Apocalypse now?

What is cnn.com thinking?

Never mind. I know. $$$$.

I am so disheartened by the news business right now. I’m curious how they choose which headlines will be t-shirt fodder.

Never mind. I know. The more salacious the better.

Even worse? Send us your picture wearing your shirt. Tell us your story. Give us content so we don’t have to do real work. Get on the “social-networking” bandwagon with people desperate for their 15 seconds of fame.

Pump up our Web site numbers! Make a little money! Sell our souls to the corporate gods. Again, I know. The news business went corporate long ago. Look at me! Selling out for a higher salary and an office with a view.

I can still be sad about this.

 

At least it forced me to clean it out

Christina showed us all the contents of her purse earlier this week, and I was instantly inspired to try it myself. When Sarah did it too, my fate was sealed.  After all, I wasn’t sure what was in there myself. My bag, purchased in Chinatown in New York City in 2004 (I never said I was an accessories maven), isn’t as big as many these days, but it holds a lot.

Enjoy the lovely painting done by R as the backdrop.

First, the pile off to the left there contains a variety of items I threw away, including approximately 11,000 grocery lists and receipts for Super Target. Interestingly, it also contains a prescription bottle of Naproxin from when I had thumb tendinitis. Expiration date: May 26, 2007. Also in that stack was my plane ticket for my connection from Atlanta to Savannah back in February and a plastic container from the cheese samples R ate at the grocery store on Sunday morning. And all the political paraphernalia acquired before I went in to vote on Tuesday.

The other stack? Beyond the normal cell phone, keys, BlackBerry and wallet, I have the mom staples of fruit snacks, baby wipes, a Sesame Street juice box, hand sanitizer, three suckers, a plastic Boots action figure from R’s second birthday cake and (call me Kelly Ripa) a tide-to-go pen. I also have the woman must-haves: tampon, maxi pad, lip gloss, hand lotion, pens, cough drops, cold medicine, pack of gum, etc.

Among the more random items: wine cork from a dinner in Las Vegas (January 2007), a ticket to the August 5, 2006 baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers at Busch Stadium (R’s first MLB game), three suckers, a press pass to a Barack Obama event in Indianapolis, a Wendy’s gift card from the summer they introduced the Baconater and were cris-crossing the country giving away free hamburgers and they coerced me to put on the Wendy’s wig and pose for a picture that ended up on their Web site all for a lousy $5 gift card and a picture of Dave and I on our first canoeing trip to the Ozarks as we came triumphantly out of a “rapid.”

That’s pretty much me - sentimental and practical all in one. One thing I don’t carry that I wish I did? A little pad of paper. That would really help when I get blog post ideas whilst driving home from work.

that’s the ticket

So I had planned some sort of inspiring, awesome post about how great it is that my primary vote finally counts for something and I waited in line for 40 minutes to fill out my ballot but that’s okay because democracy rocks and all sorts of power-to-the-people stuff. You know, something like what Frema wrote.

But then my candidate did not win my state, and some of the luster just rubbed right off Election Day.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sour grapes (okay, maybe a little bit – I haven’t picked a winner in a presidential election since 1996), and I know my little state’s results don’t mean a whole lot empirically. Especially in a world of delegates and, what’s this now, SUPER delegates? And you say they’ve been around since the Eighties? REALLY?

It did feel good to wait in line to vote. Normally, when I go vote before work I’m in and out in less than five minutes. And to have to wait, at 6:15 a.m., for the privilege to cast my ballot, was actually kind of cool. I waited in the gymnasium of an elementary school with a factory worker, a CPA, a stay-at-home-mom, a student and two school teachers. No one complained about waiting. We all commented on the abnormally long lines.

In graduate school, when I was young and idealistic and even more passionate about exercising my civic duty, I wrote my master’s thesis on increasing voter turnout. I rhapsodized about the virtues of mail-in voting (with Oregon as a model) and the future of possibly voting on the Internet. I guess what it really takes to get people out to the polls is a candidate they believe in. Why can’t we have that come around more often?

Everybody together now: oooooo, a BABY!!

Little I, snuggling his Mama. I’ve been told all he does is eat and sleep, and he occasionally has to be woken up for a feeding. This was not my new mother experience.

See, sleeping. I is a very good, if a bit jaundiced, baby.

Stay tuned for a more meaningful post about how I got to actually vote in a primary that counted for something. It was awesome.

PS Do I need to add a new “I’m an aunt” category?

Girls weekend

Dave took off for a bachelor party this weekend, leaving R and I to fend for ourselves, and I have to say, I was looking forward to it more than a little bit. And circumstances did not disappoint.

First, we spent some time at the library Saturday morning. R was enthralled, just overwhelmed by the sheer number of books. She climbed up and down off benches, picking books off the shelves, looking through them, ‘reading’ them to me, putting them back and picking more. I chose four for her to take home (which she now refers to as “mines books”), including Guess How Much I Love You. Now she runs around saying, “Mommy, I love you this much!” and I can’t think of a better outcome from a trip to the library.

When she woke up from her nap (and to a 20-degree temperature drop and suddenly cloudy skies), I packed her up to go downtown to see Whales and Dolphins 3D at our IMAX theater. While the 3D glasses didn’t last very long, the novelty of wearing glasses “like Mommy” and munching on popcorn “in the dark” helped keep her behavior under control for awhile. And, she pointed out gravely, as we watched a fin whale move toward us in the darkness, “Whales eat my popcorn, NO.”

We ordered pizza and consumed it on her princess table whilst watching Dumbo, then she sang “Happy Birthday” to her great grandma to be captured on video and emailed. She went to bed tired and happy, and woke up at 7 a.m. ready to go again. We had a nice breakfast of pancakes and bacon then went grocery shopping together.

After her nap, I let her paint with her new easel outside on the back deck. She was lovely and priceless. When her daddy got home, they snuggled together in his recliner watching Dora the Explorer. It’s times like these that I want to remember – nothing special, nothing exciting, just the pure joy of discovering the world with a toddler and sharing it with my husband.

I’ll take abnormal

R is not a normal child. Normal children hug stuffed animals as they drift off to sleep. They have a favorite doll they bring to bed with them each night. While she does have an attachment to a particular blanket, and occasionally asks for her “Baby” to sleep with her, she has quite a different requirement for bedtime  comfort.

Every night, she chooses a book – or three – that must accompany her to bed. They must be placed just so, propped up around her head so she can see the covers. Sometimes, when Dave and I check on her before our own bed time, we’ll find she’s plucked one or more of the books from their arrangement and is either clutching it tightly or sleeping on it awkwardly.

The child loves books. And I think it’s awesome.

We started reading to R the very first night she came home from the hospital, mostly because we wanted to establish a “bed time routine” so she would “sleep through the night” sooner. But it has obviously had other benefits.

Some of my best childhood memories were spent at the library. I remember the pride I felt at getting my first library card – it was orange paper with a metal strip for imprinting on the checkout cards. You couldn’t get one until you could write your name, and I remember practicing and practicing until I could write all those letters (15 total!) at the then-precocious age of 4.

I remember the story lady at the library – she wasn’t very nice and vaguely resembled the Wicked Witch of the West. I remember checking out dozens of Nancy Drew Case Files and even Sweet Valley High books in middle school (blue card) until I graduated to an adult card (yellow) and discovered historical biographies and the Bronte sisters. I remember watching my mother check out the maximum number of books allowed (at the time it was 6) and reading all of them before they were due back.

I want to share all this with R, make her love reading and look forward to library trips like we were going to an amusement park. And I think I might start tomorrow, with her first-ever trip to the library.

Side note: Because some people are asking about the baby, he was born Friday at 5:56 p.m., 6 pounds, 10 ounces of adorableness that I HAVE YET TO SEE. After we were all packed and ready to leave yesterday for Pittsburgh, R came down with a cough and a fever and general malaise (which she has since transmitted to her mother). Not wanting to expose an infant not even out of the womb for a week to those toddler germy germs, I cancelled my trip. We have tentatively rescheduled for the first week in June, when Dave can go with and we can take a trip to the Pittsburgh Zoo like we are grownups with children and families of our own or something. Seriously. How did that happen?

You oughta know I’m perfect

I was 18 years old in 1995 when Alanis Morissette burst onto the pop scene with Jagged Little Pill and its anthem for women scorned everywhere, “You Oughta Know.” I was old enough and experienced enough to appreciate the sentiment, having four whole love affairs already under my belt, three ending badly (i.e. not by my own choice).

But this entry isn’t about that song. When Dave bought me the ipod nano a few months ago (I know, a little late to the 21^st century over here), it gave me an excuse to pull out all my old cds and excitedly dump them all into itunes so I could jam out to Live’s “Pillar of Davidson” followed immediately by Britney Spears “Hit Me, Baby… One More Time.” If that isn’t music nirvana, what is?

And no, I’m not a fan of Nirvana. Though I do own a Hole album. (I know, the kids probably aren’t calling them albums these days and that’s probably why I didn’t get an ipod until February.)

Anyway, one of the Alanis Morissette songs I decided I wanted to jam to every 22 hours when it comes up in the shuffle mode was “Perfect.” If you remember, that song is all about kids whose parents push them too hard to live out their own unfulfilled dreams and be awesome and great at everything and hot damn, that spoke to me at 18.

But when it came on yesterday, 13 years later, I had a completely different perspective. It was more cautionary tale than solidarity song. Because please oh please don’t let me be an overbearing mom who expects too much of her kid and doesn’t really love her the way she is unless she’s perfect.

I don’t think my parents were really like those in the song, though they did have high expectations, especially academically. And I plan to have similar expectations of R  - because if you don’t have high expectations, what’s the alternative? Low expectations? That’s not really an option.

But the moment was really revelatory to me, both on a parenting level and a “passage-of-time” level. Because what’s next? I won’t be dancing in a cage at a nightclub to “Intergalatic” by the Beastie Boys anymore?

Wait. I won’t, will I?

babysitter in a box

 

is it time to consider myself a failure as a parent, now that my child can sing along to the Nick Jr. On Demand theme music?

giving assvice

There are so many things I want to tell my sister right now. There’s the obvious statement that her life is never going to be the same.

But how is it different? How are we changed by parenthood?

There are big things, like having another person to keep alive. But there are also a lot of little things. Like how from now on, if she ever passes a mirror or a window with her son, she won’t look at her own reflection anymore, she’ll look at him.

She will never sleep the sound sleep of the childless ever again, even a year from now when he’s sleeping through the night.

Her life’s choices will be motivated by worry – and sometimes fear – a lot more than ever before. She will never think of herself first again.

She will talk about poop and pee and vomit in normal conversation and never think twice about it. She will also clean up all of the above with equally as little thought.

Her heart will hurt more and rejoice more, and she will feel it more acutely than ever before.

She will be amazed at how proud she can feel over little things like a perfect latch or a tiny gurgle that sounds almost a little bit like “mama.”

She will find herself tearing up at unusual times – family events, preschool programs, kite-flying excursions, Sesame Street Live. I don’t think the pregnancy hormones ever really go away…

Every day will be an adventure. Sometimes it will be challenging, like growing up with a sister just 17 months apart in age. Sometimes it will be wonderful, like growing up with a sister just 17 months apart in age.

If she’s like me, she might sometimes find herself lost, find her mommyhood taking over her life and crowding out her sense of self. But I think sometimes that’s okay. I think giving up parts of our selves temporarily for our children is normal. But I would also tell her to not lose herself completely. Because her son will benefit most from having a happy, whole mom. And she is going to be a wonderful mom.

OMG OMG OMG

Dear Internetz:

My baby sister is in labor RIGHT NOW. I am going to be an aunt for like, real. Not just because I married some guy whose sister already had kids. Though they are pretty cool too.

This will be my REAL BLOOD NEPHEW. And I don’t have any of those (nephews, I mean, blood or otherwise). She says she doesn’t think he’ll come until tomorrow. But I say you never can tell with these things. So I’m pricing flights to Pittsburgh, PA.

And BTW, she voted yesterday through some painful contractions. Way to do her civic duty!

Also, she’s the one on the right above. And if you didn’t know that already, I need to go on a diet.

Hugs and kisses,

Michelle