Politics and Potties

Election season is finally upon us, after about 2 years of hearing about it constantly, and I have to say it looks like a total freakshow. I'm an Obama supporter, as you may have already guessed, and I'm feeling so fervently pro-Democrat this election that I stare into cars with "McCain/Palin" bumperstickers, as if trying to see into the drivers' souls. Or to shake my head disapprovingly at them. I just can't take it anymore! I mean, what is wrong with people in this country that we've elected a total jackass for two consecutive terms and are hearing the Republican message yet again? You know, I think McCain is actually a great candidate for the Republicans. He's sort of this straight-shooting, fiery, all-American guy with this rockin' military record (I mean, could we hear MORE about the POW experience? PLEASE?), and he has seemed, in the past, to genuinely think for himself. But no longer. I see him on the t.v. now and he looks like a worn-out old sack of potatoes with pancake makeup on. He's obviously exhausted from the campaign trail, and I can see that he's caving to the hate and fear-mongering conservative machine. He's sold his soul to Karl Rove et al. And he's got his ridiculous sidekick - an embarrassment to successful women everywhere - in her Naughty Monkey pumps. I do not know what is worse - the cheap shoes and party pony, or the fact that, in last night's interview with Katie Couric, she could not name a single publication she reads regularly. Excuse me? What if this woman became our president? It's not so unlikely, considering the looks of John McCain these days. He seems about to keel over at any moment. She's a terrifying heartbeat away from that, and everyone is so, so proud that the Republicans have a "lady" on the ticket. It's very, very awkward to see McCain and Palin in an interview together - they don't seem to know each other at all, and McCain keeps looking at Palin out of the corner of his eye as if he's afraid she might say something dumb. Guess what? In any case, I'm so watching the VP debate tomorrow night, just as I would watch a live train wreck were that to be televised on primetime.

I must take a break from politics for a while, or I will go nuts. My daughter started her preschool two weeks ago, and she's in heaven there. This year she goes two days a week, and I go with her only one of the days (the other day the other half of the moms go to help out the teacher). Some of the other kids are freaking out that their mommies aren't there certain days, but not my daughter. She's like, Bring it on! She's entered the state that, being my daughter, she will be in for the rest of her life, and that is the "Momentary Pretending to Have a Different Life State." She's like, "La-la-la, I'm a princess, and my dollies are my children, so of course I must put them to bed and I cannot come to dinner right now." Or, "La-la-la, I am a dinosaur in his nest, so this is where I pee instead of the toilet." Or, "That's not my mommy over there - you're my mommy. Can I go to your house and you can fix me a snack?" In my life it's, "La-la-la, since no one saw me eat that half-sheet of brownies, it didn't really happen." Or, "La-la-la, since I am fabulous I MUST have that (insert entirely unaffordable clothing item here), and I of course don't have to worry about how much it costs."

Anyway, Olivia loves school. She has attached herself to the teacher, and makes sure the teacher knows about everything she's doing. She also gets a kick out of the potties at school, and the fact that she can reach the sinks and squirt her own hand soap. Never in my life have I gone through so much hand soap or toilet paper as I have with a pottytraining toddler. These two items are the source of endless fascination for Olivia. Who needs a Teletubbies book or "Everyone Poops" when you've got paper that unrolls forever right next to you? The other thing she is very excited about at school is snacktime. She runs right up to the teacher when we arrive, asking, "Where's my snack?" and is very insistent about it all morning, and when the snack does show up she eats it all up; every . . . last . . . bite. Last year I had to struggle with her to get her to stay on her bottom on her seat and not wander around during snacktime. Not this year, boy. This year she sits right there and puts her napkin in her lap and pours her own water and studies every single cracker and piece of fruit as she consumes them. Then she wants seconds. Sheesh! Everyone else leaves, goes to the other room, music time starts. The mom in charge of snack cleans off all the tables and starts spraying the tables to sanitize them, and there's my daughter, still methodically eating her snack until it's all gone. I want to cheer for her and hold her up for everyone to look at - a shining example of good, healthy eating. But, sadly, no one is there to notice. They've all gone off to sing the "Cuckoo Clock" song.

My baby boy is doing great. He's such a jolly little fellow, really. He just wants to hang out and smile at me and squinch up his big blue eyes. He just seems to beam love and happiness. I really don't know what I did karma-wise to deserve such a peach of a child, but if there's one thing I've learned about happiness and contentment as a parent, it's that these things are always fleeting. I'm sure I'll get mine soon enough with him. He's going to be digging up the gay guys' gorgeous landscaping next door with his shovels and dump trucks when he's three, or smoking pot and running around with the class ho in middle school - just you wait. He turned 6 months old a couple of weeks ago, and I started feeding him "real" food. He can't seem to get enough of it, and squawks now if not invited to sit up at the table with us and be a part of things.

I think every day about whether I want to have another baby. I know, I know - it's crazy, it's too soon to worry about that. But I am a planner, and I'm somewhat perplexed that I'm not completely decided about this issue and planning my life around it. Aside from the fact that I don't know if I could mentally or physically handle a third child, I'm obsessed with the idea of having to get a mini-van. This seems like it would be the absolute end of any semblance of a stylish existence I may still cling to. But it also would be kind of awesome. Here's the thing; if I could just have a mini-van, but I wouldn't ever have to look at it from the outside - like, I would be somehow just beamed into the inside of it and settled all comfortably into my seat, I could totally rock the mini-van. Because I think the inside experience of a mini-van is exceptional. It's like riding around on a big comfy couch. And now you can get the mini-vans with DVD players and giant built-in coolers. Almost like you don't even need to leave your living room. But I just can't stand the way mini-vans look from the outside. Even in black. They just seem to scream, "I've got a big fat ass, and I don't care!" There are no chic mini-vans. But I continue my search . . .

Pickling

I've been gone - off the radar - for almost a week now. My apologies. I've been mired in the swamps of nausea and exhaustion. I've been living on small pieces of cheese and saltine crackers, watermelon and ginger ale. It's been hard to imagine getting back to normal, and I've been getting a little freaked out at it all. I also went to Portland to visit my family while my husband went to eastern Washington on a fishing trip. A lot has been going on.

I went to the doctor on Friday for a checkup/ultrasound and to hand over some more blood, and they told me that my due date is March 20th, which puts me at about 8 weeks along tomorrow. Soooo, another couple of weeks of this feeling crappy crap. I've had enough. It was heartening to see the baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound, though. I remember that my daughter's heartbeat was very fast, and my mom and all those women my mom's age told me that meant I was having a girl. But this heartbeat didn't look quite so fast, so I can't help but to think that maybe I'll have a boy. That and this yucky morning sickness, which I don't ever remember having with my daughter. I feel like I've been just sitting around this time, watching my daughter play, with minimal movement. I feel like she must be so disgusted with me after a while, saying "No-no!" and "Not for babies!" from my perch on the couch. I am disgusted with me, that's for sure. She is such a sweet little girl, though - so patient and coming over to me to say "Kiss!" and to pat me on the back every so often. What a peach.

This morning when I went to use the toilet and she went over to her little potty, I told her she was going to try and go potty like a big girl today. I took off her pants and her diaper, and sat her on her plastic pot, but she kept getting up and walking around. I think she understood that I was asking her to produce, but I'm not sure the message got across that she needed to aim her production at the potty. Finally she walked over to the corner and peed standing up and said, "Mama, potty!" She was very proud of herself, and I praised her, but then I took her hand and tried to lead her mid-pee to sit on her potty. She managed to get one drop in the pot, so I would say that she's officially christened it. I am very proud of her. I probably should do some reading on the topic of potty-training before I go whole-hog with her, but I would say that was a very successful introduction.

What else? Speaking of whole-hog, I attempted to make pickles this weekend at my parents' house. I went with my mom to Sauvie Island, to a farm stand, and bought a bunch of pickling cucumbers and jars and vinegar and spices, and got started on my project on Sunday. My sister took the baby to the children's museum, so I had a few hours to myself. Let me just say that, as with every home-made item, there is an awful lot of prep time compared to the actual time of completing the task called pickling. You have to wash and dry all the jars, screw-tops, and lids. Then you have to wash all of the cucumbers really well (and I had 20 lbs.!). Then you have to set up all of your ingredients and set out like four pots with boiling water and your vinegar solution. Then you have to sanitize each jar by dipping it into boiling water (oh - and don't forget the tricky task of getting the jars back out again without cooking your hands!). And THEN you can pack the pickles and spices and pour the solution over them and screw the tops on and put them back in the boiling water to get the lids to seal. Whew! A lot of work for about 18 jars of pickles. And I have this fear that none of them sealed right so they're all going to go bad. We'll see - I'll let you know. It did feel really good, though, to start a big project like this and see it through to its completion.

I also saw my best girlfriend from high school this weekend. She has moved back to Portland from doing her OB/Gyn residency at Duke, and now has a 3-year fellowship at OHSU. What a smarty-pants. She's getting married to her long-time boyfriend this month, and she's anxious to get going on starting a family herself. It was so nice to see her - she's one of those friends where I can go months or even a year or so without seeing her, and then I see her again and we just catch right back up. There's never any awkwardness, and she and I share the same principles of etiquette. That is to say, we are considerate of one another's needs and situations, and we don't say rude things to one another - amazing! We went out to dinner and dessert and the food tasted wonderful and I didn't feel sick once - Hallelujah! But she did say to me something that has been on my mind since I saw her. She said, "So, are you going to come back to Portland ever?" And I wasn't sure what to say. And it made me feel sad. You see, I'm still at that stage here in Seattle where I love living here, and I love the friends we have made and the life we've built for our family, but if the opportunity presented itself and the cards were right, I'd move back there in a heartbeat. You bet your boots. Because that's where I'm FROM. I LIVE in Seattle, but I'm FROM Portland, and my struggle thus far has been to create more of an identity for myself in Seattle. I suppose it will just take time, blah blah blah. It may also take getting a job outside of taking care of my daughter, eventually, or doing something where I am having an impact on a community greater than my household. I want to love Seattle in the same way I love Portland, but I'm not quite there yet. I love various people in Seattle, but the city itself is still fairly foreign to me and holds little interest right now, aside from child-friendly activities and the occasional need for a good restaurant for a date with my husband. In Portland I have a whole city that I love - every last pocket - as well as the people (including my own family and a couple of childhood friends) who I love there. Anyway, it's still a challenge.

We saw "Young Frankenstein" last night. It was very good, although quite long and my husband and I kept getting sleepy. We are such old people now! Megan Mulally was hilarious in it, as was the guy who played Young Frankenstein himself. As always, it was very fun to go out and share an evening of adult activities. As parents we need to keep reminding ourselves that this is key to self-preservation and the preservation of our romantic relationships. Amen.

Blech

Okay, maybe this early pregnancy not-feeling-so-hot thing was not just a passing thing, and I am not actually a pregnancy goddess, immune to bouts of nausea and gas and general grossness. I feel yucky again today. All I want to do is sit around and drink Sprite with ice. My sister is visiting and we went to Kokoras Grill for dinner (so good!) and all I could do was pick at my salad and try not to look at the ceiling fans for fear of getting dizzy and passing out.

It could have been the Nordstrom sale that did me in, too. I am a bit ashamed to say that I really hardly ever go downtown, so when I venture off of my peninsula for an event so massive as the Anniversary Sale at the flagship store, it is almost too much. Almost. Of course it was an absolute zoo. The women's shoe department looked like a war zone, people were running here and there and up and down the escalators with random clothing and accessory items. I took a number in the kids' shoes department, and waited fifteen minutes for the saleslady to even tell me that they didn't have my daughter's size in the shoe I wanted to get for her. But you know what? I loved every minute of it. I stood there in that great mob and my heart was beating hard and I grabbed at a green Juicy Couture track suit just because everyone else was and held it up to myself for a moment, and my daughter was at the sitter's so I could just look and look and hold pieces of clothing together and see if they made sense, and just enjoy shopping with all of the other frenzied shoppers.

I didn't buy shoes for myself somehow because I am still having this shoe dilemma where I can't seem to find shoes that are actually comfortable that make me look cute and not momsie or like some lady with a walking stick out on her Elder Hostel trek through Turkey. I need help! Flats seem ridiculous to me because I am short, and because all of my jeans are hemmed to be worn with a shoe with a heel. I know that the real fashion mavens have their jeans hemmed to different lengths to go with their various shoe heights, but I simply cannot justify this as a stay-at-home mom. I don't really wear high, high heels anymore, at least not on a daily basis. I think the answer is going to lie in some kind of wedge-heeled shoe, but one that is so comfortable I can wear it all day and not have to think about it. I continue to search.

I didn't actually buy a thing for myself today, unless you'd count the little white kimono outfit I picked up in the children's department today, size 6 months, with a white velvet bow. I'm not so sure this time that I will have a girl, but I wanted to honor the little one growing inside of me with a special gift. If I have a boy I'll take it back and find something else, of course. I think for me it is a token to hold onto through this pregnancy, and a way to remember that this child is its own miracle, deserving of its own recognition and anticipation.

Pregnant

Last week Wednesday I found out I was pregnant. Apparently, I'm about six weeks along now, and the embryo (or is it called a "fetus" at this point? I forget) is supposedly about the size of a peppercorn. I'm not exactly sure how far along, as my cycle's been all out of whack for a few months, so they have estimated from a blood test they took last week. Thank you, phlebotomist, for the lovely brown bruise I'm now sporting on my left arm.

I've had few symptoms, except for a monster headache that started about Sunday evening and stayed with me until Wednesday. Oh yes. I used to really be the Headache Queen - like get these horrible hormonal/migraine headaches that took over my entire body and would cause me so much pain I would vomit - until I had a child. Then they pretty much went away. Now they're back, apparently. With my last pregnancy, I managed to avoid coffee, alcohol, litter boxes, artificial sweeteners and most of that other "bad" stuff like the plague. I did still indulge in sushi at Azuma and stinky European cheeses. And I will again, dammit! And this time, I'm having a cup of coffee every morning. I've decided it's okay, and it's a hell of a lot better than getting a headache from lack of caffeine that turns into a migraine that lasts for three days. I did have to come to this on my own, though. I hate it when people shove their children in your face and say things like, "I had a glass of wine every day throughout my pregnancy with Beauregard, and look! There's nothing wrong with him!" Shut up - you're gross. As if your baby was this grand experiment about the REAL effects of alcohol on fetuses (all that stuff the doctors say is just a bunch of bunk, right?), and you've got living proof now that we all can have a cocktail with dinner every night. Blech.

I'm going to be talking (actually whining) about unsolicited advice from people when you're pregnant. Unsolicited comments in general. With my last pregnancy, I liked to play this trick on inappropriate people in supermarkets, etc., who would ask me when I was due. I liked to act really shocked and say, "I'm not sure I understand what you mean!" so they would have to stand there and flounder and try to think of how to now mask their idiotic comment. Some woman came up to me at Costco near the pillow section and she grabbed a body pillow and shoved it at me and she said, "You're going to need this." Shut up. Call me a grump (and I am kind of a grump today, and I will be frequently throughout the next nine months), but people need to censor themselves somewhat. A pregnant belly is not a cry for help, in and of itself. If I must cry for help, I'll just cry. Oh and I will just cry, too. Don't tell me anything about babies dying or conjoined twins having an operation to get separated or some child's plight with multiple sclerosis or diabetes or homelessness. I'll be a mess. I already am a mess, but you know, it will all just come out in your lap.

Anyway, right now this baby's just a peppercorn, so no one's talking to me at the grocery store usually. Except the elderly men who see my daughter and come up to me and say, "What aisle did you pick her up in?" Ha ha ha. I swear this has happened each of the last five times I've been at the Safeway. Maybe it's the same guy! And I always say, "I had a coupon," or "She was on special." Ha ha ha. What the hell is wrong with me?

And I am excited to house this new life. In general, my last was an excellent pregnancy. I cruised around (then waddled) for the entire blissful time. I was a little bit cranky and I got pretty tired of getting up to go to the bathroom all the time, but I loved having a big belly and I thought I looked pretty awesome. I also got really into the whole mother-one-with-earth thing. Not like Birkenstocks and all that - no way (see my last post) - I definitely still got my grub on at Jack in the Box and the taco wagon in Burien and wore heels that were too high for my pudgy legs. I just mean that I was continually amazed that my body could grow this other person, and I could be her first life source. That's pretty incredible to me.

Last time I knew it was going to be a girl. I bought her an outfit at the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale (starts tomorrow!) before we even found out, and my husband yelled at me, but I just smiled because I knew. This time nothing strikes me right away. Perhaps I'm just being more reserved because now the chances are good again that it will be a boy. A boy would be good. I'm not such a boy kind of gal (one of two sisters), but I could learn how to do it for sure. I would try not to pressure him too much or dress him too effeminately, but I think I would secretly hope the whole time that he was gay. I'd be waiting at every turn to have "that conversation" about the gay neighbors or the man who wears foundation at the M.A.C. counter or the cheese guy at the market - you know. I mostly would just want him to learn to respect women, and to respect himself, and to not be afraid to do things like use lotion.

It's going to be different this time with a toddler in tow, I keep thinking. It already is different. What happened to that rule from last time about how you're not supposed to lift more than 20 pounds? Or you're probably not supposed to change poopy diapers or eat pieces of food that someone else has already slobbered on. I guess you don't have the same rules when you already have one. I keep trying to tell my daughter that mommy has a baby in her tummy, but she just smiles at me and says, "Owie. Tummy." Okay - I guess that's good enough for now. Another great journey begins. I'll see you tomorrow at the sale in the baby section. I'll be the one with the cup of coffee.

Got an email yesterday from a college friend of mine. I haven't heard from him for a few years, and since then he's gotten married and just had his second daughter three weeks ago. His first daughter is 19 months old - almost the same age as mine - and she was born with Down Syndrome. He sent a photo of the whole family, and it just made me cry to look at it. I don't know if I can precisely describe what I was feeling. Sad, not so much because the child has a disability, but more because I know it must have been so, so hard for my friend and his wife to be faced with the prospect of raising a child with a disability. I was sad for the moment that they had to endure when they realized that none of this having-a-baby stuff was going to be the way they'd always imagined it. I also cried because I was so proud of my friend, sitting there with his beautiful family and so full of love and it all working out for him in spite of the intense challenges his family faces. And I suppose I wept a little out of guilt, too, for all the times I thought my situation wasn't perfect and got stressed out about it.

I would never not be a mom now. I am so addicted to this love (I know, I know . . . Robert Palmer got into my head just now, too - sorry) that I can't imagine living without it. Of course I get resentful sometimes that I can't just go to a movie or out to a restaurant or shopping for clothes by myself and take my time. And have things that are MINE and pretty and not stained or wet. But those are low moments, and luckily they are becoming a lot fewer and farther (further?) between. I think my situation now is just about perfect, stresses and worries and all. I'm sure my old college friend thinks his is, too.

in Portland . . .

Well . . . I guess I'm not a very good blogger so far. I've been remiss. Actually what I've been is busy, getting down to Portland with a car full of dogs and diapers to visit with my family for a week, and wrangling an 18 month-old on my own (Daddy is up in Seattle at work and Grammy and Grandpa both work full-time) - whew! I cannot imagine how single parents do it. Kudos to all of you who take this on alone, and may you be able to count on the village to lend you a hand.

My daughter is testing, testing testing me. She wants to get up on the chair and stand on it. She wants to take the sidewalk chalk and put it in her mouth. She wants to eat her book (seriously rip chunks off of it and chew them and swallow them). She wants to run with a stick down a hill. She wants to get down and walk BY HERSELF and not hold my hand. She wants to talk about her vagina with my parents' friends (thanks to my efforts to teach her the correct names of her body parts). She wants to drink my beer at a restaurant and will start shrieking when I offer her some "delicious juice" instead. Actually, I know she's not testing me - she's just trying to live her young life and figure things out and learn about cause and effect. And I am in a surprisingly good place with her right now. Now that she's talking we are having something of a dialogue, and she remembers what I say and says it back to me.

Right now we are talking about "sad" and "happy," and she's trying to understand. These are big concepts. I told her that Mr. Potato Head looked sad yesterday because he was laying down on the floor (where she had thrown him) face down with his eyes in his mouth hole and his tongue in his ear hole. I was just making mindless conversation, but she really picked up on the "sad" and she went over to Mr. Potato Head and pointed and said, "Sad!" Then she went over to the sleeping dog and pointed at her and said "Sad!" Good job, Mama. I can't just go tossing words around anymore, I see. Now she understands that people/creatures who are sleeping or in some kind of position of repose are sad, so I've got to try and figure out how to explain sad in a different way. I'm excited that we're beginning to talk about feelings now, though, so I don't have to use the word "Owie" all the time to get a message across. I found myself telling her the other day that if she didn't put her bottom down into her carseat (she was at the time arching her back and screaming as I was trying to get her into the car) it would give Mama an owie. Talk about your manipulation of language. But you know what? That worked.

I miss Portland very much, but I've lived in Seattle for two years now and it's becoming home to me more and more. Everyone always says Portland is a smaller Seattle, but I'm not exactly sure that's so. Portland is a more concerned Seattle, I think. People who live here are more invested somehow - more proactive about the future of where they live. Not to say that I haven't met plenty of Seattleites who love where they live - I have. I just think that Portlanders are more interested (and historically have been more interested) in creating the place that they love, and Seattleites have a beautiful city with some great things going on (and some not-so-great things), and they just love it, albeit a bit more passively. How's that? I'll think some more on this and get back to you. I'm a bit distracted right now since the baby just woke up from her nap and is crying for me.

I will say that I always appreciate the no sales tax aspect of P-Town and also the full-service gas stations. And you know what? Gas costs less here than in Seattle! What's up with that? Why do I need to get out of my car and fiddle with all of that and get my hands all nasty and pay more money on top of it?

BUT, Seattle has the foot ferry. It has Alki Beach and the Space Needle and a few more brown people than Portland, perhaps. That I like. And Seattle has my husband and my baby and a bunch of new friends and the life we are creating for ourselves there. I am attached to the city I grew up in, it's true. But I am more attached now to the nest we have built in Seattle, and to dreams of the future with my family there.