The thorn in my side

Okay, can I talk down Anonyhub for a moment? The other night we had a intense fight over a subject we haven't fought about in a while, but one that slices right to the heart of our incompatibilities.

Anonyhub loves Disney. Not just the man, although he does like and respect Walt. He loves the movies, he loves the product. And above all else, he loves...he adores...he yearns for the theme parks. After college, he seriously considered moving down to Florida and trying to become an Imagineer.

I don't...I just can't....sigh.

He doesn't get why pretty much everyone we know is so unwaveringly anti-Disney. And he was the first to make me really think about why I'm so dismissive. It's self-evident, right? When pressed I can offer some beefs: the incessant branding of everything and anything they can get their hands on , the overwhelming creepiness of their tv shows, the blandness of the parks. He gets especially tetchy when I mention the parks. Especially tetchy. Anyone who doesn't think the parks are magical is a 17th level Ebeneezer Scrooge, hellbent on depriving all children everywhere of Christmas and the Easter bunny and St. Patrick's Day all at once. If I don't like the parks then I don't get what makes him tick and maybe we aren't meant to be together.

So obviously the parks strike a nerve. Why? Well, I've managed to effectively keep myself in the dark about this, since it was I fight I could avoid. I haven't been willing to go to the mat to deface the mouse, as much as I have no respect for him. But over the roughly seven years that Anonyhub and I have been together, I've managed to splice together a few clues.

Let's just start with the mean premise on which my theory rests: my in-laws suck. Not unequivocably; they aren't without merit, but as Anonyhub's parents they kind of blew. They are blue-collar, hard-working Iowa folk. Together since jr. high, married right out of high school, didn't go to college. Bought a little house and scrimped and saved and built onto it and filled it up with two kids. Like to laugh and drink and get together with friends and family. Sounds good, right?

Okay, here's the part where I spew like a condescending asshole. They are also one of the blandest, most vacuous families I ever spent time with. Anonyhub's mother spent much of the 30 plus years of her marriage decorating and redecorating their house. She is notorious for repainting a room oh, seven or eight times until she gets it the color that she likes it. And then she'll move on to another room and start the whole process again. They spend hours and hours shopping for end tables and lamps and pillow shams, returning them again and again. She is a mild hypochondriac, complaining of this or that ailment and telling you in detail about her last trip to the doctor. She talks non-stop and rarely comes to a point. I stopped trying to figure out where her narratives were going because they don't. I can tell when she's being gossipy because she is circuitous and vague with narrowed eyes and a lowered voice. And I can tell when she's telling an affectionate story because her voice gets squealy and she laughs a lot. The content is more or less dada. Anonyhub's dad is open and friendly and laughs out loud a lot, but life is little more than a series of tasks to be completed. He is constantly doing small jobs around the house, or making jovial but disparaging comments to his children about why they aren't on the same hamster wheel - clearing their gutters or drywalling the basement or whatnot.

Enter their son, a high-strung, moody boy with a penchant for poetry and drawing. He got the high-strung from his mom. The poetry and drawing bit he got from god knows where. All of the things they like to do, Anonyhub was never that interested in doing. And vice versa. They are a star-crossed family, to a certain extent. He loves them. They are his parents. They love him. He is their child. But none of them have any idea of what makes the other tick. This troubles Anonyhub's parents not in the least. But being an overly sensitive chap, it troubled (and still troubles) Anonyhub greatly.

So they went to Disney World when Anonyhub was seven or so. This is where things get a little fuzzy for me, but he loved getting immersed in this other world. He thought he would explode with delight. And when he realized that people had created this other world from nothing, from swampland, something important was cauterized in him. I think he was suddenly introduced to this vision of creativity that he wasn't getting from anywhere else. It somehow became a liferaft. Micky is like a neglectful daddy, who, no matter how poorly he behaves, has a son that loves him fiercely just for siring him.

Because, you know, why else would anyone love the guy?

So I suck it up when Anonyhub gets enthusiastic with Anonybabe about all things Disney. As long as she is also exposed to many many other kinds of entertainment I don't much see the harm. Especially if I can convince Anonyhub that he Anonybabe should spend time alone in the Magic Kingdom, while I go polish off a few roller coasters at Boardwalk & Baseball. I'll just have to hope she's articulate enough to explain herself if she doesn't share daddy's penchant for the Small World ride. Otherwise he' s going to think I turned her against it.

The love of my life

Can I talk up Anonyhub for a mo? He writes lovely songs. These beautiful, haunting, jarring, I'm -not-sure-what-you're-talking-about-but-it-makes-me-think-of-that-one-time songs. Among my favorites:

Soon after we started dating he wrote a song about how we almost weren't a couple. I'd just gotten out of a relationship and so tried to make Anonyhub a boytoy instead of a proper boyfriend - keeping my distance because I wanted some alone time even though I was magnetically drawn to Anonyhub. He got, understandably, tired of being treated as a non-emoting fuckbot and was ready to bolt. Then the very night he was going to tell me g'bye we had a sweet date - a let-me-cuddle-you-from-behind-while-we-watch-an-amazing-concert-kind of date - and he decided to give me more time to come around. Good thing, because I couldn't fight the love much longer. The song is about the pain of being vulnerable to someone who isn't careful with your heart and the inner fight between being guarded and being open. It's just lovely. I mean, I suppose I could be upset that it paints me as a woman to be wary of, but why? I was. I didn't know what the fuck I wanted and was inconsiderate as hell. I'm flattered that he decided to stick around in the face of all his inner turmoil, and the song manages to capture his desire for love and his need for kindness over a beautiful guitar line. Emo at its finest, if you like that sort of thing. And even if you don't, you may be won over anyhow.

And then there's a song that he wrote for our wedding. It's about the attempt to connect and how despite the fact that we're each island and in a sense don't ever really make contact, trying to reach each other across the divide has so much beauty and grace in it that it's enough. What? A depressing concept on which to found a marriage, you say? Pish posh. Hearing Anonyhub express the same ambivalence and fear that I felt to committing made me love him more. And if you could just hear the opening bars, this spare picked-out guitar line makes you ache in all the right ways.

My only complaint about his music is that he won't play it anywhere but our living room. His job is partly to blame: he's worked in record stores since he was 14 and so has spent more than half of his life picking bad bands apart. He's also not that great of a musician in the traditional sense - he has no sense of rhythm and a high wheedly voice. But these songs! These songs he writes are so delicate and touching and inventive and beautiful. His ability to write them just exceeds his ability to play them. I told him last night he needs to play them out and see if he can find people who'll cover them and do with them what he can only do in his head. I wish I could convince him that the songs don't need to be perfect to be worthwhile, and that they don't need to be perfectly put together before he lets people hear them.

Stick in the Mud

I keep putting off writing this post because there's a hidden mountain of personal angst and government inertia and medical testiness surrounding baby vaccinations - one that I didn't really know existed before having a child, and one that I'm loathe to try to climb on in one post. In a nutshell, I'm frustrated with our country's medical system, I'm impressed with the parents who have decided to fight the power and get as much hard-won information as they can about what is getting injected into their babies' bloodstreams, and I wish I'd put 100 times as much effort into reading up on baby wellness alone before Anonybabe was born.

It's a complicated and emotionally charged topic. Last week I finally got my hands on this excellent book about childhood vaccinations from someone who seems to take a pretty balanced approach when it comes to deciphering the why's and the why not's. I wish I'd read it before Anonybabe was born, but as it was, I put a lot more effort into getting ready for the birth than getting ready for the no-less-seismic-and-much-longer-lasting aftermath. (But I guess that's what first babies are, right? Practice? *Anonymom sighs into her hands*).

I will say that I decided to give Anonybabe a full round of CDC recommended vaccinations and I wish that I hadn't. Most of them seem completely unnecessary and if the vaccine conspiracy theorists are correct, they could be dangerous.

I didn't think about shots at all before getting knocked up, and only began to realize they existed around month eight of my pregnancy, when I was interviewing pediatricians and met a nurse practitioner I really liked at the office I ended up taking Anonybabe to. She asked whether we planned on getting shots. "I guess so," I answered. I'd gotten all of mine as a child and I (debatedly) turned out okay. "We recommend the full round of immunizations for all children in this office; the benefits outweigh the risks," she said. "I'll give you some handouts." I shrugged an okay.

I forewent any shots for Anonybabe at the hospital right after her birth; that had more to do with the hospital pediatrician than me. Although no shots are always better than shots, I could have been swayed either way by being told "you need this".

After Anonybabe was home, most of my mental energy was spent trying to get Anonybabe to nurse regularly without chafing my nipples off and to figure out why I was still bleeding. I spent a lot of time in an absolute daze. But when I could, I tried to cram in as much of "What to Expect in the First Year" that I could. I gathered that some people really were concerned and upset about giving shots to their children.

So before her 4 week appointment, I read the thick section on shots in "What to Expect" as well as the handouts the doctor's office had given me. I didn't find anything helpful about vaccinations on the Internet at that point; I only had time for cursory searches and the anti-vaccination sites I found seemed too shrill and conspiracy theory-y for me to trust them. So I listened to the literature which told me that the risks of getting sick were higher than the risks of getting vaccinated. The rare adverse reaction to the vaccines seemed unlikely. Plus I believe in doing what's best for public health, and I thought getting the vaccines would help prevent the spread of serious diseases.

I felt okay about the first round of shots at week 4. The nurse helped. She was calming and adept, letting us hold Anonybabe and lining up all the shots so she could administer them as quickly as possible. Anonybabe yelped as the needle went in and then immediately calmed. I watched Anonybabe carefully for any reactions, but saw none.

The second round of shots at week 8 were a nightmare. I had a very bad feeling about them going in, but was embarrassed to cancel the shots based on an oogy feeling. Again, I'd read what I could find on shots, but was still exhausted, still bleeding, still confused, still prone to listen to our pediatrician. The experience this time was horrible. A different nurse had us hold Anonybabe stiff and prone on the table, and then took her time giving each shot, putting on a bandaid after each injection and even explaining that she was waiting between shots to "give her a minute". A minute to what? To scream bloody murder? Anonybabe continued to scream as we clothed her and carried her down to the parking garage. She eventually developed a large hard bump under one of the injection sites, which we were told was normal, but it was still unnerving. The bump didn't go away for several weeks and I beat myself up for just going with the flow.

Before the six month visit, I tried to find more vaccination information but found everything I read very confusing. Aluminum was suspect but had been taken out of vaccines? No medical establishment had been able to link vaccines to autism? I grilled the pediatrician when we took Anonybabe in for her six month appointment, and was dissatisfied with the vague answers I got about the safety of the vaccines, but still felt I should get them rather than not. We asked for the competent nurse again and the vaccination went smoothly.

But for other various reasons I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the pediatrician I'd picked. I looked for another who I heard was more encouraging about co-sleeping and extended breastfeeding and would work with you whether or not you wanted to get shots. We took her in for a 9 month (no shot) checkup and he told us he suggested a less rigorous schedule than the one we'd be following. Since then I've had more time and more brain cells firing at once, and have taken the opportunity to read more pro and anti-shot literature. The more I read, the more I'm sold on a much more watered down shot schedule.

So we're taking Anonybabe in for a one year appointment next week and I am going to definitely go for two of the recommended shots, I'm going to turn down three or four, and I'm going to grill the pediatrician about two or three I'm on the fence about.

This whole process of deciding whether or not to give shots has been completely confusing and overwhelming. I want what's best for Anonybabe and I don't want to compromise her health either way. I wish there was a ton more transparency about what's getting pumped into our kids veins, and good loud-mouthed parents have been demanding it. I hope if/when we have another kid we won't be the only ones who are better prepared to answer the to vaccinate/not to vaccinate question. I hope the doctors and vaccine makers are as well.

Let us Play

The seeds for my religion of play were planted god knows when, but they germinated when I watched the Dogtown and Z-boys documentary. The skaters in it were wholeheartedly devoted to skating because they loved it. Their skating utopia didn't last, but they at least got to taste it. After seeing it I was determined that I was going to play more, but I didn't really know how to go about it.

Baby steps, yes?

Play like you're learning

I am 33. My "Jesus Year" as Anonyhub calls it. As in, the year by which J.C. had gotten a rep as the son of god and founded a new religion (also the year he got himself whacked, but I'm gonna focus on the former rather than the latter at the moment). Anonyhub means it as an incentive to shit or get off the pot (or as fodder to beat yourself up for all of the things you still haven't attempted to accomplish, but ditto to the first parenthesis.)

Anyway, in celebration of this, my Jesus Year, I present a short list of things I've learned so far. Perhaps I'll come back and add to the list as the year progresses. Perhaps not, as "Remember stuff" hasn't managed to make the list yet.

• My parents weren't so bad. Yes, they were. No, they weren't. It doesn't really matter, does it? They are who they are, and I love them anyway.

• It's okay to suck at stuff. In fact, you can suck at everything and live a fairly happy life. The world - the world at large, and even yours specifically - doesn't hinge on whether you're good or bad at stuff. "Good" and "bad" are petty irrelevant terms when you are just doing things you want to do.


• Life is cumulative. Everything passes. The good and the bad. The visits to the in-laws and the chocolate-dipped ice cream cones. The astonishingly pig-headed comment you made to your sister and the surprisingly sweet moment your daughter sports her first tooth -- all water under the bridge, my friend, even as they are happening. And tomorrow you will have another chance to right your wrongs and wrong your rights.


• Play is work is work is play. I'm still not sure what that means, but I know I'm being led to worship at the altar of play & feel good about it. I'm going to start at the beginning and have Anonybabe and Anonyhub teach me how it's done.

That's it. That's all I've learned so far. Check back in another 11 years and maybe I'll have more to add to the list.

Writer's block

I'm taking yet another writing class; two at once!

I have lots of blog notes scribbled in a yellow note pad that stays folded up in my purse, but I rarely get around to posting them because I'm doing homework a lot of the time. But today I say screw homework! I'm gonna do some blog work! These posts may not be as fresh as the day I thought of them, but I miss posting.

Also, I need a break from my personal essay class cohorts. My social anxiety apparently extends to the eclass, because I worry that I've already overstepped my constructive criticism boundaries with my classmates. Of 18 people in the class, I seem to be the only one who offered suggestions for the way other's essays could be improved. I got no such helpful comments from my classmates. Everyone is chatting amiably about their lives and how touching each other's essay is. It's all very nice. And I have no desire to join in.

I also think I may have scared off a potential writing group buddy. I read in an advice column of a Chicago woman who last year got her graduate degree in writing, but since then couldn't build up the impetus to write. She was scared of putting herself out there. The columnist gave her great advice: don't be scared of the poor output that will inevitably come, just write every day; find a group of writers you can share your worst and best writing with, etc. I wrote the columnist to say, hey, I'm a Chicago writer in the same boat, can you forward this on to Chicago woman and see if she wants to start a critique group? Only I tried really hard to be witty and charming and charasmatic in my email to him/her. He did, and she did, but after one follow-up email from me, she disappeared from the face of the planet. Methinks I scared her off with my childish enthusiasm. Sigh. I'm not taking it to heart like I would've in the past, but I'm disappointed when people don't accept my sometimes puppy-dog like advances.

I feel like the android in the corner. I feel like the puppydog in the laundry room.

Either way, now I've got some space to myself, so I might as well do some blogging. *Shrug* Guess that's just the way I roll.

Where's the know-when-to-say-when?

Anonybabe has expanded on her where's the egg-shaker act over the weekend. First she'd put bits of food in her water glass and cock her head and make a "W" with her arms. "Where's the chicken?" I'd ask. Without breaking eye contact she'd reach into her class and grope for the soggy poultry, a "Wait for it! Waaaait for it....!" expression on her face, until she triumphantly pulled out the food with a "ta-daaa" look and popped the food in her mouth.

Next she morphed her disappearing act with her tendency to throw things off of every high surface. She'll throw her toy giraffe off of the changing table. "W" arms. She'd throw her book out of her crib. "W" arms. She'd throw food off of her high chair. "Bye bye food" I'd tell her.

It was cute the first 600 times, but we were both tiring of the act by yesterday evening. But that's okay, she is already working on her next feat: laying headbands on top of her head and socks on top of her feet in an approximation of getting dressed.

Random tidbits

So, in case you missed it in my lists below, Anonybabe celebrated her first birthday Easter Sunday. As I watched her lay a big kiss on her Pooh Bear or wriggle away from me on the changing table, I got this funny feeling that...how do I put this...finally, in my mind (the place where I happen to spend most of my time) her life is more about her than Anonyhub and me. There was a striking this-is-the-first-day-of-the-rest-of-her-life moment while we were driving to Easter lunch with Anonyhub's family. Heretofore, it's been so hard to see her as anything more than a baby, unimaginable that she will grow out of it into a girl, a woman, etc. On Sunday, I could see it without performing imagination gymnastics. And the thought made me proud. And happy.


It is amazing to witness the quick and complete shutdown of Anonybabe's personality when she is uncomfortable. She wouldn't crack a smile for her Arkansas cousins unless maybe she was in my arms, and she burst into tears several times (highly unusual for her) while we were down south. On the way to Easter with the in-laws, an hour plus drive, Anonybabe was giggling and whining, playing peekaboo and smacking theatrically on a square of peanut butter sandwich. As soon as we arrived, she set her face into an impartial grimace and clung to me or Anonyhub. When we would plop her in her grandfather or great uncle's lap, she would stare ahead stonily, only showing signs of life if we got close enough for her to reach out and try to grab on to Anonyhub or me. As soon as we got back in the car that evening, she resumed her gibbering and kicking and grunting. I get it, Anonydear. I soooooo get it. And I suppose I should be happy I have a wealth of experience to share with you when it comes to playing opossum in awkward social situations. But I'm a little sad that others don't get to see what a sweetheart you are.


Last night, Anonybabe got incredibly animated when Anonyhub got home from work. She has one of those egg shakers and after playing "which hand is it in?" with Anonyhub for a minute, she took to hiding the egg herself under the Laz-E-Boy. She would slide the egg under the chair and then look at us and raise her hands, palms up, to shoulder height. "Where is the egg?" we would ask her, raising our arms in a mirror of her "Who knows?" gesture. She would then proceed to pull the egg out to wild applause, shaking it madly and cackling and squealing. It was, quite frankly, adorable.

Farting away the time

Want to know what I've been doing rather than blogging these days?

Well, other than the trip to see my sister in Arkansas (included with the cost of the trip: one two-legged, smalled planed flight into to a gorgeous lightening storm, one surprising sensation of love for my home-state when I felt the thunderstorm whipping warm air across my bare skin, one Skoal dipping brother-in-law who mumbles, one double-wide trailer, three hellion children, one overwhelmed daughter, one grocery store that wouldn't know fresh spinach if it bit it on the foot...and forget organic anything, three trips to Sonic, five jokes at my expense for feeding Anonybabe weird things like eggs and green peppers, two trips to visit a high school friend and her dog that Anonybabe showered with open-mouthed kisses, one visit from my father and step mother, two Anonybabe meltdowns when they tried to hold her, one ensuing six-foot long caterpillar as a present for Anonybabe, one trip to the post office to ship said caterpillar home, two lovely hours spent sitting in the yard sunning my legs and watching Anonybabe gleefully pull up grass in nothing but a diaper and a onesie, approximately 12 movies and 6 shows I never would have watched on my own...Kickin It Old Skool?, Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector?, approximately one show that kicked ass, one nasty virus that laid my sister up for two days, six secret eyebrow raises towards my sister for being too hard on her stepdaughter, one moment of epiphany when I realize the child is aggravating and it's hard not to give her a hard time, and one flight home in a massive storm)

and a visit from the in-laws (included were countless hours at the stinking mall, seven tetchy comments about the fact that we don't feed Anonybabe sugary food and wouldn't let her eat the goldfish crackers or teddy grahams being fed to her 9 month old cousin, 6 long hours where Anonybabe was left crying in the arms of her aunt and grandparents while Anonyhub and I worked, one victorious carrot cake recipe, one very pleasant first birthday party (Anonybabe's) at the Garfield Conservatory, one ex-botany teacher we ran into there and fed cupcakes in exchange for a guided tour of the fern room, one Anonybabe who was thrilled to eat her first processed sugar in the form of said cupcakes, one father-in-law who crowed victoriously at Anonybabe's obvious pleasure in eating said sugar, many thoughtful and cute and amazing gifts from many thoughtful, cute and amazing friends, one forward facing car seat, one very long drive to an uncle-in-laws for Easter Sunday lunch, one Easter Egg hunt, one yippy dog, countless aunts and uncles and cousins, one unwanted but admittedly cute Easter outfit from the mother-in-law, one dysfunctional camera, 6 mini-cheesecakes, one nap on a floral couch, and one Wendy's Frostie)

I've been writing stuff for a couple of writing classes I'm taking,

and I've been watching these:

Follow the quivering bloody muscle

I like saying "follow my gut" rather than "follow my heart" when it comes to reading my inner compass. Same idea, but "following my heart" sounds so twee. So Hallmark. Even though the heart itself looks more like a quivering gut than a valentine. And the whole process of following your heart is a lot less like pink candy mints and calling in to Delilah than it is like that scene from Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom. Messy. Ugly. Ultimately fun as hell.

You know the saying, we're all naked beneath our clothes? When I was in jr. high, I was told to picture any person who made me nervous naked and/or taking a dump. Supposedly this would help me accept them as another vulnerable human being. It worked particularly well on one condescending dude in my class.

Well, we're all a writhing mass of blood and guts and fat and nerves and bile beneath our neatly washed hair and deodoranted armpits. I'm going to start picturing the joyful glut of bodily fluids and tissue that make up life as I know it when I start to get too uptight about....well, anything. Life is messy, life is fun. Life is complicated, life takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Etc., etc.

P.S. I found this clip looking for the one above. I love people and god bless you tube

Hump year

I gave birth to Anonybabe physically almost a year ago, but it feels like I spent the next 12 months giving birth to her emotionally. When she was plopped onto my chest in the delivery room, her black hair plastered to her scalp in little amniotic fluid waves, we stared flatly at each other. Her grey eyes echoed the empty "huh! There you are" that I felt. That seemed like the moment our emotional gestation began. Like the physical one, when it actually happened I couldn't feel it; it passed under the radar. But of course just like the moment t&a turned to dna (holla, big boi), a profound chain of events was set in motion.

I spent a lot of this first year in a state of terror and sleeplessness, which sounds bad, but from everything I've heard and experienced, was pretty natural. I took it upon myself to care for a new little life. Spasms of fear mixed with equally strong spasms of love makes sense.

And now that I've put in my time and Anonybabe's personality is starting to really come in and I'm starting to enjoy it, I am really grateful that this past year happened. And that it is over.

There's this guy I knew of in college, and then ran into when I was newly pregnant. We proceeded to have a nice talk (he being married and childless) about the to-breed-or-not-to-breed debate. When I happened upon his name a couple of weeks ago in some campus news, I decided to give him an unsolicited update. He and his wife had been teetering on the same pre-baby edge Anonyhub & were on and assuming they hadn't gone over it, I thought they'd appreciate the down-low. So I emailed them my then-current breakdown of parenting: 20 parts hardcore suckitude to 23 parts transcendent to 25 parts gruelling work to 16 parts sleep deprivation to 8 parts pleasant to 8 parts bore.... It seemed kind of a harsh assessment, but this first year was harsh.

I was also sharing with another friend how hard the first year had been on my marriage and he - being in the throes of it himself as a first-time father of a 6 month old - quickly postulated that the difficulties were a hump you just get over. He's right. Even as I was giving my pessimistic assessment of parenting and marriage on parenting, I think I might have just been cresting. I need a moment to look back at it and catch my breath and say out loud "Jesus K-rist!! That was some hump!"

So I'm feeling ready to head toward the next hump as Anonybabe's birthday (Easter Sunday) approaches.

Praise be.

Okay, here, as a stream-of-consciousness segue, is a sacrilicious link I enjoyed just yesterday.

See monkeys

There are so many myths of perfection out there:
perfect health, the perfect marriage, the perfect job, perfect breasts, the perfect salad.

All of them suck. Except the perfect salad. Anything food related can be perfect, because then "perfect" means "highly pleasurable", which is exactly what food should be.

It is what all of those things should be, but my vision of perfection for each of the others is too sanitary, too unrealistic.

I started that playful parenting book I mentioned before. I've only gotten through the introductory chapter, but I'm liking what I see. It made me feel better about, well about being a goofwad in general. In particular it cast a new light on the time I made Anonybabe laugh by fake crying when she would "offer" me food and then pull it back at the last minute. The real belly laughs it elicited made me uneasy, and I thought, should I be encouraging this? Laughing at another person's pain? Albeit a very hammy and obviously fake pain?

Apparently I should. Supposedly it allows her to vent steam about always being the one from whom things are taken at will. This book postulates that apart from being fun, play is an incredibly healing way to help kids overcome and sort through their bad feelings. A Pan's Labyrinth therapy, if you will. Through fantasy, and sometimes an ugly, life-mirroring fantasy, the kid (or adult) can start to feel in control and confident again.

I'm a little perturbed that my first instinct was and probably will be to sanitize Anonybabe's play. Long ago, Anonyhub asked me what motivated me deep down. He thought it was funny when I answered, "You mean other than guilt and fear?" and then couldn't get much further. So that tells you a little something about how we were raised. It'll be hard to shake the shame-mongering monkey on our backs, but there's something about this idea of play that has promise.

Letting Anonybabe spend her first year in our bed was my first follow-my-heart parenting technique.

Making a religion out of joy and play seems to by my second.

I was hoping to get more of these clear cues from my gut than one per year, but I suppose I should be happy any of them are getting past those monkeys. Guilt and shame can run a mean defense.

Pass the Ham

I told you about Anonybabe's recent tendency to zerbert any exposed flesh that might be lying around. At first she did it because she liked the sound and feel of it. But now she's fishing for a reaction.

And when I fed her with her spoon this weekend and let her guide the bite to her own mouth, she would leave the spoon in, sticking out, and give me a look like "How silly am I? Huh? Yea?". To which I would give her the same blank stare she was giving me just a month or so ago.

I don't like it when she hams it up like this, but I know she didn't learn it from Anonyhub. My anything-for-a-laugh tactic of child-rearing is already coming back to bite me in the face.

Oh well. Maybe we can do an unfunny mother-daughter stand-up routine for show and tell, complete with zerberts, ridiculous dances, absurd make-it-up-as-you-go-along song lyrics, and spoons in our mouths.

Or maybe I can learn to break the cycle of unfunny by just letting us sit and frown a lot. That sounds slightly more palatable.

So....friggin....tired

......on top of losing an hour to daylight's savings and staying up late to do my long overdue Sunday homework



......Anonybabe woke up at 3:45am in the am after going to sleep at 11:00pm.



......and then didn't go back to sleep until 6:30.



......at least Anonyhub and I got to split the shift.



......tonight Anonyhub gets to go to the movies with his pals.



......I hope to god Anonybabe is sleepy.



I'm barely keeping it together on 2 cups of very strong coffee. I so want to go see....(can't...think...need....sleep)...Dan Savage and some other essayists do a reading tonight at the Lakeview Theater, but I don't know that it's kosher to bring even a quiet baby to one of those things. Plus, don't I need a lot of sleep? I'm willing to bet Anonybabe will be bright eyed and bushy-tailed when I get home, and being so close to the bed without being able to go to it is going to be torture.



Is this penance for celebrating Anonybabe's "smooth" transition to her own bed too soon? Doesn't matter. I'm beat.

Wait, did that just happen? Part 2

For the past three nights, as Anonybabe has elected to sleep straight through from bedtime to dawn in her own bed, I have regressed to the sleeping pattern I had when she was born. She slumbers peacefully while I keep waking up in a panic, to see what's happening, check her breathing, make sure she hasn't tangled a blanket over her head or caught an extremity in the bars of the crib.

I slept in a crib from day one, and when I was a kid, I didn't want to sleep in my parents' queen size. I liked being in my own bed, where I could whisper to my dolls, make a tent out of my covers, and toss and turn freely. My parents' bed was too crowded, too warm. Their bodies were loud, two adults breathing through their mouths and lightly snoring and smacking their lips and occasionally rolling over. Plus the bed smelled of them times ten. My dad's spicy sweat-tinged scent and my mom's sweet & sour aura hung in a heavy cloud over their bed. I would only go to them after a rare nightmare, needing their comfort, but not really comfortable until I could calm down enough to climb over them and back to my own twin bed, with its cool sheets and only the warm pocket I made with my body.

I kind of surprised myself by even considering "co-sleep" with Anonybabe. We live in a one-bedroom, and I figured we would all need as much private space as we could muster. But when the time came, my question to myself about it wasn't "did I want to sleep in my parent's bed", but would I want to know I was welcome there. And the answer - to my surprise - was a strong unhesitating yes!

Aside from being hella convenient, laying Anonybabe between Anonyhub and I was a personal heartfelt gesture of welcome. A symbol of openheartedness that I could hang all of my new conflicting emotions about parenting on. I may not have known what to do about anything else, but of this much I was inexplicably sure: welcoming Anonybabe into our bed had allied itself in my mind with welcoming her wholeheartedly into our lives. I decided to use co-sleeping to syphon this powerful sense of acceptance and love into my daughters life until it didn't work for us anymore.

The tide has turned, but not abruptly. We decided to give Anonybabe her little bud-bed attached to our own and as we all get more comfortable with it, it will break off into its own full-bloom bed, and then eventually it and she will branch off into their own room.

Can I celebrate this here? Doing something that feels right and having it work out? Because I try to do the right thing lots of times and can never quite feel comfortable with my methods or the outcome. Maybe I'll live to regret our sleeping arrangement, but so far I've enjoyed every moment.

Nutty Professor

I took a pregnancy test the other day for a couple of reasons, even though near celibacy, an IUD, and continuing breastfeeding mean I was being more than a little paranoid:



1. A friend of mine just got accidentally pregnant with her 3rd child. Her womb wasn't quite as safeguarded as mine, and she and her husband are definitely more randy, but it still freaked my shit out.


2. Due to the IUD and breastfeeding, I still don't really have periods, so how would I know? And if I were to get pregnant with an IUD, things would get ugly fast. As unlikely as it was, I wanted to make sure.


3. I went through a week of eating voraciously. Eating sugar and dairy voraciously. Lots of fruit juices, and lots and lots of milk...this also hasn't happened since I was with child.


4. I have been incredibly, incredibly spacey lately. As forgetful as I was during pregnancy, when I lost my keys a grand total of four times. (To be fair, I think my burgeoning belly and my maternity coat with its shallow pockets had something to do with that). Forgetting to take letters my husband asked me to drop off at the post office 10 minutes after he reminded me to take them. Forgetting to take the necessary pump parts to work and then driving to Target to buy more, only to realize that I've forgotten my wallet at home as well. And then today's coup de grace: taking our one and only car to work when I was supposed to take the train. This is after our household has been living, eating, and breathing a project that Anonyhub has been working on non-stop for a final class he has at the botanical gardens tonight. A class that he has to have the car to get to. I'll have to leave early today to get the car back down to him so he can then drive back up past where I work to get to said class in the north suburbs.


Yipe. I'm glad I'm not preggers but I'm a little frightened here.

Not that I haven't always been a little, shall we say, somewhere else. I remember, as a child, reading about that ancient Greek who was so preoccupied with his thoughts and/or mathematical theorems that he walked right off of the road into a ditch. And I remember thinking, woah. I hope that's my excuse. That I'm really really smart.

Alas, no. Mother nature doesn't always see fit to balance out her not-so-observant children with big brains to think with when they aren't paying attention to the present. She has, however, blessed me with more than my fair share of luck. So I can't complain.

Perhaps I just need a nap.

Wait, did that just happen?

So we finally broke down and bought a crib for Anonybabe...I dunno....a month or so ago? She'd been sleeping with us, an arrangement that I hadn't really planned on originally, but that felt really right when she was born, and felt extremely right later when I had to get up in the middle of the night to nurse her and then get up and go to work the next day. You can sleep and nurse, and by golly who wouldn't want to do that?

Then we spent a few unnecessary months enduring her tossing and turning because we just weren't quite ready to have her out of the bed. (Plus she still nursed in the middle of the night, which may have been because we still had her in the bed...but given the fact that I was away from her all day, I didn't mind the circular logic if Anonyhubby and Anonybabe didn't....despite Anonymom-in-laws assertions that they could "break" her of this if we'd just hand her over for a week. Thank you, no.)

Finally we bought a bed that transitioned into a toddler bed and then a full bed, with big, white curvy slopes of a headboard and side boards, and jarring chunky bars on the sides. When we put Anonybabe in it for the first time, Anonyhub told her she looked like a Lion from the circus, and her bed does look like one of those train car cages from Dumbo.

As a way to ease out of bed sharing (probably for me more than her), we made her crib into the toddler day bed and put it right next to my side of the bed, so she could easily crawl from one bed to another. Voila! We could lay her down in her bed to sleep but easily roll over and pull her into our queen sized bed for a 3am snack. She was a little freaked out even by this at first, opening her eyes from what we'd think was a deep sleep and crying out when we tried to lay her down. (The same response we got every time we tried to have her sleep in a Pack N Play, by the way.) Then she'd stay asleep but cry as soon as she woke up. Then she'd stay asleep and cry when she wanted to nurse. Then...and I don't want to jinx this by hanging up my "Mission Accomplished" banner too soon...but for the past two nights she's gone to sleep in my arms, I lay her down, and but for a little tossing and turning, there she's stayed until I pick her up again for a morning nurse before heading off to work!

She seems very comfortable in her bed. She plays in it, looks at her "buh!"s in it. Maybe this was a long slow torture getting her into her own bed this way, but on the whole, I've enjoyed the process.

Forget crying it out, I prefer waiting it out.

The Amazing Anonybabe!

Cute stuff she's been doing lately:

She has the sign for "milk" down (opening and closing her hand as if she's milking), but usually uses it only after we've started or just finished nursing.

This weekend she was able to grab a cup from her high chair, bring it to her mouth, and take big gulps of water without spilling! Of course, for every one time she didn't spill, she poured half a cup down her front or tipped water out of the side of the cup onto her seat. That didn't stop me from tearing up and making it sound like she'd discovered gravity when she managed to drink by herself.

She has discovered gravity, dropping every object she can off of the bed, off of her high chair, off of her exersaucer.

She bobs her head to music; she'll even take requests from her exersaucer, pounding the buttons until she find the song we've been mechanically humming as soon as we put her in the thing. When a certain song comes on, she practically head bangs.

She's discovered zerberting, and can get some really filthy sounding low ones going on my boobs and belly.

Vocabulary: In addition to "buh!" for book, we can now add "poo", as in Winnie the. Anonyhub has some Pooh slippers that have two huge stuffed heads on the toes. Anonybabe loooooves them. She'll see them from her high chair perch and immediately stop eating. Anonyhub has convinced her to call for Pooh (with much coaxing of course), and when he appears from beneath her high chair tray she'll laugh like a maniac and cover him with open mouth kisses and hugs. Just the first in a lifetime of loves I will never understand.

Yesterday she spent a good 10 minutes straight pulling a magnet off of the refrigerator and putting it back on. When she'd face it the wrong direction, she'd pick it up and try again. My but she's patient! She spends a lot of time in her high chair waiting for meals, too.

I knew that I would, now.

So I've been feeling more optimistic, about life in general and about parenting in particular.

I can't say what has helped me turn from a hyperventilating food nazi with a penchant for hating my husband and my breast pump and even my daughter at the drop of a hat, to being...well, more me-like. Just last night, before dropping off to sleep, I thought of all the parenting mistakes Anonyhubby and I would make over the course of Anonybabe's life, and instead of feeling my usual mounting panic, I smiled and rolled over and went to sleep.

I think my parent's "mistakes" were probably the best thing that could have happened to me. They let a little air in & allowed me to learn who I was and what I wanted out of life. I'm not ready to stick a beer in Anonybabe's hand and send her down to the lake to go camping with the boys on spring break, ("not 'til you're 12, hon"). But I am ready to relax into the reality that I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and that it'll probably turn out okay anyway. In fact, if I take a deep breath and don't try to make everything perfect for my baby, things'll probably turn out a lot better for everybody involved.

My marriage might even survive this thing.

Since I'm dedicated to full disclosure, I'll admit here what I admitted to my husband on Friday: I recently ordered a whole book on how to play with your kid. It should feel sad to need to read something that is going to have to be intuited anyway, but the act of ordering it buoyed my mood immediately.

"Why, because now you'll have somebody telling you how to do it?" asked Anonyhubby, with a tone of barely suppressed derision.

"No, because I did what I know to do to try to move closer to my daughter and just the act of doing it made me relax. It made me believe I really can connect with her because I want to."

Anonyhub nodded his head and bunched out his lower lip in thought. "That makes sense."

So maybe ordering the equivalent of the Dummies Guide to Parenting was the tipping point. Whatever. I don't care what did it. I feel good.