I don't want to share my toys anymore

Every time my friend I and I go to this one park in Zurich with our kids, one of our plastic sand toys manages to disappear. Even with our kids’ names written on them. Another child will carry one away and it somehow makes its way into another stroller or diaper bag.

Now, I realize that we all have IKEA sand toys around here. And yellow IKEA kitchen funnels. And all other things plastic from IKEA. But, c’mon. Don’t steal our toys. Don’t let your kid walk off with another child’s toy. I want to be able to loan kids toys at the park. I think it makes for a nice sense of community, especially if you’ve just stumbled on this great new spot with the water fountain and your kids would loooooove to play in it. I’m a big supporter of magical, surprise moments like that, for my kid and yours.

Just stop taking our toys home, ok?

It happened again yesterday (I’m going to start bringing Tupperware containers instead), but otherwise we had a lovely time at the park. The water feature was on, the kids stripped down to diapers and less, and loads of cute little toddler butts were braving the freezing water to splash and pour and play. And once in a while, pee.

Water play is such a big thing for kids. Baby A loves baths, splashing with buckets and cups and the baby pool on the balcony, fountains, sinks. You name it, if there is liquid, she’ll play (down to the water in her bottle at breakfast or the cup of milk on the table). Do they gain intuition from it? Is it just fun and then they have to stop playing at some point? Is it an integral part of the conservation of volume understanding? Is it just this crazy substance that you can touch but not grab?

It makes you buoyant. It slips through your fingers. It helps you slide across a rubber mat on the lawn. It makes dry bread easier to swallow. Plants need it to grow. You float in it as an embryo. Dogs love to play in it.

Sorry, I’m tired this morning and the cleaning lady came early so I am biding my time outside the house, at a café, having a hard time thinking much or writing well. I have my Swiss magazine and my iPhone German-English translator helping me read the article titles. Let’s be honest – I’m understanding about 50% of them even with the help of 2-4 words looked up per title.

And since I’m being random and uninspired today, I’ll mention that I’m still on my clothes and house decoration buying Lent. Which I’m happily surviving, partially by taking existing clothing to the tailor in our village to take in, let out, fix and such. I even got the curtains down there for a proper hemming. Now the baby’s room blue shower curtain is no longer staple-hemmed. My Target denim shirt fits my shoulders and my waist (this doesn’t happen often to me). On Mother’s Day, I even wore a dress from 3 years ago purchase, that was too tight on my arms, because he’d loosened the arm holes. Oh, and let’s not forget shoes. I brought in a pair of Teva sandals I bought last summer to move the tie loops so they fit my foot. Amazing what you can find to wear, in your closet.

Crinkles are coming

There used to be a store in Tucson, which we often passed on the drive home. It was one of those tchotchke places, that sold decorations for holidays. Actually, I never went in, but it always had a fake pine in the window, covered in ornaments for Thanksgiving or Valentine's day. It was one of those stores that I'm surprised can even stay in business. And in this case, it didn't. But while it was there, it felt like every 2 months they would advertise with a huge sign on the shop window: "Crinkles are coming!" and then, "Crinkles are here!"

I have no clue what a crinkle is. Or what crinkles are. Or, obviously, even whether you purchase a bunch (like with flowers) or a gallon (maybe they are more like water) of crinkles. But they sure were on their way often.

A few weeks ago, I was in a hardware store here in Zurich, with my friend K, and her toddler. As we walked the aisles, I found myself mystified by the light bulb selection. I somehow couldn't find non-fluorescent bulbs in the size I needed for the dining room lamps. K quietly giggled and said that at that instant, there was no doubt as to who Baby A's mom was. We had the same concentrated frown. I smiled. K effortlessly scanned the display and quickly found my light bulbs. We went to pay.

Another friend recently mentioned something about sunglasses and not wanting to encourage those frown lines between her eyebrows. I know how she feels. I've often tried to be more conscious of my "passive face" expression. More often than not, a frown creeps in, as if I'm silently upset. And I'm not. My face just does that. So does my mom's, and her sister's, and her other sister's. And probably my cousin's. And my daughter's. It's a family thing.

I already have wrinkle lines up there. Some of the first "I'm getting old" features I see when I look in the mirror. But after what K said, I'm wearing them proudly.




So wrinkles are coming! Other wrinkles are (already) here! They make it easy to identify me as Baby A's mama. And I like that.

My day

We make plans to have friends and their kids over this Saturday for a late brunch, and see what other families might want to go to Sunday brunch early for Mothers' Day. It is Mothers' Day weekend and I ask M for two things: (1) flowers (because I like them a lot), and to let me sleep in Saturday morning. Sleeping in mostly means that when Baby A wakes up, he takes her and maybe the dog out. Because if they stay here they will probably come find me, or at least the dog will need a morning pee walk. Basically it is asking him to take both the baby and the dog for an hour.

I sleep the night before with baby A, but she wakes some 5 times (maybe it is getting too warm at night for the heater?) looking for her binky. So when morning comes and M has had a decent night's sleep, he grabs the baby, and I head to our bedroom. The three of them take off towards town, in search of flowers, and I fall blissfully back into bed.

Such a treat.

Mothering is so different than I expected, but I feel pretty good at it. I am learning to roll with the punches, I don't freak out anymore when baby A acts out more at home than school (after all, she also "paints" the crib sheets with her poo at school and not at home), I take her tantrums in stride. I trust that I know what I'm doing when she's getting cranky as I insist on her trying to nap. I try to be her solid rock when her emotions and temper start to storm. The calm to her tempest. And most times, I succeed. We laugh together, I love hearing her voice and watching her eat things she really likes.

And then I realized, just as our friends arrive for brunch, that this time last year was hard. Really hard. It is at the hospital in the countryside that I met this friend coming over today. A year ago we were both in a treatment program for mothers and families having a tough time. Who were at the end of their rope.

Which means I've reached another milestone that takes me a step further away from the painful beginning - a year since the hospital stay, and almost a year since she (and then we) started sleeping better. Since we could start not caring what the problem was those first many months of her life, because we were no longer so dangerously close to falling apart. And that all the milestones now, with the weather coming back around to each season to remind my body and brain of that last year, will be improvement milestones. The coming of Mothers' Day has not made me nervous or scared, like the coming of baby A's first birthday did.

I've learned, also, to give other mothers in other situations more leeway for ways in which they parent differently than I do. Single moms, full time work-at-home moms, and full time back-to-work moms. We love our kids, and do our best. I do my best.

And I'm a mom. Whose little girl doesn't want to fall back asleep with when she wakes in the night, or on a plane, but who will run in to greet and wake her the next morning. I let her stand in her stroller, even after I flipped it running across a street median and fell on top of it (granted, I go slowly now). I let her have her binky to calm down. And the decisions I make are ok. As am I.

I'm a good mom. And I love my baby.

It's about perspective

I looked up body dysmorphic disorder this morning. I do not suffer from something this extreme. But I do have a skewed version of what I look like. For a long time, I've felt like I need to worry about what I wear so I don't look too masculine. It probably didn't help that in college I tried to blend (or maybe disappear) and in physics that meant wearing oversized t-shirts and shapeless jeans. I had to buy men's boots for my first super-freezing winter at school, and a men's leather biker jacket (I didn't have to buy this, but I had to buy a men's size to fit my shoulders in a sweater in it). And more than once I was mistaken for a man from behind.

Given that I'm six feet tall and not super curvy, and was wearing a large biker jacket one of those times, I can see how that happened. And that it doesn't mean I look like a man.

I still worry that I do, though.

I also realized over the winter that I feel a lot bigger than I actually am. The shoulders require me to buy at least one size up from what the rest of my upper body needs as far as size goes. I have to do a quick-cross-my-arms-in-front-of-me test for any shirt or jacket to make sure it won't tear if I go to pick up something. So yes, I have broad shoulders. And big feet. And that is about it.

Yet I feel huge a lot. Or I feel like my thighs are big. And I blame a lack of perspective.

Or the existence of perspective. Or both.

This is what I see when I look down on my legs and feet from my towering 72 inches.


So if my feet are already big, my thighs must be huge. And those pants look like 80's pleated things. Ugh.

But let's see this same person, a minute later, from the side.



Uh huh. Not quite the same. The shoulders are still broad, and now the legs look completely different. Where this those mom pants go? Who is this woman? Oh, wait, that's me. And right now, with my decreased appetite and Baby A's increased energy (really? has she started fusing Helium now instead of Hydrogen? where does this child get the calories to do what she does?), I'm skinny. Even if I don't "feel" skinny.

I think I need to stop looking earthward for a while, at my feet. Perspective can be problematic. So can a culture obsessed with women as objects and women's looks, but let's face it, perspective isn't helping.

My new bookstore

I have a Kindle. The electronic book reader. If I lived in the US I may never had bought one, but it is so nice to have instant access to so many books in English, here in Zurich. Parenting books, self-help (you're not surprised by that one, I'm sure), novels, something I just heard about on NPR.

These days, instead of roaming the aisles of a Borders' store, I roam the book pages of my favorite magazines to see the recommendations, with my Kindle next to me. And the best part is that I can download all sorts of book samples for free. I don't need to read the first 10 pages of every book I find interesting in one trip to the store. I can download them to the reader and then on a night I'm having trouble sleeping, pull one up.

And perhaps most important, baby A has not yet figured out how to turn on my Kindle. That day is coming, I know, but for now it is a boring static image. She presses a few letter keys, nothing happens, she moves along to find my iPhone or the remote control. Something more rewarding of her efforts.

At this point I have some 30 books on my reader, and just downloaded a sample of a book about adult LEGO builders. I probably won't buy the book, based on the writing, but it is nice to have a chance to browse this way.

Sure, paper books are still nice, but they get less so when you already lug a diaper bag around or have to pack for a long trip with a toddler. Or move across an ocean to a smaller living space. It is much less disappointing to not read any of 10 books when they are all in one light piece of plastic than it is to not read 10 paper books. Think of the shoes I could have packed instead!

I didn't realize this blog was so widely read

On Glee last night, they used a diabetes/insulin analogy to question how people look down on medications for mental illness. Who knew that even Glee writers read my blog? Hee hee.

A friend of mine has recently been going through the "should I start taking anti-depressants" quandry, and this issue of who we are on medication versus who we are off medication came up in our discussions. It reminds me of a reading group I sat in on for some 4-5 sessions once, in grad school. The readings were tough, about identity and self, and the discussions were intense. I mostly sat back and listened, trying to soak up as much as I could. I remember only one thing from those 10 hours. For me, that's actually pretty good.

It was on the sense of "I" or "me", a solid self inside our head. And how that "I" is constantly being constructed by who we are interacting with, who our audience it, and even down to the level of using a language (be it English or another) that has been constructed by others. Even the words each of us has available, with which we define "I" or "me", are not our own. We are not independent of culture on any level. And the notion of a "me" separate from "you" came heavily under scrutiny during those two hours. It was one of those times that make you question a lot of the things you take for granted. And in a way, although we are each alone with our thoughts and feelings, in this way, we are intimately connected to all we come in contact with.

I guess what I most take away from that class, is to question the basis for the questioning about how I might be changed (for the worse, is usually the assumption) by being on anti-depressants. That there is an immutable I out there to be changed in the first place.

In talking with my friend, the use of the word "depression" to mean generally sad also came up. If it wasn't used in everyday speech to mean just sad today, it might be easier to disentangle treating sadness from depression. And all the baggage that comes with that discussion.

Oops. Time to go pick up Baby A.

spilled milk and a dead man

The news this morning is that Osama Bin Laden is dead. And I'm finding all the "shit, yeah! Awesome! Celebrate!" postings on Facebook a bit uncomfortable. All the more enthusiastic, it seems, from people who are more Christian. It is strange to see so many people so gleeful about a death. Isn't the gleefulness about people's death what we thought made him so evil in the first place? Relief I could understand better, but I guess it has been a while since most people were anxious about him still being uncaught. I wonder what people think will happen now.

I didn't mean to leave such a hater-post up (about the runner) for so long as my most recent post. It is the first time I've felt I have to write something else so that it doesn't seem like I'm just angry for days. Because I sat on the couch, and ate a whole chocolate rabbit while watching the royal wedding on Friday midday. I thought the hats many women wore were cool. Ok, some were perhaps a bit much, but most of them made me want to have somewhere to wear a hat like that. And we had a good weekend, full of farmer's market strawberries, a totally messed up batch of compote, good (but forgot the baking soda AGAIN) scones, baby A's first sleepover at her babysitter's, and a bedroom shade that works for the first time in over a year.


Oh, and Baby A is now a strawberry bandit. We've been calling her the Elmex Bandit for a few months now, because this child loves tubes of this Swiss toothpaste, for carrying around the house. Smooth, plastic rubber, fun huge cap to put in mouth. And she'll happily take 3 at a time (one long ago empty, others still in use) and cruise her territory. But this weekend we went up to visit a friend who has a share in one of the great gardens on the hill above our apartment. And the teeny berries were starting to ripen. Our friend N's friend showed her how to pick a few and she was off - harvesting like a pro. Baby A is going to know where fruits and vegetables come from. I have finished most of my balcony planting - some cherry tomatoes and zucchini in the big box, along with a peony (because I love these flowers in a visceral way and they had one deep violet flower plant left this weekend for sale), some peas that might take to a cheap trellis, a bunch of herbs (two kinds of parsley, dill, rosemary, chives), and on the floor, within Baby A grazing reach, two kinds of strawberries, basil, arugula, and mint.