Feb
10
When I was a kid I used to fly on my own from Virginia to Michigan to visit my grandparents. My mom would see me on the plane, my grandparents were waiting in the gate at my destination. Man, what a great feeling it was to step off that plane — usually with a plastic pair of wings pinned to my shirt, maybe accompanied by a friendly stewardess — and see my grandparents standing there, waving and beaming with happiness.
I loved airports back then, and everything about air travel, especially the thrilling stomach-dropping-away sensation as the plane transitions from its fullscale gallop down the runway into the air, everything on the ground tilt-shifting away into model-train-sized scenery. Then the windows filling with greyish-white before revealing the world above — the blue skies, the soft yet impenetrable-looking clouds — in all its alien beauty.
Now, of course, flying anywhere is mostly just a colossal pain in the ass. Bored security people shouting at you, lines of people, the scramble of pulling off your shoes and piling up laptop purse coat bag into trays. No one stands at gates waiting for loved ones any more. Those deliciously salty honey-roasted peanuts are a thing of the past, unless you want to buy the $15.99 version at the newsstand and, of course, risk sending your seat partner into anaphylactic shock the moment you rip open the bag. The newly-horrifying possibility of geese being sucked into the engines like single-brick Duplos crippling a Bissell.
It’s been a while since I’ve felt anything other than resigned irritation when it comes to traveling, but I am actually really looking forward to the trip I’m going on tomorrow, despite the ass-pains involved. I’m heading to DC for the first time in, well, let’s see . . . good lord, 25 years, and I’m excited about everything: seeing the area again, meeting new people, enjoying a spa night, and even sitting on a plane for several hours because holy god I might actually get to read a book or something, and unless I’m spectacularly unlucky I won’t get interrupted two pages in by having to wipe someone’s ass.
Also, I’ve informed JB that since I’ll be away from home for two nights, I expect that upon my return he’ll have trained Dylan to sleep through the night. Since it’s as simple as not going to him when he cries, I’m sure it’ll be NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER.
(I mock, and yet during my last overnight trip Riley magically figured out how to poop in the toilet, so really, you never know.)
No matter what, I’m always just a little convinced that my plane is going to burst into flames and plummet into a remote mountainside where the survivors will be forced to eat the flesh of the dead in order to survive and despite overcoming great odds and enduring the likely unpleasant taste of human I will tragically perish moments before the rescue helicopter arrives, so if you don’t hear from me again, that’s probably what happened. Don’t judge me for the cannibalism, people, I had no choice. There weren’t even any PEANUTS.
Feb
9
It’s true that some of the most accurate parenting advice is This too shall pass although it’s rarely appreciated while you’re in the midst of whatever it is that shall someday pass. I know I’ve had myself an involuntary eye-roll or two when the sentiment’s been offered in my direction, like thanks so much for the reminder I should be all zen about this shit instead of indulging in a good old-fashioned freakout, but since I am not motherfucking Yoda over here I guess I’ll just continue my useless hand-wringing, if you don’t mind. Would you tell someone in the midst of passing a kidney stone not to whine like a little bitch? Okay then!
Like a kidney stone, the various difficult stages small children go through tend to irritate the linings of your urinary tract. Er, wait: your heart. Whatever. The point is, it’s irritating when a child suddenly refuses to eat any food whatsoever except for, say, crackers, and MONTHS go by while he exists purely on sodium and white flour, and meanwhile you’re hearing about other kids who eat things like TOFU and LENTILS and HUMMUS, and clearly you made some sort of irrevocable nutrition mistake somewhere along the line and now your kid is going to succumb to scurvy, and there’s going to be a big article about you on the front page of the paper: SCURVY-RIDDEN TODDLER FED ONLY SALTINES; WOMAN TO BE CHARGED WITH BEING A BAD MOM. AND ALSO AN ASSHOLE.
That was Riley. I mean, not the scurvy thing, ha ha (I think), but seriously, he ate crackers for like a year. I don’t even know when the food madness receded, exactly, but it’s only been in the last few months that I’ve stopped worrying altogether about his diet. He’s not the most adventurous eater but neither is he limited to items that leave a salty crumble in their wake. The extreme pickiness that sucked up so much of the real estate in my brain, entire quadrants that could be better purposed for remembering where in hell my keys are, was a stage. Like the good people predicted, it passed.
Ditto the hitting stage, the greatly-preferring-his-father stage, the Blue’s Clues addiction stage, and of course, the refusing-to-poop-in-the-toilet stage. Each one caused me all sorts of anguish: what am I doing wrong? What could I be doing to make this better? And while there are entire books devoted to answering those questions and offering strategies and coping skills, sometimes the answer is simple: this too shall pass.
Lately I’ve been fretting about Dylan’s ongoing wee-hour wakenings and wondering just how bad I’m making things by continuing to get up with him. I know I shouldn’t be giving him a bottle, but I do; I shouldn’t be rocking him back to sleep, but I do. (JB tells me I should let him cry, and I say the person who actually wakes up when the baby cries is the person who gets to make the decision on what approach to take, while the person who lies there snoring like an elephant seal can suck it.)
I can feel the brain-quadrants rallying together in order to more thoroughly devote themselves to the subject of SLEEP, and here’s what I’m telling myself: this too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. And then I’m all, hey, Yoda? STFU and get me a Red Bull.
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