Going Postal

My kid NEVER spits up. Unless we are in public. And preferably when I have little or nothing to clean him with. Remember the Kohl's fiasco? On Friday we went to the post office because I needed to ship some Collector Barbies I sold on eBay. Our house is shrinking and we have no space for such frivolousness. If you're in the market for some late 90s collector Barbies please let me know.

I had my packing slips and two Barbies in their original boxes, as well as The Boy, the diaper bag, and my purse. It was quite a lot to juggle in my arms. You can't just slap a stamp on Barbie's butt and send her in the mail, so I needed a box to ship them in. I was looking at the box selection but The Boy was making it increasingly difficult. I would pull one out of the slot, assemble it, and then hold it up to see if Barbie would fit inside. Then The Boy would pull three more out of the slot and throw them on the ground. I would bend over to pick those up and Barbie would fall to the ground. I picked Barbie up and we would start the process over again. Select, Assemble, Check, Throw, Bend, Retrieve, Repeat. This was going to be a long trip.



I put The Boy down on the ground and (crazily) asked him to stand there "for just a minute." Working with both hands and no baby I thought I could be much more efficient. I selected a large shipping envelope with bubble wrap inside. In the time that it took me to pull an envelope out of its slot, The Boy was off. He fell to the ground and torpedo-crawled across the post office floor. Gross, but no emergency. I put the envelope and the Barbie down and headed to retrieve him, but not before he reached a brunette and pulled up on her legs. She startled. He grinned. I sighed. I picked up my little wind up toy boy and replaced him on his spot. I handed him a packing box to use as a drum. "Please!" I asked him, feeling ridiculous to bargain with a baby. He smiled sweetly at me, which I ignorantly mistook for understanding.

Take three. At this point I looked like a madwoman. I was aggressively stuffing Barbies in envelopes like I was a contestant on a game show. The Boy had gotten behind the self service counter and emptied the trash can all over the floor. I abandoned the mail, picked up The Boy, and stuffed all the packing slips and empty stamp sheets back into the trash can. I felt myself perspiring. I picked up The Boy and slung him on my hip, facing outward. Is it really only 10am? I was using my free hand and the counter to address the envelope when I heard The Boy spit up.I turned him around to face me but saw no evidence of spit up. I checked my clothes. His clothes. The floor. His face. My face. The counter. Nothing. Relieved, I turned back to the envelope and began to place the Barbie inside when I saw it. He had managed to spit up all down inside the envelope. He wasn't even facing the same direction...He must've turned his head Exorcist-style and projectile spat in a matter of a second and a half.

I'm not going to lie. It crossed my mind to just place that envelope back on the shelf- I hadn't even addressed it yet. Can you imagine the surprise if you were the next patron trying to mail some important documents and you grabbed an envelope filled with baby barf? Obviously I thought better of it. I quickly finished and took everything up to the counter to check out.

The attendant was a man with a strong middle Eastern accent named Yash. (BTW Does that rhyme with Josh or Rash?)
Me: I need to mail these.
Yash: All 3?
Me: No, just these two.
Yash: You don't want to mail this one?
Me: No, I just want to pay for that one.
Yash: Okay. Do you want insurance? Confirmation? Tracking? (By this point I didn't care)
The Boy: Squeeeeal!!!
Me: Sigh. No, no, yes. And could you throw this away?
Yash (looks at my strangely): You want to throw away the packing envelope?
Me: Yes, I couldn't use it.
Yash (raises eyebrows): You don't want to just return it to the shelf?
The Boy: Squeeeeeal!
Me: No.....He spit up in it.
Yash looked at me like I just said I was trying to mail the Ebola virus. He did not appreciate my plight. He charged me for the postage and all three envelopes and I turned to leave. I reached in my purse for my keys. I checked Yash's counter. They were nowhere. What if I mailed my keys? I went back to the self service counter and saw that they were there. I said excuse me to the customer at the counter, and grabbed my keys as she gave me a "you're so unorganized look." If she only knew. It was then that I decided that the term "going postal" has nothing at all to do with disgruntled postal workers, but is most likely a reference to the elevated stress level induced when trying to navigate the post office with a baby in tow: "Mid Morning Mommy Mail Mania" just doesn't roll of the tongue quite as well.

The Nephew

The Nephew is three. He's hilarious. Here's an exchange that happened when he was two and I was pregnant with The Boy.

Nephew (staring at my stomach): Open your belly.
(I pulled up my shirt)
Nephew: No. Open it so I can see the baby.
Me: I can't. He's not finished growing yet, he has to stay in a little longer.
Nephew: How is he going to get out of there?
Me: How do you think he's going to get out of there?
Nephew: I think it's gonna crack open like an egg.

Genius, right? And it makes about as much sense as what really happens.



He was about two and a half and The Boy was about 3 months when he got in trouble for scratching my brother-in-law's guitar. Here's how that went down.
B-I-L: What happened to my guitar?
Nephew: I don't know.
B-I-L: You don't know? I think you do.
Nephew. Yeah, um, maybe The Boy did it.
B-I-L: The Boy?!
Nephew: Yes, maybe he was walking around the house and he accidentally bumped it into the wall. In Athens.
B-I-L: So The Boy can walk now?
Nephew: Yes. Very slowly.

So my sister-in-law called and left me a voice mail saying that even though The Boy couldn't yet sit or stand or walk or talk, The Nephew was throwing him under the bus already. Of course we thought it was hilarious and decided to play along. I left her a voice mail saying that I was SO sorry that The Boy scratched the guitar and that we made The Boy sit lay in time out for making that bad choice. We also stressed that The Boy should be honest. She reported the same to The Nephew, who looked guilty but did not fess up.

So we upped the ante. A few weeks later we saw them and The Husband told The Nephew that he'd been thinking about it, and it wasn't a good choice, so he was going to give The Boy a spanking. He stressed the honesty bit again. The Nephew looked panicked. The Husband started to walk out of the room, allegedly to spank the baby. We all waited with baited breath to see how The Nephew would respond. "Wait!" he said. "He didn't do it!!" He wouldn't let The Boy take the fall after all. "Who did?" my sister-in-law asked. We were all proud that he was going to be honest about his mistake.
He thought quickly and replied "The niece!"


The Nephew, The Boy, and my two nieces on Easter

TIME Management

I am SO OVER this Time magazine attachment parenting controversy. I'm not an attachment parent, but I support your right to be if that's what you choose. If you want to co-sleep and wear your babies and never let them cry it out and breastfeed them for all of eternity, more power to you. Let's not bicker about who's parenting approaches are better. Really there are two issues here.

One: there's too much pressure in this country to breastfeed. I wanted to. I tried to. Despite many attempts, it didn't happen. Read more about my disillusionment with the "B" word here. I don't think I would have breastfed my child until he was three, but I would have appreciated the power to make that decision had I wanted to. People ask me about breastfeeding. Clients. Doctors. Friends. Friends of friends. Strangers at the grocery store. Mommies on the baby aisle. They ask "do you breastfeed?" It's a loaded question because you know there's only one right answer.  I'm all cotton mouth, stammering and defensive about what might have been my choice. I say I wasn't able to, and then I get The Look. The Look that comes with a nod and a smug smile and says "Oh, you must not have known that breastfeeding is best for baby and that it contains over 100 ingredients that make baby healthy and smart and raises baby's IQ an average of 7 points. You must not have ever seen any book or article or commercial about babies in the history of the world. If only you'd tried harder you could have done what was best for your baby." Or at least that's what it feels like. Plenty of people don't breastfeed and they churn out brilliant, well-adjusted, well-rounded, healthy children. And that choice was right for them. There's enough self-induced mommy guilt about not swaddling exclusively with organic fair-trade cotton, carcinogens in artificial sweeteners, what might be lead paint chipping off the antique cabinet in the kitchen, red #5 leading to ADHD, and that time he fell off the couch to add another thing to the list.

Two: It's nobody's business. Remember when nip slips were just for braless hippies, your junior prom, and Showtime movies? I don't care if you are nursing your baby or your teenager or your husband: that's your business. If you are making choices that you feel are in the best interest of your family and no one is getting hurt, have at it. There's no need to have it on the cover of magazines at the checkout line, thrust into our faces on countless blogs and internet forums, and preached at play dates turned political pulpits. Choices are called choices for a reason; otherwise they'd be called mandates. If you couldn't breastfeed, or you chose not to breastfeed, or you chose to breastfeed until your kid was 10, or you chose to breastfeed exclusively in public I assume that was a choice you made based on the needs of your family. Parenting is hard and we do the best we know how. Let's not get judgey on who's doing a better job at it when we're all just trying to survive it. At the end of the day we're all trying to keep our kids safe and healthy. We're all trying to prevent them from rolling off the couch (again), teach them not to pull up on the iron's cord (again), rescue them from swimming in the dog's water bowl (again), and save them from swallowing the toe nail they found under the couch (again). If that involves breastfeeding, fine. If it involves pumping, fine. If it involves only feeding your child organic goat's milk flown in from Fiji, fine. And yes, TIME magazine, those all mean we are all mom enough. So suck it. Pun intended.

Dog scratch fever

Prissy hasn't been feeling well for the past couple of days. She's been moving slow and has taken over laying on a pile of dirty laundry in our bathroom. What's worse, she hasn't been in the middle of all our business like usual. I even had to clean all the crumbs from The Boy's lunch myself because she wasn't up to eating the scraps. This was worse than when she was adjusting to The Boy in the beginning. When she growled at the Boy Thursday I was convinced she was dying. I prepped myself to call doggie hospice.

We went to the vet Friday. I had The Boy in his stroller and her in her crate. Of course I had the diaper bag too, since when I don't bring it The Boy throws up. Once I got all these contraptions in from the car she amazingly perked back up and started acting like her old self. Obviously.

The vet tech put her on the exam table and The Boy cracked up. The vet came in and did a once over of her mouth, ears, eyes, etc. He said she looked okay. Then he noticed a patch of matted fur on her hip and tried to investigate.

Vet: It looks like she possibly has a skin infection here but the fur is matted and it's hard to tell. (He puts his nose up to the patch and bravely smells. The Boy cracks up again). I need to shave this to really examine what's going on. Has she gotten into anything at home? Any paint or glue?
Me: No. Maybe some baby food but nothing toxic.
Vet: Let me take her back here to the procedure area and check it out. Just a minute.

Oh no! What if she'd gotten into something dangerous? What if she had something dangerous on her and The Boy petted her in the last few days? What if there were poisonous chemicals seeping into her fur and slowly killing her? No wonder she'd been feeling so bad. She was being poisoned from the outside in. I felt terrible that she was in such bad shape. How could she get into something? Had I been neglecting her such that I was unaware if she got into something dangerous?

He returns.
Vet: I just tried to wash the area, and she objected pretty strongly to that. I think it's giving her a lot of pain and discomfort. We need to sedate her just to shave the area. What's your schedule like today? Blah blah blah I'll call you. Guilt set in.

The Boy and I ran an errand and returned to get the Prisster. The vet explained that she had agitated the skin somehow, and then she probably licked it and scratched it and created a hotbed for bacteria to thrive. She scratched at the irritated skin, which further irritated it, and further itched, and so on and so forth. She was going to live! He explained that she needed an antibiotic, a topical spray, and a pain medicine. Three times a day. For ten days. Yuck. He shaved a big patch of fur off so that he could treat it and so that it wouldn't be so inviting to bacteria. "She's still waking up. Let me see if she can walk in a straight line." He said. Or what? She's not driving, I thought.


He brought her in and she was pitiful. She had a huge red, raw place on her hip that had not been noticeable when she was furry. The Boy instantly wanted to get down and touch her, and tried to fling himself floorward but I held tight. He squealed. She winced. I felt terrible. My whole body itched like when someone mentions lice.The vet said these hot spots happen sometimes without explanation. I asked if she had indeed gotten into some glue or paint. "No," he said. "That was just dried pus. Once I got in there I could tell that the area had drained, and then that dried and caused the fur to mat. It was quite pungent." I tried not to throw up right there in the exam room. $300, three prescriptions, sedation, a haircut, a catheter, and all this worry just because she had itchy skin and scratched herself into an infection? A day at the spa would be less of a production. If you need some time to yourself, next time just say so. You don't have to get all self-injurious on us to get some pampering.

Another Husband Prank

I can't take credit for this one. This was in an email my friend Kristen* sent me. I begged her to let me share it with you, and being the good friend that she is, she agreed. Okay, names have been changed to protect the innocent. Her name isn't really Kristen. Or is it?

Last night, we were in bed and Steven got up for the bathroom.  On his way back I asked him to please bring me the Vaseline.  Just 5 minutes earlier I was complaining that for the millionth night in a row, I can’t find any chapstick upstairs and was too lazy to go down stairs and get some.  He stepped out with it, “Why do you need this?”
Me: “For my butt hole”
Steven: “Seriously?”
Me: “Yeah.  It gets dry when girls are on their period.”
Steven: “No it doesn’t.””
Me: “It does.  Just turn out the light so I can use it already.”
Steven: “That’s disgusting.”
Me: “No it’s not, it happens to everyone.  It’s healthy.”
[ silence ]
Steven: “I think you’re joking.”


I swear husbands will believe anything if you say it's gynecological. 

Clean Up on Aisle Me

I'm pretty sure I'm going to get a parenting award soon. I'm excited about it in the way that actors are excited when they are nominated for a Razzie. It ain't the good kind of prize.

The Boy and I were running errands this morning and I decided to run in Kohl's because I had $10 in free money. Why not? It was raining, and I knew we wouldn't be in the store long so I just grabbed The Boy and left his diaper bag in the car. He wasn't going to need a bottle or a diaper in the next 10 minutes anyway.

I saw a cute dress that I wanted to try on, so I pushed The Boy in the Kohl's cart into the dressing room. Tight squeeze. Kohl's carts are basically a stroller with a bag on the back, by the way:

So this monstrosity, The Boy, a purple dress and I were in the dressing room.  I pushed him up to the mirror in hopes that he'd entertain himself, which worked for about 45 seconds. Then I looked in the mirror and The Boy had a little something on his mouth. Spit-up, most likely. I ignored it.

A few minutes later we were perusing the store when The Boy threw up. What a perfect time to have left the diaper bag in the car. No wipes. No burp cloth. No extra onesie. Not even a spare diaper to wipe his face with (don't judge. You've done it too). I scrambled in my purse for anything to clean him up with but there's nothing helpful. Sunglasses. A toy truck. Claritin. Wallet. Gum. Loose change. A 1/4 piece of cheese toast.  I'm frantically digging in my purse as The Boy looks at me confused by either the digging or by the vomit dripping down his chin. Disgusting. So I did what any good mother would do. I pulled out the only thing I had: a receipt. I wiped vomit off my child's mouth with a grocery receipt I found in the bottom of my purse. Double disgusting.

It was then that I noticed that he had thrown up into the Kohl's cart too. There was a puddle in the plastic seat beside him and, not knowing that this was disgusting, he was very close to finger painting with the vomit. So I had two choices: leave it in the cart for the next unsuspecting Kohl's customer or employee that comes along, or clean it myself. Obviously I don't want to leave this for someone else when I think it's gross enough and it's my kid, but as noted above, I've already exhausted my limited supply of makeshift cleaning resources. His hand went out to play in the fresh, fun, enticing vomit. I gasped. The world turned into a slow motion action scene...(morphed voice) Noooo!

I had to do it. In one quick movement I scooted my baby over in the seat and effectively used his shorts to wipe the vomit. The shorts he was wearing. I wiped his vomit with his own butt. We made our way to the register and checked out. There was no evidence of any bodily fluid in the cart, since it was all on the back of his shorts now. I abandoned the cart by the door and prayed that they regularly disinfect. We went to the car and I stripped him and changed him. He thought it was hilarious.

I called my mom and told her what great parenting choices I'd just made. Her response was "you could have bought a towel or something, and at least wiped him off with that." The worst thing about it? The only thing I purchased on today's trip: hand towels. Never even crossed my mind. So, let me know when the trophies will be printed. I want to make sure I misspell my kid's name.