Hello, Pushkin

Mae is three months old today. These have, hands down, been the longest three months of my life. Not in a bad way. In a great way. Just in a slow way. But, also in a fast way. I know I'm not making sense.

I think it's that same feeling you get when you go travelling. Everything you're seeing and doing is brand new. You're noticing all the details; taking it all in and trying to remember it. And so, somehow, the days feel much, much longer than your usual 9-5, get on the subway, go to work, work, come home, sort of days which all blend one into the next.

And then, on the other hand, it all seems to be flying by too fast. It's hard to believe that three months ago today she was just born - so squinty, beautiful and bewildered, all wrapped up in her hospital blanket - and now she's so big, gorgeous and talented! She's on her playmat right now, having a very loud and important-sounding conversation with the orange star on her dangly pull-toy.

She even went and got her picture taken with mall Santa today. How grown up is that?! You should have seen her! She was so good. So trusting!! She was fast asleep in her stroller when we got there, and she slept right through being unbuckled and handed over to Santa. And then she woke up.

Now, if I ever fell asleep in a familiar place, all wrapped up in a familiar blanket, and then woke up in the arms of a strange bearded man, there's no question; I'd definitely cry. Not Mae though. She just took it all in stride. She looked around a little to get her bearings; noticed that her daddy and I were standing nearby; then checked out Santa and decided he was probably okay. In the photo, she's looking off to her left, where we were standing, with this great expression - a little baffled, but not at all distressed - that seems to say "And who did you say this guy was again?"

Dear Lady,

Are you the snowsuit police? Yeah. Didn't think so. Then why, while watching me come into the coffee shop, did you feel you had the right to look at my daughter and say, loudly, "Oh, the poor thing. Look. She's freeeeeezing."

First of all, it was 6 degrees out today and she was wearing a fleece suit with a hood. She was plenty warm, but that's beside the point. The real point is that you should mind your own damn business.

And, really, if you were SO concerned about the welfare of my daughter, you could have taken two steps to your right and helped us in from the "freeeeeezing cold" by holding open the damn door, rather than just watching with your ugly, judgy eyes, while I struggled to get the stroller in by myself.

I hope you enjoyed your coffee.

Sincerely,
Kate

Mae's grandma is SO not in my good books today. She's fired, actually. Not from being a grandma, of course, but from babysitting - at least for the forseable future.

On Saturday night, my husband and I drove out to his mom and dad's place and left Mae with them while we went out for dinner. They are incredibly enthusiastic babysitters and we've left her with them before. And, just like the other times, everything seemed to go fine. She cried a little, they said, probably because of some gas pains, but she was otherwise our usual little angel. We said thank you, packed up her truckload of toys, mats, bottles and diapers and drove home.

But the next day, my mother-in-law called just to chat, and she just so happened to mention this trick she'd used to stop Mae from crying - something I should keep in mind, she said. What she did was dip her soother in honey. I said, "You what? You what what what?" And then I tried very hard not to freak out, but it didn't go so well. She could tell how upset I was.

And, at first, she seemed upset that I was upset. She couldn't understand what the big deal was. Just a little honey, right? She bought it at the grocery store, so it must be safe to eat. But, first of all, why would she put ANYTHING in our three-month-old babies' mouth that we didn't leave expressly for that purpose? Doesn't she know that babies under six-months aren't supposed to eat anything except breast milk or formula? I guess the answer is, pretty obviously, no.

And, much more importantly, how did she not know that it's dangerous to feed honey to babies? Hello?? Botulism?? Potentially deadly?? There's a warning right on the label??

She said "Oh no," because she used to dip her children's soothers in honey and they're fine, fine, fine. I told her to go get her honey out of the cupboard and read the warning. And then she felt very bad and appologized. And she said she didn't know. And I know that she didn't know. And I know I'm being too hard on her. But, more than the honey itself, this is the problem: she doesn't know what she doesn't know. In part, it's understandable.

The recommendations for taking care of babies are changing all the time. I mean, it wasn't so long ago that parent's were told to always put their babies to sleep on their stomachs (I guess maybe to keep them from choking on spit up?), but today it's all about "back to sleep" (because of SIDS). And that's just one example among zillions.

Except that doesn't really solve the problem of how I'm supposed to tell her the current recommendations without offending her or seeming to imply that she did it the wrong way with her kids. When I explained to her how to warm up the bottle one time (i.e., not in boiling water and not in the microwave) she took it personally. "Oh, I know THAT" she said. But how am I supposed to know that she knows unless I tell her and make sure?

Anyway, after I got off the phone, I went online to look up the dangers of giving honey to babies, so I'd know what symptoms to watch for just in case. I found out that it's extremely unlikely that Mae will get sick from botulism spores in honey and that, even if she were to, it can be treated very successfully if caught in time.

I left the screen open so I could show it to my husband when he got home and he laughed at me because in the search field in google I'd written "danger honey babies". I was mad because he didn't seem as scared as I was, but today I can admit that it's a little bit funny. Just picture these little babies in bee suits, crawling toward you with murderous looks in their eyes. Danger, danger.

Sigh. Okay. I will chill out. I will maybe even lift the babysitting ban in time. But only if she promises not to feed Mae anything we didn't leave there for her. And I will leave copious amounts of instructions from now on. And if she's offended by that, she can just be offended. Mae's safety is about a million times more important than whether or not my mother-in-law thinks I'm nice. Plus, in the end, I'm pretty sure she'll understand that I'm just trying to follow the current recommendations, which is exactly what she did for her own kids.

Mae likes things now. Squeaky toys. Teddies. Receiving blankets. She grabs them in her teeny tiny hands and does not let go. Just now she carried her own sweater down the stairs for me (I carried her, of course) and, this morning, she almost had to have a bath while holding the sheep towel because I couldn't pry her hand loose from it.

If I had to guess, I'd say her favourite things are (in this order):

#1 - Her soose. Winnie the Pooh soose, which is the original first soose, or butterfly soose, which is also a very good soose.

#2 - The yellow squeak duck.

#3 - Her Manhattan Whoosit. What's a Whoosit? It's a very ugly stuffed toy. On one side it has a black and white target, and on the other side, it's got a scary face with a big red nose. And then it's got all kinds of black and white arms. Like, ten arms. And each arm has a squeaky or rattly end to it. And you can shove all the arms inside it, and pull them out again. I only know it's called a Manhattan Whoosit because one of my friends came over and said "Oh, you've got a Manhattan Whoosit." Apparently, Miranda, on Sex and the City, got one when she had her baby. So there... see how hip Mae is? ALL of the babies have them. I've even seen mini stroller-sized Whoosits, for infants on the go.

#4 - Her set of plastic keys. Her Uncle Jim has a theory that these are manufactured by evil car companies looking to sell gas-guzzling SUVs to the next generation.

#5 - The red Fisher Price apple. It has a smiley face on it and makes a gentle, tinkling noise when you tip it sideways. It sounds exactly like fairies.

Mae and I live in Canada and, yes, it can be ridiculously cold... but aside from numb fingers in February, damn, we're lucky. Yesterday we went to our first mom's group, organized by public health. It's a FREE 8 week session run by a nurse, although she barely runs it. Basically, what happened was that public health went to all the trouble to arrange it so that 10 women, all with babies almost exactly Mae's age, all of whom live in our area, got together to drink coffee and talk while the babies wiggled around or slept on gym mats.

It's true! And you don't even have to get on a waitlist or beg to be allowed in. THEY call YOU to arrange it.

It was amazing. We started by going around the circle and talking about our pregnancies and our babies' births. And guess what? Half the women had a C-section like I did! And - like me - none of them felt particularly sad about having "missed out" on a vaginal delivery the way everyone expects you to. Also, lots of them have babies who sleep through the night, and they all felt vaguely guilty about it, too. And, even better, ALL of them hate breastfeeding!! It was like finding a whole room of kindered-spirit momfriends without having to spend a cent on a torturous excercise class or sing The Wheels on the Bus. And I wasn't the only one ready to cry with relief.

A bunch of us went out for more coffee afterwards and, walking with three strollers side-by-side (it was a really wide sidewalk), I blurted out like an idiot "I've always wanted to be one of those moms walking down the street with a stroller... with other moms... with other strollers!!" But instead of nodding and smiling while secretly thinking I was a loser, the other two moms shrieked in unison, "I know! Me too!!"

So, yeah. Woo!! At longlast, It looks like I'm going to have momfriends! Momfriends to spend the rest of my ONE YEAR maternity leave with. Yay, Canada!!!

Mae has wicked bad cradle cap today. She's had it for two weeks, actually, but it's much worse today. It started out at the back of her head, but now it's crept forward right down her forehead and into her poor little eyebrows. She looks exactly like a sea crustation.

It's really gross, but what's even grosser is the way I can't stop picking at it, especially when she's nursing. It's monkey love, I think. Some kind of deeply engrained head picking instinct. But the more dead skin I pick off and brush out with the baby comb, the more dead skin seems to come back in its place. I've tried every home remedy I can find on the Internet - which isn't saying much. The only recommendation I can find is to rub the baby's head with olive oil. It isn't helping. Not only does Mae look like a sea crustation, now she also smells like garlic bread.

This morning I seriously thought about skipping our Mom and Tot class, just because she looked so crusty and uncared for. I thought we'd walk in, and the teacher would see Mae, silently judge me an unfit mother, and then call Children's Aid the second we left. In the end, I decided to go but planned to ask, loudly, unpon entering the room, if anybody else's baby had had cradle cap and if they knew how to get rid of it (thus making sure everybody would know that #1 - I was aware of the problem and #2 - I was trying to make it better, like a good mother would).

Before I could even get Mae out of her snowsuit though, another mom started appologizing for her own baby having a crusty eye. She had a blocked tear duct. "That's nothing!" I cried happily. "Mae has cradle cap. She's crusty all over." And then we both forgot all about it for an hour and played happily with our crusty, smiley babies.

This weekend, we had a birthday party for my mom. I put Mae in this extra-ridiculous Italian princess party dress for the occasion. You maybe know the kind: 100 % polyester and totally covered in bows. Somebody gave it to us as a gift. It's hiddeous but, when I was a kid, I loved things like that. And really, it's not a party if you're not in a party dress, right?

So, I brought Mae down, all done up like a twinkly-pink sweetheart princess, and she proceeded to be horrible. Whiny. Drooly. Cranky. Irritable. Fussy. Carrying on. Screaming uncontrollably. Real tears running down her face and everything. She kept it up for nearly an hour until we finally just had to put her to bed.

But that's not the shameful part. This is: she has never done that before. Not once. At least, not like that.

When I talk with other moms with young babies, I nod knowingly while they complain about sleep deprevation. I pretend to understand totally. I have to. Otherwise they would think I was a very mean, braggy, hostile person.

But the truth is, Mae sleeps through most nights. And, sometimes, after she gets up to eat at 6:00, she falls back asleep until 10 or later. She has also slept peacefully through (among other things): a live, very loud samba band; countless restaurant meals; several fire engines; the smoke detector in our house going off twice; and me, dropping the entire pot set on the kitchen floor.

And if they talk about how much their babies cry, I nod again. But, truthfully, Mae hardly ever cries for mysterious reason. At least, not for more than a few minutes. She's mostly happy to play alone on her mat. She drifts off to sleep in the crib without a fuss. She doesn't really mind the bath. Or the car. Or being passed around when visitors come.

I swear though, this is not me bragging. I can't even start to pretend to have anything to do with her even temperement. We just completely lucked out. She was born easy-going. It's entirely possible we won't be so lucky next time around (if there's a next time around).

The other night, when she carried on for an hour, I was ready to snap. To quit. To give her away to the first pack of passing wolves. I don't know how people with collicky or fussy-natured babies do it. Somebody needs to award them medals, and throw them a parade, and offer them free babysitting while they get unlimited Sweedish massages and eat chocolate covered grapes. God knows, it's the least they deserve.

That night, we rocked Mae. We walked with her. We sang to her. I fed her. We changed her. We took her temperature and checked for any early little teeth that might be poking through her gums. Nothing worked. Eventually, after we changed her into her jammies, she just wore herself out and fell asleep. And the next morning, she was herself again.

Our best guess... Our only guess... She must have hated that stupid princess dress. And really, who could blame her? Next time we have a party, she'll just wear stretch pants and a T-shirt.

I know it's probably unavoidable. Despite our best intentions, we all turn out like our mothers in some ways. In my case, it isn't such a bad thing. My mom has her quirks (she sometimes wears a hat with a dead racoon tail attached to it), and we have our differences (she follows political races closely; I've been guilty of voting for the city councillor with the prettiest last name), but she loves me very much and, quite probably, loves Mae even more. I know that makes me lucky.

That said, there are a few minor ways I plan to stay different. One has to do with food. My mother does horrible things with food. Nasty, nasty, revolting things. Like, for years, she stored her homemade soup in the same tupperware container she gave my sister and I to vomit in when we had the flu.

Or, like this weekend, when she came to visit her grand-daughter. We went out for brunch and she accidentally dropped a big gob of pesto-garlic sauce on her shirt. Whatever, right? But wait. Next, she picked up her butter knife, scraped the sauce off her sweater, then licked the knife clean - sweater lint and all. And as though that was not gross enough, she dipped her dirty napkin into my water glass (she didn't have her own) and used it to wipe at the stain. I was suddenly not thirsty anymore.

Or there's the last time she came to visit, when Mae was three weeks old, and I caught her trying to feed a bottle of slightly-off expressed breastmilk to the cats. (She said it was a shame to waste it.)

Or last Christmas when she said, "Do you want a piece of cake?" and I said, "I thought you threw the cake out." And she said, "I did, but I changed my mind and fished it out again."

I know I will eventually do things that both embarass and gross-out Mae. (All mothers do, right? It's practically a rule). I might wear the wrong clothes; get an embarassing haricut; drag out the naked baby photos when her first serious boyfriend comes over, but, with God as my witness, I will NEVER offer her garbage cake or feed breastmilk to her cats. It's the least I can do to make things a little better for the next generation.

Mae is ten weeks old. Still so tiny, but already so much bigger and more capable than when she was born. She laughs, and swats at things and can roll over onto one side.

Watching her grow so fast, it's beginning to dawn on me that she's not going to be a baby forever. She's going to be a kid before we know it, and then a teenager and an adult, and the way we interact with her is going to play a big part in determining the kind of person she becomes. And I guess that's why I've been thinking a lot lately about what kind of mom I want to be.

I know I'm going to make a ton of mistakes but, maybe, if I can lay some ground rules for myself, I'll have something to look back on and aspire to. You know, kind of like wedding vows - except for parenting. Parenting vows.

So this is what I'm thinking. I hearby do solemnly swear the following things. And if I slip up some day (and I know I will, probably often) Mae can print this off, and highlight it, and stick it to the fridge and point to it and jump up and down and say "Hey, you. Remember how you solemly swore?"


So, I hearby do solemnly swear...

That I will not micromanage Mae's homework assignments, clothing choices, friendships, diet or schedule. Of course, this does NOT mean that I'll let her skip school, wear only a thong and a micro-mini, join a biker gang and go on a 100% Twinkie diet. Just that, whenever possible, (and unless her general health and safety is at risk) I'll try to let Mae make her own choices.

That I'll always keep in mind how much a parent's approval means and will only withold it when I can't possibly manage to approve (again, the health and safety thing). Because it doesn't matter if you're five-years-old, showing off your macaroni art project, or almost grown-up and bringing home a new boyfriend... without exception, it hurts like hell when your parents fail to be proud of you or when they dissaprove of something you love.

That I won't put myself down in front of Mae. Little girls who hear their moms say "I can't, I can't" or "I'm fat, I'm fat," learn by example.

That I'll never ask or expect Mae to take care of me - emotionally, financially, or otherwise - in return for being her mom. If Mae wants to "pay me back" she can do it by loving her own kids as much as I love her.

That I'll do my best to make the world be - and feel - safe for her even, and especially, when it isn't.

That I'll support her in becoming whoever she wants to be and in living the life she wants to live. My only expectations (and I am firm on these) are that she keeps breathing until she is at least 100 and that she is kind to herself and to others.