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Nutrition
I often think about how people with incredibly strong beliefs are proof-everything. It is impossible to rain on their parades. Faced with things like the fossil record, Intelligent Design was invented, that sort of thing.
And it cropped up again in the vitamin section of Whole Foods where Sebastian and I went today in an attempt to find some magic formulas that would restore my energy and my hair (yep, falling out with unnerving zeal). Sebastian was his usual self, spirited, affable, a bit moist with drool.
My fragile nutritional state makes me occasionally vulnerable to sales pitches and hawkers can smell my susceptibility at 1000 yards, so before I knew it, someone was pitching a line of supplements my way that would have me swallowing a minimum of 8 tables over the course of the day (not counting the hair growth capsules that had been recommended to me). Someone else joined us (how she was lured in was beyond me) and then out of nowhere came the weird breast feeding line.
"Look at how kids puke all the time," the vitamin lady said, "we give them cow's milk from the moment they're born and wonder why it takes them a year to learn how to digest it."
Who, exactly gives infants cow's milk? No one told me to do that and I've been breastfeeding, though apparently my hard work isn't convincing since Sebastian was clearly the object lesson of the moment. (All right, he had spit up a little bit along the way to the store but he was far from a super-mess.) She continued: "My children were all breast fed and we only used those silly bibs because they were CUTE, not because we needed them. And besides a little drool is nice." Well, I don't use bibs much either because I'm lazy and can't ever find them. Drool is never "nice" in my opinion. Inevitable, certainly. Harmless, yes. Pleasant, not so much.
So I was thinking about telling the vitamin lady that, in fact, cow's milk had not crossed the baby's little lips, and that he was 100% breast fed, but I stopped myself fearing that saying anything in my (unnecessary) defense would open a portal. She would tell me that surely I don't eat well. That perhaps I drink a lot of coffee or maybe eat a ton of refined sugar (guilty by the way) or maybe I drink Diet Coke or have bacon or wine from time to time. I knew that no matter what I said, she'd have some kind of reply that would make her advice and her vitamins invaluable.
Happily Sebastian got impatient and began his new screeching trick, so I packed us off as fast as possible before he could start on his real operatic vocal tricks.
And the thing is, I probably would have been happy to try the stupid vitamins anyway. I have no brand loyalty these days. I didn't need someone to try to make me feel guilty about not doing something I'm already doing to sucker me in.
I would have been easy.
posted by Elise at 1:42 PM
3 Comments
Organization
Now I am well and truly done with summer. I know there's only a week to go and I'll be looking back on these days wondering what the hell I could have been thinking but the Vortex has opened its maw once again in the middle of the house and has swallowed yet another necessity, this time the check book.
Of course, I could just blame myself for my inability to keep track of things and that is surely part of this current bad dynamic I've got going with the material world, but honestly, things do just keep vanishing and I can only assume that everything around me is taking a cue from my neighbors and is deciding to get out of town.
Black and White Doggie (the first) has not been recovered (but a stash of replacements has been hidden away for emergencies).
The keys that were disappeared remain gone
As are the good tweezers
the sun hat
the hair cutting scissors
the extra leash
And I suppose to some extent my sanity.
So while I find myself fretting about the fall schedule and wondering how school will be for Felix and fussing about work in those murky pre-dawn hours when Sebastian is most hungry, I can't say I'm dreading those days particularly.
It's limbo (no, no not the dance) that does me in.
posted by Elise at 12:29 PM
1 Comments
But I Have Nothing to Wear
In my weird (still!) postpartum state I admit that I don't feel comfortable in many of the things in my wardrobe, but my misfit feelings have extended beyond my own weird size(s). I now am wondering if Felix's clothes are going to be all right for school. I say this, but have not really done much about it. After one week last March where he wouldn't wear anything that came close to fitting, I sat him down with a catalogue and made him choose his summer wardrobe.
This actually worked a bit.
But I think something about the whole "back to school" or in Felix's case "going to school for the first time" is making me recall how sharp sartorial misery can be. A former boyfriend of mine was able to recall with no small bitterness, decades after the fact, how unhappy he was with the incredibly odd pants his mother used to foist upon him, claiming that he just didn't know what was fashionable. I don't want to be that mother. As usual, I am taking my angst about this in stride and ignoring the question entirely.
This approach is working for me as well, though I have recently watched a bunch of episodes of What Not to Wear, (I really like the original UK one as well, but it hasn't aired recently) and now I am ashamed of my shabby dressing but still doing nothing about it.
But hey, it could be worse. I could be trying to shop for a tween girl, the prospect of which sounds completely awful if Emily Yoffe's experience, documented in Slate, is any indication. In centuries past (18th, 19th, early 20th) there were tendencies to dress children as mini-adults, but none of that dressing was quite as sexually intense or revealing as what Yoffe experiences on her shop crawl, 11 year-old in tow. So my question, and forgive my ignorance because I don't have a daughter and I was a horrible dresser in middle school and high school and had few sartorial opinions that could be considered worthwhile, is who is starting the sexy dressing? Is this manufacturers deciding that girls want this or are girls, under the sway of some misguided notion that low-cut pants are comfortable and easy to wear and flattering, demanding it?
posted by Elise at 6:22 AM
0 Comments
In a Handbasket...
August really is a pit, isn't it?
Everyone is away and the few people who aren't away are zombified. Include me in the latter category. Sleep has gone straight to Hell around here for no good reason, as far as I can tell. It isn't just the baby's fault. I can blame the dog and my own weird wee hour obsessing.
Happily I don't have a ton of lead-painted toys to fret about but there are still all sorts of things brewing, not the least of which being: why I haven't accomplished more this summer; why Felix has decided to start "sleeping in" just in time to have to go to school (well in a few weeks); and speaking of school, will Felix like it and are Felix and my sartorial choices going to make us laughingstocks (is my middle school trauma showing too much)?
And I suspect I'm not the only one now gazing at my navel with furrowed brow. A fellow stopped me on the subway today (Sebastian and I were trying to get broken things repaired) and made the mistake of asking about strollers, which triggered some extremely unhelpful consumerist blabbermouth tendencies I never really knew I had. After babbling nonsensically about various stroller issues (does it lie back, do you walk around a lot, do you need to hook a car seat into it, do you need it to fold up, will you let it double as a bassinet, are you short?) I think the poor guy was even more freaked out than when he found out that he and his wife were expecting. And then he started asking me about brands I have never heard of at which point I said what was probably the thing he wanted least to hear: "I think you should just try some out. Just go to Buy Buy Baby and drive those things around. Don't worry. Going there for the first time made me cry but it isn't that bad."
And then I reached my stop and bounced out of the subway, having managed to provide no useful information while inspiring fear.
I suppose I should just try to relax and accept these limp pre-Labor Day days because between work (lots, looming) and Felix in school September is going to hit hard and there's really only so much good lots of coffee and candy can do.
posted by Elise at 1:24 PM
1 Comments
Depressing, But of Note
Last week, prompted by the terrific Arts & Letters Daily blog, I read a real bummer of an article in Vanity Fair about Arthur Miller who, as it turns out, has a son with Down-syndrome whose existence he never acknowledged.
It is an odd thing to read about this man, who wrote from the "right" side of every issue-- and God knows, I watched and even was in countless productions of the Crucible that left me burning with outrage against blacklisters-- doing something that is really and truly grim. Naturally, anyone's private life is his own and of course many great artists are truly hideous or even boring people, but there is something so harsh about Miller's behavior, perhaps because of the righteousness behind all of his work. He's never been my favorite playwright, but now the man himself seems so much uglier than the New York crank I've identified in his interviews. I can't help also but think about the burden he left on his daughter, the child he acknowledged, who followed in his professional footsteps, who has the celebrity husband and comfortable glamour. She now also has to defend her father and to some extent herself and contend with a sibling she barely knows.
The bright side of this unpleasant story, to the extent there is one, is that Miller's son, Daniel, loves and is loved by people who have cared for him throughout his life and that this is very possibly a happier scenario than if he had lived with a father who was ashamed of him.
posted by Elise at 10:09 AM
2 Comments
Convenience
Years ago, Charles Grodin wrote a book I didn't read called It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here. The title stuck with me because it came apparently from a conversation Grodin had with a British woman who was in some authority position in a movie location in England. The movie people were apparently annoying.
I can't get the title out of my mind because suddenly requests and demands have come pouring in for little things, inconveniences, courtesies I really should accord, and it would just be so nice, so very nice if these things weren't around. Much of my ire is the result of having a relatively new baby around, of course. If I didn't have to tend to him in quite the way I do, I would mind less all of the weird contortions one must do when trying to move. (Like wandering the streets with a relatively high fever from mastitis while real estate people walk around or trying to get the cranky baby to take a nap while the place gets measured by people one hopes are ignoring the mess and the Lego explosion. The great part about the latter is that not only was I able to feel I wasn't being gracious and welcoming to the strangers, I also felt like the world's biggest slob, all while being annoyed by their presence, and ashamed of myself for being annoyed because, in fact, they were very very nice.)
And now the plumber, the mythical plumber who has been dodging my calls for, no lie, two months, showed up at a moment of high inconvenience. Why can't they call first? I couldn't send him away, though, because who knows if he'll ever reappear. I had even called another set of plumbers, nicer-seeming fellows because I felt so jilted by this group. If I were a Rules kind of girl, I would have sent this guy packing, because, God knows, I have better things to do than sit around and wait on someone who can't be bothered to call for months. Sadly, I need the sink. While I hate looking at this thing that won't work day in and day out, the problem is that eventually someone will probably move in (touch wood) who will be insane enough to actually want a sink that works, unlike me who is happy to modify her life to avoid the sink because she just can't stand dealing with shambling call-dodging plumbers who just show up hoping for smiles and praise. But I'm not angry.
To this I could also add a few recent work panics that have left me more dependent than usual on the coffee maker and my tether, it has reached its end.
Oh, and does anyone know about a really powerful moisturizer for babies? I'm about to embrace the Eucerin family, but just in case that one fails, I would love a backup (and have already been through the land of Aveeno and Johnsons and one other whose name I can't recall). The baby he is scaly. Almost lizard-like. He doesn't seem to mind though, so I suppose there is the bright side, beaming at me.
posted by Elise at 1:35 PM
4 Comments
Stegosaurus In Central Park
This little scene was largely ignored (except by me, the woman with the infant) next to a bench in a wild playground.
This has been a wild week with too much work and too little patience, but here are a few things learned from this park excursion:
- The Central Park Carousel runs a bit too fast for the toddler set. (No tears on this end, just some concern and, frankly, dizzy parents. No comment from the baby.)
- Always travel with water wear if the air temperature is over 80 degrees F (that's when the Parks department turns on the sprinklers).
- Confirmed: you don't need to bring travel entertainments if you're willing to discuss repeatedly and at length the winding ways of each subway line (keeping in mind that everything the map tells you will be false because of the insane track work that derails service on every system every weekend, especially in August).
posted by Elise at 4:09 PM
0 Comments
Not So Good After All
A friend pointed me to an article that I don't mind at all today. Apparently, and this wasn't really a revelation to me but it's nice to hear anyway, Baby Einstein really doesn't help your kid at all. In fact, some argument could be made that Baby Einstein videos actually slow down vocabulary absorption in the very young.
After reading Slate's article about and ensuing argument with the creator of Baby Einstein (I know I've mentioned them here before), it only pleases me that I don't have to feel even self-conscious about not showing these things to my kids. Felix was given a Baby Einstein DVD as an infant (the Bach one) but wouldn't even look in the direction of the television when it was on. This was a relief because those DVD's are incredibly annoying. Why would anyone want to listen to creepy synthesizer Bach pieces? Babies may have bad taste, but why encourage it? Anyway, Felix still doesn't much like TV.
Though he does like nature documentaries (he has been loving the David Attenborough Life of Birds series) and is willing to take a rather liberal view of the genre. Recently, Felix discovered the Muppet Show DVD's his parents have for their own nostalgia indulging purposes and, thinking it would be a documentary about frogs (Kermit is on the box cover) demanded to watch. His primary reaction, through all of the songs and dances and muppet insanity was to announce: "Look! Purple giraffes! Dancing."
posted by Elise at 11:47 AM
0 Comments
There's No Dignity in Pregnancy
So, when one is knocked up, one anticipates annoying comments and unfortunately embarrassing situations. When I was pregnant with Felix, I triggered a miserable "Is there a doctor in the house?" situation on an airplane that left me mortified, even more so that I had to tell my tale of possible woe to a osteopath who wasn't sure how much of this stuff he could remember from medical school. I suspect I was a bit impatient and agitated. Things did turn out to be fine, but it didn't make for a really comfortable chuckle when I ran into him again on the return trip.
And of course there are endless stories about water breaking in well-lit places with plenty of human traffic.
But Gothamist today pointed out a story that sort of takes the cake for me: going into labor and delivering a baby in the middle of a Brooklyn bus route (happily the bus pulled over).
According to the New York Post article that covers this in detail, there is some debate over whether this baby will have free MTA rides for the rest of her life (various MTA employees apparently thought there was some policy about this, though MTA spokespeople deny it). If you ask me, the poor mother is the one who could use the break.
But maybe she's going to be reluctant to get on the B15 bus for a while.
posted by Elise at 7:04 PM
0 Comments
I Want the Article Back!
Cutie-pie language gets me low. When I hear a spouse referred to as "hubby" I always feel as if I'm peering (unwillingly) into someone's bedroom, and I don't much care for it when people other than my one talking child refers to me as "Mommy".
The folksy tick that I find particularly grating when it comes to discussions of parenting is the insipid dropping of the article during discussions of infants:
"Baby likes a bath before bedtime."
"Baby is having a temper tantrum."
"When mommy forgets to buy batteries, baby is miffed."
How did this happen? Where did the "the" go? Where is the appeal? I want it back. The "the" goes missing in conversation but also in print. I have this sense that magazines (parenting and otherwise) want to tap into some kind of hideous "mommy speak" in an effort to "connect" to mothers who... I don't know what. Who simply don't have the time to let their weary eyes slide across a three letter word.
Why is this on my mind? I was glancing at a new web site for "mature" mothers, and was completely disappointed to see that even "old" mothers feel the need to write in this weird baby talk for grownups. There is something distasteful about proudly proclaiming your "experienced" status if you're just going to express yourself in the style of a toddler.
It makes me want to join in, just for a moment.
Blech.
posted by Elise at 7:21 AM
3 Comments
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