Kid Amnesiac

I haven’t been ready for Simon to get his hair cut. Even as everyone all around me made it loud and clear that his bangs were too long and that he had far too much flowing hair in the back, I’ve been holding out for unshorn locks.

“He’s a baby,” I’d think and sometimes say. “He doesn’t need a hair-cut yet. He’s got his whole life to be shorn in the back; right now he can have long, soft baby hair and be natural and beautiful.”

Except we are going to be seeing some old friends soon, and the hair was really bothering Matt. And we went to a special Kiddush luncheon for my Aunt Anita’s 70^th birthday party yesterday (Happy birthday, Aunt Anita!), and saw tons of family there, too, including some I hadn’t seen for a decade. Many commented on Simon’s hair. About two-thirds flipped the back of his hair and said something like “Boy, he’s ready for his first hair-cut, isn’t he?” adding fuel to Matt’s shear enthusiasm.

My cousin Mark seemed to know where I was coming from, though. “Three years,” he said repeatedly. “Cut his hair when he’s three.”

It’s a Jewish thing, specifically an Orthodox Jewish thing, which I am most certainly not but grew up adjacent to. Baby boys get their first hair cuts at three, not a day before, and their side-locks are left untouched. This first cut is called an upsherin, and I was vaguely and subconsciously holding out for one.

Specifically, it was the three years of unshorn hair I was longing for. My nephew Nathan had the most glorious golden curls you can imagine as a baby and toddler. His parents kept it long for a very long time, so he was allowed to run around with a wild leonine mane for at least two or three years. When he eventually got his big-boy cut, he looked extremely handsome and everyone was pleased. But I at least mourned the end of the cherubic hair and the innocent era it seemed to represent.

Simon’s hair is nothing like Nathan’s, though. It’s a pretty golden brown, but it’s very thin and has no curl. So he was never going to have wild-child hair, and Matt and I simply don’t have the credentials to have our son pull off long, rocker hair like certain celebrity parents do.

So I finally agreed to a trim last night. I just wanted a tad off the front, enough to keep his bangs out of his eyes but no more, and a little off the back…. as little as Matt would let me get away with. Well, Simon went ballistic, and it was a pretty ugly scene. We had to forcefully restrain him, and he cried like mad. At one point, he reared his head mid-cut, and a section of bang ended up being shorter than I would have wanted and shorter than the rest, thus mandating the dreaded “evening up” maneuver.

Once we got the bangs evened out, it meant the back could no longer be long and flowing. We had to take it in tight, and it now follows the contours of his head. I held firm at not using clippers, but my little boy is currently sporting a total “little man” haircut. In fact, my father-in-law even called it that last night.

You can see my little man in all his glory at right. I’m still in a bit of shock over the whole thing, but I can at least admit that he does look awfully handsome with his new, echem, “older baby” do.

Well it’s official: The entire Goldstein-Whitworth family is now on suicide watch. And I couldn’t be happier. The watch has nothing to do with depression, this one is all about Simon’s burgeoning mobility.

Today he pulled up many times. How many I can’t say, because I honestly lost count. Given that between October and today Simon has pulled up once every 2-6 weeks, it’s safe to say that he pulled up more today than he has in his life combined. He pulled up in the living room at least 3 times. He pulled up in the bathroom at least once, leaving behind lots of toiletries on the floor as evidence. He pulled up at least 6-8 times in his bath tonight, then had fun “falling” down and making a huge splash. And then he pulled up while drying off après bath on our bed.

But wait, there’s more. For at least five seconds or so, he stood unassisted in the bath. He pulled up, was holding his shampoo bottle or a bath toy, and was so absorbed in it that I think he forgot what he was doing and let go of the side of the bathtub. We could hardly believe our eyes.

Today Simon also experimented with leaning and stair climbing. The leaning game features Simon throwing toys into the tub, then leaning over as far as he can to pick them up. First he eased one foot off of the floor. Then he started to ease off the other, leaning over the edge and trying to balance like a see-saw over the side. It worked once or twice, but the third time he went tumbling over. I held on enough to keep him from hitting full-force on the porcelain, but not so much that he didn’t realize he was falling and feel alarmed. I have no idea if this was the right thing to do or an appropriate teaching exercise; I can’t find “what to do when you see your kids plummeting to their likely harm and/or demise” in any of my child rearing books.

Finally, for a kid who can’t walk, he sure has ideas about how he’d like to climb stairs. I used to “walk” him up the stairs by having him lift up one foot on the next step, then pull the second foot to meet it. Given how steep our back stairs are and how short his legs are, this seemed quite logical. Simon has decided that that’s too babyish, though, and now insists on putting his right foot on the first step and then dragging his left foot up to the step above that one. Needless to say, this technique requires much “help” from me.

So that’s why Simon is on suicide watch. I’m adding myself to the list because about three weeks ago I slipped on a toy, smacked a toe into our ottoman, and am now pretty sure I broke it. Then today I stepped on a jagged piece of plastic that Simon threw on the floor and cut the bottom of my foot. Hardly lethal, I know, I’m afraid I’m going to be pretty gimpy if this keeps up. And Matt is on the list because while he hasn’t tripped over anything yet, I see the guy nearly trip on the ground and down the stairs when nothing is in his way all the time. It’s just a matter of time…

Simon can now identify at least one body part, the nose. We’ve all worked on this off an on for a while now, but both Grandma and Bubbie got serious about it within the past week. As a result, you can now ask Simon to show you a nose, and he will put his little finger right on yours. I swooned to see this, of course, and am amazed yet again at how much these creatures can learn in a year and a half and how these amazing feats would gone unrecognized by me before I had a baby of my own. Tonight I think he even said “nose,” and that sent me completely over the bend.

He’s caught on to some other objects as well. If you ask Simon to show you the giraffe, elephant, or monkey from his animal train, he will pick up the correct animal. This feat was first witnessed by my mom, but I have now seen it repeated a few times.

We’re also entering an era of more advanced cruising. Simon is not wild about using the Pooh car at our house because it moves too fast for him on our wood floors. That’s a bit of a bummer. To perk me up, however, he has begun more adventurous cruising on his own along our couch, our ottoman, and his toy chest. He’ll take more than a few steps now, he’ll move from one object to another, he’ll reach to things like the moulding on his crib to get from one object to another, and he will even take a few steps towards me using my hands for balance but not support.

This development has come in only the past two days, and I’m thrilled by it. Will Simon walk by 18 months? It’s still a long-shot. But at least now I’m seeing real progress that is coming all from him. He wants to do these things, he’s trying them on his own, and he’s pleased as punch when he pulls it off. I think the desire as much as anything is what is buoying me.

Between the cruising and the pointing, I tell you, there has been an awful lot of clapping on Cowling Avenue this past week.

I honestly didn’t think this happened to babies, but today Simon suffered his first ever Bad Hair Day. Bubbie managed to fix it in the end, but I’m afraid Matt and I could hardly look at him without laughing last night and this morning.

It began with bath time. After Simon enjoyed his evening soak, featuring the now routine throwing over the edge of the bath toys, drinking of the (pre-soap) bath water, and picking up and setting down of the baby shampoo bottle (his favorite bath toy), we took him into our bedroom and nestled him within three bath towels. He was in a sleepy, silly mood, and at one point he fell backwards onto Matt.

Since the fall didn’t bother him, we played for a good 30 minutes with him lying on his back. We’d laugh as he grabbed his feet and clapped them together, and laugh some more when he’d set his pacifier in his toes and then transfer it back to his hands or mouth. And for much of the time, we giggled ourselves sick over the raspberries Simon and I blew back and forth at each other.

Then we sat him up to read a story and saw the hazards of letting his hair dry while he was reclining: his hair was sticking up every which away. It was crazy. The front was fine, but the back was a mass of swirls and wings going in eight directions at once. Matt and I giggled some more and put him down for the night without much thinking about it.

Then this morning, it had somehow gotten worse. He must have slept on his stomach and his hair must have not been 100% dry, because when he awoke the front of his head had joined the party the back started the night before. More hilarity ensued, and sometime before Mom fixed it I began to think of another certain someone whose hair famously and fiercely also sticks up in multiple directions at once.*

So funny or fierce? You decide.

* For those of you not in the know, pictured is enfant terrible and Project Runway Season 4 winner Christian Siriano.

Apologies to Yeats for this one, as my terrible eyesore is nothing as profound or lyrical as the “terrible beauty” he describes in his poem about the Irish uprising of 1916. Still, 92 years later I’ve just wrapped an Easter day that included plenty of polite, meaningless words interrupted by a variety of odd, unsettling events.

On paper, the day was rather simple: Wake up, spend morning with Simon, take him to Jim and Evie’s for the afternoon while Matt and I attend the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors’ Theater of Louisville, return to have dinner with the Whitworths, and then enjoy the final hours of the weekend at home while Simon slumbers.

If you look at the day as a checklist, we succeeded on all fronts. There were, however, a few curveballs tossed our way.

1. I hated the play and considered ditching at the intermission, but Matt encouraged me to stay the course. Several factors contributed to my dislike, not the least of which is that entire play sounded to me as though it had been written by one of its characters-specifically the 18-year old girl running away from her upscale home trying to pose as a 24-year old while slumming with the have-nots. The local paper called the 24-year-old playwright precocious. “Precious” is the word I would have used. Another factor contributing to my dislike? The set. Meant to invoke the look of squalor and neglect, it succeeded so well that I had a hard time looking at it. The carpet was dirty. The walls were dirty. The area under the couch unspeakable. Even one of the characters was squalid. That was one terrible eyesore.

2. I expect Easter to coincide with somewhat spring-like weather. We had a nice warm Friday, but the weekend has been quite cold. And tonight, at Easter dinner, it snowed. It was a gorgeous snow-the kind you get when it’s only barely cold enough to change wet drops to huge snowflakes that look like nothing so much as giant feathers coming out of pillows in heaven. I last saw a snow like this in 1990 in Oxford. I was captivated then, and I was again tonight. And yet, there is something inherently terrible about a beautiful snow that happens on a day that began as a celebration of spring and fertility.

3. Quite possibly the coup de grace, my dad is in the hospital tonight having hand surgery because he had an accident while cleaning a gun (yes, a gun, one of those things Dad and I don’t talk about because our disagreement cannot be bridged) this afternoon and shot himself in the left hand. Sigh. Seems he shattered the bone in his left ring finger and took the key nerve and ligament with it. Did I mention my Dad is left-handed? Or that he was due to go to Rochester MN next week to accompany my uncle for heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic? There is a tiny bit of humor to be found in the situation as my dad, bless his heart, DROVE HIMSELF to an immediate care center for treatment. And my stepmom, poor woman, had been out of the house at the time of the incident and arrived home shortly after it. In the brief interval between her arrival and her being notified of the day’s events, she stood alone in her home, surveying a scene that included a gun on the floor, blood everywhere, a nick in a door-frame from the bullet’s ricochet, and my Dad and his car’s notable absence. What must she have thought?

4. And then there is Simon himself. Just as I was marveling about his impressive attention span, he made me consider seriously for the first time whether it’s attention or OCD I’m witnessing. Tonight he enjoyed playing with a shape-sorter. Once he figured out where the star shape went, that’s all he wanted to do. So he’d put the star into the star-shaped hole, take off the canister’s lid, remove the star, put the lid back on the canister, and repeat. He must have done this twenty times in a row, quite likely more. It would have been funny were I not thinking about my own sock sorting habits and other OCD inclinations.

Also, tonight we put to rest any thoughts about Simon’s inherent “boyness” on two counts. Count one is that Simon got two new stuffed animals to play with today, and he hugged, leaned into, and kissed both of them. He’s totally sweet, this little guy, with nary a trace of macho. Count two is that we have temporarily misplaced Simon’s winter hat. So Matt grabbed one of my hats for him to wear. It’s a teal blue cloche with a scalloped edge, and I swear to you that once it goes on him he transforms from “handsome” to “pretty” in no time at all.

Heaven knows, it’s easy to let things creep up on you in tiny increments. In fact, few things happen overnight. A nation’s political climate and policy can change bit by bit, our kids grow up in barely perceptible intervals, and our houses get cluttered one little item at a time.

I wonder, do we lose our minds the same way? Some of my nearest and dearest have jokingly pointed out my more OCD tendencies for ages. My spices are alphabetized. My undies are carefully sorted and stacked according to how they were packaged together when I bought them. I completely unpack in hotel rooms, even if I’m only staying overnight.

As it went in my childless life, so it goes in motherhood. I used to make all of Simon’s food from scratch. (It was better for him, and it just didn’t take that much longer.) I one day stacked Simon’s Fuzzi Bunz in the order of the rainbow (ROY G. BIV lives!) just for fun, and now do it all the time (They look pretty, and it just doesn’t take that much longer!). With one sitter, I used to lay out Simon’s clothes for the day because she left the drawers a mess and I’d have to re-fold and re-stack after her. (It’s hard to find things in messy drawers, and it just doesn’t take that long.) For another I did the same because I didn’t like the way she put his outfits together (He looked better, and it just didn’t take that much longer.)

I have one specific way of making mac and cheese, and feel palpably anxious when others do it differently. (It tastes better my way, and it just doesn’t take that much longer), I have select spots for all of Simon’s toys, and will take everything out of boxes or baskets to re-sort them if someone has cleaned up besides me. (I can find things better this way, and it just doesn’t take that much longer.) When I put up his nesting boxes, I make sure that all the similarly patterned sides match up when I do so. (It looks better, and it just doesn’t take that much longer.) Sigh. When I clean up his toy kitchen, I make sure that pantry items go in the pantry and refrigerated items go in the fridge, even though Simon has no clue. (It makes more sense, and it just doesn’t take that much longer.)

And so it goes. I have a certain way of packing his diaper bag and re-pack it when it’s not up to spec. His old toys and clothes are stored in bins mostly in their original packaging. I take inventory of all his blocks each night to make sure we haven’t lost any. I snap all his snaps and button all his buttons before folding the laundry. His socks are stacked by color. I try to match is diapers to his clothes. His dino squirters are carefully separated from his rubber duckies at the end of each bath. I arrange stuffed animals in his crib the same way each night. When Simon wakes up, I fold the blanket portion of dirty dog into triangles and place his pacifier on the seam.

Thusly, in tiny increments, I have watched huge amounts of spare time get gobbled up by things that “just don’t take that much longer.” All the while, any time for things like mopping (yuck!) or household paper organization (shudder!) keeps getting put off. I’m not sure if this is artful procrastination or budding disease, but I do know that it’s time to start searching for middle ground. But first, I have diapers to go stuff, sort and stack, and the thing is, they really do look better when stacked by color….

It finally happened! After months of waiting, wishing, hoping, and worrying, today Simon reached a baby milestone I thought I’d never see.

He crawled.

Not what you were expecting? Yea, well, that’s two of us. He’s been rocking back and forth on his knees for a few weeks now, and I kept thinking that one day he’d push himself up and walk. Frankly, at seventeen months, I just assumed the window had closed on crawling and that Simon would go straight from scooting to walking. But today he crawled just a little bit to get something beyond his reach.

What I can’t decide is whether this means walking is closer or farther away now. Is any new means of locomotion a good thing, or has he just taken a leap backwards and now is on track to walk at 22 months? I’m sure my soon-to-be good friends at First Steps, the folks who will be coming over to help out when Simon is not walking in five weeks, can tell me.

On the other first front, Simon also had his first drink of coffee today. And before you freak out, let me assure you that it was decaf. Matt brought back drinks from Heine Brothers for an afternoon break today, and, per the usual, Simon went nuts when he saw my cup. It’s not just that he loves cups. It’s that only the cup I’m drinking from will do, and he will crab and moan and bend over in frustration until he gets it or I give up and hide it.

Today I put up with this fussing until I had about ¼ of my latte left and I was sure it was lukewarm. Then I handed the sucker over and decided to let Simon reap what he sowed. I assumed-much as I did when I gave him his first piece of licorice-that he’d make a horrible face and want nothing to do with it after the first taste. Well, also just like The Affair of the Licorice, I was wrong. He struggled to figure out the cup since it had a lid on it, but once he got everything lined up properly he chugged away.

That’s my mom’s grandson! I’m pretty sure I was weaned onto milky coffee myself and that my mother is baffled by my own strong preference for tea.

Simon has a new adorable habit of late. Pretty regularly, he will pick up a book and hold it out to me. This means that he wants to sit in my lap and have us read the book together. He especially likes doing this with Curious George’s ABCs, where he can show me the penguin a few (hundred) times and trace his finger along the coil of the “slow sliding snail.”

I eat this snuggly time up. Pictured here with more in the Gallery.

Simon turned 17 months old today, an occasion he marked by being pretty crabby for half the day, spending the entire day in his PJs (Matt was up until 3:30 a.m. on a work call last night, so we were a lazy household today), and waving bye-bye for the first time.

My mom came over to dinner, and after crabbing a bit, perking up long enough to eat Caribbean black beans with a spoon at the table like the rest of the family, having us read his two favorite books these days (I’ll Teach my Dog a Lot Words and Curious George ABCs), throwing all his toys in the bathtub and pointing out every light in the house, it was time for my mom to leave. She grabbed her coat and headed for the door, and Simon began opening and closing his hand. It wasn’t a back-and-forth wave with his arm raised, so it took me a while to realize what he was up to.

He clearly knew what he was up to, though, because once he folded and unfolded his fingers a few times, he looked up at us and waited for us to clap for him. Which of course, we did wildly. Then mom actually walked out the door, and Simon sat in place completely motionless. We’ll have to work on his timing. Still, between the waving and the self-feeding of the family dinner, I’m considering the day a rousing success despite any crabbiness and the fact that he didn’t even bother to get dressed.

If Simon is to continue being an only child, it’s important to me that he learn to share and play well with others. That’s one of the reasons I began looking into pre-schools last summer and put him on the pre-registration list at Kenneseth Israel (KI).

Friday, February 29, I went to check the program out in person and process our official paperwork. Things are fine now, but on that day we ran into a huge obstacle right out the gate on the road to cooperation: Me.

That Friday, it really hit home that I’ve been raising Simon in a bubble. I’ve had strong opinions about what he eats, how he’s diapered, and what he reads and plays with, and because Matt has agreed with me, I’ve always gotten my way. Beginning with classes next August, my streak is going to come to an end, and I’m pretty anxious about it.

KI doesn’t allow cloth diapers right now, and they’re pretty sure that they can’t and/or won’t make an exception for me. That means that for 4 hours or so 4 days a week, Simon will be in Seventh Generation disposables instead of his Fuzzi Bunz. I’m wasn’t happy to hear that.

Then there is the food. Simon will be getting snacks during the day and having lunch at least twice a week. I looked at the menu, and the vast majority of it was what Simon eats now. With two HUGE exceptions: The first is that they serve meat-heavily processed non-organic, non pastured meat. The easy fix to that is to check the “vegetarian” box on his school registration sheet.

But the next issue, and one without a tidy solution, is that they also serve non-organic milk, cheese, and yogurt-products that are full of the hormones I have steadfastly avoided feeding my family. I put on a reasonably decent face about being relaxed about my eating preferences in public because I understand that what you eat is personal, and like politics and religion, it is best left out of the discussion unless you are surrounded by like minds. But the truth is, I’m a zealot at heart, and the KI cupboard is a source of distress to me.

By the evening of the day of my visit, I was so upset that I began to consider using a nanny for one more year. It seemed to me that the KI pre-school encapsulated the problems of coming home and/or joining any institution from my youth. Specifically, that while I have connections and a history with the place, I don’t necessarily share its values any more. I have a pretty good idea of where I could find the pre-school of my dreams, but I don’t live in the Bay Area any more, either. The day of my first visit, I was very much feeling that “You can’t go home again.”

Then I picked up Terry Brazelton’s book Touchpoints over the weekend and read the section on children Simon’s age and in their second year. He wrote convincingly about how important socialization is after 18 months and discussed all the things you should look for in pre-school or outside care or provide yourself.

Keneseth has it all. They have music daily. They have hands-on exploration (they call it science) every day. Arts and crafts. Quiet time. Play time. All of it. They have 5 teachers for 13-15 children. The head teacher has been in the same class for at least 12 years, and one of the other teachers, Laura, grew up with my brother Steve. I’ve known the office administrator my whole life, and when I showed up with my paperwork she smiled at me warmly, pointed to my brothers’ names on the Bar Mitzvah plaque outside her office, and said a hearty “Welcome back to Keneseth Israel. We’ve missed you.” She then looked at the address on my check and began chatting about my neighbors two doors down who sent their daughter to KI and what a nice family they are.

That same day, I saw a group of parents and teachers working in the kitchen getting lunch ready, the littlest kids munching away in their room, and the older kids running around the auditorium just before their meal began. Backpacks lined the halls. Baskets of toys, food, and household furnishings were stacked on the unused tables in preparation for a coming auction. The rabbi walked by on his way from performing the kids’ Shabbat program. And when I asked the school director about the auction, she laughed and told me I’d be helping out next year.

Simon is all signed up, so I suppose I will indeed. What I still have to figure out-and I think it will be long journey-is how to reconcile my coming home and returning to Keneseth Israel (for pre-school anyway) with my not-so-secret inner zealot who likes to go her own way. If I can figure out the right balance, I think Simon and I will both learn much along the way.