Maternally Challenged

"I'm supposed to do what now?!"

Role Modeled

I’ve watched “True Blood” from the beginning. I was a fan of the books for years, so for season one, I talked my husband into letting us get HBO just for the duration of the new episodes. When season 2 was on we couldn’t afford it, so I persuaded a friend to let me come over when she was at work and watch the first half of the season on her DVR. I watched the second half while visiting family in New Orleans for the Words and Music Festival. Twenty-six years old, away from husband and baby, in one of the country’s most exciting cities, and I happily sat around catching up on TV. True story.

Anyway, this year we’ve got HBO again, and, especially because it’s summer, “True Blood” is the show I most look forward to each week. I’m actually sad as I watch it, because I know that in just a few weeks it’ll be over for the season, and I’ll have to wait a whole year for new episodes. (Stupid pay cable.) I can tell you that I love “The West Wing” because of Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant writing, or “Chuck” because of the actor who brings such humor and likability to the title role, but I honestly can’t put a finger on exactly why I love True Blood. There’s no one specific reason; it’s just hopelessly entertaining.

Anyway, with the season finale coming up and “True Blood” on the brain, I’ve been re-reading some of the early books, and as I’ve kept going, something has been tugging at my mind, some detail I should be noticing. Today I figured out what it was: this is the first time I’ve read these early books since “Twilight.”

As someone who writes in this genre, I can tell you that the “Twilight” books have become the ultimate elephant in the room. They’re like if the elephant in the room was covered in a sea of blood and being hunted by a jillion teenage girls. For me, trying to write in this genre now means constantly asking myself, “Is this plotline/character/joke/fight scene/backstory too much like something that happened in the Twilight saga?” And if so, engage delete button. I now have a big list of Twilight details taking up valuable real estate in my brain. You know when you’re at the grocery story, and you look in the cart to make sure you have everything on your list? Well, I have to check the cart to make sure NOTHING I have is on the list. It’s incredibly annoying, because this is a genre with a lot of overlap. Everyone has vampires, and werewolves, and until Twilight came around, that was perfectly fine. Everybody did their own thing. Now I can’t get rid of the damned (metaphorical) elephant.

And I’m not the only one. This is still the genre I most love to read, and unfortunately a lot of the more recent urban fantasy novels come with baggage. There’s this sense of I’m trying really hard to make this different from Twlight or Look see this is completely different from Twlight. Maybe this is just paranoia talking, but sometimes I’ll come across some ridiculous detail and suspect that the author only put it in to avoid Twilight comparisons. Their vampires are always bald, or are contagious to howler monkeys or something. Even with the more subdued writers, you can often feel the author tiptoeing around, trying not to call your attention to any similarities. (Which is kind of ridiculous because similarities will be inevitable, if someone is really working to find them. Does your book have vampires? Yup. Will some “Twilight"-obsessed fan probably find a parallel somewhere? Yup again.)

But, I digress. My point is that Sookie Stackhouse was reading minds and being immune to vamp powers a good four years before Edward and Bella made it cool. And because of that, Charlaine Harris’s early books (we won’t talk about the downhill slide of the last two or three) have a relaxed, folksy sense of fun that is missing from any of the post-Twilight urban fantasies I’ve read. It makes me long to be a writer ten years ago, instead of now. Will I ever be able to write in this genre with that kind of freedom? Will I always be tiptoeing around the damned elephant?

Maybe. But at least Harris gives me something to aspire to.

Posted Under Maternally Challenged on 08.29.2010

The Third Heat Wave

Except for a five-year interval when I was at college, I have spent my entire life in Wisconsin.

That’s something like 23 summers in this state, so I am no stranger to the absurd heat that we Wisconsinites get to experience. My house didn’t have air conditioning until I was 15, and I spent one summer in Madison living on the second floor of a 100-year-old killer house that was apparently built with the intention of baking its inhabitants to death. Today the thermostat said 95 degrees, and with the humidity that pushed the heat index up to around 104. By 10 am I was wondering why I had bothered to take a shower.

I understand that living here comes with the burden of extreme weather, and let’s just say I’ve begrudgingly resigned myself to it, at least for now. But this is the first summer that I’ve had to deal with the heat…plus a toddler. No daycare, no preschool - just me, her, and humidity that would make the rainforest wince.

Of course, one of my key problems is how to keep her entertained, since it’s pretty much impossible for us to go for walks or play at the playground, activities we enjoyed early in the summer. But the boredom factor is only part of it. It’s so hot that I’m afraid to take her outside at all. Today I went so far as to go start the car a few minutes before we had to leave to run errands, just so the a/c could kick in before I put her in. I suddenly have to worry about Mattie getting burned by the buckles on her car seat (mind you, they’re not necessarily in the sun), and making sure she’s got a cup of water in her hand every second. I spent ten minutes trying to talk her into bringing her hard plastic doll along to run errands instead of her polar-fleece stuffed dog. And if I can actually find somewhere to take her for entertainment purposes, I have to weigh in the fact that we’ll be leaving the safety of our central air. (Dear former owner of my house: may God bless you. Seriously.)

The biggest problem, though, has got to be the mosquitos. Not only has this been a particularly hot and humid summer, it’s been a wet one, too. and that’s created what I’m calling the Mosquito Perfect Storm. (Or the rain being the Mosquito Third Heat, for you 30 Rock fans.) I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen them this bad - you can’t so much as run to the car without getting five new bites. The little suckers (get it?) are everywhere. Today in an attempt to entertain the baby, I put out an inflatable kiddie pool on the front lawn. She went apeshit for the thing, and would probably still be out there now if I had let her. But the whole time I was out there supervising, I was swatting mosquitos and fretting that they were draining her of her life essence. Even our cool-off activities are fraught with heat-related danger.

I gotta say, weather, the last thing I needed as a parent was a new challenge. Between bedtime, appetites, teething, keeping her busy, and teaching her not to hit people or stand on chairs, my dance card is pretty full.

It can be fall anytime now.

Posted Under Maternally Challenged on 08.12.2010

Call for blog topics!

Greetings, blog devotees!

It does occasionally happen (though probably not nearly as often as it should) that I have no particular issues that I wish to blog about. Life is proceeding along nicely enough, as I am waiting to a). start school, b). hear back from my agent, who has been sending out my manuscript, and c). survive this godforsaken season. (I hate you, Summer. I will gather my weapons against you: air conditioning, television, and bug spray. Together we shall triumph! In waiting you out!)

In other words, I’m sort of in a holding pattern. As I am not interested in writing a crappy post that I don’t care about, I’m going to take a page (heh heh) from the book of my fellow author and Facebook friend, Alex Bledsoe, and open it up for questions and suggestions. Does anyone have any questions about my progress with motherhood, my writing, directions to the Beltline, etc? Anyone have a suggestion for a good blog topic? Someone, please, throw (/drop) me a line here. Seriously. If you’re reading this on Facebook and would prefer to ask anonymously, I believe you can do so on my website.

If nobody has any suggestions, I may have to start writing about politics. You’ve been warned.

Posted Under Maternally Challenged on 08.10.2010

Call for blog topics!

Greetings, blog devotees!

It does occasionally happen (though probably not nearly as often as it should) that I have no particular issues that I wish to blog about. Life is proceeding along nicely enough, as I am waiting to a). start school, b). hear back from my agent, who has been sending out my manuscript, and c). survive this godforsaken season. (I hate you, Summer. I will gather my weapons against you: air conditioning, television, and bug spray. Together we shall triumph! In waiting you out!)

In other words, I’m sort of in a holding pattern. As I am not interested in writing a crappy post that I don’t care about, I’m going to take a page (heh heh) from the book of my fellow author and Facebook friend, Alex Bledsoe, and open it up for questions and suggestions. Does anyone have any questions about my progress with motherhood, my writing, directions to the Beltline, etc? Anyone have a suggestion for a good blog topic? Someone, please, throw (/drop) me a line here. Seriously. If you’re reading this on Facebook and would prefer to ask anonymously, I believe you can do so on my website.

If nobody has any suggestions, I may have to start writing about politics. You’ve been warned.

Posted Under Maternally Challenged on 08.10.2010

Political Statement Baby

Okay, bit of a funny situation. Mattie’s had a rough week, physically - she’s taken two major headers one down two carpeted stairs, and one on actual asphalt, so she’s pretty banged up. Because she’s been so tough, when I was at Target today I decided to buy her a little present. Budget: $10.

And there, in the Clearance section of the Eau Claire Target, I hit the jackpot: a Visit to the Doctor doll. It’s a baby that comes with a stethoscope, thermometer, cup, etc. What better way to reward my daughter for her strength in the face of…asphalt…while simultaneously preparing her for her upcoming 18-month checkup? NO BETTER WAY, I tell you.

So I grabbed a doll - automatically taking the last white one - and took it to the front to pay. However, the doll rang up at full price, a full $12 more than the clearance tag. At that point, I realized something: only the black dolls were on sale.

(If any of you are offended that I’m using the word “black” instead of the PC term “African-American,” I apologize and refer you to my black friends in college, who assured me that it’s cool.)

The manager explained that no, this wasn’t racist, it was just because this particular Target had a half-dozen black dolls and only one white doll. It was, she explained, just like when they have too many pink skirts, and only the pink version of that skirt goes on sale. (Sidebar: does anyone find this analogy kind of wrong when it comes to little versions of humans?) I wasn’t about to pay the $22 for the white doll, so I was left with a choice: get something else entirely, or go ahead with the black baby doll.

I admit, I looked. In fact, I looked around for almost an hour, trying to find an equally cool doll within my price range. I saw dolls expensive dolls that cooed and a weird doll that I can only assume was called “Baby Possessed.” There was a doll that could poop (…why?) and the generic version of the Visit to the Doctor doll, which had this whole computer thing going on so it could blush and squeal when you put the thermometer in her mouth, which I found slightly disturbing. But nothing fit both my price range and Mattie’s specifications. Why, you may ask, didn’t I just buy Mattie the black doll and be done with it? I pride myself on being all liberal and equal rights-oriented, how could I have a problem with Mattie having a black doll? I don’t. But here’s a little taste of my thought process.

If the new doll was to be treated anything like her current favorite, Scout the Stuffed Dog, the doll would be going everywhere with us. And we have a family wedding coming up next weekend, and we’ll be around lots of people, and I was just afraid that the doll would become a Thing. Raised eyebrows, subtle startled expressions, pointed comments from my grandmother, and so on. An 18-month-old shouldn’t have to be dealing with this stuff, right? And yes of course, I would love to assume that everyone would just be cool and go with it, but what if they wouldn’t? I’m all for fighting the good fight, but do I really want to make a thing out of my choice in dolls for my toddler? Couldn’t I just wait and be really really cool when she wants to marry a black guy?

On the other hand, when I was growing up, black people were so…other, simply because there were none in our town. Oh, there were black people on television, but there were talking cartoon rabbits there, too, so people of color just didn’t seem like part of my reality. I actually remember the first time I saw an African-American family in person, on a trip to Noah’s Ark. This wasn’t my parents’ fault, of course, but I still don’t want Mattie to grow up thinking that white people only is the norm. Maybe having a black doll would keep her from thinking that way.

These are the thoughts going through my mind at Target: big racial-issue stuff, while I’m wandering around looking at generic white dolls with a toddler in a cart. Weird, right?

So here’s the conclusion I finally came to: I was way overthinking it. The Visit to the Doctor doll was the one I wanted for Mattie, so that was the one I was gonna get for Mattie. The color of her plastic skin didn’t really matter, as long as it had all its accessories and a nice outfit that Mattie could take off and put on.

So. A triumph of open-minded thinking or a missed opportunity for a powerful statement? You decided. I’ve decided I no longer care. And if you’ll excuse me, I have a very sick doll that needs some attention.

Posted Under Maternally Challenged on 07.24.2010

Cage match

So, a couple of weeks ago, it came to our attention (via a loud THUMP) that Mattie can escape from her crib. This is a pretty typical toddler milestone, but Mattie’s a little ahead of schedule - at less than 18 months, the girl needed to be put in a big girl bed.

So I (and by that, I mean Husband) set to work transformering her crib into a “big girl” bed, which basically meant removing one long side of the railing and installing two small guardrails that don’t keep her in, but DO help prevent her from rolling off in the night. Mission accomplished, right? Sleep problem eradicated?

Not even close.

See, this is where lazy or uninformed parenting will come back to bite you in the ass. Mattie had never learned to fall asleep in her crib - in fact, she hates the crib. In the grand scheme of Mattie’s life she has many enemies, including the car, mosquitoes, occasionally Tucker, vegetables, and naptime, but her true archnemesis is that crib. For the first 17 months of her life, we let Mattie fall asleep in the living room and then transported her to the crib. Big mistake. Huge.

So now Husband and I found ourselves in quite the pickle. Not only was Mattie going to have to adjust to sleeping in a big girl bed, the way every other toddler does, but she also had to adjust to falling asleep in her own bed and not getting out of it. Since my daughter appears to be at least as stubborn as I am, this has proved nearly impossible. We tried everything we and the internet could think of: establishing a routine, giving her a snack, giving her a bottle, withholding the bottle. reading in bed, not reading in bed, everything. Eventually, we got her to the point where she would be on her bed without screaming, but only as long as one of us was on the floor next to her, and she still woke up at least three times in the night. (Dear Mattie, if I wanted to get up three times a night again, I would just have another frickin’ baby.) Defeated parents finally put an air mattress in her room for maximum convenience.

After nearly two weeks of that, you can imagine how Husband and I were ready to pull our hair out. Also, having hallucinations from sleep deprivation. I spoke to Mattie’s doctor, and she firmly told me that we had to do the one thing we’ve been avoiding: lock Mattie in the room.

See, the whole “cry it out” method, which we used to get Mattie to start sleeping through the night, doesn’t work quite as well once the kid can easily climb out of bed. Or rather, it still works, but there’s an additional, heartbreaking emotional factor. You have to lock the kid in the room and tolerate hearing her little fists banging on the door and her tiny screams as she calls for you. I hate, hate this plan. It seems cruel, and I can’t figure out why even considering it hasn’t gotten us arrested.

But we’re out of other ideas. So, being a strong, responsible parent, I did the only thing I could think of: I chickened out and left Husband to handle this. Last night I was helping a friend with a short film project, and tonight I’ll be at work, so I get to miss the big trauma for the first two nights, which I figure will be the worst. No, I’m not comfortable with leaving Tyler to do this on his own, but I’m even less comfortable with being there.

I know. I’m not only the worst mother ever, but the worst wife as well. But I maintain that while “crying it out” may be the only way to make this adjustment happen, and the whole family will be sleeping much better in a few weeks, I just don’t think you can ask the mommy to do this. It’s too hard.

I’ve often thought, over the course of Mattie’s short life, some preemptive guilt regarding our future second child. Sometimes I look at her clapping her hands for Max, or jutting out her chin to grin at me, or cuddling me when we first wake up, and I think, “there’s no way I can love another kid this much.” There’s just something about your first, right? But I’ve realized that the second child does get something in exchange: hopefully we’ll correct all these screwups. I bet if I had like, seven or eight kids, that last one would be perfect.

Posted Under Maternally Challenged on 07.17.2010

The new computer is here, and I am out of commission no more. Kind of. I still have to take it to the Mac store for cloning (yes, at first I was furious by the notion that I have to pay $100 to have my old computer data transferred over, but my rage was tempered by the hilarity of the term “cloning"), which means I have to give it away for another day or two, but still. It’s here.

For you geeks out there, the new computer is a MacBook Pro (just like the old one), only faster, lighter, smaller, and with way more memory, which was always a problem with my old 180 gig hard drive. I do miss the fifteen inch screen, but it was like an extra $400. Sometimes a girl’s gotta settle for something a couple of inches shorter, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, after two full weeks in limbo, I’m thrilled to be able to write again. Look for more blogs coming up in the next couple of days (there’s lots to catch up on, including our war with the baby regarding sleep habits, the process of sending my book out to publishers, and most importantly, my thoughts on the new Predators movie), but this is just a shout-out to say, “I’m BAAAAAAAAAACK!”

Posted Under Bemused Amusement, Maternally Challenged, Ballpoint Keyboard on 07.15.2010

Blog...Delayed!

Greetings, devoted blog readers. Since I’m sure you guys are just perishing from lack of blogs, I wanted to drop a line to let you know I’ll be out of commission for a few more days - my faithful Mac finally died, and the new one (thank you, student loans) is on the way. Stay tuned!

Posted Under Bemused Amusement, Maternally Challenged, Ballpoint Keyboard on 07.11.2010

Sleep Deprived

Two things are happening in Mattie’s world right now.

First, she is (hopefully) finally getting over the two-month ear infection that’s plagued our house. We’ve tried…I don’t know, four or five different antibiotics, and the last one has finally worked. If she gets one more ear infection in the next six weeks, however, then she has to have surgery to get the tubes. I’m not thrilled about her having surgery, but the past two months have been so rough for her; I’m ready to do about anything to make it better.

Which brings me to the next thing. As often happens with sick kids (or so I’m learning), having her ears messed up has completely thrown off any semblance of a schedule Mattie may have had. Namely, she’s not sleeping. She won’t go to bed, and when she finally does, she won’t stay asleep, and none of that stops her from getting up earlier than ever.

Now that she’s finally getting better, Husband and I had a State of the Union on sleeping, and we’ve come to the following conclusions:

1. Mattie needs to sleep better, or we’re both going to go crazy.
2. She needs to go to bed earlier - 8:00 would be ideal
3. We are doing everything wrong.

That last point is the result of research I’ve been doing on toddler sleeping habits, which work differently than baby sleeping habits. And it seems we’ve been making a lot of mistakes. First, our crazy schedules (we both work nights, but I never work the same nights and get done at all different times) has made it difficult to establish a solid bedtime routine, and we stopped trying. Mistake. Secondly, we’ve been letting her fall asleep with the bottle, which a)keeps her from putting herself back to sleep in the night, because she expects it, and b)can contribute to her ear infections, not to mention c)is bad for her teeth. Mistake(s). Furthermore, neither of us are willing to let her “cry it out” anymore, especially when she’s been so sick, so she still hasn’t really learned how to put herself to sleep - she gets to sit with us until she’s out, and then someone carefully places her in bed. Mistake.

Do you ever feel like you’re just failing on all fronts?

Obviously, changes need to be made. The current problem is how to change them. We decided to start with the actual TIME she goes down, figuring once that routine was established we could work on getting rid of the bottle, etc. Baby steps, pun intended. But there’s just one problem: nobody asked Mattie if this plan was okay with her. Every night this week, I’ve tried to get her to go to bed - the idea was to go 15 minutes or so earlier every night - and each time she’s pitched a huge fit that got her all worked up, which ended up just delaying the time she finally fell asleep. Last night she was wandering around in her pajamas at 10:45, and I just ran out of ideas, which is an awful feeling. We traditionally get her to fall asleep by laying down with her and a bottle, playing quiet music or TV in the background. But this week the kid refuses to lay down. Try to cuddle her, and you get the screaming fit of your life. Which just riles her up further.

I have, of course, consulted the “experts” (thank you, Google, for helping me demonstrate my parenting inadequacies in 14,003,295 ways). Here’s a list that’s basically a summary of everyone’s advice:

1. Keep your toddler active during the day with plenty of outdoor play.
Uh, yeah. The heat index yesterday was like 92. Taking my child outside is like taking a goldfish out of water, except with sluggishness instead of flopping.

2. Create a consistent, calming bedtime ritual. Start with a warm bath, for instance, then play quietly together in his room.
Again, the problem with our schedules - she alternates which parent puts her down, and half the time I seem to walk into the house while Tyler’s trying to get her to sleep, causing dogs to hyperventilate and baby to wake up. Then there’s the fact that Mattie’s not actually allowed to play in her room, because her idea of “playing” is emptying all the dresser drawers and bookshelves.

3. Cuddle your toddler in your lap as you read a story or sing songs together.
Yeah, we do that all day. How does that signify “bedtime?”

4. Don’t let your child get used to sleeping with a bottle or dozing off in your arms. Offer her a comfort object instead, such as a stuffed doll or a blanket.
Too late.

5. Play a tape or CD of soft lullabies or soothing music as you leave the room.
First, Mattie doesn’t give a crap what she hears when she’s dropped off in her crib - she starts screaming the moment you walk into her room, if she’s still at all awake. Second, we don’t own a CD player. We used to have a speaker for my iPod, but Mattie broke it, which is looking more and more like a calculated move to not have to sleep. And third, if the idea is to teach her how to put herself to sleep so that if she wakes up in the night she can put herself right back down, how is this at all helpful?

The final method I’ve seen basically involves reasoning with your kid - offering some sort of reward for going to bed on time, or explaining the importance of sleep. But Mattie is sixteen and a half months old. She’s only recently discovered where her nose is. And if she was old enough to bargain, I can assure you she’d not only go to bed, but also be eating vegetables. Not happening, people.

So, taking all that into account…I’m pretty much at square one. I have nothing.

Posted Under Maternally Challenged on 06.24.2010

the Ghost of Illness Future

In a very unsettling glimpse of my possible future, I am having non-pregnancy morning sickness.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, you may remember my long, agonizing battle with morning sickness. It was terrible. It was agonizing. It was…a great reason to never have kids again. At one point, the doctors put me on the same antinausea medicine they give cancer patients to help them cope with chemo. And a week and a half ago, I started having the same familiar bouts of nausea. I knew I couldn’t be pregnant, so I figured it was a stomach thing that would pass, but unfortunately the sickness has kept up on and off ever since. Over the last two days alone, it’s built up to the point where I had to call Husband to come home from work today to take care of me. And the question on everyone’s minds, folks, has got to be, “what the f*%@&?”

No. I am definitely not pregnant. When I called my doctor today to discuss, the nurse told me to take a pregnancy test immediately and call for an appointment with my GP if it was negative. I did, and it was. So I called the GP’s office to make an appointment, and was immediately shuffled off to a nurse, who told me that I wasn’t sick enough to see the doctor (you’ll change your tune when I drive over there and throw up on you, lady), and I should pick up some Pepsid. Which is a heartburn medication. Because, being an idiot, I don’t know the difference between heartburn and nausea. Silly me.

In other words, nobody can tell me what’s going on, and I feel pretty anxious about that. But I’m distracting myself with this thought: whatever this thing is, it’s also sort of like a visit from the Ghost of Illness Future. Because if I decide to have another baby - and that’s always been the plan - I’m going to have to be going through this again, every day, for at least four months. And that concept is getting more and more terrifying.

See, the first time I had morning sickness, I had no idea what I was getting into. No idea. And that made things easier because they were inevitable - by the time I realized just how bad it was going to get, it was too late to back out. Now, though, I know exactly what will happen if I get pregnant again - hell, I can feel it. Am I really going to be able to pull the trigger on the next baby knowing what i now know? There’s a big part of me that would prefer to just adopt, but I’d feel terribly guilty about it - there are so many childless couples in the world; I really don’t want to take a child away from them when I’m sitting on a perfectly good uterus.

Yeeps. I think I need to calm down and stop psyching myself out. But hey, universe, that would be a lot easier if you’d stop making me crazy sick. Help a girl out, here.

Posted Under Maternally Challenged on 06.14.2010

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