The Girl

The other day, when I was dropping my son off at school, his buddy grabbed him by the arm, leered at him--leered, I say! It turns out it is possible for a five-year-old to leer--and said, "Hey, so good luck with the
gi-irl tomorrow." "Um, what girl?" I asked my son later, trying to sound casual and failing badly. "Oh, you don't know her," he said nonchalantly. "She's from the sport's class we go to on Tuesday afternoons."

I'll admit it. In a very uncool move, today I decided to stay for the entire class, when normally I'd leave to go shopping or run errands or have a tea with mom friends. J, who normally always asks me if I'm planning to stick around and looks disappointed when I say I'm probably not going to, appeared slightly alarmed when he saw me sit down on the bench. "You're staying?" He asked. "Why?" "Because I love you," I said. "Because I want to show my support of your ...sporting endeavours."  "For the whole class? You're staying?" And he gave me a look. A look that said, "I know what you're doing. Don't pretend it's because you're supportive."

Part of it was kind of funny: an almost six year old boy acting all silly in an attempt to impress a girl, even though he really couldn't quite figure out why he was doing it. But it was also a little sad. Because I knew at that moment that he was going to grow up no matter what I tried to do about it,  and that he was going to become slightly less mine in increments that would sometimes seem small and sometimes seem big--and today felt gigantic. Being a mom is hard. Somehow,  the idea of him having his first crush broke my heart today,  just a little bit, and completely unexpectedly.

I'll give him this, though: the girl is cute. And she had a little red sequined heart clip in her hair. Well played, sister.

Things you should probably not say to a pregnant woman. Or maybe you should. But in a nicer way.

Recently, I attended a clothing swap party with some neighbourhood friends. In attendance was a woman who was pregnant with her first child. (Incidentally, she tried on one of the shirts I had brought and it looked perfect as a maternity top which made me realize why I should never have bought it in the first place.)

At one point in the evening, I entered the kitchen just in time to hear the tail end of a conversation about how awful the postpartum period can be. "It just really sucks sometimes," said one experienced mom to the new-mom-to-be. "And no one tells you it sucks, so you're basically sitting there thinking, "what is wrong with me!? This sucks. Is it supposed to suck so bad?""

I was shocked. "Um," I said nervously. "This is her first baby. Maybe we shouldn't..." Tell the truth. That's what I was thinking: maybe we shouldn't tell the truth. It  might scare her. "Actually, nevermind," I said. "You're right. Sometimes, it sucks." I turned to the new-mom-to-be and sipped my wine, suddenly determined to give her the straight goods. I'm nothing if not honest, right? "Like, you keep waiting for that perfect feeling. That, "I am so happy, I have never been happier in my life," feeling, and while you DO have that,  on the first day or two when you're still a little delirious, well, after that--" 

And this is the point where I made that sound people make. You know, the one that's supposed to imitate the sound of a bomb dropping or a plane crashing. Kind of like: “Neeeeooooooooooooow.Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssh! BOOOOOOOOOM.”

I accompanied this with hand gestures meant to demonstrate a spectacular crash and burn. I looked around the room. "Am I right?"

The new-mom-to be stared at me in horror. I realized I had probably taken it a little far.

Well, at least now she knows what she might expect to experience—and if she doesn’t,  she can say to herself, "Hey, I feel so much better than everyone told me I was going to feel, especially that crazy woman at that party. If I see her on the street, I'm going to avoid her."

 

This is why I love the internet

Some days, I don't like the internet. I say things to my kids like, "When I was a kid, we didn't even have computers or computer games and we certainly didn't have the internet" and their eyes start to glaze over and I feel ancient and also, guilty because I'm lying: we totally had a Commodore Vic 20, as well as the prehistoric video game "Pong."

But today, I don't think the internet is the scourge of civilization. Today, I'm in love with the internet. This is because I was thinking about how obsessed I was with Anne of Green Gables as a kid, and about how I used to have an Anne of Green Gables cookbook, but no one knows where it is anymore. I was remembering how I used to make (unassisted!I was a child genius) a recipe called Saucy Chicken, and I was remembering that it was so good and wishing I still had the recipe.

In the olden days, the lost book would have meant never having Saucy Chicken again. But today, I Googled "Anne of Green Gables Cookbook Saucy Chicken Recipe" and all the recipes from the cookbook, all of them, can be found here.

This makes me so happy! I'll try to remember this the next time I'm mad at the internet.

This weekend I read this article in The Globe and Mail by Ian Brown and it inspired me to believe in the future, and in my kids, and in their intelligence, and in their generation. It's going to be okay. My kids are still going to read. Books, even. Who cares if they're e-books? Although I also hope they cherish beautiful books and silly books and just books in general, the way I do. But even if they don't, I'm sure of this: they're going to cherish words. And that's just fine.

The Third Kid Connundrum (or, all that hussy Mother Nature cares about is getting lucky)

I'm toying with the idea of having another baby. My rationale goes something like this. "But honey, how could we ever regret having a whole other person?! Also, I KNOW there are a few hard months, but honestly, it's all SO worth it. Isn't it SO worth it? Also, we make the cutest babies. Don't we make the cutest babies? Look at these pictures of the cutest babies!"

At this point, my husband usually leaves the room and refuses to look at the pictures. Of his own kids. Honestly!

The other night, our kids, now aged 4 and 5, were at a sleepover with friends who have kids the same age. "This is so great," my husband said. "We've reached the age where this can happen, where the kids can just ... go to someone's house. Without us. And we don't have to worry."

"Oh, you mark my words," I said. "One of them is going to pull the chute. There is NO way they're not going to miss me." No call came in, and I spent the rest of the evening, an evening I should have spent enjoying the one-on-one time with my husband at a local bar with live music, attempting to convince him that instead of enjoying our life now that we can, what we should be doing is jumping right back into the Pit of Late Night Despair and Early Morning Confusion.

As if on cue, a couple walked in with an absolutely adorable baby. I know all babies are cute, but some babies are cuter than others, and this baby had an advantage to most other babies, in part because of his perfectly round little head. "See!?" I said triumphantly. Meanwhile, my uterus started doing this strange thumping thing and trying to move me in the direction of hte baby.  "Look at those people. They have a baby!" (Thump. Thump.) And they're out at a bar, just like we are right now. And look how happy they are." In truth, they didn't exactly look happy, but they didn't exactly look not happy, either. They're so happy, my uterus whispered, in a voice that sounded sort of like Gollum. SO, so happy, and so, so fulfilled, because that's what having a baby does. It fulfills you. You see, my uterus has been completely brainwashed by Mother Nature. It's seen all the propaganda films. I think it might even be a recruiter for other undecided uteruses.

"Yes, but they don't have two other kids running around," Joe pointed out.

"Maybe they do. Maybe they have three other kids, and they're all at a sleepover right now."

He didn't say anything. He ordered us another round of drinks. By the time we had finished these drinks, the couple with the perfectly round headed baby were gone. "See?!" He said.

"See what?" I was staring longingly at the door and considering following the baby out into the night, just to get a whiff of that little round head.

"It's 7:30 pm. They're gone. And do you know why? Because they haven't left the house in six weeks. Because they're exhausted, but they needed human interaction or they were going to go insane, except when they got here, they felt too self conscious to stay. Also, the mother ate those spicy butter chicken wings and now she's going to go home and breast feed that baby, and that baby is going to scream. All. night."

Next, I decided to do what any rational person would do. I asked my four and five year old children for advice. Said she: (with an excited look on her face) "It wouldn't be your baby, it would be my baby! I would be the mommy!" Then she rushed off to rearrange her room to fit the new baby. Uh oh. Said he: (after several moments of thought.) "We-ell, I wouldn't really want to smell poo all the time. And my ears might get sensitive from all the crying." (Me or the baby? I wanted to ask, but didn't.)

"But it would be a WHOLE OTHER PERSON!" I said instead.

"Can I go back to playing LEGO now?" He asked.

Clearly, the men in my life are developing some fairly compelling arguments against having a third baby. But me and my girl, most likely because we have uteruses and are thus at the whim of that trollop Mother Nature (wow, that was really weird, saying that my four year old daughter has a uterus. Yuck. Gah. Ack. But still. She does. I can't deny it. And one day, in the distant future, she might use it. GAAACK. Blarrrg.) who only cares about procreation at all costs, are unable to see this from a rational perspective.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to surf YouTube for funny baby videos. Have you seen this one? This is why I NEED A BABY:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4vvIVxYD2U