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?