City Girl

I was on the bus on my way home from work today observing the other passengers (the bus is seriously the best place for people watching) when one particular girl caught my eye. She was about 17 years old and beautiful- stunning even- and if I were to cast her in a movie I would cast her as the homecoming queen or head cheerleader or beauty pageant contestant. But you had to really look at this girl closely to see that beauty that she seemed to be trying to hide because she was wearing a too tight “wife beater” tank top, too tight too short jean shorts, her blonde hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail and she was wearing way too much eye liner. In her lap, sat her baby (about two months old) and next to her was a guy, presumably the baby’s father, who looked like a thug that just walked straight out of a prison cell and got onto this bus (although he was quite attractive as well). What was alarming about this whole situation was not really that this teenager had a baby with this thug boy, but that she had a tattoo across the side of her neck (yes, her neck) that said in large print “Shizz’s Bitch” (albeit in scrolly pretty script).

All I could think was “that could be Ellie” wearing a too tight tank top on a bus with her baby and thug boyfriend named Shizz and upsetting neck tattoo that declares her self-esteem problems. And suddenly I began to panic about raising our daughter in the City. Sure, suburban kids get pregnant and get into trouble too, but I am pretty certain that neck tattoo issue wouldn’t happen in the Burbs.

I don’t want my daughter to grow up declaring that she’s Shizz’s (or anyone’s) bitch. I don’t want her to have a scary thug boyfriend or a degrading tattoo. I don’t want her to have a baby until she’d old and married and ready. What are we thinking raising our sweet little baby in a harsh, big city? We live in a city - a real city, not near the city like where I grew up - but in a city with millions of people and hundreds of murders and lots of gangs and homelessness and dilapidated buildings and litter and drug problems. Do I really want Ellie to grow up in the midst of all this ugliness and violence, thinking that it's the norm?

This isn’t the first time that I had a bought of Mom Panic, and I am sure that it won’t be the last, but it was definitely the worst so far. I had to repeatedly remind myself that there are plenty of baby-less, degrading-neck-tattoo-less kids raised in Cities every day. And while there is a lot of ugliness in the city, there's also lots of beautiful parks and museums and culture and wonderful opportunities at her finger tips. I suppose it will be years before it's practical for me to worry about Ellie developing horrible self-esteem problems and teen pregnancy.

But still, sometimes the suburbs seem attractive.

Want Some Cheese With That Whine?

Splashing in puddles
When I took Ellie to the pediatrician a few weeks ago, the Doctor said, "Be prepared: the 'terrible two's' actually start around 14 months." At the time, I just gave her a perplexed smile and patted my sweet baby on the head. "Not my little girl" I thought. Of course I was naive to think that Ellie wouldn't be one of the kids that goes through this trying stage. She has been headstrong, stubborn and overly active since birth. I am actually surprised that the Terrible Two's didn't start at 2 weeks. It's not that Ellie is terrible, or even bad - she is actually a very good, sweet kid - it's more that we have reached the stage where we're having a fundamental problem communicating with each other and its getting frustrating on both ends.

She can't say much, but she always knows what she wants (never wishy-washy in the least). It's the times she wants something that she can't express that get the most frustrating. Thus begins the whining. Ok, I'll admit it, I was a big whiner when I was a kid (and maybe even still a little bit now) but I still hold a double standard because I really, really hate listening to whining. So, in order to cut back the frustration that Ellie feels not being able to say what she wants and the frustration we feel when we're frantically trying to figure out the source of the whine ("are you hungry? do you want your socks off? is that sippy cup on your tray making you mad? do you want to hold that roll of scotch tape?), we began teaching her a little bit of sign language a few weeks ago.

Elise signing that she's hungry
She actually caught on to it extremely quickly, especially considering that she is in daycare where they do not sign to her. Through sign language, she can now let us know when she's hungry, when she's thirsty, when she needs help, and when she's finished (she also lets you know she wants to go outside by bringing you your shoes and that she needs a diaper change by bringing you a diaper - not sign language, but the message is clear) Much to my dismay though, this enormous stride in communication did not completely eliminate the whining, but it has gotten a little better.

Elise mid-tantrum with Opa
Of course the word that she can communicate the most clearly is "noooo" and she exercises this quite often, especially when it comes to food (she has suddenly become a very picky eater, something that is particularly annoying since she is allergic to 90% of all food and therefore has very limited choices). But like her Mommy, Ellie has a double standard too. As much as she loves saying no, she hates hearing it. I swear you'd think usually we let her get away with everything (not even close) with the way she reacts when you tell her she can't do/have something ("no, Elise you cannot play with the oven knob"... cry, cry, tantrum... "Lysol is not for babies to play with"... tantrum cry, cry).

And yet despite the whining and hating it when she doesn't get her way, Ellie is probably the most fun she's ever been. She has quite a sense of humor and pretty much everything cracks her up (she put a little bowl on her foot while she was in the bathtub last week and she laughed hysterically about it for 25 minutes). She gets so excited about things, you can't help but get excited too (you're right! it is a dog! hurray!) and she has also started running up to me and Marty randomly and giving us hugs and kisses (melt my heart!). So really, for every time I want to pull my hair out because she is yet again trying to stand up in her high chair, there are fourteen times she does something that makes me laugh until I cry or smile until I've formed permanent smile lines on my face. I'd say that's a fair trade.

It is my hope that one day...

Elise will also be a champion! Way to go Uncle Paul! You are the Mercury, the mighty, mighty Mercury!

Peanut Butter and Jams

The absolutely very first time it was with Fiona Apple, but then again, Elise wasn't even Elise yet. She was still mini-Mo and so we're not counting that one. So this will be known as her very-first-all-time-greatest concert ever. That is of course until the next all-time-greatest concert ever. But this will always be her first. Coincidently, Meredith and I were wondering if Elise will be proud or embarrassed that her first concert was Brady Rymer and the Little Band that Could. Meredith's first concert was New Kids on the Block. Sure, that's pretty embarrassing but was timely and even her Aunt Linda (who was super cool to take her and her cousin Sarah) admitted that it was a fun show. But as an avid music listener and concert enthusiast, New Kids is an embarrassing first for Meredith. (note from Meredith: Marty's first was Kenny Rogers. He seems to think that this is cool and not embarrassing at all. He is wrong.)

But regardless of the band, seeing your first concert at 14 months is pretty cool and for what it was, this concert rocked! The UPENN public radio station here has a concert series they call 'Peanut Butter and Jams' (there's a reason they're Ivy League) and Meredith booked us three free tix. Excitement was in the air all morning long and Ellie wouldn't even take a nap. As we got ourselves ready to go to the concert which started at 11:30 AM we sang songs of delight. Actually they were more squeals or screams as Daddy crooned while getting dressed, but it's essentially the same thing. We got into the car with excitement running so high that Ellie promptly took a nap. We parked the car in the parking lot and Ellie slept. And slept. Meredith and I let her sleep and listened to an interesting story on NPR. It was quite a tailgate party. Funny thing - going to a concert with a 14 month old is a completely different experience than the other concerts I've gone to as an adult.

Anyway, she woke in plenty of time and we were able make our way into the venue. The place was packed with kids of all ages running around and parents hunched over like Quasimoto chasing after them and telling them to give that back to the little boy and don't throw the markers and get that out of your mouth and okay, I guess there's no harm in chewing on it a little and do you want some more toast and how about we find mommy, ooh, look at the mirror ball, and say thank you for the baby size maraca and the other fourteen baby-sized maraca already sitting in mommy's bag and please shake that away from daddy's ear and please give that back to the little boy and watch out you're going to get hurt... and so on and so forth.

We finally penned our little excitable girl into an area right in front of the stage. This is Meredith's little girl after all if she's going to go to concerts than she's going to learn how to get up front and stay up front! The concert started late of course 'cause apparently the concert venue people also feel that if these little ones are going to go to concerts than they are going to learn to be patient for the opening act. Not as easy with 400 screaming 0-5 year olds, but we managed.

The headliner, as previously mentioned, was called Brady Rymer and the Little Band that Could. Even before the band came on stage, Elise was dancing to the background music that was playing, shaking her maracas and bouncing around in anticipation - in anticipation of what I am not sure because she surely didn't know that she was going to see a concert. Regardless, she was ready. My first thought as soon as they started was oh my God that's so loud! No seriously, it was really loud. Elise started to cry and Meredith and I looked at each other like maybe we should leave. Mind you, she was crying, but she was still dancing. A second later the surprise at the volume must have checked itself because she turned around to us again, all smiles and giggles.

The band, full-on with back-up singer/dancers, guitar players and multiple percussionists, played a variety of songs (ranging from country to ska) that sounded like they could be regular, adult tunes, except for they all had lyrics like "I lost my barbie...oh wait I found it!" and "Mommy needs a cup of coffee to keep up with you." Ellie danced her little heart out for nearly 40 minutes, which is probably the longest amount of time she has ever paid attention to anything, so that's saying something. But when she lost interest, she completely lost it and started running around like a maniac (amongst the 400 children) and getting into things she shouldn't (and at one point, violently pushing this man who was video taping his son dancing, out of her way so she could get into a basket of markers) so we decided to make an early exit. As I said before, the tickets were free and we spent well over an hour there so I feel like we got our money's worth.

So, as you can see we've posted a video below. This is the first time we've done this and we're not the most technologically gifted people in the world so we couldn't figure out how to rotate the video and get it to stay that way. Nevertheless, here it is... just turn your head to the side and it's perfect. One last thing... about midway through the video, you will see a little girl's hand enter the screen shot and touch Ellie's arm. Her stare-down of this fellow concert-goer is awesome! She won't have any memories of her first concert, but we'll always have this video to remind her how much she enjoyed it...

Just a quick little post

I just wanted to chronicle this one little post quickly. We went back to the Please Touch Museum today and Ellie was playing in the supermarket area picking out her fake peaches, putting them in her cart and then returning them back to the fake peaches bin. It was a fun game and she was really getting going here when another little girl started doing the same thing with fake avacados right next to her. This threw Ellie off for a second as her attention span is like her daddy's. She accidentally put her fake peach in with the fake onions. (insert dramatic music) She turned back to her cart to get some more, when she stopped. She turned around. Looked into the bin with the fake onions, pulled out the peach and put it where it belonged. All this without any instruction or encouragement! Cognitively on-track, HA! My baby is a genius! It doesn't take much for a proud papa.

Ellie's Outdoor Obsessions

Every few weeks Ellie discovers something that she loves and becomes completely obsessed with it. Sometimes it's a food (it was blueberries for a while, now it's cantaloupe) and sometimes it's a toy (she currently loves this I Love Hawaii beanie baby bear that our friends Michael and Dawn got her over a year ago. She tucks it under her arm and takes it with her everywhere she goes. She feeds it and rocks it and hugs it...this bear has become her baby and her appendage). It used to be that she discovered just one item at a time, and devoted all of her time and attention to it, like said bear. But lately she's racking up the things that she loves and obsesses over, and it encompasses entire categories, not just particular individual items.

Where's Suna? Ellie looks for our neighbor's dog
Sure, she has a quasi-alarming obsession with her Hawaii Bear right now, but there are lots of other things that she's completely fixated on. First and foremost is her obsession with dogs. She absolutely loves dogs. It doesn't matter if it's a dog in a book or on the street. It could be our neighbor's dog (Suna) or Gram and Grandpa's dog (Bentley). She just loves them all. Every time she sees a dog, hears a dog (that includes barking or dog tag jingling) or sees a person walking that she thinks should be walking a dog, she barks (woof, woof). In fact she barks so much that it's quite possible that she actually thinks that she is a dog. When we're outside, she spends half of the time either pointing out dogs walking by or pointing to our neighbor's yard, where their dog may or may not be.

She spends the other half of her time outside obsessing over buses. This child has a bizarre fascination with buses. And lucky for her we live right on a bus route so she stops what she's doing (which is usually looking for our neighbor's dog) every 5 minutes to point at the bus as it goes by. We have a bus stop right in front of our house too, so she often gets extra time to ogle. She says "bus" each time she sees one, although she calls every over-sized vehicle (trucks, SUVs, ambulances) a bus. She also has pretty keen hearing because when we're inside and a bus goes by (Marty and I have completely tuned it out and have no idea this is happening) she helpfully points out that somewhere outside there is a "bus" going by. So pretty much the only thing she is saying these days is "woof, woof" and "bus". Fortunately she just points at the bus and says "bus" but she doesn't chase after it. Yet.

The Big 2-0

I took Ellie for her check up on Thursday and we got the news we'd been waiting for. Elise has finally reached 20 pounds (20lbs 5oz actually - she is in the 22nd percentile)! Why is this such exciting news you ask? Because we can officially turn her car seat around! The law is that your child has to be a minimum of one year and 20 pounds in order to turn the car seat forward facing.

As we have mentioned, Ellie is not a big fan of the car. Typically if she's not sleeping she's hysterically crying. And she usually won't sleep for more than an hour, which makes long trips slightly nightmarish. I guess it's fair to say that she has gotten a little better than she was as in infant; she doesn't ALWAYS cry when she's not asleep. There have been times where she's gone an entire 20 minute car ride without crying (maybe two max). But the point is that she hates the car, so in turn, we hate taking her in the car. There is only so much of her "get me out of this deathtrap!! why are you doing this to me?" that a parent can take.

So we came to the conclusion that the reason that she hates being in the car so much is because she gets car sick from facing backwards. Heck, I get sick riding backwards so it's not that much of a stretch. Add that to the fact that she doesn't spend much time in the car, and you have the seeds for car-hatred, plain as day. 1.5 miles to and from daycare 3 days a week is pretty much it, other than the occasional trip 20 minute to BJ's. We live in an area where we can walk to the store, doctor, playgrounds, etc, so she has never had to get used to being in the car.

Back to Thursday, when we got the big news that we could finally turn the car seat around and thus all of our car problems would be behind us. It was perfect timing, because we were going to be driving down to Marty's parents house (they live about an hour away) later that night. When I put her in the car, she did seem pretty excited. She could see everything! Her mom kept turning around and saying hi and that made her laugh! But the novelty wore off in about 5 minutes, and she screamed for nearly the rest of the ride. However, upon further discussion, we realized that she'd just woken up from a nap and didn't have dinner before we left so we came to the conclusion that she was just cranky because she was hungry. Round two: She spent the night at Gram and Grandpa's Thursday so on Friday night it was time to make the hour trip home. This was the real test. She was well fed and it was bedtime so she should just sleep and be happy, right? Of course not! She laughed and played with us for about 15 minutes and then screamed the rest of the way. But upon further discussion, we realized that it was bedtime; she was just over tired.

Round three: Saturday, we had to go to Lowe's, which is about 20 minutes away, so what better time to test out our forward facing car seat for real this time? She was well fed and well rested, and it's just 20 minutes there and 20 minutes back. This time, the magic that is the forward facing car seat surely would shine, right? Wrong again! Cry, cry, cry! I actually think she may have cried less when the car seat was rear facing! However, upon further discussion, we realized that the drive to Lowe's has tons of traffic lights, so it's a lot of stop and go. Who likes that? Maybe we'll test out the car seat for real, for real tomorrow...

To Wean or Not to Wean...That's No Longer the Question

As I have mentioned before, when you first have a baby, there is an enormous amount of pressure to breastfeed. Everyone from your doctor to the author of all those baby books to your friends to strangers on the street seem to have an unnatural interest in making sure that you plan to breastfeed because it is the "best thing" for your infant. I chose to breastfeed, not necessarily because of this pressure, but because it was something I really wanted to do. I felt lucky that Ellie and I were able to make it work and didn’t have too many problems. However, the older Ellie got the more I noticed that our society draws a fine line between giving your baby the best kind of nourishment and becoming a creepy pervert freak-show.

I guess it started when Ellie was about six months old that when it was mentioned in casual conversation that I was nursing instead of saying “How wonderful! That’s so great for the baby” as they did in the first few months, they began to say “Really? How old is your daughter?” with raised eyebrows. And as you can imagine, as the months passed it only got worse. “You’re still breastfeeding?” People said, unable to hide their shock/disgust, as though Elise were 11 years and not 11 months old. It got to the point that I felt like I have to explain myself (“she’s allergic to dairy and soy and there really isn’t a good formula option” or "the world health organization recommends that you nurse for two years so really she's well within the recommended guidelines") so that I didn’t come off like a total weirdo.

But really, why would I stop nursing at six months? The beginning was the hard part, when it hurts and the baby is eating so often and you are exhausted. Once you get over those humps, nursing is lovely and easy and convenient and if I have a job and a lifestyle where it makes sense to keep nursing why would I start paying for formula at that point? (especially if I have to pay for hypo-allergenic formula!) Ellie wanted to keep nursing and I could continue. In addition, when Elise became mobile, nursing was the only time she actually sat still and I always looked forward to our quiet time together.

All of that being said, when she was around 11 months, it just started getting harder. I was desperate to cut back pumping (the absolute worse thing about breastfeeding), and when I did, I essentially eliminated day time feedings which made my milk production plummet. Then, when she was a year old, we switched her over from bottles to sippy cups (they say bottles are bad for the teeth), and she became even less patient with nursing. Not only did I not have much milk to offer, but compared to the sippy cups where the milk just poured out, nursing became excruciatingly slow and a lot of work.

So, basically this is my long, soap-boxy way of saying that it's over. I started weaning her at the beginning of July and fed her the last time last Tuesday. The weaning process has come to an end; Elise is no longer nursing. The nighttime feeding was the last one I cut out, so after the last feeding we had two nights of complete meltdown (for about an hour) but by the third night it's like she'd completely forgotten that she'd been a nursing devotee for almost 14 months.

I guess I felt like I should share all of this because, much to my surprise, I have become a huge advocate for breastfeeding and I feel like this country has a long, long way to go. It was such an important part of the first year of Ellie's life that I don't want people to think that I stopped because Elise is "too old" to nurse or because I was hankering for pizza. I did not stop because people in this country have placed a bizarre window where it is not creepy to breastfeed or because some people think it's weird that I continued nursing after Ellie had teeth and was walking. I stopped because Ellie was ready to stop. Plain and simple. The process was slightly traumatic for both of us and it was a difficult decision to make, but in the end I think it was the best thing. Some babies are ready to stop nursing at 2 months, some at 2 years and some never take to it at all. And that's all ok. The important thing is that you do what feels right to you and your baby. I look forward to the day that mothers in this country will not feel judged for choosing not to nurse, or choosing to nurse "too short" or "too long". I don't regret nursing for as long as I did and I don't regret stopping. In the end, it was the "best thing" for my daughter. And that's what really matters.