Our Own Filth

I'm not sure how coherent this blog post will be. I have been trying to find the time to write for several months, and now that Katherine is occupied with some very loud and distracting Daniel Tiger in the background, perhaps I can string a few sentences together. I used to have a little free time when Katherine napped, but I had to use that time to do so many other things, like watch Destination America. Now she only naps if I drive her around. She also used to sleep happily through the night, but ever since Halloween, she has woken up multiple times every night saying she is scared and talking about scary ghosts. I hope I just put her on Halloween overload in October, and there aren't actually scary ghosts in her room at night. But one of my friends sent me a YouTube video about burning sage to get rid of scary ghosts, so I'm armed and ready if need be! 

The Prestons are happily settling in to our new home, and we are finally nestling into our OWN filth, and not just someone else's filth. It feels good! Here are some pictures of our new digs! Enjoy!

Here's our front stoop after a minor makeover with new light fixtures,
topiaries, mums and Franco.

Front elevation before Derrick went hog wild with the chainsaw.

And... after going hog wild.
We have every intention of not having a dirt garden forever.

It was cathartic for him, really.

The most dramatic transformation happened in the dining room. 

RIP, broken orb light fixtures! Smell ya later, peeling wallpaper!
Does anyone want to buy me two more dining chairs?

I'll Miss You Least of All

A while ago I wrote about Derrick's and my housing search this winter, and just how disappointing it was turning out to be. As in, you want a master bathroom big enough to fit more than one person at a time? You had better be prepared to pay over one meelion dollars.

I am pleased to report that the real estate gods smiled upon the Prestons and landed us in a cute lil' cul-de-sac ranch in Westchester! We fought competed with three other buyers and were shocked when they picked us. We closed a few weeks ago and have been going up every weekend to scrape out every piece of DNA the previous owners left behind. I know all most a few of you are interested, so I will begin posting some before-and-after photos of the cosmetic transformation of House Preston! You will have to wait a couple years to see the kitchen. I need a miracle or a LOT of money, or both.

Our time here in the city is winding down and I am feeling rather bittersweet. Manhattan nostalgia is the very last thing I ever thought I would feel in my life. Honestly, I was not super stoked to move here (my childhood goal was and continues to be to live on a horse farm. Someday!), but being the positive and open-minded person I am, I decided to embrace NYC living as much as I could. So many people dream of living here, and I wasn't about to take that for granted, and I know I haven't. I have grown to love so many things about living here!

I've been trying to come up with a comprehensive list of things I'll miss about New York City and things I won't, but at this moment there is only one thing I hate more than anything else about life here (especially now that we are firing up the car every single weekend). The rural folks and suburbanites among you will not understand, but I hope you will laugh and thank whomever you worship that you do not have to deal with this. To you, it is totally banal, and you might tell me some people have real, actual problems. I agree, they do. This is not really a real problem. But to me, this situation makes me a prisoner, and while it isn't a real life problem, it's a giant headache and I can't wait not to deal with it anymore. It's unique to city living; we had the same issue in Philly as I'm sure many of my non-NYC urban readers can relate.

It is: trying to load/unload your car while it's illegally parked on a busy city street.

Imagine this, Cindy Lou reader living in Mississippi or North Carolina or wherever you are: you need to go to Target or Sam's, or you're going away somewhere relaxing for a long weekend of carefree pleasure. You leisurely load your car as you wish, at any time of day or night, because it's parked mere feet from your front door. Forgot something? No worries! Just pack things as you think of them! "Tra, la la," you sing, "What a breeze this is! A delightful breeze on a warm summery day!" Take your time; no one is honking at you. No one is waiting for you. No one is about to give you a parking ticket. 

When you live in a bustling city, this is so far from reality, and it makes you not want to go anywhere, ever. We park our car 5 blocks away. If we want to go away somewhere, we pile all our $#!t in the hallway, wait until we are minutes away from leaving, and try to load/balance it all on a rickety luggage cart. You only have one shot at this so you'd better get it right the first time! Derrick then makes the trek to get the car, and if he's lucky, the fire hydrant spot is vacant and he can squeeze in there for a few minutes. If he's not so lucky, he gets a ticket for parking there. If he's not so lucky not to be in the hydrant spot in the first place, he double parks and waits for the honks and middle fingers and shouting to start while we load the car as quickly as we can with all our crap. By the time you haul the rickety luggage cart down towards the car, at least 12 items have fallen, possibly the entire cart itself, onto the sidewalk where the local dogs relieve themselves. You saw the part about the fire hydrant, right? If you're lucky, the pee is mostly dried up, but you still know it's there. If you're really lucky, the things that fell off into the dog pee aren't things that typically go in your baby's hands and mouth, but you know what? Sometimes they are.

By the time you get buckled in and get moving, you are so freaking stressed out when you go to face city traffic and get the F--- out of there. Oh, but a carefree weekend of leisure and pleasure awaits! And then two or three days later, you do everything I just described all over again, except in reverse.

At least we have an elevator. I told you: I'm a positive person!

No, seriously. I'll miss you.

In Defense of the Mom Uniform

I have never been comfortably fashionable, except for those few years at Carolina where I gleefully embraced Chapel Hill student fashions: Polo shirts, sorority t-shirts, designer jeans, ribbon belts, Rainbows, North Face, and don't forget your Longchamps tote! Yes, I was a sheep! It was the best.

Two years ago, I was still schlepping across and up town with a fresh blowout and a clean wrap dress. One year ago, I was lucky if I got a shower a couple of times a week, I discovered dry shampoo, and every outfit selection involved the following thought process: "Can I access my boobs in this? Yes? Wear it. No? Can't wear it. Also, do I have to wear pants? Ugh, I really don't want to put on pants."

Lately, I have found myself struggling daily with what to wear. I now work for a 20-month-old on the steamy Manhattan sidewalks, not in an air-conditioned office with moderately rational people, so wrap dresses are impractical in baby gym and music classes, and I no longer have to access my boobs all the time, thank goodness. Winter was a little bit easier because of jeans, but now that it's hot, what is a fashion-challenged mom to do? I have had this discussion with a few other moms and I have been reluctant about this, but it's time to face the facts.

Athleisure is where it's at. You know. T-shirts and yoga capris.

It's the shit. It's the only solution. It doesn't look great, but damn it, it's practical, it's comfortable, and you don't feel bad when your kid wipes her tater tot hands on it and then draws on you. It's why nearly every mom pushing a stroller is wearing it. Maybe she's been to the gym, maybe she's going to the gym. Who cares? She probably isn't, and I fully support her, like the sports bra she's likely wearing.

Do I do yoga in my yoga pants? Absolutely not. I wouldn't dream of it. Mostly just because I hate yoga, but if you want to do yoga in your yoga pants, you go right ahead. I am happy for you!

I tried, really I did. I tried wearing the cute things I used to wear that made me feel like a better, less sloppy person.

I tried wearing skirts and dresses. You know what happened when I wore skirts? I flashed everyone while chasing my kid, and not just when the wind would blow up the hem on the street. Or I would go to pick up the kid and her foot would catch on the hem and the skirt would come up with her. This happened every single time. It just isn't practical when you're chasing a kid on a playground, climbing on equipment with them, sitting on the floor and standing back up, sitting on the floor and standing back up, and so on and so forth for 14 hours.

I tried wearing real bras. You know what happened when I wore real bras? My kid would pull on my shirt and reveal whatever was underneath - usually going so far as to say, "BOOBIES! All gone." I am not sure why she says "all gone" when referring to my boobies. She could be talking about the long-gone milk but she could also just be talking about the boobies themselves, mere shadows of their former selves. Whatever, at least she's using word phrases.

I tried wearing cute shorts. Just kidding, I haven't tried that. If you have found cute shorts that don't ride up your ass, you have found a f*cking unicorn chupacabra and you deserve my congratulations. Tell me in the comments where you found them because I am also looking for a f*cking unicorn chupacabra. How cool/scary would that be, btw?

We have come a long way, ladies. Moms who came before me figured this out a long time ago, but not that long. I'm finally embracing this reality rather than viewing it as "letting myself go." Centuries of clothed motherhood have culminated in this very moment. The evolution of fashion has taken us from crinoline to yoga capris, from powdered wigs to high ponies. My daughter is well cared-for, and I haven't flashed anyone in the process.

If Marie Antoinette were alive today, she would first look down her nose on the modern mom uniform, and then she would say, "Sacre bleu! What was I thinking all those years? I used to hate it when little Marie Therese would wipe her chubby camembert hands all over my fancy lace skirt, and then when little Louis grabs at my wig, it is just the worst. I wish they had had yoga capris in the 1700s. But, I wish a lot of things."

Marie Antoinette with Marie Therese and Louis,
flitting about Versailles by the Temple of Love,
clearly wishing she were in yoga pants and a t-shirt.

Screen Time

As a result of this long, cold NYC winter and my inability to adhere to pediatric laws banning all screen time for the under-2 set, Katherine and I have been dabbling in children's TV programming lately, and I have minimal regrets. She's breaking in her new armchair and I get to prepare her meals without her attached to my legs and screaming. She may end up at Hollywood Upstairs College instead of Yale because of this, but she may have ended up there anyway.

Since I was the youngest person in my family until Katherine arrived, I'm watching a lot of these children's shows for the very first time, save for Sesame Street, which looked a lot groovier and less Elmo-centric back in 1984.

If you haven't seen much current children's television programming, allow me to sum up what you're missing. And if you have seen it, well... 

Thomas & Friends: Trains with free will use good intentions to fuck everything up.

Dora the Explorer: High-pitched, repetitive Latina causes migraines and fights crime; just kidding, I have no idea what goes on on Dora.

Sofia the First: Naive white girl becomes princess and relentlessly attempts to impress her asshole princess step-sister and her bitch friends.

Peppa Pig: Entitled brat has adorable English accent, treats parents like jokes.

My Little Pony: Animators drop acid on the streets of Tokyo and see what happens next.

Sesame Street: Where do I begin? What's up with Bert and Ernie now being animated to look like claymation? Why not just do claymation? Why not just use the Bert and Ernie puppets? What's up with flying fairy school??? Is it time for Elmo's World yet?

Happy viewing!

House Hunt

It's a surreal moment when you realize you live somewhere where a garden hose is a status symbol. 

Think about it: in Manhattan, if you are in the market for a garden hose, your living space must be directly connected to some outdoor space for which you are personally responsible, so you're probably at least 2-weeks-in-the-Hamptons-rich. If that outdoor space is big enough to house plant life, you're probably rich enough to hire someone to take care of those plants at least once a week. If the outdoor space is big enough to house plant life so plentiful that a lowly plastic cup you got from a 1998 Mardi Gras parade won't suffice in keeping it alive, you may be in the market for a garden hose, in which case, you are probably freaking loaded. They sell these status symbols across 3rd Ave. at Gracious Home, frequented by those also in the market for $250 Christmas ornaments. 

So we want to move somewhere where a garden hose is not a status symbol; it's a normal thing normal people have. Like more than 6 square feet of kitchen counter space, or 4 walls for your daughter's bedroom, all of which go all the way to the ceiling. How many more discarded syringes and condoms was I going to stroll past on the sidewalks before I said enough was enough? Although in this neighborhood, I can confidently say the syringes are surely filled only with the finest Botox money can buy. And who am I to say the condoms aren't too?

So begins the great Preston house hunt.

Being from the South and house-hunting in the North is possibly the most depressing thing I've yet to personally experience. House-hunting in the South is like: "Which brand-new, customized, 6,500-square-foot home do I want to pay $180,000 for?"

That will be $180,000, please.

And in the North it's like: "Which 150-year-old $1.5 million tear-down isn't TOO haunted?" And I only know this from watching way too much HGTV, but if we were in Ireland we could buy a castle. Literally a CASTLE. Pray for us.

This can be yours for $1.25 million!

No-Bake Handprint Valentines

I love hand-made Valentines, and forcing my kid to craft. And I really love combining the two.

I posted my latest craft on Facebook the other day and there were a lot of people interested in it, so I thought I would help them out with a guide. The pin I used from Pinterest as inspiration was a link to nowhere, and I was too lazy to investigate it further, so I winged it (wung it?). I only have years of glue stick experience as my sherpa. This whole craft took 15-20 minutes, most of which is cutting out little fingers.

What you need:

At least three 8.5 x 11 sheets of white cardstock (or other thicker paper), red cardstock, a gluestick, a pen or pencil, scissors, and words of choice printed on regular computer paper (OR printed on cardstock if your printer can handle it - mine couldn't). For the record, I used the song “All I Want Is You” by Barry Louis Polisar printed in courier font, and cut and pasted over and over until it took up the whole page. You could also use a poem or a book excerpt – anything you want!

Not pictured: 1 child.

Step 1:

Strap child into an apparatus that limits thrashing and distract her with TV’s warming glow. Trace one hand onto cardstock. Unless your kid has drastically asymmetrical hands, you should only need to get one. The first time I did this I was only able to get a thumb and part of a forefinger because Katherine was dramatically throwing herself around and screaming.  Doesn’t she know I’m going to treasure this memory forever? I tried again later and I was able to mark where her fingers began and ended, and from there I could connect the dots. Another Facebook poster suggested making stencils out of paint handprints, which is also a good idea. Whatever works for you and your squirming child!

What's Dora doing? Oh, that is SO interesting. Tell me more.

Yo, I need that back.

Step 2:

Once you have a drawing of at least one hand, cut it out to make a stencil. Then flip the stencil over and trace it to cut out the 2^nd hand. You don’t really need 2 stencils but it helps.

Step 3:

Arrange hand stencils onto cardstock how you’d like them to appear. Remember that you will be flipping them over later, so if it’s a really big deal to you that the left hand is on top in the final product, make sure the right hand is on top for this step. Anyway, then you trace them. You’ll want them to be mindful of the margins on your word sheet, so keep the hands kind of in the middle.

Step 4:

Cut the hands out. This would probably be better with a cutting knife, but I’m not that dedicated to storing craft supplies in my 1-BR apartment, so I just used fabric scissors because they are very sharp and small, and able to cut around those little fingertips more easily. This wasn’t pretty and there was a bit of tearing, and surely there’s a better way. You can’t use a thinner paper that would be less likely to tear, because you want it to hide the words on the underlay.

Step 5: 

Paste the word sheet onto a plain sheet of cardstock to give it some weight. Alternately, you could just print your words directly onto cardstock and avoid this step, but my printer couldn’t handle that.

Step 6:

Work quickly and glue-stick the back of the hand cut-out page - the side with your ink marks from tracing. Flipping it over at this point hides most of the cutting imperfections as well. Glue the top of each fingertip and around the bottoms of the hands. Then line it up on your word sheet and smooth it all out. You can carefully glue each of these corners on the cut-outs so they lie down flat.

Step 7:

Cut your hearts out of red cardstock and paste them on the palms. I cut these free-hand to give them a more homemade feel.

Step 8:

I added some of my terrible handwriting and a black wood gallery frame with a white mat and it looks so much better in the frame because the glass really flattens it all out making for a nice finish.

If you do this craft too, please send me a picture and let us know what words you chose as your underlay!

Merry F*€#ing Christmas

Traveling by air during the holidays is one of life's greatest annoyances. Traveling with a spirited toddler, anytime, is one of life's greatest challenges. Yesterday, for us, combining the two has led to my vow of never going anywhere ever again, until Katherine is old enough to sit and read Harry Potter for 3 hours straight. 

I am so traumatized by yesterday's flight from LaGuardia to Charlotte and I can't seem to get past it. Time heals all wounds, blah blah blah, but our flight back to NYC is 4 days away, and that is simply not enough time for these wounds. Yeah, I know I just said I wasn't going anywhere ever again, but I say lots of things I don't mean. 

I have flown with Katherine so many times that I have a pretty decent routine and a few tricks up my sleeve to keep her occupied and happy. Try to schedule the flight to be during a nap time. Fresh diaper right before boarding. Wait until everyone else has boarded so you can be the last people to get on, thus minimizing the amount of time actually spent on the plane. iPad apps. iPhone home videos. Snacks, snacks, and more snacks. 

Unfortunately, trying to beat the holiday rush meant waking Katherine up at 5 AM to make an 8 AM flight, and this proved to be detrimental. (Should we have scheduled a later flight and risked the delays? We will never know!). She was squirmy and happy and normal, and we walked up and down the aisles a few times when she lost interest in staying in our seats. When we started to descend, it was time to sit back down, and Katherine decided she was going to completely fucking lose her shit. She was exhausted, and I couldn't console her. (I know you're thinking her ears were bothering her, and maybe they were, but they never have before. The loss of sleep was the real issue). I'm talking out-of-control, throw-herself-on-the-ground, screaming-at-the-top-of-her-lungs, flailing-like-a-feral-cat tantrum.

Enter the passenger seated behind us: a drunk 60-something hag in a peacock cardigan. The guy sitting next to her later told us she had pounded 5 drinks in the first 30 minutes of our 8 AM flight. She rattled her almost-empty glass of her vodka martini on the rocks and offered it to us to give our toddler. "Haha, no thanks!" We get it, haha, alcohol for the baby will help! Let's all laugh about it.

It turns out she wasn't joking. She kept shoving her drink through the crack between the seats, begging us to take the vodka as Katherine continued to scream. "Please take the vodka! I need to you to take it! For me! It's for ME!" Because the happiness of the woman trying to give alcohol to my toddler was a real priority for me. "STOP SCREAMING!!!! STOP SCREAMING!!! She kept yelling as Katherine kept screaming. It was mayhem.

Derrick finally turned around and yelled, "Ma'am, we're doing the best that we FUCKING CAN!" I thought this was the most polite thing he could've said. I wanted to tell her to eat shit or go fuck herself, or that Santa was still watching her in spite of her being a drunk old hag, etc.

 

Shortly before landing, Katherine collapsed in a heap on my shoulder and didn't wake up again until we left baggage claim.

Look, I get it. It serves me right, yeah? There is no greater annoyance on this earth than being stuck on an airplane with a toddler having a tantrum. It's too bad we were packed like sardines in a metal tube instead of a restaurant or a mall or somewhere where we could just leave and not have to annoy others with emotional development. But children exist. There's another one born every second! Sometimes they have to go places. Sometimes by airplane. Sometimes kids have tantrums, and sometimes they don't. All of those kids have parents that are, to paraphrase my husband, trying their fucking best. It's life, and life doesn't last forever. Just like a flight from NYC to Charlotte.

I also got my lip busted by a baby with an iPad:

Navigating Playground Politics

Completely ignoring my desperate pleas, Katherine is currently transitioning from two naps per day to just one, causing me to scramble trying to figure out how to entertain her for HOURS AND HOURS with no nap.

Today I Pinterested "Halloween crafts for toddlers," and eliminated anything with choking hazards, paint, glue, or the use of intermediate motor skills. This only left making spiders out of pipe cleaners. I created them with great enthusiasm, and they amused Katherine for approximately 30 seconds accompanied by a loud "Itsy Bitsy Spider" rendition with lots of gesticulation, but that would have been exactly the same amount of A.T. (Amusement Time) with or without the pipe cleaner spiders. So.

We now visit the local playgrounds more than ever. In New York City, if it is remotely temperate, they are jam-packed with jerks, and I don't necessarily mean the parents. 

Overheard being said to/about my curious baby: "She can't have this!" "She can't come up here!" "I hate babies!" "Go away!" She has also been purposefully pushed to the ground - a one-year old! - and had sand thrown in her face.

Children are so adorable. 

YOU CAN'T SIT WITH US.

Yesterday Katherine was intrigued by an older girl and her sandbox toys - which in all likelihood belonged to the sandbox and not to her personally - and the girl could not have been more rude about Katherine's proximity to her precious plastic treasures. I am troubled by how to properly respond when a caretaker is not intervening (or even paying much attention) when rude behavior arises. I tried to see how things played out but it was pretty clear they wouldn't improve on their own, so I tried several times to distract Katherine and had no success. One last ugly look from the Sand Queen and I grabbed Katherine, who screamed like she was being axe-murdered (and why not?  She had no idea what she had done wrong).  And we left in a huff. 

This same scenario has played out multiple times lately. It's too bad common decency prevents me from telling strangers' kids that they really should share with other strangers' kids.

I am fascinated by the fact that sharing seems to be the most unnatural concept on earth, as "everything I touch is mine" manifests as early as a few months old. Children are truly like animals, and I honestly wonder whose idea it was to share shit to begin wth. Jesus', probably. 

I hope Katherine is nice to babies when she's a little older, unless it's this particular girl's younger siblings. Jesus would have had the same wishful thoughts, right?

Ghost Mom

Lately all of my Manhattan mom friends have been moving out of the city.  I am shamelessly and openly jealous of them for making a break for it, yet I must press on here without them, and I'm trying to pick up new women left and right.

I sometimes go to mom meet-ups, but Katherine is interested neither in sitting in her stroller while I chat, nor in sitting really anywhere while I chat.  So I spend most of the time chasing her around, which I can do on my own, anywhere.

We go to baby classes and I am acquainted with and chat with a few other moms, but I often think of a recent groundbreaking study, probably something I saw on the Today Show, that revealed that social media has made us less social in reality.  They say it's because you always have your nose in your smartphone and don't interact with strangers and neighbors, which I'm sure is a huge part, but no one mentions another reason: that since it is so easy to keep up with old friends, there is no real need to make new ones.

"You want to hang out IRL?  You must be a loser with not enough Facebook friends."

A couple of weeks ago I got overly excited to discover a new mom in my building with a 9-month-old son.  I saw them a few times and once bumped into them at the grocery store across the street and walked back to the building with them, enjoying a friendly chat.  She said they were only in temporary housing for a couple of weeks and then moving away (of course), but I decided to try to get in touch with her anyway if she wanted to kill some time together in Central Park before they moved away.  Look at me, being friendly!

I wrote a note and asked one of our doormen to help me since I didn't know her last name or her apartment number, only her first name and the floor she lived on.  He showed me a list of everyone who was moving in / out over the past few months and neither her nor her husband's name was on it.

The only logical explanation is that she and her son are ghosts.  I haven't seen them since and can only assume they have moved away at this point or have vanished into thin air, as ghosts tend to do.  If we looked back at surveillance footage of the day we walked back together from the store, it would probably show me walking alone with Katherine.

You couldn't have spoken with her ... She died ... 50 years ago ... TONIGHT.

Boozy Baby

I reached two new mom milestones last week:

1. I bought frozen chicken nuggets and tater tots for the first time.  Although the nuggets are actually called "chik'n" so I should probably check to see if there is any real food in them.  If not, I'll just eat them myself, obviously.

Katherine's solid food feedings aren't going very well.  She screams like a banshee when I try to offer her anything in any form.  Except Puffs.  She will cut you for some Gerber Puffs.  Put some Puffs in front of her and all is right with the world.  But any kind of fruit, vegetable, meat, bread, squeeze pouch, jar, finger food, processed food, organic food, homemade food, store-made food, etc., and she will scream, cry, and throw the food at you (which Violet loves, if it lands near her).  It is terribly stressful and makes me want wine.  Mmmm, wine.  Wine wine wine.

2. I called the poison control center after Katherine discovered some pina colada-scented hand sanitizer from Bath & Body Works in a cute turtle holder attached to our diaper bag.

It turns out the only real toxin in hand sanitizer is alcohol.  Shockingly, not even those little beady things are really toxic.  When the nice lady told me to look out for general drunkenness in my baby's behavior (stumbling around more than usual, slur-shouting to her sorority sisters, "NO, I love YOU!"), I thought, "Pshhh."  Katherine is already a champion drinker.  When she reached 9 months old, I finally bought those alcohol testing strips for breast milk and as it turns out, my milk has a much lower tolerance than I realized.  Oops!  I reassured myself that any of Katherine's previous microscopic alcohol consumption couldn't have affected her development that deeply as she began walking on her own at 8.5 months.  A friend said, "Imagine how much earlier she would have started if she had been sober."

So now I wait until after my late-night pump to imbibe, but by then, what's the point?  I'm exhausted, full, and the stress of Katherine's 6 PM solid food dinner time is long gone.  Maybe she will really like tater tots and chik'n this week and her feedings won't be so stressful anymore?  I can only hope.

Stroller Anxiety

Occasionally, I have to leave my neighborhood.  Why?  I'm not sure.  There are at least 5 wine stores within 2 blocks of my apartment, so why would I ever need to go farther than that?

But sometimes when I simply must go beyond my 20-block limit, I spend hours, sometimes days, worrying about how I'm going to get there, becoming filled with stroller anxiety.

For a while, I could just stick Katherine in the baby carrier and clomp around the city wherever I wanted to go.  Union Square?  Chelsea?  Upper West Side?  No problem!  I laughed in the face of the city's narrow aisles and heavy doors and steep stairs.  Now Katherine has passed the 17-lb mark and the last time I carried her on the subway and around the city for four hours I almost passed out.  The 14th Street freaks became even freakier when I started hallucinating by the Whole Foods.  Plus with no car seat, you remove the option for the luxurious relief of a cab.

Segue to the cab option: cabs are expensive if you can even find one, pending weather and time of day.  Moving on.

The stroller on the subway is economical, and the likelihood of passing out is low, so it is now the best option. Having done this several times now on my own, I have made two discoveries:

1. Manhattanites are content to watch you struggle up 3 flights of stairs with your heavy baby, diaper bag, car seat and stroller base and not offer to help you.  While shuffling upstairs once carrying all these things, one helpful fellow told me I needed to be carrying even weight on both sides.  Thanks, that's very helpful.  Next time I'll bring a suitcase full of rocks - or just leave the baby behind!  You are more likely to get help from the Brooklynites, but even that is no guarantee.

2. New York City is disgracefully, completely inaccessible to folks who need wheels, and I don't just mean the stroller set.  Most subway stations don't have elevators and if they do, even the most meticulous minder of gaps will still get those wheels caught between the platform and the train, and get them out before the doors slam shut on you - although sometimes not.

So now I take the stroller and wear the baby carrier, and stick Katherine in the carrier to get up or down the steps while carrying the stroller and wearing the backpack.  While visiting a childhood friend and her newborn in Brooklyn, we stood outside the stairs for the F train for at least 20 minutes while the two of us tried to readjust my carrier that had just been mangled by my stroller on the sidewalk.  We laughed about the state of our lives - that this is what it now takes to walk down one goddamn flight of stairs.  For me, I'll still take it over Mississippi.

My friend Anna lives in North Carolina and says she gets stroller anxiety just going into Target.  I told her that sounded like a vacation.

Any other moms out there get stroller anxiety?

Fantasies

We are slowly (quickly) outgrowing our Manhattan apartment.  After all, there are 5 of us living in what is technically a one-bedroom apartment: Mom, Dad, Baby, Cat, Dog.  Katherine does have her own little room that is a cutout of our large but awkwardly-shaped living room.  While the city has its perks, like almost everyone else here, we do fantasize about being suburban homeowners someday - or drastically altering our lives so we are no longer attempting to live like the urban rednecks we truly are.

Sandy H. visited recently and we usually have the TV on HGTV while she's here because it is the only channel we can all seem to agree is bearable.  Sandy does have her complaints about the Property Brothers (but I love them!), but somehow she plows through.  We like to make fun of all the people who demand "open-concept floorplans" and "good-sized" something or others.  What does "good-sized" mean to you, exactly?  I'll also never stop making fun of the one guy on House Hunters who said, "I don't know, the staircase just isn't grand enough."

I have a few things I need in my own future home.

I demand a front porch of some sort.  It doesn't have to be big; I just need somewhere to put a jack-o-lantern in October so both squirrels and neighbors alike can enjoy it.  And somewhere to put my mums ... like a welcome center for trick-or-treaters.  A lot of my housing fantasies revolve around Halloween.

I need a fenced-in back yard.  The quality of our lives would be drastically improved if we could let Violet out instead of having to take her out.  In the winter, it takes me a good 15 minutes to bundle Katherine up, only to take Violet outside for approximately 5 seconds.  I have on occasion let Katherine continue to nap while I did the 5-second pee trip with Violet, but a friend reminded me of Maddie McCann and now I can never leave Katherine alone, ever.

While scrolling through Trulia.com the other day, I stumbled upon a house that had one random large room with a TV, an old elliptical machine, and a little play area for young children.  If I had seen this room five years ago, I would have thought, "What in the hell is wrong with these people?  Pull yourselves together!" But looking at it at this stage of my life, I think it is the most brilliant goddamn room I have ever seen.  How great would it be to be able to work out and keep an eye on your kiddos at the same time?  How great would it be to be able to work out at all?  Bravo, house sellers!  I will take it, all of it, and please don't change a thing about this place.

Absolute and total perfection.

Turbulence

Always eager to cross something masochistic off my bucket list, I took Katherine by plane on my own to visit family in North Carolina last week.  It was sort of like knowing you have to get a root canal at your next dental appointment: the anticipation is probably worse than the event itself, but unfortunately there were no pain meds involved in this case.

Getting to the airport, checking in, and going through security with an infant was surprisingly pain-free.  Curiously, staff at LaGuardia were much more helpful and friendly than at the Charlotte airport, where Southern hospitality failed me.  Don't be fooled: New Yorkers are actually a very friendly people.  Just don't cross them.

The painful parts of infant airline travel are really centralized on the plane itself.  Katherine, for those of you who don't know her, abhors being held by someone who is sitting still.  And really, besides hijacking, what is there to do on a plane other than be required to sit still for the duration?  She wanted to stand on my bladder, lean this way, lean that way, turn upside down, look over there, smile at that stranger, and eventually, get angry that she was sitting still.  

She eventually fell asleep in my arms, and I wanted to keep her sleeping there until we landed, but the urge to pee became more overwhelming with every passing minute, thanks to Katherine's earlier bladder stomping.  "Are we descending?  I can wait.  Maybe I can't.  If I move she will wake up.  Did I just feel us start to descend?  No, maybe not.  Why didn't I look into getting those astronaut diapers for myself, like that crazy lady who drove non-stop for hours to stalk that one guy... no, I can hold it.  No I can't.  But I can't move... Okay, I'm doing it."

Naturally, as soon as I stood up, the plane started shaking and I swayed around like the drunk sorority girl I once was.  I figured it would pass quickly so I didn't sit back down.  The plane shook violently the whole time I was in the bathroom, changing Katherine carefully, praying she didn't hit her head on the wall.  I also can't tell you how many times during a regular day I tell myself, "Thank God I'm wearing yoga pants right now," but this was definitely one of those times, because I managed to successfully pee while holding an infant in a violently shaking airplane bathroom and hike up my yoga pants without the hassle of zippers and buttons.  

When we finally emerged, both of us dry and injury-free, I expected a vigilant flight attendant to rush over with a drink, a smile, a warm towelette, a pat on the back and a hand to carry something.  What I actually really wanted was a Cool Runnings-level slow clap from the other passengers, but unfortunately, I could only cheer for myself in my head, and head to the finish line.

10 Musings on Breast Feeding

It tickles me to death when I post something on CiB and a portion of my 15 readers squee with excitement, "She's back!" It warms my cold, black heart with sunshine!

Please know that this blog will never really go away.  I'm like herpes.  I may go dormant for a couple of weeks, or months, or years (hopefully never that long again), but I'm always here ... under your skin, waiting for 20 minutes of free time to present you with my next cold sore.

Now that that's out of the way, on to the next!

Franco is more interesting than boobs.

Franco licking himself is definitely more interesting than boobs.

My male readership is pretty limited so I don't even feel remotely bad about dedicating a post to breast feeding and pumping.  This is my life now.  And no judgment here if any men want to keep reading.  After all, Derrick is the one who sterilized and assembled the parts of my pump and even read all the instructions and then showed me how to use it.  I was far too out of it early on in Katherine's life to accomplish that on my own.  Or maybe he was just already bored during his paternity leave and looking for a project of any kind.  Either way, I am grateful for his support.

I was so aloof about all of this while I was pregnant, and stupidly didn't take any classes, and only skimmed a Dr. Sears book.  Really, the Sears family lost me when the mother bragged that she had breast fed her adopted child - a remarkable accomplishment, indeed - but then basically labeled all formula-feeders as an army of child-haters.  I tossed it aside and shrugged, "I'll give it a go, and if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, or if I hate it, I'll quit." And I just couldn't believe breast feeding classes existed at all.  I thought it was just something you did.  Like the cave ladies and their cave babies.

We did take a childbirth class, which was enlightening in some ways, but sometimes the universe has its own plan for you and before you know it, everything you took from childbirth class goes out the window as you're being rushed into the operating room for an emergency C-section.  Childbirth is just one day.  Breast feeding is all day, every day after for as long as you can handle it, and there is no epidural option equivalent.

After I actually gave breast feeding a try, I struggled to put weight on Katherine on my own.  It devastated me.  I knew this in no way determined my ability to function as a woman or a mother, but I still surprised myself by being completely determined to succeed at it.  Thankfully, I had so much support from Derrick, friends near and far, a fantastic lactation consultant, and a stash of Similac to take the edge off the debilitating pressure to perform.  I'm still going 5 months in, but I never feel like I'm "going strong," more like I'm just still ... going.  Sometimes I think about those idiots on 16 and Pregnant and know that if they can do it, surely I can too.  You have to find your motivation where you can find it!

I'd like to present my own experiences below of things I wish I had known.  I hope this is enlightening for my pregnant friends who also might choose to "wing it" with breast feeding.  And thanks to Buzzfeed, it appears many people only like to read things in list form now.

10 Musings on Breast Feeding

1. Breast feeding is the most challenging thing I have ever done.  More challenging than getting into college, succeeding in the workplace, and getting through that emergency C-section without vomiting.

2. Cluster feeding needs to be a priority.  Google it and do it as much as possible.  I had no clue what this was.  The first time I heard someone say it I thought she meant to say clusterf**k.  Life post-childbirth was a very confusing time for me.

3. Clogged ducts can happen, they're terrible, and they will make you want to quit. Those leftover body-numbing Percocets will come in handy when no number of hours or even days of lava-hot showers, scorching hot compresses, pumping, feeding, and knuckleballing yourself will do any good.  I only have 3 pills left so I can only afford to have this happen 3 more times.  Another fun part about this: when you successfully go a few days with free-flowing ducts, you get to say sexy things to your husband like, "I really think wearing these comfy sleep bras all the time is really helping to prevent my ducts from clogging!" Husband: "Umm, great?"

4. You will feel elation and inadequacy, relaxation and frustration, confusion and physical pain, sometimes in the course of 2 or 3 minutes.

5. When your baby is about 3.5 months old, she will become more interested in watching the cat lick himself than in emptying your boob.  She'll be interested in anything that isn't your boob.  Her toys, her dad, anything with a screen - your iPhone, her monitor, and the TV.  God, what fun is breast feeding if you can't watch Real Housewives or text your friends while you do it?

6. You will be hungrier than you ever imagined and you can eat whatever, whenever, and it's awesome.  I'm wolfing down Michael Phelps-level calories and still managing to drop pounds.  When I was pregnant, my doctor said sternly, "You aren't eating for two, you're eating for one." And then after giving birth, "Okay, now you're eating for two, so go ahead, put butterscotch chips in everything!"  I may have imagined that last part.

7.  It is a bigger time commitment than you thought it would be.  Not just that collectively the act itself takes up several hours out of your day, but that you'll only get a break from it for a few hours at the most when your baby is older.  Even if you have help and have the opportunity to sleep longer than 6 hours in a row, your boobs probably won't allow it.  And here you thought that once your baby arrived, you'd have to feed her, sure, but you just didn't realize how much.  Katherine is the first baby I've ever been around so I'm really flying by the seat of my pants here.

8. You might fall asleep occasionally and then wake up freaking out that you fell asleep while holding your baby and what would have happened if you hadn't woken up at that moment!?  Then those feelings will manifest as night terrors where you wake up not knowing if you fell asleep intentionally or not, and you'll search frantically for your baby in your covers, wondering how long she has been buried under there, when actually she is right where she belongs, safely asleep in her own bed.  I would actually think to myself, "I see that baby lying in the crib ... what am I going to do with the other baby when I find Katherine in these covers?  I can't put two babies in one crib.  Where is the other baby going to go, and how many more minutes of sleep will I lose while I'm figuring that out???"  I felt like a lunatic and Derrick thought I had officially lost it, but so many other mothers and fathers have told me they did, or still do, the same thing.  Always helpful, Sandy H. even shipped a less-fluffy quilt for our bed so that it might help me return to reality faster when I woke up freaking out, but it didn't help and we were so cold, so we went back to the fluffier, warmer baby suffocator.

9. People to whom you never intended to show your boobs will probably see your boobs.  In-laws, building maintenance men, dog walkers.  If you thought your modesty could be regained after birth, you were so, so wrong.  I spent my birthday breast feeding in the backseat of our car in front of a BBQ joint in Queens.  On a birthday fun scale of zero to roller skating party, I'd put this at about a 2.

10. You will both look and feel completely ridiculous and bovine the first time you pump.  No - every time.  I had been doing it for several weeks before I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror while pumping, and when Derrick got home, I asked how he had refrained from cracking any jokes that whole time.  He said, "Well, you always looked like you were concentrating so hard, I felt bad for wanting to laugh at you." I think that for as long as I pump, through this child and any potential future children, the most embarrassing moment of my life hasn't happened yet as of this writing.

Gotta wrap this up and go feed someone.

Crafts with Katherine

Before you go thinking that I actually seem like I have my s*** together if I am able to pull this off while caring for a high maintenance infant, note that it didn't occur to me to do this until the day before Valentine's Day, and I didn't make most of them until the day after.  I thought about making Easter eggs instead and just being really ahead of the game, but I chose instead to be behind the game for Valentine's Day!

It occurred to me that since Katherine was born, we don't have any hand prints or foot prints of hers of any kind, neither ink nor fossil, and I truly regret that we don't have anything like that from her newborn days.  So I decided I needed to commemorate their current size as soon as possible because they will never be this small again.  I also just really love handmade gifts for Valentine's Day, and am always searching for my next potential Pinterest fail.  

I used a tried-and-true recipe for keepsake dough, although I felt like I just personally discovered fire: equal parts flour and salt, mix in water until it's a workable dough.  1 cup of flour + 1 cup of salt + 2/3 cup water made enough for 3 hearts.

Shape the dough into your desired holiday representative object, and mash your baby's hand right in there.  This was the hardest part and I have no photo evidence of it happening because it was hard enough with one person, more doable with two people but we would need a third person to photograph it.  This took a few tries when I was on my own because if I could get Katherine's hand relaxed and flat, I could mash it into the dough but then she wanted to feel it and squish it all up.  It felt like squishy fun, so who can blame her?  So I had to start over a few times.

Baked hand prints!

Using a silicone baking sheet liner was a good call for this project, although I have to wonder why Crate & Barrel's silicone liners don't fit perfectly with their own cookie sheets?  Fail.

I baked them at 200 for 4 hours and let them cool, then painted with acrylic paint and voila!  Happy Valentine's Day, Dad!

I used Chanel suit colors instead of traditional Valentine's colors.

Derrick says he's putting it on his desk at work, and even if that means IN his desk at work, I am still really touched.  

Grands and Great-Grands, you'll get yours ... soon.  Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

Feeling All of the Things

Katherine Mae Preston was born on Friday the 13th of September, 2013 at 4:34 PM, weighing 6 lbs, 11 oz, measuring 19.5 inches long, and she is the single greatest human being ever to have existed.

The many faces of Katherine Preston.

The first of many pictures together.

I had no idea it was possible to love another person this much.  Don't get me wrong, I love Derrick and all, but I don't spend time worrying about him ever being lonely, or getting his feelings hurt one day, or waking up at all hours, worried, wondering whether or not he's breathing at night (because I hear him loud and clear).

I didn't feel this way at first.  I loved Katherine as soon as she made her appearance, of course, but it was more of a carnal "I must take care of you and keep you alive" love, but many notches above a house plant.  When she turned three months old, I finally felt all the cupcakes and rainbows and puppy dogs and ice creams about her, but didn't even realize I felt it until she turned four months old.  Maybe it has something to do with sleep deprivation over the course of the first 12 weeks of a baby's life - I managed to sleep, on average, for two non-consecutive hours per day, sometimes only getting 20 minutes of sleep in 24 hours.  I don't think I was capable of feeling anything towards anyone during that time.  Especially because of the full-body-numbing Percocets.

My previous post was written the day before I was induced.  We took a cab up to Mt. Sinai in the middle of the night, checked in, got a wonderful room with a wonderful nurse, and 15 hours later, I was being rushed into the OR for an emergency C-section.  I made peace with it on the ride in.  It really was a fine experience because all I had to do was lie there and look up at the dreamy Mt. Sinai anesthesiologist, and try to keep down all the apple juice I had guzzled during my labor.  I don't know what my deal was; my doctor said I could drink apple juice during labor and I thought, apple juice sounds so refreshing and delicious!  So I drank tons of it and why not?  FYI: the catheter is the best part of the whole deal.  More on this at a later date.  (The delivery story, not the catheter.  I pretty much wrote all there is to write about that).

We named Katherine after my great-grandmother, Catherine, and her middle name comes from Derrick's great-grandmother.  I switched the C to a K because KMP was a better monogram than CMP.  Yes, I'm serious.  We loved the idea of using family names, but there is a real dearth of usable girl names on both our sides (sorry, family members no longer with us, looking down from heaven and reading my blog: Bertha, Samanther, Dixie Lee, etc.).  We love the name Katherine and we didn't know we would be calling her by the full formal name until it was revealed that Derrick is a Kit and Kat person, I'm a Kate and Katie person.  When her face started fattening up, Derrick started calling her "Potato Head" which evolved into "Tater Head," and now she also goes by "Tater."

The past (almost) 5 months have flown by, but I do feel like I was in the hospital eons ago.

I have three New Year's resolutions:

1. Now that I have figured Katherine out a little more, I want to get her out and about, doing fun things every week like music class and baby yoga (go ahead, take your "SMH, NYC" moment here). Check, done!

2. I want to attempt to do my own housekeeping.  Check-ish - depends on what your standards are.

3. To update CiB with any sort of frequency.  I have so many thoughts on pumping/breastfeeding, because little did I know, those things have consumed my entire life, and other such topics, and I just never feel like I can really go there on Facebook.  A couple days ago I was harping on people who write status updates about potty training their kids and how completely terrible I think that is, and I'm sure no one on Facebook wants to read about my adventures in pumping.  Unless you're one of my loyal followers, in which case, I'm 100% sure you do.

My special snowflake on January 13, 2014.

How Not To Induce Labor

Everyone and her cat has a suggestion on how to induce natural labor.  Drink wine!  Eat Chinese food!  Draw a picture of a pony under a rainbow while hopping on one foot!

I'm here to save all of you future mothers of postmature-born babies a lot of frustration by telling you that absolutely every suggestion is total bullshit other than waiting it out naturally or getting the dreaded pitocin.  So just sit back, let that watermelon in you continue to grow more and more every day which will ultimately make it harder to get out, and accept your fate.

***

METHOD
Walking

CONCLUSION
Bullshit

WHY IT DOES NOT WORK
For real?  Walking?  Listen.  I am a New Yorker now and walk an average of 5 miles a day, still with more speed and vigor at 41 weeks pregnant than the average American.  If this were going to induce labor, it would have done it by now.  It's like Sandy H. says: if you do something enough times for enough days in a row, something is bound to "work" eventually.  Walking is kind of unavoidable for most people and you have to do it every day at least a little bit.  "I walked from the couch to the fridge and my water broke!  Must have been all that walking!"  By this math, what other mundane daily activities will send us into labor?  Like "Hey, I sure did a lot of blinking the day I went into labor!  I'm absolutely sure all of that blinking is what sent me into labor!"  At this point I am just going for walks because I have nothing else to do.

***

METHOD
Membrane Sweeping/Stripping

CONCLUSION
Bullshit

WHY IT DOES NOT WORK
Because I am still pregnant, that's why.  I had heard of this procedure before but had no idea how painful it was.  For those of you who have not had the pleasure, imagine having a barbaric nightmare featuring Freddy Krueger sticking his claw in your lady parts and scraping at them for what feels like hours, and you think he's done but he just sweeps again, and again, and again, and again, and when his claw finally comes out of you it looks like he's stuck it in a vat of raw, bloody hamburger meat.  {Sorry.}  Except it isn't a nightmare, it's your really-happening-in-real-life life, and it's going to happen every third day, whether you asked for it or not, until they finally just medically induce you, already.  Anyway, bullshit, doesn't work.

***

METHOD
Eating spicy food

CONCLUSION
Bullshit

WHY IT DOES NOT WORK
The proof is still in my abdomen.  I have eaten every tamale and Indian delicacy, every General Tso's morsel doused in Sriracha and nope, nope, and nope.  Still pregnant.

***

METHOD
Sex

CONCLUSION
Bullshit

WHY IT DOES NOT WORK
If having sex actually induced labor, wouldn't they tell you to steer clear of it completely until you were full-term to avoid going into premature labor?  Just sayin'.  Also: nope, bullshit.

***

METHOD
Drinking wine

CONCLUSION
Unknown

WHY I AM PRETTY SURE IT WOULDN'T WORK ANYWAY
Supposedly this relaxes you into labor.  Which is it, everyone?  Are you supposed to over-exert yourself into labor or relax yourself into labor?  Because you cannot do both!  Bullshit!  I actually still sleep like a baby so if that doesn't do it then this definitely won't.  I'm not going to find out because I refuse to drink any.  I haven't had any alcohol since 2012 (New Year's Eve, was probably 5-6 weeks pregnant at the time, sorry future baby's SAT scores!) and if I've made it this far, I plan to go all the way.  Everyone says I can have a glass, but I don't want a glass - I want the whole bottle.  In fact, some people use focal devices during childbirth, like a favorite photo or keepsake, or a picture of the sonogram so you can see your end goal.  I want Derrick to hold up a magnum bottle of chilled Sauvignon Blanc as my focal point.

***

METHOD
Drinking castor oil

CONCLUSION
Bullshit

WHY IT DOES NOT WORK
Come on now, I think someone just made this up as a cruel, weird joke.

***

METHOD
Massage, pedicures, reflexology

CONCLUSION
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit

WHY THEY DO NOT WORK
Although I had a relaxing morning with Sandy H. getting massaged and pedicured yesterday, I continue to carry this child cramp-free.  Mom even did 5 whole minutes of internet research to learn about labor-inducing reflexology and executed her learnings on my hands, ears, and feet.  It was funny, but nope, bullshit.

***

METHOD
Acupuncture

CONCLUSION
Unknown

WHY I DO NOT KNOW IF IT WORKS OR NOT
Sandy H. won't let me do it because she doesn't want me to come across any infected needles.  She says we should go to church instead.

***

METHOD
Getting on your hands and knees and cleaning your entire apartment

CONCLUSION
Unknown

WHY I DO NOT KNOW IF IT WORKS OR NOT
Because I hired a housekeeper a while back and I am really happy with her work.

***

METHOD
Eating pineapple

CONCLUSION
Bullshit

WHY IT DOES NOT WORK
I'm not sure how many times you want to read that I'm still pregnant but yes, I'm still pregnant and have eaten pineapple by the crate for the last few weeks - and even double-downed with the spicy foods method with spicy pork tacos topped with pineapple salsa - so I call extreme double bullshit.

***

So there you have it.  What bullshit labor induction methods do you suggest?  And how in God's name can you prove that's what actually sent you or someone you know into labor?  You're a liar.  Unless you suggest lounging on the couch, watching 12 straight hours of TV, then we'll talk.

Negative Six Days

It is a weird and gross feeling knowing there is a 6-day old baby swimming around in me, happy as can be, feeling no urgency whatsoever to leave anytime soon.  I can't say I blame her; I do give her lots of cookies, and an environment made up entirely of amniotic fluid may in fact be less humid than NYC is today.

*Actual sonogram photo.

Poor Sandy H. arrived two days prior to my due date and may ultimately spend two full weeks here with me before the baby even comes.  By the time I'm finally given the gift of a screaming newborn, she'll be so sick of being here she will hop on the next flight home.  Yesterday I made her walk 40 blocks in the heat and to her credit, she did it with minimal complaining!  Today she asked me what I wanted to do.  What do I want to do today?

I want to avoid as many friends and neighbors as possible who say "STILL????" whenever they see me.

No, actually, in fact, I was never really pregnant at all - this has all been a giant hoax for a social experiment to see how pregnant women are treated on the NYC subway.

No, actually, I was never pregnant, just smuggling 30 lbs of drugs.  Everywhere I go.  Just to see if I could.

No, actually, I had the baby and forgot to tell anyone.  I just still look pregnant for some reason.  *Head smack*.

These friends and neighbors will then go about the rest of their pregnancy-free days, immediately forgetting they saw me, grabbing a coffee before work, prancing around the office, grabbing drinks with girlfriends in the evening, and then they'll see me again tomorrow, remember I exist and say, "STILL????"

But not me - I will have been thinking about "STILL????" that whole time.  Every day feels like a week now, making me approximately 46 weeks pregnant.  I am 100% sure I have a one-way ticket to Induction Town this weekend.

My dear darling friend Jeff posted this Bossypants excerpt to my Facebook wall this morning and it was exactly what I needed.  I have probably read it 20 times since 7 AM and I will continue to laugh and cry while reading it over and over until this baby actually comes - if she ever comes.

"First, Lord: No tattoos.  May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it's the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach's eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, may she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half and stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her when crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called "Hell Drop," "Tower of Torture," or "The Death Spiral Rock 'N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith," and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance.  Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.  What would that be, Lord?  Architecture?  Midwifery?  Golf course design?  I'm asking You, because if I knew, I'd be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen.  Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short - a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day - And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever, that she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit.  I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.  "My mother did this for me once," she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby's neck.  "My mother did this for me."  And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me.  And she will forget.  But I'll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen."

-Tina Fey