pimp my wife
Did I tell you about how I sold a week of vacation to one of my partners? Well, I did. I sold her one of my vacation weeks. Mostly to defray the costs of New Baby and my one week of unpaid maternity leave. It's a little like robbing Peter to pay Paul, but unpaid maternity leave is the standard in the U.S., what are you going to do about it? The other five weeks I recouped by using a combination of back-hoarded vacation time and sick leave, though now after all this, I feel sort of ascetic, like some sort of vacation-shunning monk.
The funny thing of it all is that I never owed a commodity that was worth a reasonable amount of money before, and now that I do have one, it seems strange that it's something so intangible. I just sold someone a week off from work. It's like Billy Crystal in "City Slickers," who had some sort of midlife crisis at the realization that his job was selling people radio airtime. I guess in essence what I'm selling is manpower--I am being paid to work a week for one of my partners, basically--but it's nice to have some extra money and I'm willing to do it, so win-win, I guess.
Anyway, I had a choice between selling a week of vacation and paying back my maternity leave in some other way (overly boring to explain--involves switching a vacation week to another point in the calendar cycle, etcetera etcetera Zzzzzzz) but it looked as though actually selling my week would be better for us financially, especially this close to tax season. Before I made my final decision, I told the person in charge of scheduling that I needed to talk it over with Joe, but my feeling that between switching a vacation week and just flat out selling it, he would be more inclined for me to sell it.
"He's pimping you out, huh?" my partner replied. Yes, it's true. But it's consensual. And anyway, he needs a new big long coat with a fur collar, and money doesn't grow on trees.
The truth of the matter is that I just finished residency, and since I'm used to having less vacation than an attending in private practice, the time to sell my vacation time is now, before I can even miss it. At this point in my life, it's not a big deal for me to have less vacation than everyone else, and even though I'm going to miss having that week off with Cal and Mack in June (we weren't planning to go anywhere, but it was the week after Cal's school finished and before his summer program started) we still have much more time to spend together than when I was a resident. And relativity is the key to it all. Compared to residency, everything's peachy. And no, that's not just some lame joke about living in Georgia.
reconsidering
Remember when I talked a couple of weeks ago about Cal being young for his class and a little on the shy end of things and how we were considering retaining him with his current teachers to allow him to grow and become more confident and la la la everything lovely? Well, Joe and I are starting to rethink this. Not because anything has really changed--Cal still is who he is, that being a kid who is essentially cautious and slow to warm up to new things and perhaps a little on the cerebral side (though, I hope, not in a maladaptive way). We're just worried that if he repeats a year in the same classroom again, he's going to be bored as shit.
I mean, look, he's three, academics can take a backseat. But they do do some academic-type stuff in his nursery school class. They write letters and words and read books and learn songs and talk about rhymes and what letter does DOG start with, blah blah blah. And Cal knows that stuff already. He knows that R is for Robot and Ring and Ramp and...whatever, pick your favorite R word. (He has some trouble understanding that C is both for Car and Cereal, but join the club, kid, that barely makes sense to me, and I'm old.) He can tell you that Cat rhymes with Mat and Bat and Fat. As for writing letters and stuff--well, the funny thing is--OK, remember when I was all confused because his teachers insisted that he was left handed, whereas every observation I had of Cal where I had enough wherewithal to take notice of such things, he writes with his right hand? Well, when I went in for that parent teacher conference, they were showing me some of Cal's work, among which was a full sheet of paper on which Cal had written out the alphabet very neatly and legibly. "Oh yeah, that reminds me," I broke in, "what was that thing about him being left-hand dominant? Because so far as his dad and I can see, he writes with his right hand. Like this whole page of letters, he wrote with his right hand, right?"
The head teacher looked confused. "Actually, he did all this writing with his left hand. I took special note. That's why I put that in his report." They had no idea that at home, he was writing with his right hand equally well. My point not being OH MY GOD MY KID IS AMBIDEXTROUS, GET HIM IN A SURGICAL SIMULATOR NOW, rather that there is a big program in the nursery school called "Handwriting Without Tears," wherein they spend basically the entire year learning to write their letters in various multidisciplinary and multisensory ways. So does Cal really need to spend a whole additional year doing letter drills when he can already write the entire alphabet using EITHER HAND? Probably not. Again, it's true, we didn't send him to school for the academics, we sent him to school for the social component. However, since they're doing academic stuff anyway, aren't we obligated to keep him at least somewhat challenged?
The other thing is: Cal's school runs this summer camp-type thing that runs from June through August. It costs a couple of pesos, but what to do, he has to do something, otherwise he'd be so bored sitting around all day (see also: the Christmas Break that would not end) that he would kill us and we would kill him and everyone would be killed and oh, the humanity. Though this summer program runs out of the school, I presume he will have different teachers than he has during the year. The goal of keeping him in the same class next year was so that he would have the same routine and the same teachers, but what, we're going to send him to the summer program, get him used to a new routine with new people anyway, and then...send him back to the same classroom he was in before? Does that make sense? Shouldn't we use the change that is "summer camp" (still at the same school, remember, same physical plant and facilities) as sort of a jumping-off point for transitioning to next year's classroom? I mean, if he will have already made an adjustment to summer camp, what's the point of holding him back?
Part of me worries that our inclination (mostly on the part of me and Joe, though who knows, maybe the teachers feel the same way--they weren't adamant about the retention by any means, just suggested with the idea that Cal might be more comfortable with things the second time around) is this notion now to want to protect our kids from everything. Protect them from ever experiencing difficulty, failure, protect them from having to negotiate tricky situations or adapting to things with which they are not entirely confident. Sure, I want my kid to be happy and succeed, but I'm not convinced that retaining him in his current preschool class is going to have any bearing on that. I don't want to be the parent that wants to make everything PERFECT for my kid, and oh, he's a little younger than everyone else? A little shy, a little reserved? Keep him in the same class, let him be one of the oldest for once so he knows what it feels like to be ahead. I don't know if I want to be that kind of parent. I don't know if that's what's right for Cal. And I know that he's got a handle on the "curriculum" (such as it is) for his school year thus far, so would I actually be doing him a disservice by making him do it all over again, just so that he doesn't have to learn the routines of a new classroom and new teachers? I mean, in one sense, yes, let's give him the tools to be more confident and break out from his reserve...but in another sense, why not move him along and let him just cope? And sure, some things are going to be harder for him than for other kids, but isn't that just life? As a parent, you can't make everything easy for your kid, nor, would I argue, should you try to. I think life is challenging sometimes, and kids should learn that that's OK.
Anyway, the discussion goes on. We'll keep talking with Cal's teachers and we'll see what we end up doing. And thus ends another overly detailed episode of Nursery School Overanalysis. I'm your host, Michelle. Join us next week, as we explore the perverse and often baffling ritual known as "Circle Time."
Remember when I talked a couple of weeks ago about Cal being young for his class and a little on the shy end of things and how we were considering retaining him with his current teachers to allow him to grow and become more confident and la la la everything lovely? Well, Joe and I are starting to rethink this. Not because anything has really changed--Cal still is who he is, that being a kid who is essentially cautious and slow to warm up to new things and perhaps a little on the cerebral side (though, I hope, not in a maladaptive way). We're just worried that if he repeats a year in the same classroom again, he's going to be bored as shit.
I mean, look, he's three, academics can take a backseat. But they do do some academic-type stuff in his nursery school class. They write letters and words and read books and learn songs and talk about rhymes and what letter does DOG start with, blah blah blah. And Cal knows that stuff already. He knows that R is for Robot and Ring and Ramp and...whatever, pick your favorite R word. (He has some trouble understanding that C is both for Car and Cereal, but join the club, kid, that barely makes sense to me, and I'm old.) He can tell you that Cat rhymes with Mat and Bat and Fat. As for writing letters and stuff--well, the funny thing is--OK, remember when I was all confused because his teachers insisted that he was left handed, whereas every observation I had of Cal where I had enough wherewithal to take notice of such things, he writes with his right hand? Well, when I went in for that parent teacher conference, they were showing me some of Cal's work, among which was a full sheet of paper on which Cal had written out the alphabet very neatly and legibly. "Oh yeah, that reminds me," I broke in, "what was that thing about him being left-hand dominant? Because so far as his dad and I can see, he writes with his right hand. Like this whole page of letters, he wrote with his right hand, right?"
The head teacher looked confused. "Actually, he did all this writing with his left hand. I took special note. That's why I put that in his report." They had no idea that at home, he was writing with his right hand equally well. My point not being OH MY GOD MY KID IS AMBIDEXTROUS, GET HIM IN A SURGICAL SIMULATOR NOW, rather that there is a big program in the nursery school called "Handwriting Without Tears," wherein they spend basically the entire year learning to write their letters in various multidisciplinary and multisensory ways. So does Cal really need to spend a whole additional year doing letter drills when he can already write the entire alphabet using EITHER HAND? Probably not. Again, it's true, we didn't send him to school for the academics, we sent him to school for the social component. However, since they're doing academic stuff anyway, aren't we obligated to keep him at least somewhat challenged?
The other thing is: Cal's school runs this summer camp-type thing that runs from June through August. It costs a couple of pesos, but what to do, he has to do something, otherwise he'd be so bored sitting around all day (see also: the Christmas Break that would not end) that he would kill us and we would kill him and everyone would be killed and oh, the humanity. Though this summer program runs out of the school, I presume he will have different teachers than he has during the year. The goal of keeping him in the same class next year was so that he would have the same routine and the same teachers, but what, we're going to send him to the summer program, get him used to a new routine with new people anyway, and then...send him back to the same classroom he was in before? Does that make sense? Shouldn't we use the change that is "summer camp" (still at the same school, remember, same physical plant and facilities) as sort of a jumping-off point for transitioning to next year's classroom? I mean, if he will have already made an adjustment to summer camp, what's the point of holding him back?
Part of me worries that our inclination (mostly on the part of me and Joe, though who knows, maybe the teachers feel the same way--they weren't adamant about the retention by any means, just suggested with the idea that Cal might be more comfortable with things the second time around) is this notion now to want to protect our kids from everything. Protect them from ever experiencing difficulty, failure, protect them from having to negotiate tricky situations or adapting to things with which they are not entirely confident. Sure, I want my kid to be happy and succeed, but I'm not convinced that retaining him in his current preschool class is going to have any bearing on that. I don't want to be the parent that wants to make everything PERFECT for my kid, and oh, he's a little younger than everyone else? A little shy, a little reserved? Keep him in the same class, let him be one of the oldest for once so he knows what it feels like to be ahead. I don't know if I want to be that kind of parent. I don't know if that's what's right for Cal. And I know that he's got a handle on the "curriculum" (such as it is) for his school year thus far, so would I actually be doing him a disservice by making him do it all over again, just so that he doesn't have to learn the routines of a new classroom and new teachers? I mean, in one sense, yes, let's give him the tools to be more confident and break out from his reserve...but in another sense, why not move him along and let him just cope? And sure, some things are going to be harder for him than for other kids, but isn't that just life? As a parent, you can't make everything easy for your kid, nor, would I argue, should you try to. I think life is challenging sometimes, and kids should learn that that's OK.
Anyway, the discussion goes on. We'll keep talking with Cal's teachers and we'll see what we end up doing. And thus ends another overly detailed episode of Nursery School Overanalysis. I'm your host, Michelle. Join us next week, as we explore the perverse and often baffling ritual known as "Circle Time."
a healthy respect for the jinx
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The funny thing of it is that Joe and I really aren't sleeping any less now that Mack is here. I mean sure, Mack wakes up at night, once around midnight-one-ish and once around four-five-ish, but given that I need to get up for work by five anyway, there's really only one real interruption to our night, and even then, it's not like he's crying or anything. He just starts fidgeting a lot, grunting like he's moving heavy furniture around. And then it's just a matter of changing his diaper and feeding him (ah, the miracle of co-sleeping and breastfeeding, you can basically sleep right through it), so that the whole waking ritual takes only, like, five minutes tops. Joe keeps saying that I should wake him up to do the diaper change, but most of the time I don't, as I have to feed Mack anyway so Joe doing the diaper doesn't actually buy me any more sleep, and anyway, the actual effort it takes me to wake Joe up far outstrips the effort it takes just to change the diaper myself. I was worried that after what an easy baby Cal was, we'd be stuck with some nocturnal hellion when Mack came along, which would render me sleep-deprived and stupefied for my days at work, but actually (and man, I hope I'm not jinxing myself, but it's been two months already and we're still smooth sailing) it's so far been fine.
Speaking of things that keep you up at night though, I don't think that there is any medical professional who is immune to the concept of The Jinx. Everyone knows that the second you look around the PACU remarking, "It looks pretty quiet here tonight" you are giving the signal to the universe to deal you the call night from hell, just like when you tell someone, "This should be a short, easy case" you will being pushing epi and giving chest compressions in short order to that seemingly young healthy patient who came in to get his hemorrhoids lopped off. Taking certain things for granted is just tempting fate, and no one understands that better than people who see, every day, fate turning on a dime.
So when people tell us how lucky we are to have two healthy kids, I can't help but to squirm uncomfortably and make quiet, almost apologetic remarks under my breath. Joe and I have the exact same reaction, and conferring with each other, we agree that it's just not something we feel comfortable saying out loud, because it just feels like an invitation for bad things to happen. It's not that we don't think we're lucky to have two healthy kids--we are lucky, very lucky. It's just that we also recognize luck for what it is, and that is: completely random. And there was nothing I hated more in taking a Pediatric history than hearing this prelude: "He was totally normal and healthy, everything was perfect, until..." before launching into a huge, tragic story of injury or illness. In fact, part of what made me not want to do Peds anymore was because I needed to get away from those stories. What makes that kid different from my kid? Answer: absolutely nothing.
It sounds so pessimistic to say that, but when you see bad things, it's hard not to realize that no matter how much distance you try to create, the fact of it is that bad things can happen to you too. It has nothing to do with your job or what kind of parent you are or your socioeconomic status or education or where you live. Sometimes bad things happen. And it makes it easy to understand why, in some cultures, children are hidden or disguised or given secret decoy names to obfuscate whatever demons or evil spirits wander the Earth. Because if they see you with your gorgeous baby, catch you looking too cocky, too proud, if they think you're taking your good luck for granted, they just might come along and show you how wrong you can be.
I'm not superstitious, and I don't really truly believe in evil spirits or anything like that, but I have a healthy respect for the concept of The Jinx. Because why push your luck? Since when is the universe indebted to me or my family? We have been lucky, but I don't ever want to get too comfortable with that. I'm only three and a half years in, but I realize that parenthood is like this lifetime of worry that never ends. And I feel like even talking about The Jinx is jinx-y in and of itself, but I just want whatever it is out there to know that we take nothing for granted, that we respect and fear The Jinx. And that no matter what we may say or how much time may pass, we will never stop being thankful, nor forget how lucky we have been.
Speaking of things that keep you up at night though, I don't think that there is any medical professional who is immune to the concept of The Jinx. Everyone knows that the second you look around the PACU remarking, "It looks pretty quiet here tonight" you are giving the signal to the universe to deal you the call night from hell, just like when you tell someone, "This should be a short, easy case" you will being pushing epi and giving chest compressions in short order to that seemingly young healthy patient who came in to get his hemorrhoids lopped off. Taking certain things for granted is just tempting fate, and no one understands that better than people who see, every day, fate turning on a dime.
So when people tell us how lucky we are to have two healthy kids, I can't help but to squirm uncomfortably and make quiet, almost apologetic remarks under my breath. Joe and I have the exact same reaction, and conferring with each other, we agree that it's just not something we feel comfortable saying out loud, because it just feels like an invitation for bad things to happen. It's not that we don't think we're lucky to have two healthy kids--we are lucky, very lucky. It's just that we also recognize luck for what it is, and that is: completely random. And there was nothing I hated more in taking a Pediatric history than hearing this prelude: "He was totally normal and healthy, everything was perfect, until..." before launching into a huge, tragic story of injury or illness. In fact, part of what made me not want to do Peds anymore was because I needed to get away from those stories. What makes that kid different from my kid? Answer: absolutely nothing.
It sounds so pessimistic to say that, but when you see bad things, it's hard not to realize that no matter how much distance you try to create, the fact of it is that bad things can happen to you too. It has nothing to do with your job or what kind of parent you are or your socioeconomic status or education or where you live. Sometimes bad things happen. And it makes it easy to understand why, in some cultures, children are hidden or disguised or given secret decoy names to obfuscate whatever demons or evil spirits wander the Earth. Because if they see you with your gorgeous baby, catch you looking too cocky, too proud, if they think you're taking your good luck for granted, they just might come along and show you how wrong you can be.
I'm not superstitious, and I don't really truly believe in evil spirits or anything like that, but I have a healthy respect for the concept of The Jinx. Because why push your luck? Since when is the universe indebted to me or my family? We have been lucky, but I don't ever want to get too comfortable with that. I'm only three and a half years in, but I realize that parenthood is like this lifetime of worry that never ends. And I feel like even talking about The Jinx is jinx-y in and of itself, but I just want whatever it is out there to know that we take nothing for granted, that we respect and fear The Jinx. And that no matter what we may say or how much time may pass, we will never stop being thankful, nor forget how lucky we have been.
picture show
You like pictures, right? Well good, because I got some for you.
First up, Mack's 6.5 week picture set.
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No, I'm not going to take some big wad of pictures every single week for the rest of his life, but he's little now, so it's allowed. And...I know this is only par for the course, but people, I love this baby. Seriously, I LOVE HIM. Such a sweet little temperment and so snuggly and smell-goody, and he's getting so chubby now that it's hard not to keep comparing him to all manner of delicious foodstuffs. Have you noticed that, how people always talk about babies as though they are tasty desserts? Muffin and cupcake and honeypie and such? WE ARE ALL CANNIBALS.
You like pictures, right? Well good, because I got some for you.
First up, Mack's 6.5 week picture set.
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No, I'm not going to take some big wad of pictures every single week for the rest of his life, but he's little now, so it's allowed. And...I know this is only par for the course, but people, I love this baby. Seriously, I LOVE HIM. Such a sweet little temperment and so snuggly and smell-goody, and he's getting so chubby now that it's hard not to keep comparing him to all manner of delicious foodstuffs. Have you noticed that, how people always talk about babies as though they are tasty desserts? Muffin and cupcake and honeypie and such? WE ARE ALL CANNIBALS.
On a related note, I have Twittered this before but when you name your kid Mack, you have to be comfortable with the fact that your kid is going to have a lot of nicknames. Even Cal has taken to calling his brother "Big Mack Attack." Some might think that having a kid who could easily (and quite logically, given his respectable baby size) be nicknamed "Mack Truck" a con, but actually we consider it something of a bonus.
Second up, we got Cal a kite recently, and today we took him to the park to try it out. He had fun and we got a couple of good runs out of it while the breeze cooperated. And while I still miss New York a lot--the food, the culture, the millions and millions of people and the energy of it all--on days like today, spending an afternoon in the park in the middle of February, with plenty of sunshine and blue skies and a big empty field with room to run, I kinda don't mind living in Atlanta.
(Full kite picture set here.)
Second up, we got Cal a kite recently, and today we took him to the park to try it out. He had fun and we got a couple of good runs out of it while the breeze cooperated. And while I still miss New York a lot--the food, the culture, the millions and millions of people and the energy of it all--on days like today, spending an afternoon in the park in the middle of February, with plenty of sunshine and blue skies and a big empty field with room to run, I kinda don't mind living in Atlanta.
(Full kite picture set here.)
head above water
Sorry for the sudden drop-off in updates this week, but I have been negotiating the transition from stay-at-home back to work, and have thus been a little...harried. I think that I mentioned this in a previous Twitter, but when you work outside the home, your evening parenting experience picks up this unfortunate utilitarian flavor. Basically, I'm running in the door, taking the quickest shower possible (to cleanse my skin of the multi drug-resistant microbes), and it's this breathless race of MAKE DINNER FEED DOG FEED BABY GIVE THE KIDS BATHS SNACK FEED BABY BEDTIME FOR EVERYONE GO GO GO that fails to elicit the heartfelt talks and snuggling that might manifest in a more relaxed pace of parenting spread out over several more hours. And there's the unfortunate feeling that I don't get enough time to spend with my kids, which is probably true--on Thursday after I got home, I fed Mack, and he proceeded to sleep for basically the rest of the evening into bedtime. I know it's bad mojo to wake a sleeping baby, but by 8pm, I was coughing loudly and poking him in the belly with one finger just so I could at least play with him a little bit before I had to go to bed myself. (During the work week, I go to bed on average between 8:30 and 9:00pm. Much like your grandmother.)
Adjustment back to work was another issue. I have never been away from clinical anesthesia for six whole weeks before (I didn't do any research electives during residency or anything like that, and when I took my maternity leave with Cal, those six weeks didn't count because I had just started my anesthesia residency three weeks prior to that so I didn't know enough to forget), and I have to say, I was a little afraid of being rusty. And while the truth of the matter is that while my hands didn't get rusty--muscle memory is a powerful thing, see also: riding a bike--but my brain feels rusty, having not been thinking about anything close to medicine (aside from a smattering of self-centered OB and Peds) for a month and a half. So that was a little disconcerting. I'm sure it'll just take a little time, and a little reading, to get my wits about me again, but it makes you realize just how cerebral the practice of anesthesia is. Which is why I'm sure no one understands what we do, because all they see is us standing there, watching the patient and frowning.
Also this week (because you know how much I just love to make my big moves all at once--IT'S ALL OR NOTHING, BABY), I submitted my second round of manuscript revisions to my editor. Honestly, I've read this manuscript so many times by this point that I don't even trust that if there are any glaring errors or discontinuities, I will catch them--but I do think that it's pretty OK and fairly close to the final product that I had envisioned. I don't know, we'll see. Of course I will still have to read through it fifteen million more times, but I am looking forward to moving on from the words-on-a-screen stage to the hey-this-might-actually-be-a-real-book-that-people-will-read stage. That will be fun.
So that's that. Oh, and I keep trying to take a picture of Mack smiling (it seems like he's actually doing it on purpose now, just starting this past week), but I never have my camera close by when he's doing it, and whenever I run and get my camera I can't get him to smile anymore. Perhaps I need a more hilarious camera.
Sorry for the sudden drop-off in updates this week, but I have been negotiating the transition from stay-at-home back to work, and have thus been a little...harried. I think that I mentioned this in a previous Twitter, but when you work outside the home, your evening parenting experience picks up this unfortunate utilitarian flavor. Basically, I'm running in the door, taking the quickest shower possible (to cleanse my skin of the multi drug-resistant microbes), and it's this breathless race of MAKE DINNER FEED DOG FEED BABY GIVE THE KIDS BATHS SNACK FEED BABY BEDTIME FOR EVERYONE GO GO GO that fails to elicit the heartfelt talks and snuggling that might manifest in a more relaxed pace of parenting spread out over several more hours. And there's the unfortunate feeling that I don't get enough time to spend with my kids, which is probably true--on Thursday after I got home, I fed Mack, and he proceeded to sleep for basically the rest of the evening into bedtime. I know it's bad mojo to wake a sleeping baby, but by 8pm, I was coughing loudly and poking him in the belly with one finger just so I could at least play with him a little bit before I had to go to bed myself. (During the work week, I go to bed on average between 8:30 and 9:00pm. Much like your grandmother.)
Adjustment back to work was another issue. I have never been away from clinical anesthesia for six whole weeks before (I didn't do any research electives during residency or anything like that, and when I took my maternity leave with Cal, those six weeks didn't count because I had just started my anesthesia residency three weeks prior to that so I didn't know enough to forget), and I have to say, I was a little afraid of being rusty. And while the truth of the matter is that while my hands didn't get rusty--muscle memory is a powerful thing, see also: riding a bike--but my brain feels rusty, having not been thinking about anything close to medicine (aside from a smattering of self-centered OB and Peds) for a month and a half. So that was a little disconcerting. I'm sure it'll just take a little time, and a little reading, to get my wits about me again, but it makes you realize just how cerebral the practice of anesthesia is. Which is why I'm sure no one understands what we do, because all they see is us standing there, watching the patient and frowning.
Also this week (because you know how much I just love to make my big moves all at once--IT'S ALL OR NOTHING, BABY), I submitted my second round of manuscript revisions to my editor. Honestly, I've read this manuscript so many times by this point that I don't even trust that if there are any glaring errors or discontinuities, I will catch them--but I do think that it's pretty OK and fairly close to the final product that I had envisioned. I don't know, we'll see. Of course I will still have to read through it fifteen million more times, but I am looking forward to moving on from the words-on-a-screen stage to the hey-this-might-actually-be-a-real-book-that-people-will-read stage. That will be fun.
So that's that. Oh, and I keep trying to take a picture of Mack smiling (it seems like he's actually doing it on purpose now, just starting this past week), but I never have my camera close by when he's doing it, and whenever I run and get my camera I can't get him to smile anymore. Perhaps I need a more hilarious camera.
all romantical and shit
So, Valentine's Day! How was yours? Ours was fine, if utilitarian--Joe's mom was in town to visit the kids (still feels weird to say that--I can't believe I have kids, plural) and demanded to babysit for us so that we could have Valentine's Day dinner out, though for a variety of reasons, Joe and I decided to call it an early night and were home by 7:30pm. However, it was a good dinner, and certainly more romantic than my original instinct, which was to take the opportunity for some free babysitting and run to the supermarket, because just think HOW EFFICIENTLY we could do our shopping without all the carseats and wrangling and no-you-cannot-buy-that-cereal-it-is-a-rip-off-and-I-don't-care-what-percentage-of-the-profits-goes-towards-saving-the-rainforests. It's these magical moments that make a marriage special.
The flowers, by the way, were from Joe, and very lovely. Before he showed them to me, he warned, "I just want to prepare you, they're a little...Tim Burton-esque," which made it a lovely surprise that they were actually pretty, just ornate and a little gothic (black tulips, twisty vine accents etcetera) as opposed to what I was thinking when he said "Tim Burton-esque," which was, like, a single dead daisy. I expect the flowers will only continue to become more Tim Burton-esque as the week goes by, anyway, due to my habit of never, ever throwing out flowers until they're basically putrefying. I just get so attached is all.
So, Valentine's Day! How was yours? Ours was fine, if utilitarian--Joe's mom was in town to visit the kids (still feels weird to say that--I can't believe I have kids, plural) and demanded to babysit for us so that we could have Valentine's Day dinner out, though for a variety of reasons, Joe and I decided to call it an early night and were home by 7:30pm. However, it was a good dinner, and certainly more romantic than my original instinct, which was to take the opportunity for some free babysitting and run to the supermarket, because just think HOW EFFICIENTLY we could do our shopping without all the carseats and wrangling and no-you-cannot-buy-that-cereal-it-is-a-rip-off-and-I-don't-care-what-percentage-of-the-profits-goes-towards-saving-the-rainforests. It's these magical moments that make a marriage special.
The flowers, by the way, were from Joe, and very lovely. Before he showed them to me, he warned, "I just want to prepare you, they're a little...Tim Burton-esque," which made it a lovely surprise that they were actually pretty, just ornate and a little gothic (black tulips, twisty vine accents etcetera) as opposed to what I was thinking when he said "Tim Burton-esque," which was, like, a single dead daisy. I expect the flowers will only continue to become more Tim Burton-esque as the week goes by, anyway, due to my habit of never, ever throwing out flowers until they're basically putrefying. I just get so attached is all.
and then he started combing his hair with it like in "the little mermaid"
Hey look, I don't pretend to be Martha Stewart, OK? I can barely cook rice, and as for kitchen tools, the ones we actually use we keep to a minimum. Most of them are from this black plastic set that I think we picked up at Bed Bath and Beyond, that came in a bagged bundled set for, like five bucks. So it is very strange as well as very specific that one of my pet peeves is when people (translation: Joe) use(s) kitchen implements for the wrong purpose. Inexplicably drives me INSANE. And the brunt of the transgressions centers on this one tool:
I don't know what this is, or what it's called, but to my mind, the shape and configuration implies that it is a tool used to pick up and serve pasta of the spaghetti/linguini variety. I mean...right? It has little prongs to entwine the strands and everything. It's a long pasta picker-upper, and due to its unusual shape, that seems like basically the only thing it's suited to do.
However, Joe uses this implement for EVERYTHING. Which is annoying not just because it's difficult to clean, but, see above, using kitchen implements incorrectly drives me crazy, despite the fact that I have no actual proof that pasta-picking is what this implement is actually used for. But people, seriously? HE USES THIS FOR EVERYTHING. Including and not limited to:
I mean, really? SOUP? When it's sitting next to two ladles and a giant serving spoon? And, more saliently, THERE'S A HOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT THING. I mean, Jesus.
Hey look, I don't pretend to be Martha Stewart, OK? I can barely cook rice, and as for kitchen tools, the ones we actually use we keep to a minimum. Most of them are from this black plastic set that I think we picked up at Bed Bath and Beyond, that came in a bagged bundled set for, like five bucks. So it is very strange as well as very specific that one of my pet peeves is when people (translation: Joe) use(s) kitchen implements for the wrong purpose. Inexplicably drives me INSANE. And the brunt of the transgressions centers on this one tool:
I don't know what this is, or what it's called, but to my mind, the shape and configuration implies that it is a tool used to pick up and serve pasta of the spaghetti/linguini variety. I mean...right? It has little prongs to entwine the strands and everything. It's a long pasta picker-upper, and due to its unusual shape, that seems like basically the only thing it's suited to do.
However, Joe uses this implement for EVERYTHING. Which is annoying not just because it's difficult to clean, but, see above, using kitchen implements incorrectly drives me crazy, despite the fact that I have no actual proof that pasta-picking is what this implement is actually used for. But people, seriously? HE USES THIS FOR EVERYTHING. Including and not limited to:
- Scooping up rice
- Serving beef stew
- Dishing out soup
I mean, really? SOUP? When it's sitting next to two ladles and a giant serving spoon? And, more saliently, THERE'S A HOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT THING. I mean, Jesus.
do-overs
(Above graphic by Chris Sharron. Incidentally, just so I can clear about 20+ e-mails from my inbox all in one fell blow--people often ask me where I get those cute T-shirts for Cal. I have talked about this before, but most of them are from Threadless.com. They primarily do adult shirts, but their selection of kid's shirts and onesies has really expanded in the past few years. And apparently they are having a $9 sale on all their girly-fit T-shirts now through Sunday, so go look. Unless you're one of those nudists.)
(And now back to your regularly scheduled whatever.)
There's a pretty big spread of ages in Cal's class. I mean, all the kids are three to four years-old, but I don't think anyone can argue that a the difference between just-turned-four and just-turned-three is huge. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that while it's a spread that will minimize with time, it's not going to totally stop being a factor in school until all the kids in the group hit puberty, at which point everyone will just be equally revolting. Some of the kids in Cal's class turned four as early as this past summer, probably more than half celebrated their fourth birthdays before the calendar year ended. And Cal, well, Cal turned three at the end of July, less than a month before the school year began. He is what in the preschool age spread they call "a young three." In fact, I think he's actually the second-youngest kid in his class, if not the youngest.
The night that we got Cal's progress report, Joe and I discussed the idea of retaining Cal in "pre-primary" (as his nursery school class is called) for another year. This is something that sometimes the teachers and parents choose to do for a variety of reasons--there is one kid repeating in Cal's class right now, for instance--mostly to give kids who are a little bit on the young end of things a chance to catch up, both socially and developmentally, to give them a chance to not always feel the pressure of being smaller, clumsier, behind. I'm not worried about Cal's academic development--that I think is well on-target--but I think the combination of Cal's particular cautious personality and the fact that he is on the extreme young end of the bell curve for his group may be a disadvantageous combination. We talked about it and we talked about it, and finally, I just said, "Well, let me just see how this parent teacher conference goes, and we'll see what they think."
At the parent teacher conference, after we had chatted and gone through all the papers and artwork and shot the shit for a while, the teachers paused, sort of took a deep breath, and said that while Cal is doing great academically, they thought that--guess what?--with the combination of Cal's particular personality and the fact that he is on the extreme young end of the bell curve, they wanted to see what we thought about him staying with them in pre-primary for another year.
I think they were a little surprised when I told them that I actually wholeheartedly agreed instead of running out of the room, rending my garments, screaming, "MY KID JUST FAILED PRESCHOOL!"
After they exhaled (really, they were very relieved that my reaction was not, you know, defensiveness or anger), they further elucidated their reasoning, much of which I had thought through myself and agreed with. He would be in the same classroom, with the same three teachers, and they hoped that in not giving Cal another big transition (our move from New York to Atlanta right before Cal started school also played into their decision, as Cal is not a kid who deals easily with upheaval), that he could build his confidence, and in already knowing the rhythm and patterns of his classroom environment, he could finally be the expert, the leader, bigger and more competent as opposed to always feeling behind. And that with this comfort and familiarity, maybe he could finally be a little less anxious, and develop a little more of that social piece that we all think he needs work on. That's the thinking, anyway. We could re-evaluate again at the end of the year, since Cal seems to have been steadily improving on all fronts (most notably in the few weeks since Mack was born--instead of regressing, he seems to have hit some sort of developmental growth spurt) but they just wanted to broach the subject and see what we thought.
I will be totally honest with you here and say that as a Type A person and someone who skews towards the nerd end of the spectrum, part of me does find this a little embarrassing. The TEACHERS are saying that MY KID may benefit from REPEATING a year in NURSERY SCHOOL. Oh my god, he is REMEDIAL. But another part of me sees the potential benefits of retention very clearly, and not just for the reasons you might think. See, when I was a kid, I attended nursery school starting at the age of two. This is not uncommon in New York, and anyway, my parents were both residents, and they figured, what, was I just going to sit at home with a nanny all day? Might as well go learn how to sit in a circle and nap on cue. So by the time kindergarden rolled around, I had already been attending school for three years. Like Cal, my academic skills were on target, and at the time (this was the early 1980s, remember) my school principal thought I might be bored in kindergarden or something, doing the same old things that I had been doing all along, and so decided (along with my parents) to skip me directly into first grade. My birthday is at the end of June, so I had just turned five.
Like I said, I turned out basically OK. As I got older, I even eventually came to like being on the younger end of things--it occasionally made me look like some whiz kid or something, though clearly I am nothing of the sort. But as the years went by, it also ceased to matter--no one asks me how old I am anymore (well, I guess my patients do sometimes), and when I did an extra year of residency when I switched from Peds to Anesthesia, that extra year I had on everyone got absorbed. And, whatever, I'm thirty now, so who cares. But being on the extreme young end of the spectrum for my grade and, like Cal, having sort of a self-contained personality, I'm not sure in retrospect that skipping ahead was necessarily the best decision. I've always done OK academically, and it's not like I'm some social retard or anything like that, but I'm not going to say that being on the younger end of things didn't occasionally make things hard.
Particularly for Cal now--we're not sending him to school for academics. I mean, yes, of course that is part of it, and I care as much as the next parent whether or not he can write his alphabet and cut out shapes and recreate patterns. But the big thing, the main reason we sent him to school when and where we did, is for the social element. As his parents, we can teach him how to read and add and write in cursive. But we can't recreate the experience of being in the schoolyard with four of his little buddies, playing "construction site" and cooperating to dig a giant hole straight through to China.
Joe's one hesitation when we first discussed the idea of retaining Cal was the prospect of separating him from his peer group. There are seventeen other kids in Cal's class besides him, and he knows their names, knows some of their parents, sometimes tells us little stories about the COO-RAZY stuff that Aaron or Maya or Simon did at school that day. However, tellingly, Cal does not have a best friend yet. He is interacting with the other kids more now than he was at the beginning of the year, and I think is starting to make that leap from parallel to cooperative play (he also does more imaginative play now, at least at home--his new favorite game is "Car School," in which there's a teacher car and student cars and all the cars sit in a circle and have snacktime and line up to go to gym class) but I don't think he's particularly attached to any one or several kids in his class over any other kids he might meet. Well, except for his teachers. He is very attached to his teachers. Which, I guess, is another argument to keep him in the same class for another year, and let him grow a little more under the care and guidance of people who already know him well.
Anyway, for all our hand-wringing and overanalysis, let's not forget--THIS IS NURSERY SCHOOL. The idea of "retaining" or not retaining him in some sense is almost meaningless, all it means is that he's going to be in the same classroom with the same teachers, as opposed to in that other classroom with those other teachers. Everyone's going to learn to read, everyone's going to learn to add, everyone going to get to eat paste. The important thing is that Cal is enjoying himself while doing it. And that he eventually attends the Ivy League medical school of his choice.
(Kidding!)
(I swear.)
(Above graphic by Chris Sharron. Incidentally, just so I can clear about 20+ e-mails from my inbox all in one fell blow--people often ask me where I get those cute T-shirts for Cal. I have talked about this before, but most of them are from Threadless.com. They primarily do adult shirts, but their selection of kid's shirts and onesies has really expanded in the past few years. And apparently they are having a $9 sale on all their girly-fit T-shirts now through Sunday, so go look. Unless you're one of those nudists.)
(And now back to your regularly scheduled whatever.)
There's a pretty big spread of ages in Cal's class. I mean, all the kids are three to four years-old, but I don't think anyone can argue that a the difference between just-turned-four and just-turned-three is huge. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that while it's a spread that will minimize with time, it's not going to totally stop being a factor in school until all the kids in the group hit puberty, at which point everyone will just be equally revolting. Some of the kids in Cal's class turned four as early as this past summer, probably more than half celebrated their fourth birthdays before the calendar year ended. And Cal, well, Cal turned three at the end of July, less than a month before the school year began. He is what in the preschool age spread they call "a young three." In fact, I think he's actually the second-youngest kid in his class, if not the youngest.
The night that we got Cal's progress report, Joe and I discussed the idea of retaining Cal in "pre-primary" (as his nursery school class is called) for another year. This is something that sometimes the teachers and parents choose to do for a variety of reasons--there is one kid repeating in Cal's class right now, for instance--mostly to give kids who are a little bit on the young end of things a chance to catch up, both socially and developmentally, to give them a chance to not always feel the pressure of being smaller, clumsier, behind. I'm not worried about Cal's academic development--that I think is well on-target--but I think the combination of Cal's particular cautious personality and the fact that he is on the extreme young end of the bell curve for his group may be a disadvantageous combination. We talked about it and we talked about it, and finally, I just said, "Well, let me just see how this parent teacher conference goes, and we'll see what they think."
At the parent teacher conference, after we had chatted and gone through all the papers and artwork and shot the shit for a while, the teachers paused, sort of took a deep breath, and said that while Cal is doing great academically, they thought that--guess what?--with the combination of Cal's particular personality and the fact that he is on the extreme young end of the bell curve, they wanted to see what we thought about him staying with them in pre-primary for another year.
I think they were a little surprised when I told them that I actually wholeheartedly agreed instead of running out of the room, rending my garments, screaming, "MY KID JUST FAILED PRESCHOOL!"
After they exhaled (really, they were very relieved that my reaction was not, you know, defensiveness or anger), they further elucidated their reasoning, much of which I had thought through myself and agreed with. He would be in the same classroom, with the same three teachers, and they hoped that in not giving Cal another big transition (our move from New York to Atlanta right before Cal started school also played into their decision, as Cal is not a kid who deals easily with upheaval), that he could build his confidence, and in already knowing the rhythm and patterns of his classroom environment, he could finally be the expert, the leader, bigger and more competent as opposed to always feeling behind. And that with this comfort and familiarity, maybe he could finally be a little less anxious, and develop a little more of that social piece that we all think he needs work on. That's the thinking, anyway. We could re-evaluate again at the end of the year, since Cal seems to have been steadily improving on all fronts (most notably in the few weeks since Mack was born--instead of regressing, he seems to have hit some sort of developmental growth spurt) but they just wanted to broach the subject and see what we thought.
I will be totally honest with you here and say that as a Type A person and someone who skews towards the nerd end of the spectrum, part of me does find this a little embarrassing. The TEACHERS are saying that MY KID may benefit from REPEATING a year in NURSERY SCHOOL. Oh my god, he is REMEDIAL. But another part of me sees the potential benefits of retention very clearly, and not just for the reasons you might think. See, when I was a kid, I attended nursery school starting at the age of two. This is not uncommon in New York, and anyway, my parents were both residents, and they figured, what, was I just going to sit at home with a nanny all day? Might as well go learn how to sit in a circle and nap on cue. So by the time kindergarden rolled around, I had already been attending school for three years. Like Cal, my academic skills were on target, and at the time (this was the early 1980s, remember) my school principal thought I might be bored in kindergarden or something, doing the same old things that I had been doing all along, and so decided (along with my parents) to skip me directly into first grade. My birthday is at the end of June, so I had just turned five.
Like I said, I turned out basically OK. As I got older, I even eventually came to like being on the younger end of things--it occasionally made me look like some whiz kid or something, though clearly I am nothing of the sort. But as the years went by, it also ceased to matter--no one asks me how old I am anymore (well, I guess my patients do sometimes), and when I did an extra year of residency when I switched from Peds to Anesthesia, that extra year I had on everyone got absorbed. And, whatever, I'm thirty now, so who cares. But being on the extreme young end of the spectrum for my grade and, like Cal, having sort of a self-contained personality, I'm not sure in retrospect that skipping ahead was necessarily the best decision. I've always done OK academically, and it's not like I'm some social retard or anything like that, but I'm not going to say that being on the younger end of things didn't occasionally make things hard.
Particularly for Cal now--we're not sending him to school for academics. I mean, yes, of course that is part of it, and I care as much as the next parent whether or not he can write his alphabet and cut out shapes and recreate patterns. But the big thing, the main reason we sent him to school when and where we did, is for the social element. As his parents, we can teach him how to read and add and write in cursive. But we can't recreate the experience of being in the schoolyard with four of his little buddies, playing "construction site" and cooperating to dig a giant hole straight through to China.
Joe's one hesitation when we first discussed the idea of retaining Cal was the prospect of separating him from his peer group. There are seventeen other kids in Cal's class besides him, and he knows their names, knows some of their parents, sometimes tells us little stories about the COO-RAZY stuff that Aaron or Maya or Simon did at school that day. However, tellingly, Cal does not have a best friend yet. He is interacting with the other kids more now than he was at the beginning of the year, and I think is starting to make that leap from parallel to cooperative play (he also does more imaginative play now, at least at home--his new favorite game is "Car School," in which there's a teacher car and student cars and all the cars sit in a circle and have snacktime and line up to go to gym class) but I don't think he's particularly attached to any one or several kids in his class over any other kids he might meet. Well, except for his teachers. He is very attached to his teachers. Which, I guess, is another argument to keep him in the same class for another year, and let him grow a little more under the care and guidance of people who already know him well.
Anyway, for all our hand-wringing and overanalysis, let's not forget--THIS IS NURSERY SCHOOL. The idea of "retaining" or not retaining him in some sense is almost meaningless, all it means is that he's going to be in the same classroom with the same teachers, as opposed to in that other classroom with those other teachers. Everyone's going to learn to read, everyone's going to learn to add, everyone going to get to eat paste. The important thing is that Cal is enjoying himself while doing it. And that he eventually attends the Ivy League medical school of his choice.
(Kidding!)
(I swear.)
Edited to add: Yes, I have read this article. And while I never thought that I would be making this decision, I realize that if Cal continues at his current school through kindergarden, we may be in the position of looking over the fence from one side of the debate to the other.
blame daddy, because i just say "jeez"
Cal's Gold Star day went really well. He was super-excited to have me there (at one point he told me, "Thank you for coming to my school, because I miss you when you're at work," like STICK A KNIFE INTO MY HEART why don't you), and was so proud to show me where everything was, what he was doing, all that kind of thing.
Part of Gold Star Day is bringing something in for Show and Tell--really just an excuse to get kids used to the idea of speaking in front of people and to share something interesting from home. I knew if Cal brought in a toy or a book, he would run out of things to talk about fairly quickly ("This is my train..." followed by five minutes of mute nodding), so in the interest of prolonging the experience, I printed out a big picture of him and Mack to bring into the class, so he could talk about "his baby" and the various aspects of his new life as a big brother.
Cal uncharacteristically seemed to be enjoying the self-revelatory aspect of the activity, and decided to share this story, which I will transcribe as faithfully as I can.
"The baby can't use the potty. He pees in a diaper. And he poops in a diaper. And when we were going to the park and the baby was in the stroller, he pooped in his diaper. And then we changed the diaper but then he pooped in the diaper again. I mean, Jesus."
Cal's Gold Star day went really well. He was super-excited to have me there (at one point he told me, "Thank you for coming to my school, because I miss you when you're at work," like STICK A KNIFE INTO MY HEART why don't you), and was so proud to show me where everything was, what he was doing, all that kind of thing.
Part of Gold Star Day is bringing something in for Show and Tell--really just an excuse to get kids used to the idea of speaking in front of people and to share something interesting from home. I knew if Cal brought in a toy or a book, he would run out of things to talk about fairly quickly ("This is my train..." followed by five minutes of mute nodding), so in the interest of prolonging the experience, I printed out a big picture of him and Mack to bring into the class, so he could talk about "his baby" and the various aspects of his new life as a big brother.
Cal uncharacteristically seemed to be enjoying the self-revelatory aspect of the activity, and decided to share this story, which I will transcribe as faithfully as I can.
"The baby can't use the potty. He pees in a diaper. And he poops in a diaper. And when we were going to the park and the baby was in the stroller, he pooped in his diaper. And then we changed the diaper but then he pooped in the diaper again. I mean, Jesus."
like mother like son
First off, thanks for all the e-mails about my post yesterday regarding Cal in all his little old mannish-ness. Just seeing the volume of stories about kids just like Cal who are all doing well (despite the best efforts of us parents to TOTALLY SCREW THEM UP) was very reassuring. One piece that I should add for context that is also reassuring (or possibly alarming, depending on your point of view) is that when I was a kid, I was actually very much like Cal is now. Especially when I was very young, meaning nursery school up until...oh, say...second grade? I just found the childlike hijinks of other kids a little overwhelming for me, and occasionally puzzling. Why are they doing that? Why are they so loud? Why would they just knock that block tower over? Why do they keep touching me? I don't want to name a body part to stick into the circle to shake all about for the Hokey-Pokey. EVERYONE STOP LOOKING AT ME. And then I would cry. I think I cried a lot in school as a kid. They even broached the subject to my parents that maybe I should see some sort of child psychiatrist for what they construed as my crippling shyness and anxiety (who knows, maybe they were right) but anyway, such things were just not as common then as they are now, and besides, as I got older (and perhaps just as importantly, my classmates got older) everything sort of normalized, and here I am now, restricting my serial killing to just the weekends.
Well, the important thing is that Cal really loves his school, and that the emphasis be on him getting as much out of the experience as possible rather than getting him to fit into some cookie-cutter mold. However, I also worry (warning: exposure of deepest darkest neurosis ahead) that the teachers or other parents somehow think that Joe and I are psychos because we have this kid that more than one parent has described to us as, "so sweet, but so serious!" I mean, this thing that Cal says to get out of doing things, by saying, "I'm not very good at [insert activity here]," be it playing some group game, complying with instructions, breathing, what have you--is just strange, because where did he get that? One of the other moms said to me at this party on Sunday, "Well, isn't that cute, he just wants to be the best at everything!" Lady, let me tell you, Cal wants a lot of things, but could not give two shits if he is The Best at anything--I'm not even sure he understands what that means. Why he says "I'm not very good at this" as an excuse I have no idea, but if it somehow gives the impression that his browbeating overachiever parents are telling him that if he can't be the best at something, he shouldn't even try, I will die of mortification. Seriously, I will die. I know I shouldn't worry about what The Other Parents think, but let's be honest, we all do, right? ADMIT IT. (See also: why I will put on lip gloss for the parent teacher conferences.)
But anyway. Tomorrow is Cal's Gold Star Day (specifically engineered with his teachers so that I could attend during my maternity leave--he wasn't originally scheduled to have his Gold Star until the end of the month), and afterwards, I will stick around and help the kids decorate cookies for Valentine's Day. It's quite possibly my only chance this year do do anything with Cal's class at school during actual classroom time, so that will be fun, and possibly even take the edge off my working mom guilt somewhat.
First off, thanks for all the e-mails about my post yesterday regarding Cal in all his little old mannish-ness. Just seeing the volume of stories about kids just like Cal who are all doing well (despite the best efforts of us parents to TOTALLY SCREW THEM UP) was very reassuring. One piece that I should add for context that is also reassuring (or possibly alarming, depending on your point of view) is that when I was a kid, I was actually very much like Cal is now. Especially when I was very young, meaning nursery school up until...oh, say...second grade? I just found the childlike hijinks of other kids a little overwhelming for me, and occasionally puzzling. Why are they doing that? Why are they so loud? Why would they just knock that block tower over? Why do they keep touching me? I don't want to name a body part to stick into the circle to shake all about for the Hokey-Pokey. EVERYONE STOP LOOKING AT ME. And then I would cry. I think I cried a lot in school as a kid. They even broached the subject to my parents that maybe I should see some sort of child psychiatrist for what they construed as my crippling shyness and anxiety (who knows, maybe they were right) but anyway, such things were just not as common then as they are now, and besides, as I got older (and perhaps just as importantly, my classmates got older) everything sort of normalized, and here I am now, restricting my serial killing to just the weekends.
Well, the important thing is that Cal really loves his school, and that the emphasis be on him getting as much out of the experience as possible rather than getting him to fit into some cookie-cutter mold. However, I also worry (warning: exposure of deepest darkest neurosis ahead) that the teachers or other parents somehow think that Joe and I are psychos because we have this kid that more than one parent has described to us as, "so sweet, but so serious!" I mean, this thing that Cal says to get out of doing things, by saying, "I'm not very good at [insert activity here]," be it playing some group game, complying with instructions, breathing, what have you--is just strange, because where did he get that? One of the other moms said to me at this party on Sunday, "Well, isn't that cute, he just wants to be the best at everything!" Lady, let me tell you, Cal wants a lot of things, but could not give two shits if he is The Best at anything--I'm not even sure he understands what that means. Why he says "I'm not very good at this" as an excuse I have no idea, but if it somehow gives the impression that his browbeating overachiever parents are telling him that if he can't be the best at something, he shouldn't even try, I will die of mortification. Seriously, I will die. I know I shouldn't worry about what The Other Parents think, but let's be honest, we all do, right? ADMIT IT. (See also: why I will put on lip gloss for the parent teacher conferences.)
But anyway. Tomorrow is Cal's Gold Star Day (specifically engineered with his teachers so that I could attend during my maternity leave--he wasn't originally scheduled to have his Gold Star until the end of the month), and afterwards, I will stick around and help the kids decorate cookies for Valentine's Day. It's quite possibly my only chance this year do do anything with Cal's class at school during actual classroom time, so that will be fun, and possibly even take the edge off my working mom guilt somewhat.
Oh right, that reminds me of my other secret worry--that I made Cal into an anxious collection of neuroses by working such long hours. Side story: one time I got out from work early and was picking Cal up from school. One of his classmates, a little girl, asked me, "Are you Cal's babysitter?"
"Actually," I told her, "I'm his mom."
She paused for a long time, looked me up and down, and then retorted, "NO. You're his BABYSITTER." Ah, little girl, practicing for high school already.
"Actually," I told her, "I'm his mom."
She paused for a long time, looked me up and down, and then retorted, "NO. You're his BABYSITTER." Ah, little girl, practicing for high school already.
Anyway, whatever, I know it's the fatal flaw of all parents to overanalyze everything with their own kids to absolutely no benefit, so I'll just try to stop. It's kind of like in the hospital, how the especially complicated patients will have this huge thick chart just filled with reams and reams of notes, but at the end of the day, the essential plan to stay the course with current treatment remains unchanged. Or as one of my attendings is med school put it, "no one ever died of note-openia."
progress report
(I was going to start off with some joke about how the devil went down to Georgia, and that's why it's so warm down here--highs in the 70s today--but I realized that would be a pretty lame joke, even for me.)
So yesterday, we got Cal's progress report, which is sort of like his little report card, issued in advance of the parent-teacher conferences this Thursday. By the way, even though part of me misses the comments section on this blog, this is one of those days that I am glad I turned them off, because for some reason, EVERY DAMN TIME I talk about Cal going to nursery school I would get these comments that were like, "Why can't you let your kid be a kid, why do you have to send them to school at age three, what are you hyper-achievement pressure-parents pushing, MCAT prep or something!?!?! And also: !!!!!!" Yes, people send their kids to preschool. And then the kids can eat their boogers in new and enriching environments. The End. But anyway, comments are OFF now, so I don't have to mentally gird my loins for the sarcastic repartee, of which the name of some Ivy League school and our supposed grand admission scheme always seems to be the punchline.
Anyway, though I think Cal is a pretty great kid, I am well aware of his shortcomings. I don't worry about him from an academic point of view--I know he's smart and all, and learning numbers and letters and colors and reading honestly isn't the reason that we sent him to school, because he can get that at home. The reason we thought it was important for him to start school was for the social piece--particularly, socializing with other kids his own age. Because frankly, in a room full of other kids his own age, Cal is kind of...weird.
It says repeatedly in his progress report that he's more of an "observer" than a participant in group activities, and that I have to agree with 100%. He doesn't play with other kids per se unless he's tricked into it; more often, he just watches them. When you try to get him involved in some big-group kid activity, he inevitably makes excuses and begs off. He's less this way now, but a few months ago he actually used to be kind of scared of other little kids, especially when they were very exuberant (read: loud) or energetic (read: rough), and would run back to me or Joe or whoever to cower by our sides and peek out from between our legs. Just yesterday, we took Cal to the birthday party of some kid in his class, held at one of these little kiddie gyms with a ball pit and a trampoline and soft climbing structures and what have you. He had a right fine time playing on his own, but when it came time for "circle time" and to participate in a group game (I believe it involved beaning Nerf balls at each other) he stood off to the side and refused to participate. "I'm not very good at sitting in a circle," he explained, casting a jaundiced eye on the proceedings. "And I don't think I like that game very much." Meanwhile, all the other normal kids were smashing each other with foam balls and screaming with joy. Let's just put it this way: if you're a magician at a kid's party and you need to pick a volunteer for audience participation, you don't want to call on Cal.
Contrast that with what I think is actually Cal's ideal party, which we attended a few weekends ago--the adult's cocktail party. Our neighbor had a small get together for about thirty people to celebrate her 40th birthday, and since it was early enough and we lived right next door anyway, we brought Cal and Mack along. Cal was in his element. He was talking to everybody, all of them strangers, telling stories, laughing and dancing, even sidling up to one person he'd just met to hold their hand. (This actually was fairly embarrassing for me, because the person whose hand he decided to hold had, I'm fairly sure, had a STROKE not too long ago, and it appeared he was actually PARALYZED on the hand-holding side--but the guy was a former teacher and very nice, not to mention thoroughly charmed by Cal's gregarious party persona.) To say that Cal is "adult-oriented," as one of his teacher's noted earlier this year, is perhaps one of the bigger understatements that we've heard. If you saw him at this adult party and then observed him with other kids, you might not believe he was the same child.
The other problem with Cal (well, it's not a problem in that it's so unusual for a three year-old, but it is a problem in that it makes things difficult sometimes) is that he does not deal well with new things. I'm not talking about new foods or new people necessarily, but new experiences are problematic, and no matter how much fun they look and whether or not every other kid is enjoying it (there was a zip-line at this kid's party yesterday that he just refused to even look at), he is just very slow to warm up. He's not the kind of kid who's going to cannonball into a pool, let's put it that way. I believe they call this warming-up-to-new-experiences "transitions" at school, and it's true, Cal is probably not that great at transitions. I mean, just look how long it took for him to agree to even use the toilet at school, despite being scatologically reliable at home. MONTHS. And you have to be careful how you encourage him to try the new things. One wrong word and he digs his heels in and you can just forget it--he won't be going down that slide or sitting in his cubby or watching "Toy Story" ("TOY STORY" for chrissake! It's a CARTOON! And an hour and the half of parent-endorsed TV time! Who is this kid?) ever, ever again. Or at least until he forgets all about it and just does it anyway.
I think these two things are the two core things that Cal needs to work on, but the problem is that between those two things, I imagine Cal occasionally does not come off very well, and appears more like the freaky loner kid who refuses to do anything that I'm sure teachers just LOVE. The progress report takes pains to mention what they feel are Cal's strengths--mainly, that he's very empathetic and sweet and "sensitive" (though this seems more like a euphemism for "cries easily"), but I think some of his other strengths are being eclipsed by the fact that he just refused to do some of things for which he was being evaluated. For instance, we (Joe and I) know Cal has known all his letters for almost two years, he can easily count to 20 (has, actually, counted to 120, with only occasional prompting that the number following, say, 49 is not "forty-ten"), writes his own name, talks in long, complete sentences (tellingly, his favorite word is "actually"), and knows his basic shapes, colors, and all that crap. I mean, the kid told me a few months ago, "Actually Mom, did you know that this banana kind of looks like a crescent?" COME ON NOW. But according to his progress report, he is still has not mastered those skills, which makes me wonder just what kind of act he is pulling at school, and just how stubborn he is being about coming out of his shell to show them. Because when Cal doesn't want to do something well, he just won't do it.
I mean, for example, in his progress report, it says in one part about fine motor skills that he is functioning as left-hand dominant. And Cal is very clearly right-handed. I mean, we've been spelling out the words for him and he writes thank-you notes to his grandparents--I've watched him, HE IS RIGHT HANDED. Yet for this evaluation, he was using his left hand to cut out shapes, write letters, what have you. This is classic Cal, this deliberate screwing up of tasks he can easily do well (like when he pretends he can't put on his pants so we have to help him, or pretends to fall down because he's "too tired to walk") inevitably followed up by, "Actually, I'm not very good at this, I can't do this." He can do these things at home, and my initial response was to be very defensive of Cal and his abilities, even thinking, well, maybe I should make a tape of him and show them...but then I came to realize that really, that's beside the point. The point isn't that he can do this stuff at home, the point is that he isn't doing them at school. And that's what we need to work on.
That and his reluctance to play with other children. Other kids just freak him out for some reason. The adult world, with its manners and rules, its polite conversation, its personal space boundaries and lack of rough physical engagement, that's what Cal likes. Put him in a room with a bunch of squealing, grubby kids jumping up and down and throwing things (you know, any preschool class, in other words) and you're more likely than not going to find him standing off to the side watching everyone else and occasionally making deadpan critique. Yesterday at the party, he walked out of the party room, where all the other kids were honking on their little noisemakers, and told me, "It's just too loud in there, it's hurting inside my ears," before settling on the bench next to me and finishing his slice of pizza. Part of me agreed--it was loud in there, all the other parents were wincing and making jokes about "whose idea was the noisemakers anyway?"--but another part of me wanted Cal in there, honking on his horn and smearing frosting. Like, BE A KID, for chrissake!
I also realize that I'm going to get some e-mails from people insisting HEY, YOUR KID HAS ASPERGER'S! (or whatever, pick your favorite diagnosis--mine is tuberculosis, THE GREAT IMITATOR), but I really don't think so, mostly because he is very empathic, and also his little peccadilloes are not across the board--like I said, around adults or older children, he's much, much different. Not that I'm in love with the new en vogue practice of labeling every childhood micro-neurosis with some diagnostic catch-all anyway. I think Cal is sort of a weirdly fastidious, over-analytical kid, and while we can certainly work on some of the issues of stubbornness and transitioning now, the rest of it I think is just going to take some tincture of time.
Either that, or he'll grow up to be a twenty year-old kid who spends all his leisure time hanging out with his BFF over at the old folks home.
(I was going to start off with some joke about how the devil went down to Georgia, and that's why it's so warm down here--highs in the 70s today--but I realized that would be a pretty lame joke, even for me.)
So yesterday, we got Cal's progress report, which is sort of like his little report card, issued in advance of the parent-teacher conferences this Thursday. By the way, even though part of me misses the comments section on this blog, this is one of those days that I am glad I turned them off, because for some reason, EVERY DAMN TIME I talk about Cal going to nursery school I would get these comments that were like, "Why can't you let your kid be a kid, why do you have to send them to school at age three, what are you hyper-achievement pressure-parents pushing, MCAT prep or something!?!?! And also: !!!!!!" Yes, people send their kids to preschool. And then the kids can eat their boogers in new and enriching environments. The End. But anyway, comments are OFF now, so I don't have to mentally gird my loins for the sarcastic repartee, of which the name of some Ivy League school and our supposed grand admission scheme always seems to be the punchline.
Anyway, though I think Cal is a pretty great kid, I am well aware of his shortcomings. I don't worry about him from an academic point of view--I know he's smart and all, and learning numbers and letters and colors and reading honestly isn't the reason that we sent him to school, because he can get that at home. The reason we thought it was important for him to start school was for the social piece--particularly, socializing with other kids his own age. Because frankly, in a room full of other kids his own age, Cal is kind of...weird.
It says repeatedly in his progress report that he's more of an "observer" than a participant in group activities, and that I have to agree with 100%. He doesn't play with other kids per se unless he's tricked into it; more often, he just watches them. When you try to get him involved in some big-group kid activity, he inevitably makes excuses and begs off. He's less this way now, but a few months ago he actually used to be kind of scared of other little kids, especially when they were very exuberant (read: loud) or energetic (read: rough), and would run back to me or Joe or whoever to cower by our sides and peek out from between our legs. Just yesterday, we took Cal to the birthday party of some kid in his class, held at one of these little kiddie gyms with a ball pit and a trampoline and soft climbing structures and what have you. He had a right fine time playing on his own, but when it came time for "circle time" and to participate in a group game (I believe it involved beaning Nerf balls at each other) he stood off to the side and refused to participate. "I'm not very good at sitting in a circle," he explained, casting a jaundiced eye on the proceedings. "And I don't think I like that game very much." Meanwhile, all the other normal kids were smashing each other with foam balls and screaming with joy. Let's just put it this way: if you're a magician at a kid's party and you need to pick a volunteer for audience participation, you don't want to call on Cal.
Contrast that with what I think is actually Cal's ideal party, which we attended a few weekends ago--the adult's cocktail party. Our neighbor had a small get together for about thirty people to celebrate her 40th birthday, and since it was early enough and we lived right next door anyway, we brought Cal and Mack along. Cal was in his element. He was talking to everybody, all of them strangers, telling stories, laughing and dancing, even sidling up to one person he'd just met to hold their hand. (This actually was fairly embarrassing for me, because the person whose hand he decided to hold had, I'm fairly sure, had a STROKE not too long ago, and it appeared he was actually PARALYZED on the hand-holding side--but the guy was a former teacher and very nice, not to mention thoroughly charmed by Cal's gregarious party persona.) To say that Cal is "adult-oriented," as one of his teacher's noted earlier this year, is perhaps one of the bigger understatements that we've heard. If you saw him at this adult party and then observed him with other kids, you might not believe he was the same child.
The other problem with Cal (well, it's not a problem in that it's so unusual for a three year-old, but it is a problem in that it makes things difficult sometimes) is that he does not deal well with new things. I'm not talking about new foods or new people necessarily, but new experiences are problematic, and no matter how much fun they look and whether or not every other kid is enjoying it (there was a zip-line at this kid's party yesterday that he just refused to even look at), he is just very slow to warm up. He's not the kind of kid who's going to cannonball into a pool, let's put it that way. I believe they call this warming-up-to-new-experiences "transitions" at school, and it's true, Cal is probably not that great at transitions. I mean, just look how long it took for him to agree to even use the toilet at school, despite being scatologically reliable at home. MONTHS. And you have to be careful how you encourage him to try the new things. One wrong word and he digs his heels in and you can just forget it--he won't be going down that slide or sitting in his cubby or watching "Toy Story" ("TOY STORY" for chrissake! It's a CARTOON! And an hour and the half of parent-endorsed TV time! Who is this kid?) ever, ever again. Or at least until he forgets all about it and just does it anyway.
I think these two things are the two core things that Cal needs to work on, but the problem is that between those two things, I imagine Cal occasionally does not come off very well, and appears more like the freaky loner kid who refuses to do anything that I'm sure teachers just LOVE. The progress report takes pains to mention what they feel are Cal's strengths--mainly, that he's very empathetic and sweet and "sensitive" (though this seems more like a euphemism for "cries easily"), but I think some of his other strengths are being eclipsed by the fact that he just refused to do some of things for which he was being evaluated. For instance, we (Joe and I) know Cal has known all his letters for almost two years, he can easily count to 20 (has, actually, counted to 120, with only occasional prompting that the number following, say, 49 is not "forty-ten"), writes his own name, talks in long, complete sentences (tellingly, his favorite word is "actually"), and knows his basic shapes, colors, and all that crap. I mean, the kid told me a few months ago, "Actually Mom, did you know that this banana kind of looks like a crescent?" COME ON NOW. But according to his progress report, he is still has not mastered those skills, which makes me wonder just what kind of act he is pulling at school, and just how stubborn he is being about coming out of his shell to show them. Because when Cal doesn't want to do something well, he just won't do it.
I mean, for example, in his progress report, it says in one part about fine motor skills that he is functioning as left-hand dominant. And Cal is very clearly right-handed. I mean, we've been spelling out the words for him and he writes thank-you notes to his grandparents--I've watched him, HE IS RIGHT HANDED. Yet for this evaluation, he was using his left hand to cut out shapes, write letters, what have you. This is classic Cal, this deliberate screwing up of tasks he can easily do well (like when he pretends he can't put on his pants so we have to help him, or pretends to fall down because he's "too tired to walk") inevitably followed up by, "Actually, I'm not very good at this, I can't do this." He can do these things at home, and my initial response was to be very defensive of Cal and his abilities, even thinking, well, maybe I should make a tape of him and show them...but then I came to realize that really, that's beside the point. The point isn't that he can do this stuff at home, the point is that he isn't doing them at school. And that's what we need to work on.
That and his reluctance to play with other children. Other kids just freak him out for some reason. The adult world, with its manners and rules, its polite conversation, its personal space boundaries and lack of rough physical engagement, that's what Cal likes. Put him in a room with a bunch of squealing, grubby kids jumping up and down and throwing things (you know, any preschool class, in other words) and you're more likely than not going to find him standing off to the side watching everyone else and occasionally making deadpan critique. Yesterday at the party, he walked out of the party room, where all the other kids were honking on their little noisemakers, and told me, "It's just too loud in there, it's hurting inside my ears," before settling on the bench next to me and finishing his slice of pizza. Part of me agreed--it was loud in there, all the other parents were wincing and making jokes about "whose idea was the noisemakers anyway?"--but another part of me wanted Cal in there, honking on his horn and smearing frosting. Like, BE A KID, for chrissake!
I also realize that I'm going to get some e-mails from people insisting HEY, YOUR KID HAS ASPERGER'S! (or whatever, pick your favorite diagnosis--mine is tuberculosis, THE GREAT IMITATOR), but I really don't think so, mostly because he is very empathic, and also his little peccadilloes are not across the board--like I said, around adults or older children, he's much, much different. Not that I'm in love with the new en vogue practice of labeling every childhood micro-neurosis with some diagnostic catch-all anyway. I think Cal is sort of a weirdly fastidious, over-analytical kid, and while we can certainly work on some of the issues of stubbornness and transitioning now, the rest of it I think is just going to take some tincture of time.
Either that, or he'll grow up to be a twenty year-old kid who spends all his leisure time hanging out with his BFF over at the old folks home.
the hot zone
I knew it had to happen sooner or later, but a one-month old with a cold is just the most pathetic thing. Mack's just so confused by the whole situation, spluttering and coughing and just generally being miserable. He gets more congested when he lies down, so I spent basically the entire night sitting up with him sleeping in my arms. We've used the bulb-sucky thing and saline drops (the one good thing about being married to an ophthalmologist--our access to free samples of saline drops is unparalleled) and today he's a lot better. But still, poor little guy.
Patient zero (that is to say: Cal) is doing fine, as usual. Even when he's sick, he doesn't really get sick, so he's just running around with a fine scrim of dried boogers around his nares, carrying on as usual. Joe has a cold too, but as is also usual, I am basically untouched. Who knew that those years of working in the Peds ER and being innoculted with every virus known to man would turn me into Bruce Willis from that M. Night Shamamamalalalan movie? UNBREAKABLE.
I knew it had to happen sooner or later, but a one-month old with a cold is just the most pathetic thing. Mack's just so confused by the whole situation, spluttering and coughing and just generally being miserable. He gets more congested when he lies down, so I spent basically the entire night sitting up with him sleeping in my arms. We've used the bulb-sucky thing and saline drops (the one good thing about being married to an ophthalmologist--our access to free samples of saline drops is unparalleled) and today he's a lot better. But still, poor little guy.
Patient zero (that is to say: Cal) is doing fine, as usual. Even when he's sick, he doesn't really get sick, so he's just running around with a fine scrim of dried boogers around his nares, carrying on as usual. Joe has a cold too, but as is also usual, I am basically untouched. Who knew that those years of working in the Peds ER and being innoculted with every virus known to man would turn me into Bruce Willis from that M. Night Shamamamalalalan movie? UNBREAKABLE.
snakes on a drain
As I had sort of implied with that earlier post, we have been having some problems with our downstairs toilet. (How weird, to have a "downstairs toilet." How weird to have stairs. Anyway.) Nothing broke per se, the toilet's not overflowing, there's no leak, the toilet just won't flush. I don't know if its a function of water pressure or too much toilet paper or someone's formidable and apparently capacious bowels, but it has been clogged for several days, defying attempts at clearance ranging from flushing again to plunging to The Old Coathanger Trick to being chemically challenged with Drano. At some point, we sort of called the code and Joe suggested that maybe we needed to call a plumber to snake the toilet.
"No!" I insisted, jiggling the coathanger into the toilet's murky depths, "It's fine! Just flush it again!"
Anyway, I called a plumber.
First, I called our building management as a courtesy to ask if there was a preferred plumber that they wanted us to use. However, as with every other occasion that I have called building management for any kind of problem (see also: SILENT BUT DEADLY, when we thought we were being killed by a gas leak from our fireplace), my call went directly to voicemail. Fine, I tried. So I looked online (apparently there is this very informative and useful site called Google.com! Write it down! I'm saying that as a joke but my mom actually e-mailed me once with a note to that very effect--e-mailed it, in fact, to my Gmail account) and found some plumber in our neighborhood that was called something enticing like, "Budget Plumber" or "Affordable Plumber" or whatever, something implying that they were cheap. So I called the economy plumber and explained the problem, asking them if I could make an appointment for them to come by tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, barring any unforseen complexities (a bezoar of toilet paper the size of China, perhaps), how much did they estimate it might cost to clear the blockage?
There was some rustling as the lady looked for her price list. "Well, if it's a simple [hmmm], and there's no [hmmm] to the main [hmmm], as long as the [hmmm] is confined to the [hmmm]..."
(Fifteen minutes of plumbing talk later, she said that it could be around $135.)
A HUNDRED THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS FOR YOUR EXTRA-LONG COAT HANGER POKING? I felt like I was going to have a stroke. But what can you do? It's like calling a consult at the hospital. Sometimes you don't want to go through all the trouble, and it's not anything you couldn't do yourself, but what are you going to do? You need the experts and their special toys. So anyway, they told me that the plumber would be by the next day, between 10am and 2pm (note the convenient and small time frame--that won't fuck up your plans for the day) and hung up.
About an hour later, I got a call back from building management. "Hey, got your message, and yeah, there is a plumber that we like to use who does a lot of work in the building. It's called Super Duper Plumbing [or whatever, I can't remember], here's their number. If you can, be sure to ask for Eric."
"Super Duper. Eric. Got it."
"ERIC!" the building manager repeated, somewhat frantically. She had a real boner for Eric, evidently.
Now, let me ask you this. If your management company has a SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP with a specific plumbing company, if they throw all their business towards this one group, wouldn't you expect that reciprocally, some sort of special discount should be applied for residents of this housing complex? I mean, that's just my understanding of how the world works. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. You snake my toilet, I'll...flush yours. I don't know. Stay with me here. I called Super Duper Plumbing, made an appointment, asking for ERIC (they tried to give me Steve instead but I said no way, Corky) and then called back the economy plumber to cancel.
However, after canceling with the first plumber, it occurred to me that I never asked Super Duper Plumbing for an estimate. So I called back, they hemmed and hawed, and fifteen minutes of plumber talk later, they said that at bare minimum, it would probably cost $235.
TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS TO SNAKE OUR TOILET. I mean, I know that these are troubled economic times and all, but I was under the impression that numbers still carried some meaning.
So then I cancelled my appointment with them too. And then I was going to call back the first plumber to re-set up the original appointment, but I was too embarrassed, like I had jilted them or something and now I was crawling back on my hands and knees begging them to clear the detritus of our human waste from our poor, pathetic downstairs half-bathroom.
And then Joe got home and asked if the toilet was fixed and I said, "Funny you should ask that," before telling him the whole story about the cheap plumbers and the building manager and Eric and TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS!!! Which is why I cancelled their asses!
"TWO HUNDRED THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS?" Joe panicked, completely skipping over the cancelling part. "WE CAN'T AFFORD MANY MORE PROBLEMS LIKE THIS!" This is usually his cue to start his gloom and doom pre-tax season financial projection, which--OK, I know, alright? I know times are tight, and some expenses inopportune, but do you and CNN need to point out how it's the End of Days every single minute!? It's not like I'm over here stuffing fur stoles and hundred dollar bills into the toilet, causing it to clog! I DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO CALL A PLUMBER, WE HAVE TWO OTHER TOILETS THAT ARE WORKING PERFECTLY FINE, I JUST WANTED TO KEEP POKING AT THE TOILET WITH A STICK.
Anyway, we soon realized that while we probably are not qualified to handle the nuances of fixing, say, a cracked water main, or even necessarily a leaky faucet, the act of jamming something down a toilet to break up whatever unspeakable substances are clogging it does not amount to rocket science, and that they sell toilet snakes (or "augers," for you fancy folk out there) at Home Depot for, like, $30. And so...
And now, we can flush our toilet.
(And the point of my telling this story was...what? Hilarious domestic antics? Appreciation for the plumbing arts? The revelation that someone in our house may be taking prodigiously huge shits or using an unholy amount of toilet paper, possibly both? An attempt to sabotage any chance I may have of ever becoming Surgeon General? Take your pick.)
As I had sort of implied with that earlier post, we have been having some problems with our downstairs toilet. (How weird, to have a "downstairs toilet." How weird to have stairs. Anyway.) Nothing broke per se, the toilet's not overflowing, there's no leak, the toilet just won't flush. I don't know if its a function of water pressure or too much toilet paper or someone's formidable and apparently capacious bowels, but it has been clogged for several days, defying attempts at clearance ranging from flushing again to plunging to The Old Coathanger Trick to being chemically challenged with Drano. At some point, we sort of called the code and Joe suggested that maybe we needed to call a plumber to snake the toilet.
"No!" I insisted, jiggling the coathanger into the toilet's murky depths, "It's fine! Just flush it again!"
Anyway, I called a plumber.
First, I called our building management as a courtesy to ask if there was a preferred plumber that they wanted us to use. However, as with every other occasion that I have called building management for any kind of problem (see also: SILENT BUT DEADLY, when we thought we were being killed by a gas leak from our fireplace), my call went directly to voicemail. Fine, I tried. So I looked online (apparently there is this very informative and useful site called Google.com! Write it down! I'm saying that as a joke but my mom actually e-mailed me once with a note to that very effect--e-mailed it, in fact, to my Gmail account) and found some plumber in our neighborhood that was called something enticing like, "Budget Plumber" or "Affordable Plumber" or whatever, something implying that they were cheap. So I called the economy plumber and explained the problem, asking them if I could make an appointment for them to come by tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, barring any unforseen complexities (a bezoar of toilet paper the size of China, perhaps), how much did they estimate it might cost to clear the blockage?
There was some rustling as the lady looked for her price list. "Well, if it's a simple [hmmm], and there's no [hmmm] to the main [hmmm], as long as the [hmmm] is confined to the [hmmm]..."
(Fifteen minutes of plumbing talk later, she said that it could be around $135.)
A HUNDRED THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS FOR YOUR EXTRA-LONG COAT HANGER POKING? I felt like I was going to have a stroke. But what can you do? It's like calling a consult at the hospital. Sometimes you don't want to go through all the trouble, and it's not anything you couldn't do yourself, but what are you going to do? You need the experts and their special toys. So anyway, they told me that the plumber would be by the next day, between 10am and 2pm (note the convenient and small time frame--that won't fuck up your plans for the day) and hung up.
About an hour later, I got a call back from building management. "Hey, got your message, and yeah, there is a plumber that we like to use who does a lot of work in the building. It's called Super Duper Plumbing [or whatever, I can't remember], here's their number. If you can, be sure to ask for Eric."
"Super Duper. Eric. Got it."
"ERIC!" the building manager repeated, somewhat frantically. She had a real boner for Eric, evidently.
Now, let me ask you this. If your management company has a SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP with a specific plumbing company, if they throw all their business towards this one group, wouldn't you expect that reciprocally, some sort of special discount should be applied for residents of this housing complex? I mean, that's just my understanding of how the world works. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. You snake my toilet, I'll...flush yours. I don't know. Stay with me here. I called Super Duper Plumbing, made an appointment, asking for ERIC (they tried to give me Steve instead but I said no way, Corky) and then called back the economy plumber to cancel.
However, after canceling with the first plumber, it occurred to me that I never asked Super Duper Plumbing for an estimate. So I called back, they hemmed and hawed, and fifteen minutes of plumber talk later, they said that at bare minimum, it would probably cost $235.
TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS TO SNAKE OUR TOILET. I mean, I know that these are troubled economic times and all, but I was under the impression that numbers still carried some meaning.
So then I cancelled my appointment with them too. And then I was going to call back the first plumber to re-set up the original appointment, but I was too embarrassed, like I had jilted them or something and now I was crawling back on my hands and knees begging them to clear the detritus of our human waste from our poor, pathetic downstairs half-bathroom.
And then Joe got home and asked if the toilet was fixed and I said, "Funny you should ask that," before telling him the whole story about the cheap plumbers and the building manager and Eric and TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS!!! Which is why I cancelled their asses!
"TWO HUNDRED THIRTY FIVE DOLLARS?" Joe panicked, completely skipping over the cancelling part. "WE CAN'T AFFORD MANY MORE PROBLEMS LIKE THIS!" This is usually his cue to start his gloom and doom pre-tax season financial projection, which--OK, I know, alright? I know times are tight, and some expenses inopportune, but do you and CNN need to point out how it's the End of Days every single minute!? It's not like I'm over here stuffing fur stoles and hundred dollar bills into the toilet, causing it to clog! I DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO CALL A PLUMBER, WE HAVE TWO OTHER TOILETS THAT ARE WORKING PERFECTLY FINE, I JUST WANTED TO KEEP POKING AT THE TOILET WITH A STICK.
Anyway, we soon realized that while we probably are not qualified to handle the nuances of fixing, say, a cracked water main, or even necessarily a leaky faucet, the act of jamming something down a toilet to break up whatever unspeakable substances are clogging it does not amount to rocket science, and that they sell toilet snakes (or "augers," for you fancy folk out there) at Home Depot for, like, $30. And so...
And now, we can flush our toilet.
(And the point of my telling this story was...what? Hilarious domestic antics? Appreciation for the plumbing arts? The revelation that someone in our house may be taking prodigiously huge shits or using an unholy amount of toilet paper, possibly both? An attempt to sabotage any chance I may have of ever becoming Surgeon General? Take your pick.)
iPood
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I know that talking about poop is like the mommy blog version of a stand-up routine about airline food (not that I consider myself a mommy blog per se, I do have a disinclination to be pigeonholed though others might just tell me to face the facts, I'M THERE), but Mack had a poop today after which the only recourse I had was to just dump him straight into the bath. And then throw out all his clothes. And then move to a new house.
Edited to add: Oh my god, I love this. I LEGO N.Y., from the "Abstract City" blog in The New York Times. OK, now I'm homesick.
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I know that talking about poop is like the mommy blog version of a stand-up routine about airline food (not that I consider myself a mommy blog per se, I do have a disinclination to be pigeonholed though others might just tell me to face the facts, I'M THERE), but Mack had a poop today after which the only recourse I had was to just dump him straight into the bath. And then throw out all his clothes. And then move to a new house.
Edited to add: Oh my god, I love this. I LEGO N.Y., from the "Abstract City" blog in The New York Times. OK, now I'm homesick.
four weeks
I took Cal--I mean Mack (dang, keep doing that)--for his four week check at the Pediatrician's office today. He's not four weeks until tomorrow really, but who's counting, right? Barring any problems, I don't quite understand the purpose of a four week check other than weighing him, which made the forty minute limbo in thefomite waiting room filled with febrile, coughing toddlers all the more anxiety-provoking (yes, I know that we live with a preschooler, but these were not family germs, they were STRANGER GERMS), but I'll get over it.
The stats, for those interested (probably confined to grandparents, various relations, and other Baby People): Mack is now 11 pounds (on one hand, they weighed him with his diaper on, on the other hand, he hadn't eaten in almost two hours, so that probably evens out to about right), 22.5 inches, and his head circumference is...oh hell, I guess no one cares about head circumference. Either way, he is 75th percentile all across the board, which seems just perfect to me. And not until they told me that he had grown three inches since birth did I notice (I look at my kid, I swear, but sometimes it's hard to tell, he's scrunched up a lot of the time) that he had well outgrown his newborn footie pajamas, and in fact, could not extend his legs straight while wearing them. So we went home and I put him in these 3-6 month pajamas with monkeys printed on them, and they fit him just right and were delightful besides. I mean, really. MONKEYS.
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(Full one month photo set here.)
I took Cal--I mean Mack (dang, keep doing that)--for his four week check at the Pediatrician's office today. He's not four weeks until tomorrow really, but who's counting, right? Barring any problems, I don't quite understand the purpose of a four week check other than weighing him, which made the forty minute limbo in the
The stats, for those interested (probably confined to grandparents, various relations, and other Baby People): Mack is now 11 pounds (on one hand, they weighed him with his diaper on, on the other hand, he hadn't eaten in almost two hours, so that probably evens out to about right), 22.5 inches, and his head circumference is...oh hell, I guess no one cares about head circumference. Either way, he is 75th percentile all across the board, which seems just perfect to me. And not until they told me that he had grown three inches since birth did I notice (I look at my kid, I swear, but sometimes it's hard to tell, he's scrunched up a lot of the time) that he had well outgrown his newborn footie pajamas, and in fact, could not extend his legs straight while wearing them. So we went home and I put him in these 3-6 month pajamas with monkeys printed on them, and they fit him just right and were delightful besides. I mean, really. MONKEYS.
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(Full one month photo set here.)
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