Last week, I clogged the upstairs toilet. I threw a bunch of dirty wipes in the can after cleaning Clara's bottom with them. My experience up until then had been that our plumbing system could handle the wipes. I guess maybe not twenty at a time, though.
I thought the problem resolved itself, but the next morning, as Clara and I were brushing our teeth, she casually reached over and hit the flusher. The toilet threatened to overflow but, mercifully, didn't.
"Let's finish brushing our teeth in the basement bathroom," I told Clara, shutting the toilet lid. The giant cat sticker Clara stuck to the toilet lid last Halloween has developed large cracks across the face and body, making it look even creepier than usual. I shuddered. I was not having one of my sterling days. I was feeling inexplicably exhausted--even more than pregnancy exhausted ( I later learned I was coming down with a killer cold and flu virus). The pregnancy queasies had also perched on my stomach, perhaps goaded by the sight of the backed-up toilet's contents.
Downstairs I mindlessly scrubbed my teeth, staring into the mirror over the sink. My jowls were coming back, I noted, though they seemed to hang a little lower than they did when I was pregnant with Clara. I'd slept on my hair wrong again and the back of it had taken on almost architectural dimensions. It looked like a hair version of the Sydney Opera House.
Clara was ominously silent beside me. I glanced down and around, and found her cheerfully stirring the downstairs toilet water with her Dora the Explorer toothbrush.
"Hey!" I yelled. "That is yucky! Yucky! Yucky! Yucky! We put our poop and pee in there!"
I snatched the toothbrush from her hand and tossed it in the waste-basket, wondering uneasily if it was the first time she'd done that. And if she'd only done it with her toothbrush.
"That's MY toothbrush!" she shouted, scowling deeply at me.
"No. We'll get you a new one. That one has germies all over it now."
"I want my toothbrush!" she yelled, and then she began flushing the downstairs toilet, over and over.
"Honey, please. Do not flush the toilet unless you've put your pee or poop in there, remember? It gives the toilet an ouchie when you do that. And we also use too much water."
After we'd brushed our teeth, I felt determined to fix the upstairs toilet. Clara and I marched up there, plunger in hand. I began vigorously plunging, visualizing Laura Ingalls Wilder churning butter. After a long time, it began to seem like I was gaining some traction. Big bubbles and belches were coming from deep within the bowels of the toilet's plumbing. Alas, Clara chose that moment to reach over and press the flusher. Immediately, what seemed like five days of my family's combined bodily effluence rose to the toilet's rim and streamed over, flooding the bathroom floor and threatening to flow into the hallway.
At that moment, a good parent would have chuckled ruefully and said, "O-kay. Time to call a plumber," and left the bathroom with the child for the park or an indoor carnival somewhere.
But I was suddenly galvanized by intense, pregnancy-grade fury. I picked Clara up and put her down with a loud thunk outside the bathroom door.
"DO NOT MOVE!" I said.
"MOMMY! I want to come in the bathroom!"
"NO!" I roared, plunging furiously. The filthy water sloshed all over my shoes and the bottoms of my pants. If Genghis Khan had been a plumber, he would have looked like me at that moment: wild-eyed, wild-haired, a prurient odor lurking as he purged toilets of their clogs all over the outer Mongolian rim.
Finally, panting, I gave up and stripped off my pants and shoes and socks, leaving them in the bathroom. Not wanting Clara to see me in full meltdown mode, I rushed past her and into my bedroom. Then my hormones really kicked into high gear. In order not to howl, I put my fist in my mouth while tears squirted out the sides of my eyes like geysers. I remembered seeing a mental patient in a movie biting her fist. I wondered what it might look like if I actually lost my mind. But instead of seeing myself in a straight-jacket or a mental ward, I for some reason pictured myself as a giant piece of three-layer chocolate cake with fudge frosting. Confusingly, my mouth began to water.
Clara, meanwhile, had followed me into the bedroom and was howling at my feet. Tears streamed down her firm pink cheeks.
"I want to go into the bathroom with Mama! I want to flush the toilet!"
Her cries were exquisitely-pitched, vibrating at the exact frequency of the throes of my last frayed nerve. My right eye began to twitch. I ran out of the room and down to the basement playroom, grabbing my phone on the way. Clara followed, whacking the wall with the flat of her hand every time she stepped down a stair and yelling at the top of her voice:
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"
"There. Is. S*#%. And. P*#$. All. Over. The. Bathroom. Floor," I said when Simon picked up his phone.
Simon, usually glacially calm and unflappable, cleared his throat nervously. I could hear the thunk of him running into his cubicle furniture and rustling papers as he frantically made his way to an empty conference room, where the cacophonous sounds of me hysterically crying and Clara screaming over the phone wouldn't alarm his work neighbors.
"I'm coming home," he said.
"No! Do. Not. Come. Home. I can handle it," I hiccoughed, and hung up on him.
Both the great and the horrible thing about pregnancy hormones is they change at the drop of a hat. A few minutes after I hung up with Simon, I began to feel remarkably better. I went ahead and let myself cry for a while, and Clara joined in, luxuriantly testing the range of her pitch and depth of her sobs. Then I wiped both our noses and gave her a kiss.
Then I called a plumber.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
Encore
You may as well know, I'm pregnant. Thirteen weeks, to be exact.
The first thing to go with me in pregnancy is my mental acuity. When I was about five weeks along, as Clara was yelling that she wanted a bowl of chocolate pudding without having to first eat two mincing bites of the pork chop I'd prepared for her, Simon looked at me sagely and said, "There's a Rolling Stones song about this."
I thought hard, trying to fit lyrics about a bowl of chocolate pudding before pork chops over a Rolling Stones beat. Simon waited patiently, his eyes widening slightly. I could almost hear him mentally counting, "One Mississippi...two Mississippi...three Mississippi," as he waited for me to catch on.
Finally it hit me. "Oh!" I exclaimed. "'You Can't Always Get What You Want!'"
*******************
I got sick at about seven weeks. Morning sickness is difficult to describe. For me, it's a low-level state of green. It doesn't keep me bed-ridden, but the sight of someone eating kale salad can bring me to my knees.
I told myself when I found out I was pregnant again that this pregnancy was going to be healthy. As opposed to my pregnancy with Clara, where each day was punctuated by trips to Starbucks for pastries and triple-chocolate hot chocolate. And yet, seven weeks in, I found myself sitting over two Taco Bell tacos with extra sour cream, quivering with joy.
At times, the nausea of morning sickness mixes with hunger in strange ways. Simon and I went on a date to Five Guys soon after my trip to Taco Bell. I had a cheeseburger. A little while later, I threw it up. I have to admit, it was delicious both going down and coming up.
******************
When I'm pregnant, I develop a condition called "spinal lordosis." It means that, as I get larger, my spine gets pulled further and further forward. At nine months, I resemble a sway-backed mule, thick of rump and low of belly. There's not a whole lot I can do to remedy it. There are certain physical therapy exercises. There are things I should avoid, like high heels and running and slouching in my chair. And limbo-ing and hula-hooping.
Having spinal lordosis means that I show a lot sooner than most. It's because my belly is sticking out more than most pregnant women's do as my spine curves in. It also means that I waddle much sooner. When I was pregnant with Clara, and I went to the pool for some aqua jogging, the lifeguards always splashed me with water because they knew I could neither reciprocate nor run away. I would yell and shake my fist at them as I lumbered along the pool deck, swollen and ungainly, my swimsuit straining to give me adequate coverage.
*********************
During pregnancy, food takes on a deep sense of poignancy for me. When I eat, I put my arms around my plate or bowl, like an overweight kitty cupping her food dish with her paws. I have a relationship with my food. It soothes me. I dream about shirtless men bringing to my desk at work crab dipped in butter, sour-dough rolls, clam chowder thick with cream.
There are cookie crumbs on my bed sheets. Dirty dishes by the bathtub.
When I cry, which is rather often these days, I eat. Because only food truly understands what I'm going through.
For Valentine's Day my mom made me red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. After Clara and I each had one, there were four left. Wilbur got up on the table and ate all of them while I was upstairs changing Clara's shirt. Plus the cake part of Clara's cupcake that she refused to eat.
My rage and bitterness were unparalleled. Since Clara was there, I couldn't tell him what I really thought of him, so I only said, "Bad, bad dog!" over and over.
He came to me a few minutes later to apologize, head down, tail between his legs.
"No, I'm not forgiving you," I told him under my breath. "You probably didn't even taste those cupcakes. I saw you swallow the last one whole! It went down your throat in a big lump. And you had cream cheese frosting on your fangs. Cream cheese frosting is my favorite. You are a very, very bad dog."
A couple days later, my heart had softened enough to give him his dental hygiene bone, rather than throwing it at his head. But my bitterness was renewed when Simon went on poop patrol in the backyard and reported back that he'd found a pile that was deep, velvety red and spongy in texture.
"Those should have been our poops!" I hissed, throwing Wilbur a stony glare.
The first thing to go with me in pregnancy is my mental acuity. When I was about five weeks along, as Clara was yelling that she wanted a bowl of chocolate pudding without having to first eat two mincing bites of the pork chop I'd prepared for her, Simon looked at me sagely and said, "There's a Rolling Stones song about this."
I thought hard, trying to fit lyrics about a bowl of chocolate pudding before pork chops over a Rolling Stones beat. Simon waited patiently, his eyes widening slightly. I could almost hear him mentally counting, "One Mississippi...two Mississippi...three Mississippi," as he waited for me to catch on.
Finally it hit me. "Oh!" I exclaimed. "'You Can't Always Get What You Want!'"
*******************
I got sick at about seven weeks. Morning sickness is difficult to describe. For me, it's a low-level state of green. It doesn't keep me bed-ridden, but the sight of someone eating kale salad can bring me to my knees.
I told myself when I found out I was pregnant again that this pregnancy was going to be healthy. As opposed to my pregnancy with Clara, where each day was punctuated by trips to Starbucks for pastries and triple-chocolate hot chocolate. And yet, seven weeks in, I found myself sitting over two Taco Bell tacos with extra sour cream, quivering with joy.
At times, the nausea of morning sickness mixes with hunger in strange ways. Simon and I went on a date to Five Guys soon after my trip to Taco Bell. I had a cheeseburger. A little while later, I threw it up. I have to admit, it was delicious both going down and coming up.
******************
When I'm pregnant, I develop a condition called "spinal lordosis." It means that, as I get larger, my spine gets pulled further and further forward. At nine months, I resemble a sway-backed mule, thick of rump and low of belly. There's not a whole lot I can do to remedy it. There are certain physical therapy exercises. There are things I should avoid, like high heels and running and slouching in my chair. And limbo-ing and hula-hooping.
Having spinal lordosis means that I show a lot sooner than most. It's because my belly is sticking out more than most pregnant women's do as my spine curves in. It also means that I waddle much sooner. When I was pregnant with Clara, and I went to the pool for some aqua jogging, the lifeguards always splashed me with water because they knew I could neither reciprocate nor run away. I would yell and shake my fist at them as I lumbered along the pool deck, swollen and ungainly, my swimsuit straining to give me adequate coverage.
*********************
During pregnancy, food takes on a deep sense of poignancy for me. When I eat, I put my arms around my plate or bowl, like an overweight kitty cupping her food dish with her paws. I have a relationship with my food. It soothes me. I dream about shirtless men bringing to my desk at work crab dipped in butter, sour-dough rolls, clam chowder thick with cream.
There are cookie crumbs on my bed sheets. Dirty dishes by the bathtub.
When I cry, which is rather often these days, I eat. Because only food truly understands what I'm going through.
For Valentine's Day my mom made me red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. After Clara and I each had one, there were four left. Wilbur got up on the table and ate all of them while I was upstairs changing Clara's shirt. Plus the cake part of Clara's cupcake that she refused to eat.
My rage and bitterness were unparalleled. Since Clara was there, I couldn't tell him what I really thought of him, so I only said, "Bad, bad dog!" over and over.
He came to me a few minutes later to apologize, head down, tail between his legs.
"No, I'm not forgiving you," I told him under my breath. "You probably didn't even taste those cupcakes. I saw you swallow the last one whole! It went down your throat in a big lump. And you had cream cheese frosting on your fangs. Cream cheese frosting is my favorite. You are a very, very bad dog."
A couple days later, my heart had softened enough to give him his dental hygiene bone, rather than throwing it at his head. But my bitterness was renewed when Simon went on poop patrol in the backyard and reported back that he'd found a pile that was deep, velvety red and spongy in texture.
"Those should have been our poops!" I hissed, throwing Wilbur a stony glare.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Owchie
Last week Clara took a header in front of the Y. I was on my way in to work out, and trying to hold her hand through the parking lot. To Clara, my hand is an unnecessary tether that keeps her from fun. Accordingly, she made her paw stiff and straight like a wooden paddle so I had to grasp her at the wrist. Then she did the old "splay and twist," flexing her fingers apart and swiveling her wrist back and forth.
The snow and deep freeze we had in January was thawing. Engine grease, old de-icer, sand and dirt mixed with ice water to form a soup that puddled in low places on the asphalt. Clara briefly wrested her hand free from mine. In that moment, the toe of her toddler sneaker hit an edge of ice and she went face-first into the soup. Black goo was smeared from her forehead to her lips. It covered her hands, the fronts of her jeans, the entire front of her coat.
An idling Land Rover, waiting for us to cross the parking lot's main thorough-fare, witnessed the fall. I dared not look into the face of the driver as I futilely tried to clean my tarred, squalling baby's nose with my spit-covered thumb.
Finally I hustled Clara inside, where every person from the front lobby to the childcare center stopped us to gasp and asked what happened. Clara kept her head on my shoulder, lips quivering, tears spilling onto her cheeks. But the time we got to the Y's childcare center, she was convinced of two things: first, that she had been in a terrible, horrible accident, the likes of which should befall no one--not even the lowliest of the lowest carrion-chewing hyenas; and second, that her courage and resilience were so great the Nobel Prize committee should seriously consider her.
And she was pretty brave. I told her as much as I scrubbed her face and hands clean with soapy paper towels and then kissed her on her soapy red lips. When everything was clean, and she was changed into clean pants, I examined her skin and found a tiny bit of road rash, about half the size of a pencil eraser, on her right palm.
"OWCH!" she yelled as I dabbed it with paper towel. "I need a band-aid!" I supplied her one from the Y's first-aid kit. A big, important-looking band-aid.
That night, when Simon got home, we touched briefly on the fall, and he made an appropriate amount of noise over her band-aided owie.
As I drifted off to sleep at about eleven, I heard disgruntled sounds. I wanted to believe it was only air circumventing the mucus stalagmites, warts and hairs of Wilbur the dog's treacherous sinuses as he slept on his dog bed below me. But pretty soon the sounds became distinct:
"Ow, owie, owie, ow, ow!"
I sighed and got out of bed, wondering if Clara's tiny wound had metastasized into something disastrous in the two and a half hours since I'd put her to bed. Maybe she'd developed flesh-eating streptococcus or gangrene. I groggily wondered if I should cut an X over the wound and suck the poisoned blood out. Then I remembered that you're only supposed to do that for snake bites.
"Do you want me to turn on the light and look at your owie?" I whispered to her over her crib railing.
"Yes," she whispered back.
When the light was on, I saw the problem immediately. It wasn't the wound--as is the case with most toddlers, Clara's little cells divide and multiply so quickly the wound was visibly more healed even since bedtime. The problem was the band-aid had slipped off and was twisted around her wrist.
"I need another band-aid, Mommy," she whispered.
Thankfully, the new band-aid lasted until morning. She allowed me to take it off just before breakfast. Then, she held out her hand and said softly, "Mommy, this is my owie."
The snow and deep freeze we had in January was thawing. Engine grease, old de-icer, sand and dirt mixed with ice water to form a soup that puddled in low places on the asphalt. Clara briefly wrested her hand free from mine. In that moment, the toe of her toddler sneaker hit an edge of ice and she went face-first into the soup. Black goo was smeared from her forehead to her lips. It covered her hands, the fronts of her jeans, the entire front of her coat.
An idling Land Rover, waiting for us to cross the parking lot's main thorough-fare, witnessed the fall. I dared not look into the face of the driver as I futilely tried to clean my tarred, squalling baby's nose with my spit-covered thumb.
Finally I hustled Clara inside, where every person from the front lobby to the childcare center stopped us to gasp and asked what happened. Clara kept her head on my shoulder, lips quivering, tears spilling onto her cheeks. But the time we got to the Y's childcare center, she was convinced of two things: first, that she had been in a terrible, horrible accident, the likes of which should befall no one--not even the lowliest of the lowest carrion-chewing hyenas; and second, that her courage and resilience were so great the Nobel Prize committee should seriously consider her.
And she was pretty brave. I told her as much as I scrubbed her face and hands clean with soapy paper towels and then kissed her on her soapy red lips. When everything was clean, and she was changed into clean pants, I examined her skin and found a tiny bit of road rash, about half the size of a pencil eraser, on her right palm.
"OWCH!" she yelled as I dabbed it with paper towel. "I need a band-aid!" I supplied her one from the Y's first-aid kit. A big, important-looking band-aid.
That night, when Simon got home, we touched briefly on the fall, and he made an appropriate amount of noise over her band-aided owie.
As I drifted off to sleep at about eleven, I heard disgruntled sounds. I wanted to believe it was only air circumventing the mucus stalagmites, warts and hairs of Wilbur the dog's treacherous sinuses as he slept on his dog bed below me. But pretty soon the sounds became distinct:
"Ow, owie, owie, ow, ow!"
I sighed and got out of bed, wondering if Clara's tiny wound had metastasized into something disastrous in the two and a half hours since I'd put her to bed. Maybe she'd developed flesh-eating streptococcus or gangrene. I groggily wondered if I should cut an X over the wound and suck the poisoned blood out. Then I remembered that you're only supposed to do that for snake bites.
"Do you want me to turn on the light and look at your owie?" I whispered to her over her crib railing.
"Yes," she whispered back.
When the light was on, I saw the problem immediately. It wasn't the wound--as is the case with most toddlers, Clara's little cells divide and multiply so quickly the wound was visibly more healed even since bedtime. The problem was the band-aid had slipped off and was twisted around her wrist.
"I need another band-aid, Mommy," she whispered.
Thankfully, the new band-aid lasted until morning. She allowed me to take it off just before breakfast. Then, she held out her hand and said softly, "Mommy, this is my owie."
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Clara's Hair
Last night I gave Clara a bath. In our house, as in many houses, bath-time is pretty fun, except for the end, when it's time to wash hair. Clara has more hair than most ten-year-olds, let alone most two-year-olds. It's curly and falls halfway down her back. A good rinse requires several cupfuls of water poured directly over her head (Alas, we don't have a detachable showerhead. And Clara refuses to lie down in the bath so I can simply tilt her head back for a rinse. She doesn't trust me. With good reason).
At first, it pained me to deluge my daughter every bathtime with the cupfuls of water. Now it gives me a sort of diabolical joy. She usually stands up while I hold onto one of her arms. Doing a jerky little jig of misery, she sputters and gulps as soapy water streams over her face and down her little round tummy and her little pink piggies press so furiously into the bottom of the tub they turn sort of white.
It's a very endearing and entertaining performance, however uncomfortable for her.
"Mama, I don't like this!" she gasps with every cupful.
"Look up at the ceiling!" Simon encourages if he happens to be in the vicinity. "Close your eyes! Close your mouth!"
It is all for naught. She's so marooned in the suffering of the experience she can't focus on what her eyes, mouth or head should be doing.
"This is the best way," I tell Simon. "It's like ripping off a Band-aid."
Simon's dad gave us this rubber visor with a handle on top that you're supposed to use to keep the soap and water out of her eyes while you rinse. Such things are always better in theory. It's way too big for her head and has found its way into her toybox, where visitors mistakenly identify it as a boomerang or a shoehorn. Sometimes I wear it when Clara and I play "grocery store" and I'm supposed to be the clerk.
***********************
When I was a kid, my mom would always say, "Beauty is pain!" when my sister and I complained while she brushed the tangles out of our hair. She always said it with authority, as though John Keats himself had written the words, presumably just before he changed his mind about the nature of things and wrote "Ode on a Grecian Urn" ("Beauty is truth, truth beauty"). My mom's little maxim did shut my sister and me up though, not necessarily for its imagined profundity, but because we were thinking, "Does this mean when we finally get to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling it's going to feel like someone crushed our femurs?"
I am now faced with the quandary of what to tell Clara when I brush the tangles out of her hair.
"Owwwwww! Mommy! I don't like this!" she yells while I patiently pull at the cyclonic rat's nest on the back of her head (constructed through the dual evils of her swiveling the back of her head against her pillow all night and Simon's habitual use of his very easy, but very ineffective "finger combing" technique).
"I do this, Mommy!" she sometimes says, wresting the brush from my hands. She gives it a go and invariably ends up howling louder because the brush gets stuck in her hair. Various de-tanglers do little to minimize the effect of "tumbleweed hair." Engine oil might work.
Recently Simon's mom got us some hair products designed especially for little girls with curly hair. I call Simon's mom Clara's "hair benefactress" because she, having naturally curly hair herself, understands its idiosyncrasies. The new hair products work pretty well. They make Clara look like a delectable little cherub. Which, unfortunately, makes it ever harder for me to reprimand her for, say, swinging on the oven door handle or doing gymnastics on her crib mattress.
At first, it pained me to deluge my daughter every bathtime with the cupfuls of water. Now it gives me a sort of diabolical joy. She usually stands up while I hold onto one of her arms. Doing a jerky little jig of misery, she sputters and gulps as soapy water streams over her face and down her little round tummy and her little pink piggies press so furiously into the bottom of the tub they turn sort of white.
It's a very endearing and entertaining performance, however uncomfortable for her.
"Mama, I don't like this!" she gasps with every cupful.
"Look up at the ceiling!" Simon encourages if he happens to be in the vicinity. "Close your eyes! Close your mouth!"
It is all for naught. She's so marooned in the suffering of the experience she can't focus on what her eyes, mouth or head should be doing.
"This is the best way," I tell Simon. "It's like ripping off a Band-aid."
Simon's dad gave us this rubber visor with a handle on top that you're supposed to use to keep the soap and water out of her eyes while you rinse. Such things are always better in theory. It's way too big for her head and has found its way into her toybox, where visitors mistakenly identify it as a boomerang or a shoehorn. Sometimes I wear it when Clara and I play "grocery store" and I'm supposed to be the clerk.
***********************
When I was a kid, my mom would always say, "Beauty is pain!" when my sister and I complained while she brushed the tangles out of our hair. She always said it with authority, as though John Keats himself had written the words, presumably just before he changed his mind about the nature of things and wrote "Ode on a Grecian Urn" ("Beauty is truth, truth beauty"). My mom's little maxim did shut my sister and me up though, not necessarily for its imagined profundity, but because we were thinking, "Does this mean when we finally get to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling it's going to feel like someone crushed our femurs?"
I am now faced with the quandary of what to tell Clara when I brush the tangles out of her hair.
"Owwwwww! Mommy! I don't like this!" she yells while I patiently pull at the cyclonic rat's nest on the back of her head (constructed through the dual evils of her swiveling the back of her head against her pillow all night and Simon's habitual use of his very easy, but very ineffective "finger combing" technique).
"I do this, Mommy!" she sometimes says, wresting the brush from my hands. She gives it a go and invariably ends up howling louder because the brush gets stuck in her hair. Various de-tanglers do little to minimize the effect of "tumbleweed hair." Engine oil might work.
Recently Simon's mom got us some hair products designed especially for little girls with curly hair. I call Simon's mom Clara's "hair benefactress" because she, having naturally curly hair herself, understands its idiosyncrasies. The new hair products work pretty well. They make Clara look like a delectable little cherub. Which, unfortunately, makes it ever harder for me to reprimand her for, say, swinging on the oven door handle or doing gymnastics on her crib mattress.
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