the reproduction production

Last Friday I went to try on my fave pair of pre-pregnancy designer jeans. I try them on periodically to measure my body shifting, but last week they fit! Albeit not exactly the same as they did before my pregnancy, but they no longer made me feel like a sausage and I could wear them out in public without feeling like my circulation would be cut off from my waist down.

Seems like small scale apartment renovation, packing, moving, and unpacking have facilitated a weight loss in both Adam and myself. Thank god. We had grown very accustomed to hanging on our couch, watching downloaded TV series, and eating organic cookies since Alexandra came around that we'd both managed to maintain a certain baby flab. But now it's gone and we have emerged out of the cocoon of chub victorious!

But, of course, the discussions re: baby #2 have now begun.

One of the many things I appreciate about my New York peers is that many of us agonize over if we should kids, when we should have them, how many to have, the impact of our reproduction on the world at large, on the environment, zero population growth, urban living and city finances, etc, etc, etc. There is no mindless reproduction here (for the most part). We are all very critical thinkers (as well as slightly cynical) about many issues, and this trickles down into our reproduction practices as well.

So Adam and I have been belaboring the one kid versus two agenda. Neither of us is BFF with our siblings, but we are both certainly glad to have them and couldn't imagine growing up and/or being an adult without them. We recognize that the cost of daycare, the space issue in small apartments, the looming cost of a college education, our desire to stay in Brooklyn, the challenge of public schools, my inner fears of getting fat all over again and giving birth to another ginormous babe, our goals of international travel....all these things get increasingly complicated with a second child. One kid = we can negotiate all this quite easily. Two kids = a whole different kettle of fish.

But how do you measure--financially or otherwise--the life of a second child? All our reasons for having only one child reflect, for the most part, our desires for an easier financial future; one child allows us to maintain our relatively posh life. But how can we explain to Alexandra, when she's older, that we didn't think a sibling for her was worth giving up our ability to go to Europe, to eat organic meat, and to rent in a nice neighborhood? It's a hard thing to reconcile.

(photo of my belly the night my water broke: june 23, 2007)

shameless marketing

i have been at ikea a lot lately.
i am such the evident marketing demographic that it is actually a trifle embarassing. I almost want to disguise myself when i go there so that the ikea secret agents that roam the store or watch me on video camera as i agonize over a beige or olive throw pillow won't feel so smug in their effectiveness.

here is how i know they're out to get me--the music.

in my last two trips to ikea, it is as if they have hijacked all my mix tapes from high school. remember those? mix tapes. so beloved. i have held onto a few of mine; they were representative of so much effort! and it was as if ikea found them and broadcast them, on a low-medium volume, throughout the whole store.

some highlights:
"in between days" the cure
"lips like sugar" echo and the bunnymen
"hysteria" def leppard
"bizarre love triangle" new order
"i want candy" ?
"get outta my dreams, get into my car" ?
"patience" guns and roses
"enjoy the silence" depeche mode

IKEA!!!!!!!! i hate you for having me so figured out! you make me feel so unoriginal, especially when i am surrounded by other 30-somethings all singing under our breath, pushing our strangely-named cheap furniture around. dammit ikea! you're too good at what you do. you win. now give me my svan chair and billy bookshelves and let me take the free shuttle bus home in peace (minus that cure song now stuck in my head).

Bristol, the Preggo Teen

I have been incensed by how easily Bristol Palin's teen pregnancy has been poopoo-ed by the media. Palin's comment that,"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned," made me want to scream. Does nobody out there know the realities of teenage pregnancy? Popping a baby out of your vagina does not = instant maturity!

I heard the reports of those rallying around her, saying that they know how Sarah Palin feels and that they, too, have had knocked up teenage daughters. I have read of the pro-life groups that are celebrating Palin's ability to put her money where her mouth is in terms of her conservative/religious stance on abortion. But come on...Does nobody see the bigger issue here? Teenagers are having sex! Not only are they having sex, but they're having UNPROTECTED sex! How can the Republican Party rally around Bristol and then argue that sex education does not need to happen in schools? That, "If you hand out condoms, they'll have sex."

Idiots...they're having sex anyways.

After 10 years of teaching high school, as one whose younger sister had two kids before she was 18, and as the product of a teenage pregnancy that ended in adoption, I feel I have an inch of a platform to stand on here.

A large percentage of teens are sexually active. Period. Some are smarter about it than others, but many embark on this intimacy with little to no true knowledge of their bodies, pregnancy, STDs, HIV, and so forth. The lack of information that I have encountered as a teacher astounds me routinely. A co-worker of mine had a student ask her if girls had hearts in their vaginas because when she made out with her boyfriend she could feel hers beating. A had a random student ask me in the hallway, "Miss, how many holes do we have?" After I figured out what she was asking, I replied that women had three holes--the urethra, the vagina, and the anus. She said, "No, my mom told me we had only two holes down there." "Ummmm....sweetie....your mom was wrong."

I am not advocating or encouraging teenage promiscuity here. I say repeatedly in my classes that I don't think that high school students should be having sex because they are not mature enough to deal with the real life consequences of pregnancy, disease, and illness. But I do think that there needs to be real place and curriculum for sex education in our schools. If the schools don't discuss it, then the government ends up paying for it later in welfare, in health care, in Head Start. And you know Republicans don't want that.

And I can't help but bring up the race card here. If Obama's daughters were older, and one were pregnant, I can't imagine the stereotypes that would arise. Why is it so acceptable for Bristol--who is white and wealthy--to be 17 years old and pregnant, but my if my poor, Mexican or Black student were she would be shunned? Can you only be a pregnant teen if you have rich parents to raise your baby?

WTF?

the poo cat

alexandra has been very excited and curious about her vagina lately. when her diaper is off, she plucks at her part like a banjo. when i'm out of the shower or using the toilet, she points at mine and says, "that!" yes honey, it's all about "that."

this leads to the awkward crossroads as to what we are going to call the anatomical parts of our bodies with her. we have deliberated and talked about this, and we have decided to keep my dear friend amy's family name alive: the poo cat. (still undecided on male part's name).

i met amy freshman year in high school when she transfered to our school from a private christian school. her and her sister shannon just blew us all away: they were funny, they lived in a big house with new, mauve furniture and a pool table in the basement, her parents let us all hang out there, and these parents (fred and scarlet--i love you!) openly talked about the poo cat. coming from a house of sexually repressed christian rhetoric, this really blew my mind and made me slightly uncomfortable at first. but soon it became normal, and fun, to use this word to talk about boys, sex, teenage life and all the drama that goes with it openly and honestly, with adults...the poo cat was always present in our teen prattle.

so while i am defying my demographic of the liberal yuppie parent who uses the anatomically correct words for everything, i feel totally happy when i hear alexandra refer to her "ooo at." i hope we can provide an open space for her to talk about her poo cat throughout her life, the challenges having this said body part bring, and how having a poo cat and being a women is a much more defining experience as you get older than you ever thought it could be.

now if she would only stop thinking that xena--our cat--is also a poo cat. oops.

ps: photo of a vagina halloween costume. you can wear it over your suit to work! any takers?

group work : parenting

We've been in school for a week, and I just had my students do group work for the first time yesterday. We're doing background knowledge work in order to read "The Crucible" and I had the students look at political cartoon depicting the McCarthy Era in order to understand the idea of scapegoating, mass hysteria, etc. Unfortunately, due to our current political climate, I have never had an easier time explaining this phenomenon to a group of youth. They totally get it. But that's not the point of my post today.

Of course, the usual roles emerge in group work: the girl who will write but won't talk, the boy who stands up and explains perfectly the entire exercise after screwing around the whole period, the group that doesn't complete it, the group that completes it in five minutes and is bored...You probably remember these exercises.

I always found group work so useless. Being the control freak that I am, I just wanted to do it all so that it was done right. I wanted to write in marker b/c I have always had nice handwriting. I would bite my tongue from telling others, "No, don't say that, that sounds stupid." I'd try not to wince as a not-so-eloquent group member explained our work and missed the whole point. You wouldn't believe how much group work is involved in the doctoral process. I am so thankful to be done with coursework and hope I never have to do group work again as long as I live.

And then we had a baby. Our marriage was literally smooth like butter until our little baby girl came along. Then it was constant negotiation. Bedtimes, what to eat, when to start solids, when to wean, how to travel, who to travel to see, money, money, money! Ahhhhh! It's like group work hell all over again. And even though my husband Adam is competent and loving and the best dad, group work is never a 50-50 split.

I couldn't help but see our marriage staring me in the face as I walked around the room, group to group, yesterday. I wish I could tell the kids to work on compromise in group work b/c one day it might help them in parenting (although a handful are parents already), but they wouldn't get me. They'd think I was some crazy old lady.

Maybe I am.

Moving Moodiness

Somebody told me the other day that moving is ranked up there with death in terms of the emotional stress it causes individuals. I couldn't agree more. There is something so unsettling about uprooting your home. No matter how tiny or overstuffed our apartment is, the act of trying to condense it all into meticulously labeled boxes and canvas bags--even just to move downstairs into the garden apartment--just makes me want to curl into the fetal position and cry silently to myself until i can go to sleep and wake up magically moved.

The trauma of moving for me involves the endless memories that resurface when I am forced to catalog all the beautiful crap I have collected throughout my life. The very first roses a boy gave me at 16 as well as the first rose Adam gave me--their petals all sickeningly smelly in a Bonne Maman jar. Valentines from the college boyfriend singing sweetly of my attributes when I was 20 years old. Polaroid of my old, lost friend Kendall, shit-faced drunk and wrapped in our sea-motif shower curtain, obviously saying something really deep into the camera but I can't remember what. Postcards I sent my family while I lived in France, each word heavy with the tension of our relationships. The box of my dad's life that I salvaged from my mom. A seemingly lost sympathy note from our miscarriage. It just goes on and on.

I think I save these objects that are so saturated in emotion tucked in secret places throughout my apartment (books, jelly jars, pottery pieces) so that I don't have one massive trunk of baggage staring me in the face. Instead I have it sprinkled all over my house. When I come upon a piece of it, I usually find it endearing and it gives me pause, but coming across a tsunami of memorabilia is amazingly overwhelming.

And while I truly feel so blessed it's just sick (I adore my husband, my daughter, my job, I'm healthy and so are those I love...how many people have that?), I am feeling a bit mournful for parts of my life as I move forward.

Lessons from my Dad

Painting always reminds me of my Dad. When I was little, my dad worked at the CIA by day as a research librarian, but during his nights and weekends he moonlighted as a house painter. Him and this guy named Clyde had a small business and did interior and exterior house painting. I don't remember much of this second job, except that it kept him away from home a bit, required a lot of long ladders, and that Clyde had a truck and a big smile. Dad would come home covered with dots of paint.

My dad's health got worse and worse, and by the middle of my elementary school life the side painting job had to go b/c he started losing control over his legs from diabetes complications (which is not a good thing when climbing high ladders). That is when I became his painting apprentice. This usually involved dad sitting in a chair with his cane yelling at me to cut in better, roll differently, tape more effectively, etc. Let's just say, it was not a bonding moment. It was like paint boot camp and usually resulted in me screaming at him to get out or me dramatically exiting the scene of the painting with tween and/or teen flair.

So last night when I was painting, Adam came over to help so that we could get to bed. Suddenly I started nagging him to cut in better..."Why aren't you rolling that part?" "You're leaving brush strokes!" Wow...I had--for a skinny minute--become my father.

I don't see my dad a lot in myself; I see more of my mom. But this moment stunned me. My dad passed away 12 years ago. He hasn't seen me grow into a woman, marry my husband, have my first baby...He didn't witness my move to NYC or know of my career of as a teacher or my doctorate work. I don't really believe in a heaven, but if there is one, or if he's out there, I know that last night when I rabidly critiqued Adam's painting skills he would have said, "That's my girl."

Why I Teach, Part 2

Adam just got home and asked how my first day was. After mumbling something about how I should have kept my posh job as the school's Literacy Coach (b/c teaching is so much damn work in comparison!), I remembered my best moment from the day, so I thought I'd share.

In my AP class, we had an awkward amount of minutes before the bell, so I had the students go around and introduce themselves and say something that we didn't already know about them. These honors kids have been traveling together for four years now and they know each other well. They know whose parents have died, who immigrated from where and when, who everyone has dated, and so on.

Of course, everyone moaned and sucked their teeth at me, but I still made them do it. Most said really banal stuff, like "I'm addicted to texting" (which is a veritable problem that I will have to post on later) and then we got to one student, and he blew us away.

Let me preface this by saying that this one student is known for rambling a lot in class about random topics. He is super skinny and tall. He draws science-fiction-y/fantasy-esque characters all over his notebook and is an amazing artist. He does not wear uber fashionable clothes; he just comes as he is.

So it's his turn. He starts to ramble. Everyone is trying to get him to cut to the chase and spit it out when he says, "I used to have cancer."

At first we're all incredulous. "Shut up," "No you didn't," "That's not funny," the kids (and I) said. He stood firm. He had some kind of nasal carcen...blahblahblah. He said he had to memorize the name of it b/c it was so long and hard to pronounce. It was a tumor behind the nasal plate in his skull. He had to do chemo and radiation, lost his long dreads (he has short natural hair now) and half his body weight. The class was stunned. Then someone clapped and the whole class burst into applause. It was an intense moment. He smiled shyly, accepting the applause.

As I thanked him for being so candid, I reminded him: "You have one heck of a college essay to write..."

DAMN.