The Kid Has Arrived

Matt and I bought Where the Wild Things Are for the boy last month. It’s become one of his favorite books, and he likes to talk to the little Max doll that he has.

Right now, the child is supposed to be in his crib falling asleep for his nap. Instead, he’s in there singing an ode to Max. It goes a little something like this:

“Maaaaaax. Maaaaaaaax! Max! Max! Mamadadamemenana. Maaaaaaaaax! Max. Haway, haway thow! [Hooray, hooray snow, from a song we sing] Maaaaaaax Maaax Max!”

Move over, Cole Porter. I think your place in the American songbook is about to taken over by my kid. He is killing me with the cuteness today.

Hooray!

Hooray, hurrah! Matt came home from Sundance last night, and Milo and I couldn’t be more excited. I was a little curious to see how Milo would react to his dad’s arrival. Matt was so busy from morning to night out there, so we only got to ichat one time all week and of course, Milo isn’t much for phone chatting at this point. I thought Milo might hang back a little, be a little shy when Matt came in, but there was none of that.

As soon as he heard the key in the lock, Milo peeked his head around the corner. “Milo, who’s that?” I asked. “Is it Daddy?” “Dada!!!!!” Milo shrieked and ran down the hallway. He jumped into Matt’s arms and gave him a big hug. He hung close to Matt for the next hour, bringing him books to read and clamoring for rough housing. This morning, Matt was changing Milo, and I could hear Milo laughing uproariously, going “peeease? peeease?” weakly every few seconds, begging for more tickling. Matt went to work a little late this morning so he could accompany us up to the weekly singalong at the Dean St Cafe (with the always wonderful Lloyd Miller of the Deedle Dees). Milo was very Daddy-centric, only coming over to me for snack refills.

I’m not a particularly sentimental person and, in fact, have been accused more than once in my life of being a cold-hearted lady, but watching my two guys together just about melts my heart. I am beyond excited to bring another little guy into our circle in a few months. My heart, it is so full.

I mean, I probably should definitely not make a burrito out of the chili I made for dinner last night, right? Because it’s 10pm.  And I already ate the entire box of Annie’s mac n’cheese that I made for the kid’s dinner but he refused to touch after he’d eaten all the broccoli that I’d mixed in there out of it, plus the two very large doughnuts I ate tonight.

But maybe it would be ok as long as I didn’t smother the chili burrito in cheddar cheese?

I think I always gain about 10 pounds whenever Matt goes out of town to a film festival.

Sometimes I think it’s really weird that Milo doesn’t like to eat bread. Most of the time, it’s actually pretty annoying because it takes away a lot of quick meal options, like sandwiches. But sometimes, like when I’m sitting here eating a dulce de leche yeast doughnut from my favorite doughnut place (Dough, for those of you in Brooklyn), it’s actually pretty awesome that he refuses to take a bite of anything that looks like bread.

I WILL EAT ALL OF THE DOUGHNUTS! Because I’m a big, fat pregnant lady whose husband has been gone for several days and will continue to be gone for several days, and I don’t have anyone to keep up appearances for right now.

The boy and I have both come down with winter colds, which I blame on taking him to the doctor’s for his well-baby visit on Friday. I’d put off that visit for 2 months, but now I wish I’d skipped it all together. I don’t see much need for well-baby visits past the 12 month mark, especially during winter’s cold/flu season. Sure enough, there were several sniveling children sitting around miserably in the waiting room, coughing into the air and blowing their snot-filled noses and sneezing. Milo decided to have some kind of contest with himself to see how many things he could touch/lick in the ten minutes we were in the waiting area. He woke up with a runny nose the next morning, which meant that by Saturday evening, I started feeling sick too.

The last time I got a cold (back in November) it lingered for a good two weeks.  I’m waging an all out war on this stupid illness this time around with lots of saline solution and hand sanitizer and extra vitamin C. It’s a particularly bad time to get sick because Matt leaves for the Sundance Film Festival on Wednesday, and he’ll be gone for week. I don’t mind the solo parenting, but it’s no time to be sick, especially since I can’t take any OTC relievers because of baby junior.

Plus, c’mon, I have tickets to see Jeff Mangum on Friday night! I don’t want to be the person noisily blowing their nose while everyone around me is crying during Oh Comely. (Is that a thing, guys? Are we still crying during that song?)

It’s a boy!

Matt and I went to my midwife’s office today for our 20 week ultrasound, aka the day you can find out (if the baby cooperates) the sex. The tech was talking us through all the steps she was doing. There are two techs in the office, but this one is my favorite because she’s so nice and always goes into detail about what she’s looking for and what she’s seeing. There’s nothing more nerve-wracking than lying there on the table while the tech peers silently, with lips pursed, at the squishy thing inside your belly for 15 minutes.

Everything looked wonderful, she assured us. Limbs and digits where they were supposed to be, brain and organs developing on track. She asked if we wanted to know the sex, and we said yes. She squished the baby around a bit trying to get it to cooperate, but she finally got the wand in the right position - it’s a boy, she announced. No doubt about it.

Now, I’ve been telling everyone I thought it was a boy. I’ve been telling everyone that I wanted another boy. I love the close relationship my husband and his brother have. I was the worst kind of sullen, depressive, angst-ridden, unpleasant to be around teenage girl, and I feared the karmic retribution of that being visited upon me in years to come. On the practical side of things, since baby #2 will be born within a few days of Milo’s birthday, all of his clothes will be seasonally appropriate for the new baby to wear. Obviously, a girl could wear most of Milo’s stuff with a few embellishes here and there, but it would be even easier for a boy.

And yet, my friends, as I walked out of the office back into the lobby, I started crying my eyes out. I guess, deep down, I wanted to have a daughter. Matt held me as I cried and tried to pull myself together. He whispered some encouraging words. I sniffled a bit, but got it together. We walked out into the lobby, and I showed my midwife the photos and told her it was a boy. She was thrilled for us and came over to give us a hug, whereupon I started bawling again. I love my midwife. She started telling me some funny horror stories about dealing with her daughters when they were teenagers, and continued to distract me with tales of how she can’t stop spoiling her grandson. By the time I left there, I was feeling better, although I had one more mini-teary session in the elevator with Matt.

“I guess we know now what you really wanted,” he said.

“I don’t know,” I replied, ” I just feel like there are things I’ll miss out on now. Now no one will go with me to the Anne of Green Gables tour of Prince Edward Island,” I sobbed. (I guess this is a major concern of mine.)

“Sweetie, I promise the boys and I will take you there.”

“It won’t be the same. And now I won’t have anyone to play dollhouses with—”

“No, probably not.”

“—or read The Secret Garden to at night.” [This book always comes up because there’s a very funny tale of his mom trying to read that to the boys when they were young and they both totally revolted against it and were too distracted with laughing about how there was a boy named Dickon in it to care about the book’s plot.]

Matt smiled at me. “Honey, that book sucks anyway. But maybe you can still read it to them, you just have to do it when they’re really young. There’ll be lots of other books to read and games to play with boys. Besides, you’re just better with boys in general. It’s going to be wonderful. They’ll grow up to be such good friends. Also, you dress Milo so well, but I’ve seen your taste in girl clothes and I really feel like we’ve dodged a bullet there.”

I had to laugh at that one because there’s a degree of truth in there. I’m a sucker for red velvet dresses and little pink ruffled skirts. Another good thing is that we won’t have to fight over girl names now. Apparently, I like “rich snooty boarding school girl names” (although I prefer the terms elegant and classic), which Matt does not.

Now that I’ve gotten over my initial shock, I’m quickly coming around to the idea of another son. And really, the most important thing is that I’m so incredibly lucky to have a baby who’s developing in a healthy, appropriate manner, and I’m having a healthy and happy pregnancy. I think most of the Tumblr parenting community has been following the sad tale of Rebecca’s little family and her daughter Edythe, who was born with Trisomy 13 last month and died this week. My heart breaks for that family. Following their story has helped keep me focus on what really matters here, that my family is healthy and how incredibly lucky I am for that to be so.

The best day of Milo’s life

In another instance of Matt hitting it out of the ballpark of awesomeness, he bought us tickets to the New York Botanical Garden’s Holiday Train Show, with an extra ticket to go see the sing-a-long performance with Thomas the Tank Engine. He completely and thoroughly blew Milo’s mind with this day.

Milo’s fascination with and love for trains continues unabated. Rare is the hour of the day when there’s not at least one toy train in the child’s hand. “Dee deeeeee” is the constant refrain floating through our house. But we weren’t totally sure how the Holiday Train Show would go over with him. Would he be upset that he couldn’t get down and play with the trains? Would he be able to take it all in? Would it keep his interest long enough to make the travel time and the expense worth it?

The answer to this last question was a resounding holy-shit-are-you-guys-seeing-this YES. The boy was shocked into a rapt awe of silence and pure joy.

It’s a really lovely little exhibit featuring models of historic New York houses and landmarks, interspersed with model trains running on tracks around the houses and over models of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

(Check it out, Ari, it’s Olana!)

We were a little concerned when we first got there because there was a long line to get into the exhibit. Milo started getting antsy while we were waiting, but luckily the line moved fairly quickly. Once we got into the room, Milo’s mouth fell open and his eyes got big, taking it all in. He’d whisper quietly “dee deee” every once in a while, but that was about it. At one point, the exhibit path goes out a door way and winds back around to create some space. Milo thought we were leaving and immediately started bawling his eyes out. The security guard took pity on us and let us skip back into the room without making the full detour.

One little track had a Thomas engine pulling the cars. Milo broke out into a big smile, and would wave “hiiii hiiii” each time Thomas made his way back around. 

After the train show, we walked over to the performance hall and did this:

Uh huh. You know those things that you find yourself doing once you have a kid, and it just kind of blows your mind that this is you and that you’re sitting in this room doing this seriously weird thing all because you love your kid so stinkin’ much? Yeah. We paid like 40 bucks to sit in an auditorium with an audience full of toddlers all grasping various Thomas trains to watch some poor Theatre major dude sing Thomas songs and watch a creepy animatronic Thomas car talk about Sir Topham Hatt.

Here’s Milo clapping wildly to the songs:

Stunned into silence:

Obligatory family photo (subtitled: Damn, girl, you need a haircut!)

For reals, the best day of Milo’s young life so far.

I’m not the type of person who makes New Year’s resolutions. I know myself too well to bother with this usually. This year, however, I do have a few things I’d like to put some effort into. One, of course, is to be a better parent to Milo, especially as we transition into a 2 kid family. Two, to be more engaged in the world around me. I need to learn to take some time to myself more often to remember that there’s a me outside of my role as mother. And three, I want to work on being a better partner to my husband because, man, he’s really been hitting it out of the park lately, even more so than usual. It’s so easy to let him take care of everything because he’s so good at it, but I need to remember that he needs to be taken care of too.

Matt’s been learning to cook over the past few months, which is really fortuitous timing because I’ve developed a complete lack of interest in cooking. He’s gone from a repertoire consisting of scrambled eggs and pancakes to making a beautiful New Year’s Eve leg of lamb dinner for 10 in just a few short months. Seriously, if it were up to me to do all the cooking still, we’d be reverting back to some serious college-style eating of gross vegetarian processed frozen foods and Annie’s mac and cheese. Food preparation is so unappealing to me these days that that’s about all I can manage, which is strange because I used to take such pleasure in cooking real food.

Matt wakes up every morning with Milo at the crack of dawn so they can spend a few hours together before he heads off to work, which allows me the luxury of sleeping in until 8:30 or so. On Saturday morning, I woke up with a start to an eerily quiet apartment, sunlight streaming in through the blinds, feeling completely rested for once. A little while later, Milo came running in, cheeks aglow from his morning outing with daddy. While I lay in bed asleep like a big fat pregnant lady, they went to the farmer’s market and then the playground.

Even after a long day at work, he comes home and waits on me. Sure, in my defense, I’m having some real physical problems during this pregnancy, so I’m kind of useless by 8pm after a day of picking Milo up and chasing around after him. Still, Matt works long hours and has been up since 6:45am, and I know he’s tired too. He never complains though and keeps on giving 100% all of the time.

I need to set this post as some kind of pop-up reminder to myself periodically about good I have it with this man.