Play-time

Tonight after dinner we all went downstairs to play. Clara came and looped her arms around my neck. I gave her a bunch of kisses on her plump little cheeks.

"I don't want tisses and stuff," she said, wriggling away from me. Her hair was soft and windblown and she was wearing one of her favorite shirts: a long-sleeved purple number that has two racehorses on it. Near the bottom of the shirt, a lady wearing a big hat with a purple mesh bow watches the horses from the stands. Since Clara met two real horses at the foothills dog park yesterday, the shirt has special significance. The handy mesh bow on the spectator's hat was used at dinner to stash away unwanted black beans.

Downstairs in the playroom, Clara found a syringe we used to use to administer Tylenol to her when she was an infant and that we've since given to her to "feed" her stuffed animals with. She came at my face with it.

"Mommy, I'm going to get your boogers," she said. After a brief hesitation, I let her stick the syringe a little ways up one of my nostrils. I felt it was only fair, considering I mine the depths of her nose with Kleenex pretty much every day. "Yuck, that's stinky," she said, extracting the syringe and tossing it to the side.

She grabbed a puzzle and whacked Wilbur over the head with it.

"Hey, that's not nice," said Simon. "Better tell Wilbur you're sorry."

"I don't want to be sorry," she replied, looking up at me petulantly through her bangs. Finally, faced with the threat of going to bed early, she sullenly told Wilbur she was sorry. He gazed boredly back at her. Then she began to rummage through the bin that holds all her plastic toy food and cooking utensils for her kitchen.

"Where's my pancake? Mommy, help me find my pancake. I'm going to flip it all around."

I found the top of a plastic hamburger bun and handed it to her. She briskly set to work in her play kitchen, arranging a tiny sieve on the range (which was piping hot, as evidenced by the decal that showed glowing coals under burner stripes). "Mmmmmmm, that's not right," she mused. "That's a bowl." She rummaged around some more and found a skillet to replace the sieve. Her jeans, embroidered with butterflies on the back pockets, were sagging because she'd been running around outside and playing in the dirt all afternoon, and at some point she'd gotten them wet, either in a puddle of rainwater or with the hose.

After the pancake was "done," she brought it to me in the sieve along with a tiny cup of water to be administered by her with a spoon. I pretended to eat the pancake.

"What about me? I want a pancake, too," said Simon.

Clara came to me and reached for the sieve. I protested wildly. Firmly she took it from me and gave it to Simon.

"Here you go, Daddy."

"But what about me? I'm still hungry for pancake!" I complained.

Looking sort of stressed out and exasperated, she pointed to a space on the carpet in front of me. "There it is, Mommy. There's your bowl with the pancake."

"Clearly she thinks I'll be mollified by a pretend pancake," I said to Simon. Daddy wins again.

Next Clara set to work pulling off the black hoodie I wore over my T-shirt. "I'm cold! I don't want to take it off!" I moaned.

"Yes, Mommy. You need to take this off."

She pulled it off my arms and gave me a conciliatory pat on the shoulder with her chubby toddler paw. Then she held up a cup and pretended to spoon-feed me: "Here, Mommy, have some soup," she whispered tenderly.

**********************

Today Clara lost her favorite stuffed dog just as we were getting ready to leave for the park. The stuffed dog was a birthday present from a friend, and came inside a big purse with a pink and white pattern vaguely reminiscent of a Louis Vuitton knock-off. That's right. Not just sort of like the real thing, but sort of like the one that's sort of like real thing. (Like most two-year-olds, Clara is oblivious to the dictates of fashion. She only noticed that it was pink and had a little stuffed dog inside.) The purse has long since been relegated to the toy box, but the dog, called simply, "Doggie," goes with us everywhere. It's replaced "Ugly Baby," the doll she used to haul around.

The dog originally had a battery pack inside his abdomen that made him bark and pant. Clara figured out how to get the battery pack out of its velcro-ed pouch in the dog's belly and started dragging the dog around by it. (The wires connecting the battery pack to the dog itself were long enough for her to designate them "Doggie's leash"). Watching her drag the dog around by its circuitry seemed sort of like watching a perpetual disembowelment.

Eventually, the wires pulled apart from wherever they were connected inside the battery pack. Clara was pretty upset that the dog no longer barked and panted, so I figured the only option was surgery. I opened the battery pack and Simon showed me where the wires should attach to a tiny circuit board. But, he said, they were probably originally welded or soldered on. I tried getting the wires to stay with masking tape and duct tape, to no avail. So I tried melting the wires to the circuit board by holding a match to them. The entire circuit board went up in flame. I didn't think silicon could burn like that.

After I threw away the wires and the partially melted battery pack box, I explained to Clara that Doggie had suddenly become really quiet and shy. In fact, he would probably never bark again, but we could still love him just the same. She was content with this explanation. I couldn't get the hole where the battery pack used to be to stay velcro-ed shut. Doggie started leaking fluff everywhere. Finally I sewed up the hole, but not before he'd lost most of his fluff.

So, Doggie is now very floppy and misshapen. I get him into the wash twice a week, but he's still usually crusty (milk and honey) and covered with dirty Band-aids, and his plastic nose is askew. Still, Clara felt she must have him with her when we went to the park. She wandered downstairs to the playroom, shouting, "Doggie, where are you? We goin' to the park now, awighty? Hey, Doggie, you're missin'!"

Finally she found him inside a tupperware container I use to store her tiny dollhouse furniture in. She'd wrapped him in a handkerchief and put him to bed there a half hour before. When she found him, she scooped him up and cradled him lovingly in her arms.

She said, "Don't worry, Doggie. I'm your Mommy, and all your dreams will come true."

Chocolate and jalapenos

Yesterday I dreamt a waitress in a fancy restaurant showed me the dessert walk-in fridge. She crouched, her traditional Bavarian dirndl skirt and corset bunching a little at the waist, to look on the walk-in's bottom shelf. "Well, it looks like we're out of the three-layer carrot cake with cream cheese frosting," she said regretfully. "Buuut," and she pulled out a tray of German chocolate cake (was this why she was in a Bavarian costume?) and also a tray of brownies. "What we can do is this..." she continued, and she put a square of brownie on top of a piece of German chocolate cake. They both instantly became warm and melty and delicious because she had the power to send microwaves through her fingers. Then she drizzled warm chocolate ganache over the top. In the dream, I said something I will never, ever say in real life: "Me like-y! Me love-y! Me want some more of-y!"

Then my pregnant stomach began growling and woke me up. It was morning, and Clara was rustling around next door. Wondering if we had anything decadent in the cupboard I could have for breakfast, I went to get her.

"Hi, Baby," I said, as she jumped off her bed and into my arms.

"I'm not a baby, Mommy," she said. This after months of insisting we call her just that.

Glory be! I thought. She's embraced the winds of change!

"I'm a cat."

Wrong direction.

She stuck out her tongue and licked my cheek.

"Honey," I said, grimacing."Please don't do that. There's all sorts of germies on my cheek." And on your tongue, I added to myself.

She took my face in her hands and examined it closely.

"Mommy has two polka-dots," she said, touching her baby index finger to the rosacea spots on my cheek. For my rosacea I apply a thin layer of a prescription drug called Metrogel to my face every night (That's right, Metrogel is not a hair pomade for people of indeterminate sexual orientation, but a topical ointment for people with, "adult acne"). It occurred to me that Clara now had some of last night's Metrogel on her tongue. But since the Metrogel apparently doesn't do jack for my rosacea, I was pretty sure it wouldn't strip her tongue of its taste buds or anything horrible like that, either.

"And an ouchie," Clara continued, pressing the mole by my mouth. Her inspection over, I took her downstairs and sat her down in her booster seat.

"Did you have any dreams last night?" I asked her, rummaging through the cupboard. Bananas Foster would have been an ideal breakfast, but what pregnant lady keeps a bottle of rum on hand?

"Yes. I dreamed about baby doggies and little, tiny baby kitties." Her voice got squeaky high when she talked about the little, tiny baby kitties, and she brought her hands together, making her fingers wiggle with anticipation. Like she was getting ready to eat something delicious.

"Did they have names?" I asked, pouring her a bowl of Trix.

"Ummmmmm....YES. Names are Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail."

"Oh, like in Peter Rabbit?"

"No. Just in my dream."

*************************************


This pregnancy, besides decadent desserts, I've been craving anything spicy. I put jalapenos on everything: pizza, scrambled eggs, ham sandwiches. Two nights ago I had jalapenos on a tuna melt. Then I went to a Mexican restaurant called The Matador with some friends. We had chips and hot salsa. And I had a bowl of chicken soup that our server called, "The spiciest thing on the menu." And how. It was so spicy I couldn't finish it.

That night I woke at two am. My belly clenched. It felt like flames were making a circuit of my stomach and intestines. This is what Johnny Cash meant when he wrote "Ring of Fire," I thought. I was up half the night, praying for deliverance from that bowl of spicy chicken soup.

In the morning I had to take Clara to daycare. As we walked up to the daycare's front door, a strange feeling came over me.

Please don't let this happen, I thought. But it was happening. I ran to the flowerbeds beside the daycare's driveway and dropped to one knee like a football player conceding ground. Stirred by the morning breeze, multi-colored pinwheels whirred cheerfully in the grass beside me. A stone garden bunny looked on with amusement.

Clara has never seen anyone throw up. She herself has only done it a couple times. A baby throwing up is not like an adult barfing. Clara always seems surprised when the detritus of her last few meals comes flying out her mouth. And there are no real sound effects with babies, just the gurgle of fluid leaving a vessel. As with most things, barfing gets much uglier as you become an adult. There's the pre-vomit sagging face, as the barfer anticipates the roiling stomach spasms to come. There's the guttural retching and the bowed torso, like an alien giving birth.

As cars whizzed by, I tried my best to be discreet about it.

Clara bent over next to me and spat gratuitously in the grass. She pretend-coughed and imitated my retches. Whatever...I thought. As long as she's not wandering in the street while I'm emptying my stomach.

My glasses slipped off my nose and fell into the pile of vomit.

Luckily, I had wipes on hand in my purse. Otherwise I might have had to spend the next several minutes viewing the world through puke-streaked lenses.

Thankfully, I don't think anyone from inside the daycare saw me hurl. I wondered, as I spoke with Clara's daycare provider, if I had flecks of tomato on my teeth from last night's salsa.

I called my OB afterwards just to apprise him of the situation and to reassure myself that I hadn't inadvertently marinated my gestating baby in a napalm-like slurry of chili pepper.

"Well," he said, after I told him of the situation, "I think now we can safely say you understand the boundary between enough spiciness and too much." In other words, I thought "We're not going to do this again, are we?"

Perhaps. But even as I write this, the idea of jalapeno-encrusted nachos makes my mouth water.

Big Girl Bed

A few weeks ago we decided to buy Clara a "Big Girl Bed." Since it was such a momentous event, I had Simon take a photo of me and Clara beforehand.
"Not bad," I said, inspecting the photo.
"Yes, except you're posed like a linebacker," Simon said.
"Meh," I replied. "Clara looks pretty cute, though."



We went to all of the major furniture stores in the Treasure Valley.

"Now, I have to remember not to ask the salesmen for a 'Big Girl Bed,'" I told Simon in the car. "What if they think I'm looking for a bed for myself when I say that? The correct terminology is, 'Toddler Bed.'"

We tried a hometown family-type furniture place. A young sales guy came over to greet us. He seemed sheepish, like he was embarrassed to be a salesman. I looked for telltale signs of his lack of job commitment, but, in spite of his youth, his trousers were pressed and he was wearing a white undershirt beneath his button-down (there's nothing worse than catching a shadow of someone's chest hair beneath a white button-down).

"We're looking for a bed for our little girl," glancing down at Clara. She was holding my hand and staring in amazement at the dozens and dozens of couches and beds and recliners in the showroom. So much to jump on and tumble over. It was toddler Utopia.

"Oh, you want a 'Big Girl Bed,'" he said, and Simon grinned silently at me. The salesman led us to a bunch of twin-sized bedroom sets. This was not the sort of thing we were looking for, but we let Clara go to town on the beds for awhile anyway. She put her stuffed dog to sleep on the top bunk of a set of bunk beds and efficiently destroyed the painstakingly-staged throw pillow configuration on a wrought-iron daybed.

Across the parking lot from the hometown family-type place was A FURNITURE STORE BEHEMOTH. As soon as we stepped into their showroom, it became clear why the salesman at the hometown family-type place was sheepish. People streamed into and out of the FURNITURE STORE BEHEMOTH's MASSIVE SHOWROOM. The elderly and infirm whirred quietly past king-sized mahogany beds in store-provided scooters. There was an electronics section with some kind of ornate electric light display above it. There was a cookie bistro at the back of the store. The hometown family-type place had obviously positioned their showroom to be like a baby piglet sucking on the teat of the mother sow FURNITURE STORE BEHEMOTH. Disenchanted or out-budgeted would-be FURNITURE STORE BEHEMOTH customers could just go across the parking lot to the hometown family-type place for a better deal.

Alas, though the FURNITURE STORE BEHEMOTH had Hello Kitty and Curious George and Star Wars and cowboy bedroom sets, nothing seemed right for us. As was the case at the hometown family-type place, the beds they marketed as 'Big Girl Beds' were actually twin-sized beds. We were looking for something smaller, more transitional.

We went to a Himalayan place for lunch. Clara ate only the sauces that came with our turkey dumplings, so we ended up getting her a hot dog, sweet-potato French fries and chocolate milk from a nearby restaurant.

Clara has never in her life had a hotdog. She sank into profound silence as she shoved juicy bites into her mouth. She became philosophical while she chewed. The world receded. There were whole universes to explore in this salty stick of discarded cow parts (it was a beef hotdog). She couldn't believe we withheld this delicacy from her for so long.

What was the purpose of our existence?

To eat hotdogs.

What was the meaning of life?

Did it matter, while there was hotdog in your mouth?

"Do you like your lunch?" I asked her.

"Oh, yes. I like hotdogs," she replied, her eyes widening, her mouth full of masticated meat and ketchup.

In the car she turned comatose, gazing without seeing at a point on the distant mountains. Her little belly was so full it was distended, pushing at the front of her shirt and making it ride up, exposing her little pink belly button.

"This is the key to getting her to nap," Simon said in wonderment. "Feed her obscene amounts of sodium, carbohydrates and fat."



We finally ended up at Babies R Us. They had a pretty good selection of toddler-sized beds. I envisioned us getting one of the simple wooden ones, but I noticed there were also two or three pink, princess-themed ones. A feeling of doom descended over me. I took Simon aside.

"Is this one of those times where we let her decide which one?" I asked him.

"I think we should. We want sleeping in a 'Big Girl Bed' to be a positive experience for her," he said.

"But we know which one she's going to choose. It's going to be the princess-themed one," I said. "And all the other moms in play group are going to make fun of me."

"What? Why?" Simon asked.

"Because everyone knows princesses are not good role models."

"So the other moms in play group are going to say, 'Ha-ha Isabelle, you let Clara have a princess bed! You're a bad mom!'"

"They're not going to be, like, 'Neener, neener,' or anything out loud, but they're going to think it in their hearts."

"How can you know what people think in their hearts?" Simon asked.

"I want this one," Clara said, pointing to a toddler bed featuring a headboard decorated with a dubious cast of characters: Belle, Snow White, and Cinderella, all vacant of eye and lustrous of curl. All with seventeen-inch waists. All seriously white. They could have at least added a princess of color, like Tiana from "The Princess and the Frog."

"Well, but do you want this one or this one?" Simon asked, showing her a similar-looking one with a canopy.

"Ohhhh! I want this one!" Clara said, pointing to the one with the canopy.

"I don't suppose they carry this kind of bed with a picture of Marie Curie on the headboard?" I asked.

"It would be cool if they had one with, like, the periodic table of elements on it," Simon agreed. "But I don't think they make those."

Clara had already pulled the boxed toddler bed she wanted part-way off the shelf.

In truth, anything pink and frilly makes me giggle. Deep in the recesses of my intellectual, highly-educated soul, the princess bed looked as enchanting to me as it must have to Clara. I secretly love Cinderella and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, both for the pretty animation and the romance (Obviously, Clara doesn't understand the romance aspect yet. Seeing Prince Charming and Cinderella kiss just makes her come give me kisses and snuggles, a situation I can't really complain about.)

When Clara got her Calico Critters dollhouse for Christmas, with tiny Baby Bunny and its cache of tiny pink undies and bedding and clothes, I shrieked and clapped my hands and jumped up and down right along with her.

After some more deliberation at Babies R Us, we bought the princess-themed bed. As I was strapping Clara into her carseat,she looked at me very seriously and said, "Mommy, my princess 'Big Girl Bed' is in the back," and she pointed behind her to the back of the car. "That's my princess bed."

Plumbing Crisis: Part 2

     Continued from last week....

     The plumber came in the early evening the same day of the toilet eruption.  He was a big bear of a guy, late middle-aged, and, though I refrained from checking, I have no doubt that he displayed several inches of the requisite "plumber's crack" whenever the occasion called for it.
     "Hello," he said to Clara when I opened the door.  She was wearing white jeans and a white shirt with a black ruffled hem.  The shirt had a purse with a golden chain and a red bow embroidered onto it. "Do you mind if I come in and check your toilet?"
     "Yes," she said, which meant, "Yes, you can come in."  It also meant,  "I like everything about you.  I like the big red truck you came in, I like the funny shower caps you're wearing over your feet [so as not to track mud into our house], I like the grizzled gray whiskers on your chin, and I especially like your big belly."
     The man came in and stood clasping his hands.  He looked around and swallowed.
     "Ah...."
     "It's upstairs," I said, leading him up.  Even though his feet were covered with those ridiculous shower caps, he stepped gingerly on the carpet.  He looked like a polar bear trying to walk on its toenails.
    "Mmmmm-hmmmm," he said, peering into the bathroom.  I felt the urge to make amends for the mess and the smell, though obviously he must have seen much worse.  He seemed to possess an interesting mix of rough and delicate sensibilities.  I could see him roaring obscenities at a ref from the stands at a football game, and then apologizing profusely to the people sitting next to him.  I could also imagine him eating escargot with a tiny, gilded fork, and then farting voluptuously.
     "Well, we'll be downstairs," I said, grabbing Clara's hand.  She was prepared to follow the plumber into the bathroom or into the depths of hell.  Wherever he might lead.
     "No, Mommy, I am helping this man," she said.
     "No, Honey.  This man does not need our help.  Come on, come downstairs.  Don't you want dinner?"
     She followed slowly, but when we got to the kitchen, she looked at me seriously and said, "Mommy, I am going to help this man."
      "How about some Flying Pie pizza?"
      Realizing I'd left the pizza in the car, I ducked into the garage.  When I came back a half-minute later, she was, of course, gone.  I found her in the bathroom doorway, watching the plumber.  Did he need something, her body posture seemed to ask. Maybe she could get him a wrench or something from his truck? No?  How about a stuffed animal from her bedroom? How about Mrs. Potato Head?
     The plumber was deep in a mystical, primeval dance with the toilet, wielding something that looked, at a glance, like an orange, plastic version of Crocodile Dundee's whip. He murmured quietly to himself while he worked.  
      I tucked a wildly-protesting Clara under my arm and carried her downstairs.  The plumber followed a few minutes later.
     He stood in the kitchen, rubbing his hands together and looking uncomfortable.
     "Ah....Uh, it was a big wad of paper towels," he said.  Wet wipes, I thought, but there's no reason for him to know of my indiscretion.
      "That stuff don't pass," he said with the utmost gravity, as though finding paper towels in the plumbing was unheard of and even sort of catastrophic.  I could imagine him saying instead, "Ma'am, there was a chunk of plutonium in your toilet pipes."
     "Once it got into the mainline, it could've easily cost you five hundred dollars," he continued, clasping his hands and shaking his head in despair.  "And then, if we didn't catch it, the plutonium chunk would've gotten into the city sewer line, gently irradiating the innards of all your neighbors while they attempted to void their bowels and bladders."
     "Do you have any idea, Ma'am, how the paper towels could have got in there?"
     "Uh," I swallowed.  Why did he need to know that? I glanced at Clara, because she was the only one who knew it was me that dumped all those wipes in the toilet.
      The plumber misinterpreted my glance.  "Ah," he said, all the grimness and tension draining from his face.  "So it was someone, over here, in this region?"  He waved a massive, meaty paw in Clara's general direction and grinned.  She had climbed into her booster seat and was watching him with deep interest, her little cheeks pink because it was warmish in the kitchen.  She looked like a cherub.
     "Yes," I said, and he laughed and sat down at the kitchen table to finish writing up the invoice.  Clara climbed down from her chair, ran past him and deposited her favorite stuffed dog on his lap.  She never lets anyone hold the dog.  Sometimes me or Simon, but never anyone else.  In fact, I've seen her scream like a horror movie actress when another child picked it up. The plumber made over it, saying what a beautiful dog it was, how soft, etc.  And I watched from nearby, marinating in guilt over implicating my child in my crime.