Word to your mother

I didn't go to Niagra Falls but Brian did on his way back from Canada last week and I thought this picture was really cool. He said everything was covered with ice there.

Am I the only one who can't think or say the word ice without immediately thinking or saying "ice, ice baby"? I thought so. Never mind.

The best parts of my new job all revolve around the things that are unlike working in a corporate setting. I do not spend the whole day in useless meetings that constantly check the status of projects that are late because everyone is in status meetings all day. I dress however I want because there is no one to impress with the dress and the owner/founder/president of my agency likes to wear jeans. I do not travel because we are small and most of our clients are local and e-mail will do just fine, thank you. I am not encouraged to kiss ass or have a certain variable set of standards of etiquette based upon who I am speaking to or working with because there are only 5 of us and everyone appears to treat everyone the same, which is kindly.

Let me revel! If I have to leave my babies in someone else's care I am entitled to Pollyanna, right?

Cleaning House

Hey, how's about a playlist? Is it a sad comment on my life that I even have a playlist called
"Cleaning House"? Sigh. Hey, I also have ones called,
"Walking Dance Party" and "Sitting Out Back". So, not only do I clean, but I walk. And sit! Oh, man, now I'm depressed. Anyhoo-here's the stuff I clean to:


Graduate-Third Eye Blind
Friend of the Devil-Grateful Dead
How to Save a Life-The Fray
Sarah Silverman-Every Damn Day
Crash Into Me-Dave Matthews Band
The Remedy-Jason Mraz
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing-Jack Johnson
Right By Your Side-The Eurythmics
Switch-Will Smith
Walking on Broken Glass-Annie Lennox
Do Right-Jimmie's Chicken Shack
Oh-Dave Matthews Band
Catch My Disease-Ben Lee
Hangin' Around-Counting Crows
21 Things I Want in a Lover-Alanis Morrisette
The Impression that I Get-The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones
Stan-Eminem
Peaceful World-(yeah-right after Eminem! I'm multifaceted, don'cha know)Mellencamp
Heart of a Miracle-The BoDeans
JellyMan Kelly-James Taylor
Holiday from Real-Jack's Mannequin

I'm off for a walk-or mayhaps a sit.

A rookie mom’s year’s worth of lessons

I was cleaning out my inbox tonight and came across the letter that I wrote to Annie on her first birthday. I was happy to see it. We are currently mired in fixing Mary's sleep issues and her debut at daycare is likely to happen sooner than later and I needed this to remind me that each crisis passes, and quickly.

Here is goes:

A rookie mom’s year’s worth of lessons

What I want is not important. What I want to do, where I want to go, and when I want to leave has become irrelevant. I am on Annie time now-she’ll let me know when it’s okay. There’s a word for this-patience. I had heard of it before but never knew its meaning until now.

This to shall pass. And this. And that other thing, too. Every new phase that feels like the end of the world ends just as I have learned to adjust to it. What I’ve learned from this is there is no reason to panic-the current disaster will give way to something new.

Um-that passes too. The perfect series of days comes where you think you have graduated from the hardest trials of babydom. Her nose is not runny, she doesn’t scream at bath time and everything you do is like the funniest thing…ever. Complacency sets in. For five minutes. Until the hellbeast returns and makes you long for bedtime.

Though it seemed as though you were trying to split up your dad and me I kind of see now how you might could maybe have brought us closer together. We definitely are learning how to act like a team now-one picks up when the other has run out of steam. Also? You look at your dad like he hung the moon (it’s okay, everyone at our house looks at him this way) and help me see new ways to appreciate him constantly.

I learned that a baby’s smile is the best thing since…since…a fat cat’s snuggle. Oh how you light up when you see your brother-and he in turn lights up right back atcha. You squeal for the people you love best (always preferring the company of men, you little such and such) and they pull everything from their bag of tricks to get you to smile even more. And me? I practically run from my car to the door of Little Learner at the end of the day because when you see me you will smile goofily and happily and widely and make me feel like a won the lottery.

Family means more when you have your own family. I now gaze at my own mother who has made me nuts the past few years, with admiration. How did she do this six times over? How did we have clean clothes, home cooked meals, hugs, and bedtime books when she must not have had time to sit? And how did she do it all maintaining friendships, hobbies, and social work? And my sisters…what good mothers they are…how could I not notice? My brothers-one of whom I swear adores her as much as I do…the other who will, once she’s older and less of a mystery. And my Dad who wanted us to have everything and whose quiet adoration of us set a standard that I hope to live up to.

American Pie is a great song to sing when you are losing your mind. See, we had a deal during the worst days of the colic. You WILL stop crying by the time I get through the final verse of American Pie. The length of time of American Pie roughly equals the length of time that a person can carry a screaming, tomato-faced baby. If this hasn’t been proven scientifically, it should be. And an addendum to this: If you don’t stop crying by the time I finish, I will start crying. Then I’ll start from the top.

It’s hard to be the baby. Seriously. Who would want to be a baby? You crap your pants. No one understands you. Much of your food consists of a liquid that smells like burnt rubber. You can’t GET anywhere. And when you can, the places you most want to go are off-limits. Why wouldn’t you be hell on wheels? Even when I want to send you to live with Uncle Jerry, I understand that your life is no picnic.

A Top 8 List

What...you think lists are a copout? Oh, she believes this actually counts as an entry? Slackass, you think to yourself.

Relax, you.

This is my list of top eight songs people have written for their own or someone else's kid. And when I say people, I mean men and women. Har-I say that, and only Old Friend M will get it, but it's from a brochure written and distributed by a man that used to bartend at the diviest dive on campus. It was about how a 250 pound bartender (him) stayed in such great shape. Throughout the pamphlet, every time he used the word people, he'd follow it with men and women leaving us all to wonder what in the world else would be meant by the word people??? Men and snakes? Smoked meats and women? The mind it does wonder.

Anyway, here's my list.

1. Gracie-Ben Folds
Oh, this is the best. He captures little girls of a certain age just dead on. The first line, "You can't fool me I saw you when you came out" sets it up perfectly and the rest? Knocks it down. My favorite part goes:

With your cards to your chest
Walking on your toes
What you got in the box
Only Gracie knows

I had a thought while I was compiling this list. I started thinking that maybe 10 songs was too ambitious and about how I might fill in some spots (later I pared the list down to eight). To me, the most obvious song for this list is one that I don't really love, Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely. I mean, in spite of the fight he and I are in because of the very existence of I Just Called to Say I Love You, I do loves me some Stevie. Just not so much the grating repetitiveness of the song for his kid. But, I was running through it in my mind anyway, seeing if maybe I might like it now and I got to the line, "Less than one minute old" and I thought of how silly that sounds, as if he gave a quick how do you do to the baby and then jetted off to whip out a song. Where'd Stevie go? Oh, he's he's just GOT to rhyme wonderful with one minute old.

Don't mind me.

2.) Little Miss Magic-Jimmy Buffet
Constantly amazed by the blades of the fan on the ceiling
The clever little looks she gives me can't help but be appealing

3.) Sweet Baby James-James Taylor
To me, this one is a classic lullabye. It was written for JT's nephew. I used to sing this to Annie when she was colicky, crowding in Sweet Baby Annie at the chorus. You know, to keep her interest. I have known this song for as long as I can remember.

For reasons I can't explain, I also used to sing Copacabana to Annie and I now sing it to Mary. It makes me larf to sing, "Your name is Mary, you were a showgirl. But that was 30 years ago when they used to have a show. Now it's a disco, but not for Mary". Ah, good times.

4.) Oh-Dave Matthews
I'm cheating. This sounds like it was written for an old friend rather than a child. But when I worked for publisher B I had a Mac that had iMovies so I downloaded a bunch of pictures of Annie to it and added this music so that this song always reminds me of her, of being at work but thinking about her.

I love you oh so well
Like a kid loves candy and fresh snow
I love you oh so well
Enough to fll up heaven, overflow, and fill hell

5.) Beautiful Boy-John Lennon
Contains the single best 2 pieces of advice ever smooshed into a couplet:

Before you cross the street, take my hand
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans

6.) Raina-Peter Himmelman
When I met O's friend and her daughter Raina I was all, "Like the song, right?" but she hadn't heard of the song. Even though I tried to impress upon her that she really should, I didn't want to be annoying about it even though that was my inclination. I doubt she sought it out. Jerk.

There's so little in this world that's true
I have boundless dreams for you

7.) Just the Two of Us- Will Smith
I'm such a honkey but I just love Will Smith's music. People used to tell Brian that he'd like this song when it was just him and Ryan together. It's very cute and I imagine that this kid will smile to himself quite a bit over it when he's older.

Five years old, bringin comedy
Everytime I look at you I think man, a little me
Just like me Wait an see gonna be tall
Makes me laugh cause you got your dads ears an all

8.) Bedtime Girl- Ralph's World
Kids' music is so much better now than when I was little. Growing up, we had this album of Thumbelina for kids and I can remember this maudlin song all about, "When the weeping willows stop weeping, when the bluebirds stop being blue". And we had the 45 of "It's a Small World after All" I mean, if ever a tune made a kid want to slit their wrists more, I don't know it. So, at an early age, I'd sit in my older sisters' rooms listening to their Beach Boys, Beatles and America records. Now, though, there is so much children's music, and so much is so very listenable for kids and adults. Anyway, Ralph's World is really just Ralph Covert who has a very alternative sensibility that he brings to his kids' songs. Bedtime Girl is a very sweet, hooky updated lullabye.

How's about a smile from a bedtime girl
Sweetest little monster in the world
Hush-a-bye hug friom my little angel
Sail away upon your pillow

See? I didn't just list the songs, I said a little sumphim' sumphim' about them. If I know you and you want me to burn any of these for you, lemme know. I'm good that way.

The Giving Tree makes me cry

Why does the book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein inevitably make me cry? I'd avoid reading it altogether if I could. I think the copy that resides in Annie's room must have been Brian's because I am pretty sure I wouldn't have bought it for myself, knowing what it does to me. Regardless, it's there and sometimes she wants us to read it to her.

It didn't always upset me. My mom used to read it to us when we were young and I liked it. I liked watching the boy age. I liked when he brought his galpal to the tree. I liked that the tree was anthropomorphized because I like when things that don't talk do talk. I even read it in church, once. Our grade had planned the mass and my best friend Maria and I read it, alternating pages.

Later and still, I must have felt like the ingrate that the boy becomes. I took so much from my parents and they gave so much. But it's not the same, really. No, really. I didn't leave them as stumps, for example. There were 6 of us siphening, I can't be held responsible for any lasting damage to them. Wait. I don't cry out of guilt. I got it! It's the damn beauty of it. Parents give and give and give more. There is no limit. And it's likely that their kids will never exude gratutude, nor should they. We give and give and give more and in return we want their happiness and we want them to return to us when they need to. It's one o'dem circle of life things.

So, it's the beauty. But it's still sad. Maybe because I think of my own giving tree, my dad, and how maybe even though he wouldn't have wanted it, I maybe could have exuded a little more gratitude before he died. But doing so would have outwardly acknowledged that I knew he was going to die and I am sure neither one of us wanted to go there.

I like Shel Silverstein, too. When Miss Hickey read his poetry to us in the third grade it was the first time I had been exposed to a kind of writing that was both current and funny on purpose. Even though Shel looked scary on his book jackets, he didn't scare me because he was silly.

Just as an aside, I hate a very similarly themed song, too. That stupid f-ing Cat's in the Cradle song. Manipulative and maudlin. And what is that plinging instrument between verses? Plink plink plink plink plink plink. Is that a harpsichord? Hate it.

When Annie chooses The Giving Tree as one of her storytime selections, I tell her it makes me sad ("WHY, MOM?" "I don't know, it just does") but that her dad will read it to her. As he does, I bite the inside of my mouth and watch her enjoy the talking tree and the growing boy.