Psst...some happy news!

I am delighted to announce that Momo had her baby! B's little brother was born last night and he is a cutie patootie. Mom and baby are both doing well. I'll let Momo share the details when she's ready, but just wanted to let you all know since she probably won't be updating for a while. :-)

Random thoughts

• I really need to get in the habit of looking in the mirror before I leave the house in the morning. I mean, I do look in the mirror, to put on my makeup and make sure my underwear isn't showing, but for about, oh, a year and a half, I've been getting dressed and dashing out of the house without really looking at myself. Dressing is done automatically in Garanimals fashion: Dress plus sweater, check. Neutral pants plus black or white tank top plus jacket, check. Skirt plus some kind of top, check. Throw on flip-flops or sneakers (all my nice shoes live at the office and I change at work), and run out the door. But sometimes the Garanimals formula fails me and I put a perfectly nice top and a perfectly nice bottom together in an unaccustomed way and wind up like today, all sexy secretary from the waist down and impish ragamuffin from the waist up, and it does not look good.

• It sucks when a stay-at-home parent gets sick. Suuuuucks. My husband was kind enough to come down with a hacking cold while I had taken a few days off work. Would not be a problem but for the fact that we are still in this godawful sleep regression and he usually does night duty. I've been getting up with BG so he can get some sleep. I also put her down at night and get up with her in the morning. So this is rather hard. By some miracle neither BG nor I have gotten sick yet, knock wood, because that's our saving grace right now.

• For a month or two every four years, I wish I still lived in the state where I grew up (a major swing state), instead of the state where I live now (a rock-solid blue state), just so my vote would actually count. But only for that month or two. And only a little bit.

• We found a nice preschool not far from us that does a toddler program--one morning a week, for an hour and 15 minutes, parent or caregiver stays with the child, playtime plus age-appropriate curriculum (music class, colors and numbers, etc.), and parents have a "life with toddler" coffeeklatch while the kids have a snack. Sort of preschool with training wheels. The idea is to get both parents and kids used to a preschool-like environment so the transition to actual preschool is easier. This is one of the few preschools near us with a 2-year-old program (2-3 days/week), so it's conceivable that BG could actually attend there next year. I'm not even close to convinced that BG ought to start preschool at age 2, but hubby and I agreed that right now, it would be good to have a structured activity to break up their week, and provide BG with some of the socialization we'd hoped she would get at daycare.

• The preschool thing...ugh, it makes my stomach hurt. We're entering preschool admissions season here in Big City. School tours (the first step in the admissions process) start next month, and we're already signed up at the school where BG is doing the toddler program. Like I said, I don't think she HAS to start preschool next year (I can't believe I am talking about this! She is not even 20 months old!), but I do want to have the option available. Because she is so verbal and precocious in many ways, and because with a February birthday she will be one of the oldest kids in her grade, I do think that "academically" (whatever that means for someone who still poops in the bathtub) she could handle preschool at age 2--some children just two months older than her will be starting 3-year-old preschool next year. On the other hand, I see no signs that she's particularly advanced emotionally or socially, and I don't want to be one of those insane Big City mothers pushing their kids into an overscheduled existence before they're even potty-trained.

God, I just reread all that and it sounds horrible. I need to relax. My kid doesn't even have real hair yet, and I'm thinking about putting her in school? Who am I?

• Twitter: yea or nay? I am enjoying the pithiness of Facebook status updates but sometimes have updates I would prefer not to share with some of the work-related people who are among my Facebook friends. I suppose I should just keep those thoughts to myself but I'm a blogger! I have to smear my every last thought all over the Internet! LOVE ME!!!

• I'd like BG to be a tiger or a monkey (her current favorite animals) for Halloween but I don't like any of the costumes I'm seeing on the Nets and am not crafty enough to whip up my own. And don't want to spend $$$$ for a costume she will wear for, like, an hour.

• Whew. Had a lot more to say than I thought when I began this post.

Today

While I was in the shower this morning, my husband came into the bathroom and said, "There's nothing on TV."

I knew what he meant. For the last six years, my husband has gotten up on this morning, turned on the TV, and watched a handful of mourners read a list of names near a gaping wound in the earth, his own small act of remembrance. Today, the major news programs, all atwitter with the latest ObamaBidenMcCainPalin whatever, were not covering it.

It feels like any other day. To look at us all, riding the train and walking the streets and going to work, you'd think we didn't remember. But we do. I know I do.

(Mel has organized another act of remembrance over at Bridges.)

Are you jealous?

Forgot to mention that I made it to the Ask Moxie meetup yesterday! I got to meet hedra, and Ali, and One Tired Ema, and a whole lot of other cool women and men who I didn't manage to connect with their online personae. Partly because I would meet someone, introduce myself by my real name, and then before I got to explain what my online handle is (and they theirs) Bat Girl would run off to steal someone's stroller or climb a big rock or run right into a giant dog's face, and I'd have to dash off. Toddler-chasing is not so conducive to getting-to-know-you conversations. So if anyone out there was there but I didn't meet you properly, I was the one running after the stroller-obsessed toddler in the pink hat.

Daycare decisions and mom on the warpath

After much discussion over the weekend, my husband decided that he is not ready to stop being a stay-at-home dad. We spent a lot of time talking about it because I wanted to make sure that he was making that decision based on his own needs/wants, not just the trauma of some rough drop-offs at daycare. Also that he was willing to commit to staying home for at least another 6 months to a year, so that we're not crawling back to daycare in three months totally regretting it. He said yes, this is the job he wants, no other. I called the daycare this morning and tried to make it clear that it was because of my husband, NOT any problems we had with the daycare itself, and that I hoped in another year we could come back. Daycare provider was very nice and understanding about the whole thing. So there you have it.

*****

This is the other piece of bullshit I've been dealing with for the last month. Bleah.

Nineteen months

My husband called me this morning at 10:30. After dropping Bat Girl off at daycare a little before 9:30, he stood outside the door and listened to her scream "Daddy, Daddy" for an hour before breaking down and going back in to get her. He's really upset and is questioning the whole idea of putting her in daycare--certainly the idea of putting her in fulltime right away.

I'm torn. Obviously it's a huge adjustment for a child who, previous to this, had never spent more than four or five hours with a babysitter, never had a babysitter she didn't know well ahead of time, never been in any childcare setting. I was actually reluctant to put her in daycare, since obviously it was an awesome deal for me to have a stay-at-home spouse and know that I trusted her care 100 percent. My husband was the one who pushed for daycare, since he was feeling worn down by the SAH life and the demands of a toddler, and wanted to get back to work. Now, we're reversed. I loved seeing her play and interact with the other kids when I picked her up the other day, and I think the socialization will be really good for her (especially since my husband is uncomfortable having playdates with the neighborhood mommies). And he's having trouble finding a job that's exactly the right fit, and having a tougher time than he thought letting go of his full-time daddy role.

Any of you put your kid in daycare for the first time as a toddler? (Eva, I think you did, right?) What was the adjustment period like? I'm also going to call and talk to the daycare provider and ask her what she thinks of how BG is doing.

*****

In happier news, BG is 19 months old today. Her language continues to make leaps and bounds, as does her "singing" (I put it quotes because thus far she doesn't really carry a tune). She likes to sing a song we learned from watching "Little Bear" (she sings the lines first, then I repeat them) and she sings a rough phonetic version of her ABCs and "Row Row Row Your Boat." And she's been expressing longer sentence-like strings, too:

Sung as we lie in bed together: "Get up, get up, everybody geeeeet uuuuup." (I think this is a song they sing at daycare to herald the end of naptime.)

Crooned to herself while she colors: "We're all going Seattle." When I ask her, "Did you just say that we're all going to Seattle?" she answers, "Yep. Sure" which is the latest evolution in assent for her, from "Yes" to "Yeah" and now "Yep, sure" which is freaking hilarious.

When I finally go in to get her out of her crib one morning after she yells, "Mommy, change diaper!" she thumps her chest and proclaims: "This baby poop."

After I hand her some Mardi Gras beads: "Here's my pitty necklace."

She's been doing more imaginative play too. After showing no interest in her baby doll for months (beyond taking all the doll's clothes off), she's been putting the doll in her car seat and "taking her for a ride" (rocking the car seat back and forth), giving the doll a bottle, pretending to tuck me in and making me pretend to yawn and fall asleep (this is my favorite game, obviously), making "vroom, vroom!" noises while she runs her cars around the living room.

She's definitely in the toddler picky-eating stage, complete with dramatic refusals of rejected food. The best is when you offer her, say, a little cup filled with blueberries, and she screams "NO!!!" and swipes at the cup with her arm so that blueberries go flying everywhere. Then she picks up the three berries that landed on her high chair tray, eats them, and says "Mmm! More booberries!"

Crazy kid.

I don't get it

I don't talk about politics much here, but anyone who knows me in real life knows that I am a hardcore liberal. Possibly a pinko commie except I like pretty things too much. I am not one of those people who is ever wooed by politicians in national elections, because besides the fact that I live in modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah in the bluest of blue states (and therefore it barely matters how I vote anyway), my vote can pretty much be taken for granted. The Democratic primaries were extra thrilling because for the first time, I was really being wooed--I got emails from Hillary and Barack nearly every day! I saw real campaign commercials! Everyone wanted me!

I consider myself to be pretty respectful of people with beliefs that don't jibe with my own. I may violently disagree with you on an issue, but I will have a courteous conversation with you about it, and I will respect your right to hold your opinion. I will even understand how you can hold that opinion (even if I think there is no way any logical person could arrive at that opinion).

What I am having trouble with right now is the folks who are still undecided in this election--the Independents, the undecideds, the people that both parties will be battling it out for over the next two months. To me, the stakes are so high in this Presidential election, and the contrast between the candidates and their positions on the issues are so stark, that I can't understand how anyone could be genuinely torn between the two. I can understand, say, feeling ambivalent about Obama/Biden personally, but holding your nose and voting Democratic because you want to preserve abortion rights and get out of Iraq. I can understand thinking that McCain just isn't conservative enough for you (before Palin hopped on board, anyway) and deciding to opt out of this election. But to be genuinely torn between these two poles? To be reading the papers or watching TV or standing at the voting booth on election day thinking, "Gosh, I just don't know..."?

I don't get it. If you are one of these people, can you explain it to me?

(This prompted by a--very respectful!--conversation this morning with a co-worker who told me she had been pro-Hillary in the primaries, but she doesn't like Obama or Biden, and she had been thinking about not voting, but after seeing Sarah Palin speak last night she was starting to lean Republican. And then my head exploded.)

*****

When I picked BG up from daycare yesterday, she was having so much fun playing that she didn't want to leave. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Update and trash TV

So when I got home my husband clarified that the daycare did not call him, he called to see how BG was doing and they suggested that he might want to pick her up. Which is still bogus in my book, but I guess marginally better. I called this afternoon and the teacher's assistant told me that BG had had a good lunch, that she was napping (!), that they had gotten her to nap by rubbing her back and calming her down (!!) and that she hadn't needed a bottle (!!!) because she'd had milk with lunch. I want to believe it but it hardly seems possible, considering that for her entire 19 months of existence, we have been unable to get her to nap any other way but with a bottle and/or with stroller or car motion, but I suppose there's no reason they would lie about such thing. I have heard that daycare ladies can get children to do things they would never do for their parents, so maybe that's it. I'm sneaking out of work early to pick her up, we'll see how she is.

*****

Did anyone watch the new 90210 last night? I was totally disappointed. They did a good job nodding to us old-school fans (Hannah Zuckerman-Velasquez! Erin Silver! Nat! Kelly and Brenda!) but the show itself was not all that well written or acted. I know that series premieres are not necessarily indicative of how good the show will end up being (if you ever catch old reruns of the first season of Friends--oy, horrible!) but I know my teen TV, both good and trashy-good, and this didn't come close to, say, the series premieres of The O.C. or Gossip Girl.

Plus, when did girls get so damn skinny? I'm a skinny chick myself so I don't normally criticize this kind of thing, but all the young actresses on this show are SO tiny, it's rather disturbing.

I guess I'll watch next week just to see the Brenda story play out a little more, but then I think I'm done. Also, WTF happened to Shannen Doherty? Yikes.

Shortest first day ever

Today was Bat Girl's first day in daycare. We've been contemplating this move for a while--my husband has been thinking he should get back to work, and we thought BG would benefit from more social interaction now that she's almost 19 months. We were waitlisted at the "best" daycares in our neighborhood since the spring, and some spots finally opened up starting this week. We toured and interviewed both places, and decided to go with one that is slightly less organized and regimented (which is a negative for me) but where BG would be one of the youngest kids--we wanted her to benefit from hanging around older toddlers and preschoolers.

Morning dropoff was nervewracking for me. It was totally chaotic--out of 10 or 12 kids, there were 3-4 other kids who were new today, and the teacher was frazzled and disorganized. BG, though, took it in stride--they had a toy stroller, which she immediately seized and wheeled all over the place. We gave the teacher a bunch of last-minute notes (none of which I'm sure she remembered, though I just hoped she'd read through the 20-odd pages of intake forms we had to fill out giving minute details about BG's likes, dislikes, and habits) and then said goodbye and headed out. As soon as I passed out of BG's line of sight, I could hear her panicked, "Mommy? Mommy! MOMMY!" and the teachers trying to calm her down.

I was fretting all morning, emailing with another mom I know whose kid was also starting at the same daycare (we spent lots of time together this weekend so the kids would know each other), worrying about whether she'd eat, or sleep, whether they'd remember to put her hat on her when they went outside, whether she'd be sad or upset.

My husband called at 1:30. They'd called to ask him to pick BG up and take her home. She was refusing to nap (even though they'd rocked her with a bottle as per instructions) and was making a lot of noise so the other kids couldn't sleep. When he got there, they were waiting outside with her. Her eyes were all red and puffy from crying.

So, I'm a little annoyed. I realize that it's a small place and there's not much they can do with a kid who's making a commotion during naptime, but isn't that their JOB to figure it out? And yes, we did tell them to call and my husband would be happy to pick her up if needed, but what would they have done if (as will be the case tomorrow) no one was home?

Hmph. We'll see how tomorrow goes. But I'm annoyed.