Gatito September 5, 2009

It’s hard to figure out what to write about how Gatito is faring. Other than the fact that he has a congested cough and fever right now, which figures because he never gets sick. And he basically slept/coughed on top of me last night so I figure I’m next, followed by the baby.

In some ways, he’s grown up so much in the last twelve days. He’s calling us Mom and Dad instead of Mommy and Daddy, and he’s switched to taking showers instead of baths. He can be very sweet with the baby. He doesn’t want to hold her, but he’ll say, “Hi Baby! I’m your big brother!” and she, in the way of all babies, has a natural interest in him. He’ll kiss her knee good night or ask me to bring her and her bouncy seat into his room. He is often quite helpful, he doesn’t ignore her, and he’s certainly not aggressive.

Some of the stuff is funny. He really, really hates to hear her cry. When it happens, he either goes running or frantically shouts instructions, like “Pick her up!” or “Feed her!” or “She doesn’t want the pacifier!” It’s like living with a little old lady interfering and guessing what your baby wants.

And in other ways, it’s downright heartbreaking. He and A have always had a very special relationship, and it’s really hard to watch Gatito’s reaction to A taking care of the baby. To call it jealousy seems way too simple, too pedestrian, to describe what he is really feeling, and it is hard, hard, HARD to watch.

The newest galloping cat August 24, 2009

Born at 12:32, she weighs 9 pounds and is 20 inches long. She’s got fat little cheeks and is very pink and quite beautiful, if I do say so myself. It appears as though she is a blue-eyed blond, at least for the moment, which is very surprising! I was prepared for a brunette or redhead but certainly not a blond!

She has been sleeping all day long, though she has sucked down two bottles.

Gatito came to meet her and later told my mom that he loves her.

I’m doing great. What a relief to have successfully crossed the finish line.

I could hold out no longer June 13, 2009

I simply HAD to visit the baby girl section of H&M. After all, it will still probably be warm for a couple if months after she is born and all the stores will be selling winter stuff by then. Ahem.

Gatito picked the strawberries. Wouldn’t have been my choice, but it seemed wrong to discourage him, plus for $3…

Mural June 12, 2009

From Mo Willems’ There Is a Bird on Your Head. And the other is a car. A Honda, hence the H. Duh.

The wrong side of luck May 9, 2009

I cried yesterday, reading about Johanna Justin-Jinich, the Wesleyan student who was shot and killed while working at the book store coffee shop. Certainly there are enough other news stories worthy of my tears, but this one hit particularly close to home. She took a summer course at NYU a couple of years ago, this guy became obssessed with her. He sent a number of harassing emails, which she reported to the police, but then he left town and she decided not to press charges. End of story, except that it wasn’t.

How many times in your life have you encountered situations with at least a passing degree of similarity to this one? I have, many times, I realized yesterday.

My sophomore years of college, a guy I had briefly dated turned up outside the window of my first floor bedroom in the middle of the night. I can’t remember what he wanted, and it only happened the once, but I do remember it creeped me out.

Junior year, living in London, I had one date with a Greek graduate student who, it turned out, was hoping to avoid his compulsory military service by marrying an American. I lived on the third floor that year, but I used to find him, cup of coffee in hand, staring up at my window, fairly often.

Senior year (the whole year), I dated an extremely controlling, emotionally abusive graduate student. It never turned physical, but when I’ve heard the stories of people in physically abusive relationships, I see it had all the hallmarks and may well have been heading that direction. My parents figured out what was going on over graduation weekend. They drove me to his house and waited outside while I broke up with him, and I will be forever grateful to them for doing that.

My first job after college, out at a team-building bowling party with colleagues, I had a senior member of the team tell a very long, very dirty and, above all, very un-funny story. When I didn’t laugh, he turned on me angrily. “What? You’ve never had rug burns?” he demanded.

In the job before this one, an internal client used to call me Gorgeous. As my name, I mean. “Good morning, gorgeous.” He asked me out regularly, despite my incessant uncomfortable chatter about my husband and baby. Once, I told him I was going to [local amusement park] and he asked why not Naked [local amusement park]. I kept a log of everything that happened, just in case, while I worked on developing the courage to tell him to back the hell off. I never reported him, for a variety of reasons.

Any one of those guys could have turned out to be Stephen Morgan. Could have wanted to cause me harm. Could have gotten angry enough, or crazy enough, to do so. Or not. But how does one tell the difference and what could Johanna possibly have done if she had known? How can I protect my future daughter from the men she may meet?

Ultimately, I know so many bad possibilities in life cannot be anticipated, avoided, or controlled. Sometimes applying common sense helps, but in the end, you have to be lucky to avoid illness, accidents, and general malevolence. I’ve learned to live with this– what’s the alternative? But every now and then it still smacks me in the face and makes me cry.

Poor Johanna, caught on the wrong side of luck.

There is nothing in the freakin’ water April 23, 2009

When four women who sit within ten feet of each other are pregnant and due within a month of one another*, it is only a matter of time before the jokes about the water supply start.

How much longer will it be till I announce that it wasn’t the damned water, it was $12,000 worth of gonadatropins and complementary drugs injected into my fatty thighs and ass, a couple of surgical procedures, a petri dish, and one really awesome doctor + staff?

I’m just saying.

* I TOLD you this is the most fertile office on the planet.

Siblings without Rivalry March 4, 2009

If you’re feeling sad because you only have one child or if you think you’re having a second (or more) for the sake of the first, go read Siblings without Rivalry. It is scary stuff!

Oh god, it gets worse February 2, 2009

So okay, we cannot just serve a frittata. But neither could I find a way to say no to this damned dinner.

A said, “We can get a roast and I will cook it. In the oven.”

Do you see how much trouble we are in that he felt he had to specify that it would be cooked? In the oven?

We decided to get some prepared meat or fish from Whole Foods and I will make garlic (or maybe wasabi!) mashed potatoes and green beans with yummy french fried onions. See? Meat, potatoes, vegetable, no one should feel gypped as they apparently would by my light vegetarian suggestion.

So I called the chairwoman back to accept, admitted we would be doing some kind of take-out, begged to be assigned non-judgmental guests, and somewhere along the way I became slightly hysterical with laughter. She said they would bring flowers and wine by earlier in the day and I requested no flowers because the cats are dumb enough to eat them. I don’t know why, but A and I were practically in tears at this point and the chairwoman? She was confused. And then, I don’t know what possessed me, I told her the story of my in-laws’ friend who brought a house plant to a dinner party and their cat ate it and died. And while she’s all, “Oh my god, that’s awful,” which, for the record, of course I believe it is, I was in complete hysterics.

By the time we got off the phone, she’d gone from thanking me profusely for hosting to saying, “Um, are you sure you want to do this?” She actually said, “Do you think you can manage ordering in?”

A thinks she must have thought I was high

Which is so unfair because I haven’t smoked pot since freshman year of college and I barely even drink.

But I laughed so hard I not only got sweaty enough to need a shower, but I actually threw up for the first time this pregnancy.

Meanwhile, the deal with hosting is that you do not have to pay the $75 to attend. I’m pretty sure I will spend at least that much on the food, so that seems fair. But today the co-chair left a message asking whether I would like my $75 back or not. So now I have to act like a cheapskate and call her back to say yes. Which I will do because, c’mon! I know this is a fundraiser but I still don’t see why I should have to pay double. Have you noticed these are tough economic times? The classy thing to do would have been to just send me the freakin’ $75.

I’m just a girl who can’t say no February 1, 2009

So the nursery school is having this progressive dinner thing as a fundraiser. We signed up to go and tonight I get a call asking if we can HOST. As in, cook dinner for other people.

Aggghhhh!

I enjoy baking but I’m otherwise not a very good cook. But I don’t know how to say no.

Would you be offended if you paid $75/couple for a dinner and got served homemade lentil soup, a frittata, and some nice bread? I mean, it has to be something I can make in advance so I can go to the appetizers thing at someone else’s house first, plus did I mention I have a very limited repertoire?

And I’ve just realized that I’m going to have to ask my parents, who are on tap to babysit, to host a sleepover instead. Else what will I do? Ask them to hang out in the library while we host a dinner party?

The rare social night out I was kind of looking forward to has just turned into a giant pile of work and inconvenience for me. Fun!

By show of hands January 29, 2009

How many of you have husbands/male partners who have *never* been out of the house alone with you child(ren)? Is this normal and acceptable by any view?