Random Advice

This post isn't about the random advice I've received (though of course I've received lots) but rather the advice that pops into my head. Rather than accost complete strangers in person, I thought I should just blog it out.

1. Let others fall in love with your kid.
If you let other people hold your baby, there's a good chance that some of the baby-holders will fall in love with your kid a little bit, and this is such a good thing. A person who is enchanted with your kid is more likely to be charmed than annoyed when your kid gets noisy. You might even get spontaneous babysitting offers, who knows. One of the funny things I've learned is that if you ask someone "do you want to hold the baby?", a lot of times the reaction is "I thought you'd never ask!" And then, while someone else is holding your baby, you find yourself going "aw, I miss him." Even if you just spent the past 12 hours thinking "I wish I could just hand this baby to someone else for three minutes."

2. Cultivate friendships with other parents, even/especially those at a different stage of parenting than your current stage.
When I was in the hardest stages of baby boot camp, I often wanted a parent friend who was going through the exact things that I was. My pre-existing parent friends have kids who are at different ages. While it can be unsettling to find yourself feeling jealous of another baby's head control or the intelligible speech of a growing toddler, knowing babies and kids of different ages can help you get a sense of what's coming next and this can help you think ahead a bit. And in the case of kids that are a few years older than your baby--these kids might entertain your child, or read to him or her, or just share funny observations of your baby. It rocks.

3. Beware of dark colors on car seats, swings, soft carriers, and nursing clothes.
I wear a lot of black and was quite attracted to black fabric on the various baby accessories. While choosing these accessories, it didn't really occur to me that they would not look quite as stylish with dried spit up stains on them. Nobody really brought this to my attention ahead of time, so let this be a warning.

4. If you're going to use a Boppy for nursing, be sure to have a Boppy cover that you actually like.
You probably need (at least) two Boppy covers, but your Boppy will end up in lots of photos and you will spend a lot of the time that you are nursing looking at the Boppy. It's a little hard to explain how much little things like an attractive Boppy cover can matter to you.

5. Know that some of the handiest baby products have the stupidest names.
See #4 above, about the Boppy. The other main nursing support pillow, the Brest friend, has a name that is at least as stupid-sounding as Boppy. And yet, many people find these products indispensable. (But realize this: every list you see of "must-have baby items" has at least one thing that you probably don't really need. Unfortunately, you won't really know which item this is until you meet your kid and experiment with his or her likes and dislikes.)

6. Don't give up on things too easily.
This goes for baby products as well as bigger things. Your child might be indifferent to the baby swing one day (leaving you to wonder "why did everyone tell me this was an essential item?") and then be totally into it a week or two later. Emmett hated tummy time the first 100 or so times we tried it, but after trying some different strategies it started going better. Be patient, but also be willing to try things out in different ways. You can't really force a kid to get into something that he or she is not ready for--this isn't how child development works.

7.Throw the book across the room if you need to.
I've read (or at least looked at) quite a few books on pregnancy and parenting this year, and I have to say that the tone of these books matters a lot in terms of whether you'll get much out of reading them. I eventually realized that I should audition books via library sign out before buying them just in case I found myself more annoyed than informed. (Side note: everywhere I've been that sells used pregnancy/parenting books has multiple copies of the What to Expect books. My theory is people got really fed up with the author's attitudes towards weight gain.) I do really think that consulting the literature is a good thing, but there's nothing quite like knocking yourself out trying to do what's best for your child and then having some book make it sound as though the big and little problems are all your fault. Go ahead and throw the book across the room and seek alternate sources if you still need info.

I'd dress the boy in purple today if I could

Today is apparently the day that people are dressing in purple in memory of several recent suicides by gay teens and tweens who'd been harassed by peers. I've got some purple on and would have had the boy wear purple today if purple clothing for boys of his age actually existed. He does have purple socks on, and the hippos on his shirt kind of look purple. It's the thought that counts, right?

During maternity leave, I have not been very good about following the news. (The upside is that I'm apparently missing WUNC's latest fund drive...sorry, NPR, but your fund drives last way too long.) There have only been two news stories that have really gotten my attention: the rescue of the Chilean miners (trapped for most of Emmett's fourth trimester) and these suicides.

Friends keep posting videos from the It Gets Better project, where prominent public figures and others try to give teens who face harassment the message that things will get better. It's a touching and important message. I've watched a lot of these videos while nursing Emmett, and I can't help thinking about some of my hopes for the future.

I wrote a more rambling version of the following a few days ago:

Emmett, I would love it if you could grow up in a world where there's no bullying of any sort and where there's true acceptance of things like homosexuality. I think that there's something warped about us humans that means that teasing will always exist. I hope that you are someone who can develop a thick skin about everyday teasing if needed; I hope that if you ever engage in anything other than mild teasing, you have the strength of character to feel bad about it, and/or to make amends if someone is hurt by it.

More importantly, I hope that we have sort of a "bridge over troubled water" type of relationship throughout your life. I hope to be one of the people you really can turn to if you're ever having dark thoughts or need support or a sounding board. I hope that you'll have many great people in your life besides me that you can turn to when your emotional needs are strong.

Most of all, I hope that you can be yourself and be comfortable with and confident in who you are. Sometimes it takes courage to be yourself, and people definitely try out different identities along the way. Whatever sort of personal style or preferences you choose or end up with, I hope that you are a person who approaches life and interpersonal relationships with compassion.

Hello motherhood, goodbye hobbies?

Once upon a time, I had these things called hobbies and interests...and then I had a baby.

Actually, it's not really fair to blame the baby on the demise of some of my hobbies. Before he came along, my job made it such that "photocopying things" was my main hobby. I started doing bento as a hobby a while ago and people would tend to react to it with "how do you have time to do that?" I realize that most people don't think they have the time to spend an additional 5 to 40 minutes making their food look more cute, but under normal lifestyle circumstances (i.e., not nursing an infant), I think that many people could manage some time for some hobbies if they really wanted to. To sort of try to prove this, back in 2009 I set a goal that I would draw every day, and I did it--even when I was traveling, or working a 13-hour day.

As it turns out, some of my hobbies are flourishing during these early months of Emmett's life. Now that I can stay awake for more than 20 minutes, I find that nursing is a good chance to engage in my hobby of reading chick lit as a way to amuse myself. And I can amuse Emmett with some of my other hobbies (singing badly, playing mandolin, drawing).

However, the bento hobby has been pretty neglected. I tend to do all things involving food in a rushed, half-assed sort of way lately. About half of my diet is foods in bar form or other things that can easily be eaten quickly with one hand. When I attempt a bento (and I usually only do them for the dog at this point), I often get only partway done before Emmett starts the "you're neglecting me severly"cry. The only cure for this cry is a 12-hour nursing session, and suddenly you find that there isn't time to add extra detail to that Day of the Dead Dog Skull Quesadilla bento you started. Maybe one day when he has a bit more ability to amuse himself, I'll be able to do the kind of detailed work that exists in my imagination.

Emmett's First Banned Books Week

It came to my attention yesterday that September 25-October 2 is Banned Books week, and I realized that I wanted to celebrate it by reading some controversial books to Emmett. We started reading to Emmett even before he was born and we try to read a number of books with him every day. I've noticed that picture books with rhyming language tend to work well with him at the moment.

Most of the books that were familiar to me as banned books are ones that are a little old for him (but will be good for future Banned Books weeks), so I had to google to get some suggestions of banned picture books. One of the first titles I ran across was The Lorax, which was perfect for us...I have at least two copies of it and I practically can recite it by heart. So we read that yesterday morning after listening to a brief audio excerpt from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, another apparently controversial book.

Later the same day, I was at Elaine's house and I took the opportunity to read Where the Wild Things Are to both of our boys. Maurice Sendak is a good example of how the coolest writers tend to have stuff on the "most common banned books" lists. The controversy usually just makes me want to read the books more. This was certainly the case with a more recently-published book called And Tango Makes Three, which I'd heard had something to do with gay penguins. I checked to see if the big local public library had it (I love the fact that we can do these searches online), but both copies were signed out. I was disappointed until I reflected on how cool it was that my town had multiple copies of the book and that it was in demand. Luckily one of the branch libraries had it, so I signed it out last night and read it to Emmett and Adam before Adam went off to work today.

And I just have to say...I love this book! It's a great story, based on a real male penguin couple, and is just adorable and touching and sweet. OK, so the two male penguins are in love, but it's not as though the book discusses them having hot gay penguin sex or anything. They swim together, sing penguin songs to one another, and eventually raise a baby penguin. However, the thing about book banning is that it's usually based on fairly stupid reasoning. Take the example of the other book I signed out yesterday: William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Apparently the objection to it was that police were pictured as pigs. OK, first of all: all of the characters are animals. Second, the pig policeman is on one page only (and there's another pig in the book who's just a regular old neighbor).

One of our next reading selections was a book called The Rabbits' Wedding by Garth Williams. Williams did the illustrations for the classic editions of the Little House on the Prarie books, for Charlotte's Web, and for many other books. I hadn't realized that there was a book that he'd both written and illustrated. The Rabbits' Wedding is a lovely story about two rabbits who have a down-to-earth, non-bridezilla outdoor wedding and then live happily ever after playing Hop Skip and Jump Me, Find the Acorn, and Jump Through the Daisies. Nothing controversial about that, right? The controversy exists because one rabbit is white and the other is black.

Although Emmett is too young to fully understand the books we're reading, I'm sort of glad that he's also too young to ask questions like, "Why was this book banned?" for which my answer would be something like. "People are idiots. Well, some people."

Kids' Music

The theme of this week at home with Emmett is music. We've been sharing music with Emmett from the very beginning, including my playing/singing selections from two favorite children's music albums, Sandra Boynton's Philadelphia Chickens and No! by They Might be Giants. I've also been making the effort to learn the actual lyrics to some Spanish songs so that we can sing those to him as well. (Recently, Adam and I both sang the Spanish version of "Rubber Duckie" to him). I haven't wanted to limit him to "real" children's songs and thus have opted to add various upbeat songs and soothing songs to our shared music-listening experiences. So, early in the day we might dance around the living room to 80s music, or later in the day I might try to soothe him with something like Van Morrison.

Earlier this week my sister sent me about 15 different CDs of children's music from my nephew's early years. I've been spending all week listening to and cataloging the various selections. It's really propelled me to do even more to expose him to more and more music. Right now the idea is to build up a basic library of songs that I can draw upon at various times in the future. I want to learn many of the songs now while I have the time. I particularly like putting together different songs that relate back to the same topic or theme (probably because I used to do this when I was planning lessons as a music teacher). For example, Emmett and I have a series of "farm songs" and this week we added "I Had a Rooster" to our song mix.

Additionally, I've started playing various songs for him on mandolin. I especially like doing this with some of the classic children's songs that I don't feel like singing. Let's take "Rock-a-bye baby" as an example. The lyrics to that song are disturbing! I seldom find myself in the mood to sing about my baby falling from trees, but I do often find myself in the mood to plunk out a nice calming melody. I also like to play bits of classical music for him. For some reason, I don't typically enjoy listening to recorded versions of classical music (unless it's Yo Yo Ma), but I do like playing the music on an instrument. At one point in life, I was terribly sick of a lot of it (especially anything from the first few books of Suzuki violin music) but 20+ years after I first learned the tunes, I can enjoy them again.

I have grand plans that I will one day compose original children's music that doesn't have disturbing lyrics. When I was working with kids, I was always pretty good at reworking existing songs to create something topical (the Weird Al school of songwriting), but I hope that if I keep things up, I'll be able to move up to the Sesame Street school of catchy songwriting. I'm definitely out of practice at the moment but am working on it.

How Puppy Love Can Prepare You for Parenting

In the days before Emmett came on to the scene, whenever I'd get asked if I had kids, my reply would be something like, "No kids, just a dog!" (or sometimes "Does the dog count?"). Most people reacted appropriately (acknowledging that dog parenthood is a valid life choice) but some people (maybe 15%) felt it necessary to point out to me that parenting a human is totally different, as if I had no idea and no imagination. Of course it's different! At the same time, I actually do think that my attachment to Lucy has helped prepare me for some aspects of parenting.

Having a dog made realize that I could easily love someone who is dependent on me. While Lucy isn't completely dependent (she is quite good at foraging for dropped junk food and rotting chicken bones on our walks, for instance), she does need me to open the dog food containers and I do have to make sure to be available to tend to her various other needs. Sure, babies take the dependence to a whole other, all-day consuming level, but still. In the case of dogs and babies, I find the dependence enjoyable. Of course, it doesn't hurt that they're both so darned cute.

With both dogs and babies, complete strangers might start talking to you any time you go anywhere. Often these conversations start with people in a similar situation (another dog parent, a parent of a stroller-aged child). It's a great way to be social, though sometimes you may not be in the mood to be social right when it happens. Friends with kids have told me in the past that it gets weird to be known as "(your child's) mom" rather than by your own name, but hey, I've been answering to "Lucy's mom" for about seven years now, so I'm sort of used to it. (In the best case scenario, people are interested in you as a person rather than you as the parent, but the truth is that there are always going to be at least a few people who wouldn't have noticed or paid attention to you if the dog or the baby weren't in your company.)

Taking your dog to the vet is good practice for visits to the pediatrician (or, as one of my friends puts it, "the baby vet"). This is especially true for challenging things like blood draws or vaccinations. Having watched Lucy go through procedures using needles made me less anxious before and during Emmett's vaccinations and blood draws.

Then there's the excrement angle. I think one of the things that is the most off-putting to people who haven't spent a lot of time with babies is the prospect of changing diapers. However, a responsible, poop-picking-up dog parent comes to people-parenthood with daily experience with poop. While diaper changes aren't fun treasure hunts, they don't seem like such a big deal after daily experiences with dog poop scooping.

Another big similarity is communicating without words. I know it can be frustrating for parents to wonder, "Why is the baby crying? What could he want?" In most cases, though, the wants of the baby are not all that complicated, at least not during the fourth trimester. It kind of reminds me of when we bought a mood collar for Lucydog. Per the "interpretation guide," whatever color the mood collar turned, the "message" was "pet me, feed me, take me for a walk." Having spent a lot of time contentedly communicating with my dog makes me feel pretty comfortable around my nonverbal buddy Emmett.

There are other similarities. I could discuss how putting a sweater on my dog was good practice for dressing my child, or who knows, maybe all of that leash-walking experience will come in handy someday with the kid (hope not!). My main point is that pet parents often do have a bit of existing readiness for parenting.

How'd I End Up On This Mailing List?

About 6 weeks after giving birth to Emmett, I reached another pregnancy/parenthood milestone: getting my first free can of infant formula in the mail. I was beginning to think that I'd somehow managed to stay off the radar of the formula companies. At least one person in the childbirth/parenting classes I'd attended mentioned having received free formula during her pregnancy, so I knew that this sort of thing happened to moms, but it hadn't happened to us. I'd steered clear of many of the "sign up for big bargains" marketing tools in part because my junk mail situation is already a bit unbearable.

I wouldn't have been surprised to get a packet-sized sample of formula, but what I received was a 12.5 oz can of formula. I can't think of any other product where I've gotten a free sample in that large of an amount without having done anything specific to request it. I am certainly not worried about these companies going out of business if they can give away their products in these amounts.

I asked some of the other moms in a breastfeeding group I attend whether this had happened to them and it was a common occurrence. It was One woman said she'd received three cans of free formula. Another one said, "it seems like they prey upon you at any weak moment." Maybe that's what's going on here. I kept wondering which of my actions triggered the "send formula" button--was it that I finally redeemed the coupon for the free subscription to Parents magazine? (Maybe not, I'd done that a while ago.) Was it my enrollment in the Babies R Us rewards program? (Perhaps, but I did that even before giving my address to Parents Magazine.) Is the store Destination Maternity somehow caught up in that? (I seem to recall giving them some personal info when I bought a nursing bra recently.) Could it just be the fact that I gave birth in a hospital? (But...but...the hospital was doing such a good job of promoting breastfeeding!)

I sort of think that maybe the deciding factor was that I'd quite recently purchased a breast pump. Maybe the formula companies thought that the suckiness of pumping would make me into a formula convert?

Shortly before having Emmett, I was reading a book (fictional) called The Wet Nurse's Tale and that book really made me appreciate the existence of things like infant formula...but I have to admit to being a bit creeped out by the aggressiveness of the marketing.