Kid Amnesiac

Right now I should be worried about things like whether Simon is delayed in his gross motor skills, whether his nutrition is up to snuff, and whether his language development is on track.

But I’m not. How could I possibly worry about these things when a much scarier prospect looms on the horizon; namely, tha one day my sweet little boy will be, to quote writer Dan Savage, a sociopath. Specifically, an out-of-control little sociopath until or unless I metaphorically beat it out of him.

This observation comes courtesy of This American Life, which this week rocked my world with its show on how to talk to children. Act One detailed how hard it is to talk to children about, well, about almost anything. Don’t say “how’s school?” the kids told host Ira Glass.

“Don’t assume if we laughed at the joke once, we will again later.”

“Don’t talk down to us.”

“Don’t talk about things we don’t understand.”

Fine, but that leaves me pretty much at “don’t talk”, which may be what kids really want anyway. Sigh.

Now feeling thoroughly inadequate in my kid-talking skills, we move into Act II, which is all about how to talk to kids about sex. Oy. I’d really prefer to not have to think about this one at all. And so, in an act of mind control unusual for me, I tune out and don’t hear much of this essay.

Next up is Dan Savage making the case for screaming at your kids. In fact, he argues that since that literal beatings are unacceptable by today’s standards, verbal ones are more important than ever. They are, he claims, “all we have left.”

This essay was interspersed with a tape of Alec Baldwin yelling at his 11-year-old daughter, which  someone in the Kim Basinger camp clearly leaked to make Alec look as bad as possible.  And bad he did look! I mean, he called her a “thoughtless little pig” and sounded homicidal throughout. Except, according to Dan, nearly all of his friends confessed to having said something as bad or worse to their own kids of the heat of the moment at least once. Dan himself thought the tirade was par for the course for parents-even the very good ones.

So here I am. Getting ready for Simon’s first birthday party this weekend, and having the distinct feeling that this first year is a true honeymoon in parenting. The hours may be long, but my baby has been just that-a sweet baby-who hasn’t needed anything beaten out of him in the literal or metaphorical sense. Next come toddler willfulness, potty-training battles,  and then a long stretch of living with a short sociopath.

Maybe this is why so many parents cry when their babies turn one.

Well, we’re back from Gatlinburg and have much to report from our trip to the Smokies. Simon liked his new car seat, relaxed at the Laurel Falls waterfall, loved touching an engraved stone at Cades Cove, thought hitching a ride to Clingman’s Dome via Daddy’s back was very funny, and thrived on all the time spent with his Goldstein relatives.

He also learned to scoot (finally!) and will now stretch out his  arm to “help” put on his PJs or other long-sleeved shirts. But my favorite new development is one Matt has coined “anointing.”

Periodically, Simon will grab his pacifier out of his mouth, hold it up to one of us, tap it on our face or head, and then put it back in his mouth. If we’re not being anointed, we’re at least being knighted. What does he think he’s doing? I haven’t a clue.

It’s just one of many ways he’s getting more physical, more agile, and more funny as he hits week 51. I almost think he’s dialing up the cute a notch to make me feel better about his being nearly a year old. After all, I can’t keep wishing he’d be six months old again when he’s cracking me up and being more affectionate than ever.

Today Matt witnessed Simon’s first demonstration of true fear. I was at the grocery and Matt was playing with Simon in the living room. It’s fall now, and despite it still being 80 degrees outside, certain fall-like things are beginning to happen, including various creepy crawlers trying to make a home inside our house.

One such creepy crawler was a spider that scurried across the carpet in front of them as they played. Matt is no fan of spiders and was no doubt uneasy around this very fast moving specimen.  According to Matt, Simon was downright hysterical. He took one look at that spider and then shrieked, cried, and raised his arms for Matt to pick him up and get him away from it.

This reaction is really interesting, because normally Simon looks at any new creature as either amusing or a potential new friend. He’s been in love with our cats from day one. The first time a (big) dog ran up to his stroller in the park and licked his face, he giggled. He’s either oblivious or enthralled with animals at the zoo.  In fact, I’ve hardly ever seen him look scared at anything or anyone.

As Simon is not quite one and has never encountered a spider before, this reaction could not have had anything to do with a prior bad experience with spiders. So not a learned response. And Matt swears that Simon got hysterical before he had a chance to get that way himself. So not an example of Simon modeling a parent’s behavior.

That leaves us with the explanation that Simon has an innate fear of spiders. One that, for the record, he inherited from his father, as they don’t bother me much at all.

This week I’ve taken advantage of extreme ends of the shopping spectrum.

On the high end, after much thinking, planning, wanting, wavering, fretting, and stalling, I finally upgraded my stroller. It’s no Bugaboo (I love it, but I just can’t afford it), but it’s still pretty swell. I bought a Bob Revolution stroller at a decent price from an online outfit. What finally made me give in to this lustful craving on my part was discovering that I had not invoiced my old boss for some freelance work I completed earlier this year. Since this was “found” money, I felt justified on blowing it on a total luxury.

The promise with the Bob is that it will handle well over just about any terrain, can be used as a jogger if you wish (I don’t), but has a rotating front wheel that makes it easy to navigate in tight spaces as well. The Bob arrived yesterday, and today I put it through its paces. I rolled over 100-year-old sidewalks with huge cracks, over curbs where sidewalks end, over massive potholes caused by recent gas-line work, off road in part of the park, and into a crowded a cafe.

The Bob performed marvelously. It was the easiest, smoothest ride I can remember having. No bumping into chairs when I couldn’t get my stroller to swivel well. No veering off the sidewalk when I hit a big crack. And no getting stuck in the road when I encountered one of many potholes in my neighborhood. Sheer bliss. In fact, it was so enjoyable that I nearly doubled my usual walk and even ran for part of it. I can’t wait to give this baby a spin in the Smokies next week.

At the other end of the spectrum, this morning at 10:00 a.m. sharp I hit Highland Presbyterian Church for their semi-annual children’s consignment sale. Bargain-palooza! I had but one rule going in, and I cribbed it from Tim Gunn’s A Guide to Quality, Taste, and Style: Do not buy on sale something I would not have payed full price for. Those so-called bargains just end up filling up your drawers and not being worn.

I abided by this rule religiously and culled my stack before hitting the checkout line, yet still managed to come home with two matching top and bottom sets, a jacket, two pairs of pants, and a pair of overalls. All were Absorba, Catimini, Baby Gap, or Gymboree, all were very lightly worn, and all were super cute. Total financial outlay-including a toy and some baked goods-$32. To put this into perspective, that’s the same amount I blew on Simon’s cool double-layer Lucky tee and less than what I recently blew on his adorable Noppies jeans or sweater.

I need to do that kind of shopping more often! Much more often. I hear they have a spring sale in March or earlyApril. I’ll be there. And if I can part with the clothes I have stashed at the top of his closet, I may even do some consigning myself.

Picture coming soon to illustrate this one.

In the past week or so, Simon has taken quite a leap in his fine motor skills. He can get his stacking rings on their post in no time, and he can even gets blocks with a pretty small central hole onto a toy train with no problems.

But his new favorite pastime is putting things into a container, taking things out of a container, and rearranging objects inside a container. Today I sat on the floor with him and watched as small fabric blocks, small wood blocks, plastic rings, and balls went into and came out of a large cardboard box. Good times!

As he plays with containers, Simon is simply entranced. In fact, today I’m pretty sure he achieved what Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi calls flow: so absorbed and immersed was he in his activity that I’m pretty sure he forgot I was there and lost all sense of time.

While I’m sure this is all developmentally quite normal, all I can’t help but wonder if he hasn’t got a bit of his Bubbie in him. Because let me tell you (and Mom, you know it’s true) if there was ever a person who loved arranging and putting up objects, it’s my mom. And if Simon’s current interest translates into picking up after himself later, no one will be happier or prouder than her.

Simon, go forth and contain! And while you are at it, could you pick up our bedroom?

That’s al chet as in the Hebrew “for the sin”, what you call the long confession on Yom Kippur.

I’m not terribly observant, but there are a few holidays I still enjoy-or in this case still think are important. Passover is one, because how can you not be descended from East European Jewish immigrants and not appreciate being free? For that matter, how can you not be a white U.S. citizen and not appreciate all the advantages that status confers on you?

I also have a healthy respect for Yom Kippur (though not a perfect respect, as I am currently breaking the rules by blogging). With its fasting and chest-beating and marathon length, it’s not high on the fun scale. But there’s much to be said for an annual moral accounting. Where have you been good? Where have you been bad? Where have you improved? Where is there still room for improvement? Atonement may not be a good time, but it is good for the soul.

My accounting has been more or less the same for about 20 years now. I’m not violent. I’m not vicious. I’m neither a gambler nor a glutton nor a cheat. But every year I get to the bits in the al chet that cover idle gossip and/or pettiness and jealousy, and I think “Busted! This year, I mean it, this year, I’m going to stop the gossiping and chattering and just be nicer.” Well, self, good luck with that. Maybe the 21st try will the charm.

There is one member of my family, however, who is nearly perfectly innocent: Simon, of course.  It won’t be appropriate for him to recite the al chet for some time-not until he’s at least 10 or so I’d think-but I know his days of perfect innocence are nearing an end. Any day now that little ego and id will be unleashed on the world with no super-ego in sight to keep things in check. The era of naked aggression, of possessiveness, of tantrums, of negativity, and of willfulness lurks just around the corner.

But before he gets to “no!” or “mine!”, we are enjoying an Indian summer of innocence, as beautiful as it is transient.

The one thing Simon may want to consider atoning for, if he knew how, is for taking a swipe at his old man. Evie was over Thursday, and Simon hadn’t seen her for two weeks. The minute he laid eyes on her, his whole body lit up. He smiled,  clapped, cooed, and his eyes sparkled extra bright. He was overjoyed to see her. Matt made the terrible mistake of trying to join in on the fun, putting himself between Simon and his grandma. Bad move.

Simon yelled and started swatting away at Matt. He knocked his hands away, swatted at his face, and let his displeasure be known in very clear terms. Not very respectful of his parent, and a little on the violent and possessive side as well. That’s at least three sins. As this was only the second incidence of temper we have seen, it’s new and funny. I suspect more is coming in the year ahead, and it will become much less funny as a result.

But I’ll worry about toddler tantrums later. Tomorrow I’ll be focused on my own sins in the sanctuary while Simon enjoys playtime in the al-chet-less nursery.

Oh happy day! We’ve graduated to the front-facing car seat.

In the beginning, the rear facing seat was no biggie. Simon weighed 7 pounds or so, the whole thing lifted out of a semi-permanently anchored base, and other than a slightly awkward reach to get the sucker out, there was nothing to it. Then Simon went on to weigh 10, 12, 15, 18+ pounds and the going got harder. Or heavier to be more accurate.

For the last week or so, we’ve given up on taking the whole seat out altogether. But it turns out that getting Simon into and out of a seat facing backwards in the middle of the back seat is not significantly easier than lifting the whole two-ton baby-plus-seat contraption was. They’re both hard. Plus, Simon’s legs are now so long that they can’t extend all the way without hitting the back seat. And the absolute last straw is that we’re going to Gatlinburg in two weeks, and the thought of taking that trip with the old seat makes us both cringe.

So Tuesday night, on impulse, we decided to go out and get a new seat. We had been out for dinner and had managed to hurt our backs and bonk Simon’s head on the interior roof TWICE when we decided enough was enough. He must be 20 pounds. He’s within spitting distance of a year. It’s time.

So having had one friend recommend the Britax and another the Graco, we ignored all, skipped the consumer reports guide, and bought the Eddie Bauer one that looked the best to us and was priced high enough to seem reasonable (over $100) but not so high to make us gasp (under $250).

It’s possible, just possible, that we messed up and will be back for the Graco or Britax in just a few days or weeks. If that happens, we will have thrown away good money on an impulse buy. But man, right now I’m so sick of that rear facing seat that $200 for even a week or so sounds like money well spent.

Long live the Eddie Bauer!

CODA: I wrote this yesterday, and didn’t finish before the okcomputer server crashed. Today Matt and I went to adjust the seat, only to discover that Simon’s not tall enough for it yet. So much for trusting our instincts at the store. Looks like we’ll be owning a Britax soon after all. And next time I’ll listen to friends and/or do my research before shopping.