My Monday Moments of Zen July 31, 2007

1.) Having just enough creamer left for the perfect cup of morning coffee

2.) My Mondy Morning Weekend Catch-up IM chat with Friend Steve

3.) Getting 2, count them 1…2…, hour+ naps out of the Little Bit

4.) 4 errands and not 1 left hand turn, round trip (well, except into the driveway)

5.) The first sip of Steak-n-Shake’s Black Cherry Fruit and Yogurt Shake. YUM.

6.) Making it through another Laundry day and knowing the only dirty clothes in the house are on me right now

7.) Calvin’s belly laugh

8.) Vine ripened tomatoes on a Tomato and Mayo sandwich

9.) The awesome power of OxyClean. (Sign me up for a testimonial!)

10.) A new album release to look forward to. Check out Victoria Hart if you like jazz and blues

The Curse? Or just a phase? July 30, 2007

Please. Help. Someone has stolen my sweet, gentle baby… and replaced him with a CRACK MONKEY!!!!!

 

Up until about a week ago, I could put Calvin down and he’d play quietly on the floor or in his swing while I worked or did chores or what-not. When I was done, I’d come back and there he’d be, in the same spot that I left him, smiling up at me as if to say, “I was just thinking about you and, like magic, you appeared.”

 

Before last week, he’d let me know a few minutes before it was time to eat. I’d make the bottle. He’d eat the bottle and back to our happy little life we’d go.

 

When Calvin was born, we had two names picked out for him: Will or Calvin. The mild tempered little infant that they first put in my arms was so docile and sweet that we had a tough time deciding. Will is the name for an intelligent, sweet kid. Calvin is a shit-stirrer, a rabble rouser, an alpha baby born to terrorize adults and over-sized felines. We both really liked Calvin (especially with the shortened version as “Vin”). But for weeks, I thought we’d named him wrong.

 

“He’ll change,” said The Engineer. “Just give him time.”

 

And he did spark personality… lots of it… but he was still an easy kid over all.

 

Now, Faithful Reader, I should interject at this point that I was NOT an easy kid. Some might say filled with the dickens. Others, evil. I prefer “spirited.” I was about half the size of anyone else and I more than made up for it with my ability to con, snoocker or intimidate anyone that crossed my path.

 

And, my mother put the curse on me for it. “You just wait. Someday you’ll have a child of your own and I hope you get one JUST LIKE YOU.”

 

But, I’d lucked out. Because Vin is an angel baby. Text book right down to the serial comma. Or so I thought…

 

As of last week, my beautiful boy has transformed. Now everything is either hilarious or devastating. Just those two emotions. Nothing else.

 

He refuses to nap. He decides he’s not interested in eating after the first ounce or two. Should he find a catalogue, a magazine, or even a tax assessment notice on the floor, he grunts and flops himself across the room like a slobbering, gimpy Tasmanian devil and devours the offending papyrus. (Calvin’s crawl is not pretty… it uses a foot, a knee, a forehead and occasionally an arm.)

 

Gone are the days of gentle-mobile-viewing-come-slumber naps that last longer than 20 minutes. At nap/bed time, he dons his hooves, pulls out the pitch fork and raises hell. He’s figured out when I leave the room. He flips himself around and snakes his way down to the end of the bed with a view of the family room. He yanks down the bumper pad and he stares at me so as to ensure that I not miss one single alligator tear.

 

He’s ravenous for the first two ounces of his bottle, then he’d rather be exploring. It’s my job to hold the bottle out so that should he decide he needs a swallow or two, he can roll over, drink and then get back to the business at hand. (Not that I actually let him do this… very often.) Don’t think that I don’t recognize that sly little smile on his face, as if to say, “As soon as I can reach the pedals of your car, I’ll replace you with that thin piece of metal that holds the water bottle to the side of the hamster cage.”

 

But, really, I’m not complaining. I’m sure it’s just a phase he’s going through. He will be 6 months old next week, after all. Right now he’s back to his angelic self, curled up with the little pink blanket he stole from his cousin. And I wouldn’t trade that silly laugh of his and that crooked grin for a million sleep-in-Saturdays.

 

Plus, I have a glass of nice red wine, a tub full of bubbles waiting and the knowledge that tomorrow I still get to play the adult and he’s stuck as the baby. After all, my mom made it through. Even if it is the curse, how bad could it be?

The Mean Streets of Broad Ripple July 29, 2007

This is a post that I wrote for a blog I started in my former, single life. A good friend of mine asked me to repost some of these “oldies but goodies.” Seems like a lifetime ago… back when it was just me and the Trumonster. No Engineer. No little bit. No barricade between me and sleeping all day on weekends. Ahhhhh… the simple life.

I don’t really miss it! Anyway. I hope you enjoy.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I put on my running shoes as soon as I got out of bed this morning.

Perhaps I anticipated a pudding cup emergency in my future today. (Who am I kidding… I have a pudding cup emergency every day. I’d eat the entire damn 6-pack in one sitting and chase it down with a Jello Pop if it didn’t mean hauling myself the 12 miles necessary to burn it off.) Perhaps turning on the A/C last night to get rid of the humidity just made me cold. (Fact: 62 degrees is not a temperature in which a girl should sleep naked, down comforter or not.) Perhaps the 960 hours remaining until I have to squeeze myself into a strappy bridesmaid’s dress AND go out in public weighed heavy on my mind.

Whatever the reason… I put on my nylon track pants, grey tank top, red hooded sweatshirt and running shoes as soon as I got out of bed this morning. I felt pride inside my heart. Doing the right thing makes people feel good, I explained to Truman.

Truman eagerly agreed to don the latest muzzle-like torture leash and accompany me. He seemed to beam with equal pride as we trotted down the driveway in our matching workout wear. (His leash is red, like my sweatshirt. It’s important to him that we coordinate. Luckily, we are both blondes who wear red well!) Block one went fairly well, save one “Truman, not there! Those people are sitting on their front porch and I don’t have a bag.” The next few blocks required a series of Come to Jesus meetings wherein I not-so-calmly explained to Truman the useful life lessons of not acting like a freak in public.

All and all, things moved along smoothly. Truman sniffed anything and everything. I bopped along to the cadence of a little ditty looping in my head, something along the lines of… “Pudding Cup, Pudding Cup, Nanni, Nanni, Pudding Cup.” As we rounded the corner to the very busy Kesslar Avenue, I noticed a moving van out of the corner of my eye. The cargo door seemed to be rolling up while it was in motion. Then, BANG! BANG! BANG!

Now, I’m what you might call a connoisseur of Police Drama. I’ve seen nearly every episode of Law & Order, and that includes its 17 bastard spin-offs. So, with all of this pre-education, I know that when you hear gunfire you hit the ground. The fact that Truman hasn’t picked up on this after 5 years of near-nightly exposure to Law & Order is beyond me.

BANG! BANG! BANG! I ungracefully flung myself onto my belly in the grass and covered my head with my arms, including the one with Truman’s leash wound tightly around my wrist. “Terrorists in Broad Ripple! I knew it! I knew the bad people would eventually get me! Why did I choose to live in the big city?” (Well, technically Broad Ripple is a village.) “I don’t want to die along side the mean streets of Broad Ripple!” (Okay, they are more shrub and perennial-lined streets than mean but death is death, damn it!) BANG! BANG! BANG! Truman took off across the lawns like a bat out of hell.

We interrupt this story to revisit a physics lesson first introduced on a day I apparently skipped class: Nylon track pants and humidity soaked grass create what physicists call “lack of friction.” Think slip and slide here, people.

Truman took off across the lawns like a bat out of hell easily dragging me behind him. He’d pulled me a little more than the length of two lawns by the time I was able to dig my toes into the grass enough to stop him. He looked like a poor little wild horsy, he was so freaked out. I sat up and looked around to see black smoke shoot out of the moving van as it continued past us and down the road, backfiring again… BANG! BANG! BANG!

Naturally, all of this took place across from the Catholic high school. And, naturally, there was a whole gaggle of uniformed teens outside for gym class. And, naturally, they were all staring and pointing at the crazy woman being dragged down the street by her oversized retriever. (Honestly, I would have laughed too. I love watching other people fall down.)

I very humbly stood up, brushed the damp grass clippings off of my breasts and ducked down the next side street that would take us out of the view of these cruel children and toward home. Truman was as skittish as a heroine addict, yanking my shoulder from its socket at the slightest sound or movement. This is the point I realized, we are no where near home – home is more than a mile away and there is no short cut – so I just started to laugh, out loud. How could I not, this is my life… grass stains on my chest, bed hair, overactive imagination, crazy spaz dog and all. Of course, in my life, a girl can eat a pudding cup for breakfast and still have an emergency one to spare… you know, in case the UPS truck triggers some post traumatic stress reaction later in the day.

Wringing Out the Oil July 27, 2007

I like farmers as much as anyone else. Honest. What’s not to like? I totally support the “eat local” movement. But come on, Mr. Hoosier Farmer, if you want me to eat locally you gotta offer up something a little more appetizing then kale.

 

I’ve heard that 10 calories of energy goes into producing every 1 calorie that we consume. I’ve also read that if every US citizen ate one meal of locally grown/raised food a week, we could reduce our oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. (FYI… oil is currently about $87 a barrel.)

 

Ever since Calvin came along, being a responsible steward of the earth has taken on a whole new meaning. The first step came when I saw the large bags of disposable diapers we were using and called for curbside recycling to even the score.

 

So, today Vin and I took a fieldtrip to the market with every intention of doing our duty to wring some of the oil out of our diet. (Ok, Vin eats only the formula so it was mostly my diet but I told him it was his too.) It’s late summer in Indiana, I thought. I’m sure there will be all sorts of wonderful produce to choose from.

 

There was Kale.

 

Kale!

 

I bought the kale. I cooked the kale. I choked down the kale. Not sure if I can learn to love the kale.

 

I’m really glad that Vin isn’t eating locally yet or I doubt he’d still be on Momma’s Eat Local bandwagon after the kale fiasco.

 

Still, I put my money where my mouth is on this one. Here’s hoping that the Farmer’s Market has more to offer this Saturday. Until then, it’s back to organically grown California strawberries for us!

Packing and Poetry July 26, 2007

I wonder if there are people out there who actually like to move. I’m certainly not one of them. Of course, whenever any one asks me to help them pack and move, I never seem to say no.

 

In all fairness, it is certainly easier to deal with other peoples’ belongings than my own. Today I had no trouble at all tossing my sister’s possessions one after the next. I’ve watched enough Clean Sweep and Neat to have a keen grasp on the basic purging process. It was kinda fun. Now my own stuff is a whole different story. (In our house The Engineer is in charge of organizing. He’s a natural.)

 

Anyway, that’s how the Little Bit and I spent the morning. Vin rolled around on the floor, looking for paper to eat, and I asked my sister how she would classify anything that wasn’t obvious. “Friends” we kept. “Acquaintances” we stored. “Strangers” we pitched. It went fairly quickly. Too bad she didn’t close on the house today as planned. I am SO GLAD that I don’t have to sell/buy a house anytime soon. What a frustrating process.

 

Calvin has fine-tuned the art of car napping. This is certainly much preferred over screaming constantly whenever I put him in the car. I just wish his motion detector didn’t work quite so effectively. The minute the car stops running his eyes pop open and checks “nap” off the task list for the day.

 

After leaving my sister’s, we headed out to The Ranch (grandma’s house). I drove as slowly as legally possible and took all the back roads, anything to prolong the car nap into something that approximates a normal mid-day nap for a 5 month old. I turned on NPR for company. Diane Reams was on, I think. Her interviewee recited a poem that was kinda cool, and this is from the girl who ONLY cares for the poetry by Shell Silverstein.

 

Come to the edge.

We might fall.

Come to the edge.

It’s too high!

Come to the edge!

And they came, and he pushed

…… and they flew.

– Christopher Logue

 

Of course, I thought they said it was by Christopher Lowell and that nearly ruined it for me. I’m so glad that the gayest of gay decorators didn’t apply his 7 layers of decor to that nifty little poem. Gentle reader, if you are not familiar with Mr. Lowell… well, just trust me that the Lowell experience is much similar to the nails on a chalkboard experience. Definitely to be avoided.

But, back to the Logue poem, your respective interpretation is probably a good Roshak test for what’s going on in your own life. I took it as Coming to the edge means stepping out of your comfort zone. Coming to the edge means testing your knowledge. Coming to the edge means trying something new. Coming to the edge means accepting the challenge. Coming to the edge means risking the fall to know how it feels to fly.

 

Or, maybe I just need to get out more.

Momma of the Year… NOT! July 24, 2007

After 10 months of miserable pregnancy and hours of labor, that first noise your tiny newborn makes is one of the most welcomed and inspiring sounds that exists. No doubt I’m not alone in taking those first moments with my child to silently vow to be the best and most perfect mother any child has had… EVER.

 

Flash forward nearly 6 months. I have been knocked out of the running for Mother of the Year at least as many times as I’ve been peed, pooped or spit up on, and I don’t think numbers go that high. Among the more classic new mamma blunders:

• Traumatizing my newborn and making him forever averse to the female breast. (I swear that the breastfeeding worksheet warns, “Do not chase the baby with your breast” and it took reading that before it occurred to me that I in fact was doing just that.) only to find out that there was no milk in those things anyway.
• Being convinced that the dog’s mouth was actually cleaner than a humans and allowing him to lick the baby. (One week in the children’s hospital with rare bacterial infection. Oh yes, infectious disease specialists were called.)
• Putting the just-weeks-old baby in my bed with me so we could both nap only to have him roll off the bed WHILE I WAS SLEEPING IN IT.
• Locking myself out of the hotel room with the baby inside.
• Driving halfway to Michigan with the baby strapped into the carseat but not actually strapped into the car.

 

When someone asks, “What’s new?”, obviously I’ve been somewhat reluctant to share these more newsworthy aspects of my day-to-day parenting experience. And yet, typically, these little maternal follies seem to be the only thing that differentiates one day from the next.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I love that I’ve devoted this first year of Calvin’s life to focusing on being his mom first and foremost. I find him quite fascinating. I just don’t think that anyone that is not Calvin’s mom would find it even remotely interesting.

 

“Calvin just tried to eat a piece of paper!”

 

YAWN.

 

“Look at those cute little leggie rolls.”

 

SNORE.

 

Then a few weeks ago, my grandma passed away. My siblings and I put together a memory video and I wrote down some thoughts to share. It was that process that opened my eyes to the fact that a lot of elegance and joy exists in what looks to be just an ordinary life.

 

What I intend to do here is document the entire journey into Soccer Momdom, with ALL my neurosies, for all who wonder what will change, what will happen. I promise that my other entries will not be so long. So forgive me. And stay tuned.

P.S. I’ve attached the comments that I wrote for my grandmother’s funeral. If you are curious about what 96-years of ordinary grace and elegance looks like, check it out.Veva Nesbit Memorial Speech