Langer Loksh

New: Comment without Fear

I just figured out how to make it so that you can leave a comment without exposing your email address. So comment away! That being said, I have really enjoyed corresponding with new people who have kids with microtia and HFM, as well as people I went to high school with and haven't seen since I had a perm, after they left me a comment with their email address. So go ahead and include your email address if  you like. I have also set up a brand-y new email address anyone can use to send me a private comment: langerloksh@gmail.com.

One other little thing: I set it up so links now open in new windows. Let me know if this is more annoying than having to click the back button.

Sonia Collazo of Roxbury Crossing, Please Stop Calling Me

My cell phone number ends in 9999. Several times a week I get people who called the wrong number. It is probably really easy to press an extra 9 when you're trying to call the person who has 9998 or 9990 or whatever. Lately I've been getting a lot of calls from a particular number so I reverse-searched it on the Internet. The number is owned by one Sonia Collazo.

My voice mail says "If you're calling about the apartment, you have misdialed or the number you saw was misprinted." That's because a few years ago someone must have listed my number on a flyer or something and I was getting calls night and day from potential tenants. After a while I changed my message to the standard "This is Jill's voice mail, please leave a message" and I got all kinds of people telling me that Troy better call them back, or why won't you return your own mother's telephone calls? So I put it back to the apartment thing because it seems to alert callers that something is numerically awry. (I don't know why the fact that my name is Jill and not Troy, or anything else for that matter, did not do the trick.)

My siblings like to leave uninspired little remarks along with their messages for me. "Don't you think it's about time you changed your message?" "Are you still having that problem about the apartment?" Here's a little tip, guys: you can press the pound sign to skip the message. It would be much more fun if you would get creative with it instead. Leave me a message invoking Schneider or Mr. Roper.

A fabulous prize awaits the caller who leaves the best voice mail. I personally hope it's Sonia Collazo.

Shaina

I had logged off and was just getting ready to go to bed when I realized that I am a huge faker for not mentioning the fact that our babysitter Shaina was here for over four hours this morning and it was in fact not me but Shaina and Summer who actually baked the chocolate cake that I then decorated with whipped cream and icing for the party today, and before that it was Shaina who put sunscreen on Summer and Charlie and pulled them in the wagon to the Memorial Day parade, and Shaina who blew up eighteen balloons, and Shaina who made the chicken nuggets for Summer and Charlie's lunch, and Shaina who washed out the plastic coconut cups that I bought at iParty this weekend, and Shaina who placed one sheet of Tinkerbell stickers and one pirate pencil and notepad in each goody bag, and holy frijoles what am I going to do when Shaina goes to college in September?

Pretty Much the Reason I Had the Kids

I did it so I could have an excuse to make these: cupcakes baked right in ice cream cones. I had to mail away for a special pan. Tomorrow Summer turns four and we're bringing these treats to preschool for snack. I am definitely more excited about it than I should be.

Today (Memorial Day, "the unofficial start of summer") we had Summer's birthday party in our back yard. The theme: Peter Pan. Summer wore her Tinkerbell swimsuit (half price at the Disney Store) and Charlie wore his hand-me-down Peter Pan t-shirt. We hunted for buried treasure and "walked the plank" on a slip-n-slide. We sipped fruit punch out of plastic coconuts and I made a Tinkerbell cake.

Summer's friends certainly have her pegged. Six out of her eight presents were either Barbie, ballet, or Disney Princess oriented. (The other two were excellent age-appropriate activity books and games.)

Jeff and I were so proud of the way Summer conducted herself today. Jeff has a cousin, Alison, who is six years old and, as far as Summer is concerned, the coolest person to ever breathe air. Take a look at this picture and you'll have to agree. She is the only person capable of eclipsing the ultimate rock star of Summer's preschool class, Anjali. At Charlie's birthday party, Summer was so dazzled to be in the presence of the magnificent Alison that she shunned all her other friends; Her best friends Matthew and Ellie both cried. So before Summer's party, where both Alison and Anjali would be appearing and potentially causing Summer's head to explode, we had several conversations about being a gracious hostess and making all the guests feel welcome. It worked. Summer greeted each friend, played with each one, and thanked each one profusely for coming.

In all of the excitement I managed to forget that tomorrow is not just Summer's fourth birthday but also our seventh wedding anniversary. My mother had to remind me on the phone--and correct me, because I thought it was number six. I should have been able to figure it out based on Summer's age. She was born on our third anniversary. In the antenatal room, Jeff gave me a card on which he'd written "I didn't know we were supposed to exchange a baby on the third anniversary." Tomorrow I guess I'll have to go get him something wool, according to that crazy old list. Maybe I'll give him the alpaca scarf I started knitting in 2001. Who cares if it's not finished--it's 95 degrees out here.

So there you have it. Seven years of marriage, four years as a parent, one year as a parent of two, and here I am, staying up late making ice cream cone cupcakes and taking 37 pictures of them to get just the right shot for my blog.

Happy Birthday, Summer. Happy Anniversary, Jeff. I love you. Have a cupcake.

Gingivitis and Ex Libris

One of my book club friends does not read blogs as a rule. She's all smug about it, as if the whole Internet were a waste of time. She has about eight remote controls on top of her TV and records and watches many, many hours of television every day.

This month at book club I could not drink the Yellowtail because I was on antibiotics for gingivitis. I had such bad gingivitis on the gums of my bottom front teeth I actually had to take flagyl. You can't drink on flagyl. I told everyone what the hygienist told me: I brush and floss properly; this is just my body's response to stress.

"Why are YOU stressed?" this friend snorted at me. She has no children and works full time after having earned her Ph.D., which I'm sure was very stressful. It was obvious that she imagined a life for me consisting of sipping tea with my feet up while my children play charming, imaginative games of their own devising and my house staff cooks and cleans and my--I don't know, my clone?--my clone does my part-time office job and my freelance articles for me. "I don't know, maybe having a baby with weird birth defects has something to do with it," I answered.

My book club, Ex Libris, used to be my favorite evening every month. Recently some members drifted away. One simply quit. One moved to Indiana. One said it wasn't worth paying a babysitter for.  Madness! It's  at the top of my list for babysitting money. Then I really sat down and thought about it. 

The friend who doesn't read the blogs--she is my friend, even though it sounds like she's a big jerk. That's the thing that I used to like so much about my book club. Everyone is different and has all kinds of opinions. My friend Meredith started the book club and I have been proud of my long-term relationship with her, a pro-life Republican. But Meredith left the book club years ago to pop out twelve babies in a row.

I can't imagine life without my book club. It just doesn't feel like my book club anymore. Or maybe I don't feel like my old self anymore. I only want to read chick lit, like the Sophie Kinsella novel I just sucked down in two days. In the car, I only want to listen to safe, calm 1970's music (the John Denver Favorites disc is burnin' up my CD player), or Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. I'm so thin that I can easily pull my jeans off without unbuttoning them. I find myself wishing the cat would get run over just so I wouldn't have to listen to her scream at me a hundred times a day. And yes, on top of all the normal parental worries, I'm always thinking about Charlie and how he's going to feel about himself and is he going to have trouble in school because he can't hear well from one ear and what kinds of surgeries will he have to have and will insurance cover them and will he need glasses and if so what do we do about the fact that he only has one ear to hold up the glasses and will his torticollis ever resolve? I'm happy, like I've said, but I'm also very stressed out, and that's not fun for anybody, except the bacteria that live in on my lower front gums, who are apparently really enjoying themselves.

I spent Thursday and Friday with the moms I've known since I joined a new mom support group when Summer was three weeks old. We didn't do much of anything but wrangle the children and chat. I spent today with my best friend (and fellow Ex Libris member) Julie, eating cole slaw at Friendly's and walking her new puppy Stella and watching her put on a kitchen-utensil puppet show with Summer. It's been kind of like what our other book club friend probably imagines my life is like all the time, and it's been just what I've needed. I think I need to do more of it. This post pretty much sucks, but I don't want to get stressed out about not being clever enough on my blog, because I need to put less pressure on myself, not more. Now I'm going to brush and floss and think soothing thoughts.

"Rocky Mountain high, Colorado..."

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Circle of Smiles Post

Interfaith Marriage

Jeff and I were lucky enough to get tickets from a vendor (thanks, KB International!) for this evening's Red Sox game against the Yankees in baseball's best park. James Taylor threw out the first pitch and the Amherst College Choral Society did a beautiful job on the Star Spangled Banner.

The Yankees won, 8-6. But my personal Mudville would have been joyless either way. Since I'm from New Jersey, I'm a Yankee fan, and when I see a Yankee player do something good, I cheer. It's involuntary. Now that I live here, it's hard not to root, root root for the home team. For years I've tried to do that "fan of the game" thing, but that's crap. A fan needs a team. When the Yankees play the Sox, I lose.

Jeff and I made a deal that we'd raise our kids to be Jewish Red Sox fans. But what about me? Tonight I rooted for the Sox because the Yankees had the loathesome Randy Johnson on the mound. Alas, the Big Tool prevailed. It reminded me of the 2003 American League playoffs, Red Sox vs. Yankees. Our friend Bob, also a Yankee fan, shamefully confessed that he was rooting for the Sox. I admitted I was too. First thing in the morning after the Yankees clinched it, my cell phone rang. It was Bob, who vowed "I'll never have my heart broken by the Boston Red Sox again!"

Life would be simpler if Jeff and I were both Jewish, or both Catholic, or both Red Sox fans. But as I'm learning all the time now, life just isn't simple, and it's pretty much a daily occurence for me to feel simultaneously happy and sad. As for tonight, whether you bleed Yankee pinstripes or are a citizen of Red Sox Nation, there's no more pleasant place to be than Yawkey Way on a clear, cool May evening with your sweetie.

My Daughter, the Tourist Attraction

Japanese tourists love Summer. It must be her hair. I've heard that Japanese tourists throng Prince Edward Island because they love Anne of Green Gables--translated in Japanese as "Anne of Red Hair." This woman at Coit Tower insisted on being photographed with Summer.

Welcome to San Francisco

We flew from Boston to Los Angeles and landed in plenty of time to make our connecting flight to San Jose, where we had reserved a rental car to get us to San Francisco. We went to the gate but there was no plane and no gate agent. We waited around and then went to a Starbucks 100 feet away for about 15 minutes. When we came back, the plane had landed, boarded, and left without us.

The nasty United woman we found to help us told us all flights to San Jose were booked for the rest of the day. I said "Then send us to San Francisco because that's where we're going anyway." She got us on a flight that was set to leave in four minutes. We pounded through the terminal, back to the same gate where we'd landed, and made the flight. Too bad our luggage was on the plane to San Jose.

The very nice Dollar people switched our rental to San Francisco and spotted us a car seat because we'd checked Summer's. We drove to San Jose to pick up the bags, and then back to San Francisco, where Jeff's aunt Kathy and her husband Paul had a delicious dinner of salad, orzo, and chicken waiting for us. Everyone stayed very calm and cheerful throughout this incredibly long day of travel--we'd left our house in Massachusetts at 6:15 a.m. and didn't get to Kathy's until 10:00 our time.

I've been thinking more about the Welcome to Holland essay ever since my early intervention parenting group read and discussed another woman's take on it. Jill Cornfield is the mom of a child on the autism spectrum, and her theory is that travel is not a good metaphor for parenting a child with special needs, or any child at all for that matter, because you can't just catch the next plane out.

What happened to us yesterday, though, is actually the perfect metaphor for Charlie's first year. We wanted to go to San Francisco. Then we thought we were going to San Jose. No, no, wait, we flew to San Francisco. Oops, just a second, we do have to go to San Jose. But we'll be back in San Francisco just in time for dinner.

Brother Bed Head

Moms, how often does this happen to you: you dress the baby, you get dressed, you walk out the door and you realize you are both wearing the same thing. I guess when you have control over what someone else wears, and you are in the mood for red stripes, it's a twofer.

Check out the insane bed head on this kid.