We’ll be leaving for the beach in a few hours and will be gone for a week. I’m pretty sure we will not have an internet connection there so I guess I will be on forced blogging hiatus. Perhaps that is a good thing seeing as it is a FAMILY vacation and sometimes blogging can be a bit of a…distraction. I look forward to coming back to all of your blogs when we return and perhaps I’ll even have something thoughtful to say. You know, the ocean can make ya thoughtful sometimes. Have a wonderful week and let’s hope that for the drive to the shore Sam looks like this (he likes to drive with the windows down):

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Well, we flew home late yesterday afternoon. Sam. Was. Awesome. I can’t believe it. Somehow he woke up without a fever that morning. Our flight was on time. We got there at the perfect time. My parents watched him as he crawled around the airport for a while as I stood in the bathroom chanting my mantra: “You can do this. It will be over soon. You can do this. It will be over soon.” You’d think I was in labor. We stayed with my parents as long as possible and then went through security, arriving at the gate just as they started to board. I was worried about not having a seat next to us, and truthfully the woman next to me did not seem interested in moving to an empty seat (was she insane? My parents say it’s a Southern manners thing). But right before take off the flight attendant came and told me we could move to the front - that’s right, the front row! Where there’s room for Sam to stand and play on the chair like it’s a table. Two empty seats in front and they were mine, all mine…all right, ours, all ours! And Sam was great. The one lone guy across from us was great, giving Sam high fives at the end of the flight, which I guess will have to suffice for the deserved applause.

And now everything we were dreading is done. No more airline travel. Sam is getting over this cold thing, as am I. And Hubby has completed the Bar Exam. Today is our 3 year anniversary. We leave for the beach on Saturday, or, as people say here on the east coast we are “goin’ down the shore.” Everything is good.

Here are some highlight photos from our trip - all taken before the illness hit him. All in all I think it was a pretty good time.

He loved the swing Grampy put up for him…

He loved the corn on the cob Grammy made for him…

And he loved his little wading pool…

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Well, Sam caught this horrible thing that I have. He came down with a fever yesterday, along with some pukiness, potentially a stuffy nose (hard to tell with a non-verbal baby), and a whole lot of miserable. He had an awful time sleeping last night and ended up in the bed with me for most of the night - just like when he was very little. It was kind of nice. I’ll always wish the co-sleeping had worked out for us better than it had.

Today Hubby is taking his first day of the Bar exam (go Hubby!). This proves it was a good thing for us to come out to my parents’ afterall. As hard as it is to be away from home and away from him with both of us sick, it would have been horrible for him to have this to deal with on top of the exam.

The plan is still for us to head home tomorrow. Remember I mentioned I should fear the trip home with every fiber of my being? Yeah, let’s add a fever on top of that. Those horse tranquilizers are looking pretty good. Of course it could be worse. I could be writing essays about law for 8 hours each day.

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Well, with my last post I broke two of my very own blog records. The first was my all time high number of comments. That’s right, 16 baby! And that’s not including me adding my own comments to your comments; it’s a solid 16. Not that I’m counting, of course. I blog for myself…of course…

And the second record was the extremely long period of time that I left that rather pathetic/complaining post up there. But I have a reason, which I probably should have mentioned earlier when I had the chance. Sam and I are away. Hubby is studying for the Bar and is taking the test early next week. So Sam and I decided to escape before he went all Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” on us. Since Thursday we have been in the lovely Blue Ridge Mountains visiting my parents.

I had big plans to write a sarcastic and ridiculous post documenting a horrible airline experience, but much to my dismay the trip was great. This was the second time that I have flown with Sam by myself, the first one being that lovely trip we took from Chicago to Philadelphia for the move. You remember that, the time I had to drag the car seat through the airport with absolutely no assistance and then install it into 2 different seats on the plane because the flight attendant made me move just before take off? Yeah, we all remember that trip.

My little cherub was perfect, though. I believe the key to my success was that I arranged to be moved so that there was an empty seat next to me, imperative to the happiness of all. Of course, that didn’t stop all of the people in the vicinity of our seats to moan and murmur, “Oh crap” to each other as Sam and I approached. But then Sam was awesome, the snacks mommy brought were awesome, the secret toys mommy had hidden for a week and saved for the plane ride were awesome, and no one had a leg to stand on. By the end of the flight Sam was still happy and started waving to everybody, who, now that the flight was over and they saw they would not be bothered by a screaming baby, were happy to wave and smile back. Seriously, when a mom gets though a flight with so little disturbance to those around her, I think she deserves applause at the end. When I stood up with him to get off the plane it was all I could do to not turn around and bow, waiting for their ovation for my totally AWESOME MOMNESS. I did get in trouble though. We had a fasten seat belt sign on because of some turbulence (nothing like clutching your child on the bumpiest plane ride you’ve ever been on). When I thought it was done I put Sam back down in the empty seat next to me and immediately the flight attendant came on the intercom with: “Will the lady with the lap child please be sure to hold the child in her lap?!” I blushed like a 6th grader getting busted passing a note. People actually turned around to look at us.

As soon as we stepped off the plane I pretty much checked out. I’d been fighting a cold since Tuesday and after the flight it pretty much took hold (the air sickness from the turbulence certainly didn’t help), leaving me in a snotty funk and so very glad to be with parents who could take care of Sam while I wallowed around feeling sorry for myself. Hubby and I weren’t sure we’d made the right decision as this trip approached. I felt I was abandoning him in his time of need, despite the detailed meal plan I wrote out for him. And when lone air travel with a child looms in the future, it’s hard to not second guess one’s decision. But once I started getting sick it was clear we had done the right thing. Now Hubby could study in peace, sans needy baby and sick wife, and not feel bad about how much time he needed to spend working. And like I said, I’ve checked out. Today my mom asked what I wanted Sam to have for lunch, a question that normally would be met with a detailed menu incorporating just the right balance of vegetables, grains, and fruits. I believe my response was something along the lines of, “I dunno. Whatever you want.” Yeah, absentee mommy here.

So the blogging and the commenting may continue to be a little sparse until next week. Then Sam and I come home for 2 days and we all go on a celebrate-the-end-of-the-Bar-beach-extravaganza, where I am not sure we will have internet access - oh, the horror.

In the meantime though, I am totally convinced that the flight home is going to be horrendous. In my experience so far, if one flight goes well, the other one fully deserves to be feared with every fiber of one’s being, and I am fearing it. I’m convinced we will not have an empty seat next to us and Sam will be forced to sit on my lap for the entire 2 hours. From the short time he had to stay on my lap on the flight out, I learned that trying that for any period longer than 15 minutes would not be wise. So what are your suggestions for entertaining a baby on one’s lap on an airplane? I didn’t buy him a seat because of all the trouble we had on that trip that must not be named with the car seat, but now I’m really wishing I’d sprung for the promise of a seat for Sam. Any suggestions? And don’t even try to suggest that I try and get him to go to sleep unless you are also recommending that I inject him with horse tranquilizers, because there’s no way it’s going to work any other way.

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I’m struggling lately. I know it has to do with being in a place that still doesn’t feel like home. It has to do with trying to meet other moms and having the opportunity to see how other moms parent their children. It has to do with loads of laundry. It has to do with planning the meals. It has to do with questioning my choices, spending maybe too much time on myself, doing the dishes, vacuuming the floor, worrying about Sam’s development, worrying about Sam’s education, worrying about Sam getting sunburned, wondering if I should go to another playgroup, if we should spend more money to buy more organic food or if we really don’t have that money, if I do enough during the day to keep Sam intellectually stimulated, if we are doing the right thing for his sleep problems, if we are dealing with his new screaming fits the right way, if he will scream on the plane ride on Thursday when it is just the two of us, if I am too late on so many things we already made decisions about in Sam’s first year, and if I will always wish I had made another choice, a better choice, a more informed choice, a more proactive choice…wondering already, if it is too late. It has to do with being a mom.

I never, ever saw myself as a stay at home mom. Frankly, for all of my life up until about one year before getting pregnant with Sam I never saw myself as any type of mom. But once I got the mommy bug, I wanted that baby immediately. I remember holding my friend’s one year old daughter thinking to myself as I rubbed her back, “I want this baby IN me…now!” I probably squeezed her too hard at that point. And now, here I am, a mom. And doing what I never could have predicted: staying at home. All day, every day, we are staying at home. And all day, every day, I wonder if Sam is getting everything he deserves. Lately I am immersed in the frenzy of trying to read parenting books, education books, baby food books, all books that will make me feel that I am doing a good job, doing the right things, making the right choices. And just as often I am immersed in the pool of tepid, stand still nothingness called Boredom. The routine. Dear God, The Day In, Day Out Routine! The dishes, the cooking while a child screams at you only to be screamed at once the food is prepared, the picking said food up off the floor, the laundry, the nap preparation, the diapers, the trash, the cat litter, the grocery shopping…the routine. How do we do this?

How do we deal with these challenges? How do we spice it up, make it interesting, keep ourselves motivated? I know that Sam is my motivation in the bigger sense, but I mean practically speaking. How do we keep on keepin’ on and how do we do it effectively, happily, in a way that sets an example, that makes us feel proud of what we do, every day?

And on the flip side, how do we not go crazy with trying to do what’s best at all times, forcing us to constantly try to figure out what best is? I sit in the living room with Sam playing by my side. He’s got a puzzle and a car that he’s banging around that I’ve just been driving around all over his back and his head. Now, do I keep playing with him? Do I try and read a chapter in any one of the 5 parenting books recently borrowed from the library which will potentially make me much more useful the next time I play with him? Which one? The one about emotional intelligence, the one about developmental stages, the one about age appropriate games, or the one about how to make “Super Porridge,” the most important of the Super Baby Foods? Or do I go and try to make the stupid brown porridge so that he has no time to start flailing around at lunchtime, resulting in me getting more food down his little gullet. Do I read a few blog posts and perk myself up mentally and emotionally because a happy mommy is a better mommy? Do I pack us up and get us out of the house for yet another trip to an empty park so that Sam’s world is as big as possible? Run an errand? Do I fold the clothes? Eat some breakfast? Close my eyes for 2 minutes? Too many choices, the same choices that are faced every 15 minutes or so of every single day. It’s enough to make ya wanna sit there and do nothin’.

How do you do it? And I’m not saying I’m unhappy with this set up; this is exactly what I want to be doing. I just mean what I said: how do we do the repetition of the day in, day out in a way that sets an example, makes us feel that we are good mothers, makes us feel like we are making the right choices, from what we do for the next fifteen minutes to how we parent our babies. I guess I just feel like I’m flailing around a bit. I look up and see a lot of question marks, not nearly enough periods.

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Stephanie from Adventures in Babywearing very kindly tagged me with this meme recently. I’ve kind of been feeling like lately I’ve been writing way too much about me, me, me and not nearly enough about Sam, Sam, Sam though. When I saw that Jamie from All Things Avery had done this tag from her daughter’s perspective it was the perfect solution. Now I get to refocus on Sam, do the meme, and you guys don’t have to keep reading about me. So, Sam would like you to know the following things about his personality:

3 Things That Scare Me
Loud children.
The flying circus tent in Teletubbies – the one that houses the dancing bear.
When mommy makes strange noises to keep me awake in the car when we’re just a few minutes from home.

3 People That Make Me Laugh
Daddy
Mommy
Tyler & Maki (our cats)

3 Things I Love
Obstacle courses
Nummies
Figuring out something new

3 Things I Hate
When I try to escape to the place behind the potty and get caught before I can pull the cap thing off of the base.
Being picked up and taken away from an area I am exploring.
When Mommy doesn’t share her food.

3 Things I Don’t Understand
Why I can’t grab the stream of water poured from a cup.
How to fall asleep by myself.
Why I’m not allowed to push through the screen door

3 Things On My Desk/Table
Car puzzle
Geo Trio
Nesting cups

3 Things I’m Doing Right Now
Sleeping.
Sweating.
Plotting my next potty escape…or my next waking.

3 Things I Want to Do Before I Die
Mommy’s not even willing to discuss me in the same sentence with that word so I guess we have to skip it.

3 Things I Can Do
Hammer – watch my video. I’m REALLY good at it.
Make mommy laugh.
Stand for a few seconds all by myself.

3 Ways to Describe My Personality
Contemplative
Joyful
Impatient, especially when it comes to people making my lunch too slowly.

3 Things I Can’t Do
More than I can list. Walking and talking are pretty high up there right now.

3 Things I Think You Should Listen To
I like songs with lots of drums.
Anyone who is saying “Bye bye.”
Mommy, but only if she is talking about nummies or trucks.

3 Things I Think You Should Never Listen To
Anyone saying the word “no.”
Babies that yell during playgroup.
Anyone saying there is “no biting.”

3 Absolute Favorite Foods
Toast with peanut butter
Grilled cheese…cheese of any kind
YoBaby yogurt - blueberry

3 Things I’d Like to Learn
How to catch the ball
How to catch the cats
How to read my books

3 Beverages I Drink Regularly
Milk from the nummies
Whole milk
Apple juice

3 Shows I Watched as a Kid
Teletubbies
Sesame Street
Lots of tennis, but I don’t pay much attention to it.

3 People I Tag
I want to tag all of Mommy’s friends that she thinks have one child. That way, if the mommies want their kid to have a meme, they don’t have to choose between their children. Or the mommies could do the meme about themselves. Or they don’t have to do it at all, and that’s ok, I won’t be offended. So I tag:
Eli
Gilly
Jack
bb
Boo
Baby A
Camden

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Originally this title was going to head a post about how much I hate yogurt, and how my willingness to let my son cover me in it at lunch time proves my love. But something much worse has crossed my path today.

Hubby reads that Slate website all the time and today came across this article about a fairly controversial artist who has been discussed on the internet a lot lately. So I’m late in addressing this today, but I’m not writing about it because I want to be part of the hype anyway. I need to write about it because I’m disgusted and have to clear my mind so I can go to bed.

Lisa Greenberg takes pictures of sobbing toddlers. She instigates these sobbing tantrums in her studio by doing things like giving the child a lollipop and then taking it away with no explanation. In fact, she does not speak to them at all. Once she has successfully produced a crying child, she takes their picture. I realize there are so many issues here, and I’m not going to cover even close to all of them and when I start clicking around on this subject I find that there are a lot of people who have already said a lot with which I agree and done it much more articulately than I ever could. Supporters are arguing that this is great art because it is getting people talking and has sparked debate. The debate, however, is not about the quality of the photographs but rather the method she is using to get her subjects, babies, to do what she wants them to do. Just because the art achieves a strong emotional reaction from its viewers does not mean that it is good, not when the reaction is attributed to the viewer wondering what the artist did to these kids to make them so unhappy. You know what, blah! It doesn’t even matter if it’s good or not. I wouldn’t feel any better about what she is doing even if the art were amazing and whatever message about Bush she is trying to convey actually came across (yeah, she says the pieces are about Bush and the future of the world for our kids) because its quality still would not rationalize the way in which she takes advantage of these children.

Other Greenberg supporters, including the “artist” herself, are saying that this is not abuse and these kids will forget about it within 10 minutes because children this age cry “all the time for no reason”, and it is “normal.” Ok, yes, children this age cry. They cry because they are hurt, sad, angry, frustrated, want attention, scared, and sometimes they cry because they have been totally wronged and have been offered no explanation for why an adult is treating them so unfairly. That they may forget that lollipop in ten minutes may be true. But the lesson they learn about life and the world probably will stick with them a bit longer. They are taken into a room by their parent, who sits by and watches while a woman mistreats them, and then they see that their parent does nothing to make it right. What have they learned from this? We spend so much time when they are babies teaching them to trust us, to depend on us, that we will be there to take care of their needs. What could these kids possibly think when mommy sits by and does not stand up for what is right on their behalf?

These are children. They are not old enough to give consent for this exercise. They have to depend on their parents to make good decisions for them. This could never happen this way if the subjects were adults because adults can make decisions for themselves and can choose whether or not to allow someone to abuse them for the sake of art. These babies didn’t make that choice. They don’t even know what’s going on, and it can’t even be explained to them in a way that makes sense because it is so ludicrous. They get nothing from this experience except that one day they will get to see a huge photograph of themselves with a broken heart, sitting in a room not understanding why the people who are supposed to care for them are giving them absolutely no respect. And that’s all I see when I look at these photos – brokenhearted, confused, miserable, and scared babies who did not choose to be there, have their picture clicked, and certainly not displayed in a gallery. I hesitate to even link to these pictures because I feel like it just perpetuates this violation…so I won’t. You’ll have to use the link in the article I mentioned above and find them for yourself. While there you can also link to her interview where she comes off as completely unsympathetic because she is not causing any “psychological damage.” Gross. Grosser than gross. I have to go kiss my baby now.

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