1m2aSandbox

Having been deprived of her beloved
playground for over a week now, Maddie’s had a bad case of
cabin fever. Her naps have been nonexistent and she spends a lot of
time with her sad little face pressed up against the window. So
yesterday when the weather finally warmed up and the winds backed
off, we were out the door faster than you can say Show Me Your
Belly Button.


With the temperature a balmy 30 degrees, we almost wore shorts but
decided against it. We did enjoy the relative warmth, though, as we
strolled along our street, happy the sidewalks were shoveled and
the melting ice was piled on the sides. We had snacks in the
stroller and were headed to the park – what could go wrong?


And then we hit our first street corner. Of course. Corner
snow.

My husband recently found out that
he’s losing his job as his entire New York office gets shut
down. We’ve spent the past two weeks coming to terms with
this white elephant of uncertainty in our lives, trying to figure
out how we’re going to get ready for a new baby in the midst
of such upheaval.


It’s obviously been a lot for us to process, since it’s
taken me two weeks to get to a point where I can write about it.
Brian’s looking for work wherever he can find it, and the
very real possibility exists that it ain’t in New York. So as
if financial uncertainty and losing our corporate health care
weren’t enough, now we’re faced with the idea of
selling, buying, packing and unpacking a house with a newborn. The
sheer volume of details overwhelms me.


And that, of course, is setting aside the emotional impact of all
this. I’ve lived in New York for 12 years now and love it
fiercely, warts and all. At the same time, we know it’s
nearly impossible to raise a child easily in New York without a
pretty hefty amount of cash, so we’ve always had this
nebulous idea of moving out of the city at some point. Just not
fresh from the delivery room.

(Warning: insanely cute video coming up.)


Ok, so perhaps she’s not the next American Idol
– after all, they’ve got an age minimum of 16, and
that’s years, not months.


And I promised myself that I’d never be a pushy stage mom, no
matter how incredibly and clearly talented my daughter might be.


But listen, I can’t fight it if it’s her destiny. My
child is barely 20 months old and walks around singing a half dozen
of her favorite songs. Upon waking in her crib after a nap,
she’ll entertain herself with endless rounds of “Row,
Row, Row Your Boat” or her new favorite, “Head and
Shoulders, Knees and Toes”. She’s got her favorite tape
of church songs we sing and will happily sing along with a few of
the simpler ones.

Maddie’s had a couple of bad colds
this winter, and one of the worst side effects for her is the
stuffy head while she sleeps. A couple times she’s been so
congested she can’t sleep more than half an hour: after maybe
30 minutes of lying down, she’d wake up crying, needing to
get up and let the old sinuses drain for a bit. Lie back down,
sleep some more, wake up crying, and so forth.


In an attempt to help her (and us) sleep better, we elevated the
head of her crib by sticking a pillow underneath that end of her
mattress. This helped a bit, but wasn’t a perfect solution
since she had a tendency to slide towards the bottom of the crib
and seemed, in fact, a bit afraid of her off-kilter world.

Maddie’s got a bit of a thing for
firemen and fire trucks. Living in New York, it’s hard not to
see a lot of emergency vehicles, and living a couple blocks from a
fire station we see more than our fair share of them. We often see
a fire truck parked outside the local grocery store on our way to
the park, or hear one whizzing on its way to a fire. So my
daughter’s become immune to the noise and the scare factor,
and we’ve even taught her to hear a siren and say,
“Fire truck! Going to help people!”


In fact, her dog-sensitive ears now perk up at any sound of a
siren, and she wants to run to the window and look for the fire
truck. Whenever we see the boys on the street, she waves at them
and is ecstatic if they return her wave. She thinks they’re
very cool.


So the other day when we had a fire truck pull up right in front of
our house, Maddie thought she’d died and gone to heaven.
Apparently someone a couple doors down needed medical care, so two
ambulances parked at that address and the fire truck – the
backup medics, I guess – idled in front of our picture
window.

A reader wrote to me recently asking for
advice on this one question:


What do you do when you and a good friend with babies the same age
as yours have differing ideas on child-raising? Specifically, on
when it’s ok to take a sick child into a social situation?


This mommy is having a frustrating time finding a way to stay
involved in play groups and mommy circles, since her friend insists
on bringing her sick child to every meeting. She’s been
making polite excuses for missing various functions, but knows it
will soon need to be decided on more concretely. And before you
ask, yes, she’s tried direct confrontation; there’ve
been days when the two of them have had a play date set up, the
other mommy’s called and informed my reader that her
baby’s sick, my reader’s asked her not to come, and she
shows up anyway.


So this poor girlfriend wrote asking for advice on how to handle
the whole thing. Not wanting to simply throw my opinion in her
face, I sent the question out to my best friends, my Mommy Focus
Group, to get their responses.


The overwhelming response? Glad we’re not in her shoes.

When Maddie was only a couple weeks old,
our friends Matt and Sandra came by for a visit/pep talk. They
brought their son Stephen, who is a year older than Maddie. An
active then-one-year-old, Stephen politely showed us all the areas
of our house which were not yet baby-proofed. Matt wrestled our
television remote away from Stephen and stowed it safely on top of
our entertainment center. Ten minutes later, Stephen was pointing,
clearly asking for the remote again.


“He’s just gotten the object permanence thing,”
Matt explained. I watched, awestruck at the small body that could
remember things ten minutes after they happened. I looked at my
newborn, who couldn’t remember where she’d left her
fist, and longed for the day when she’d have the ability to
remember stuff like that (and, of course, shower thanks on me for
all those remembered favors.)


I know, careful what you wish for.