Dear Noah,

You were “supposed” to be born exactly a year ago today, but you weren’t ready. Your father and I weren’t yet freaking out—lots of first-time moms see their due dates come and go without a blip on the radar—and in fact, I didn’t really freak out at all throughout my pregnancy with you. Which I believe is probably one of the reasons you’re so chill. That and the fact that, well, you’re part Jankowski. Jankowskis define chill.

Also you eat spinach and squash and other regulating foods every day for every meal, so you probably usually feel pretty great. As any pregnant woman can tell you, regulating foods are basically the key to happiness. That is, combined with yoga. This is what you learn in your thirties, but you have to get there on your own so I don’t know why I’m even bothering telling you now—especially since you’re a boy and it probably won’t apply to you since boys—yes, even boys of mine—don’t reach the girls’ level of maturity until at least their forties. Your father can let you know how that’s going for him.

You are taking a nap right now—in your crib, under one of the several beautiful blankets loved ones knitted in anticipation of your arrival. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sufficiently convey to you how warm a welcome you received into this world, how excited everyone in our lives was for you to make an appearance. Every day, several times a day, I would be hounded for news, for signs. Any labor pangs yet? Has your water broken?

Your due date was the sixth—though I was not-so-secretly hoping you’d be a Cinco de Mayo baby, and actually one of the names we entertained for you was “Julio” . . . no joke—but it wasn’t until almost two weeks later that you started to squirm and jostle around in there to be let out. And even then, you took your sweet old time, and I mean, who could blame you? I had nine months to do pretty much nothing but create a perfect uterine environment for you. I drank beet juice every morning for christ’s sake.

Except not for Christ’s sake—yeah, we’ll discuss religion later on in your life if you want to—but for Noah’s sake. For your sake. So that you would become a big strong happy resilient baby. A baby who—before you came out—was feared to be much, much bigger than your eventual 8.2 lbs. To the point that the hospital staff had a pool going.

Oh yeah, and that’s the other thing: you were “supposed” to be born at home. Mommy was going to have a nice natural semi-unassisted labor on her bed and in the bath tub, and you were going to slide right out of there smoothly and the midwife would help us get cleaned up and cook us dinner and then go home and we’d suddenly just have the ability to take care of you perfectly and would all live happily ever after the end!

Except that after a few days of labor with no “progress”—hey, I KNOW it was comfortable as hell in there; you don’t have to tell me—we had some decisions to make.

Actually, let me rephrase that:

After a few days straight of my walking around and having to stop every few minutes to grasp [the side of a building, a tree, your father's arm] to experience excruciating pain that rocked my entire body . . . with no “progress” . . . as in, no major dilation of my cervix beyond, like, a couple centimeters . . . we had some decisions to make.

Lucky for you, you’re a boy and will never have to experience what it’s like to BE IN LABOR while everyone around you is just cavalierly going about their business, walking and talking and checking email and shit. The labor part alone is beyond worth it, and for you I would have continued for as long as it took, but your midwife asking for your wi-fi password? I’m actually surprised that right there didn’t cause labor to “progress.”

So finally it was a day before the official “two weeks late” mark, which, just to give you a recap, is when everyone starts to panic about the sustainability of the uterus. As in, sure, you weren’t ready to leave yet . . . but for how much longer would the placenta keep delivering the nutrients you needed?

Our midwife told your father and I to go for a walk while she continued—I don’t know—playing Words with Friends or something? We walked a total of three and a half feet away to the Skyline Diner next door and had to stop no fewer than fifty-seven times for me to clutch the nearest object and labor. I ordered an Athenian omelet, and if you’re old enough to be reading this, you KNOW I always finish my Athenian omelets. This time I only took a couple bites. The pains were getting stronger!

We dashed back to the apartment so Linda could check my cervix. I was really excited—convinced things were finally starting to move—but that wasn’t the case. Nothing had changed since she’d last checked me hours before.

People usually get the impression that midwives are these new-age, western-medicine-shunning witches or whatever, and ours definitely gave off a convincingly spacey vibe, but to be fair, that’s what people look for in a midwife. That’s why you DON’T go the scheduled c-section in a modern hospital setting route. The spacey herbal-remedy witch thing is what sells.

But for it to REALLY work you have to have actual medical knowledge, and ours was smart—smart enough to know when intervention is needed. I want to set the record straight, lest anyone thinks our midwife was sitting there administering infusions of mugwort and wolf’s bane and chanting Wiccan spells. SHE’s the one who convinced US to go to the hospital.

Now, here’s where your father started to freak the eff out because months before that I’d made him swear that no matter what happened he wouldn’t let me “give in” and go to the hospital. He freaked out again AT the hospital when labor STILL hadn’t really progressed and we were faced with even more decisions. And by freak out I mean “probably thought I was going to leave him for going against something he swore, like, seven years ago that I’ve since forgotten about.”

Anyway, Linda pretty much advised us to go to the hospital using a tone of voice and looking me in the eye in a way that quite frankly scared the hell out of me and convinced me to throw together a “go” bag and thumb a ride uptown. The cab ride was the classic woman-in-labor ride you’d expect, with me freaking out in the back seat about the driver not going faster, literally not comprehending why he wasn’t ALLOWED to run red lights. You know, since I was the only person to be in labor ever. Luckily we were only going thirty blocks due north.

You know the quintessential triage waiting room full of slurring, cussing homeless people being ignored by the receptionists behind the bullet-proof window? That’s what we were greeted with when we arrived at St. Luke’s Roosevelt. We waited for long enough—with me in labor on a chair—that the homeless people who themselves had been waiting all day started to get pissed off that I was being ignored. Problem was, Linda had faxed all my paperwork to the wrong number or something. Maybe in high school history class you’ll learn what “fax” means.

Eventually we got admitted—not without my being made to feel like a knocked-up crack addict off the street once or thrice—and by the time we were settled into a more civilized, more high-rent wing of the hospital, the nurses attending me were positively fantastic. I really cannot sing their praises enough. Julie something and Marie-Josie were their names, and they treated me like I’d been their patient for years.

I keep meaning to write to Marie-Josie because she was the one who—even after it was already decided that I’d be having a c-section within the hour since despite being shot up with an epidural and pitocin and allowed to rest overnight, I still wasn’t dilated much more than I’d been at home—encouraged me to get into whatever laboring position felt most comfortable because I was going to push out my baby now and that’s all there was to it. She really believed in me up until the last moment, the rest of the hospital’s agenda be damned.

I tried and tried but it still wasn’t happening, and pretty soon the doctor and her swat team of attendants took position in the room, broke it down, and wheeled me out into the hall and onto an elevator and out onto a different floor into a different room. The room in which you would be born!

It all happened so quickly, and it was infuriating that a giant sheet was separating me from being the first one to see you come out. Your father got to watch the whole thing and when they lifted you up out of me, he burst into tears. It was only the second time I’ve seen him cry. The first was one time when someone used the wrong number of ellipses in a sentence.

You cried out when they held you up and it was the most beautiful, melodic sound I’ve ever heard. I heard you before I saw you. When I finally got to see you, it was established: you were magnificent. I made your father tell everyone your name right away. Noah Joseph Beard.

A little while later they brought you to me to nurse, but there were so many wires attached to me it was difficult to get you into the right position, so I started yanking them all out. It was kind of like that scene from E.T., as your Auntie Marie pointed out when I was describing it to her. Eventually we got comfortable, though, and that was just the beginning of our now-going-on-a-year nursing relationship. A relationship that I will miss terribly when it ends.

Looking back, I don’t think we had a clue how we’d get through this first year, let alone that first day or first week or first month home from the hospital. Things have not always been easy, but only because we’re inept. We lucked out with you—we’re reminded of it every time we look at you, every time we feel the urge to squeeeeeezee you. You are oh so amazing and I’ll still be telling you this when you’re old enough to develop a complex from it because I don’t care. You are.

So happy one-year anniversary from your due date, little boy. Maybe we’ll celebrate later with some beets or kale juice. Daddy and I will spike ours, pretending to be frazzled parents, even though really we have no excuse since you’re perfect.

Love,
Mommy

Between 6:00 and 6:45 a.m. Noah wakes up. Elliott asks me if I think the baby is really REALLY awake, and I say yes. Elliott gets him up and brings him into the kitchen to give him his breakfast and to feed the cats so that I can go back to sleep.

7:15 a.m. I wake up, go out to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. (Sidenote: the most useful thing I’ve ever done in my life is get a programmable coffeemaker. Our lives as we know them would not be possible without that puppy starting up by itself at 6:30 a.m., rain or shine.)

7:20 a.m. With Elliott either still in the process of feeding Noah or doing the dishes from the night before, I return to the bedroom with my cup of coffee to relax with my electronic reader, catching up on my news feed or—in recent developments—reading an actual book!

7:30 a.m. I saunter out into the kitchen for my second cup of coffee, returning to the bedroom yet again to laze around without a care in the world while Elliott is scraping pots & pans and Noah is shouting to be let out of his high chair.

8:00 a.m. After Elliott has given the baby a bath (wow, I didn’t realize how much Elliott does until actually writing this all out!) he brings him into the bedroom to me for our morning nursing. We are down to two nursings per day, one morning and one evening, plus usually at least one in the middle of the night.

8:15 a.m. After nursing, Noah and I play on the bed for a while. He “crawls” toward the edge and I pull him back by his feet—it’s the most hilarious thing in the world to him and he laughs like crazy. Then we go over to the window and look out at the city. I point out various objects and things that are going on—birds in a flock, joggers on the High Line, x number of yellow cabs whizzing past, somebody with an umbrella, somebody walking a dog, etc. He usually gets bored with it after a couple minutes and ends up just staring up at my face and smirking.

8:25 a.m. At this point Elliott is out of the shower and getting ready for work. Noah and I go out into the living room and I put him down on the floor to play. I grab a container of Greek yogurt from the fridge, add either almonds or nuts & berries trail mix to it, and down the mofo as quickly as I can before having to chase Noah—who after about five seconds has stopped playing nicely in one spot on the floor and is making a beeline for [insert lethal object babies love to put in their mouths here]—around the apartment.

8:30 a.m. I finish my coffee in Noah’s room while he plays on the floor with his books. We keep the door closed because at this point Elliott is usually emptying the kitty litter box, which is the singlemost fascinating thing in existence for the baby (we will remind him of this when we assign it to him as his first chore in a couple years).

8:40 a.m. I put Noah in his playpen so that I can make my spinach/kale juice without worrying about him being underfoot in the kitchen.

8:45 a.m. I chug my juice, clean the juicer, and now—with baby still cooped up in his pen—it’s time to Give Cobweb Her Fluids. Cobweb is our elderly cat who has recently been diagnosed with renal failure. She’s hanging in there for now, but we have to keep her hydrated by injecting her with ringer’s lactate twice a day. I had to do it with my old cat Scylla as well. Reckon it comes back to you like riding a bike.

8:50 a.m. Elliott leaves for the office.

8:55 a.m. Noah plays on the floor while I do my “exercises,” which are basically just a series of ballet- and yoga-inspired stretches. Plus lately I’ve been doing sit-ups and push-ups. Noah is a great spotter, especially for the sit-ups! Everybody should invest in a baby sit-ups spotter.

9:15 a.m. I take a shower—with Noah in his playpen right outside the door where I can peek out to make sure he’s, well, alive. I do often wonder when the whole making-sure-your-baby’s-still-alive thing will phase out. Probably never.

9:25 a.m. I finish getting dressed and we play on the floor for a little while.

9:45 a.m. Noah has his morning snack, which is usually just cheerios and water. Really I don’t get the whole giving-your-kid-constant-snacks thing. I think it’s for kids who don’t eat their regular three meals, maybe? He never seems ALL that hungry at snack time.

10:00 a.m. Wow, we’re only at ten a.m. and I’ve been writing for half an hour? That used to be the approximate time I woke up for the day. What? Anyway, around ten a.m. Noah takes his morning nap. By which I mean, I stand in the middle of his room rocking him to sleep for anywhere from five to thirty minutes. I sing the following songs to him—in this order: “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Frere Jacques.” OTHERWISE IT DOESN’T WORK. Nah, just kidding–sometimes he falls asleep at “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”! And sometimes—but usually not for a morning nap, because morning naps are the easiest—I have to throw in “Edelweiss.” Which for some reason makes him giggle.

10:15 a.m. While Noah is napping, if I have freelance work to be doing, this is when I do it. I’ve actually found I can make more progress during this morning nap than during any other napping/sleeping point in the day—I guess because I’m not yet totally drained? The whole thing baffles me because I never used to be a “morning” person.

If I don’t have work to do, I’ll catch up on the news a bit, surf the web, and then maybe start preparations for baking cookies or researching chords for a new song to learn on my ukulele. Or I’ll read a magazine article or some pages from a book (again, just read my first full book in ages recently—these truly “spare” moments are so few & far between). I’ll clean up the apartment a bit, but without making too much noise as Noah is kind of a light sleeper. Often this time is spent begging Cobweb the Yowler to shut the eff up.

11:15 a.m. Noah usually wakes up an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes later. I get him out of his crib and bring him over to the window to look outside and point things out again. Then we go into the living room to play for a little while before lunch.

12:00 p.m. We have lunch. Noah has pureed spinach, squash, and, say, black beans—except that lately he’s been refusing to eat anything besides yogurt, so we have to improvise, and by improvise, I mean “trick the baby.” I think the issue is that he resents having to BE FED and wants to do it himself, but not just by himself with his hands, with an actual utensil. So I’ve found if we give him a second spoon or other object to play with, he’ll feel like he’s more in control of the situation and won’t notice that WE’re actually the ones shoveling food into his mouth with the spoon . . . albeit a different spoon. Or sometimes we dip the tip of the spoon in yogurt so all he sees is the white coming toward him even though he’s about to get a mouthful of, like, collard greens. See? I missed my calling in Child Psychology.

12:10 p.m. At this point I’m eating “my” lunch, too. Translation: depending on what it is (lately it’s been vegetable pad thai from Trader Joe’s), Noah usually gets some of it as well, which is good because we’re trying to get him to eat all the same stuff we eat so that I can stop spending a third of my life slaving away over baby food-making. And honestly, he WOULD eat everything we eat, no questions asked. But we usually eat crap and I don’t want to start him out on the wrong foot like that. We’re the ones who need to change. In my fantasy dining world, Elliott and I would actually start eating spinach, squash, and black beans for dinner . . . and then we’d write a cookbook about how baby food changed our eating lives and we’d make millions.

12:45 p.m. Usually we’re done with lunch by now, so we get cleaned up, dressed to go outside, and head out for a walk. If the weather’s crappy we just stay local, hitting up the grocery store if we need to and making a fairly conservative loop around the neighborhood. Or if it’s raining but only drizzling, we’ll go for a walk on the High Line, which—don’t tell anyone—is best for rainy-day walking since everyone steers clear of it but the greenery is particularly striking in the wet glaze. If it’s fair, we’ll head further afield for a “destination walk”—like, up to the Cloisters or all the way across town to the East Side River Walkway (or whatever it’s called) or down to Battery Park City. Last week we took a field trip to the Upper West Side to walk the length of 76th Street to see (in addition to just enjoying the gorgeous West 70s) if the building in the opening credits of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd is an actual building on the street she supposedly lived on in the show. Turns out it’s not, proving my theory that that kind of architecture only exists downtown. Also during this time we usually hit up the swings.

3:00 p.m. Noah’s usually ready for another nap around now, so if we’re still out I just let him fall asleep on me. But if I have work to do, I really try to get us back to the apartment so that I can put him down and fire up my computer for an hour or so. We used to nurse right before this nap, but we’ve replaced that with a sippy cup of cow’s milk—mildly pasteurized, unhomogenized New York State grass-fed, thanks—and I try to get him to drink as much of it as possible. We’ve only been doing this substitution for a couple weeks, and at first I didn’t think he was gonna take to it, but now sucks back half the cup like a pro. Ain’t no child of mine turns down dairy!

3:15 p.m. I try to get some work done now (like I said, if I have any). It usually takes a bit longer to rock the baby to sleep in the afternoon, and I used to be EXHAUSTED during this nap and would often take my own, but lately that hasn’t been the case, and we’ll get to why in a few hours. If I don’t have work, I’ll tidy up the apartment or work on my writing or pay bills or debate the pros and cons of this new book idea I have. Or, on rarer occasions, try my hand at baking something or—even rarer—making something for dinner.

4:30 p.m. Noah wakes up and we play—or he crawls all over the place and I continue doing whatever I was doing in the kitchen, in between sprinting back and forth across the apartment to catch him before he put his hands in the toilet or litter box or cat food dish, etc. If he wakes up any earlier than, say, four, we’ll usually go back outside and go for another quick jaunt or pay a visit to the swing set before dinner.

5:00 p.m. Dinnertime. Same as lunch, except Noah’s the only one eating. He seriously eats spinach three times a day—I’ve gotta hand it to the kid. And when it’s not spinach, it’s kale for christ’s sake. We recently started brushing his teeth, actually, because even babies aren’t immune to the kind of breath that results from excessive kale eating!

5:10 p.m. At this point I’m looking at the clock, wondering how much longer it’ll be before Elliott walks in the door because I’m itching to go to the bathroom with the door closed or otherwise be alone with my own thoughts without having to worry about the safety of another human being for three and a half seconds.

5:30 p.m. Elliott has usually come home by now and Noah’s finished his dinner, so either father and baby play inside or they go to the park or to run errands or pick up dinner or what-have-you. Or sometimes we all go out together, if I don’t have any work to attend to, or if I’m not totally exhausted and in need of some down time.

6:30 p.m. They come back and I watch the baby while Elliott starts making dinner (yes, Elliott makes dinner, too! Oh em gee, what an ungrateful, lazy stay-at-home mom Bess is!) Sometimes he gets creative and sometimes he just heats something up out of the freezer. Lately we’ve been subsisting quite happily on frozen meals from Trader Joe’s. Masala burgers and biryani rice are among our favorites.

Anywhere between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. Noah gets put into his pajamas, we nurse, and he plays for a little while before bed. Sometimes this includes reading a book or two—he’s obsessed with the little British Christmas board books my mom gave him months ago and his current favorite is the old classic Pat the Bunny—but not always.

Anywhere between 7:15 and 9:00 p.m. After standing in the middle of the room rocking him for upwards of half an hour (repeat sequence of lullabies as before)—not that I’m complaining since it may burn more calories than breastfeeding and I love any excuse to hold my baby close—he falls asleep and is transferred delicately into his crib. I know what you’re thinking: why don’t you “train” him to fall asleep on his own? Well, my answer to you is: no matter what approach we take in parenting, it’s not like he’s going to turn into an eighteen year-old who needs to be rocked to sleep, and you know what? I might wish that to be the case when he’s eighteen. So why shouldn’t I enjoy it now when he actually does seemingly need it?

Whatever time that’s been accomplished: Usually I tell Elliott to eat first, but sometimes the timing is such that we can eat together. If not, I scarf down my dinner the second I’m done putting the baby down. Elliott has finally come to terms with the fact that he needs to prepare me, like, eight times the amount of food that a normal person would eat. None of it goes to waste, ever.

9:30 p.m. or so: Sometimes—but less and less frequently—the baby will wake up, like, thirty minutes after he’s fallen asleep, and that is when DADDY goes in and rocks him back to sleep, because guess what? Daddy doesn’t carry the possibility of a nursing in his boobs!

At some point during this evening stretch: I try to cram some work in.

10:00 p.m. or so: We hit the sack! Yeah, it’s early, but we’re both pretty beat, and we know that we’re most likely going to be getting up in the middle of the night at least once.

12:00 a.m. If Noah’s gonna get up multiple times, this is usually the first, and oftentimes Elliott can go in and rock him back to sleep before we have to resort to nursing. Or we resort to nursing and THEN Elliott rocks him back to sleep. Or we let him fall asleep nursing in bed with us.

3:00 a.m. or so: Noah usually gets up again (or for the first time) and needs to be nursed. If he’s in his crib he gets up less frequently because he doesn’t have my body RIGHT THERE making him think he’s thirsty, and we all get a much more blissfully continuous night’s sleep. And again, I know you’re thinking, but WHY don’t you just ALWAYS make him sleep in his crib? Answer: sometimes he just will not fall asleep in it and we don’t believe in “crying it out.” Yet again: no matter what we do now, I’m pretty sure he will NOT WANT to sleep in our bed when he’s eighteen.

6:00 to 6:45 a.m. Repeat as above!

The other day I was walking around wearing Noah in one of his carriers, and I’d experimented with using it in the side-slung hip position—which was fine until I was also carrying an eight-hundred-pound bag of groceries on the way back—so I stopped to duck off of the avenue and attempt readjusting it into the frontal, more comfortable mode.

You’d be surprised at how many people will ooh and ahh over your baby in passing on city streets but can’t be bothered to stop and ask if you need help as you’re dangling him over the concrete sidewalk by one leg as you straddle the groceries and click and unclick the gears and levers and straps of your carrier fruitlessly because you’ve never done it before and have no idea how and may as well just throw in the towel and rely solely on spit and duct tape and prayer to hold the thing together for all the progress you’ve made in the ten-minutes-going-on-forever you’ve been standing there.

In any case, I finally figured it out, so we were soon on our way, and Noah was being awesome as usual but was starting to get tired, which is usually indicated by a bit of mild groaning. Most parents would laugh hysterically at what passes for fussing in Noah’s world, so I won’t use that word to describe it. But I could tell he was getting sleepy, so per our custom, I started to sing him a song.

Lately whenever I’m walking around outside, the theme song from Beverly Hills Cop plays in my head. (Before that it was “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” which for some reason was playing on repeat through my brain for, like, a month straight, and I still can’t figure out why, since none of the baby’s toys play songs that even come close to sounding like it—but it’s equally baffling.) It starts in my head as soon as my feet hit the pavement, and unfortunately it is an excellent urban walking song and very whistleable, so sometimes I’ll suddenly realize I’ve been whistling it to the baby for, like, twenty blocks.

It’s like a bad episode of Ally McBeal. Except, wait, it’s like a good—a really good—episode of Ally McBeal, an into-the-future dream sequence episode in which she’s married to Robert Downey Jr. and given birth to his baby, whom she’s now carrying around NYC, where they’ve relocated from Boston, because, hi—NYC is superior to Boston, Emily and/or Matt if you’re reading this kthxbai!

But this occasion called for the most versatile of nursery rhymes, the “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” I sing it to the baby all the time before bed, and I thought I’d sung it to him previously in our walking travels as well, but something about this particular time—maybe the weight of the groceries on my shoulder was putting some extra oomph into my gait, or maybe after having stood on the corner balancing twelve different fifty-pound objects on each of my limbs I was feeling especially just-emerged-from-the-front-lines-of-battley—stands out as being the day I discovered that the song’s beat is very similar to that of this one.

To the point that by the end of the block I was outright singing the latter.

If men could have babies, the Beverly Hills Cop theme song would share a meter with, like, “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” But they can’t, so we have to settle for the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” through gritted teeth with the sun stinging our eyes and a boulder balanced across our shoulders—up hill both ways—turning quickly, fluidly into a Rilo Kiley battle cry.

They can’t, so we have to settle for Robert Downey Jr. in a dream sequence.

It all evens out, I suppose.

I think I’m going through some kind of post-partum hairstyle depression. The just-became-a-mom custom of chopping off all one’s hair is obviously nothing new, but it’s never really discussed in detail, and I think people come away with the feeling that moms are just throwing up their hands, like, “OK, that’s it! I’ve given birth! I give up on dolling myself up and making an effort to appear attractive forever!” And promptly shave their heads and cease wearing makeup, thereby falling off the grid and refraining from being “noticed” ever again in their lives.

But I will let you in on a secret. It’s remained a secret up until now because most moms are too busy to sit around dwelling on superficial crap (I’m one of the lucky few privileged enough) AND most moms don’t care enough to set the record straight for people who sit around assuming the worst about them.

The secret is that when you have a baby to contend with? Your hair cannot get in your eyes without making you want to shoot yourself in the face.

I’ve gotten my hair cut and/or cut my hair myself and/or forced my husband at scissor-point to cut it approximately thirty-five times since I had the baby last year, and even now I am forever googling newer, shorter hairstyles.

At the moment my hair is the shortest it’s ever been–the stylist literally shaved the back last time, which was a crazy sensation!–but though it starts off super short in the back, it angles to the front to become LONG ENOUGH THAT IT OFTEN GETS IN MY EYES. And we can’t have that.

It’s kind of anvil-shaped. Sometimes when I see pictures of myself, I panic and feel like I look like Kate Gosselin or Marcy from Married with Children or someone.

And we can’t have that. No–no, we can’t.

If I keep the overall style and just shorten the front, it will look stupid, but if I constantly pull the front back out of my eyes, it defeats the purpose of having a hairstyle in general, because that’s the other thing:

I’m starting to be anti-styling. It’s not that I “don’t have time” to style my hair; I just think it’s stupid. I mean, think about it. Think about the freedom of never having to do it again. Think about how 99.9 percent of men have been living since the dawn of time.

I’m even–and this is where it gets a little “Is Bess off her meds again? Maybe she should take a little Virginia Woolf-esque ‘holiday’ to the country”–beginning to harbor anti-part sentiments.

Like, why do we part our hair? Think about it. It’s ridiculous. Think about how free we’d all be if we never had to part our hair again!

Anyway, I’m thinking I’m finally gonna go for a pixie. Not a really short one, but a looser, wispier one. If nothing else, it’ll cool me down for the summer and keep my anvil of big hair out of my eyes so I can see my baby.

My five year-old daughter is an extremely social person, and some of her first peers to become actual, definable, friends, have generalizable, inner-suburban parents. And while I have always been plagued by a feeling of not fitting in, of being a fish-out-of-water, of being completely disassociated from society altogether, or even invisible (at my unmedicated worst, I feel like a Doors song) there are many real commonalities among my daughter’s friends’ parents (DFPs). This is not just one of my depression-induced delusions.

The most obvious one is that 100% of my DFPs are five to ten (or even more than ten) years older than I am. I never considered 28 to be young to have your first child, but apparently in this age of Aquarius, it is the equivalent of having a child before graduating high school. Age differences are supposed to matter less as you get older, but I actually don’t find this to be true at all. Five to ten years is actually a large enough difference to have caused my DFPs to pick up some of the horrifying qualities of professional adults living in the pre-crash society of the early 2000’s (while I was busy prolonging my adolescence by attending graduate school). For example, the need to appear completely put-together and organized at all times. Giving my DFPs the benefit of the doubt, a lot of the other horrible societal traits of the early 2000’s have become less severe, such as the intense material competitiveness (i.e., my ____ is bigger than your ____, etc.); however, the need to appear completely put-together and organized persists.

There are other prevalent commonalities, which likely can just be attributed to my neighborhood, city, and maybe even country (I’m telling you, those über-polite politically correct Canadians are secretly emotionally-repressed passive-aggressive wrecks). But the need to appear put-together is the trait that I am most affected by. If there is one thing I can’t stand is when people act like everything is great and fine and wonderful all of the time AND IT OF COURSE ISN’T. 95% of my DFPs have households containing two parents that work 40-60 hour per week white-collar jobs and have more than one child that participates in more than one extra-curricular activity. One does not have to be a sociologist/anthropologist/psychologist or whatever to realize that by default, these people are not completely put-together at all. Nor do they have their lives organized. Their lives are chaotic and busy, and their insane schedules are sucking any time for enjoying their lives right out of their lives.

My daughter, who is in kindergarten, has a best friend (S—) who happens to be in first grade (or Grade 1, if you are Canadian). They have fairies, jewels, Barbies, diaries, and make-up in common. My daughter has had numerous reciprocated play dates and birthday parties with S—, and S—‘s family even came over for a BBQ this past summer (!), as a part of my vain attempt to make friends with other overbooked parents in my neighborhood. I figured maybe S—‘s parents would have things in common with my husband and I because S—‘s mom (P—) has a nose ring and her dad is a high school media arts teacher with a moustache (I am very superficial, admittedly). However, P— is a lawyer, is five years older than I am, and speaks very logically and calmly all of the time. She also always appears extremely organized and put-together. She rarely talks about herself in terms of her emotions. There is a bit of a projection on a wall kind of aspect to her, but no one is allowed to know what is on the other side of the wall.

Since this past summer, I have sort of come to terms with the fact that P— will likely never invite us over to dinner, and our relationship will continue to consist of short small-talkish conversations at the elementary drop-off area of our local public school that occur on most mornings. Oh well, I think, at least I tried; and I will just continue to obsessively practice yoga, check Facebook, read fantasy novels, play Nintendo, and whatever else I do instead of having a social life.

Breakthroughs always occur when you least expect them to though. Like this morning.

P— and I’s small-talkish school drop-off conversation began normally.

Me: “I couldn’t remember if it was red, green, and white day today. I forgot to look at the calendar.”

P—: “It must have been a kindergarten thing because it wasn’t on S—‘s calendar.”

Me: “Yeah, oh well.”

(Pause)

P—: “Actually nothing is on S—‘s calendar. Just what number day it is.”

Me: “I know, our calendar is blank too, though Mrs. ____ did give us something that said what the kids have on each number day. But that of course requires looking at two different pieces of paper at the same time.”

P—: “I try my best to remember to put S— in leggings and proper footwear when it is gym day, and to return books on library day, but I am having problems with the way S—‘s teacher communicates things this year.”

Me: “Really? I guess all teachers are different.”

P—: “I actually wrote a note to Ms. ____ about it, and considered calling the principal, because I feel like all classrooms need to send home that kind of information. I don’t mean to complain, Ms. ____ is great and everything.” [Note typical example of Canadian passive-aggressiveness].

Me: “No it’s OK, you can complain. That is kind of annoying.”

P—: “And the homework! Oh my God. The math assignments—double digit addition and stuff that takes hours for me to do with S— each night! I don’t have time for this, with work and little J— and the house and dinner and everything. It’s only first grade. And I mean, why don’t the Grade 1’s get agendas, like the older primary kids, it would help them organize everything so much better. S— is really organized, she has a Type A personality, but she is organized about things like her nail polish. It is up to me to remember everything, like, oh my God, she has this project due next week, which I don’t know how they are evaluated on, and S— lost the paper that had the project assignment on it, and I am totally freaking out!”

Me: “Wow, that seems like a lot for Grade 1…”

P—: “Oh my God, you probably don’t want to hear me whining. I am sorry for taking all of your time up and you have had to stand here and listen to me whine. I must sound really negative about everything. I don’t know why I feel the need to take all of S—‘s stuff onto myself.”

Me: “No…It’s OK! You can whine.”

P—: “It is just that all of this is too much, you know? I’m sorry for whining at you.”

Me: “No I know, it’s OK.”

I suddenly realized how relieved I was that P— was whining to me. Excited, actually. Happy, for her whining. To me! Maybe this means she will eventually go from being a DFP to an actual friend.

Isn’t that what people need to do? Especially during parenthood, where no one feels like they are ever doing a good job? Isn’t it comforting to whine to each other sometimes? I listen to you whine, you listen to me whine, misery loves company, and you and I both feel better? Why do all of my DFPs feel the need to act like everything is OK all of the time? Everything is not OK. Especially not all of the time. Don’t stop whining, please.

The other day my husband and I realized suddenly . . . that we have no money! It came as something of a shocker to us, being that the only three–oh so tiny little–things that have changed in our lives recently are me no longer having a full-time paying job, our rent going up by something like $400 a month, and having an additional human mouth to feed.

I mean, give us a little credit here: how could we possibly have seen those things coming?!

As a solution, we decided that–get ready for it; its ahead-of-its-time cleverness will blow you away–instead of dining out or ordering in every night? We would NOT dine out OR order in EVER AGAIN IN OUR LIVES.

Or, at least, every night, going forward, until further notice.

It’s been quite a challenge, partly because I fail as a stay-at-home mom and don’t really cook, and partly because it’s kind of hard not to just be like, “Why doesn’t one of us just run across the street to pick up a massive $5-per-person feast at the Chinese place?” every single night, since really sometimes the whole thing does seem a bit futile. But we’re trying to get into the habit of this, so we can’t allow ourselves to slip.

One thing that’s made it easy is our discovery of the frozen section at Trader Joe’s. And by that I mean, the frozen section at Trader Joe’s in its entirety now resides in our freezer and will be feeding us for the next quarter-year. For $27.85.

Every several days I trek over to TJs to top us off with stuff like a couple dozen bags of biryani rice–the excursion has replaced the trip to Whole Foods as one of my evening “alone time for mommy” rituals–and since I always end up unintentionally buying six or seven vegetarian or vegan dishes (read: “soy”cotash? Really? Didn’t realize lima beans were from an animal), the walk home is just like the new PETA campaign where the neck-brace-clad anorexic supermodel trudges back from the market carrying a bag of vegetables to refuel her maniac boyfriend’s insatiable sex drive.

Except that I’m weary from running around after a crawling baby all day instead of from starving myself. And except that if anyone ever did anything to me in the bedroom that put me in a neck brace, I would be walking in the OPPOSITE direction with that bag of vegetables. And except that I don’t usually make a habit of glorifying rape.

But other than that it’s exactly the same!

We’ve really stuck to the dining-in plan, though, and money-wise I do think it’s helping. And the nostalgia of feeling like it’s the last time I was poor all over again–when I first moved to the city over a decade ago–is kind of comforting in an odd way. Walking past all of these wonderful-looking restaurants day in and day out, dreamily gazing in and wishing I could afford to eat at them–makes me feel like my whole life is ahead of me again! Or at least my twenties.

Except that I wouldn’t wish the reliving of my twenties upon myself.

Nor would I wish my twenties upon my worst enemy.

I would, however, wish my twenties upon any and all young and impressionable girls who see the latest PETA commercials and decide to starve themselves so some sex-crazed douchebag (dorky and unattractive, as it turns out, but I guess that’s “in”) boyfriend figure will find them more desirable.

My twenties were an absolute field day compared to that!

Anyway, as soon as we have money again, we’re goin’ to Disney World! Nah, just kidding, we’re going to–waaaaaaaait forrrrrrrrrr ittttttttttt–a super-elite premiere NYC dining spot known as? The secretly be-gardened, lovely and shockingly reasonably priced Italian place around the corner.

And if we order vegetarian there, it will be entirely intentional.

People often think that because you’re a blogger, you follow lots and lots of other blogs, that blogs are your thing–kind of like how people often think that if you have a cat you’re a cat person and love any and all cats and cat nicknacks and trinkets and cartoons and Martin Luther King Day greeting cards with cats on them.

But really blogs are just a way for writers to write–to force themselves to put their writing out there in some kind of coherent and/or timely fashion–and one of the only blogs I follow–and that I’ve been following for a really long time, but not as long as, say, Marie‘s first incarnation of blog, which was one of the first blogs that ever existed in the history of the internet, since before “web log” was even SHORTENED to “blog,” thanks–is Dooce.

It is authored by Heather Armstrong and has chronicled her life in very witty, engaging prose, and I’m sure this is true about a lot of blogs, but once you start following, you develop something of an emotional attachment to the people being chronicled–in this case a decade or so down the line.

What I’m trying to get at here–and it’s actually something I’ve secretly been freaking out about for months and pointedly avoiding addressing here–is that I am basically an emotional wreck over Heather and her husband’s trial separation.

Hi, my name is Bess Jankowski, and I am a victim of the emotional ramifications of cyber-voyeurism.  Or something.

I’m actually kind of fascinated with how upset I am over it.  Every time I see that she’s updated, I hold my breath in hopes it will be to announce they’ve decided to have another go at it.  I know this is as naively unrealistic as praying one’s parents will get back together, which is exactly what I did when my own parents split up in 1986 or whenever, but it’s weird: I just can’t accept it for some reason.

Of course, a little-known fact about me is that the main reason I was so reluctant to get married is that I’m oh so much more reluctant to get divorced.  I mean, sure, isn’t everyone?  No one “wants” to divorce, but seriously, I am, like, CATHOLIC when it comes to divorce.  Yes, it’s the age-old child-of-divorced-parents cliche, but I just don’t believe in it.  I really don’t think it’s Inevitable in Certain Cases™.  I simply don’t see why people would even think about getting married unless they’re a million percent serious about staying in it for the long haul.

I have no idea what happened between Jon and Heather–the whole thing is just so sad, least of all for poor little blog-following me–and I’m not going to speculate or judge.  But I kind of feel sorry for my own husband, because I don’t think he realizes what he got himself into by marrying me. As a child of parents who are still together, I don’t think he shares the same stay-married-or-die philosophy, and it’s probably never occurred to him how difficult I would make it for him to ever divorce me.

Of course, since he’s a child of parents who are still together, he’s also ridiculously well-adjusted and obscenely normal and probably doesn’t view marriage as something you should rush to get out of–which is how I’m starting to think the rest of the world views it.  Maybe I should have asked him how he views it BEFORE we got married, but where’s the fun in that?

In any case, last weekend I officiated at the wedding of some friends, and luckily the couple wrote their own vows instead of leaving it up to me, because those in attendance didn’t really need to be made privy to my just-now-revealed-for-the-first-time-ever uber-radical marriage views!

But since the couple did write their own vows–instead of having a member of the clergy spew recycled, yawn-inducing bible verses like at most weddings–I got to observe the thought processes that went into it, and I must say that it was very refreshing.  Imagine: choosing the words that legally bind you to another person for life!  Rather than having a random third-party bystander do it for you!

Part of that wording included a section about their friends and family vowing to hold the couple to their promises–helping them figure things out together in times of trouble rather than siding with them individually–and as officiant I had to ask the attendees at one point to literally say: “we do.”

That was the part of the ceremony I was most nervous about because–well, first of all, I was a train wreck about the entire thing in general. And in particular I was afraid I wouldn’t verbally have set that one part off enough from the rest of what I was saying, and that everybody would be nodding off and wouldn’t have heard. But when it came, enough people were paying attention that many–if not a majority of–voices did respond, and for a second it was pretty moving.

In a way, the entire internet–or, at least, all those bloggers who follow all the other bloggers–is that room full of voices, vowing to hold Heather and Jon Armstrong to the promises they made to each other. Or, in my case, wanting to reach through the computer screen to SHAKE THEM. And I know it sounds prohibitively dated and uncharacteristically old-fashioned and that I totally need to get with the program and accept that most marriages end in divorce even when both parties mean really really well? But I’m not going to.

And there’s nothing anyone can do to make me.

Kind of like how there’s nothing anyone can do to make me care about other people’s cats.

I always have to stifle a little chuckle when my pregnant friends talk all definitively about what kind of parents they’ll be. I’m sure I did the same thing before the baby came–even if I didn’t say anything out loud, I was probably thinking it–but now, in retrospect, it’s downright LOL-worthy to think I thought I had any say in the matter.

I remember vividly the day we were given our first electronic toy for the baby. I knew Elliott was thinking the same thing as I was: our kid will not be playing with electronic toys, thank you very much.  Turns out that very toy is currently among his favorites, and were we weak to give in?  Did we first try to sustain him on a strict playtime diet of faceless Bruderhoff dolls?  In all honesty, I guess he has a pretty balanced mix of electronic and non-electronic toys–I haven’t actually thought about it that much, because one of the other things my pregnant friends will learn is that when you become a parent, you don’t have time to sit around agonizing over that kinda thing.

But here’s the challenge.  Here is what will break even the most hardcore of simple, noiseless wooden and/or cloth toy proponents: look at your baby’s face LIGHT UP IN UNADULTERATED DELIGHT over some absolutely dumbass tune electronically piping out of a plastic Winnie the Pooh toy, and try DENYING him that toy.

You can’t do it.  I know you’re thinking it’ll be different with you, but it won’t be.  I’m not exactly softcore when it comes to sticking to my convictions, people.  If I’ve given into electronic toys, chances are you will as well.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of exactly how much of a wuss I’ve become since giving birth.  At some point I guess we’re going to have to start disciplining the baby, but even that doesn’t really sound like something I’ll be able to bring myself to do.  I mean, he’s so good!  And so cute!  When he yells indoors it’s adorable!  He doesn’t MEAN to be loud!

And then there’s the cosleeping.  I know what most of you right now–especially those who don’t–or don’t yet–have children–are thinking, and maybe some day I’ll devote an entire post to my defense of cosleeping,  but right now let me just say, again: not something I planned.  Would I trade it for anything in the world?  No way.  I love having my baby right next to me where I can gaze upon him all through the night, and I’m dreading the day when we’re no longer nursing and it won’t be necessary and he’ll be a big boy sleeping by himself with a big sign on his door that says “NOAH’S ROOM!!  KEEP OUT!!”

Also, sidenote: what animals in nature give birth and immediately set their children up in a “nursery” down the hall and/or up a flight of stairs–and let them scream through the night to “teach” them to be independent?

I’m telling you, I thought I’d be able to do all of that before the ACTUAL BABY came into our lives, but now I can’t.  And I’m not ashamed to admit it.

People have actually asked us if we’re thinking of having additional children, and it’s like, Really?  We’re supposed to have started thinking about that already?  I mean, I know some people have the spacing all figured out (my own midwife even asked me about it as my FIRST post-natal appointment), but for starters, I think we need to see this baby safely to his, I don’t know, first birthday?  And secondly, I actually HAVE thought about it because we’re far enough away from seriously having to think about it that I can be really honest and candid with myself about it, and I must say that I don’t know if I have it in me to be diplomatic enough to have more than one child.  I just don’t know if I’m mature enough as a person.  I wouldn’t be able to constantly take sides (or constantly not take sides) and in my imaginary scenarios of how it would play out, I’m always siding with Noah, since he was here first.

That’s probably not a very healthy approach to parenting.

But then again, maybe that’s one of the things that would change about me post-more kids.

In the meantime, all you parents of multiple children can stifle little laughs and smirk knowingly at each other.

I “dated” this boy in seventh grade–we’ll call him Adam Stein, since that was his name–and I’ve been thinking about our “relationship” a lot recently.

Our “relationship” consisted of maybe a week’s worth of phone calls and exactly one–somehow unchaperoned?  how did that happen?  maybe just because it was Adam Stein, thanks?–date to the movies and then to–wait for it–Friendly’s for ice cream.  For those of you tuning in locally, yes, this did take place at Middletown’s very own Caldor Plaza, circa the Caldor 500 days.

We saw Joe Versus the Volcano and we even discussed it afterwards over the aforementioned Friendly’s ice cream, because hi, this was Adam Stein and he was a thirty-five year-old trapped in a twelve-year-old’s body.

I’ll never forget how I’d gotten dropped off at his house that evening and since Adam “wasn’t ready,” I hung out with his parents in the kitchen for awhile, and I’m only mildly exaggerating when I say that they quizzed me on world events and asked me what my favorite “studies” were.

I was twelve. Those were among the most terrifying ten minutes in my life.  Still consider them to be a little.

Adam was super-duper-smart–still is, no doubt–and went on to become a straight-A super-genius in high school, heading up various extracurricular activities and volunteer groups like he owned the place.  He turned into an exceptionally charming young man, which came as no surprise to anyone, but at the time–in seventh grade–he was slumming at the Caldor Plaza with the likes of me, and also at the time he was involved in some kind of hardcore regional gymnastics competing, wherein every day after school he was driven several hours away to face off with other really awesome gymnasts, returning home very late–with just enough time to quickly complete his homework and hit the sack.

And so it came to pass that my most vivid memory of my brief “relationship” with Adam is the time on the phone he declared to me that he always, always  fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

I guess my response must have been complete silence, because after a few seconds he added, “I mean, don’t you?”

I probably lied and said, yes, Adam–of course I do!  I definitely don’t lie awake for hours past my bedtime every night worrying about all the dumb things the typical, remotely self-aware seventh-grade girl worries about, like whether she’ll be let in to the outer ring of the cool girls’ lunch table the next day or if she’ll instead have to casually take her tray to dine in Mr. Huldie’s classroom, pretending that’s what she’d planned all along.

Actually that was eighth grade, but I digress!

Anyway, point being, no, I did not fall asleep in a timely fashion in seventh grade because my days were not spent tra-la-la-ing about which of my “studies” I preferred and musing intelligently about what was going on in the outside world, because?  I was a seventh-grade girl and all of my efforts were concentrated on being accepted for who I was by my peers . . . where my peers equaled the 1990 equivalent of the cast of Mean Girls. I don’t think I have to tell you that that meant lying awake all night trying to mold “who I was” into a watered-down cookie-cutter form most easily digested by the cool crowd.

And right now, here at thirty-five years young and a new mom, I am going on the record to say that this is the first time in my life I’ve pretty routinely fallen asleep the moment my head hits the pillow.  My days may not consist of Odyssey of the Mind competitions and “away” gymnastics tournaments, but they are full of a baby who keeps me on my toes, and more importantly, keeps me engaged.  I could sit and just look at him for hours.  Unfortunately if that’s all I did, someone would call CPS.

But I fall asleep pretty soon after my head hits the pillow, and these days–when I’m not staying up to work at my second job, thanks–that comes much earlier than it used to.  Waking up for the day comes much earlier than it used to as well, and I’m actually starting to enjoy it.  That’s correct: I, Bess Jankowski, Lifelong Late-Riser, Am Beginning to LIKE Rising Early.

Not that I wouldn’t mind casually being able to walk out of my apartment, go to a movie, and sit afterwards discussing it over sundaes without a care in the world!

As long as that movie is something other than Joe Versus the Volcano.

Or Mean Girls.

I told myself a year ago–when we first found out about this new building going up, before they even broke ground for it–that if we got in, I would start volunteering somewhere in the neighborhood.

I intend to hold myself to that–which is one of the reasons I’m committing to it in writing here–but it has since been downgraded from all-out joining the local church (seriously, what? why is that funny?) to taking a shift at its soup kitchen. Even if a homeless woman standing on line yesterday outside said soup kitchen did grab Noah when we walked past and say, “Look at that big fat belly!”

Really? Just because I have a big fat American baby, I’m supposed to let hungry homeless people grab at him? I’m leaning towards not so much, actually.

Anyway, the soup kitchen is actually accepting volunteers, which I’m pretty sure is usually unheard of. So it would be feasible for me to sign up–provided they let me do something that doesn’t involve homeless people flinging their hot soup into Noah’s eyes or attempting to strip him down and baste him and stick him in the oven. I kind of have to bring him along, since, like, 90% of the reason I’m doing it is to expose him to the idea of “giving back” to the community. Even if that community can’t get past the fact that he’s well-fed. On free breast milk.

I’ll get over my bitterness at some point before I show up at the gig–don’t worry–but in the meantime, the other issue is that Noah–while thoroughly delightful precisely BECAUSE he doesn’t have to go to a crappy daycare and be exposed to bratty kids who teach him how to hit–is going to be needing some form of socialization soon. Unfortunately I don’t have many friends with kids his age, and certainly none who live close enough that it would be convenient for us to get together and down champagne while our children bang their heads on the sharp edges of un-babyproofed coffee tables.

Nor will I at any point in the near future since my Brooklyn-dwelling cousin and his soon-to-be wife are moving to freaking Boston a month before they have their baby in June! Not that I’m bitter about that, either! At all!

I want to join a mommy-and-me-type group, but have it be composed entirely of jaded housewives who are completely against mommy-and-me-type groups. We’ll go for walks on the High Line every day and take our kids on field trips to dangerous urban ruins. Hey, safety in numbers!

Some kind of volunteer element to the group would also be nice, rather than just sitting around doing whatever they do at these gatherings. I honestly have no idea what they do besides spend time with their babies and each other and each other’s babies. Yoga, maybe? Shopping trips to Buy Buy Baby? Rounds of the Itsy Bitsy Spider?

If anyone has any suggestions/advice/etc. for any of the above, please leave comments on Facebook/Twitter. Also if anyone knows how to fix my comments code here, I will pay you.

And if anyone wants to move to the city and have a baby–in no particular order–I will be your best mommy-and-me-group friend forever. Together we will keep our mouthwatering babies safe from the hungry masses.