Langer Loksh

Thank You

Just a quick post to say thank you to all my friends who have emailed or called me to offer their condolences. I really appreciate your kind thoughts. The funeral was today. It was, of course, heartbreakingly sad. It was funny, too, because Bobby was funny, and his sister Hillary gave a euology that recalled not only his sweetness and devotion to family but his goofy sense of humor.

Grandma Sophie used to say, specifically about Ellen and Bobby, that there's a lid for every pot. Now Ellen is missing her lid, and we're so sad. Thank you for thinking of us.

Why Am I Thinking About Ketchup Flavored Potato Chips?

Last night my sister Ellen called and told us that her husband Bobby had had a heart attack and they were at the hospital. He was having a cardiac catheterization. We figured he'd be OK if they were checking him out like that. But she called back a short while later and said "Jill. Bobby died."

That is not possible. Look, he's right there on that table, can't they undo that? Just undo it. Or go back in time. Just go back to yesterday. Right? I mean, Jeff just bought four bags of ketchup flavored potato chips because Bobby's coming to visit in a few days.

This is just how I felt when Charlie was a few hours old and they told me he might be very severely not OK. I was like, can we just go back to Thursday and do this over again? Only not like this?

Not. Like. This.

Thousand Dollar Monster Spray

I am the proud(?) owner of a Kirby vacuum cleaner. Perhaps you have not heard of the Kirby. I had not either, until a Kirby salesman called me up and told me my friend Martha had given him my name as a person who might appreciate a free demonstration. And because I suffer so hideously from sinus allergies and am in an escalating nuclear arms race with the dust mites, I said yeah.

On the November day that the guy came to my house, Summer was two and a half and terrified of vacuums. He was at my house for hours; Summer sat in the big rocking chair in her room, tears streaming down her face. I bought the vacuum. It cost, and I am not exaggerating, a thousand dollars.

It is a cleaning marvel. Sure it can suck the dust mites right out of your mattress! It even has a carpet shampooing system. It has many attachments including the trademarked Zippbrush; the Crevice Tool, ideal for those gritty, unreachable spaces inside your car; the Portable Sprayer, and the Massage Cup, which my friend Martha uses to vacuum hair directly off of her dog's body. Heck, it has a headlight.

Problem is, it is made of steel and weighs many hundreds of pounds and even though I used the ergonomically correct hoisting handle to carry it during the nesting phase of my pregnancy, I'm pretty sure that's why Charlie came out five weeks early. Also, it is so powerful that it sucks our Oriental rugs right off the floor, which means I can only vacuum the living room when Jeff is home to stand on the corners of the rugs, and trust me, when Jeff gets home from a long hard day of standing around and pointing, the last thing he wants to do is play human paperweight. Finally, after Charlie came we hired a cleaning lady who brings her own, totally normal vacuum that probably only weighs 10 pounds and seems to do the job. So I really don't use the Kirby very often.

Our primary goal for the week, however, is to clean the slipcover of our couch, which has these super nasty head grease stains, and of our chair-and-a-half, which features a thick coating of the cat's DNA. So I busted out the Portable Sprayer after I put the kids to bed. Then I busted out the manual, and it says I shouldn't use the carpet shampoo on fabric-covered furniture, which is not what the guy told me, so I think I'm going to have to call the guy during business hours tomorrow.

Summer came down the stairs just now as I was standing there with the Portable Sprayer and asked me to shut her closet door because she could not sleep with it open because of the monsters in there. I have been waiting for her to get scared of monsters so I could employ the fantastic concept of monster spray that I have read about in parenting magazines, and lo! I had in my hand the most expensive monster spray on the market. Sweet dreams, Summer. You have been saved by your very worst fear: the vacuum.

Shaina to the Rescue

I took Summer to the ice rink with Charlie. I hadn't thought it out very well. I think I thought I was going to hold Summer's hands and walk backwards on the ice with Charlie in the Baby Bjorn. I didn't bring my skates. We rented skates for Summer. Then we walked into the rink and I saw the all the rules listed on a big sign, rules like "No holding babies on the ice" and "No shoes on the ice" and "No dumb people like Jill on the ice."

Suddenly, who should appear out of nowhere but our own human ray of sunshine, our beloved babysitter Shaina! Shaina (in the navy sweatshirt) and her friend Marisa took Summer around the ice while I held Charlie. This is not the first time it has been painfully clear to me that Shaina is more qualified to be a parent than I am.

Summer was actually a natural--very steady on her skates, though she's letting Marisa do all the work in this clip. After tormenting the high schoolers for two turns around the ice, Summer wanted to go again, so I took her out, against the rules, in my shoes. Summer was so concerned that the guard was going to "capture" me for this transgression that we called it a day. We'll definitely go back.  (With skates, and without Charlie.)

Blame Johnny Depp

The other day at Stop and Shop the woman bagging my groceries jerked her head towards Charlie in the cart and whispered "What happened?" Good thing she whispered, otherwise he might have his eight-month-old feelings hurt! As I have mentioned, this pretty much never happens. It didn't bother me. I shrugged, smiled, and said "Just came out that way!"

At home Jeff told me I should prepare something better. Like what, I don't know. Maybe, "Smoked too much pot while I was pregnant!"

The best explanation I've heard so far comes from a kindergartener, as reported by his mom on my Yahoo! group. When he arrived at school, a little girl asked him what happened to his ear. He told her, "A pirate cut it off with his sword."

Swing Low, Sweet Charlie

The unseasonably warm weather afforded us an afternoon at the playground.

Packing Water

At 4:30 in the morning when I've just fed Charlie and I'm stumbling into the kitchen for some water, I hear it: the banshee wail of my wretched cat. It does not matter that Jeff passed out on the couch and has been within feet of her for five hours. When she sees me come downstairs, she screeches for food, screeches as if she has not been fed in fourteen days, even though there is food IN HER BOWL.

I carry a spray bottle filled with water holstered in the belt loop of my jeans so I can spray her in the face when she screeches. The water is a deterrent to me, not to her. It does nothing to quell her screeching, but it is the only thing stopping me from crushing her skull with a ball-peen hammer. The trigger action of the spray bottle helps me release just enough of my death fury so I don't actually hurt her. Too bad I don't have belt loops on my pajamas. You can tell I'm conflicted about it because I Sharpied "Water Only" on the bottle, as if I was afraid Jeff would fill it with bleach and leave it lying around and I'd accidentally blind the cat.

I've been trying to have Summer feed the cat so maybe the cat will stalk Summer instead, but I don't think it'll work. This cat likes to push my buttons. My favorite is when Summer's whining, Charlie's fussing, and then the cat starts in. Everyone needs to eat RIGHT NOW and I'm the only one who can feed them.

Hey, maybe the spray bottle would work on the kids.

Blow Your Nose! Blow it, I Say!

When I take Summer to the diaper aisle at Target, she crumples at the knees, looks up mournfully like Jesus at the stations of the cross, and laments, "I wish I could go back to Pull-Ups." How gross is that. How totally gross, to pine for an absorbent synthetic disposable wearable TOILET. Is it simply the convenience of peeing without interrupting your ballet demonstration? Summer only pees about once every 48 hours anyway. What is the allure?

One thing that was funny about the Pull-Ups was that Summer liked it when I took a Sharpie and drew evil characters over the princesses printed on the front of each one. Her favorite was Maleficent, the wicked fairy who curses Sleeping Beauty.

Tonight while at Babies R Us buying Table Toppers for Charlie, I saw something else in the checkout line that I had to buy. For the life of me, I cannot figure out who else on planet Earth besides me would buy this item. There were seven of them and I bought six, leaving one just in case, just on the off chance that there is another little girl out there somewhere who, like my Summer, would be overjoyed to keep by her bedside...

A box of Kleenex tissues decorated with pictures of Maleficent.

Other Mothers

At our Early Intervention hearing-impaired-baby parenting group we were discussing the merits and drawbacks of Early Intervention. EI is great, but it can also make you nuts--like when they told me Charlie has torticollis and might need a helmet to prevent his head from getting flat. Turns out his head is a lovely round thing, no helmet necessary, but for a few days there, I was freaking out, because--this was early on, he was just a couple months old--I felt like, the kid's got enough going on already, I really don't need to call even more attention to him in the produce aisle. Anyway, in group, I said something like, "I think Early Intervention is awesome. I mean, Charlie's going to be fine. He doesn't need a lot of special help. But it's great to have these resources to get him off to a better start."

The next day I told Sarah that I was feeling awkward about what I'd said. I was worried that the moms of kids who really do need a lot of special help--there are kids with severe gross motor delays, for example, and one with a helmet, on top of the fact that some of them are just plain deaf--were sitting there thinking, "How nice for her, that she doesn't need 'special help.' I guess she thinks we are undesirable untouchables with cooties."

Sarah admitted that she was feeling funny about something she'd said to me the week before. We were talking about a child with some delays. She said he was not "normal." She was worried that she shouldn't have said that word, "normal," in front of me, since my baby has birth defects.

It hadn't even registered for me. "Well that just goes to show you, in my mind, Charlie is normal!" I said. So maybe the other moms in the EI group weren't thinking bad things about me. We are each in our own place with our own kids, and we don't think of ourselves in comparison to each other.

Except, we do. Because in my Yahoo! group, the one about ears, I find myself feeling very cranky towards moms who write in all spazzed out about their kid who just has one wacky ear and none of the other things that Charlie has. One new mom, for example, posted pictures of her baby and wrote "Do you think it's very noticeable?" Please, sister. Of course it is noticeable! Get over it! Be glad your kid doesn't also have a messed up jaw and a facial nerve palsy! I imagine that the people whose kids have worse problems than Charlie think the same thing about me: Get over it! Be glad your kid doesn't also have a messed up kidney and a feeding tube!

So I hope I haven't hurt anyone's feelings, but maybe it's just unavoidable. I do feel for that one new mom, because I know that it's so shocking when you're baby's born looking different. She'll move through the same kinds of things we've moved through emotionally, and eventually, there is a new normal.

Not that we aspire to be normal.

Killer Shrimp

Benihana is my favorite restaurant. I even had my Sweet Sixteen party there! I had to laugh when I saw this article. It reminded of the time we went out for Allison's birthday and her brother Steve ordered the "Shrimp in Eye."