Cravings and Ravings

I’ll admit it:  when my neighbor, Fussy Mom, yanked her 3 y.o. out of our local church childcare center to send him to a fancy pants school a few towns over, I had a moment of panic.

But I settled down, and decided that all the Turmoil in the Turtle Classroom was nonsense.  Could it be better? Sure.  I’ve signed up to volunteer in the fall, and picked up a bunch of extra art supplies on my most recent foray to Michael’s, an attempt to bolster a supply budget that is too skinny on the best days.

Then Fussy Mom waxed lyrical to me about how the Kiddie Academy was making sushi, comparing it disparagingly to Church Childcare’s big field trip to the local coffee shop for grilled cheese and lemonade.

And all of a sudden it hit me: this ain’t about our kids.

Making sushi is not a life skill.  Will some of the pint-sized Kawasumis at Kiddie Academy expand their horizons and be a smidge less difficult when confronted with new foods?  Maybe.  Can’t hurt, right?  But are they really learning oh-so-much more than they would, say, rolling out Play-Doh?

I can’t help but feel that “my child made sushi at Kiddie Academy” is one bumper sticker away from “my child is a honor roll student at Jefferson Middle School” which is, of course, one static cling sticker away from the “Harvard Class of 2026″ gem that some parents imagine.

My own husband grew up with parents, hard-working, ambitious immigrants who desperately wanted their children to excel.  And they insisted on academic achievement, to the detriment of their children’s other abilities and interests.  It’s a common tale – having given up so much, they want tangible results.  Being able to talk about their kids at the Ivy Leagues?  That’s the pay-off for sacrificing so much.

So I get it – I do.  But I also know that my husband’s happiness is not linked to his attending a highly selective college.  (Not an Ivy, as it happens, but close enough to satisfy all concerned.)  And I’m not unhappy for having a degree from a state school.

Is Kyd smart?  Probably.  Is Kyd a genius, a pint-sized virtuoso, just waiting to excel in music, mathematics and the sciences?  Probably not.  And if he is, he’ll let me know in his own time, and we’ll deal with it when confronted with evidence of his budding Stephen Hawkins-ness.

For now, we’re good with grilled cheese.

I’ve written about my panic that it’s less than ten weeks until my darling daughter makes her appearance.  And I’m happy to report that I’ve taken steps to correct our completely unprepared state.  Our household now contains:

• One pack of newborn and one pack of size one Seventh Generation diapers;
• Three Evenflo glass bottles, size small;
• An assortment of small pink outfits, mostly sourced from our local Salvation Army.

But along the way, I’ve discovered a few disturbing things about Girl World – chiefly, that my pre-verbal child can announce to the world that she is a Diva, Princess in Training and/or Cutie Pie and that she Has Daddy Wrapped Around Her Finger.  Some of these outfits combine their messages with animal prints, and nearly all of them include sparkles.  It’s like some deranged crafter attacked the baby section with a Bedazzler.

Here’s the thing:  I’m a feminist.  But I’m not opposed to putting my darling daughter in the color pink.  I like a bold floral print, a pleasing stripe.  And I even get the cute factor behind a few of those messages – after all, my husband is a sucker for newborns and will almost certainly have Daddy firmly under her spell whilst I recover from my C-section in a sleep-deprived haze, mumbling Talking Heads’  lyrics.  Well … how did I get here?

When my son was three months old, I bought him a onesie that declared he was a “Chick Magnet.”  It’s true, of course – my little guy had plenty of adoring aunts and great-aunts ready to agree that he was the Best Thing on Earth.  So maybe it’s even hypocritical of me to object to some of it.

But on balance, there’s something about the girl-tastic slogans that sits wrong with me.  I don’t want to encourage selfish, self-entitled behavior.  I wouldn’t let my son wear a shirt that said something like, “I tried to do my homework, but I got bored” or other inanities.  The foolishness just seems to start smaller with girl children who we assume, rightly or wrongly, will want to shop, apply cosmetics and strike a pose.

My husband’s response to my complaints is to say, “Let’s just go to a boutique in Georgetown.”  And yes, purchasing our entire layette from Kate Quinn Organics would simple things up, I suppose.

At least until we start getting new baby gifts.

It started small.

After all, he was small – just two and a half, the picture of innocence with his unruly curls, button nose and pouty lips.  Yup, I’m talking about my son Kyd, last summer at the beach.  We’d nipped into a sundries shop for sunscreen, and Kyd’s eyes fixed on a large, plastic truck filled with sand toys.

“I want to buy this,” he told me.  Buy was a brand-new verb for him, but I didn’t immediately grasp just how much he’d learned.  ”Do you have any money?” I asked, convinced I’d stump him and we could leave, sans truck.  ”Yeah,” he replied.  ”At home in my piggy bank.”

My husband collapsed in fits of laughter, and managed to choke out that he felt our toddler had won that round, and I ought to buy the truck.

I did – but it’s gone downhill from there.

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I may be freaked that there are a mere eleven weeks between me and baby #2, but my son seems to be getting it.

In fact, he seems excited about the new arrival.

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It is quite fashionable to be a bad parent these days.  But only in a specific hipster way.  It’s cool to refuse to play Rafi and insist your baby grow up on the Ramones; it’s cool to brag that your kiddo devours Thai food with you out past bedtime; it’s the height of cool to talk about taking your offspring on extreme outings.  I pulled my kid out of school to see Angkor Watt and I’m not even a little bit sorry.

But I’m a bad parent in some of the good, old-fashioned (read: not fashionable) ways.  And I’m starting to think that might be just fine.

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I’m 27 weeks pregnant.  Big enough to be awkward and slow, but not quite big enough to cause comments about “any day now, huh?”

But I just looked at a calendar and realized – eff!  This baby is coming very, very soon.  And she will be naked when she arrives.

That’s not the least of it.

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I often write about going greener.  And I’m proud of what we’ve done.  Here’s another one: Average daily water consumption, or so our water and sewer bill tells me and Google confirms, is 70 gallons per person.  Our household of three clocks in at just 122 gallons total, or about 40 gallons per person.

But here’s a way that going green just isn’t working for me, and I’m going to stop feeling guilty about it.  Right now.

We don’t eat local.

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I’m 27 weeks pregnant.  Since I plan to deliver via elective c-section in my 38th week, that means I’ve got less than three months until my daughter joins our family.

This is not long.  College semesters last longer.  TV seasons stretch over many more weeks.

But it really feels possible that my head will explode between now and then.

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From time to time, when I search for a book on Amazon.com, I come across “statistically improbable phrases” – strings of words that the almighty Amazon thinks are unlikely to occur together anywhere outside the book on offer.

Is it me, or does literature have nuthin’ on parenthood?

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Modern life brings with it a host of irritations, from the trivial to the truly problematic.  What many stay-at-home parents fail to recognize is that by accepting the role of full-time caregiver, we accept responsibility for a high percentage of daily irritants.

This is officially my least favorite part of the gig.

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