Leery Polyp

Trickertreat

It took years before I realized it was more than one word. Ditto the phrase "pass gas," treated in my family as a single word and conjugated as such. "Pee yew! It smells like passgas in here!" "Ha ha! I passgassed on your leg!" Et cetera. I wonder what linguistic quirks Sophia will hang on to as she grows up. Already the cutest ones live only in the baby book -- "wawer" for water, "mushaboom" for mushroom (in reference to the song, and perpetuated by her parents). For a long time she rendered "sp-" as "f-", resulting in such gems as "Fiderman" and pronounced "sk-" as an exaggerated Hebraic "ch-", pointing out the moon up in the ccchhy and gathering up a bag full of books to go to ccchhool. Her world is now inhabited by the regulation Spidermen, skies, and schools, but she has a funny little accent, a baby accent, I guess, that sounds like a Brooklynite by way of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. "I need a HAYULP to get in my stroller and then we can go to the PWORK!"* (Although I'm trying to break her of the habit of calling me "MWAHMWAH.") There is also the toddler's charming syntax; every night I hear plitplitplitPLITPLITPLIT as she runs dripping down the hall to inform me with a look of slightly malevolent glee, "I taked a bath!"

Sometimes she overcorrects, though. We have an old record, dating from a period in country-western with which I was intimately familiar (when I was six or seven my father gave me his old AM-only radio, which predictably in Wichita got all country, all the time), called Sesame Country, and oh Lord is she obsessed. It features a game Glenn Campbell and a terrified-sounding Crystal Gayle, as well as a Loretta Lynn who sounds warm and familiar as always (and who, at least, had probably actually seen Sesame Street before doing studio time with a manic, befurred amorphous blue blob). There's a song called "The Last Cookie Round-up" that features the refrain, "This is the last cookie round-up /Eat 'em up, cookie-i-ay." I was singing it recently when Sophia put her sticky hand on my shoulder and said exasperatedly, "No, Mama! It's, 'Here is a cookie I ate'!" Which is how she sings along, earnestly, in her tiny innocent voice.

I won't disabuse her of that interpretation, lest I be deprived of the pleasure, years later, of telling the story whenever possible. This is what my mother does in a similar instance, only it was my younger sister and a record of "Gimme a Redneck Girl.". "Gimme a, gimme a, gimme a red-eyed girl," she would croon at the record player. Who would deny that it actually represents an improvement over the original?

* * * * *

We've been watching Lost on DVD, Sean and I, and we're about halfway through Season 2 (please do not tell me what happens! I beg of you! Although based on what I have seen thus far I suspect you would not be able to tell me much anyway!). This morning we tag-teamed breakfast as we always do, taking turns amusing Sophia in the kitchen with egg-stirring tasks and water-pouring and egg-eating and for-the-love-of-god-do-not-feed-one-more-bite-of-that- to-the-goddamn-dog-she-looks-like-a-braunschweiger-on-toothpicks-already. After defusing multiple mini-tantrums and mopping up spill after spill, while I contentedly plucked my eyebrows and gave my teeth more than a cursory wave of the brush, Sean sat down to his eggs with a frayed look in his eye. As I sauntered up to the table, he said of parenting a two-year-old, "It's like that button in Lost. Except you have to push it every 108 seconds, and the code is different every time."

Which is why he is the best husband ever.

* * * * *

Desperate for cool-weather clothes (boo frickin' hoo, all my old stuff is too big), I dragged Sophia to the mall today. At H&M, fresh from the car ride, I squatted down next to her and said some cheerful things about what we were going to do that day. A woman pushing a stroller paused and looked at me, aghast.

"You're a mommy?" she asked, disbelieving.

"Um. Yes?" I said, wondering which direction this was going to take.

"You talk so NICE to your child! It makes me feel terrible!" she said, and looked even more horrified as I began to guffaw.

"Only for another ten or fifteen minutes," I said. "Come back later." And I couldn't stop laughing. She disappeared off into the mall, which was unfortunate, because she missed the show in which stroller-less Sophia insisted on darting out into the mall, climbing the security sensor gates, swinging from the clothes rack, and disappearing from my sight at every opportunity. My voice grew thinner and tighter and testier, and the only thing that saved me was when she dumped my purse out on the floor and discovered a lollipop. Thus pacified, she contented herself with lying on her back in the aisle. I did get two sweaters (same thing in different colors), so I consider the trip a raging success.

*"Help" and "park," respectively.

Frogger

A while back I mentioned I was knitting Cherie Amour from the latest knitty.com. Got the yarn from handpaintedyarn.com (and oh my god, I want to eat it like linguine alfredo, it's so yummy, and affordable! Do you hear me? It's cheap enough that you could actually eat it!), started working, and...let us just say that this has been a learning sweater. I learned that you have to pay attention to the frickafrackin chart if you're knitting lace: I learned that it does pay off because that lace is pretty. I learned that no matter what voodoo I work, I can't get the lace on the top part of the sweater to come out mathematically correct -- and before ripping those 15 rows a third time, I decided to try the sweater on. Whereupon I learned that, as certain of the internets have been saying, that it is not the most flattering sweater to many of us on the meatier end of the single digit sizes. (Single digits, people! I am now in the single digits!)

I don't want to rag on the thin girls, but one look at the designer (who is stunningly beautiful and clearly a good designer, present issue notwithstanding) made it plain how something that seems like it should be so flattering (and indeed is, on the slender-er) ends up looking like a Gut Tube Now With Muffin Top Enhancer on me. Yes, my abdominal area is somewhat, um, blousy, but most of my clothes don't erect a flashing neon billboard proclaiming that THIS WOMAN HAS HAD A BABY! POSSIBLY WITHIN THE PAST SEVERAL HOURS!

And yet. The lace on the bottom of the sweater was just so danged pretty. It goes so well with the yarn, a variegated curry-to-amber-to-pumpkin merino that looks amazing over burgundies, deep greens, olives, navy (my cheery clothing palette). So I am hatching a plan, perhaps a foolhardy one for a novice sweater knitter, but here it is, and if as an experienced knitter you have commentary, please to be sharing:

Okay. Here it is.

Note: I knitted it in size S the first pass, and while it hugged in a sexified way, I do think (as the designer has stated) it'll look better with a little less grab.

Cast on as for medium; knit the bottom lace of the sweater the specified 31 rounds. Then switch to slightly smaller needles, and knit another six inches or so; switch down another size and knit another three or four inches. This will make the sweater somewhat longer so it hits at a more flattering place on my body, but keeps it from being overly bulky as it goes up past my hips toward my waist. (And saves me having to do any lace pattern math.) This is important because...

...I am only going to do maybe three inches of ribbing, and I want it to be supersnug and right up under my bust. On the original, that big swatch of thick ribbing placed where it was unflattered me so terribly, so this will dispense with that problem while still cinching in the sweater in the smallest place on my body.

After that I will continue with the pattern as written, in size M (although maybe on a smidge smaller needles), and hope that the math either works better for the M or spontaneously resolves itself presuming the problem is in my head.

I am also considering making 3/4 sleeves, but I don't know how that will look with my rejiggered pattern.

(All this will have to wait until after Wednesday's midterm. Boo hiss.)

The Babysitters' Club

For years babysitting was my primary source of income. I had some regular gigs in the neighborhood -- the three kids across the street, the four around the block -- that were supplemented with random calls from parents in what was evidently dire need, since they had never met me or my parents. Maybe they'd heard about me in church, maybe they'd gotten a recommendation -- sometimes parents would come up to me at the playground and proposition me as I pretended to dig up dinosaur bones in the sandbox with a five-year-old. If it hadn't been something so wholesome as babysitting, their behavior might have been skeevy -- they'd eye me for a while, size me up -- not old enough to be the mom, hmm, playing in the sand, yes -- and then they'd approach, make an offer. I used to think it was a little creepy, and smacked of desperation. I still think the latter, particularly since I have now been on the giving end of that interaction. Forget the good man; a good babysitter is hard to find. (Though I've got a line on one now!)

The regulars were my favorites -- I knew the parents well, knew the kids and their quirks, and they had a pretty good idea of what I would permit in terms of bedtime shenanigans. There were three families I worked for over years -- one little girl was 18 months old when I started, and four by the time I moved away. One little boy I used to bathe is now six foot ten (really). I wonder if my mama fever got started during the babysitting years, or if I took to sitting so well because I was mama-geared from age 10 onward. The first time I lifted a toddler onto my hip to maneuver a vacuum, the world rearranged itself in my head. I arrived home that evening and declared to my mother, to her utter dismay, that surely there was some design that went into that neat locking of baby onto hip. (When, later, my class had to select the Greek goddess we most identified with, I picked Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home. "Wouldn't you rather be Athena?" my mother prodded. "The intelligence? The wisdom?" She was two years into graduate school at that point, after having stayed home with us for eleven years.)

There were the awful ones, too. Sometimes the kids were hellions -- one six-year-old boy was intent on body-slamming his baby brother, and I spent hours dodging projectile toys when I wouldn't allow him to do so. (That was a one-time thing; I don't think I even knew the family's last name, and they did not adequately prepare me for the night to come. When they arrived home to find me pale and shaken, and Terror Child rampaging through the nursery, they sighed resignedly and tipped me an extra five, implying they had some inkling what was going to happen. That was the unforgivable part.) Sometimes the kids were fine, but the parents were nutjobs. Another one-off family who must have gotten my name from church drove me out into a remote subdivision that was still a fresh muddy wound on the prairie, and promptly abandoned me with breezy instructions about ramen noodles and the appropriate hour for bedtime. "And we don't let him watch TV," they told me, backing out of the driveway. "We left you a book on the table!" Vrroooom. The stove burner wouldn't turn off after the ramen was boiled, and what was presumably the master bedroom containing the forbidden TV was sealed behind a gigantic padlock. The aforementioned book was Anne of Green Gables, which I had already read; there were no other books in the house. Maybe they were locked up in the bedroom too. I spent enough time sitting at their kitchen table in the dead quiet of an uninhabited housing development that I finished the book. (Periodically I had to make sure nothing had blown over onto the hot burner.)

So I know a good gig when I see it, and I'm fortunate enough to have two right now. I am ridiculously attached to the kids, as is Sophia, and we look forward to our visits to her friends. (And of course the parents all count among my favorite people.) It's funny, I always figured babysitting would be easier once I became a parent myself -- the natural authority, don't you know, the ready knowledge of the appropriate action in any given situation. (I will pause for you to change into new underpants at this point.) No, in some ways it's harder -- am I being fair to everyone, am I making sure not to favor my own child or conversely someone else's child? Am I conducting myself within my comfort zone (dogs are not for kicking! friends are not for biting! nobody has to play ring-around-the-rosie who doesn't feel like it!) while respecting the parents' own ways of doing things? And then the old worries: Is it okay for me to sit on the sofa for a while, hang out? Better to wash the dishes or keep close watchful eye on children at all times? How much should I be engaging with the kids? Can I go to the bathroom by myself? (I almost never eat anything -- at my lunch-serving gig I only recently started making enough scrambled eggs for me to have some too, instead of just picking at leftovers -- but I do case the bookshelves, skim books of interest.) All these silly seventh-grade things that, were I the parent hiring the sitter, I would find absolutely ridiculous -- dude, of course you can pee alone! And have a sandwich while you're at it! If nobody's crying, everything's good! -- but there they are, a remnant from an awkward-stage past. I should be glad the gigantic purple glasses and shirts knotted at the hip are gone, I guess.

What I want to know is: what do you expect from a babysitter? If you sit yourself, what do you do while you sit? And most fun: got any horror stories from years past?

Add It Up

Reminder to self: A heat wave ≠ global warming, just as cold snap ≠ global warming disproven.

That said, I feel a little wistful looking at the pile of woolen hats I have generated this week. Onward --

I did a little math, this week, above and beyond that which was required for my statistics class. 10 hours babysitting toddlers +

(real-time interjection: I just looked up from my computer to see one Phida with her face markered up to look like a cross between drag queen and tiger face paint. You will be delighted to note, as was I, that the walls and furniture had been done to match.)

Okay, where were we...ah. Yes.

10 hours babysitting toddlers + 3 hours class time + 3 hours homework (minimum) + full-time childcare for own daughter + meals prepared from scratch not because I want to but because good bloody luck finding any Atkins-friendly prepared foods/one week = one tired-ass mama with a twitchy upper lip. Yes, I somehow managed without really noticing to become one of those mothers who works part-time, goes to school part-time, and is fool enough (okay, and broke enough; I don't babysit for the change of scenery) not to have a sitter. I am fortunate enough to have a husband who pulls his fair share (and that's a feminist fair share, not a "takes the kid to the park once a week and calls it 'babysitting'" fair share), but Dr. Science over there has himself a more than full-time job at the office, and can be found doing science-y things late into the night and during any free time (ha!) on weekends and holidays. And the conferences are coming! Woo!

This is not to say that my burden is exceptional, oh no. Among the ranks of Americans it's unremarkable at worst, which is sort of a shitty thing in itself, but damn. This is hard and it's totally ridiculous. News flash, right?

And now I have to go, because someone is whining and dangling from my chair and climbing on me, and despite the last few hours of (comparatively) undivided attention and play, apparently somebody just can't get enough Mama.

Unfortunately, neither can I.