Like Cussing Mother, Like Cussing Daughter

According to my sister Bridget, the first time I cussed was when I was four.  Eight siblings had just crawled out of the backseat of our dad’s station wagon.  I was about to follow suit when Bridget closed the door in my face, forgetting that I was still in the car.  Realizing her mistake, she turned around to open it.  Before she could, she read my little lips as I yelled, “oh shit.”  I was angry and surprised and I had no other choice but to curse my way through the situation.  I don’t think I’ve stopped swearing since.

Darla is an even earlier bloomer than I was.  It was a proud moment in my life when I realized that my 18-month-old daughter was a swearer.  This special occasion happened for me when I gave Darla a juice box filled with coconut water.  She took a long, satisfied pull from it, slammed it down on the table and said, “Oh S” (but it’s not just “s”) with a big grin on her face.  Greg and I looked at each other and put our heads on the table.  The most troubling part about this wasn’t the fact that she said it, but that she had reached a level of sophisticated cussing that she completely bypassed the frustrated or angry profanity and went straight for the joyful use. 

This is a wake up call for me.  Although I’ve been very conscious not to let vulgarity rein, I’ve let a few (or maybe a little more than a few…) muttered profanities pass my lips in her presence.  Sometimes, it came as a result of running late for an appointment and seeing that Darla had decided to take my bag and dump it all over the floor.  Other times, it was when I’d been so excited by something cool Darla has done (like dancing like a “Maniac”) that I exclaim, “that’s f’ing amazing.”  I’m 100% to blame for this and I apologize in advance to all of the parent’s Darla and I come in contact with.  Darla has been known to teach other kids such wonderful things as “no, no, no, no, no” or screaming at the top of her lungs.   Here’s just one more thing to add to your list of “things my child learned from Darla that I now have to unteach it.”

I’m at a loss of how to deprogram Darla, but I have been trying my hand at redirecting her language.  Here are some examples:  When Darla says the s-word I pretend she has said “cheese.”  With her garbled tones, it’s an easy mistake to make.  I’m hoping after enough rounds of this, she will get confused and think she’s actually saying cheese.  Also, I believe I’ve heard Darla say the b-word, but I just translate that to “peach.”  When the day comes when Darla says the f-word, I imagine I will have to think she’s saying “fork” and pass her the utensil. 

I’m hoping this plan works.  I try not to let my mind linger on the fact that she may just end up saying the s-word every time she wants a slice of cheese.  

Let Sleeping Darlas Lie

I was guilty and anxious before I had a baby.  The situation has not improved at all.  It’s actually gotten worse.  Especially on the days I work from home.   I want to give 100% to Darla and 100% to work.  Neither is possible and I end up feeling like a horrible failure as each only gets about 30% (don’t ask me where the other 40% is.  I think I lost it somewhere in my second trimester

Today was shaping up to be one of those frantic afternoons (darting between feeding Darla, doing laundry, setting up the bakery’s insurance and, maybe, squeezing in a bathroom break) when my working day came to a grinding halt.  After attempting to logon to my email, I found that the Internet was down.  I reset the modem several times.  I had no other solutions beyond this, so I started walking in circles.  I stopped walking when I realized that I had forgotten to pay the bill.

“That’s an easy fix,” I thought and called in my payment.  The automated system told me it would take half an hour for my service to be turned on.  I was at a loss and resumed walking in circles.  My plans for a frantic day were nothing without the Internet

Darla smiled up at me from her high chair.  She rubbed her eye and tugged her ear.  There was my answer.  I was being summoned to begin the most stressful part of my afternoon: getting Darla down for a nap.  This involves a lot of deafening howls and countless trips into her room to coax her down from standing up in her crib.  After a half hour, I would most likely give up on a crib nap and just put her in the car to fall asleep so I can run errands. 

Today, I didn’t feel like getting into the ring with Darla, so I decided to let her fall asleep on our bed.  After 15 minutes of shrieks and trying to keep Darla from sitting up, I gave up and gathered her into my arms.  I lay her head on my chest and she stuck her thumb in her mouth.  Within a minute, she was fast asleep in my arms and I lay back while she sighed deeply on my chest.  As I listened to her breath, sadness came over me.  I realized that laying her sleeping body across my chest on a warm afternoon with little strands of light coming through the window wasn’t going to last forever.  Her little roly-poly body would only be able to lie on me for a finite amount of time before she learns that she and I are not the same person.

For a moment, I thought about all the work I should be doing besides holding Darla in my arms.  This was a useless thought.  One year from now, was I going to regret not folding the laundry?  Probably not.  Would I regret not taking advantage of an opportunity to rest with my daughter?  Definitely. 

I hugged her tighter and felt incredibly sad that I couldn’t lay there with her forever and incredibly grateful for the fact that I forgot to pay our Internet bill.  I bought myself a chance to be 100% a good mom.   I closed my eyes to just let it all soak in when Darla lifted her head and poked my eye open.   

A Gaggle of Moms and a Lunch Rush

Darla wants to be the only baby at lunch

Going to a restaurant with one baby and two adults is a horrible experience for me.  I nervously look around at all the patrons, wondering where their hatred may lie on a scale from one to ten.  My guess is usually that it hovers somewhere around five when she’s quiet and ten when she’s screeching.  This is why Greg and I only go out to eat at 4:30 PM. 

Picture this nightmare scenario, then.   Myself and six other moms walk into The Cheesecake Factory during their lunch rush. Five of us carry our babies in Ergo packs on our chests.  We hush our respective baby’s screams.  Two other women roll strollers through the front door as us Ergo wearers struggle to hold it open for them.  Our names have been submitted to the hostess, who shows us the various options we have for seating.  We opt for the one in which we have an entire section to ourselves. 

We toddled to our table, while the women with the strollers attempted to roll their behemoths away from the center of the aisle.  Their SUV strollers, however, are still planted right in the middle of the restaurant.  I had to give them credit for trying.

We sat down and chaos (or at least what I felt was chaos) ensued.  The mothers politely argued amongst themselves over whose baby was the fussiest, therefore earning the seats on the end.  Each baby cried intermittently.  Drinks were ordered and, with the exception of myself, waters were ordered all around.   I worried over whether the server hated us because we took up eight tables in his section.  I neglected to change Darla’s diaper for fear of stretching out the experience.  What if, after I ordered, the server came to the table to tell me that they’d run out of the bacon bits for my salad while I was in the restroom with her?  I would hold up the entire table’s order, thus forcing all involved to sit at the table even longer.  I sat tight and apologized profusely to Darla in my head.  All of us mothers struggled to keep a steady conversation going between “shhhhs” and “ummmms” as we lost our train of thought. 

I tried my best to stave off a headache as I inched closer and closer to a panic attack.  After waiting tables for years, I had become a hyperaware restaurant patron. I’ve always been careful to order politely, tip in cash and not ask for water that I won’t drink.  I like to walk lightly through the whole experience.  The mom brigade descending on the Cheese Cake Factory, however, was more like a destructive stomp in the middle of the restaurant.  I really enjoyed every mother who was there, but it's better in a one on one situation.

In the end, I needed to get out of there so desperately that I just started throwing cash at the situation.  I overpaid my part and felt it was money well spent because it got me home to my quiet, empty house all the sooner.  Once I walked through my front door, I breathed a sigh of relief and vowed to only go out to eat with one mother at a time. I’ve made good on that promise so far.   

Darla's Laugh Track

Given that I've recently gone to work and Darla's sleep has become horribly disturbed, I've been unable to muster up the time or energy for anything more than posting videos.  But, I have to admit, they're FANTASTIC videos.

Enjoy this minute of Darla laughing!

Darla's First Music Video

My lovely and talented niece, Madeline Follin, started "Cults" with her boyfriend, Brian Oblivion, last year and posted some songs online at Bandcamp.  The songs blew our entire family, media, music industry and New Yorker's minds.

Fast forward to a little over a year later: Cults is huge.  They've signed to Sony.  They're album is a chart topper on iTunes.  They're constantly on tour.  They're in every magazine you open.  They're so totally mega!

Baby Darla was given the opportunity to ride on her cousin's coattails this past Mother's Day when Madeline asked if she could be in the video.  Darla fretted over her thighs and her thinning hair, but ultimately agreed to it.

This is the amazing, haunting video.

Mom Time

This story gives Darla and I a headache

Nowaday, I lose everything.  My card isn't an exception.  This is why I made sure to have cash on hand in order to pay for the Mommy and Me movie (Super 8) that I had plan on going to with my new mom friend.  I left it in the car so I would know where it was when I left the next morning. 

Darla was strapped in her seat and calm.  We were ready to roll.  I looked down in the cupholder to make certain the cash was there. 

It was gone.

I tore the car apart.  Sweat rolled down my temples.  I knew I only had a finite amount of time before Darla grew frustrated and started to scream.  I threw all the dry cleaning on the floor.  I knocked plastic cups out of their holders. I threw paper everywhere.  I even checked the glove compartment (clearly, the most unlikely place because it's the most logical spot to put cash). 

I called Greg, not knowing what else to do.

"I took out money so I would have cash today and I can't find it anywhere," I said.

"Ohhhhhh...Was it a few bills?" He asked.

"You didn't," I said.

"I thought it was a bad idea to leave cash sitting out like that, so I picked it up on my way to work," He said.

"I have no money!" I said.

"Sorry," he said. 

This was when Darla started to cry and I realized I was going to be over 20 minutes late meeting my new friend, whose cell phone number I didn't have because we'd only ever emailed each other.  I remembered the humongous bag of change that sat on the floor of my car.  I was just going to have to bite the bullet and use those.

I raced over to the the theater, reaching into the backseat every few seconds to shove the pacifier back in Darla's screaming mouth.  I, panic stricken, rolled her stroller into the theater and apologized profusely to my friend.

"One please," I said to the person selling the tickets.

"That's $10.50," she said.

"I'm so sorry about what I have to do, " I said as I started counting out stacks of four.  "One, two, three, four....Crap, I don't know if I have enough...five, six, six seventy five, seven, eight twenty five, nine...How much was it?...ten, ten fifty."

Mortified and ashamed, I collected my ticket.

"I'm so sorry," I said to my new friend.

She waved her hand as if to say get over it, but I couldn't.

We watched the movie and, after, she bowed out of lunch (which I would've had to pay for in quarters anyway).  She claimed she had a stomach ache.

I knew better and worried the whole way home that I had lost a potential friend.  I decided to write her an email in which I lied and said: I am usually far more put together.

She replied back that in Fiji everyone is late and they have something called Fiji Time.   We're on Mommy Time, she reasoned.  She then moved on to tell me that Ian Ziering (Steve from 90210) was the celebrity actor the woman in our mom group was referring to as being her husband.

I told her I had figured that out through a one handed google search within an hour of leaving the Mommy and Me group. 

My flakiness from that morning wasn't acknowledged any further.  All was right with the world.