Wheels!

The old saying goes, "be careful what you wish for," but maybe it should also include, "be careful what you threaten" as well. When I was a teenager, my parents and other relatives enjoyed teasing me about how my attitudes would change one day when I became a parent. Part of the middle-age package included the acquisition of a minivan. I swore up and down that I would never, ever, if the choice was a tricycle with a shoddy wheel or a minivan and I was being chased by an angry mob, would I ever buy a minivan. Luckily for me, my family is too gracious to tease me overly much when we had our baby and did indeed purchase a minivan (that, and being such harried, harassed parents gave them far more material to tease us about than just our wheels).

Now, it wasn't easy for me to give in to the pressures to get a minivan. I have always loved well engineered cars and agile handling, and in a past life, nothing gave me greater joy than driving an Audi S4 sports car and cruising the Golden Gate bridge at 80 miles an hour and then blithely dropping down a gear and passing another car at 90 miles an hour with mere nudge on the gas (obviously not in rush hour). Despite the fact that we paid more for our monthly car payments than many recent grads paid for their rent, it was a joy to drive. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that there are even Audi clubs that would get together on the weekends to drive up the windy, twisty roads at "top speed" to the summit of Mt. Tam just north of San Francisco. And yes, we did that more than once too. And then there were the little drives down to Monterey and up to Napa in the vintage Porsche with the removable top (which you had to remove yourself prior to driving as this was 1970 and even Porsche owners couldn't expect everything to be automated) and the joy of class German engineering beneath and surrounding you. It doesn't hurt that I happened to be driving this vintage Porsche when I was side swiped by a drunk driver high on weed and I easily survived without a scratch (as did my car) while the other SUV was not so lucky. Anyway, the point of this is all to say that I really enjoyed cars that were a pleasure to drive.

So the first step down the rabbit hole was when we became far more practical and sold the fun toys of newly found financial independence and acquired a fun, but practical compact sedan instead. It was in this everyday sedan that we brought home our baby girl from the hospital. For the first couple of months, this was fine, as long as my 6'5" husband didn't mind bending like a pretzel to fit in the front seats, no one ever wanted to sit in the back, and we didn't need more than two bags of groceries (that impractically expensive stroller we discussed earlier took pride of place and volume in the trunk). So on a whim, a simple impulse, we decided to try out a minivan one weekend "just for fun" (and yes, this is one of many signs that our lives had changed irrevocably with the addition of a child).

And as the salesman opened up the dual automated side doors and the trunk and my tall husband sat up front and he showed us how to store the third row into the floor . . . we were in love. Gone were the days of struggling with an increasingly heavier combination of baby and carseat while fumbling with keys and doors and bending over to click her into the car. Gone were the days of folding like a pretzel, desperately hoping not to happen into an accident and have your body compress into a tangle of limbs and chest and head. Gone were the days of choosing between the stroller to take her around the stores and actually buying anything in the stores. Gone were the days of having visitors and family members rent a car because we couldn't fit them in our only car (well, this one is a debatable advantage actually, but that's an entirely different topic for another post). We were smitten. And this was before we were shown the DVD system (subject of a previous post) and the lojack and alarm systems (which were the bane of my existence when they continually warbled at 3am and woke everyone in the neighborhood including our newborn who had finally gone off just because a tiny flower or nut from the tree above the car dared to land on the roof). This was a very good thing and when the inventory showed that it was available that day in our favorite color, and they honored the price that we wanted to pay and gave us a good trade-in for the former compact car, we were out the door in our new set of wheels.

And there's just something to be said about being surrounded by that many tons of metal and space and airbags that cushions you against the taunting and jeering looks of loitering teenagers and their judgement (and this very observation of said teenagers is only further proof that we are firmly established a deeply middle-aged now). But while they jerry-rig the roof of their cars with a couple of jump ropes and some steadfast determination to drive home a piece of furniture they have salvaged from someone's refuse pile on the lawn, we can quickly transform our rolling living room into a cavernous space capable of any amount of damage to our Costco credit card or great deal from Craigslist. And once we figured out how to disable that incredibly aggravating alarm (after congratulating ourselves on paying for that last minute hard-sell impulse buy), we have never looked back. Someday I'm sure we will look back and realize just how dorky and yuppie we were driving around town with self-satisfied smirks on our faces at our superior choice, but for now, we'll push that sunroof button, pump up the volume on the Veggie Tales DVD, and let the good times roll.

Keepin' Up with the Joneses

. . . takes a lot of extra storage space and a sociopathic disregard for your checking account balance. There is no shortage of items to acquire when you first find out that you are expecting. There are chains of warehouse sized stores out there to cater to your every whim, and plenty of awe-inspiring boutique stores, not to mention the shoppers-paradise known as the internet. And with all of that mind blowing merchandise comes an impressive array of blogs and critiques and lists and guidelines as to what you will need and more importantly, what you will want. But there are the basics: crib, stroller, carseat, highchair, rocking chair, feeding equipment (e.g. bottles or pump or whatever), and diapers. Everything else is lovely, but again, auxiliary. And having free reign to search and find and acquire all of these wonderful items is every pregnant woman's dream (and secret obsession - I swear this is how I wore out my trusty laptop, not with the hours I spent actually working on it).

Growing up in a yuppie, upper middle class city near a major metropolitan city imbued in me a certain set of morals and a certain level of taste which I'm not always proud to admit to having to others. But there it is - I like nice things. Let me qualify that though: I like nice things that are (1) functional, (2) practical, (3) aesthetically pleasing, and (4) adorable. Unfortunately, we have found in the course of our baby equipment buying experience (and registering for our wedding and furniture shopping and life in general) that all of those criteria have one trait in common: they are expensive. So it's probably no surprise, certainly none to anyone who knows me well, that we went for some of the most expensive items out there. Some I admit, were less practical than my justifications of their cost would like to suggest, while others are real lifesavers (well, at least timesavers, which is synonymous when you're a busy parent).

The fancy stroller (and less fancy, but just as desired back up stroller) that was supposed to last five years (see "Getting Baby from A to B") are both in storage. The Scandinavian, solid wood Svan brand high chair that blew away the competition and that I had to have has been taking up valuable kitchen floor space ever since we started eating at counter height and the chair was made for table height. The Baby Bjorn travel crib (which is really something, given it's five pound weight and the five second set-up) and the rolling carseat (to combine stroller and carseat into one neat package and to avoid disassembling our day-to-day fancy carseat from the car) are both real timesavers while traveling. But having a child who is not the world's best sleeper (to put it mildly) has kept our travels to a minimum. So both of those are also in storage.

That beautiful, organic crib set and blankets that I couldn't pass up? Well, turns out that (a) blankets are not safe for infants and (2) our baby turns sleeping into a decathalon, so keeping a blanket on would be laughable and (3) if you cosleep with your baby until she is 8 months old, the lowest crib setting that you have to use negates the ability to use the crib skirt and apparently (4) crib bumpers are also a safety hazard. Regardless, those monkey sheets are adorable and she loves to use the monkey blankets to tuck her baby dolls in to sleep.

Also, that must-have, new age, hippy baby hammock that helps lower SIDS and soothe colic and helps newborns sleep better? Not so great for a baby who prefers to sleep on her stomach (yes, she was placed on her back in her bed, but we swear she learned to roll over early expressly in order to sleep on her tummy). It worked great as a night time swing, but then, the mechanical swing that plugs in and requires no human effort worked just as well. Oh, and said mechanical swing was also the snazziest on the market - also used for a grand total of two months before our not-so-petite baby tried to crab walk and houdini herself out of it.

Other baby must-haves had greater staying power. The cosleeper lasted longer - mostly because it became a home for her stuffed animal collection and toy bin. The Inglesina portable high chair we bring with us to every restaurant, although she rarely stays strapped in for an entire meal. Her Britax Advocate carseat is a real monster in size, but works like a dream. And her Haiku diaper bag keeps me organized and curtails my over-packing tendencies with its modest size. And although this is not technically baby gear, we have become psychologically dependent upon our minivan. It is a member of the family (with a name and everything) and makes parenting really just that much easier. And on days when you are running solely on fumes, that makes a difference.

So after all of those hours of research and bargain hunting and installation, parenting has been stripped to the necessary minimum of accessories: carseat, diaper bag, portable high chair, minivan. And in all honesty, it's quite freeing and lovely to lighten up. So the Joneses can have their plethora of baby gear - we're going to the park!

Sleep "Training"

We have discovered many new things as parents, some comical, some depressing, and some just outright nonsensical. Both of us love sleep. If you were to present us with a Vegas style buffet and a really comfortable bed, there would be no contest. The perfect weekend used to be a fun-filled Saturday followed by a good party that evening followed by the inevitable hangover on Sunday and a day of lounging in bed. There would of course be much sleeping in and napping throughout said days. So it came as an outright shock that we would give birth to a baby that seems downright offended by the idea of sleep.

It used to be funny when we were pregnant and she would rumble around at all hours of the day, giving a very accurate impression of an earthquake in the belly. It was less amusing when she was born and decided that life was far more interesting than sleep, even at the age of 1 week when her motor skills consisted of kicking her foot in and out or at 3 months when she practiced rolling over (and then complained about being on her stomach) or at 6 months when she rocked back and forth to prepare for crawling, etc. A hamster in its wheel had nothing up on our baby.

So like all sleep-obsessed parents, we fell into the usual traps: pacifier, swaddling, rocking, and holding. We had read "The Happiest Baby on the Block" and the "No Cry Sleep Solution" like any self-respecting hippy-liberal-treehugger, and thanks to all of that wonderful advice, our baby was swaddled and pacified and rocked for months while cosleeping for the hour at a time that she deemed necessary for sleep. These crutches, and our unwillingness to let her cry, resulted in a baby that didn't and couldn't sleep through the night on her own until she turned 1.

That was the day her father had had enough (luckily he's made of far sterner stuff than I, coming from a brutal, war-hardened place like England . . . ). He popped her in her crib, kissed her goodnight, told her he loved her, and then closed the door. And didn't go back in until morning. The first night, she cried for almost four hours nonstop, and then fell into an exhausted sleep. The second night, she cried for 45 minutes, and the third night 30 minutes. It was torturous, I would hate to relive it, but after three days of crying, she slept. And she has slept ever since.

There was the one anxiety-inducing day a few months back when we realized during an enforced nap, when she was not in her sleepsac that she was capable of climbing out of the crib. One moment she was complaining about her nap, the next she was over the rails, across the room, up on her rocker and sitting there looking petulant and unrepentant when we raced in. So we learned many things that day: (1) she can't be left in her crib without her sleepsac (custom made on Etsy because kiddopotamus sizes are too small for a toddler!), (2) she knows how to manipulate the zipper on her sleepsac so now she goes in with the zip up the back, and (3) she will only sleep if given no other option.

And then yesterday at 21 months old, she spiked a fever of 105 and was miserable. So we regressed to our namby-pamby ways and cuddled her and nursed her and gave her tylennol and decided she could fall asleep in our arms again until she drifted off. Well, she didn't drift off. She doesn't "just" drift off. So eventually, she was kissed and cuddled and told she was loved and then placed in her crib and left alone. After the requisite 30-second yelps of complaint, she was fast asleep. The same thing occurred again at midnight when the tylennol wore off and she needed another dose. So for all of the cynics who believe poor sleeping may be a phase, an age-related issue, our baby at least seems to defy such definitions. So we continue to abandon our baby, night after night, and she continues to complain for the typical minute, and then all is quiet. It's not what every parents dreams of, but I'm no longer losing sleep over it.

Brain Rot

We had the best of intentions when we set about having a baby and planning how to raise said baby. One of those absolutes was "we're not going to have a couch-potato-baby who watches television nonstop." Well, we made it six months before breaking that particular ideal. It was a subtle, gentle slide into temptation . . .

At first, we told ourselves that it was educational. We were one of those families that shelled out the big bucks for the entire "Your Baby Can Read" series of DVDs and books. This may have been helped by lack of sleep and those last few remaining brain cells being susceptible to power of suggestion from successful telemarketing approaches, but we're pretty sure deep down we just wanted to impress our friends who are also parents with a 11-month old whiz who could order her own kid's meal off the menu. So we sent away for the set and promptly began showing Charlotte the 30-minute videos.

Next up was the DVD player in the car. Yes, you may very well question why we bought the new car with a DVD system in it post-baby if we were intending on a tv-abstinent childhood. There was definitely some subliminal programming going on at the car dealership - somehow the minivan just seemed not quite complete without the DVD system. But I digress . . . so next, it was "Your Baby Can Read" in the car. And I have to say, for all of the naysayers out there, I much prefer the sound of a baby chuckling and repeating words back to the DVD system than the previous environment of screaming, crying, wriggling and writhing, and launching of toys and sippy cups at my head while driving. Sure, tv may rot the brain, but I can attest to hard objects hitting my head being pretty harmful to MY brain.

And then, it was Veggie Tales, which were a baby shower gift, and then Classical Baby on recommendation from a friend, and finally . . . Sesame Street. Now, if "Your Baby Can Read" is like juice, then Veggies Tales was like coffee, Classical Baby equivalent to a good martini, and I swear, Elmo and friends are just pure crack cocaine to our child. It started innocently enough at home - she enjoyed them in the car, maybe she would like to watch a video now and then on the flat screen at home so that we could accomplish minor tasks like cook or clean or get a drink of water or use the restroom, you know, the luxuries of parenthood. Innocent enough, we thought.

But then one weekend we all had the same cold, and the lingering side effect of allowing your toddler to watch non-stop Sesame Street so that you can lay on the sofa and wish you were dead . . . is that now your toddler runs for that tv every day demanding "Elmo! Elmo! ELMO!!!" and you sit on the sofa watching endless Sesame street episodes, wishing you were dead. Upside of her learning to talk is that you can finally get real feed back, "honey, which Elmo do you want to watch," followed by "Doctor Elmo!" and instantly, you have your answer and peace reigns once again. The downside of someone who is just learning to talk without the years of decision-making skills behind her language development is that (1) she sometimes forgets words she knows and strings together sounds while looking at you hopefully, then with frustration, and then pure annoyance and rage; and (2) she's apt to change her mind, within seconds of preferred program being started, to another program that is almost identical, and then change it back again.

Now, if we were better parents, or at least more stalwart and far more deaf, we would figure out a way to turn off that darn tv once and for all and sit down to spend some quality time with our child and maybe teach her some really useful life skills like how to count or the alphabet or how to make mommy a really strong espresso. On the other hand, Sesame Street is doing a pretty good job at the first two, and that nifty DVD player in the car allows mommy to do the third at her friendly, neighborhood crack house (e.g. Starbucks) just fine. So for now, this blog was brought to you by a desperate and sheepish mom and the letter F and the number 10.