Med

My grandfather was a surgeon and another close relative is a pediatrician. I never strongly considered medical school myself, mostly knowing I was not up for the gargantuan effort, and besides, I was jonesing for a baby as early as late college, but I appreciate medical arts and sciences and have had good experience with its practitioners and, yes, pretty much believe most of what my doctors tell me.

Sure, I wish medicine were more evidence-based and scientific and I recognize the unfortunate influence of drug company lobbyists (while being grateful for medications themselves, one of which, metformin, I take daily and which has hugely improved my health), and I know that my c-section wouldn’t have been considered necessary in many other countries, and that sometimes doctors make mistakes or don’t keep up with current research and have biases and strong attachment to preconceived notions just like anybody else.

Yet on the whole I am very cognizant of my good fortune in having access to experienced, educated, and kind medical practitioners, and I believe they mean my family well (insurance companies not so much). Medicine is one of the big perks of being human, and I see it as one of the super-neato ways that human intelligence and capabilities have developed in such a way as to guide our further evolution. No longer does shitty eyesight mean starvation! No longer can a small cut you weren’t able to keep clean potentially spell death! Now you can (sometimes) reproduce even against your body’s own inclination! Now, conceivably, we could be selecting for more subtle traits (in practice, though, the typically more scaled-back fertility of the more successful population–by some definitions–is the antithesis of how natural selection usually works. Now it’s survival of the least-apt to use contraception).

My appreciation of medical advances extends to topics like immunizations, so when the pediatrician finally got some H1N1 vaccine in, I immediately made an appointment. Little Girl’s not in school or around society at large much usually, but we’re about to go on a multi-state, multi-hotel, multi-tourist trap Thanksgiving trip, so I’m glad to offer her some additional protection. And to participate in the larger societal effort to reduce disease.

“I’ll have that for you right away” and other dumb stuff I say

Husband and I both work from home. He’s physically in the office three days a week, and I am physically in the classroom three hours a week, but for the remainder of the time for him, and about 20 hours a week for me, we’re laboring over our laptops at home. Of course, he works during normal business hours, while Little Girl and I go to storytime and put away the laundry and whatnot, and I generally toil away from bedtime (8 PM) until, occasionally, the early morning.

That totally sucks, by the way. Since Little Girl doesn’t nap, that means I don’t get that much-vaunted “break” during the day, and then I don’t really have any free time at night, because even when I cut myself some slack on my research job, I really ought to be preparing for my class, the curriculum for which is entirely new and up to me. I am often pretty tired, too.

Work is even busier for me right now (both jobs) as I’ve been asked to create and present an in-service to the other instructors on, basically, how to be as totally awesome an ESL instructor as I am. This comes as a result of my recent teaching observation, and is of course wonderful and flattering, but is a whole extra bunch of work and stressful to boot.

And things with my research job are basically fine, but right now there’s a joke about my doing “participatory research” into the use of a newly-popular mind-altering substance among the VPs (all I said was maybe we should add it to our list of substances youths abuse if it’s common enough even I’ve heard of it!), and plus I’m having to hammer out this contract with this really problematic vendor we have to use for stupid political reasons, and I also realized that I really ought to be higher up on the totem pole, job title- and compensation-wise, so I’m gearing up for my arguments on these points in my upcoming performance review.

So with all this my work is spilling into my days, which equals Little Girl in front of the television, because no other method of keeping her quiet during conference calls or careful parsing of phrases in important emails works as well. And that’s the exact opposite of how I want work to fit into my life. I want it to be this thing I do she knows nothing about, that affects her in no way, while nevertheless affording me monetary and self-esteem gains as well as an increased feeling of security and progress and, well, fulfillment in my professional and intellectual lives. I want to be an attentive full-time mother but also something of a career woman. Keep dreaming, Antropóloga.

The holey and the transgressive

I don’t know, I guess I developed some sort of allergy or something, but a few years ago I started being insanely irritated by wearing earrings, and I eventually gave up. But I’d like to wear them, you know? For one thing, people keep giving me earrings, so I have tons. And some I actually like.

But then I had a new problem: I couldn’t get an earring in my right ear even when I tried. And the left ear was no picnic. The holes had filled back in.

So I decided to get them pierced again. I’d had this plan in the back of my mind a bit–not like it was urgent–but last week, the day after my birthday, while running some errands, Little Girl and I passed a store that advertised body piercings. Hey, a real piercer! That sounded good! We went in and a hot Israeli guy said he could probably stretch the holes for me for 15 bucks. Sold!

So Little Girl and I followed him back to a the piercing room, which was wallpapered with photos of young ladies of dubious reputations showing off their belly-button piercings. I wanted to show Little Girl what I meant by pierced ears, so I took her over to the little display of fake body parts with piercings in them, when I realized that there were no regular ear piercings in evidence. Sure, there are noses and eyebrows and lips and other kinds of lips, but no ears, so I quickly redirected her attention.

Explaining that the piercer was “like a doctor” (she likes doctors, and plus he had on latex gloves; they were black, but still) and he was going to fix my ears so I could wear earrings, she held my hand while he stretched one hole (OUCH) and had to pierce anew the other.

Little Girl was cool with it. She asked a few times if she could have her ears pierced, too, but was satisfied with my answer that she’d have to wait until she’s 10, or maybe even 13. (She is familiar with this sort of answer as she gets it when she requests to drive the car. Also, I have no real reasoning for those ages she has to await, except that I myself had to wait until 13 and that seems…sensible).

From a mommy standpoint, I felt a little uncomfortable with the slightly sexual ambiance of the piercing parlor, though Little Girl didn’t seem to notice. The piercer’s attitude towards Little Girl was one I like, though: he neither fawned over her nor ignored her, was just matter-of-fact that she was a small person who was accompanying me. Anyway, it was hardly that transgressive a place to take her, nestled as it was between a Bed Bath & Beyond and an Old Navy.

And my ears are healing nicely, thank you.

Recipe

1 vague geocaching intent
0 geocaching experience
0 geocaching plan
1 fussy three-year-old
2 lazy dogs
0 strollers
0 containers of water
0 snacks
0 maps
and…
1 faulty motherfucking GPS device

This post writes itself, right? You can probably even infer the huge fight in the middle of nowhere after wandering around for two hours and arriving absolutely nowhere.

There’s a happy ending: Husband can run really fast, so he finally went and got the car so we didn’t have to drag ourselves all the way back, and then later we used his cell phone, which has GPS that actually functions, to, uh, drive to the spot, two miles away.

We live at 34 Totalitarian Regime Drive

Little Girl does a lot of make-believe play with various little toys (or, if we’re outside, pine cones and sticks and rocks and whatnot) where the elements talk to each other. Sometimes they’re calmly informing each other, often inaccurately, of each others’ colors, and discussing where they will go and recounting exciting trips to the playground. But often they are castigating each other vehemently: “You need to be a good listener!” And occasionally they even veer into shocking territory with their diatribes: “I don’t like you! Go away!”

What?!? Where did she get that? I’ll admit I sometimes get irritated and go off the rails a bit, but I have definitely not said that. Goodness.

Anyway, I can’t decide how to respond. It’s basically just thoughtcrime. And I know her play is where she practices life. I want to let her have her space and not feel like she has to keep tabs on where her mother is because she can do as she likes only when she has privacy (ahem, I may be projecting from my own childhood). At any rate, I’m uncomfortable with requiring her to censor herself as she plays alone at age three.

At the same time, sometimes I can’t help but pipe up in reaction to both her nasty words and her unpleasant tone. “Is that how we talk?” I’ll say, and try to figure out what prompted the outburst on her, uh, toy’s part. What do you think this is all about, and how should I respond? She did try a similar line on her father once and he totally let it slide but I made a huge deal about it and required her to apologize, but it’s less clear to me what to do when it’s part of play.

PS: Regarding my last post: fairy ballerina.

Maybe I was dressed up as a grown-up, did they ever think of that?

Since my birthday is two days after Halloween I traditionally have weeks of candy/cake/chocolate gifts to enjoy. This has been less the case this year as Little Girl mostly did not get sweets while trick-or-treating but boring shit like pretzels and popcorn balls and little plastic toys. Obviously this was great for her, but since, in addition, she also has a much lower tolerance for trick-or-treating than I do, and was ready to pack it in after no more than a dozen houses, there really has been no candy extravaganza, especially as we didn’t stock ourselves for trick-or-treaters at all, rightly expecting none (which is why we got in the car and traveled to the only child-infested neighborhood on the island for Halloween).

Wow, I don’t know what happened with that sentence, but it is really long. To summarize, it’s my birthday Monday, and Halloween was meager (but fun). They’re starting to do Halloween a bit in Sweden so I didn’t have another this-is-the-last-time-I’ll-ever-do-this-again freakout.

I dressed up, too, as always, and carried the extra treat bag a neighbor had given Little Girl. But nobody mistook me for a kid. One person even asked me, “Are you collecting for another child?” And then at lunch today the waitress, upon learning it was my birthday celebration, asked me, laughing, “Are you twenty-two today?” Why is that a joke? I mean, I could be twenty-two, right? How would she know? Hell, I could even be a teenager, for that matter! Maybe I was trick-or-treating!

Uh, I guess I’m having some birthday issues. But Halloween was good, even though it was pretty weird to be sweating while trick-or-treating. It was so warm that day we swam in the ocean. Ah, island living.

Bonus points if you can guess what Little Girl was. She nodded affirmatively to everyone’s guesses yesterday but nobody got it quite right. Probably because it’s not an actual thing. Cute, though. (She’d also nod affirmatively anytime anyone told her that, too. Which was even cuter.)

My three dogs

It’s my understanding that a lot of three-year-old girls are really into princesses. Not mine. Mine loves to pretend she is a dog. A specific dog, in fact. My mom’s dog, Dewey. At least 50% of the time she insists she is not [her name] but Dewey, and wants to be told not to jump, to eat by sticking her head in the bowl, to crawl around, to yip. If she doesn’t want to do something, suddenly she’s Dewey, and duh, of course Dewey can’t put on shoes, he’s a dog. She’s really into it. Sometimes it’s cute, and sometimes it’s too much.

I think this is her little obsession because, instead of siblings, she has our dogs as playmates. Daily I herd my three puppies on walks on the beach. I take my three puppies out in the yard to pee (uh, yes, all three of them, sometimes). My three puppies beg for snacks in the kitchen. My three puppies need me to yell to get them to come.

She’s particularly close to Loki, who is just immense but the most tolerant creature, and is apparently just happy to get attention when she sits on him, pours sand on him, bats at him with palm fronds, tries to draw on him with sidewalk chalk, tugs at his collar, takes away his dog food, adorns him with accouterments from the dress-up box, and yells in his ear. Our other dog, Freya, is not as enthusiastic about such activities, and will look as dejected as possible when, say, Little Girl drapes her in dish towels and tell her she’s a babushka.

What’s funny is Dewey (the real one) has similar relationships with our dogs; Loki is happy to go along with his silly little puppy games, and is just so sweet when he dabs gently at Dewey with his immense paws as they “wrestle.” Meanwhile Freya keeps her distance, having less patience for the constant nonsense of puppyhood.

I guess Little Girl and Dewey really do have a lot in common. No wonder she identifies with him so much.

We spent all day downtown

Little Girl today noticed our dog, Loki’s, penis. This has only served to heighten her recent desire to discuss genitalia and who has what. And why. She’s in that phase where she wants to know the whys and wherefores of everything.

–Loki has a penis, why?
–He’s a boy. Just like Daddy!
–He’s a boy, why?
–Some people are boys and some are girls. Girls have vulvas and boys have penises.
–Why some people are boys and some people are girls?
–Because we need some to be girls and some to be boys.
–Why we need that?
Uh…

And so forth. This usually continues until I use some phrase with which she is unfamiliar, like “Because that’s the social norm!” (that was about leg shaving) and she has to stop and think about it for a minute. I do try to give her real, comprehensible answers as much as I can, and encourage her inquisitiveness, but it isn’t always easy.

At any rate today’s main topic was about everyone’s equipment. She’s been getting the various elements and purposes of her own personal anatomy straight in her head, and her interest extends to those around her.

–I need to see Loki’s penis some more. Where he put it?
–Well, Loki likes to keep that private. So we don’t look at it a lot. It’s just for him. Just like your vulva is just for you. It’s private.
–It’s private, why?

She sees her father and me naked a fair amount; typically after we swim in the ocean, or at any rate wear our bathing suits at the beach (which, yes, the week before Halloween we were able to do, despite my recent dithering about The End of Summer for All Eternity), we all shower together. She has no interest in her father’s personal area except insofar as it relates to his getting to stand to pee, which she considers the height of awesomeness, and is something she frequently mimics. “I Little Daddy! I pee pee standing up!”

And tonight was her pièce de résistance. She managed to straddle her little potty, facing the wall, and really and truly pee standing up like daddy. I’ve never seen such joy. We were very proud. What a talented and curious little girl!

I’m not a woman, and she’s not my daughter

Three years in and I’m as yet unable to refer to Little Girl as my daughter. I can say, “my kid,” “my little girl,” or her name, but absolutely not “my daughter.” I am somewhat taken aback when other people call her my daughter. Of course she is, but…do they have to use that word?

And in what I think is the same vein, it weirds me out if someone refers to me as a woman. Sure, I’m female, but “lady” or “[Little Girl's name]’s mommy” or [Husband's name]’s wife” or my name are all much less discomfiting. Actually the wife thing may be a little alarming, too. Can I just be me?

Normally with a post like this I’d do some self-analysis and come to some conclusions, but really I can’t quite figure out why I have aversions to these perfectly common, perfectly accurate terms. And it’s not really a problem, just a quirk. I don’t, like, correct people who use them. But I wonder. Are the words perhaps too generic for me? Too grown-up? Threatening in some way? Do they refer to someone else in my head? Am I having identity problems? Am I a goofball?

Cloth-diapering my three-year-old

First, why is my three-year-old being diapered at all? Why is she not potty-trained?

Why indeed. I don’t know. She was, kinda, to the point where we would go out for the day with her in panties and me with no spare clothes, and now she isn’t. I assume one day she will be again. In the past I was concerned to see young people who could correctly use adverbials and irregular past tense verbs who nonetheless were unable to control their bowels, but now that I have such a person in my house, I’m all “eh” about it. I mean, I’d like her to use the potty at all times for all functions, but she does not. We’ve only recently solved her anal retentiveness (or Miralax did anyway), and step one of using being a potty user is wanting to allow waste to leave from you in the first place, so we’re giving her some time before we start on step two.

Anyway so she’s still in diapers, at least some of the time. When she was half a year old I started cloth diapering her, and she is still wearing the size medium Fuzzi Bunz I bought used back then (we have some that are other brands that don’t work well anymore. Actually I kind of hate them by this point.) Boy are they starting to look ratty. We’ve never had to size up–she’s not even on the largest settings (they’re adjustable). The hemp inserts are all falling apart, and mostly we rely on auto shop microfiber towels to stuff the diapers, which we only do at night, since she pees in the potty during the day. Of course, she’s now capable of making so much pee that she often wakes up all soaked, and that’s unpleasant.

Huh, this isn’t all that interesting a topic after all. In summary, my three-year-old has a small tushie and has been wearing the same 20 or so diapers for nearly the last three years. I guess your take-home message can be: petite children are more economical.

I hate cold.

Six days ago we were swimming in the ocean and making sand castles in our bathing suits under a nice, warm sun. I don’t know what the hell happened but it’s totally freezing now. Hot weather doesn’t bother me at all–100 degrees? Great! No need to wear clothes!–but anything under 70 is unacceptable and we are already 20 degrees below that and I am unbearably cold. (Sweden, here I come!)

I’m pretty mopey about it. It feels not just like the end of this summer, but the end of any kind of summer for the rest of my life (don’t make fun of my melodrama). Even in July in Sweden you might need a jacket. Normally I like fall–my birthday, scarves, the candy, corduroys–but since the weather in Sweden is, in some ways, perpetually fall, at least Georgia-style, I’m not interested in experiencing it in advance. As though I had a choice. I’m pretty, disproportionately, I suppose, upset about the turn in the weather.

But I reluctantly put up the Halloween decorations and we carved a pumpkin and ate the seeds and that was nice so I guess I’m finally giving in and accepting that summer is gone and I’ll just have to be cold forever. There’s still fun stuff to do, I guess. Like washed-up logs to jump over and dead baby sharks–with teeth!–to poke at with sticks. It’s not all bad. Sigh. Sucks though. Least it’s not snowing, like it is in Sweden already.

Other people’s children

In my ESL class I’ve got a handful of au pairs from Europe and Latin America. I have to keep myself from pestering them with questions about their jobs because when they do share tidbits about lives with their host families it is beyond interesting to me–in fact, it’s downright titillating. It’s like some real-life Nanny Diaries, complete with distant, wealthy, indulgent parents (who have vacation homes just one hour from their regular homes!) with cross-cultural highlights and domestic service worker abuse. Plus it’s absolutely surreal when we can compare notes about the weird children’s librarian in the area who does storytime (since he just transferred from the library they go to to the one we do).

Tonight they were venting about how hard it is to have to work when they’re sick. What pricked my ears is that what they were calling work–taking care of little kids–is what I do for, well, definitely not work; actually, for me, my basically full-time mothering is pretty fun, and I certainly don’t get paid. It’s neither entertainment nor occupation. It’s just my life. It’s my default. And since it’s all under my control, if I’m sick, I can let Little Girl watch her favorite video, a Swedish thing about a cow and a crow that I imagine she would be happy to watch all her waking hours, for indeed all those waking hours, if I feel like it. I make a million little decisions all on my own every day about how to raise my little girl, and it’s all up to me.

But not for the au pairs. The parents, their employers, have decided, say, the kids can only 30 minutes a day, and since these women (really they’re all in their late teens, so I’m gonna have to change that to girls) have all the responsibilities of mothering and none of the agency, for often twelve hours a day, they have to work. They can’t have a lazy sick day. They can’t take off, because then who would watch the kids? Certainly the employers are too important to miss work. And the au pairs can’t decide how to discipline the kids. They can’t decide what activities they want to take the kids to. They put the kids to bed, even if the parents are there. And then they’re supposed to shut their caregiving selves off and sit quietly until their rooms until it’s time to make breakfast.

Once upon a time I was a nanny, though I didn’t live there, and I recall acutely the trapped, impotent feeling of waiting for parents late to arrive home from work. It felt so unfair when it turned out they’d just been out shopping, like they were using my time, even if it was compensated, against my will and contrary to our agreement. There were schedules that weren’t mine to follow, norms to uphold that went against my grain (like letting the baby cry herself to sleep). I felt guilty taking the kiddos to do the errands I had to that could only happen during the day, like the DMV. Whenever I looked at my old driver’s license pic I recalled, down out of the frame, that my hands were each gripped by a smaller one.

They had fun that day, playing I Spy in line, but they weren’t my kids. Perhaps their mother would have preferred that precious day of growing up to have been spent some other way. With Little Girl it’s completely automatic, not to say unavoidable, that she goes everywhere with me, and I think it’s good for her to participate in society along with me. But then she’s mine, and I’m her social director, and I love that our lives are entirely enmeshed, and I’m there alongside her taking in her experiences and helping her to understand them. No one else would or could, no matter how long the instruction sheet, replicate that with her. Certainly no one to whom it was just work, something they only have to do, not get to do.

I’ve yet to hear a caring word about their charges from the au pairs, or something that even individualizes the kids they’re with so many hours. The events of their daily lives are so alike to mine and yet their motivation and enjoyment so different, it’s like some skewed mirror that reflects back only a faint and colorless outline of my life with Little Girl. I guess my take-home message really shouldn’t be “non-parental childcare is bad” but rather “these au pairs and/or their situations are kind of shitty.” Still, learning how those girls feel about caring for other people’s children makes me so grateful I’m the one caring for mine.