MomMe TV Blog :: "The Silver Lining"

At my request my husband, Steve, took a few days off last week creating a long weekend. It was my birthday and I wanted us to spend some unscheduled time together. Steve takes days off on occasion but they are almost always because we are going on vacation or have some other obligation that demands our time. So this was unusual because a four day weekend lay before us with no specific scheduling demands.

Just like nature abhors a vacuum, Steve abhors unscheduled time. He felt compelled to fill this scheduling vacuum with a productive activity, in this case “A Summer Cleaning”.

I wonder what it would be like to have a husband who just sits around watching sports all day. It sounds relaxing to me.

The spark that ignited it all was that Steve opened up our laundry room cabinet looking for something and demanded “Why do we still have these old towels?” My answer was simple. Every time a towel would get faded, ripped, or stained, or I’d simply changed color schemes, I’d put these towels in a cabinet to be used as rags. It was what my Mom did and it seemed a more dignified passing for once beloved towels than the trash. At least they would still have a useful life. But after sixteen years of marriage, we had accumulated fifty or more rag towels and they were spilling out haphazard and in disarray.

“Time to let go”, he declared, and so the frenzy began.

One disorganized cabinet opened up the Pandora’s Box of our four day cleaning and organizing frenzy. You probably remember the legend of Pandora. When Pandora opened up the box, she let out Sadness, Greed, Corruption, Sloth and more, unleashing all manner of sins and tragedy upon mankind.

Well if Steve were the one opening Pandora’s Box, the tragedy would have been averted. As soon as the vices would start flying out, Steve would grab them, sort them and dispose of them appropriately.

“OK. Here’s Greed - I haven’t used that since the Internet 90’s, so we’ll put that in the Goodwill pile. Waste - Not since the kids were born but I’m sure plenty others have time to waste so that goes to recycle, Sloth- Not since my college days so that goes to trash”. If you give Greed to charity, recycle Waste and clean out Sloth, don’t they cancel each other out, kind of like matter and anti-matter? We’d have to consider saving Hedonism and Laziness for our kids for when they go to college but I’m certain they would want the latest versions anyway, so out they’d go. I would have to insist on saving Vanity and Narcissism because obviously I am still using them.

I started out helping with the clean up. I’m a good sport. I figured two people would get it done faster than one. But my efforts would be interrupted with, “No, no, don’t save that”. So I started just throwing everything out. That was interrupted by, “No, no, I need that”. Clearly he was following rules to which I was not privy, so I bowed out.

The kids and I learned very quickly to just stay out of his way. As he rummaged through cabinets, he’d pull out an offending item and inquire, “Whose is this?” At first we thought the right answer was, “It’s mine”. But that brought, “Well this doesn’t belong here. Please put it in your room, in the basement, in your closet, (insert some other inconvenient destination)”.

Pretty soon we’d all be weighed under with a pile of jacks, playing cards, old notebooks, bobble headed monkey pens and books with no idea where to put them. Obviously that is how they ended up where they were. So the safer answer became, “I have never seen that monkey pen in my life”, which doomed it to a fate in the waste pile.

The kids and I all just hovered a respectable distance away, just outside of the Steve’s organizational force field, making mental calculations on whether the trip upstairs or downstairs to put something away way was worth saving it from the trash heap. “No” to the old jacks, “No” to the notebook, “No” to the McDonald’s toy but for the love of God, don’t throw out my Monkey pen.

We moved from the laundry room, to the kitchen, through the family room and finally into the garage. The garage was such a profound disaster that it was there we decided we needed professional help.

I remembered that there was a woman in my neighborhood that started an organizing business. I gave her a call and she came right over and she and Steve became engaged in a discussion of what to save, what to give away and what to throw away which led us to filling our two cars with items we took to Goodwill and a mountain of trash for the curb.

With the first “Getting rid of” phase complete, we plan to continue to the organizing phase. This will probably take place during Steve’s next unscheduled weekend, perhaps our anniversary.

So there went my birthday weekend. My present from Steve- a more organized home. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, our house needed an overhaul; I know just what to do!”

Posted by Sassypants at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Becoming a parent is empowering on many levels. You are given this new life to mold and protect. You will never, you vow, yell irrationally, loose your temper, or, otherwise, give your children reason to blame their problems on you in therapy years later. We would present well-adjusted, happy and undamaged children to the world.

Before I had kids, I would see parents screaming at theirs in public as the kids melted down, and I’d scoff with superiority. I would never do such a thing. My children would know their limits, and if they didn’t, I would calmly explain the consequences and they would intelligently make the right choices.

I would never say things like, “Because I said so!” or “Am I speaking to the wall?” or “How many times do I have to tell you? (“Obviously mom, at least one more time!”)

Making this vow is easy to do before you are presented with the reality of parenthood. If I stop and think about it, I’m sure I could catalogue all the unique ways I am messing up, and messing my kids up as a result. Although hundreds, if not thousands, of parenting mistakes come to mind, there are a few in particular that convince me that along with their college fund, I’d better start a long-term therapy fund as well.

My early mistakes with Martin centered on attempts to subdue his physical energy. Left in a room to play, he would literally bounce off walls while he moved from one activity to another. No drawer would be left unopened. No toy untouched. I told Steve we might be wise to pad the walls. If nothing else, it would cut down on the abuse of our walls.

The problem was I couldn’t always keep him inside. Sometimes, I needed to take him out into the world. When Martin was two years old, I took him to the mall in a stroller. Martin was never one to stay quietly put. As soon as I turned my back (to look at some clothes on sale), Martin tipped out of the stroller, ran out of the store, and sprinted down the mall commons. As soon as I noticed (it took awhile, we were talking 50% off!), I dashed after him. About 100 yards down, screaming like a lunatic the whole way; I leaped in the air and executed a tackle the NFL would have been impressed to see. I threw him over my shoulder and marched back to the store as he screamed and struggled the whole way. I couldn’t decide whether to explain to shocked onlookers that he was really mine, (I didn’t want them to think I was kidnapping the kid), or deny any knowledge of this wild creature altogether.

And this kind of thing happened all the time. When Martin was three, I took him with me to an outdoor garden center. One second he was walking next to me. The next second he was gone. I immediately panicked and started running down the rows of plants screaming his name. As I surveyed the wide landscape I spotted him running out of the garden section and full tilt into the busy parking lot.

When I finally caught up with him, I was in such a state of panic that I grabbed him by the arm, pointed a finger close to his face and yelled. “Don’t you ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER, run away from me. Do you hear me? Never, ever, ever, EVER, run into a parking lot. EVER!”

During my entire tirade I kept waving my finger at him in sharp motions to emphasize the ‘never evers’. I ended with, “What did I just say?” I was hoping to reinforce my important point by making him repeat it. He stared at me earnestly, then wagged his little forefinger severely in my face and said, "You said, don’t you ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER… I forgot the rest.”

I’m glad that got my point across.

And while Martin was my active child, dealing with his sudden escapes turned out to be easy compared to his sister’s public meltdowns. These public tantrums were regular performances in Kelsey’s behavioral repertoire.

When Kelsey was two, we flew to Houston to visit Steve’s family. Scheduled to return on a 4:00 PM flight, we really wanted Kelsey to nap all the way home. We knew that if she fell asleep for even 20 minutes before take-off, she would assume that was her nap, and she’d be awake and cranky the entire flight. Her naptime was usually around 2:00pm, so we kept her going all afternoon.

The real challenge was the drive to the airport, where she kept nodding off in her car seat. In order to keep her awake, I sat next to her in the back and kept blowing in her face and tickling her, which annoyed her greatly, but kept her awake.

By the time we got on the airplane, she was delirious. As we reached our seats, she started screaming that her diaper hurt. As I tried to calm her down, she stood up in her seat and started to strip. Off came her shoes, her socks, her pants, her diaper, and her shirt. As I tried to redress her, she screamed louder and got more naked. I fully expected, and our fellow passengers fervently prayed, that we were going to get kicked off the flight. I would struggle with her to put back on her diaper and then she would rip it off. I would force her shirt back over her head and she would scream, tear if off and throw it across the aisle (she has a great arm). We managed to half dress her and in the process we became untucked and disheveled as well. I can’t imagine what we must have looked like to other people. We didn’t appear to be in control of the situation, mainly because we weren’t.

Eventually, we managed to contain her somewhat, but for the duration of the flight, she screamed, struggled and acted like a maniac child. It wasn’t until we started descending that she fell into a deep and quiet sleep.

As she got older, Kelsey found new ways to push my buttons. I can proudly say now that I handled many of them...oh, who am I kidding? I managed to mishandle any number of situations.

When Kelsey was four, she developed the annoying habit of needing my attention any time I would pick up the telephone. I would try to carry on a conversation, to an ongoing background barrage of “mom, mom, moms,” until I would loose my patience altogether.

So, of course, I made a rule. “When mommy is on the phone, you don’t interrupt unless you or someone else is bleeding, or is otherwise in need of immediate medical attention.” It didn’t seem to sink in. In one case, though, I was glad she didn’t follow my rule.

That day it was my turn to drive Kelsey and her four-year old friend, Matthew to 10:00am gymnastics. Matthew’s mother had a 9:00 am appointment so she dropped Matthew off at our house to play before gymnastics. When Matthew arrived, I sent him to the basement, where Kelsey was watching Big Comfy Couch, a PBS program, on our new 70” big screen TV.

This cinematic extravagance came equipped with a universal remote, a term that seemed very ‘Star Trek’ to me, like ‘Universal Translator’ and we were just beginning to figure it out. In conjunction with the new digital cable, I had only learned the very basic functions.

I probably don’t have to tell you this, but we had purchased this huge television at the insistence of my husband. As you walked down the ten steps to the basement, it sat in full view of anyone walking down.

They were watching Comfy Couch, so I started to clean the kitchen and the phone rang. While I was talking to my sister about nothing I can recall, Kelsey came running up the stairs, trailed by Matthew, whining, “Mom! Mom! There is a lady on TV and she’s dying.”

“I’m on the phone,” I mouthed, and gave a very stern looked designed to get my point across. I planned to ignore her to teach her not to interrupt, but something caught my attention. Why would someone by dying on Comfy Couch? That seemed decidedly un-Comfy Couch-like.

I told my sister I’d call her back and started down the stairs to investigate. As I approached step five, with the kids close behind, I noticed that what was on this life-size screen was not Comfy Couch at all. There, in 70” graphic detail, a naked man and woman were engaged in an activity that, had the kids stayed down another minute, would have clearly revealed that she was not dying. Shocked, I dove for the remote, tackled it, and quickly hit the Power button, shutting it off.

“Hey, we were watching,” whined Kelsey.

“It’s broken.” I breathlessly muttered, and ushered them off to a coloring project.

What I believe had happened was that Matthew did not like Comfy Couch and was not shy about playing with the Universal Remote. Unbeknownst to us, we had the Spice channel on our digital cable, and he located it before we even knew we had it. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it). We’ve locked those channels since.

I kept waiting for the kids to say something about the program but they never did. After gymnastics when I drove Matthew home, I pulled his mother aside and said I had to tell her something.

“The thing is,” I began, “I accidentally exposed Matthew to pornography this morning”; a pronouncement she was probably not expecting. I was certain to be cut out of the carpool. Thankfully, she found the story amusing and told me she’d let me know if he ever mentioned the incident. Surprisingly, neither of them ever did. No doubt, it will be one of those repressed memories that come out after extensive therapy. “When I was four I witnessed life-size pornography, and that must be why I have an unexplained attraction-repulsion to electronics.”

Life goes on, and I look forward to the numerous and interesting ways I will mess up in my parenting in the future. Now that the kids are older, I move from safeguarding their physical self to the much harder and less clear task of safeguarding their emotional development. I hope I start doing a better job soon or someday they will be hearing, “Sit back on my big comfy couch and tell me all about it.”

Posted by Sassypants at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One great thing about writing is that having your words on paper gives you a measure of immortality. I have this feeling that my voice will transcend me and I find that thought comforting. That is the extent to which I normally contemplate death. But recently I’ve read an article about LifeGem, a company out of Illinois, which started me thinking about the afterlife. LifeGem is a company that takes a person’s cremated remains and turns them into a real diamond, and something about this idea really appeals to me. Maybe because it seems like the Jewish women’s version of reincarnation – coming back as a precious gem. I even like the company name, LifeGem. It puts such a positive spin on the whole death thing. But most probably I like the idea because I like the mental images it creates.

How many days in your life do you feel soft, dull and misshapen? Now, for all eternity, you can be hard bodied, perfectly formed and brilliant.

Also, being an immediate gratification girl, I love the idea that while a natural diamond takes millions of years to occur, a LifeGem diamond takes only eighteen weeks. I’m sure this doesn’t sit well with the big diamond conglomerates.

My favorite of these is the DeBeers “A diamond is forever” people. Women swoon and men get nauseated at the sight of their commercials. Especially polarizing is the ten-year diamond anniversary commercial where the handsome graying-just-a little-eyes-with-laugh-lines husband stares lovingly in his aging-gracefully-still-beautiful wife’s eyes and pledges he’d marry her all over again. Not only that, he presents her with a diamond necklace to prove that talk is cheap, but he isn’t.

My husband, Steve, feels he speaks for most men when he voices his disgust. “Look at the manufactured pressure this puts on men. It makes women think that if they don’t get this expensive necklace on their anniversary, then their husbands don’t love them and wouldn’t “marry them all over again”. Fine, be that way.

Now I have my solution. I told my husband that if he dies before me, I’m turning him into a diamond. He seemed pleased with the idea, especially if it gets him out of buying one during this lifetime. And it seems appropriate on so many other levels.

Since he is 6’4”, a whole lot of carbon atoms, it seems certain to be my only chance of getting my three carats. I don’t care what anyone says, size does matter. For another thing, my tall, handsome husband has always made a great accessory. This just allows him to continue in that role. Thirdly, even after he goes, for the rest of my life, I’ve got him where I want him. I can talk as much as I want, about whatever I want – even my feelings, and he can’t leave the room. And lastly, what could be a better example of turning lemons into lemonade? On one hand, you have lost your lover, your soulmate, and your best friend. But on the plus side, you are left with fabulous jewelry. Not an even exchange, but something.

And I want to be a diamond, too. My concern is that being short (barely five feet tall), I hope there is enough of me to make a diamond for each of my kids. I don’t want them fighting over me.

I can even pick the cut. In keeping with my reputation, I guess I’d choose a Princess Cut, but I’d have to think it through. Princess cuts are a little square. Do you think it would make me look fat?

I also discovered that the color, from a light yellow to amber, will vary based on the impurities in your ashes. But what would cause you to have impurities? Would your color after the fact give away a life of impure thoughts and deeds ala, “He came out amber. I knew he was cheating on me!” Or perhaps you really are what you eat and the color will be determined by your diet. “He always loved beer. How fitting that he would come out a golden pale ale”.

When I mentioned my plans to my kids, they were repulsed by the idea. But being a former marketing person, I tried to spin the concept positively. I told my son that if I die before he gets married, he could present his beloved with a diamond engagement ring ala mom.

“Darling, this is for you. Will you marry me?”
“Oh honey. It’s beautiful. Did this belong to your Mom?”
“Well, sort of, um, actually, it is my mom.”

If she doesn’t run screaming it was meant to be. Sure it’s odd and a little bit creepy, but whose in-laws aren’t?

Still, the kids seem still resistant to the idea. Maybe it’s not fair to make my kids wear me long after I am supposed to be gone. The quest for immortality is ever elusive. So I decided I will create immortality the old fashioned way. I’ll haunt them.

Posted by Sassypants at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In a moment of insanity last summer, we decided to get a second dog. We got our first dog, Cosmo, a Brittany spaniel, five years prior at the pound. He was a stray and as close as they could figure, was approximately three. Cosmo has been a great dog, but at around eight years old, he is slowing down a bit. He has one energetic walk in him in the morning and after that, he just wants to sleep. So my daughter, Kelsey, started lobbying for another dog, one who would play with her –a puppy this time.

Kelsey is animal crazy and if we'd heeded every pet whim she'd had over the years, we'd have a rabbit, a guinea pig, a fish, a turtle, a frog, a snake, a cat, and a bird. But Cosmo is a hunting dog and every time she'd suggest a pet, I'd said, "Sure, and we'll name it Lunch, because that's what Cosmo will make it". Last year we went to a outdoor adventure trade show (don't ask me why) and this man was selling Sugar Gliders, a kind of tiny, nocturnal marsupial that likes to curl up in the warmth of your pocket. This guy kept pulling them out of hidden compartments in his clothing and they seemed very gentle. When Kelsey predictably began to beg for one, I started to respond, "Sure and we'll name it…" she interrupted, "I know, I know, Lunch." We repeat this drill so often that I wouldn't be surprised if she named her first child Lunch.

So she narrowed her quest to another dog. She said, "Wouldn't it be so cute to get a puppy like Cosmo. We never got to see Cosmo as a puppy". To humor her, I went on-line and looked up Brittany breeders in the area and found an available litter of puppies. Word of caution- don't ever do this unless a puppy is definitely in your future, because there is nothing cuter than these little pups. They should come with warning labels.

I thought my safety net would be my husband, Steve, who I assumed would never agree to another dog. But he didn't immediately say "No", which to Kelsey translated as an enthusiastic "Yes". After a little more begging, the next thing I knew we were putting down a deposit on a female Brittany puppy, who we decided to name Sophie. The only dissenting member of our family was my son, Marty, who sensibly pointed out the additional work that would go in to getting a second dog. It is a scary day in our family when my teenager acts as the voice of reason. If nothing else, that should have tipped us off to the folly of our plan. The other dissenter, it turned out, was our existing pet, Cosmo.

We justified that Cosmo could use some dog company- someone to talk to. But no one consulted him and based on his ongoing relationship to Sophie, I believe his feedback would have been "Don't do me any favors". From the day she arrived, she has been making Cosmo's life a misery. At seven and half weeks old, Sophie was eight pounds of orange and white love, but Cosmo wanted nothing to do with her. When she showed up, he sniffed her and walked away. I think he was hoping she was just here for a visit but not only did she stay, she took over. On the other hand, Sophie loves Cosmo and exhibits it with a frightening intensity.

Cosmo has a gentle, laid-back and even lazy temperament. If he were a human, I'd describe him as the aging athlete that just wants his sports, a burger and permission to lie around all day. If only he had thumbs, he'd be popping beer cans and working the remote control. Those qualities are very endearing – in a dog.

Sophie, as it turns out, is anything but laid-back. She's energetic, playful and completely in charge. Cosmo will just be settling down for his mid-morning nap and she'll bounce over and bite him in the face, jump on him and bark at him until he gets off his doggy butt. We imagine she's scolding him, "Get up already. You slept 20 hours yesterday. Let's go do something. Let's dig some holes, catch some birds or play with my rubber chicken. Why do I have to do all the work?"

Sometimes, when she's hanging off of his ears and biting his eyes, I could swear he mumbles, "Bitch" under his breath as he ambles by, although whether it's merely an observation and not an assessment of her character, I don't know. But I believe he secretly loves her. She is so adorable and really sweet in a manic, bossy, "I have to be the center of attention" kind of way.

And for reasons I don't quite understand, I can really relate to that.

Posted by Sassypants at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

School is just about over for the year and I am as relieved as my kids.

As a stay at home mom, I am the parent who is intimately involved with all of their school obligations. I am the nag-in-chief when it comes to making sure their homework and long term projects are completed on time.

My role differs with each child. With my daughter, I strive to limit the emotional meltdowns each day. My little girl can be a little high strung. On the one hand, I really admire the high standards she sets for herself. She is a very hard worker and quite the perfectionist. On the other, much more neurotic hand, she is unable to tolerate anything going wrong.

Just this morning, thirty seconds before we were leaving for school, she realized she didn’t have some notes she worked so hard on over the weekend. Instead of looking around for them, she decided instead that it was more satisfying and apparently more productive to fly into a panicky rage. She started crying and screaming that someone (read me) must have cleaned-them-up-and-thrown-them-out-and-now-she’ll-fail-and-it-will-be-all-my-fault! So I responded in the only way I now how to handle an unfounded, hormone-induced hysterical accusation. I yelled back. Surprisingly, this only escalated the frenzy.

“Now-all-my-work-is-wasted-maybe-I-dreamed-the-whole-thing-and-I-never-even-worked-on-it!”

So of course, I laughed. Sometimes these hysterical rants can be pretty creative. Somehow, whenever something goes wrong, she is able to find a reason, no matter how obscure, to make this disaster my fault. If she did badly on a quiz, it was clearly because I forgot to do her laundry so she had to wear something really dumb, so she was really distracted because David was looking at her and probably thinking she looked like a dork, so she couldn't concentrate on the answers and she would have gotten an A if I had just done her laundry the night before. Huh? I guess she's got me. I wanted to point out that if spent half as much time studying and keeping track of her work as she does finding creative reasons why it is all my fault, she'd be running the show. But my pre-teen is not a fan of irony, so I kept this observation to myself.

Instead I remembered something from a parenting book I once read, so I said, “OK, that’s One. If I get to Three, you lose television tonight. Calm down and we will look for it”.

“But-I-need-it-today-and-it-isn’t-where-I-left-it-so-you-probably-put-it-somewhere-and-now-you-can't-remember-cause-you're-getting-old". She's getting good- she shifted the blame and reminded me of my advancing years in one run-on sentence.

“OK, that’s Two.”

“And-now-I’m-going-to-be-late-for-school-too"!

So I marched upstairs. Opened her nightstand and promptly found the papers she was looking for right on top.

"The papers are right here. That is Three. You just lost television for the day.” I was actually panting from the nervous frustration of an emotional aerobic workout.

“Oh sorry, mom”, she said, instantly calmed, taking the papers and stuffing them into her backpack. And here’s the beauty part. She became completely and instantly unruffled while I was now wound up and tense. How she accomplishes this transfer of anxiety I’ll never know. But it works every time. As she cheerfully left for school, I spent the next three hours wrestling with a facial tic.

All of her teachers and other parents never see this side of her. To the outside world she is the sweetest and most charming kid around.

My son is another story altogether. At fourteen he should not need my micromanaging; however he is so laid back and unconcerned that I feel I must fill in the worry gap. He will “forget” to study for tests, do homework assignments, or about long term projects until 24 hours before they are due. Yes, I know conventional wisdom says I should let him fail. But I have such a hard time doing that.

I tell him if he keeps up this slacker attitude he will only have to learn one thing, which is how to say, “Would you like fries with that?”

I realize that parenting by sarcasm is not really helping and I do actually offer helpful suggestions. Last month he was faced with three long term projects all due within the same week. So I thought I would help him learn how to break down something large and daunting into small digestible chunks. We sat down together and broke each of these projects down and I created a timeline detailing what needed to be tackled each week.

But my son is the king of procrastination. Before he settles down to work, he will decide he needs to eat. But it is never a quick snack. He’ll decide to make a fruit salad, meticulously cutting each piece of fruit in equal sized bites. Then he’ll decide to make soup. The only time he’s willing and able to feed himself is when the alternative is school work. Then he’ll say he has to take a bath, or he becomes suddenly willing to help his sister out with something. Whenever he starts to go out of his way to be nice to her or is suddenly concerned about his hygiene, I know he is avoiding homework.

So yesterday, after several hours of procrastination-related activities, he finally buckled down to work on a book report. He spent three hours at this computer. When I went up to check on his progress I realized he spent the first hour trying to locate family tree software on the Internet so he could more easily dissect the character relationships. After that unsuccessful search, he proceeded to list every characters lineage and their interrelationship with every other character, yielding an incomprehensible and convoluted introduction.

So I freaked.

“What a waste of time! Next time I am building into your timeline one hour for trying to download unnecessary and nonexistent software followed by two hours of mind numbing exploration of character quirks and non essential subplots!” I know. I was back to the parenting by sarcasm thing.

He actually accused me of mocking him. At this point, my husband got involved. He pulled me away and scolded me for being so harsh and saying that I was clearly taking it all too personally. Of course I was, but can you blame me. After all my hard work, he was going to blow my A.

If only I could combine my daughter’s perfectionism with my son’s calm, we’d have the perfect student. Of course, more likely we’d get a combination of my daughter’s emotional high maintenance plus my son’s disorganized procrastination and we’d have, well, me. And we don’t want more than one of those.

So next year, I pledge to try a different approach. I will let my daughter’s tantrums wash over me, absorbing the shock waves until they dissipate into calm. With my son, I will let him approach his work in whatever circuitous, fruit salad making pace he is comfortable, and just stay out of his way. That is my solemn vow – until the fall.

Posted by Sassypants at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

MY SON MARTY WAS A COLICKY and gassy baby. Every evening from about six o’clock on, he would cry, squirm, and expel gas. From the time my husband, Steve, got home from work until Marty finally decided to call it quits around 11:00 P.M., one of us had to carry him around.

We tried everything to calm him. We tried placing his car seat on our clothes dryer because the vibration and warmth was supposed to be relaxing. It didn’t calm him down and it started to melt the plastic car seat. We tried running the vacuum because the white noise was supposed to be soothing. My carpets stayed clean but the vacuum gave me a headache.

After much experimentation, Steve perfected a cradling technique that he called the Vulcan baby hold, named after the immobilizing Vulcan pinch from Star Trek. He would hold Marty upright with one hand under his bottom, thumb and pinky under his armpits and an index finger behind his head. While this seemed to stop his crying, we could only hold him like this for so long.

When we lacked the strength to walk him around, we discovered that taking him for a drive would put him to sleep. Many times, on the edge of exhaustion, we’d pull out of the garage and drive him around the neighborhood. As long as the car kept moving, he was fine. We dreaded a red light because the minute we stopped, he would start wailing again. We imagined explaining to an officer the need to go through any number of red lights to avoid a crying baby. A jury of our peers (sleep-deprived new parents, that is) would never convict us.

We tried new formulas every week, hoping to find one that kept him happy. We did iron-enriched. We did iron-free. We did soy. Nothing helped.

When Marty was about one month old, I showed up at the pediatrician’s office completely exhausted, unwashed, unbrushed, and totally disheveled. I was practically crying as I explained about Marty’s colic and how I just didn’t know what to do. The doctor took one look at me and, with no apparent thought to his physical safety, suggested, “Just looking at what a nervous wreck you are makes me wonder if you aren’t communicating your anxiety to your baby.”

“Are you suggesting I am making him colicky?” I shrieked a few octaves above normal.

“Well, some studies suggest…” he started to explain.

“Studies suggest, studies suggest!” I sputtered. I was furious. How dare he! I packed up, left the office, and found myself another pediatrician.

I found a more sympathetic doctor, but we still had to deal with Marty’s ongoing colic and smelly gas.

At last, at about 12 weeks old the colic finally let up. I don’t know if this was due to the new formula my new pediatrician suggested or just Marty’s maturing, but we were so relieved. However while the end to his colic was a blessing, it was replaced by projectile vomiting. Our doctor assured us that this was normal and, that by the time he was walking, it would cease. Easy for him to say, as Marty’s first spit-up-free steps would be months away. Things really got interesting when we started baby food, because Marty would spew in Technicolor.

You couldn’t even anticipate when he would let go because it didn’t necessarily happen right after meals. He would be sitting and playing with you, and suddenly, with a smile on his face, he would send a stream of blueberry spit-up three feet across the room. We even thought about having him exorcised but we couldn’t find a rabbi willing to do it.

When Marty was about four months old, Steve and I went shopping for one of those metal frame baby backpacks so we could carry him around hands-free. Steve tried one on in the store and liked the fit. Just before we bought it we placed Marty in the back to see if he liked it, and he promptly spit up on Steve’s head. We decided not to get one. We would never feel safe.

So Steve and I got in the habit of wearing oversized T-shirts over our clothes whenever we were at home. Our babysitters and friends all knew the drill. We had stacks of these T-shirts by the door, and when anyone came over they would don the costume. With the protective attire and our friend’s reluctance to handle him, you would have thought Marty was made of plutonium.

In spite of his messy ways, Marty was a very funny and outgoing child. And he was always on the move, even in his sleep. Throughout the night in his crib, he would squirm and rotate in a circle—a human sundial. Upside down and vertical in the crib, it must be twelve o’clock. Perpendicular and with feet pointing to the wall, must be three o’clock. And this was before he was walking.

He started walking when he was only ten months old or, rather, he started running. At last the spitting subsided. We celebrated by cleaning the carpets, the furniture, and tossing out our old T-shirt supply.

But now we had new challenges. He had all the mobility but none of the sense, so we couldn’t take our eyes off him for a second. He would literally bounce off the walls all day long and then collapse into a heap at night.

I was convinced that his active nature must be a sign of greatness, and of course he must clearly be a genius. I was always on the lookout for evidence of his infant Mensa status and Marty, at the tender age of 16 months, finally provided my proof.

One day as we were playing in our first floor family room, a fire engine blasted down the street. Hearing the wailing siren, Marty stood up, started running around the room, and began to yell, “Fire, Fire, Fire” while grabbing up his scattered toys.

I was blown away. He had, obviously, identified the sound of the fire truck; made the cognitive leap that a fire was nearby, and had the presence of mind to collect his valuable possessions and prepare to evacuate. As far as I knew, he’d never heard a fire truck before. I’d never explained what a fire truck was, and never talked about escape plans. He heard the sound, made the deduction and took action. Clearly, this was the work of a genius mind.

I phoned Steve at work, my mother, Steve’s mother, and several friends to tell them of Marty’s remarkable feat. I felt sorry for my friends. Their children were so ‘normal.’ How sad, I thought, to be them.

Several weeks later, we were again playing in the family room when a car drove by and loudly backfired. Marty heard this very sudden, loud noise and he jumped up, ran around picking up toys, while yelling “Fire, Fire, Fire.” He finally overturned a pillow, found a pacifier, held it up triumphantly, and said “fire” before he put it in his mouth. ‘Fire’ as it turned out, was his name for pacifier, and he was just scared by the loud noise and was looking for his pacifier for comfort. The ‘fire’ from weeks ago was just a cry for his pacifier, not the logically deduced plan I imagined.

And though I now knew that Marty did not commit the act of genius for which I gave him so much credit, I somehow never told my family and friends.

Posted by Sassypants at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I have always been a fan of science, even though the relationship has been very one-sided up to this point. It's not like science has handed me much good news. Apparently I have to exercise every day or my body will atrophy, lift weights or my bones will dissolve and eat low fat, high fiber foods or I will gain weight and get, you know, irregular – and nobody wants that. Smoking will kill me, too much food or alcohol will kill me and even if I try very hard to take good care of myself, living a long time will still ultimately kill me. Where is the love, science?

Well today something happened to make me forgive you. A new scientific study just came out that hints that eating chocolate may boost your brainpower. To quote the study, "Chocolate contains many substances that act as stimulants, such as theobromine, phenethylamine, and caffeine," Dr. Bryan Raudenbush from Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia noted in comments to Reuters Health.

Certainly I've heard of caffeine and in the mornings I happen to be a big fan, but I've never heard of theobromine or phenethylamine. Frankly, they don't sound very delicious, but I'll take any justification I can find for eating more chocolate. Those who know me know of my passion for chocolate. I have always loved chocolate and I am very open-minded where chocolate is concerned. I like the cheap kind and the expensive kind, dark or milk, crunchy or smooth. Science as been on my side for a while where chocolate is concerned. Maybe there is a small but delicious chocolate lobby in place. I know, that sounds nutty or maybe chewy, but I digress.
Many years ago, a study came out that said that eating chocolate gives women the same feeling they get when in love- something about the release of endorphins in our brains. I believe this. If asked whether I prefer chocolate to sex, I'd have to ask, "Sex with whom and how much chocolate?" I mean, I love my husband, but sometimes sex isn't practical. Like, you can't have sex in a movie theatre. Well, you can, but it makes it hard to keep track of the plot.
I also read recently that dark chocolate has antioxidants because of something called flavinoids. So I started buying dark chocolate and told my kids all about this flavinoid theory. But just between you and me, the real reason I switched to dark chocolate is because my kids don't like it so they leave my stash alone.
And today, my case for chocolate just got richer, I mean stronger. If I eat chocolate, I not only get an endorphin rush and an antioxidant boost, I get to think more clearly. The study said that chocolate eating improves impulse control and reaction time, although in my case, it does not control the impulse to eat more chocolate. However, now that I think about it, my reaction time to grab the last three M & Ms is very good.
So today we can rejoice. Raise your bar of chocolate and toast the wonders of science. "Here’s to you science. Thank you for the chocolate news. Now go find a food that makes my children listen to me and I'll let all that other stuff slide.

Posted by Sassypants at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)