-dental trauma

It took about 2 hours to get from my office, pick up T., take the train, be met by C., drop the family off and drive over to the dentist, all to find out whether Friday's shot of novocaine caused some sort of embollistic (?) bubble in my right face. The last part, the 45 minute drive across a city that claims to be 7 miles square, just about did me in. I arrived right before closing, parked illegally, and dumped a load of commuter rage on the poor receptionist. My agro-tude was rewarded by prompt service. Fortunately, no crackling beneath the surface, but probably some sort of larger sinus issue. This will likely be my last visit to this dentist. Even our shared Ukrainian roots aren't enough to bring me back over to that part of town. And now I have a chance to test my theory that I don't really have pregnancy-induced decay, that my visits have really involved a lot of faux-insurance-fleecing-drilling. We'll see.

In other news, we took a beautiful hike this weekend, a great reminder of why it is we live here. The little girl loved the air and the views and so did we.

Legwarmers.

Just finished a pair of legwarmers for T.
Thanks to shisomama for the pattern.

awkwardness resolved but...

I went to pick up the girl early yesterday and she had had a great day. We all talked a little bit and the awkwardness seem to have dissipated. Nonetheless, when I stumbled upon this yesterday, it seemed to capture the whole daycare conundrum for me:

"She was a beautiful baby. She blew shining bubbles of sound. She loved motion, loved light, loved color and music and textures. She would lie on the floor in her blue overalls patting the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur. She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all."

So there it is.

resumption

We're back from our travels, back to the grind and the little fungirl turns 8 months old today. As always, depositing her back into the care of the institution has been difficult, but yesterday she was only there for a few hours before being sent home with a fever. I'm convinced she piled on all of her outerwear and roasted herself until the teachers took her temperature, all so she could hang out with me some more. Her fever mysteriously vanished after we got home so we squeezed in one more bonus vacation day.

Apparently when the baby gets sent home with a fever, she can't return for 24 hours after the fever leaves. Understandable rule, but when the fever seems kind of bogus and we're faced with losing our only two days of childcare for the week, it just all seemed too ridiculous. I ended up calling the daycare last night and convincing them to take her back today which created some awkwardness this morning. This all brings up something I've been pondering for a while now: parenthood magnifies one's personal flaws. I'm a bit of socially stunted person normally, but with compromised sleep and this totally unfamiliar terrain, I feel like I'm putting my foot in my mouth with every interaction, and maybe they like T. less as a result. My concerns follow:

• The teachers often comment on T.'s outfits, the girl who doesn't wear pink. Doesn't seem that radical in this age, but apparently unusual still. Somehow when they say things like "wow, a baby wearing black," I hear "T., you have an asswipe for a parent."
• There's a wall in the classroom for photos of the babies' families. In four months I have yet to remember our family pic. I don't know why. It just never makes it to the to-do list. Our empty space screams "You think you're too f**cking cool for the photo board????"
• When I missed the 20 signs for the holiday breakfast, there was: "Oh, don't forget to stop by the parent's appreciation breakfast, [unappreciative bitch]."
• Did I totally screw up by not giving holiday gifts/sending our X-mas card to the classroom for the photo wall/making some kind of holiday related gesture? Isn't there a rule book to tell you what to do?
• And then, the whole fever episode yesterday. It's just so damn awkward. How does one "right" a situation like that?

Is there some kind of etiquette guide to parenthood?