April 18, 2010
The Motherverse
One day last August, I reported the following: “Now, must wake baby, feed baby, change baby. For we’re off to a program at the library that promises songs, and stories and “tickle rhymes” for all. (I’m not sure if it’s sad or amazing that this is my life now.)” And I’m happy to finally be able to report that it’s amazing. These days we’re on our third round of “Baby Time” at the library, I’m getting a reputation as “the mom who knows all the songs“, andI suspect that reputation might be way less awesome than I think it is.
I find it remarkable, the way that every mother claims she can’t identify with the mothers she encounters at Mommy/Baby groups. The way that every mother claims to be an outsider in this baby-centric maternity-leave no-males-in-the-daytime universe we all inhabit– can every single one of us really be all that unique?
Of course, I am that unique. My daughter never even had a Sophie, and I only made one friend at Baby & Me Yoga (and she was picked out of the crowd due to her pants’ lack of a lululemon insignia). My daughter is now old enough that when I hear new(er) moms’ conversation, I roll my eyes in boredom (and NO. Your child is not teething at three months. I don’t care what the book says. He just drools a lot). I am tired of learning your baby’s name (which is usually something like Jaydence), his age, but never, ever learning your name. (And I also hate you because Jaydence sleeps through the night, but that is another story).
Venturing out to the world of other-moms has been more like grade seven than any experience I’ve had since then. Everybody always seems to be friends already, better at applying make-up, they’re thinner than I am and they have better clothes. And that they’re not that interested in being my friend is usually due less to the fact that they’re mean and stuck up and has a great deal more to do with me being a loser. That I’m “the mom who knows all the songs”, and moreover, I’m proud of it. I’m the one totally rocking out to Skinnamarink– what can I possibly expect?
I love the songs though. I have become obsessed with nursery rhymes since Harriet was born, and recite them on command. I’m a regular fount of bouncing rhymes, and tickling games. Baby Time is one of the highlights of my week, so I can’t help but get a little enthusiastic. And it’s strange to now be one of the moms who chases her mobile child across the circle– the first time we went to Baby Time, Harriet was two months old, and she spent most of the program asleep in my arms. We have come a long, long way since then. (And I’ve actually met some very nice moms in the interim. How wonderful is it always, that spark, that moment of connection, when someone stands apart from the rest, and you’ve no doubt that you’ve just found a new friend?)
Harriet will be eleven months old next week, and she’s never been more amazing. The last few days we’ve gotten a great idea of how much she actually understands– if we say, “Please?” she’ll hand us an object. If we ask her to wave (without gesturing), she’ll oblige us. Perhaps because we don’t have a TV, she is obsessed with books in lieu of the usual television remote control, usually whatever one I’m reading and she’ll climb over anything to get her hands on. Once she gets her hands on it, she often doesn’t rip it. She has four teeth, so much hair, the most gorgeous smile I’ve ever seen, and a little poking-out belly. She thinks I’m hilarious, though her love for me is a bit much in the evenings when she cries if I leave the room. She loves swimming lessons. Her daddy can make her laugh like no one else can, hysterically, and it’s my favourite sound in the world. She loves the swings, though she cries when we take her out of them. She even likes Miffy! She’s amazed by mobiles, windchimes, and she loves to suck on the bottom of shoes. She continues to be an appalling sleeper, though we had two weeks off from that and it was blissful. I tried to tell her that I’m a way better Mommy when she sleeps well at night, but Harriet wasn’t having any of it. Harriet yields to no one.
I often hear women saying, “I love being a Mom,” which I’ve never been able to bring myself to say, and sometimes I feel bad about that. Though I think it would be a bit like saying, “I love having arms”, and really, what’s the point? What I do love is Harriet though, and having her in our family, and in her near-eleven-months old phase in particular, because she’s so much fun. She’s the whole reason I wanted to have a baby, and it’s been so brilliant these last few months to be reminded of what that reason was in the first place.
April 13, 2010
Mini-Break fun.
Harriet was extremely wary of her first Muskoka Chair
Because we’re a family that thrives on extravagance, we’ve started a tradition wherein we book one single night at a very nice resort during the off-season and live it up for about twenty-four hours. (Check out the photo from last year’s mini-break to see what was sitting on the chair then instead of a baby). It was a little different this year with Harriet in tow– she couldn’t get enough of the swimming pool (because she is our child, after all), but dinner was take-out on the floor in our room rather than hours spent lingering over delicious food on plates with elaborate coulis designs. Once Harriet was stowed away asleep in the pack n’ play, however, Stuart and I were able to indulge in copious episodes of Mad Men season two (and have I mentioned here how much I love that show? Season One took a while to win me over to the show’s intelligence, though maybe the LRB review had made me prejudiced, but now I’m totally enthralled and intrigued…) And then reading in bed. Could a night be any more perfect? Capped off the next morning by brunch with a chocolate fountain– the stuff of dreams. It was a beautiful drive back to the city the next day, and it felt like we’d been gone for three weeks. .
March 8, 2010
"ABC in CMYK"
I love this amazing alphabet poster that my husband has made for our daughter’s room.
February 26, 2010
In the post and etc.
I just tramped out through the snow to collect today’s brilliant postal haul, which included a writing cheque, my new spaceage autoshare keycard, and a copy of Susan Telfer’s absolutely beautiful collection House Beneath. And really, it tops off the most wonderful morning, which I’ve spent listening to DJ Bookmadam’s playlist, reading An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym and issue 32.3 of Room Magazine. Drinking pear lychee green tea, while Harriet napped for almost two hours (!!). This morning following an evening during which I went out and spent my time in the company of inspiring, amusing women and ate lots of cheese while my husband put the baby to bed without me for the first time ever, and they both did brilliantly. All of which is to say that I am terribly, terribly happy today, and I tell you this not to be smug or rub it in, but because this is one of those good days that I want to collect like a postcard, to pickle away and keep always to remember just how fantastically beautiful the snow-covered world is outside my window right at this moment.
February 26, 2010
The trajectory of a downward spiral
So please, may I draw you the trajectory of a downward spiral? 
It’s when you get The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems out of the library in October, The No-Cry Sleep Solution out of the library in December, and you pick up a used copy of Nighttime Parenting by Doctor Sears come February. This last one signals complete surrender, along with the fact that I bought a bed rail last week.
It’s funny how unwilling I am to give up on my insistence that some book somewhere will contain the answers to our sleep issues. I think this is where desperation can take you. And it’s even funnier, because in no other area of my life would I even consider self-help books, except this one. I scoff at self-help under most circumstances, thoroughly convinced that the truest wisdoms are to be found in fiction. (But aren’t there a dearth of babies in fiction? Real babies, I mean. Literature is rife with narratives about pregnancy, but who would want to read a book about life with an infant? [Though some people have, of course: check out Stephany Aulenback’s Babies in Literature Series at Crooked House]).
The Sears book might be the one that actually works though, because it seems to take most things that we’re doing, things that I worry we’re doing wrong, and then tells me my child will grow up to be maladjusted unless we keep on doing them. And seeing as I am the laziest nighttime parent the world has ever known, we really might be on to something.
(Though Harriet is still moving into her own room this weekend. She does manage to spend about half her night asleep in her crib, and the very best part of her move is that we’ll be able to read in bed again. I can’t wait.)
February 17, 2010
Getting Settled
Oh, I do love my new website. I love the colours, and I love the doors (which I photographed in Elora last summer), and I love my cool twitter feed in the sidebar, and my “Features” buttons. In the wider world, I love that celebrating Valentines, Family Day and Mardi Gras, and though tomorrow is the first day in three days that isn’t a holiday, my husband’s got the week off work so the fun continues– tomorrow we’re going to the AGO. Though we’re completely exhausted already, and not just because of pancakes. I now see the advantages to preparing your baby’s nursery before the baby’s birth, as opposed to, say, when the baby is eight and a half months old, because it’s an all-consuming process, and then the baby gets so mad when you’re ignoring it to screw crescent-moon light covers into the wall. The one good thing about it though is that the baby gets an awesome room completely devoid of pastels, and perhaps a bit overstimulating, but something tells me our baby would have had that anyway.
Anyway, all this to say that we’ve had nary a spare moment, but I’m almost through Nicholas Ruddock’s The Parabolist and will be posting a review very soon. And next up for me is Patrick Swayze’s autobiography, if I actually decide to go through with it. Which seems like not the best idea in a world with so many books and so little time, but if I don’t, what might I be missing??
February 8, 2010
Furnishing a room
Our house is currently in a state of upheaval as we begin the process of moving the baby into her own room. We’ve got a faint hope that it might help her sleep better, and after eight months of enjoying having her close, we want our room back. And no doubt she’ll be joining us there most nights anyway (and yay for reluctant co-sleeping, which is much better than being awake).
Baby will be moving into the spare-room/ office/ library, however, so the books have had to migrate living-room-ward. Which at first I was sad about, that the books would be losing a room of their own, but now having them out in the world again, I realize that I’ve missed them. How little I visited our library, unless I had a reason to, and how nice the spines are just to stare at, and the journeys they could take me on from my seat here in the gliding chair.
And I realize that books have been missing from this room all along. It’s so nice to be back among them. The aesthetic effect of their various colours and heights. How the walls were empty before, and the floor just too wide, and how the built-in shelf beside the fireplace was wasted before now. It’s true, they do– they furnish a room! And joyfully, because televisions don’t, we’re getting rid of ours, so just excuse the focal point in the photo in the meantime.
October 25, 2009
Flying Babies and Books
Once upon a time, a plane journey meant I’d get a whole book read, and a magazine or two. In-flight movies were for chumps, and I was the annoying person whose reading light was shining bright when you were trying to sleep. And then I had a baby.
And I’ve had a baby long enough to have a good idea of how much reading I’d get done in transit. Whereas before, I’d bring at least four novels and a magazine (because, I mean, what if we had to make an unexpected stopover at an airport without a bookshop?), I brought just one book this time. And I’ve also had a baby long enough to be pleased to get just the first three stories in Birds of America read during our flight.
Thankfully, we went to visit the grandparents, which is the closest thing I’ll have to a vacation from motherhood for quite some time. So I got two issues of the London Review of Books read, finished Birds of America, and read the wonderful Howards End is On the Landing. On the flight home, I began The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen, and got about 60 pages in, mainly because I read while jumping up and down, rocking Harriet in her Little Star Sling. On the whole, I am very satisfied.
Reading aside, flying with babies is hard work, but I really can’t complain, considering the moms I saw flying alone with two children. Harriet was pretty good, didn’t scream substantially too much of the time, airline staff and other passengers were really kind, helpful and accommodating, and having a baby makes the whole world a really friendly place. Once arrived, we had a really wonderful time. Harriet never adjusted to the time change, and went to bed at midnight every night, and while this made her grumpier and grumpier as the week went on, it’s been no trouble getting her back on track at home.
And I’ve got to get back on track too. Since my last “I’m not buying books” post, I think I’ve bought about seven more books. But no more, of course. I’m done, but it does mean I’ve got some serious blogging to do, and more reading to do, and then I’ll go and read some more.
October 16, 2009
European Vacation
Of course, I married my husband for his dreamy accent, but also so I’d have a good excuse to take frequent European vacations. (And it is a European vacation, proof here.)
And it’s that time again, because we’re off to the British seaside– it’s October after all. We’re returning to my husband’s homeland so that his parents can meet their grandchild for the first time, and while they’re busy spoiling her and ignoring us, we’ll partake in English things we love and miss, like cream tea; cheap books, beer and chocolate; newspaper supplements; penguin biscuits; lamb shanks; round postboxes; crisps; good TV and radio. Oh, and the weather. We’ll pack the brollies.
I’ll be posting a few updates while I’m gone, as well as an eagerly-awaited interview, and regular posting will resume in a week.
