Tragic Sandwich

Category: Health and Fitness

  • Sand Pail List

    Pail

    The latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens (and with that, I am officially my mother–or, since she read Woman’s Day and Family Circle, perhaps one of her close cousins) encourages people to make a “Sand Pail List” of things you want to accomplish before the end of summer. It’s like a Bucket List, but only for summer. And presumably without bringing death into the equation. So here’s what I’m thinking about:

    Going to the park
    Baguette loves to run free, and we’re lucky enough to live near several public parks. I want to make the most of them.

    Summer concerts
    One of my friends lets us know about outdoor concerts in a park close to her. It sounds like a great family event, and I’d love for Baguette to meet her boys. Plus I’m not sure I’ve seen this friend since shortly after Baguette was born.

    Going to the beach
    We live close enough–why don’t we go more often? I want to go at least three times this summer.

    Swimming lessons
    Baguette loves the pool, and she finally loves the tub–she’s even teaching herself to put her face in the water. I want to make sure we start her on swim lessons this summer.

    Cooking
    This is a perennial goal of mine. Baguette and I love summer produce, and there’s a farmers’ market near our house every Sunday. I want to get back into the habit of buying food there and making healthy family dinners.

    How about you?

    Photo by k.l.macke, via Flickr.

  • Why I’m Not Participating in No Mother’s Day

    For starters, I already started to celebrate Mother’s Day–I sent flowers to my stepmother and mother-in-law.

    Also, there’s this, from Catherine Connor of Her Bad Mother:

    If we don’t all get Mother’s Day, why should I get Mother’s Day? If Mother’s Day isn’t for every mother, why should it be for any mother? We are all important. We all matter. Let this be for all of us, or for none of us.

    It’s not that I disagree with the premise. Or, rather, with the premise-behind-the-premise. We should make prenatal health–and health during delivery itself–a priority for the mother as well as the baby. More mothers should survive pregnancy. that is absolutely true.

    But I’m not sure that I agree with the concept of forgoing Mother’s Day because not everyone gets one. There are lots of things that not everyone gets. Do we get rid of all of them? Should I not have gone to college because not everyone gets to?

    As for a campaign of silence–aren’t women silenced all too often as it is? I’d rather use my voice than forgo it.

    I’m just not sure this makes a statement that people are going to hear, either literally or figuratively. And–this is a personal preference–I’d rather give money to an organization that directly provides that kind of care, or funds training for prenatal health specialists, rather than just building awareness. Awareness is important. But action actually gets things done. So instead of donating to Every Mother Counts, I’m giving to an organization that supports homeless mothers and families.

    You may want to do something else. That’s fine. There are lots of ways to help. But No Mother’s Day isn’t the one that resonates with me. And I don’t even really have plans for Mother’s Day.

     

  • Bullies Come in All Shapes and Sizes

    I feel like The Harried Mom is speaking directly to me this week. First, her post about showing Star Wars to her son got me thinking about my own connections to that movie. Yesterday, she wrote about playing softball as a child and being bullied by a parent from the opposing team. And that got me thinking about some of my own experiences with bullies. Here’s one.

    In the sixth grade–I went to a K-6 elementary school–the new P.E. teacher decided to set up co-ed softball teams for each class. My two best friends and I were on the team, and we were very quickly marginalized. The boys would refuse to let us play. Or if we did get to play, we were only allowed to play the invented positions of “backup outfielder.” You know, that’s the person who stands about 20 yards behind the right fielder. Oh, you don’t know that position? Neither did we. Finally, we stormed home to my mother (the other mothers both had jobs out of the house, and weren’t home yet) and told her about how the boys were refusing to let us play, and the teacher wasn’t doing anything about it. So my mother immediately got on the phone and told the teacher that either he could set up separate boys’ and girls’ teams, or he could set up co-ed teams and make sure that everyone got to play, but he couldn’t do what he had done–set up co-ed teams and then say, “Oh, the boys play so rough, I don’t want the girls to get hurt.”

    Flash forward to the last game of the “season.” Not one of us got to play. Not even my friend who was a better pitcher than any of the boys. Not for one moment of that game. And in childish frustration, I threw my glove on the ground.

    The next thing I knew, the teacher was looming over me. And he was yelling. At me.

    “You don’t get to throw your glove on the ground! If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a poor sport! You are nothing but a poor sport!”

    I was mortified. I was a model student. I never caused the slightest problem in school. But because of that, I was also furious. After all, he should have known exactly why I was upset, because he had explicitly been told what the problem was. So I pointed my finger at him and said, “I may be a poor sport, but you’re nothing but a male chauvinist PIG!”

    He blanched. I bent down, picked up the glove, and said, “Excuse me. I have to go back to class.”

    And then I started to get scared. People were going to be angry with me. I was not supposed to talk to adults like that. So when I got to my classroom, I went straight to my teacher–the refined woman who taught us etiquette as well as math, creative writing as well as grammar, personal hygiene as well as biology. I idolized her, and couldn’t bear the thought that she’d think less of me. But I also knew that she needed to hear about this from me directly. So I sat down in front of her desk, practically in tears, and said, “I yelled at the P.E. teacher, and I’m afraid I’m going to get in trouble.”

    She must have wanted to laugh right then. But she didn’t. She said, very calmly and gently, “Tell me what happened.” And when I had, she said, “Well. I wouldn’t worry about it. You aren’t going to get in any trouble.”

    I didn’t. There were no repercussions, either at school or at home. And that P.E. teacher avoided me for the rest of the year.

    I still have that glove. I’m still in touch with my sixth grade teacher. And I still have nothing but contempt for that P.E. teacher for trying to intimidate an 11-year-old child.

  • Oral Hygiene, the Toddler Way

    Don't forget to brush

    After her bath, Baguette loves to brush her teeth. I should probably say that she loves to “brush” her teeth, because mostly what she does is swish the toothbrush around her mouth, alternating with waving it under the running water. And what I really should say is that she loves to stand on a stepladder in front of the sink with the water running. “Brushing” is really just an activity that gives her the excuse to do that.

    She also enjoys eating a lot of toothpaste, one pea-sized dollop at a time. I’m really glad that I got her the fluoride-free kind–but it still says to supervise her in order to minimize swallowing. To which I say: Yeah, right. Like I can control that.

    What’s really gross is that even though she has three–THREE–toothbrushes of her own, in various sizes, she keeps using mine. I love her beyond measure. But yuck.

    Another way to pass time in front of running water is to comb her hair. This is accomplished by passing the comb under the water and then using it to comb her hair forward across her face. Naturally, this is best done after I have dried her hair, so that it is soaking again.

    Which brings me to something I really can’t believe: I use leave-in conditioner on Baguette’s hair. And I blow it dry. Both of these seem ridiculous to me. But the first makes it easier to comb her hair (better than the Johnson’s No More Tangles I remembered from my own childhood and started using on her once her hair was long enough to comb), and the second means that she’s not going to bed with wet hair and sleeping on a soggy pillow as a result.

    But mostly I want her to understand that she can be just like Mommy without using Mommy’s toothbrush. I really, really want her to understand that.

    Photo by JMaz Photo, via Flickr.

  • Bathtime for Baguette

    Early Bath 1956

    As a newborn, Baguette hated sponge baths. They were an affront to humanity. Then she graduated to the whale tub with its infant insert. And she hated it. Last summer, with much trepidation, we introduced her to the pool.

    And she loved it.

    We decided that maybe we had to make the tub more like a pool. So we filled it deeper and started referring to it as the “pool-tub.”

    Then she hated it.

    For about the past six weeks, though, we’ve been in a new phase. Baths are one of her favorite things. She will even ask for “Bubbles!” And we have finally been able to make baths part of her evening routine, instead of a regular source of conflict. Because you can’t just let kids go about unbathed forever.

    She loves them so much, in fact, that we’ve had to come up with a code word so that we can refer to them without raising her immediate expectations. And that word is SCUBA.

    Photo by Smabs Sputzer, via Flickr.

  • Sleepy, Very Sleepy

    Manolo sleeping.

    Apparently I’m too sleepy to come up with anything exciting/funny/incisive to post. Here’s a recap of our week so far.

    Sunday
    Baguette had a playdate with the daughter of one of my friends. Things went pretty well, except that Baguette fell asleep while I was holding her. In the middle of a playground. So we all adjourned to the picnic blanket so that she could lie down. After a while (and some errands), we returned home. She took another nap–very unusual–at around 4 p.m. When she woke up, she had some milk and promptly made the waterfall sound that indicates that the milk? Is coming back up. Yep–she had a fever. Fortunately it never got that high (101.5 at the most), but that meant she had to stay home from daycare.

    Monday
    Baguette stayed home from daycare and I stayed home from work. This was a good decision–she slept until 11 a.m., which told me that she needed to be at home. Of course, there was no napping after that, but at least she wasn’t sick any more.

    Tuesday
    Baguette went back to daycare and I went back to work. When we all got home, we took pictures of her for her “month-day”–each month, we put her in the same chair with the same stuffed animal (for proportion, you see) and take a ridiculous number of photos of her. As she has gotten more mobile, keeping her in the chair gets trickier and trickier. Food is now involved.

    Wednesday
    Baguette and I stood at the back bumper of my car, where she had me identify letters. I think she’s going to wind up spelling “Subaru” backward.

    Thursday
    I woke up early. At about 1:15. For no reason. And didn’t get back to sleep until after 4. Then, I had a dream in which I called in sick for work and had a glass break while I was drinking from it. I do not know why I was dreaming about fishing large quantities of broken glass out of my mouth. At least I didn’t dream about getting cut–but it still wasn’t what I’d consider a good dream.

    So I’m tired.

    Photo by Luisus Rasilvi, via Flickr.

  • January 2, 2012: Looking Ahead

    I’m not a big believer in New Year’s Resolutions, primarily because I never keep them. But I do have goals. Here’s what I’m looking at for 2012:

    • Get our house in order. Literally. I can’t teach Baguette to clean up after herself if I have piles of papers lying around. Also, who wants piles of papers lying around?
    • Get in better shape. I’ve done a few sprint triathlons in the past, and I want to do another this year–I’m probably looking at September. Immediately, I’m going to start regular crunches and stretching.
    • Cook more. Between my job and commute, it’s hard to cook a nice dinner in the evenings. I need to dedicate weekend time to cooking in advance so that we can eat as a family during the week.

    None of these sounds huge on their own, but together they can make a huge impact on our lives. I’m looking forward to it–and to the year.

  • It’s Not All Fun and Games

    It’s undeniable: Baguette is a dream come true. Every single day, even when we’re exhausted after a night of being kicked in the head by a toddler, we know that we are the luckiest parents in the world.

    But if I’m completely honest, I’d like to be just a little bit luckier. Last month, we found out that I was expecting. The timing was a little confusing, but the various tests were crystal clear: I was pregnant. The week before Thanksgiving, we could see a heartbeat–distinct from mine–on the ultrasound.

    And that was it, apparently. Two weeks ago I had another ultrasound, and it showed that development had stopped right around the time of the previous one. There was no sign, except that a few days before this ultrasound, I just knew.

    So as of last Friday, my total is five pregnancies, one baby, four D&Cs. In four years. I’m exhausted and sad and I want another baby and I don’t know if I can handle trying again.

    Feeling lucky doesn’t mean I always feel happy.

  • The Kindness of Strangers

    Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com fame ran the New York Marathon this weekend (congratulations, Heather!) and broke her foot (feel better, Heather!). Her post about the reactions she’s encountered reminded me of the six months I spent wearing something like this:

    Yes, I partially tore my ACL in a college fencing bout, and due to scheduling issues (my vacations, cross-referenced with the invasion of Panama, which if you do some very basic math will also tell you something about my age), I spent the better part of my senior year of college on crutches. Because I went to school out of state, I traveled a lot–even in the knee immobilizer. I became very familiar with bulkhead seats and the need to argue that, yes, it was unreasonable to expect me to go all the way to the back of the plane instead of violating the sanctity of the first/business class lavatory. (I remember saying to one flight attendant, “Seriously, I am willing to ask every person in first class if they really have a problem with this. Do you want me to do that? Because I’m happy to.” She acquiesced; if any of those passengers had did have a problem, they never hinted at it.)

    In the course of those flights, and the wheelchair escorts to and from each gate, I seemed to meet every person traveling, each of whom wanted to talk about my knee. Which is why I later started reading true crime on airplanes, but that’s a story for a different post. Maybe.

    Eventually I was able to jettison the knee immobilizer and just use the crutches. And I was struck by the looks I got from gate agents who seemed to think I was faking (because riding a wheelchair through the airport when you don’t need one is, apparently, cool enough to cause people to fake injuries). Heather’s post reminded me of that. It seems crutches aren’t enough.

    So that was my senior year in college: a short fencing career, months on crutches, arthroscopy over Spring Break (woo hoo!), physical therapy, and arguing with airline staff. Which doesn’t even touch on this exchange as I waited for my surgery:

    Surgeon: So how’s the knee feeling?
    Me: You know, I really haven’t noticed it since I had the appendectomy.
    Surgeon: [slightly alarmed] And when was this?
    Me: Two weeks ago.
    Surgeon: Uh huh. When did they say you could go back to normal activity?
    Me: Well, I’m not supposed to lift anything for a few more weeks, but what do you mean by normal?
    Surgeon: When did they say you could drive?
    Me: Oh. You know, they didn’t say. But I’ve been driving for a week.

    And then in the recovery room, I got hypothermia. Good times. Spring Break! Woo hoo!

    Photo from Patterson Medical website.

  • Thank You, Los Angeles

    I’d like to give a special thanks to the city of Los Angeles. Because I’m sure they realized just how bad traffic would be if they shut down exits on the 405 and started construction on Sepulveda Blvd., the nearest alternative for getting through the Santa Monica Mountains.

    I know we’re supposed to be impressed that they realized that shutting down the Wilshire Blvd. on- and off-ramps now, on top of that, would be madness. And, sure, it’s good that the Rampture was delayed.

    But did those planners factor in what it would be like when, just as you pull onto the long, long on-ramp that is jammed with cars, with nowhere to go but straight ahead (at a crawl), you hear the dulcet tones of your toddler vomiting in the back seat?

    I’m going to guess not.