Sitting

I'm currently looking to add to my tiny list of "approved" babysitters for Elle. By "approved," I mean "I will only check my phone a hundred times per hour when I leave her with you, rather than a few hundred times an hour and then come home far ahead of schedule in a sheer frenzied panic."

I currently have two sitters. The woman who watches her while I'm at work will occasionally do nighttime gigs. I trust her completely, but I kind of like the idea that Elle will know more people than just Mama and her sitter. Also, Elle's weekday sitter, while wonderful, likes her TV. I'd really like someone who doesn't even think to turn it on, thanks.

I have a second sitter for every couple of weeks when I go to rehearsal. B is terrific-- incredibly good with kids, extremely intelligent, and has an air of calm competency about her. If I could afford to hire her as a full-time nanny for Elle, I'd do it in a heartbeat. B can sit occasionally on other nights as well, but she has a couple of other jobs (and a social life-- she's young and totally adorable) so is not always available.

So I've put out the word and talked to the first young woman tonight. I'm talking to at least one more next week.

I'm a big believer in gut instinct. With both Elle's weekday sitter and with B, I knew pretty quickly that I could trust them. I didn't know exactly how they'd interact with Elle, but I at least had a sense that they weren't ax-murdering ped0philes or anything.

The young woman I talked to tonight was intelligent and seemed kind, but something about how she interacted with Elle just didn't sit quite right. I don't mean that in an ax-murdering ped0phile way, of course. Just... Maybe she's not quite as comfortable with kids Elle's age as she thinks she is, or maybe it's been a while since she's worked with them so young. I don't know. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm going to listen to the part of me that thinks something's not what I want it to be.

I'll keep talking to people. Every time I ignore my gut, I regret it.

Milestones

Everyone out there has information to share with you on what your baby should be doing at any given time. All the baby websites, all the blogs, all the books. Your baby should be doing this now, or that now.

And there's a subtle (and often not-so-subtle) competition that goes on between moms. "Oh, my (NAME) did (ACTIVITY) when he was (AT LEAST SEVERAL MONTHS YOUNGER THAN YOUR BABY IS)." I even see this on blogs.

I freely admit that I let myself get sucked into all of this. And even when the website/blogger/mom is just stating a fact, not comparing, I find myself anxiously looking at Elle and thinking "Well, X baby did X at nine months, and you're ten, and you still don't do X. Why not?"

I need to stop.

It's not fair to Elle. Elle is a good-natured, alert, friendly, inquisitive, healthy baby-- who happens to be on the late side, so far, for nearly all of her milestones. Not so late that her ped is worried something's wrong, but as a friend said, "When there's a curve, someone's got to be on the back side of it."

Elle's on the back side of the curve.

This doesn't mean she's going to grow up to a bright future of asking "Would you like fries with that?" until she retires. It means she's a late bloomer, physically. (I should note that I'm not the least bit worried about her verbal development. For those readers who know me in real life, you're not at all surprised by that.) I was a late bloomer as well, so she's taking after me, poor muffin.

I need to take a breath, and not worry about what other babies are doing. They're doing their own thing, and probably their mothers worry about milestones too. Worry is the price of motherhood, I think.

I'm blessed with a fantastic little girl, who will do things in her own way and in her own time, and she'll get there like everyone else. That needs to be my mantra.

***

Complete non-sequitur: I seem to have chipped one of my front teeth, and I've no idea how. It's not a big chip, but big enough that it's rough on my tongue or my lip, which of course means I can't stop feeling my tooth.

I so love going to the dentist. Oh, well.

Holidays, weddings, and chicken

I bought a little two-quart Crock Pot. Tonight when I came home, I had chicken in a red sauce with onions, potatoes and mushrooms waiting for me. Total prep time, including peeling/slicing the taters and onions: less than ten minutes.

As Elle starts eating more and more people food, this is going to be very handy. You can throw almost anything in there with enough liquid, and you have dinner. The only stuff you have to watch out for is veggies. Most meat, though, is fine. And the two quart size is perfect-- two big entrees, or one big, one small, and one lunch.

***

It was a lovely first Mother's Day here at casa Plus One. Well, once you got past the 6 a.m. screaming bloody murder wakeup, that is. (She never wakes up crying. Seriously, never, and Mother's Day it was zero to OMG SOMEONE IS KILLING MEEEEEE.)

One heck of a way to wake up the morning after I actually went out and didn't get to bed until v. late.

The rest of the day-- weather was nice, so we took a walk. Later, dinner with a friend. I do like that she takes two naps, but at the same time you're really bound by that schedule. And I'm not one of those "oh, it doesn't matter if s/he takes a nap!" kinds of people-- I do not mess with her naps any more. I do not mess with bedtime, either, although I have about a 20 minute window I'll play with if needed.

Cardinal rule: You Do Not Mess With Baby's Sleep Patterns, For If You Do, You Will Regret It.

Funny moment of the day: at dinner, in the middle of it, Elle decided it was important to share with me her babbly happy opinion on... something. Not sure what. But I have nothing to worry about in terms of her lungs and her ability to project, because the entire restaurant, I think, clearly heard her pronouncement, and she looked quite pleased with her bellowing self-- so pleased that she followed it up with another announcement. Possibly two.

The fact that the adults at the table were laughing hysterically probably didn't motivate her to turn down the volume...

This past weekend, then, Elle went to her first wedding. Just to the ceremony, and this was of course with full permission from the happy couple-- I never assume my little bundle of joy is anyone else's! She was very good and the photographer got a ton of pictures of her-- can't wait to see them. Elle was flirting shamelessly with the photographer, which helped. That's my girl.

The morning after the wedding, unlike Mother's Day, Miss Elle slept until 6:45. Heaven, heaven, heaven.

***

We are teething, big time, and in the middle of trying to get more of her bedtime bottle into her tonight I realized she was just plumb exhausted, and it was time to get her to bed. She may wake up in the middle of the night starving, but sleep at that point was more important than anything else.

It's a lot of work, getting big.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. And the moms-to-be, and the godmothers, and anyone who acts in a mom-ish way to someone. You are all important and loved.

It is the hardest job I have ever had, and the stakes are higher than I ever imagined. I wouldn't trade a moment of it.

Never Forget

This past weekend was Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah. I read several blogs by Jewish bloggers (what? I'm Episcopalian, but I can't be interested in other faiths?) who wrote eloquently of what this means to them.

Through the readings I ended up on the Yad Vashem site-- a thorough and utterly heartbreaking site that seeks to name each victim of the Holocaust, and collects photos and other archive information.

The photos are overwhelming. So many stories, most of them terrible. As I was paging through one section, I stopped short at a photo of a young child-- perhaps three years old or so-- standing amidst a group of people in a field. The child looks like a little girl (it can be hard to tell at that age) and she's looking at the camera with large, dark, direct eyes and a very serious expression.

Elle could look just like that little girl in a couple of years.

People tell you that once you have kids you can't watch the news any more, especially when the stories have to do with children. They're right. And it's not like I didn't already know that countless children died in the Holocaust. But this photo, with her eyes so much like my daughter's, just brought it home that much harder.

I suppose it is a blessing that I cannot possibly wrap my mind around how anyone could slaughter six million people and, apparently, think it was just fine to do so. So many people did so many things to contribute to these deaths-- from actually pulling the trigger or pouring the crystals, to simply watching as they walked towards the gas chambers. All are guilty. Every death was a horrific crime.

But someone took a picture of that little dark-eyed girl, probably moments before she trustingly put her little hand into someone else's and was escorted to her death. Someone took a picture, and did nothing to save her. And she was only one of thousands upon thousands of children.

Sars wrote today about Bin Laden's death, about how he should have to face those he killed, about how perhaps he does go to heaven but it's not his heaven; he's only there to have to listen to the victims of 9/11 telling him about their deaths.

Monsters should have to face what they've done, if there is any justice.

So for the person who took the picture of that little girl, then let her die? Perhaps his Hell will be having to hold the chubby, warm, slightly sticky hand of his own beloved child and walk that child into a gas chamber. Over and over and over again, for all eternity.

Never forget.

Opportunity Cost

I like advice columns. Always have. Sometimes I like them because I can disagree with them, but most often I admire advice-givers who are able to see through the slobbery mess that someone puts out there and hone in on the real issues, then give guidance. (Not tell someone exactly what to do-- in many cases, that's not helpful. Guidance is better, unless you need to be really direct in situations like "call the suicide hotline," "call children's services," "move into a shelter NOW" or something along those lines.)

One of my long-time favorites has been Sars at Tomato Nation's The Vine. Some of the letters she gets are hilarious, some are heartbreaking, but Sars has a way of seeing what matters. She seems to tackle less significant topics lately, and the focus of the site has subtly (or not-so-subtly) shifted, which is a shame. But I'll still dig through old Vines sometimes, for inspiration or encouragement or common sense.

A more recent discovery has been Dear Sugar. She's just as practical as Sars, although you can tell she's a writer rather than a journalist; her flowery style isn't for everyone. But under the style, the advice she dispenses is excellent and deeply thoughtful. Her most recent column (#71) hit home.

My great-grandmother (Elle's namesake) would every so often take her prayer book, let it fall open, and read the prayer that appeared there; she believed that accidental page was something meant for her to know that day.

I kind of feel the same way about Sugar's most recent column-- it appeared just when I needed to hear it. (Maybe you should go read it as well, or the rest of this won't make as much sense. The comments on the entry are fascinating as well.)

The state of Colorado has been running tourism commercials locally. I love the mountains in Colorado with an intensity that is probably not entirely healthy. I don’t think of myself as a particularly brave or fearless person, but I’ve taken seven-hour hikes in the backcountry entirely alone, simply because the hike needed to be done. I pore over trail maps. I take copious notes of each hike. I can sit by a Colorado river (or the Colorado River) for hours and not notice time passing. High on a mountain, sweaty and hot, wearing my beloved hiking boots and carrying a half-ton of water in my pack, I feel closer to God than almost anywhere else I’ve ever been.

(Completely illogical, given my Midwestern roots. But there it is.)

I was stopped in my track by one of the Colorado tourism ads the other day, just before I read that Sugar advice column. I had the strangest feeling, watching it. I brushed it off.

Now I know what I was feeling-- that sister life, that life that is no longer mine, brushed past me as I watched.

If there's anyone out there who doesn't feel they have a "sister life" running alongside of the life they actually live, I probably don't want to know them. And that doesn't necessarily mean the sister life is one they prefer.

But I think that part of being a self-actualized adult is recognizing that all your choices, even the small ones, set you on a path that is different from the path you might have otherwise taken. There's a reason that so many people enjoy stories of alternate universes-- the movie Sliding Doors is one that comes to mind (underrated, I think), or the classic Groundhog Day. And just about every science fiction television series has at least one episode along those lines.

We all wonder, sometimes, where different choices would have led us.

Becoming a parent is not a small change, obviously. Anyone who has become a parent understands how dramatically everything shifts-- everything. As I was a non-parent for far longer than I've been a parent, I can say with absolute confidence that there's no way that a non-parent can truly understand how immense the change is. I'm not making a value judgment there, or saying non-parents are somehow less, because that's not the case.

But people without children do not, cannot understand the magnitude of the change that occurs when someone hands another life over to you. It doesn't matter whether you give birth, or adopt, or become a stepparent, or a foster parent; the how doesn't matter at all. It's that it happens, and you cannot be the same person once it does.

(Some people don’t seem to change much, and that’s a topic for another day. That’s not what I’m focusing on here.)

Sugar's column made me think about that. About choices that aren't mine any more. About new choices I have to make, every day.

I do not, for a moment, regret becoming a mother. If that's what you, the reader, take from this blog entry, I'm doin' it entirely wrong.

But I think I had a moment where I turned a corner from my old life, and moved fully into my new one. You might have thought that would happen during childbirth, or when I held Elle for the first time, or the first night we were up all night walking the floor, or any one of a thousand other things that have made up her first ten months of life. Apparently, you'd be wrong.

For me, it was a commercial for Colorado.

There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.

Thanks, Sugar.

The universe steps in (sometimes)

You get lots and lots of adorable baby clothes when you're having a little girl. (You get too many, actually. One of the few pieces of advice I give to people I know who are about to be first-time parents is that you do not need anywhere NEAR the amount of clothes you think you're going to need, unless you have a spit-uppy baby or do not have in-house laundry. You can take many of those clothes back and get credit for the future, when it's three days to payday and you're short and that Target gift card gets you the diapers you need.)

I should have done far more of that-- I can't tell you how many things Elle wore only once or not at all, and the credit at Target or Babies R Us or Kohl's would have done me a lot more good, financially speaking, than another cute romper she just didn't need.

Despite the overabundance of clothes, though, every time Elle starts going up a size I worry there won't be enough. This is silly, but I can't help myself. And there is some validity to the worry now: the clothes I got as gifts when she was born are now running out. People buy you clothes up through about the 9/12 month mark, and after that (as a friend said to me) your kid's gonna be naked.

We had a big consignment sale at a local charity recently, and I was able to get some cute summer clothes for her at a fraction of what I'd have paid new... yet I still worry.

I shouldn't, I guess; the universe seems to step in and provide. I had lunch with a friend the weekend before Easter, and she brought two bags of hand-me-down clothes for Elle from someone she works with. This same person gave me a bag of maternity clothes back when I was pregnant, and is now passing on clothes for Elle. She's never even met me. Then yesterday on Face.book, a single mom friend offered hand-me-downs from 18M through 2T. And for Easter, my mom showed up with a stack of adorable summer clothes she found at an outlet mall, on sale.

I've written before about how amazingly generous people can be. This is another reminder. Elle is now set through fall, with the inevitable fill-in purchases here and there.

I am trying to continue the tradition. I did sell some baby clothes in the consignment sale I mentioned, but I've also been giving clothes to friends who just had a baby a couple of weeks ago. They'll probably benefit from Elle's sharp dressing for several years to come, assuming their daughter doesn't grow at a rate far out of step with Elle, and I'm glad there's someone who can take advantage of it. (And it gets them out of my house. Double bonus.)

Some days it feels like there's so little we can do to make things better in this world. And some days, passing on a stack of onesies is enough to make it a better day.

***

Elle's first Easter was a lovely celebration of what is my favorite (church) holiday. Our church does a whole procession with streamers and everything, and she was transfixed. The church was also more crowded than usual, and the choir was extra loud, so she was pretty enthralled throughout.

Very serious-faced, though, even with all the people coming up to us and wishing her happy Easter and commenting on her Easter getup. (She looked ridiculously adorable, really.) She just gazes at people with her big dark eyes, sizing them up. If she knows you, she smiles. If you're new or new-ish, she just checks you out. It's pretty funny.

I even cooked dinner (my mother took care of Elle) which I really enjoyed. I love to cook, as much as that's just not practical right now. I didn't make anything especially difficult or complicated, but it all turned out well and tasted delicious. And I now have leftovers. Mmm, leftovers.

Elle probably thought it was just another day, but it was a special first Easter for our little family.

***

I am going to try and include some photography here and there, FYI (note the new header picture, which is the wrong size because I can't find anything that tells me what size to make it and I'm not able/willing to keep resizing it until it fits-- I do not have TIME), but I am not someone who's comfortable putting pictures of my kid(s) on the internet. I'm just not.

It's really not fair, since I get so much pleasure out of the pictures of other people's children online. Some of my favorite blogs (many linked in my sidebar) often feature pics of the blogger's child/children, and I've gotten so much pleasure out of their kids and out of watching them grow. That's just not me, though. Which is a shame, because Elle is adorable. (Not that I'm biased, or anything.)

So there will be silhouettes and backs and fingers and toes, because I do think photography adds to a blog. But my ingrained intarwebs paranoia wins the day on this one.