Picture this - or - a lot of petty ramblings you might want to skip

Ah, the holidays. Thank god they're fucking over.

Not that I had a bad holiday season, per se, there was just a lot of running here and there around the country, and the fact that I have a lovely little being dependent on me for basics like food, waste removal and getting from point A to point B was never more apparent.

So now we are settling back in at home and I have time to reflect over the yuletide with the in-laws. Which is a strong reminder of why I made this post anonymous and have not shared it with anonyhubby.

Not that his family is so bad. Over the years, I have learned to appreciate how in their own special way they are generous, and hardworking, and love their children and grandchildren. I'm sure after a nice visit I could go on, but at the moment those are all the compliments I can muster up. Part of the problem has nothing to do with being good or bad; they are just so entirely different from my family that I found myself retreating in shock after meeting them the first time. And it's been a long slow haul since then learning how to just let them be themselves without getting all worked up about the differences.

But I'm being much too general and kind; let's gossip about specifics shall we? Like I said, this really wasn't a bad visit. I had to go fishing for complaints, and the ones I reeled in are really too small and should be tossed back in...but hey, it's the holidays; I'm gonna indulge.

First there's the stuff that doesn't really bother me, but is tiring nonetheless: the 7 & 5 year old boy nephews that are loud and want to play always. They just had a little sister born 2 months after anonybabe. They are always in her face, trolling for a smile and they sometimes get it. But most of the time, no matter their sweet intentions, they made the babies cry. They must have learned their wooing techniques from their grandpa, who makes his voice lower and lower and gets closer and closer to anonybabe in an attempt to win her over.

In return, she gives him a look of utter distrust, which causes him to guffaw and her to jump. Padre-in-law made me jump and earned my stinkeye when he allowed her to play with a spoon he'd been using to fish jalepenos out of his chili with. "Ahem," I offered calmly in an attempt to fit in to the neglectful atmosphere, "Could you maybe take that spoon away?" "Oh, she's just got the stem end," he says and then continues to chat distractedly away, as I watch her grab the fiery side with her hands and then put the end of the spoon in her mouth. She only fussed a little and anonyhubby was quick to wipe her hands before she rubbed her eyes. Padre-in-law acts like we are all overprotective and crazy. He and his wife are of the "crying is good for their lungs" camp. I've been keeping an eye on him since I found out that he let anonyhubby fall down the very tall basement stairs when anonyhub was a wee tender baby himself. Not that we can't all make mistakes. I'm sure I'll make worse ones with anonybabe. But...I don't know...the way the story was related made it sound like grandpa's babysitting skills on that day were par for the course.

The in-laws also pooh-poohed anonybabe's fever, which started the day of our trip (a six hour drive one way) and then our reticence to use baby tylenol without a thermometer around to check her temp, and then the fact that she was extra clingy. (Turns out she had Roseola). Have you ever read "Guess How Much I Love You" by Sam McBratney? It was the first book the in-laws gave our daughter when she was about 6 weeks old, and to me it pretty much sums up their attitude towards kids. A little rabbit wants to tell a big rabbit how much he loves him, only to always be one-upped by the big rabbit. It has this weird dismissive vibe towards the young rabbit. A patronizing "Oh how cute that you have your little feelings...too bad they aren't as big and important as mine". This is probably not the point of the book at all but I can't help but see it that way. Especially in the way anonyhubby is always trying to get his parents' approval and they are pretty much blind to anything but themselves.

Like for instance: Anmom-in-law wanted a family portrait made and some "proper" 8x10s of anonybabe, so on Saturday evening we all traipsed to Sears and sat on a dirty white backdrop and proceeded to take some tacky pictures to make anmom-in-law happy. They really were tacky. In one jewel of a shot, anonybabe is sitting on the grubby backdrop while anonyhubby and I flank her on our stomachs. We were supposed to be looking at the camera, but both looked at her when she gave a rare laugh (the camera lady scared the shit out of all of us) so there's a shot of us leaning on our fists, lying on the floor, gazing lovingly at our smiling daughter between us. And then there are the 8x10s of anonybabe which are just..not cute.

And then there were the shots of the in-laws with all four of their grandchildren. During the shoot, mom-in-law sat both baby granddaughters on her lap as she kneeled on the ground. She wasn't paying attention, so at one point anonybabe slumped forward just as the shutter went off and then she fell to the ground. Of the 3 or 4 grandparents/grandchildren shot, this is the one picture that mom-in-law picked. When I looked at the rest of the proofs, I saw that most of the other shots were more flattering of everyone else (not of anonybabe, she looked like she was being sent to prison camp in all of them) but madre-in-law picked the portrait that was the most flattering of her. Sigh. At least we were at the mall & got an Icee out of the deal.

I really wish I were less on edge when I go visit these people. I spend a lot of time hating everything about their house and their manners instead of just relaxing and trying to make lemonade out of lemons. Any advice?

A Hairy Situation

So I just took anonybabe down to meet two tellers who work in the bank building where my company rents space. They commiserated with me while I was with child and told me a little about the joys and travails of parenting young chillens. They both happen to be of eastern European descent, which got me wondering whether they have as much body hair as I do.

Anonybabe is hairy. She had a thick black inch-long thatch on her head when she was born, which shocked her dad and I. You would think I'd been running around with the mailman if Anonybabe didn't have her father's facial features transcribed eyebrow to chinbone on her own. Anonyhubby is of mostly Swedish descent, and was a white-blonde towhead until well into puberty. My hair is dark brown and my body hair is now thick and plentiful, but I started life as a blondie, and with very little hair on my head until I was about 4 and no dark hair anywhere else until I was about 20.

A.B. was covered in fuzz at birth, as babies are wont to do, and it was as dark as the hair on her head. It was everywhere: on her shoulders, on her upper thighs; there was an especially thick triangle on her lower back pointing down to her butt crack that hasn't entirely gone away. We were told all of Anonybabe's head hair would fall out at about 3 months, but although it thinned a little and lightened considerably, she held on to most of it. Now at 9 months she has a full head of blonde hair with dark brown tips that is easily 3 inches long where it hasn't been cut. I can already see the little blonde baby fuzz beginnings of a unibrow on her. She won't necessarily grow to be a hairy woman, but I could definitely see it happening.

In my family...in my extended family even, there was a complete vacuum of knowledge about body hair. My mother's was naturally very light -- she's never even had to shave above her knees it's so light and sparse. To this day I don't know if I have any hairy aunts. If they were, they never let on that they had hair to get rid of in the first place. So when, in my sophomore year of college I started to sprout dark thick hairs in previously unhairy places: my chin, my nipples, further and further up my thighs, it was like it was this secret abomination. I had moments of panic where I thought I was a freak of nature and then I would comfort myself by thinking okay, somehow, somewhere, there must be women out there who are as hairy or hairier than I am.

Of course there are. My own grandmother is. Many many women are. But I had no clue.

Which brings me back around (finally) to the eastern European tellers. These two ladies may be naturally smooth as a baby's bottom, but I was imagining that they weren't, and that they had a family culture that sat them down a la the birds and bees talk and told them all about body hair. It made me think about how different communities have such weird little bubbles of knowledge and ignorance. And it made me think about all of the things I don't know to tell my daughter. I'm kind of humbled and excited in the face of that. We both got a lot to learn.

Boy, are my arms tired

Welp, just flew back from Christmas in Texas last night. Where Anony-meme and anonybabe's great grandparents live (now christened Gigi Dot and Gigi Ed).

Man, travelling with a child is hard. Even a quiet, relatively good child.

I love going to see these grandparents. They live in the hill country of Texas, which is beautiful; they retired there to a drafty and cluttered house at the foot of a hill, adjacent to a field and a creek of their own. They have five children, all of whom love to visit them, in no small part because of the area they moved to. There is always some sort of run-in with nature while I'm there, good and bad.

This trip there was an inundation of thousands of blackbirds (grackles? I don't know what they were, although my granddad and an uncle and two of my aunts could name them) in their backyard for about 10 minutes. They were just passing through. My aunt & mom called everyone to the kitchen window to see. And then there were two bucks in the area tusselling. They were sighted twice. "They're just playing; practicing, see? They aren't really serious. If they were, boy, they would really be hurting each other." (This from my grandfather, who grew up in San Antonio, but has the country common sense of someone who had to know how to clean fish and build things and take care of any problem as it arose. He was an engineer for the phone company by trade, but as long as I've known him he had an easy appreciation for nature. He doesn't romanticize it, but he doesn't try to eradicate it. I get the impression he feels we all have our place on this rock...he feels he has the right to get along as much as his fellow fish and racoons and ants and stickers. I've known him to shoot or drown animals that were harrassing the chickens or eating the vegetables, but only after he tried trapping them and setting them loose miles from their property. A softy deep down, but a practical one.)

Other trips included a trio of baby foxes abandoned by their mother (my granddad left out dog food for them), a biblical infestation of grasshoppers in the guest house (my hubby spent half the night trying to kill them all), the occasional scorpion (my grandfather pooh poohs them as not too troubling "I've only been stung twice the whole time we've lived here; they'll only sting you if you apply pressure, you see"), and the alway ubiquitous mounds of fire ants. You just have to watch where you step when you walk down to the creek.

When I was 20, I lived one summer with these grandparents. I've always had a special connection with my grandmother (who is now sinking rather pleasantly into dementia) there. So long short of it is, I like going there a lot.

But this trip I was in a sleepy haze. I flew down with just myself and anonybabe, sleep deprived after a late night packing and then a very early morning flight. Little missy was quiet on the plane, but fidgety. She did eventually go to sleep and I napped with her in my arms, grateful for a moment's peace. Then we had a car ride home with my mom and a crotchety and slightly off-his-rocker uncle, who when we asked him to exit so we could go to a grocery store on the way home, took a wrong turn and then was determined not to turn around...it usually takes less than an hour to get home from the airport, and it took us three, in a carseat that wasn't right for Anonybabe so I kept giving her snacks to keep her quiet and holding her head to the carseat to insure she wouldn't get whiplash as my crazy uncle sped up to get right behind cars that were going too slow for him and then slammed on the brakes. At least he was predictable with his braking and I knew when to hold Anonybabe's head.

Anonyhubby didn't follow us out until a couple of days later, and even though my mom and grandma wanted to hold and help with the baby, there was still a fair amount of caretaking I did on my own. Being away from home made it just a little more exhausting to make her food and change her diapers and put her to sleep. I could really feel how much it was taking me away from one-on-one time with everyone else. There was one nice moment, when my grandmother was feeling sick, and I climbed into bed with her so we could warm our socked feet on each other's legs and chat. But that only lasted 10 minutes before we were called into open Christmas presents and the spell was broken. Oh, and my grandma and I did lie on the kitchen floor one night while Anonybabe practiced pulling herself up on my legs and then plopping herself down on her bottom. Pulling up, plopping down, pulling up, plopping down. She was great at it by the end of the holiday. I was so proud.

But generally I felt tired, everyone around me looked tired. Having a baby is such a blessing and a curse. I don't know; this trip made me really feel like time is marching on.

Food Fight Pax

I know you won't believe me, because it seems to be half of what I write about, but I really don't talk about food and feeding my daughter all of the time.

But I think I had a breakthrough and I'd like to share. I previously had all kinds of misgivings about giving our daughter juice, period. Thought it would rot her teeth, give her empty calories or at least take the place of much more nutritious calories. I had control freak fits with my husband about it. Water and breast milk only! So I was reading about how juice is a good way to get some vitamin C into kids at the same time you give them iron, which you want to do to help them absorb the iron. So I decide to call my husband to tell him I've reversed my stance on juice in my usual whiplash-like fashion.

And it suddenly (finally) dawns on me the way I've been talking to him about feeding her all along: like everybody in the world (including him) is trying to force poison down her throat and I am her lone defender. Like he's a moron who is going to put slurpees in her sippy cup. As soon as I would read something about nutrition I would get all anxious that he was doing the opposite and I would call to demand that he do it a certain way. It occurred to me that I could share what I'd been learning with him, and, being the reasonable human being that I've always known him to be, he could probably wrap his mind about the food choices I was trying to make. He may even have some good common sense ideas to help make sure she's well-fed without going off of the fear-based deep end. We could even *gasp* make decisions about what she eats together. That he actually cares about her as much as I do.

So I called him to tell him that. And to apologize. And he accepted my apology and told me I'd hit the nail on the head, with the treating him like a sub-intelligent human being. It felt really good to start to make nice with him about that. It'll be good practice for the approximately 20 billion apologies I'll be issuing to anonydad and anonybabe over the course of my lifetime as I figure out how to wife and mom with a little love and style and grace. Okay, maybe just the love. But they do say you have to shoot for the stars to hit the moon.

Well, well, well. Looks like I might get my wish of having a daughter that is a vocal little snit after all.

For the most part anonybabe is not a cryer. She cries when she falls down, sure, or gets her hand pinched in something, or gets her legs contorted into some strange shape when she tries to get up. She's been fussy because of teething, which means she gets pouty and looks up to be held as soon as you put her down some days. But she's not so much of a complainer, that one.

But I'll be damned if she didn't cry/yell at me the other day when I gave her a piece of apple to gum on and then took it back because she was suddenly able to bite off big unswallowable chunks. Cried/yelled with tears rolling down her face. She was pissed. And now all of the sudden, if you want to take something from her and don't distract her with something bigger and shinier, she grips onto it and screws up her face and just hollers.

I know the general consensus is that people who scream when they don't get their way are brats, but I'm enjoying the hell out of this newfound spunk. I start to worry that with this attitude I'm going to breed a monster, and then I think, screw it. We've got time to socialize her. For now, I'm going to sit back and revel in my daughter's reddened cheeks and dagger-shooting eyes. And maybe not take her out to restaurants so much.

Let us eat

So my main new year's resolution is to not be such a food marm.

"Food marm" is actually kind of a mild description of what I seem to be turning into. "Food Nazi" has been bandied about my home. "Self-righteous bitch" comes to mind, as well as "Overbearing killjoy".

Through a combination of wanting to eat healthier for my pregnancy & baby, and then reading up on the local food movement that's sweeping the white, middle-to-upperclass crowd (that's me!) I've been kind of fixated on learning about nutrition and being more mindful about what I eat. Which is good, but...If you've seen Dogtown and Z-boys, Skip Engblom talks about how as skaters, they really had to be able to execute their moves with style to be considered good. Even if they could do a lot of crazy skating tricks but looked bad doing them, they would get no respect. And the way I'm going about changing my family's eating habits is starting to get a little stank.

When I was pregnant it felt good to channel all of my fear about my changing body & the explosive way all pregnancies end into exercise and a good diet. I didn't worry so much about staying away from bad foods, I took every opportunity to put foods in me that I thought would make me strong and nourished and would make good building blocks for little baby organs and baby hair and baby fallopian tubes. But somehow since then things have gone south. I've talked a little about my rigidity in introducing foods to anonybabe. I went all Exorcist on my husbands ass when I thought his mom gave Gerber applesauce to our then six month old daughter, because it wasn't organic and it wasn't on my food introduction plan. That was warning flag #1. (It was actually more like flag #521, but it was the first one that got my attention). Then warning flag #20022 was when anonyhubby was buttoning up his coat recently to go to the grocery store and I told him I'd like to go to and he hesitated mid-button. "If you go, then I can't buy any junkfood" and he truly looked disappointed. He can't buy junkfood in front of me? Something is wrong. I hate that my husband drinks so many Dr. Peppers, but I hate it more that I give him the stink eye every time he does it, and I hate it more than that that he feels he needs to go in another room to drink his DP in peace. There's a lot more to life than eating healthy. I believe that how you interact with food is very indicative of how you interact with life, and this whole thinking that I can control all bad things in life by eating good foods is just neurotic.

So I need some food therapy. I don't need junk food, but I need to be open to some less-than-perfect eating. I need to enjoy food again. I need to let my husband work out his own food issues and accept the fact that my daughter is going to be seeing a lot worse things than her parents slugging down sweets, and that she'll manage to work things out. At least I'd like her to have a mother that she can openly eat her pixie sticks in front of.

Pumped dry

I'm not sick of nursing - far from it - but I am so freaking sick of pumping. I cut my pumping sessions at work from 3 to 2...which means I actually get a lunch break outside of the office. This taste of freedom only seemed to make my little plastic-tubed tether more onerous.

I am appreciative that my pump lets me breastfeed at all. But if I can get occasionally sick of my lovely husband and daughter, I can sure as hell get sick of my breastpump. Today I am giving it the finger as well as the stink eye.

Anybody got a more uplifting act of rebellion? I could write a hate poem. Or start a punk band that only writes songs about our angst towards breast pumps. (I will write a special song for the ridiculous rubberband/bra contraptions they sell to facilitate "hands free" pumping.) Or I could start a revolution. Power to the dirty pillows! Free them from their shackles of plastic tubing and rubber! Let them hang free among the tongues and lips of their sons and daughters! I'll paint murals on the subways of sucklings mothers crushing breast pumps underfoot.