Kid Amnesiac

Today is my first Mother’s Day, and in some respects, I still don’t feel like a real mom. With Simon being so young, I haven’t had to treat a skinned knee, lower a fever, soothe hurt feelings, or help with homework. Nor have I argued with Simon over where he can go, how much he has to eat, and what he is allowed to wear. Surely these are the true tests of motherhood. Emotionally, babies are very easy.

The physicality of mothering a baby, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Simon will be 30 weeks old Monday, and we’ve had him home for 29 weeks as of last Friday. By my reckoning, I have by now done the following:

• Nursed Simon approximately 1,471 times.
• Changed about 500 diapers (Matt changes as much or more than I do, and we have Moms helping out twice a week, too.)
• Changed his clothes around 300 times.
• Washed approximately 182 loads of diapers.
• Washed approximately 73 loads of non-diaper baby laundry,and spent more on baby clothes than I’ll ever admit.

And heaven only knows how many times I’ve picked Simon up, burped him, bounced him, sung to him, or carried him up and down the stairs. At the same time, I still have yet to:

• Be away from Simon for more than 4 hours (2 1/2 is my usual average).
• Sleep for more than 6 straight hours (3-4 is our usual average here).
• Eat a meal at home without simultaneously working, folding laundry, or holding Simon.

But I’m not complaining. Because after three days when I had lots of help with Simon–a mommy’s helper Thursday, my mom Friday, and Matt yesterday–I found that by last night I was rather missing him. Enough so that I spent a fair bit of time watching him sleep and tried to get him to sleep with me after his 5:00 a.m. feeding.

So whatever I get for my first Mother’s Day (I’ve asked for a cafe au lait from Highland Coffee Company delivered to me in bed), I can’t help but feel that my real present is Simon himself.

We’re now four weeks into solid food, and the culinary adventure is beginning to be fun even as it gets to be more challenging and even a little political.

Like 99% of parents in America, we started with boring rice cereal from a box, step one in a strict progression ordered by the pediatrician. It promised to be nearly allergy-proof; unfortunately, it also proved to be nearly flavor-proof unless you consider library paste an actual flavor. Simon ate small amounts of it with little enthusiasm for about two weeks, then pretty much stopped eating it, even when I added mashed banana and a dash of cinnamon to liven things up.

Meanwhile, at the two week mark we started Simon on vegetables. I was pretty excited about the jar of sweet potatoes I bought. Simon? Not so much. He ate them pretty well once, and then made awful faces the second and third time. At first I suspected that he inherited his Bubbie’s freakish dislike of the world’s most perfect vegetable (They are good for you, and they taste like candy. What could be more perfect than that?) Then I tasted the suckers and wondered how something purporting to contain only sweet potatoes and water could taste so little like the real thing.

Turns out lots of what comes out of those jars has little flavor. The carrots are good, the squash is so-so, and the peas are grayish and scary looking (I have no idea what they actually taste like, as I’m finding their color a barrier to entry). As we introduced these new vegetables, Simon seemed to concur. As a result, he wasn’t eating so well and wasn’t enjoying himself. Most meals began with a grimace, ended with a grimace, and featured quite a few grimaces in between.

At this point, I decided to do a little reading and got Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense, which offered the ground-breaking theory that if it doesn’t taste good to you, it may well not taste good to your baby. That and there’s nothing sacrosanct about those jars. This information liberated me to get out the food mill, hit the produce aisle, and start cooking. I’ve got carrots, butternut squash, sweet peas, and peaches ready to go, and Simon has enjoyed the carrots and squash with nary a grimace in sight. Meanwhile, the yucky rice cereal has been banished from the pantry, replaced with oatmeal. It tasted much better to me, and judging by the amount Simon gobbled this morning, I’m going to say he liked it better, too. Now we’re cooking!

In just over two months, it will be time to introduce protein. And that presents its own challenges. I’ve been a vegetarian for 17 years, so my heart wants to make a go of feeding Simon a vegetarian diet, too. My head, on the other hand, is pretty sure that it’s hard to get small babies to eat enough beans or tofu to ensure that they get enough good fat and protein. A quick call to my cousin Connie, a dietician by trade and vegan herself, more or less confirmed my hunch. In fact, she suggests skipping poultry and going straight to beef.

Beef! The meatiest of all meats! The least vegetarian food in the world! Well, it could have been worse: She could have suggested pork.

So here I sit in my kitchen researching local sources for grass-fed, free-range beef. Turns out I need not worry; my home state has many farms that produce just what I’m looking for, much of which is carried at a grocery store about a mile from my house. So the shopping at least will be easy.

The cooking on the other hand…that’s a whole ‘nother story. I’ve never cooked meat. Ever. I’m sure I can read about cooking beef in my copy of The Joy of Cooking, but can I cook it safely without tasting it? I’ll let you know in about two months. (Mom, can you come over and help?)

And the biggest trick of all will come in setting a good example for Simon, as the irony in all this food angst is how badly I eat myself. If you truly are what you eat, then I am Chinese take-out, Amy’s Organic meals in boxes, Alpen Muesli, McCann’s Oatmeal, Snyder’s Pretzels, and Starburst. Ay yay yay, there’s a lot of junk in that list.

But I have a plan for getting off the junk. My theory is that Simon’s grass-fed, free-range beef will be so expensive that I’ll be forced into eating black beans and brown rice to economize. Then again, Starburst is pretty cheap…

I saw the movie Brazil in 1985, and even though that was 22 years ago (cough), there is a character from it that still resonates with me: Archibald “Harry” Tuttle, the vigilante repairman/plumber who circumvents Brazil‘s dystopian Central Services to conduct freelance maintenance and repairs. Twenty-two years ago, the idea that plumbing and electrical work was tantamount to terrorism amused me. Now I just want to know if ole’ Harry is in my local Yellow Pages.

It seems I need the services of a renegade plumber myself. As I’ve mentioned before, once Simon started eating solid food, his diapers got a little scarier. Anticipating this, when I ordered his size medium Fuzzi Bunz last month, I added a diaper sprayer, a.k.a. a “personal bidet”, to my order.

Whatever you want to call it, it’s a device that hooks up to your toilet and allows you to spray off the bulk of the offending bits before laundering the diapers. I went to install this gizmo a few nights ago and was thwarted at step 1: “Shut off water supply to tank”. It seems it had been so long since someone had done so, that the entire mechanism was corroded into place and would not budge. That’s no good.

So I called Willman Plumbing, in business since the Civil War, where the receptionist Gladys not only knows my mom, but also told me that “[she] only figured out that Ms. Goldstein was Mrs. Wolfson’s daughter” a few years ago. Incidentally, being identified as “Pearl’s granddaughter” when you call the plumber has got to be one of the quintessential, back-in-Kansas moments of all time. But I digress.

Yesterday at 11:00 a.m., Steve from Willman plumbing entered my home. As long as he was here and I was paying for the service call, I figured I might as well have him install the sprayer.

I should have known. Much like the 3.5-gallon Canadian toilets that desperate Americans smuggled across the border after the 1992 Energy Policy and Conservation Act doomed us all to 1.6 gallon toilets that don’t get the job done, it seems my diaper sprayer is also illegal and that, by owning it, I have joined the ranks of vigilante bathroom appliance owners.

You see, without some special part, my humble diaper sprayer could be the cause of the contamination of the entire city’s drinking water. It’s highly unlikely, but it could happen, Steve assured me with an earnest face. As such, he cannot install my sprayer without risking his professional license. In fact, Steve was so horrified that he took my installation instructions with him to show his boss because, “He won’t believe this. I can’t believe anyone sells these things. Where did you get it again? Off the Internet somewhere?”

You would have thought he had just discovered an illegal drug stash.

Now I’m on the hook for a second service call and a $50 part, all predicated on the notion that Simon’s poop is so toxic that it could wipe out Greater Louisville. Any other day, and I might have just installed the sprayer myself. But given how atrocious Simon’s monster poop of last week was, I’m a believer. Maybe, just maybe, that poop would wipe out the city. Then how would I feel?

Steve will be coming back next week. I’d be more upset about the inconvenience and added expense if I weren’t still laughing. Because the entire visit was worth it for me owing to one, unintentionally hilarious exchange between Steve and me:

Me: “If I install this myself after you leave, do you have to report me?”

Steve: “No ma’am. Whatever you do in the privacy of your own home after I leave isn’t my business; whatever you do, that’s between you and your toilet.”

Kinda like “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Awesome.

Whenever I’ve talked to people about going with out or taking a vacation with a baby, I always hear the same thing. “You just have to lower your expectations.”

Today was my first forray into this new world. At about 10:30 today, I decided that once Simon woke up from his morning nap, we were going to the zoo. There’s a baby elephant there, and I wanted to see him while he still looked like a baby.

Simon woke up at around 10:45, and we were out the door by 11:00. So far so good. The baby is only on display from 10:00 a.m. to noon and 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., so I had no time to lose. By 11:20 I was a zoo member, and by 11:30 I was standing in front of a six-week old unnamed elephant.

Cute! And when I say “cute”, I mean super-duper, amazing, heart-breakingly, would-it-fit-in-my-car? cute. I didn’t get to see him for long, but he put on a good show for me while I was there, including attempting to throw dirt on his back and missing and nursing from his mommy.

Speaking of nursing, by noon the baby went off display and I had to go nurse Simon. By 12:15 or so Simon was full, but I was starving. I have to say, salad was not a great choice, as it was very hard to cut up all the huge produce and eat it with one hand while I bounced Simon on my knee and otherwise tried to keep him happy with the other. By 12:45 or so, I had done the best I could and Simon was getting restless.

Off to the gorillas! No dice. Tons of kids there making tons of noise was too much for Simon to handle.

Off to the Siberian tiger! No dice. The tiger was best visible from a platform you reach by stairs. I had Simon in the Mei Tai, but I still couldn’t abandon the stroller.

Off to the polar bears! Nope, Simon was restless and wanted some time to stretch his legs. So out comes the outdoor blanket, and Simon and I enjoy some quality time sitting in the grass, playing with a rattle, and watching people go by.

Off to the polar bears! I got to see a single, rather mangy looking polar bear for about five minutes before Simon began protesting again in his stroller.

Off to the ____! And he’s done. By now, Simon is sufficiently unhappy that it’s clear to me he’s done with the stroller, done with the Mei Tai, done with wearing a hat, and pretty much done with the whole thing.

To the exit! After a few wrong turns, I find my way to the parking lot and our car by 1:30 p.m. By now, Simon has worked through his fussy period and is getting a head start on his afternoon nap. I seriously consider re-entering the zoo at this point, but it begins to rain before I can get the car-seat out of the car.

The final tally: Two hours. Rushed lunch. One nursing session. Three animals seen in any detail. But you know what? I got out of the house, I enjoyed a good walk, and the baby elephant was super-duper heart-breakingly cute.

Success! How’s that for a lowered expectations?

Footnote: A funny thing happened at the zoo. During my failed attempt to see the gorillas, I walked through a set piece designed to look like a traditional African market. The walls of this area are decorated with pictures of men and women in traditional garb, including at least one image of a woman carrying her baby in a long piece of cloth tied across her torso. Before I left the market, I heard a woman in the room say to her child, “Look honey, she’s got her baby in a carrier just like the mommy in the picture.” It took a minute, but I realized that the woman was talking about me, that I was the only person at the zoo with her baby “strapped on”, and that I was something of a walking exhibit myself.

A disclaimer: If you are squeamish or easily grossed out, you might want to skip this post.

Oh holy mother of all that stinks! We just had our first experience with a real solid-food poopy diaper and it exceeded our expectations. By a long ways. To paraphrase a friend, it was hell in microfleece.

You have to understand that for us, going from our old breastmilk diapers to these solid food ones is like teaching a kid to drive a farm truck on 1000 acres in Iowa and then setting him lose with a stick shift in New York City. We’re not ready!

Because truly, breastmilk poops don’t stink. We got a tiny bit of poop in each diaper that was delightfully odor free. There was no need for a fancy pail. Then solid food entered our lives two weeks ago, and we got a few poops that kind of stunk. Then, troublingly, no poops at all for two days. Then yesterday the dam broke, so to speak, and it left Matt gagging and me laughing at Matt for gagging.

Well, karma’s a bi*ch, let me tell you.

Today I thought Simon smelled a little poopy, went to change him, and disaster struck. I did not know the grab-both-feet trick. I mean, I grab Simon’s feet sometimes, but it’s not the first thing I do while diapering. Nor is it automatic. It hasn’t had to be. Until now.

The scene that unfolded was something from the more scatalogically oriented sections of 120 Days of Sodom. I took off the diaper and there was poop everywhere. And since I didn’t have Simon’s legs in my hands, wherever it wasn’t, it got to be–real fast. His feet, legs, shirt, bib, hands, face. It was just awful. I didn’t know what to grab or try to wipe off first. He even got the walls.

It was like wrestling a poop octopus. In fact, I kept thinking of a hilarious scene in Ed Wood where Bela Lugosi is wrestling a motorized octopus movie-maker Ed Wood did not have a motor for. Bela had to pretend to wrestle the thing while also moving its arms around to make it look alive. Poor humiliated Bela didn’t know what to grab first, and neither did I. The difference? My little octopus was very much alive and was having the time of his life squirming around in his own filth.

At the end, Matt came to help me and we dumped Simon straight into the bath. Where he then proceeded to pee in an arc that landed directly on our toothbrushes. Sigh….

Simon’s all cleaned up now and I’m feeling more prepared for the next mess. All that remains, evidence-wise, is a bucket of clothing with half a box of Oxiclean dumped into it and two parents with mild cases of PTSD.

When Simon was about three weeks old, an old friend called to check in on us. He and his wife were considering having a baby themselves, and the question arose, “Now that you have him, can you imagine your life without him?”

At the time my friend asked, Simon was just a few weeks old, he had been screaming his head off for about an hour, and I was terribly sleep deprived. Could I imagine my life without him? You bet! At that moment, I would have happily taken a dip into the calm pre-baby waters.

Simon is now six months old, and we’ve gotten to know each other much better. Someone else asked me the same question a week or so ago, and this time my immediate and unthinking answer was “God no.” I can still remember my life pre-baby, but I can’t imagine having that life now.

Nor do I want to. It’s not that I’m deluded and think every moment is all sunshine. Of course it’s not! The last few weeks Simon has been eating often and sleeping little. More than once I have wondered–seriously wondered–how I will manage to keep my sanity to say nothing of getting any work done.

But the thing is, even with the eating and non-sleeping, he’s a little sweetie–my little sweetie. He lessens my stress, he makes me laugh, he frees me up to play the silly games and sing the silly songs I, ever trying to catch up to my older brothers, rarely did as a kid myself.

These are all serious benefits, but nothing comes close to seeing how he loves me. When you are pregnant, everyone tells you that you’ll love your child more than you can imagine. I disagree. In fact, I could imagine loving my kid about as much as I love Simon. Truth be told, there were pre-Simon moments when I gazed at Percival or Tristan sleeping and felt a now-familiar heart swell. Clearly there was no shortage of pathetic fallacy going on in our household.

No, for me the true revelation of parenthood is how much Simon loves me. I can walk into a room and watch his entire face light up. If I’m terribly stressed or sad, he’ll fuss and be unsettled. If I’m feeling bouyant and happy, I can almost always make him smile. Much as Simon loves Dad and Grandma and Bubbie–and he loves these care-takers fiercely–sometimes only I will do.

It is astonishing and exhilarating and more than a little terrifying.

So here’s the part where I break into verse. Matt’s band has been practicing this little dittie by Cheap Trick–yes, Cheap Trick–that seems apt:

I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I’d love you to love me
I’m beggin you to beg me

As a love song, it’s a bit creepy and cliche. As a modern lullaby, on the other hand, it’s kind of sweet and sums things up well. You just have to ignore the second verse and the fact that it was written by Cheap Trick.

Today Simon went in for his routine 6-month well baby check up. The relevant numbers follow:

• Weight: 16 pounds, 6 1/2 ounces (35th percentile)
• Length: 26 1/4 inches (50th percentile)
• Head circumference: 17 7/8 inches (90th percentile)

Yup. Our guy is of average height. He’s a bit on the slender side. And has an ENORMOUS head. Simon’s head has always been on the big side, and lately I’ve noticed that many shirts sized for 6-12 months barely go over his noggin. And forget about it if the shirt doesn’t have snaps on the side or down the back. I’ve considered cutting him out of more than one! (My mother once did cut my brother Perry, who was blessed with a similar head size, out of a shirt.)

Thank goodness there is a long and glorious family history of Wolfsons having huge heads and being developmentally normal. Were it not for Grand-Zadie Lester, Bubbie, Uncle Perry, and cousin Nathan, I would have to seriously wonder right now if my guy was a high functioning victim of hydroencephaly. Instead, I like to think that he is thinking great big thoughts.