Citizen Baby

A hop, skip, and jump over the pond

B.E. (Before E), John and I took advantage of those super last minute airfares to places like London, Paris and Prague somewhat regularly -- like maybe twice a year. It was easy to pack a bag for a long weekend, leave at 7 p.m. on a Thursday or Friday, and arrive at our destination early in the morning. We didn't have an eating and sleeping schedule that needed to be worked around, or anything other than ourselves to deal with.

Since E was born, we've really limited how much we travel, particularly by airplane. We've only been to Houston to visit my family once, when E was 9 months old and he was great on the flight. But that's our only time on a plane with E. We did a crazy thing and drove 14 hours over two days to Indiana to visit John's mom, and that trip ended up going amazingly well. The trip by plane takes about 14 hours, too, so I preferred breaking it up into two days and having control over the situation by being in the car.

The reason for my hesitation to fly is stupid. It all boils down to my fear that E will freak out and the people around us will hate us. This stems from my pre-baby days when I really didn't like kids very much (confession: it still takes a lot for me to like a kid who isn't mine, but I'm definitely more tolerant of kids in general). Now, I'd like to tell my old self to just chill the hell out. I don't expect everyone to want to have kids or to like kids, nor to like my kid. That's fine. But kids are a fact of life, and kids have to travel sometimes. They just do. And sometimes it's not even that they HAVE to travel, but just that the parents WANT to travel, and that's ok too, damnit.

And lately John and I have been missing our fun, spontaneous trips. We regularly receive emails for really good fares on trips to places we would love to go, so we finally decided just to get E a passport and to just take the plunge. So this weekend we're taking a somewhat secret trip to Paris. Secret because we are not telling our families we are choosing to fly to Paris over visiting them. We'll get to them eventually...

We got a great deal on airfare, and so we've decided to splurge a bit and stay at a rather nice hotel in a great area. I'm excited and can't wait to take E to the Rodin Museum (he loves "statues") and to just walk all over. We used to just spend a lot of time sitting in cafes reading and watching, but I don't think that will work out this time, so we will be true tourists.

And E may soon be getting additional stamps on his passport because John was invited to give a talk at a conference in Germany in July, and we are thinking of going with him. But we'll first see how this weekend's two almost-7 hour flights, and the accompanying jet lag, go...

(Yes, I know I never write here any more. But I need a place to write these thoughts down.)

E and I just dropped my little sister off at the airport after a 6 day visit. It was pleasant and I always enjoy seeing E with my family. But the visit, for various reasons, very much emphasized the distance, both literally and figuratively, between me and my family.

My sister and I couldn't possibly have more different relationships with my parents. First of all, our dad is technically my step-dad, even though I think of him as my father both because my biological father was MIA from early on and because he's been in the picture since I was 3. Also, my mom got pregnant with me when she was 16, and I was born a month after she turned 17. Teens don't really make the best parents. She had to grow up fast, and ended up marrying my step-father who is 10 years older than she is, and then my sister was born was she was 24. Needless to say, she was SO much better at being a mom to my sister than she was to me, and I was not unaware of the differences.

I really think she was a pretty lousy mom to me. I won't get into much detail, but there was a lot of yelling and threatening and more than enough hitting. She often reminded me that I made her life hard (yep, it was all my fault she didn't get to go to college), and I realized early in high school that she was envious of any success that I had. It went so far that she tried to sabotage my acceptance to my college of choice.

It took years. YEARS. for me to get over all of that. And by YEARS, I mean years of therapy. Years of hating myself. Years of never feeling like anything I did was worthwhile. And then finally coming to terms with the fact that really none of it matters any more. That I am the one with power over my feelings and my actions and my deeds. Yes, a lot of that stuff affected the way my early adult life would be, but I've been on my own long enough, have made enough of my own decisions (good and bad), and have put enough distance and time between us that she can not have any power over me. And finally coming to that realization was completely life changing. I've been pretty satisfied and content with my life ever since.

That realization also allowed me to see that she was also a different person and allowed me to have a relationship with her. A good relationship. I like being around her, even. I have not forgotten nor forgiven the misery of my childhood, but I've moved on, and that has allowed me to recognize what a good grandmother she is to my son. And that contributes to my feeling of having a satisfactory life.

My sister had a very different mother from the one I had. She did not feel controlled or hated or unwanted. She felt nothing but loved and respected. So while I sought out every bit of independence I could and moved away as soon as possible, my sister lived with our parents through college and after. She now lives in a house with her fiance less than 10 minutes away. Her fiance is best friends with my parents' neighbors and they see each other ALL THE TIME. My sister is happy with this situation, and I am happy living 2000 miles away.

The physical distance has allowed the emotional distance I established long ago to remain intact. I made the choice to create those distances and it has never bothered me. Until now. My sister talked a lot about her and her fiance's friends' son who is 3 months older than E. This kid spends a lot of time around my parents, and my parents rave on and on about how great this kid is. I think that's nice, and I know the distance from their own grandson has been hard on them, so I'm glad they are around a similarly aged kid that they like. But as I listened to all these stories about this kid, I realized they have a closer relationship with him than they do with E. And that made me realize just how much closer emotionally they will be to my sister's kids than they will be to E, no matter how many video chats we do or how often we talk to them on the phone. It's just a fact. It bothers me because I worry about how E will feel in the future when we go to visit his grandparents and HE sees the differences in the relationships his cousins have with his grandparents.

Maybe I'm more concerned about this because it brings up the horrible way I felt all those years witnessing the differences between my and my sister's relationship with our parents. Maybe E won't notice at all, or won't care at all. Maybe as long as we give him all the love that we have to give him, he will just roll with the situation and not worry about it.

But right now J and I are in the process of making some changes to our wills, and we've been meaning to revisit the guardianship issue. We currently have assigned very good friends who have a child close to E's age, and who were very touched when we asked them for permission to name them as E's guardians. But since I've seen how great my parents are with E, and since realizing they will most likely NOT treat him the way I was treated growing up, J and I came to the conclusion that they would be the people in our lives who would love him the most, and ultimately that is what is most important when it comes to someone raising our kid if we were to both die. It even trumps the fact that E would grow up in a podunk Texas town.

But now I'm feeling conflicted about making the change. If the unthinkable were to happen and E had to move in with his grandparents, would he grow up feeling "less than" his cousins in the same way I always felt "less than" my sister? Am I just putting my own issues into this equation?

The fact is, no one will raise E the way J and I strive to raise him. No one else will share our exact same philosophy on discipline, or encourage him to take the same kind of classes we will, or dress him the way we do, or do anything the same as we will. Really, though, none of that stuff matters. What does matter, and what I can't stop thinking about, is that no one will love him the same. And I just can't accept that, and it is paralyzing me from being able to make a rational decision.

We've been living in the new house for just over three weeks now, and although we are having some trouble settling in, thanks mostly to our decision to delead the place, we are happy we bought this house. I think we'll finally start to love the house in about another month or so, once all of the contractors have left and we've returned from the vacation being forced upon us and I'm not mopping the floors every other day (and yes, I know I am neurotic since the lead dust tests all came back negative, so I'm really just mopping up nonexistent lead dust. But, man! our floors are CLEAN these days!). I look forward to that.

But we think we made the right choice in finally deciding to buy in Boston. Our mortgage is actually less than we were paying for rent at the beach house we lived in for the past 8 months, and way less than what we were paying for our place in Boston before that. And there are the tax incentives, which will only pull me even further away from my early-20-something desire of never having to use any form other than the 1040EZ, but hey, I've been a long way from that dream for some time now. And we actually OWN this place, which means we can do whatever we want to it. Although that freedom of ownership is a double edged sword, as we are also responsible for fixing EVERYTHING ourselves (or at least hiring people to fix it for us). And this IS an old house, so there is plenty that needs fixing. But it's the oldness of the house that provides it with the character we like so much.

And did I mention it's a SINGLE FAMILY HOME? That means we aren't sharing walls with a 22 year old who doesn't give a second thought to cranking up the volume of his home theater system at 3 a.m. And it means we can listen to our OWN stuff as loud as we want, and I don't have to freak out about Ezra disturbing the neighbors with his loud, stuttering toddler gait. Or his occasional tantrums. Not only that, but it's a single family house right in the city! Only one block away from the T! Once again, most of the things we need are within walking distance, or at least a short T ride. But despite it's proximity to all the action, our house is located on a quiet, dead-end side street. It's the situation I'd never allowed myself to hope for because I did not think it existed in our price range.

And despite our minor irritations with the house, all is made up for by the fact the we LOVE our neighborhood. We have met so many very cool, interesting people (lots of them parents) in the short time we've been here. People who have chosen to live their lives slightly (or extremely) more alternatively, or creatively, or selflessly. I thrive on being surrounded by these kinds of people, it makes ME feel more alternative/creative/selfless. I feel more alive and interested in the world around me, and feel a need to do something to contribute. Living here, I am reminded of the year I lived in NY, when I somehow managed to surround myself by people living life in this way, and I felt full of vitality and inspiration. It's a deliciously addictive way to feel.

And in this neighborhood, on every block there is an agency that does something that attempts to make this world better. On the corner of our street is the Somali Development Center. A little further up the street is the Haymarket People's Fund. It goes on and on. And the people of this neighborhood are devoted to making it a better place to live, by keeping out national chain stores and restaurants, coming to plant a tree or a vegetable garden in your yard, having art classes for children and adults, providing clean and safe playgrounds for kids, having a very active neighborhood council, and holding planning meetings to figure out how to improve the neighborhood without gentrification that prices people out.

There are some tough areas in this neighborhood, and it takes dedication to work on improving them. Several months ago I promised myself I would get involved in some kind of community building, because I want to do everything I can to make sure Ezra grows up in a strong community that not only provides him with fun and safe things to do, but also provides all the neighborhood's kids with opportunities to improve their lives and add some beauty to their childhoods. Living here it is impossible to ignore that promise I made. And that's a good thing.

So yeah, we did good buying this house in this neighborhood.

Last Sunday, the New York Times Magazine had a six page spread of photos taken by the photographer Paul Fusco on June 8, 1968, from the funeral train that was carrying Robert F. Kennedy's body from New York to Washington. The photos are hauntingly beautiful and full of emotion that left me with tears in my eyes. James Danziger, owner of the gallery Danziger Projects where the entire collection of photos will be on display briefly this month, writes in his blog:

The photographer Paul Fusco had been assigned the story by LOOK Magazine and on what turned out to be an unusually hot Saturday, close to a million people – black and white, rich and poor, young and old, singly and in groups - spontaneously came out to pay their respects to the man who had inspired so many Americans.

The blurriness of many of the photos makes them feel dream-like and fleeting, underscoring the poignancy of that moment in history when all of the hope and promise for a better future RFK brought to the American people was dissolved in a single moment of violence.

You can see some of them for yourself online by clicking here.

Existential Dread

This documentary about Philip Glass actually looks really good and like it might even be fun. The only problem is that I have a terrible time staying awake while listening to Glass' music. I've attended three of his performances and have fallen asleep during all three. I have never fallen asleep during any other live performance I was attending. It's got to be the repetitiveness of his music. So maybe I'll just have to wait for it to come out on DVD and then just block off several nights so I can get through the whole movie.

John and I got married with the intention of not having any children, but agreeing to revisit the issue after five years. Just before we hit the half-decade marker, we revisited it one evening when I came home and asked him, "What do you think about having a baby?" Turns out he'd been giving it some thought even longer than I had.

So we did. But sometimes I allow my imagination to follow along the path not taken -- the one where we stuck to our guns and remained childless. I imagine our life would be very much the same as it was before we had a baby. Lots of disposable income from both of us working full time. Martinis over long, late-afternoon Saturday lunches. Weekends filled with nothing but a stack of DVDs, the NY Times, and lots of take out. Late nights out followed by late mornings sleeping in. Frequent weekend trips to wherever we could get a cheap fare.

In short, we would be incredibly happy and satisfied with our life together. We would feel no regrets and our life would be wonderful.

But I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know what it is like to love someone as intensely as I love Ezra. Because, even though everyone told me about the amazing love a parent feels for their child, I never believed a child would be anything other than a burden to me. And I never imagined I would love this little person with such an overwhelming, all encompassing power that sometimes I think I am going to splinter into a million little pieces from the sheer force of that intensity inside of me.

So maybe there are days when I walk around not realizing I have a mix of chewed up graham cracker and saliva dried on the shoulder of my shirt. And we have to be more careful about how we spend money. And I will probably not get to sleep later than 7 a.m. for at least 11 more years. And yes, a lot of the time he is something of a burden. But I am so so so glad we changed our minds because Ezra is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and to me and John. He is a projection of our love, tangible evidence of something pure and beautiful. And he is just amazing.

There is nothing I can write that is not a cliche, and nothing I write would convince the 28 year old me that reproducing would be this rewarding or that it would actually be galvanizing. But it is all of that and so much more.

From what I can tell so far, there are a few good things about owning a house.

1. It is a good investment. We can't deny that any longer -- we ran the numbers and considering our mortgage payment will likely be the same or less than what we pay for rent, plus we'll get the tax credit, it's the best thing to do, even if the value of the house stagnates (which is unlikely over 5 or more years). Even with ALL the money we'll have to pay for upkeep and repairs. We'll still come out WAY ahead. Drats!

2. We can do whatever we want. We can add a half bath, paint the living room black, tear down walls, whatever. (Of course, we have to PAY for everything...)

3. We won't have to lie to anyone about how many cats we have.

But the rest of it? It sucks.

I keep asking myself if we are really ready for this, especially owning an older house. After our inspection on Tuesday, I was looking over the report, and I can say with certainty that there is no way I would ever know 3/4 of those things would actually be problems! There is some pooling of water near the basement window when it rains. Assuming I even noticed something like that I would just assume it would drain eventually. But apparently it can cause the whole house to fall down, or something like that. Who knew?? I sure as hell didn't!

But I guess we'll learn. Or else our house will fall down.

Regardless, it looks like we are moving forward. There were a few somewhat big surprises that came up during the inspection, while things we thought would be problems, like the roof, aren't. At least not yet. So our realtor (who I think is just fabulous because she does SO MUCH WORK and never appears to ever ever sleep judging from the emails I get from her at midnight, then at 6 a.m.) is negotiating with the seller over these things. We're pretty sure the seller won't want to make the repairs, so we're angling for a price reduction or a rebate at closing. If all goes well, we'll hand over a huge check next Thursday (our down payment), then we'll go around begging for a huge amount of money. It just keeps getting better and better!

So most of the time I'm freaked out. I find myself laying awake at night worrying about a billion house-buying related things. But I can not deny my underlying feeling of excitement. Even though there was that terrifying article in the Boston Globe about how people who make $300,000 and have excellent credit can't get mortgages, I feel like this could really happen. And that makes me happy. Because despite the headache that comes with owning an old house, the three things I listed at the beginning of this post really do overshadow all of that. At least that's how I feel right now. Check back with me in a year!

If

We put an offer in on a house last night. Last night I did not sleep very well. Numbers swam around in my head as I tried to figure out from which accounts to pull together our down payment, how much more we should offer if they don't accept this offer, how much faster we would build up equity if we did a 15 year instead of a 30 year, how I'm now going to pay for my LASIK surgery...

But in between those ugly financial thoughts I also allowed some other, more pleasant, considerations. Like where we would put all of our book shelves, what color we would paint the living room, the dining room, the bedrooms, and which room would be Ezra's playroom. And images of Ezra running up the street to the totally awesome playground or learning to ride his bike on the dead-end street punctuated those thoughts.

So IF our offer is accepted, and IF we actually manage to pull together the financing, and IF the crazy old lady who is selling the house (who did not LIKE our bank so wanted us to get another pre-approval from a different bank at 10:00 at night) doesn't pull any surprises at the closing, well, maybe those nice thoughts will come to fruition. If if if if if.

I'm SO so so excited and SO SO SO terrified and I think my head is just going to explode from all of it!

Hmmm... an ode to my mom?

My mom told me recently that some of the things I've posted about my attempts to be more environmentally conscious on our "family" blog have really made her think and act differently. I don't think anything (other than Ezra) has made me feel so good recently. If I can make my MOM think differently, I must be doing something right! Of course she still lives in a neighborhood that requires the FIRST floor of any home being built to be AT LEAST 2800 square feet. Um, can you say McMansion? Does one couple really need four bedrooms, a "media" room, a "billiards" room, and a study, in addition to all of the regular rooms that come with a typical large house ? But she did choose to buy a regular (luxury) sedan rather than the SUV she really wanted, and she gives me a lot  of the credit for making that choice.

I've actually really come to have a lot of respect for my mom over the last few years. She went from a 17 year old mother who had never left her small upstate NY town, who, when moving to Houston thought for certain life in the big city meant I would be kidnapped, she would be raped, and we would be mugged on a daily basis (except we were moving to the big ol' scary suburbs!) to a woman who has worked her way up to an impressive position in a huge Fortune 100 corporation that requires her to travel all over the world. Whereas she used to think shrimp was a disgusting thing to eat, she has now feasted upon many unusual foods considered delicacies in several Asian countries. And over time I've witnessed her perspective of the world shift from one that was very narrow to one that recognizes and understands that there is a wide variety of "normal" in this world, and that people who do not live the way she does are not always wrong or bad or frightening.

I also love love love the grandmother she is to Ezra. She is amazing with him. She approaches him gently and allows him to warm up to her. She plays with him with the understanding that he is a one year old toddler, not a monkey meant to be trained and used for our amusement. She is fun and enthusiastic with him, and he really responds to her. I love seeing them together and wish they could hang out more often.

It's amazing to me that I feel inspired to write something this glowing about my mother. My childhood, teenage and young adult diaries are filled with page after page of vitriol directed toward her. We so truly did not get along. I never felt like I ever did anything to please or impress her. But I think she finally accepts that I want different things out of life than she does, that I have different ambitions and different ways of doing things. And I think she might even respect that. And maybe I finally respect those things about her.

"And I get to hug him when I do it...

[When I originally published this post over at our family blog, this vintage Sesame Street video about breastfeeding was actually available. Too bad for copyrights, eh? But the title of the post comes from the video.]

I'd always planned to nurse Ezra until he was a year old. The AAP recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and "support for breastfeeding for the first year and beyond as long as mutually desired by mother and child." While I know nursing doesn't work out for all moms and babes or some moms prefer not to nurse, I found for us the reasons supporting breastfeeding to be numerous and compelling. Not to mention The Physicist and I are far too lazy to get up to mix formula in the middle of the night, or to wash all those bottles all the time!

It ended up taking much effort and perseverance for us to get our nursing relationship off the ground, but it has been one of the most worthwhile things I've ever done and the bond Ezra and I have established is simply beyond words. And once we got through that first very difficult month, nursing is an almost effortless practice.

But I always figured I'd start weaning shortly after a year and be completely finished by 15 months. However, as that 12 month marker grows ever closer, the more reluctant I am to start weaning. And the more I read about the benefits of toddler nursing, the more I want to continue. Dealing with fewer colds and other illnesses is only the tip of the iceberg. Nothing else can soothe him the way nursing does when he is upset, calm him when he's angry, comfort him when he's scared, or ease his pain when he is hurting. And I absolutely love our nursing relationship.

So as long as Ezra also continues to enjoy nursing, we will most likely keep it up at least through his second year. The Physicist is a little apprehensive about this decision, as he pictures me nursing Ezra during recess in first grade or before sending him out the door for his first day of high school. He has even threatened to steal off with Ezra to an undisclosed location on his second birthday and not return with him until he is forcibly weaned. While I don't expect to still be nursing when Ezra starts pre-school, I think these kinds of fears are common.

But the fact is, in the coming months solid foods will become more a part of Ezra's diet, and as he becomes a more proficient eater he will need to rely on breast milk less and less for complete nutrition. Eventually, nursing would be a once a day thing, or even once every other day. Perhaps he would only nurse when he was feeling upset in some way. If I go back to work before he starts school, it seems like nursing for a bit at night would be a very nice way to re-connect after being apart all day. And eventually he will decide he doesn't need it anymore, or I will decide it isn't working out for me anymore, and we will stop then. He isn't going to be some kind of weird freak because he nurses until he is 2 or so!

So I thought I would share some breastfeeding links, some related to toddler nursing, some not...

• The benefits of extended breastfeeding
• Is nursing toddlers the "new black?"
• A snarky photo montage toward criticism of public breastfeeding -- you might find this offensive if you find the covers of magazines in the grocery store offensive...
• World Health Organization's breastfeeding info -- they recommend breastfeeding until at least age two.
• Breastfeeding can boost your sex life!!