Kid Amnesiac

Poor Matt. He somehow managed to survive Simon’s first entire year without anything too gross happening, only to be ambushed not once but twice this morning.

The first gross-out moment came at breakfast. Matt was giving Simon his oatmeal as usual when he noticed a smidge on his upper lip. Without paying too much attention, Matt reflexively did what he always does: He scooped the bit of oatmeal off Simon’s lip with his finger, then put the finger in his own mouth to clean it off. Except, oops, that wasn’t oatmeal. That was a booger. Poor Matt.

Then, to add insult to injury, he accidentally picked up a piece of poop with his bare hands just moments later. You may wonder how anyone can “accidentally” touch poop. Well, when the stated poop is sitting in the laundry basket, it’s not that hard.

Now, of course, I have to explain how a bit of poop ended up in our laundry basket. From a housekeeping perspective, I promise it’s not as bad as it sounds. Here’s the story. Yesterday, I changed Simon’s diaper in the mid-afternoon right before his nap. As soon as I got Simon down, I planned to wash a load of diapers, and the pail was already in the hall. So, I put the diaper with its single, small poop on the dresser, turned off the light, pulled down the shade, and put Simon in his crib with dirty dog and a round of the crib aquarium. Then I tip-toed back to the dresser, picked up the diaper, and brought it into the bathroom to spray off before doing the laundry.

Then we got busy and distracted, and the laundry load didn’t happen until after Simon had gone to bed for the night. That’s when I reached for the diaper and realized that—oops—there was no poop in it. It must have rolled off sometime when I was fumbling in the dark, and a quick check in the nursery while it was lit only from the hall didn’t wake up Simon, but neither did it turn up the poop.

I was dedicated to hunting it down the minute I got out of the shower this morning—before our new Monday nanny could realize what was going on. Matt forgot all about the missing poop, however, saw something in Simon’s hamper as he showed Jean how the Fuzzi Bunz work (the hamper sits to the side of the dresser), reached in hand to grab it, and in doing so found the missing poop in a way he didn’t anticipate. Poor Matt.

Tomorrow I feel sure Matt will report for Daddy duty wearing a Hazmat suit.

There’s been something afoot in the last week or so that I have been uncharacteristically silent about, mainly because I’ve been upset and unsure of exactly how I feel at any given moment.

Simon has begun to self-wean himself. For the first nine months of his life, he nursed seven to nine times per day. For the next three, he nursed five times per day. Then, within days of turning one, he decided he was largely uninterested. One day in the last week he nursed three times, most days he’s nursed twice, and the last couple of days he’s nursed only once. I still offer him the chance five times a day, but he usually latches for 30 seconds or so and then either bucks and cries or calmly pushes himself into a sitting position.

While this change has been sudden and easy for him, it’s been much, much harder for me. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’ve been through most of the seven stages of grief in about as many days.

1. First, shock. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Simon loves to nurse? He throws away his pacifier when I approach. What’s going on here?
2. Then, denial. I didn’t think he was weaning. I thought he was too tired, too busy, too full, or on a strike. Surely this would pass in a day or so.
3. Next, bargaining. OK. So maybe he really only needs to nurse three or four times a day. I’ll catch him when he’s hungrier, pump to make the milk come faster, and this will pass in a day or so and we will resume at a reduced rate.
4. Then, guilt. What had I done wrong? Too much food? Too slow a let-down? Did I need to call in a consultant or try harder? If I had kept up pumping would this have happened?
5. Embarrassingly, next came a foray into anger. How could Simon reject me like this? Maybe if I withheld food and made him sit on this bed with me long enough, he would come to his senses and nurse.
6. Predictably, when these heavy handed tactics failed, I moved straight into depression. I wasn’t going to continue mothering as I had planned. My baby was growing up and rejecting me. What was the point of staying home with him if the most hands-on part of my mothering was ending? And how could I have failed at something so important?
7. And in the last 24 hours, thanks to several books and websites and the shoulder of a few friends and family members, I have reached a fragile acceptance.

Maybe Simon hadn’t really rejected me, but was just moving on faster than I expected. Maybe I will enjoy being able to drink a full glass of wine or real cup of tea after nearly two years. Maybe it will be good to be able to be away from Simon for more than 3 hours. Maybe if my hormones go back to normal, my freakishly straight hair will curl up again. Maybe this change won’t be so bad after all.

I’ve certainly learned two valuable lessons from this experience. One is that Simon is a little person with likes and dislikes of his own, who is not going to behave according to averages and statistics I find in books. Or, for that matter, according to how I envision and plan.

Another is that you sometimes find comfort in unexpected places. About the last resource I considered consulting was the La Leche League website. Those people advocate the sort of baby-led weaning that has pre-schoolers still nursing. Wouldn’t they just make me feel worse? Desperate for answers and information, I finally hit their FAQ on weaning and was amazed to discover that they say babies self wean as early as ten months. One group leader reported her experience with six babies: three weaned by 13 months, the other three went past two years. This made me truly believe that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Then, of all places, I found a section in a book called It’s All Too Much, a guide to decluttering, that helped me understand my feelings better. The author, Peter Walsh, describes going into the house of a mother of three. She could barely move in her house because she had so much stuff in it—mostly stuff her three children had outgrown that she could not bear to part with. Looking things over, he asked her one question: “Do you believe your best times with your children are behind you or in front of you?” She began to cry, and he realized why she was holding on to all that stuff; she was desperately clinging to what she feared would be the best times ever with her kids.

She’s not alone. I can’t seem to part with Simon’s old clothes. I get sad every time he outgrows a toy. I’m obsessed with when babies become toddlers. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I still have his cord stump.

But no amount of wishing or hoarding can turn back the clock, so I’m resolved to not ruin the time ahead of us by mooing over time already passed. And since every morning that Simon nurses might well be his last, I’m going to relish the time we have left. Finally, I’m going to focus on the amazing smiles I get from him every day. Because while I am/was hung up on what this weaning might signify, Simon doesn’t seem to love me any less today than he did three weeks ago.

Now that Simon is one year old, his list of favorites is changing. As of this October, Simon’s day is brightened by the following:

The Dirties: Dirty Duck and Dirty Dog are still very popular around here, but they are no longer toys. They instead fill the role of transitional object or lovey, and Simon holds onto at least one of them as he falls asleep. I can’t help but think that my training him to hold onto a blanket toy instead of a proper stuffed animal is fueled by my desire to see him a sweet, Linus-like little boy.

Clippy: Clippy came into our lives this past May. It’s really a Haba brand pacifier chain, a gizmo that safely allows us to attach Simon’s pacifier to his clothing or a harness strap. Now that one of Simon’s favorite activities is throwing things, this device has become a must when he needs his pacifier on the road or in his stroller. Bonus: It’s so very cute that Simon will play with it when he’s not interested in using the pacifier.

Radio Flyer Little Red Wagon: OK, this version is not very little. In fact, it can seat 2, has a fold down activity tray, a storage area, cup-holders, a canopy, and a cooler that hitches to the back. It was a present from my brother Steve and his family, it is totally over the top, and Simon loves it. Several days in a row, Simon has had a mid-day fussy patch that no amount of dancing, nursing, eating, reading, or playing could undo. Each time, I hauled the Radio Flyer down the porch, put Simon in it, and hauled him around the block while he laughed and smiled. Monday evening Matt and I took him all the way to a café on Eastern Parkway (about a mile and a half round trip), let him sit in the wagon while we drank our coffee, and then pulled him back home again. He had a ball, and even discovered two fun games: (1) littering; (2) grabbing the wheel as it spins. I can already tell we will be abusing this wagon for years to come.

Dancing: Oh my. This one makes mama all mushy. It began as a joke. We were having dinner at third avenue café about a month or so ago when a swing band began to play. I love to dance, and Simon was getting bored and squirmy. So to buy my mom and Matt some time to eat, I picked him up and danced with him. He loved it. Big smile once I held his left arm out. Bigger smile when we spun. And biggest smile of all when I dipped him. Dancing is now a regular part of our repertoire, and it makes us both happy. I think Simon enjoys the movement and the closeness with me. And me? I love the fact that I can back-lead all I want….

Glasses: Seems Simon agrees with the band Sloan on this one. Lyrics from “Deeper than Beauty”:

And your glasses, your hideous glasses
When you remove them I would rather
Skip my classes and be caught
Than to entertain the thought
That someday you’ll just put them on again

Simon simply adores taking my glasses off. It’s to the point that I have to hold him at very specific angles and/or take them off to play with him. That latter part is tricky, because I really, really need mine to function! We’ve put my glasses on Simon a few times to amusing effect. Specifically, he smiles, squints at the distortion, and then yanks them off as soon as he can. Today he made a grab for his Bubbie’s glasses as well, so it seems my little cherub is an equal opportunity glasses yanker.

Nesting Boxes: I bought a set of nesting boxes with a Golden Gate Park theme for my nephew Ben a few years back. Now Simon has his own set, a gift from Cindy and Tim in Boston, and he adores them. He loves knocking down box towers so much that I rarely get a stack more than three boxes high before he takes his first swipe. He also really likes to take the smallest boxes and put them into and then take them back out of a larger box. I’m amazed at how long he can amuse himself playing this way.

Rocking Horse: Another birthday present, this time from his Bubbie. And another huge hit. If he’s in the right frame of mind, we can put Simon on this sucker, hum the William Tell Overture, and watch him hold on and bounce for a good long time. This present is also a big hit with me. Because before it arrived, I was the horsey, and kiddo is getting heavy!

Books: After several months of indifference, Simon has finally latched onto books. Literally. Therefore, many of our old favorites have been shelved while Simon learns that books are for reading and looking at, not eating and teething on. Not that he doesn’t “read” them, too. He does. In the last few weeks, he’s even begun to point at interesting objects within.

Old favorites: None of this is to say that all his old favorites have disappeared. The little guy is still madly in love with two very important favorites: our cats and his grandmothers. See, he’s only 12 months old and he is already distinguished by excellent taste.

Today’s theme is “measuring up”.

Part I: Physically measuring up

Simon had his one year check-up Wednesday. The vital stats are:

Height, 29.5 inches, putting him in the 40th percentile (so not a basketball player).

Weight, 20 pounds, 2 ounces, putting him in the 15th percentile (so not a football player, but enough to turn the car seat around).

Head Circumference: 19 inches, putting him in the 92nd percentile (so possibly an A student).

The trip was notable for the amazing screaming fit Simon threw when Dr. Newstadt cleaned out his ears and checked them. He was not just uncomfortable, he was mad. Hopping mad. Crazy mad. Tonsils-baring mad. I haven’t heard him scream so loudly since I tried to discuss his possible colic with Dr. Abrams on a particularly bad day last fall. He wasn’t even this loud when he was catheterized last February. This was ear shattering.

I handled things differently than in previous trips, though: this time I laughed. I mean, I was sorry for the fellow and all, but his reaction was so extreme and ear piercing that it bypassed upsetting and moved straight to amusing. I’m sure it won’t be funny when screaming takes the form of a toddler tantrum, and I certainly won’t be laughing if Dr. Newstadt sues me for causing hearing damage and/or tinnitus. But Wednesday, I kept thinking of the importance of proportionality in one’s reactions (be one a nation or a person) and how out of balance Simon got.

Part II: Behaviorally measuring up

From early months on, I’ve been delighted that Simon is a friendly, outgoing child. He’s had very mild stranger anxiety, and he greets most with a huge smile and bright eyes. Since I’m a social person, this makes me happy. More than that, it makes me proud, as I like to think that sociability is a good feature to have and to pass down.

Saturday Simon met one of his two possible new sitters. Her name is Christine, and I met her through friends of the Whitworths. She’s a Sudanese refugee going to school locally, and she came to Louisville after being born in the Sudan, growing up in Kenya and Uganda, and moving to South Dakota two years ago. She’s 23, the oldest of 8 children, and she raised 6 of her 7 younger siblings and therefore knows much more about babies than I do.

Based on her personal history, there was no question she was qualified. As Simon typically loves women, especially young and pretty women, I figured they’d hit it off right away. And yet, when Christine first saw Simon and opened her arms to him, he uncharacteristically looked wary, turned towards me, and fussed.

Christine laughed and said, “Oh, you are scared of me right now. OK.” And I immediately started to blather on about stranger anxiety, about how it peaks at 9-18 months, about how he’s slower to like people these days, etc., etc., etc.

Then Simon promptly gave lie to all of that by looking very happy to see Christine’s American sponsor, a woman he last saw January 1. At that point, the flop sweat showed up.

For I think–and I can think of no other explanation for this–that Simon was afraid of Christine because of how she looks. He hasn’t seen many black people, and the black people he has seen don’t look like Christine. She has a very distinctive sub-Saharan African look, featuring extremely dark skin, very high cheek bones, bright teeth, and dark hair worn in tiny braids.

Like many a liberal white, I can pretend all I want to not notice race. But Simon can’t play that game. All he knew was that this woman looked like no other person he had seen before, and so he was scared. And I was stammering and blathering to cover this, and my own embarrassment at this situation, and my irrational fear that somehow I had created a racist baby (as if such a thing were possible).

Then I remembered a family story about my grandfather, who came to the US at the age of 17 from a small city in Belarus. Upon his arrival, he caught sight of a black stevedore working at the docks and, never having seen anyone of African descent before, was frightened by him. Honestly, the man may as well have been green. That story always embarrassed me a bit, too (”Grandpa, how could you be afraid of someone just because they were black?”), but I couldn’t expect my uneducated Russian grandfather to understand about Africans almost 100 years ago any more than I can expect my infant son to now. After all, this is the same man who tried to eat a banana peel and all.

In fact, you could argue that the Christine incident is a fine argument for the importance of my finding a way to expose Simon to a wider array of humanity. Until or unless my own social circle–quite diverse in San Francisco but pretty homogeneous in Louisville–gets wider, it’s time to get Simon out more. That means, I think, more of my trips to the mall, the grocery, and the post office will include a baby companion.

Also, Simon is getting not one but TWO sitters of color. Christine will be joining us on Wednesdays, after a successful trial run Wednesday. He was wary for a bit, but warmed up quickly. And Jean will be joining us the Monday after next, replacing Emily. We first met Jean in the nursery at Keneseth Israel on Yom Kippur. She’s African American, a grandmotherly figure, and Simon warmed to her instantly.

I’m sure in the coming years Simon will embarrass me plenty by noticing and publicly commenting on blind folks, wheel-chair using folks, old folks, bald folks, and any other manner of people that don’t look like me or Matt. But since black-white race relations are our national obsession, I’m hoping on at least this score to get him to behaviorally measure up to my ideal and not have it be his.

Well, today is it: Simon’s first birthday. One year ago last night, a singer auditioned for Matt’s band who was so very bad and so very annoying that I joked at the time that he might send me into labor. Then I awoke at 5:20 or so the next morning with a pop of amniotic fluid, spent the next eight hours in a series of rooms and with a series of people I can hardly remember, and finally, at precisely 1:48 p.m., saw Simon for the first time.

One year ago as I type, a doctor was in our room explaining that Simon’s irregular breathing could be the result of his aspirating amniotic fluid during delivery, could be the result of congenital heart trouble, or could be a sign of brain damage caused by delivery. I classified these possibilities as not-so-bad, pretty awful, and unspeakably horrible (in that order), and in my immediate post-partum state was in no frame of mind to consider any possibility other than the first. Thankfully, we got the “good” scenario and had only some IV lines and a few days of separation as our battle wounds.

I took today off from work so I could spend the day with Simon without any distractions and really enjoy this first day of his second year. Saturday and much of Monday he was pretty off his game; let’s just say I saw a lot more of his uvula then I’d care to. But today Simon awoke in a great mood after 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep. He had his breakfast and morning time with Matt as usual, but then instead of taking a nap, we headed out to a local mall’s indoor play area to meet my cousins Connie, Cara, and Gabriella (my first cousin, her daughter, and her granddaughter respectively).

Despite missing his nap, Simon was quite cheery. He took one look at Cara and Connie and broke into a huge smile and clapped. Then he sat around and watched happily while the bigger kids played, ate some yogurt, and helped me with some cinnamon coffee cake. By noon or so, the lack of sleep was finally catching up with him, so I loaded him up and took him home. After an early afternoon nap, we sat around and played with all his new toys, especially enjoying the little basketball, the “baby grand” piano, and the rocking horse he got on Sunday. Now he’s sleeping again, and I’m reflecting and sipping some tea.

It’s been a low-key, lovely day. He’s been happy. I haven’t had to share him too much. I’ve had lots of time to look at him and reminisce about the last year. And I think I can sum my feelings up by simply saying it’s been a short, amazing trip.

There’s a saying from the Talmud, one I was going to put on the announcements we never sent out, that says, “With each new child, the world begins anew.” It’s truer than I could have known. Through him I’ve rediscovered the wonder of the sky and running water, the beauty of cats, the amazing texture of grass, and the fascinating interplay of reflections in glass in and water. In the past year, my world has certainly has changed for the better, becoming at once smaller in scope and larger in feeling than it had been before.

By now I’ve left this post and come back. It’s 10:30, and for once I’m going to turn in at a decent hour. Tonight, for the 366th time, Simon will be the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. And tomorrow, also for the 366th time, he will be the first thing I think about when I wake up. Like I said, small world, big feelings, just right.

There’s so much to write right now that I’m a tad overwhelmed. Since I’ll never have time to write it all down–for reasons I’ll be getting to in a minute–I’ve decided to take a thematic approach. Herewith, a blog entry about my adventures in motherhood and how they relate to the themes of Love, Loss, and the Power of Google.

Love: Sunday (today as I’m writing this) was Simon’s birthday party. It was a simple family affair featuring sandwiches, veggies, chips, hummus, bean and pasta salads, pumpkin cupcakes, a bug hunt (think easter eggs with a higher oogie factor), and–of course–presents and singing. As I’ve been nostalgic about Simon’s babyhood since the second week, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in recent weeks looking over old photos of him and reading about our early adventures together. I clearly loved him from the first. But not like I do now. That first love is biological and intense, but also uninformed. Now, a year on, I love him for the sweet little boy I know so well. For any Philip Pullman fans out there, I feel at times like Simon is my daemon familiar, and that I’ll learn more about myself when I find out more about who he is.

Loss: This, sadly, is a two-part entry.

First, I’m losing my Monday nanny, Emily. Simon loves Emily. Because of that, I love Emily. She arrives every Monday right at 9:00 a.m., she plays with Simon, takes him for walks, and gets him down for an afternoon nap, she feeds him, and she does all of this with a minimum of fuss. She’s been a dream. However, she’s now just over three months pregnant, her allergies are giving her fits, and my cats are killing her. This loss hits me on several fronts. On the one hand, I just like Emily and will genuinely miss seeing her once a week. And selfishly, this is the time of year I was hoping to kick back and enjoy a bit of down-time, but instead I’m back to square one in the nanny hunt and then will have to familiarize someone new with our routines. Not exactly what I had in mind.

Loss, Part II: It doesn’t end there. The worst of it is that two days ago the server that runs okcomputer.org crashed. This has happened before, but Matt could always reboot the server. Or the hosting company could. Matt didn’t get around to submitting a trouble ticket, and we hadn’t backed up the site. You see where this is going, right? This time, the server did not reboot, and a call to our hosting company could not quickly remedy things. Words like “disaster recovery” were used. Then worse sentences followed, like “we could not recover your data”. My heart sank.

okcomputer.org not only houses our email (oops!) and photos (we have all), but also my year-long blogging project. Nearly every thought I’ve had about Simon is in that blog. My early successes and failures, fears, delights, records of when he did everything for the first time. All of it is on the unsaved blog. In fact, this winter I had planned to search some of the information to put in Simon’s baby book. I did not take the news of the possible loss of this entire record well. While Matt talked about disaster recovery companies and forensics tools, I sat in my dining room, put my face in my hands, and sobbed.

When I’ve lost stuff in my life before, I’ve typically been pretty cool about it. My friend Beth’s mother Judie once said “it’s just a thing” about something or other (appropriately enough, I can’t remember just now), and I’ve made that my mantra. Laundry accident? It’s just a thing. Lost earring? It’s just a thing. Cat scratches on something? It’s just a thing. Then last October I realized that Simon’s little ankle bracelets from the hospital were missing, no doubt thrown out by accident, and my mantra failed me. That thing was more than a thing, and I wanted that thing badly. I still think about those little anklets and wish I had them.

But losing the blog would be the worst. When I first started blogging, it was just a casual way to let friends and family know what was going on with us. Then it became a habit, and then a compulsion. It’s the longest diary of anything I’ve ever kept. We’ve been lax about videotaping, but I’ve been a relentless blogger. And I’ve been telling myself for months now that one day, when I am old and my memory is failing me, I will treasure being able to revisit my first year of motherhood. If I’m lucky, one day Simon will grow up, have a child of his own, and might just appreciate reading it himself. I truly intended Kid Amnesiac to be a gift to my future self and to Simon. The prospect of losing all that just made me inconsolable, especially coming as it did on a day when I was so immediately reminded of Simon’s growing up anyway.

The Power of Google: Enter Google. I haven’t always been a huge fan of Google. I know from my work life of the privacy and security implications of Google’s search and cache functions. Google street views are cool, but also invasive. Their policies in China have disturbed me. They are getting awfully big, and they threaten copyright. Whatever. At this point, were I on the Nobel Committee, and with due apologies to Al Gore, I would happily award the Peace Prize to Google, because Google saved my blog.

Right now, I’m waiting for Matt to rebuild Kid Amnesiac. The archive isn’t functional—and it might not be for a long, long time. But I have 90% of my blog and will have 100% (I hope!) before it is over, and I did it by hunting down my blog month by month–or sometimes entry-by-entry–through Google’s cached pages. God bless Google. My house is a disaster. I don’t have a new nanny yet. And I need to get some sleep. By I’ve got my blog, I’ve saved my memories, and I can go wipe off my tear-streaked makeup and sleep tonight. Thank you Larry Page and Sergey Brin, from the bottom of my heart.