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.

In fairness, the truck remains one of his favorite toys - his only oversized bright plastic vehicle, but one that he clearly loves far more than any of the environmentally responsible trucks I’ve sourced.  The wheels fall off and we pop ‘em back on.  It’s not exactly sturdy, but safe to say that we’ve gotten our $11 worth.

But what crazes me is that, one year later, my child has taken to asking for stuff.  All.  The.  Time.  He wants to know what he gets on a shopping trip.  And ice cream - the “if you’re good” reward from my childhood - isn’t enough.  He figures that the $3 I’d blow at Cold Stone can be better put to use in the toy aisle at Target.

This morning, he wanted to go to Target instead of nursery school.  A few months ago, while we were at Disney World, he actually wanted to know when we could go to Target.  (He’d just been dragged out of yet another gift shop, empty-handed.)

What gives?  

Or, more precisely, who gives?  Part of the problem is that I’ve used toys as bribes.  ”Earn one sticker every time you use the potty/go all day without whining/pick up your toys” and then trade in ten stickers for a Matchbox car.  

An equally challenging issue is that my in-laws’ culture is one where you can’t visit without bringing stuff, and every holiday must be celebrated with a present.  I respect grandparents’ desire to spoil their grandchildren, but it makes me queasy when my son equates their presence with loot.  My own memories of my beloved Grandmother Rose are all about the time she spent with me, sewing clothing for my stuffed animals, concocting strange and fabulous desserts, reading stories.  I guess she bought me stuff, too, but I can recall only one gift - a stuffed Dumbo during our trip to Disney On Ice.  Actually, I don’t remember Dumbo as much as I remember my mother’s astonishment that her frugal parents had shelled out for the plush elephant.

We’re affluent.  We can afford to buy our son tons more stuff than he has.  Heck, we could buy ourselves far more stuff than we have - flashier cars, more current clothing, an avalanche of electronics and gadgets.  But we’ve suffered through credit card debt and gotten wise.  Now we live below our means, and think carefully about even the smallest extravagances.

My big thrill from yesterday?  I bought my usual home hair color kit at CVS for $2.99, after a sale price and a coupon.  Once upon a time, I dropped $100 at a salon every six weeks, whether I could afford it or not.

I’m not the same person anymore.  But my son might be.

Here are my possible courses of action:

1. Assume he’s ready for the next step.  Take him to the bank avec piggy bank and deposit all his spare change.  Then give him a weekly allowance and force him to figure out that when it’s gone, it’s gone.  We’d planned to do this sometime after his fourth birthday, as his ability to handle more complicated math develops.  After all, he still thinks that three nickels, a dime and two quarters is six moneys.
2. Ban the purchase of all items on shopping trips.  No Matchboxes, no cookies, no ice cream.  Except that I like to stop for coffee while we’re out, and it isn’t practical to skip every snack.  After all, we walk virtually everywhere.  It can take hours to accomplish a morning’s errands.  I suppose I could pack more cheddar bunnies and take an extra bottle of water.  But where’s my incentive for trudging seven miles instead of hopping in the Jeep?
3. Don’t take Kyd to the store.  Since he’s in nursery school three days a week, I could probably do this, but it’s tricky - many of our trips take place on Monday because I realize we’re short bananas or some other lunchbox staple for the coming week.
4. Continue as we’ve been, and accept the tantrums.  This is a perfectly reasonable option.  After all, I don’t mind a tantrum.  We don’t live in a shopping mall - it wouldn’t take much to avoid the stores.  But I’m afraid he’ll interpret this as “mommy being mean” and not as an actual lesson.  So he won’t stop asking - he’ll just ask his grandparents instead.

None of these really feels like the right course of action.  My goals are to a) raise a considerate child who understands that stuff is just that; b) raise an eco-sensible child who realizes that while most stuff isn’t valuable, it can be incredibly destructive.  Part of my horror at all of this stuff is the packaging - the cardboard backings, the protective plastic, the inserts listing all the other Thomas engines or Pixar-themed cars you can “collect” for a modest fee.

And so I’m just gonna mull this one over for a while … because none of the answers seem right.  And I’m starting to feel like I’m holding back a tidal wave with an umbrella.

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.

Yesterday, he surprised me by insisting that he wanted to say hi to the baby.  He talked to her through my large, distended belly, peppering her - me - with kisses and dangling a teddy bear mobile for her to see.  ”Hi baby Chloe, I’m your big brother,” he said, and I melted.

A few hours later, when our neighbors gathered outside, he gravitated towards the blanket where the two babies - one just shy of a year, one closer to 10 months - played with a few toys.  Instead of tearing up the sidewalk on his tricycle, he watched the babies, then played a song or three on their plastic drum.

The incident that made for the trifecta took place a few hours later, when during a total meltdown, I picked up and carried my child to the step for a time out.  Kyd shrieked, “No, Mommy, I don’t want to go!  You can’t carry me!  You have a baby in your belly!”

It’s hard to not just bust out in laughter.  Here’s hoping my sense of humor holds once the baby makes four.

In other news, my husband read my blog post and installed the towel bar, after a mere 51 weeks.  We’re still screwed on the crib, but hey … if cyberspace censure can move my guy to bust out the cordless drill on a weeknight, maybe writing about my insecurities will prompt me to do something about our overcrowded bedroom?

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.

Here’s what prompted this post:  my neighbor, Fussy Mom, was ranting about the snacks that our childcare center feeds the kids.  Yes, I’ll give you that there’s not much food in fruit snacks.  And canned pears, fruit juice and graham crackers?  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  And I’m sure my kid has had a Cheeto or two while on their watch.

You know what?  It’s not poison.  It’s modern life.  If you really want your kiddo to grow up without ever sampling a processed food, move to rural America, become an organic farmer yourself and home school.  But out here in the midst of urban living, it’s just obnoxious to be oh-so-precious about your child’s caloric intake.  French fries happen.  

I’m a healthy eater - usually.  A huge part of my motivation is to model good choices for my son, and to make sure that it takes some doing for both of us to get junk food.  If there are carrots and bananas in the house, well, even I’ll eat the carrots and bananas instead of going out in search of chips and Swedish fish.  Most of the time.

I’m done gretzing about the snacks other parents bring in for school picnics, or the possibility than there are trans fats in the birthday cake.  These are life’s little pleasures, the odd indulgences that color our vacations and holidays.  Never again will I utter the phrase, “I try to offer a healthy alternative.”

Next let’s talk about television.  

I am addicted to TV - and not just brainy, CNN and documentary-style television.  I follow Tori & Dean, Project Runway, Design Star.  Earlier tonight, I watched the E! True Hollywood Story about Punky Brewster, and if my husband hadn’t surfaced to quirk an eyebrow, I’d have probably watched the whole episode, ’cause hey, who doesn’t love Soleil Moon Frye?

Yes, I know that plenty of studies tell us that TV stifles the imagination, destroys our physical health and is responsible for the downfall of Western civilization.

I don’t buy it.

J’adore the idiot box.  And contrary to shutting down my imagination, TV has always sparked my creative side.  It’s a chance to hear language and observe styles - a challenge to imagine your own possibilities.  As a child, I’d pick up the TV Guide and a ballpoint pen, mapping out each day of my summer vacation based on re-runs.  Then I’d huddle in the air conditioning, under an old quilt, and drink it down.

Was it always age appropriate?  Doubt it.  I remember watching Love Boat and Fantasy Island in elementary school.  It was a less sanitized time.

So do I limit how much TV my kid watches?  Sort of.  But it’s more about a) my limited appetite for toddler tube; b) my worries that if Kyd skips a generous dose of fresh air and exercise, he’ll never sleep and c) my own inability to sit still and remain indoors as long as he might tolerate.

But I’ve caught my 3 y.o. in an ESPN-induced coma, crashed out next to my husband.  This weekend, it was the Tour de France.  When I turned the channel to check the weather forecast, he whinged, No, Mommy, we need to watch the bicycles!

If it didn’t kill me, it won’t kill him.  My husband grew up without cable TV, and while we’re very different people, it’s pretty clear to me that the differences are just that.  It’s not about my encyclopedic knowledge of music videos from the 80s.

Would SuperNanny pitch a fit if she rolled up on our doorstep?

Probably not.  Kyd can play solo for hours, pushing his trains around the track.  He uses courtesy words and eats most of his dinner.  While he’s no perfect angel, he’s not a beast, either.  Kyd is typically typical - sometimes so helpful and affectionate you think you’ve hit the jackpot; sometimes, er, not.

So yeah, I’m a bad parent in all the bad ways.  And I’m kind of okay with that.

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.

Here’s where we stand, with roughly 77 days to baby:

1.  We have our crib leftover from Kyd, so all we have to do is wrestle it out of the guest bedroom closet and assemble it.  But knowing my husband - it’s been 50 weeks since I bought a towel rack for our master bathroom, and the rack remains in the original packaging - we should’ve started that project about two months back, easy.  I think we have all the bedding, and I suppose if we don’t, buying another crib sheet is easily doable in under an hour.

2.  There’s no room in our house for a separate changing table, but I do have the old changing pad and changing pad covers we used with Kyd.  It’ll take all of five minutes to put that together and slap it on our dresser.  Well, make it an hour - I should probably wash the changing pad covers since they’ve been languishing in a Rubbermaid container in Kyd’s closet all these months.  (Speaking of which, when we wrestle the crib out of Kyd’s closet, we really oughta drag out that changing table.  Betcha I could sell it on Craig’s List for a couple of bucks - assuming my husband will help assemble it.  Well … maybe before she leaves for college.)  Oh heck, and I need to relocate the stuff that lives on top of the dresser - alarm clock, jewelry box, framed photos - as they won’t really work with a kicking, fussing infant.

3.  But the changing table brings me to the real challenge of the moment.  We have just barely enough space for all of our clothing.  My husband has barely evolved past the “sniff test” standard for clean laundry.  And while I’m a bit neater, I’m guilty of holding on to clothing representing pregnancy wear, skinny wear, fat wear, professional wear and everything in between.  And let’s not even think about the shoe population in our closet, which includes at least one pair of sneakers Jimdear holds on to as a reminder of the qualities to seek in a future pair.  (True story.)  All this means that none of the dresser drawers are available for baby clothes - or wipes, or diapers.  And what I recall from the first go-round of parenting is that everything on your changing table MUST be within arm’s reach.  Or you’ll suffer the consequences.  So I have some choices to make - finally order new bedroom furniture for me and Jimdear; ruthlessly pair down our wardrobes; clear out at least one drawer of the dresser … I can’t even think about it.  But I’d better.  Or those first few weeks will suck.

4.  And it’s entirely possible that our daughter will spend those first few weeks clad in nothing but a white onesie and one of the four “gender neutral” snapsuits that I kept from Kyd’s early days.  Because I don’t have any place to put baby clothing, I’ve been reluctant to buy it.  And so she’ll be naked.  How does this sound like a good plan?

5.  Bottles.  The baby needs bottles.  Yes, I intend to take a breastfeeding class and hopefully make it work this time.  But I know that pumping is a mother’s best friend, if she ever intends to sleep more than three hours at a stretch early days.  (And yes, I intend to sleep more than three hours.  I don’t do well on a steady diet of sleep deprivation.)  So not only do I need to register for and attend the class, I also need to go ahead and rent the pump - and haul it home on the Metro, not fun, but surely less fun the more heavily pregnant I grow.

6.  Damn - the hospital!  I still need to pre-register and take a tour.  Agh!  The website doesn’t seem to allow sign-up for tours … I have to call.  I can’t call with my 3 y.o. on the premises.  I shouldn’t even be typing!

7.  OMFG.  Eleven weeks.  I can’t do this in eleven weeks.  Can I do this at all …

Okay.  I’m signing off.  I need to breathe.

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.

That’s not precisely true.  I do venture to our small, local farmer’s market most weeks.  And I joyfully, enthusiastically buy local produce whenever it’s on offer and matches my plans for the week.  But becoming a true locavore?  Not in the cards.

Bottom line:  I’m a rookie cook.  Up until about a year ago, at least 75% of our meals were eaten out.  Learning to cook nutritious, healthy meals at home has been a process, and I have stumbled.  Often.

Today, I can say that most of our meals are homecooked, nutritious and reasonably low on the food chain.  But I achieve this by using frozen (organic) broccoli, pre-packaged (vegetarian) chili mix, canned (reduced sodium) black beans and a host of convenience foods that are, yes, too high on packaging and processing, but satisfy virtually every other concern.

I do not have a lifetime of healthy eating habits to fall back on.  As a teenager, I thought that fast food was the only food.  Slurpees and Chipwhiches from the 7-Eleven were lunch.  While I never tipped the scales at a truly scary weight, I told myself that my size 14 self was just where I was naturally meant to be as I shoveled in the French fries.  It was only when I realized that my toddler couldn’t drive past a Wendy’s without asking for chicken nuggets that I realized how very, very deeply I had sinned.

I’ve changed my ways, but it still takes some doing for me to walk past the Golden Arches, head home and wield a frying pan.

To go from barely feeding myself and my family to confidently selecting bok choi at the farmer’s market and turning it into three delicious, appealing dishes to suit my Eastern European husband, fussy toddler and, truth told, even fussier self?  That’s like expecting to wake up from a coma and run the Boston Marathon the next day.  Ain’t gonna happen.

I like the locavore idea.  I love my farmer’s market.  I get it, I get it - I do!

But I’m not there yet.  I’m still taking baby steps.  And while some preach radical, sweeping change, I’ve found that I’m an inchworm.  I can makes miles of changes - heck, we already have. But only if I pace myself.

So there we have it.  I’ll buy things from the farmer’s market that make sense - the fragrant peaches my husband loves, the summer squash and local corn that are truly among the best things about the season, the eggs that require me to bring my own carton.

But actually plan our menu around what’s available?  Sorry, I’m not there yet.  And for now, that just has to be okay.

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.

If you don’t know me well, you probably think that I’m pleasant and calm and tough to ruffle.  

This is a carefully constructed facade.

My natural state is an exhausting sort of inner turmoil.  Writing is one of the few things that calms it.  Writing, large amounts of alcohol, walking distances so far that my feet are about to fall off, being in huge groups of people where keeping the conversation alive takes all of my effort.  

At 27 weeks, alcohol is obviously off the table, and anyhow I don’t just want a drink.  I want to swim in a vat of margarita, to pass out in a rum’n'Coke induced coma, to slowly work my way through a large quantity of red, red wine until all the demons in my head lay down and slumber.

Huge groups of people used to be delivered on a regular basis by my career, a job that required me to stand up in front of accomplished, experienced crowds and still manage to be in charge.  It was a thrill, a rush - and a relief, too.  But as a SAHM, that path is closed, except for the odd neighborhood gathering where I can work the room.  That’s silly, isn’t it?  But I exercise the same skill set, memorizing names and remembering details.

Distances are getting to be a problem, too.  The white heat of summer is upon us, and the extra pounds I’m carrying - plus a baby big enough to make herself felt even when I’m not holding still - means that I’m lucky if I can cover four miles without my calves aching, my feet swelling.  On dark days, I need more like seven to shut down the hostility and fear.  And no, no, I can’t walk inside on a treadmill.  It’s not just the physical activity - it’s the scenery and landscape and the act of being out in the world that calms me, as much as whatever the movement does for my brain.

Factor in my anxiety about having our lives in order before my daughter arrives, and I’m spending far less time writing and far more searching for furniture we need to order, pricing storage alternatives for our bedroom, blah, blah, blah.

Failing everything else, I can usually sleep off a bad mood - except that I’ve got a toddler, and a baby in my belly, and Kyd’s abandoned the afternoon nap, leaving me out of luck.  In the dark of night, my daughter stirs, and I have no choice but to awaken, too.

The result?  My rage switch is triggered constantly.  I am angry, short-fused, sleep-deprived, lost.  Overwhelmed.  Irritated, as I wrote in another post.  Ready to shred something - not Kyd, he’s spared my moods because even I can’t shriek at such an innocent little monster.  But there’s all this excess - excess ability, excess thought, excess energy - and it flows out as a kind of madness.

There’s nothing in my life to be mad about.  Really.  I’d like to go back to work, but when I’m in a calm moment, I acknowledge that I’m privileged to have this little space to myself.  To not have to juggle prenatal appointments and try to cloak my expanding belly in professional attire.  To be able to anticipate my daughter’s arrival without the whirl of uncertainty about whether I’d be able to reschedule appointments, meet deadlines, file reports before I had to head to the hospital.

And yet there is all this extra stuff - these extra parts of me that if I don’t spend, come out as raw, undiluted rage.  It’s me in my purest form - angry, anxious, malcontent and loud.  It’s the stuff I usually put to service, to work in the form of creativity.  It’s my shadow side - powerful and inconvenient.

These days, it’s winning.

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?

Case in point:  Don’t lick the parking meter! followed closely by don’t drink the holy water! and those have mouths, too.

Speaking of mouths, the things that come out of mine are surprising, but perfectly appropriate in the moment.  Sometimes I find myself grasping for words, unsure of how to communicate a concept, a reason, a need to a child who still thinks in concrete, immediate terms.

Sometimes I spout idle threats.  If you take your shoes off, we’re going inside right now.  As soon as I said it, I knew I didn’t care - we were outside with two of our Mom’n'toddler friend duos, and one of the other boys was already shoeless.  As I said the words, I looked at my mom friends and frowned.  I don’t mean that, I said, as Kyd unbuckled his Keens and carefully placed them on a concrete step next to a planter.

Why am I saying that?

The language of parenthood is a slippery thing.  I usually remember not to curse - usually, not always.  Like any other mom whose child has just kicked the diaper habit, I sometimes call it the potty - even when talking to adults.  But mostly I’m only aware of how I sound when I hear my child talking to me.  Apparently, I use words like available, episode, acceptable and possible with enough frequency that Kyd repeats them.  As for adjectives?  There’s fabulous, vibrant, tall tree and on and on.

My romance with language is old news, maybe the only truly consistent part of my life.  And still I’m surprised that I find it so completely charming to talk to my small son - and to hear the improbable, impossible things he says back.

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.

This week’s rundown:

• The state we moved from feels that we owe an additional $500 in taxes.  Do we?  How would I know?  I called our accountant, who told me to write a letter reading blah, blah, blah.  I mentioned to my husband I was nervous about the situation.  (Hello, taxes?  Who wouldn’t be?)  He isn’t entirely confident about the accountant’s answer, either.  (Not that either of us are accountants.  Or tax attorneys.)
• Our ancient iMac died, taking with it years worth of snapshots on iPhoto.  Figuring out who could fix it, how to get it there and when?  Apple support is better than most, but it’s still technical support - a headache wrapped in a migraine.
• After installing our new ceiling fan, our electrician announced that he didn’t have a switchplate cover.  It’s an unusual configuration - not stocked by Home Depot or Lowe’s.  (Yes, I checked both.)  So I Googled an online retailer, measured, attempted to decipher the size charts and (hopefully) ordered the correct model.
• Our one year inspection on our house is due, and I spent the afternoon calling the warranty department to discuss the lingering problem with our heating system and the other trifling matters to be resolved.
• It’s time for our sporadic family reunions, and it’s my job to book the hotel.  But for how many?  Separate rooms or suites?  How close to the family reunion site?
• We have lunch guests coming on Saturday, and despite the fact that husband will man the grill, I have to procure the groceries.  I’m supposed to be at the farmer’s market right now, but honestly?  I’m grouchy!  And blogging instead.  After all, I already drag our son to Whole Foods tomorrow, so why not get it all there?  (Why not?  Because it will cost three times as much.  Maybe I should go …)
• Having fetched four nicely framed posters from Michael’s, I now need to hang them.  It’s possible that I’m capable of doing this myself.  But given that two of them are mammoth in proportion - and each pane of glass costs more than $100 to repair if I botch the job - I’m starting to have my doubts.  Do I bust out the stud finder?  The wall anchors?  Or do I just hit Craig’s List and try to find a handyman?
• Our kid wants fancy sippy cups, with wrap-around straws, that cannot be easily procured anywhere within walking distance of our home.  I know.  I checked everywhere this morning.

Alright, some of these are beyond trivial.  My kid will survive not having the right sippy cup, and our guests will be perfectly happy if the food comes from the local, un-fancy grocery store.  We can all sleep somewhere the night of the reunion, even if my high maintenance siblings kvetch about the thread count at the Hampton Inn.  Heck, even if we do owe the $500, we actually have it - which makes us pretty fortunate indeed.

And no, it’s not the stress level of a job, a job with the constant potential for frustrations and unreasonable expectations.  I know that my husband handles a level of stress in Corporate America that is infinitely greater than my own.

But I’m not sitting here eating bon bons, either.  This is not free time.  This is not play time.  Caring for our family’s well-being is, in fact, a job that occupies pretty much every one of the 20-some hours that our toddler spends in nursery school each week.  And it’s a job that I do in isolation, without colleagues or comradeship, with very little support save for my trusty MacBook, high speed internet service and our reasonably healthy bank account.

It’s a job.  I may not be an air traffic controller or a highway patrolman, but I’m still responsible to a host of people, and I’m usually working outside my range of expertise.  (Like with, oh say, the taxes.  Or even the picture hanging.)

It’s my job, and I can’t quit and I can’t take a day off and I can’t … oh never mind.  I have 45 minutes until nursery school lets out, and I’d better see if I can’t track down some decent looking vegetables.

A few weeks ago, I found myself musing, “Hmmm … wonder when they hit that phase where they want an explanation for every little thing?”

For my kiddo, I can confidently tell you that the phase hit about three days ago, and is gaining speed.

This morning’s prize question: Why was I born?

I resisted the urge to tell my pint-sized philosopher that better men than I had wrestled with the question, and settled on the evasive, but apparently satisfactory “Mommy and Daddy love each other, and we wanted to have you in our lives to love, too.”

A little saccharine, but really.  It was 8:30 in the morning.

Much as this phase promises to surprise and confuse me, I remain delighted by my child’s ability - and willingness - to have a conversation and to think about the world around us.  Yes, I’m dumbing things down, but only some.  (Stealing from a Sesame Street sketch, I told Kyd that if he leaves the water running while he brushes his teeth, the fish in the pond run out of water.)  

Mostly, I love the chance to hear him think.  We spend all this time wondering what our kids have on their minds, and finally - finally! - they can tell us.  

Finding answers promises to be daunting, but for now, we’re mostly in the category of things easily addressed.  Before we turned to matters existential, we were discussing why his bike has three wheels but Mommy’s has two.  That I can handle - even before coffee.