First Steps!

Daddy Nay Nay told me that the little gnome took two steps by himself today. He took them really quickly and when he realized what he had done, sat down on his bum. I am so excited for him and slightly sad, but not devastated that I did not witness these myself.

PS I borrowed the office of another absent professor for pumping. This made me hope that I manage to use the office of every member of our faculty over the course of this semester, although those with couches might merit a revisit.

The Interpretation of Dreams.

Last night I dreamt that my friend Leila was running for some adult equivalent of student body president. I was running too. At stake, in addition to the future direction of this unnamed organization, was a posh residence. Leila had Juniper with her, so the voters knew that she had a baby. This guy stood up and interrogated her about her ability to do this job and be a mother. He had two step kids, he said, so he knew how much work it is. Suddenly I stood up and bitched him out (yes, Dave &c, bitched) about how inappropriate it was to question her abilities on those grounds, especially when she has more stamina than anyone I know, and certainly than anyone else running. Later after this debate, two women pregnant with their second children, strangers, approached me and said they thought that I had been too harsh towards this man, that he had a legitimate point. And then all of the candidates descended to the front of the auditorium to watch the polls come in. Of course, the flat, virtually unknown and uninteresting conservative man won, a candidate who did not actually appear in the dream other than to claim victory.

Toys of the Moment.

In addition to the piano, Soren has been making good use of his Busy Zoo and more recently, his Bug. He has figured out how to mount the bug, but his feet are not quite firmly on the ground yet, so he keeps sliding off of its butt.

PS The people who make the bug also make this excellent and understated wipes warmer.

At Least No One Pulled Me Over...

To my repertoire of dangerous activities engaged in while driving, on this evening's commute I added breast pumping.

The Sybarites Ladies Drinking and Dining Society

would surely serve this at Tea. Perhaps this is what one does with the raw cacao nibs purchased on impulse from Rainbow.

Ol' One Eye.

Five minutes after we got this snail out of its box, Calliope has eaten its eye off.

Easier than I had Anticipated.

The manny has been minding Soren for a couple of weeks now and school is back in session. Yesterday was the first day of classes and I had forgotten the chaos that accompanies the start of the academic term. Within the first five minutes of the lecture, one student had already had a breakdown and begged to leave without penalty (not a problem, not a problem). What has surprised me about these afternoons away, back in my earlier swing, is how easy it has been to slip into my solo self, a self I had begun to imagine former. I think about the little gnome, or occasionally worry about the kind of event that one cannot predict befalling him, but these thoughts do not consume me. I know that Daddy NayNay has the situation in hand and more likely than not they are having adventures that I would also enjoy. I had imagined that I would have to restrain my hand from picking up to phone to check on them while I am away, but my hand is not so inclined. I am happy to see the little gnome when I get back, but I am also enjoying my time away, back in the familiar academy with all of the incestuous insanity and intellectuals. This is a different kind of learning and work than where I have been for the past year, but I am glad to realize that for the most part, it remains fulfilling work.

Mamamamamamamamamama!

Recently the little gnome has added these momentous syllables to his babble. On the one hand, quite exciting, on the other not at all clearly directed at me. The wave though, he's got that one down.

le pianiste pissant.

My brother and I once took piano lessons from a certain Ms. Toombs who lived in the neighborhood. At one time I delivered her paper as well. We, my brother and I, were not virtuosos. The piano on which we practiced remains unplayed in our parents' home, now blocking access to a bookshelf in the living room, having been displaced from its former position in front of a window by a highboy inherited by my mother from hers. I remember very little about these lessons other than the proximity of her house to ours and her silhouette, brown wavy hair and round face next to the piano bench. I can picture the scene as though I am not the little girl seated on the bench. And in truth I was not so little. In fact, I was the oldest student in my recital level, at which I delivered a stunning rendition of My Big Sombrero. Thus ended the piano, the third of four instruments I would attempt growing up.
In some perverse attempt to make my child everything that I am not, I have been on an instruments kick lately--tamborine, maraca, and most recently a four-note "little tykes" piano tuned to Pachelbel's Canon (so Peter informed me). I acquired this for four dollars and fifty cents at Chloe's Closet. There were two, and the little gnome and another child of similar age expressed the vaguest of interest. I and the other mother felt compelled by the presence of each other to buy one. We chose orange with colored keys, leaving them with the yellow (I have a thing against yellow pianos after my parents bought a house from a woman whose favorite color was yellow and that extended to her mustard grand piano in the same yellow-draped living room in which our wooden upright now stands).
The little gnome does seem to like this little piano and the neighbors have yet to ask that we decommission it. Where it has proven the most useful, however, is with the infant potty training. I decided to continue to give it a casual go, after the recent victory. When he gets up from a nap, I seat him on the little red potty and then place the piano in front of him so that he can play while he sits. I make the little ppsssppssppss cue noise, but this is usually drowned out by the keys. It occurs to me that if he goes on to play the piano later in life, he will be at risk for peeing while he plays.

Or at weddings when the bride walks in.

Daddy Nay Nay.

On Wednesday the manny wore a necklace gifted by his previous charge, a little girl now in pre-school. Cursive silver letters hanging from a chain spelled out Daddy Nay Nay. Later in the morning he climbed to Bernal Heights with the little gnome, for the children's reading at Red Hill Books. The little girl was in attendance with her mom and when she saw them she said, Look Mama, Nay Nay has a new one! And later when she asked him to push her on the swing, she chose a swing next to Soren so that Nay Nay could push him too.

I Wish They Made These For Adults...

I just ordered the little gnome these and these woolens. I sort of wish that I could have one of these.

Face.

Now in my
heart I
see clearly

a beautiful
face
shining back on me

stained
with love


Sappho 4
(from the new Willis Barnstone translation, Sweetbitter Love)

Very Nervous.

Tomorrow is my first (half) day away from the little gnome.

Stroller News.

A while back I mentioned that we bought a Maclaren stroller then took it to Athens and back without much use. Today I decided to give it another go.

Pros:

Something else is carrying the 20+ pounds of child and the 5+ pounds of child accessories.

You can hook the dog leash to the handle.

You can walk faster and probably reach your destination sooner than if you were carrying everyone/thing.

If you acquire more goods along the way, you have somewhere to put them.

Your child can see the world, not just your collarbone or the space between your shoulder blades.

Cons:

For this particular model, the handles do not adjust. If you are tall, like me, this will be uncomfortable after about two blocks.

If your child decides s/he no longer wishes to be in the stroller and you take him/her out of it, the stroller will fall over with the weight of everything you have hung from the handles.

If your stroller does not have air-filled tires (and none of the compact models do) you and your child will notice every bump in the road, especially on the return trip when everyone is tired.

Unlike some of the SUV strollers, this one does not give you the option of having the child face you, so when s/he wants to look at you s/he must twist around quite far. S/he made maintain this position for many blocks.

Last Note:

This seems like it will be a great stroller for a tired older toddler. The little gnome flopped around a fair amount (he chose to ride with one leg kicked over the side, which sent the rest of him slouching more and more to the other side). It takes up very little space, both on the road and in the garage, but you do probably sacrifice some comfort.

Guess What ?!? II.

After watching Oona yesterday, the little gnome and I gave it another go. He woke up from a delicious nap and then sat on the little red potty and actually peed into it while banging on an empty container of some excellent hot chocolate. I am not completely happy with the fact that I feel somehow victorious.

Did Some Babysitting.

TIRED!

Better than Page Six.

Advice-wanted from the Berkeley Parents Network is the juiciest read, full of affairs, cat fights, and high-drama lives. Why pay for a trashy novel when this arrives in your inbox for free?

Transitions.

We spent a while searching for the right person to look after Soren while I am at school. I was concerned that the duration of our trip abroad would put us back in San Francisco too late to do a proper search and that all of the good ones would be gone. Thankfully, this does not seem to have been the case.

It is especially difficult to find a well-qualified caretaker who would like part-time work. Most people who have experience know that they can get full-time and prefer it. It is especially-especially difficult to find someone who would like half days, since one of the ways that people who take part-time clients work it out is to take a different client on the other days. Also, a normal "full" day in the childcare industry is ten hours, so that the parent can work eight hours and commute each way. We wanted four half-days/week.

I also assumed that we would have to compromise a fair amount in terms of how we wanted Soren to go about his day. It seemed unreasonable to ask someone to use cloth diapers, given that one has to change them much more frequently and that trying to change the little gnome's diaper right now is a bit like trying to dress a large snake. I also assumed that he would have to get used to spending much more time in the stroller, since insisting that a woman of a certain age lug around our sturdy child simply because he prefers it also seemed out of the question.

And then we met the person who is now the little gnome's manny (whom my father would like to call his billy, since apparently nanny derives from nannygoat and billygoat is the appropriate male equivalent). He is doing an intensive training to become a yoga teacher and works as a dance and performance artist, so he prefers part-time. When we first met he brought up having had a good experience using cloth diapers with past charges, and one of his references told me about how he carried her daughter all over town in a wrap. It seems we might not have to make so many compromises after all.

Beyond these particulars, he was someone to whom Peter and I could relate. We realized that Maggie's comment that she wanted to find a caretaker with whom she herself could hang out or have dinner made a lot of sense (thanks Jennifer for reminding me of this mama's coffee conversation!). We wanted the little gnome to spend time with someone with whom we would also be happy to spend time. Someone with stories and energy.

I have spent this week hanging out with the little gnome and his new billy. We wanted to have some time for everyone to get to know one another and feel safe. Yesterday I went to a yoga class in the afternoon, my first in a long time. It was difficult for me to leave the two of them, even for a short time. Despite all of the references and my own intuition, I wondered whether I had just been completely wrong, whether all of the evidence that he was the right person to look after my child had been an elaborate ruse to babynap him (I am prone to imagining these sorts of extreme scenarios.) At the end of the class, as I slipped in to a well-earned savasana (corpse/resting pose) a word came up out of me with such force. That word was TRUST.

I walked home and found the little gnome just waking up from a nap. His hair smelled faintly of the amber resin that the billy wears, a deep, warm fragrance of comfort.

*picture from this article.

The Way Things Work.

These days the little gnome can amuse himself for hours with every drawer, door, knob, hinge, or pump in the house, with every mechanism and movement. He spent this morning standing in front of the ancient toaster oven in the kitchen opening and closing its door. In the bedroom he stands at the bureau and pulls all of the drawers open, or the doors on the cupboard in the living room. In the bath he eschews the many rubber duckies in favor of the knob that switches from shower to bath or the switch that opens the drain. He pulls every bottle of shampoo, conditioner or soap into the tub surrounding us with floating bottles, some of which are as tall and heavy as he (I buy my bumble and bumble in bulk) and pumps conditioner into the bath. He reminds me of a book called The Ways Things Work, a book whose cover I can picture, but that I do not remember ever opening. I do not think that I was a child who fixated on the mechanics of things. My dress-up box brimmed over and I spent my time with fantasies. Plus ca change, perhaps, for I have grown into an adult not overly concerned with the mechanics of things, but for whom the stories matter. I hope, of course, that the little gnome will enjoy his share of fantasy and costume, of getting so deep into a story that you race to finish even as you fear coming to its end. At the moment, however, I enjoy watching him figure out how objects go about their tasks. The mechanics of our world have their own stories to share.

Circumcision of the Tongue.

Today the little gnome had his 9-month checkup. He had the usual measurements and checks. And after removing quite a lot of wax from his little ears, the good doctor clipped the underside of his tongue. He had a lingual frenectomy, which is literally the clipping of the tissue beneath the tongue. Some babies have it done much earlier if they seem to be having trouble latching on. We chose to have the pediatrician do it today because if we waited and it did cause him difficulty speaking, he would need to have general anesthesia as a two year-old. At this age, they just clip it quickly with no anesthesia at all, not even local. He was definitely upset, but no more so than he was having his ears cleaned and looked into. There were a few drops of blood, but nothing substantial. Apparently our doctor had recently done the tongue of his patient's father, who also had the condition and wondered if that was why he had always been very shy and had difficulty speaking. I do not think I would have been so bold as to present my tongue to the clippers (nor do I have a thick frenulum), but overall the procedure was much less dramatic than we had imagined. And now the little gnome may one day be able to touch his tongue to his nose, which is what we were really concerned about.

STATS: 20 lbs 14 oz; 28.5 in; 46.5 m; and one polio vaccine.

We Were Just Talking About This At The Corner Store...

Gloria Steinem says it well in today's NYT op-ed.

That's not your mother, it's a man, baby!*

It is a go! The nanny whom we wanted to look after Soren wants to do it. This comes as a huge relief, after weeks of searching for the right person and situation. And...she's a man, baby.

*from this movie.

A Few Things...

1. our new britax car seat rocks. the little gnome seems happy to sit on this throne whilst tooling around town. hurrah.

2. i have been consumed since our return with our search for childcare.

3. maybe, just maybe we have found the right person. more details once we have confirmed-confirmed.

4. the awkward thing about consulting a lot of people for advice before a big decision is that people will tell you different things and in the end when you reach your own decision, you will have done just the opposite of what some suggested.

5. the little gnome is learning to wave. maybe someday he will blow kisses like the little girl next door.