Green Thumb in training...

I don't have a good track record when it comes to gardening. It would be fair to say that I am the angel of death to all things with roots and leaves. Some subconscious part of my being must take some sort of joy in decimating those poor oxygen exhalers, because I am just not capable, no matter how hard I think I'm trying, of keeping plants alive.

So I figured here in LA, I'd have my best bet I'd actually helping a plant live beyond a few days. It is sunny 98% of the time, all lawns have built-in sprinkler systems, and houses come equipped with like 6 hose hook-ups. It is a gardening paradise. I couldn't possibly mess it up. Right? Right?!

Well, we'll see. I did manage to salvage two plants out of a house-warming planter my mother-in-law sent to us when we moved to LA. Sure, 3-4 of the plants kicked it, but they didn't have a chance. I had re-potted them and set them out in the backyard, exposing them to that 98% sunlight (and have I mentioned that the sun here feels like it is resting on the top of your head? I'm not entirely convinced that we don't hover suspiciously close to the surface of the sun here during the summer months). When my mother arrived for her first visit here, she informed me that those plants? The ones "basking" in the blazing full sunlight of a Southern California summer? Yeah, they were what you call "house plants" (hence, sent to us as a "house-warming" gift). So the whole baking in the sun thing? NOT their thing.

Three of them made the transition into the house nicely and have grown slowly but steadily for the past several months. One is barely hanging on, but I can't bring myself to throw it away. So it sits next to the other two, I imagine, groaning in agony in some inaudible to humans plan language---the Debbie Downer of the three plants. It probably wishes I'd put it out of it's misery, but I can't. I prune it back, picking off the dead leaves (read: all the leaves) and hope it will spring back to life.

This week, I decided to take a leap back into the big scary world of outdoor gardening by taking Ethan to Target to buy some snapdragons, purple cabbages, pots and Miracle-Gro. I have a soft spot for snapdragons because when I was a little girl, walking to the store with my grandmother, she's stop by a patch of them and show me how they "talked". She'd lightly pinch the sides of the flower and it's "mouth" would snap open, like a mouth saying, "hi." She'd repeat the movement over and over, talk out of the side of her own mouth, and VOILA!---flower talking to amazed little girl. Seriously happy childhood memory. So I always want a snapdragon or two in my life.

Ethan and I set up shop in the front yard, complete w/ shovels, watering cans, hose, pots, flowers, etc. I had planned on putting two of my snapdragons into one big pot, but found it was too small, so I moved one of the plants to the middle. I love playing in the dirt, but I am so bad at getting the plants in at the right depths and with the right amount of soil. So now I need to go back to Target (question of the day--can I get through one entry without mentioning Target? I'm guessing the answer is "no"), and pick up some more pots so my yellow snapdragons don't die. I thought I could just dig up some dirt and throw the purple cabbages into the ground, but it turns out the ground's really, really hard. Ugh. I suck. More Target pots needed, please.

So I don't know just how long any of this stuff is going to live. But at least they are immortalized in these pictures....

Green Thumb McGhee, reporting for duty.

This is as dirty as he got. How is he my kid???!!!!

Getting just the right amount of soil into the pot...or, covering the blooms completely on that side of the pot. Not sure which.

Drowning, I mean, watering the plants...

Whatever Doesn't Embarrass You to Death, Makes you Stronger...

So Ethan's quite a hit in public restrooms and the check out line at grocery stores. Apparently there's something irresistibly hilarious about a pre-schooler who possesses certain knowledge and no filter for what may or may not be socially appropriate commentary.

Case in point one: Two days ago, after a fabulous play date and delicious lunch with friends, Ethan and I stopped at Target to pick up some overnight diapers (because peeing on the potty is kind of a once-a-week kind of thrill for us here rather than an every day occurrence) and some Breathe-Right strips (large, clear--because FORTHELOVEOFGOD, make Husband's snoring stop!!!)

It was one of those Targets with a Starbucks conveniently located at the entrance--clearly, the best kind of Target. But before I could order and adequately enjoy my tall, decaf, skim peppermint mocha, I needed to make use of the facilities.

Fortunately Ethan is still amenable to sitting in the stroller every once in awhile (as long as it comes along with a "guess what?! Mommy will get you a Hot Wheels car if you sit in this stroller for just a few minutes!! I'm not proud.) I'm normally thrilled to have him running around, darting from one aisle to the next, just to test my "no one steal my baby!!" reflexes. Keeps me on my toes. But that day, I just wanted to run into Target, get the stuff we needed (including the peppermint mocha, people), and then get out. So the stroller makes mama happy, even if it's a little challenging to push said stroller while carrying a package of Huggies Overnights and a Starbucks cups.

Why no cart, Sarah? Just put Ethan in a cart, Sarah! Then you can throw your purchases right into the back of the cart, Sarah. Dumby!

I'll tell you why no cart, Sarah. Because I'm on a self-imposed (okay, Husband-imposed) Target detox. If I get a cart, I FILL a cart. I don't mean to. It just happens. Don't act like you don't do it, too, interwebs. I see you.

So I only purchase what I can either carry in my hands or in one of their little hand-baskets (you can fit a surprising amount into those little things).

ANYWAY! I had to pee, remember? And Ethan was in the stroller. In the handicapped stall with me. While I peed. In a crowded restroom. It is at this point in our day that Ethan decided to review his latest anatomy fixation, and yells out, "Do you have a vagina??!! Is that your vagina??!"

Ohdeargod. Yes. Yes, Ethan. That's mommy's vagina.

I'm a little relieved that he has learned the right word--for a long time when he was learning "penis" and "vagina", he melded the two in his mind and created the word "ginis" (pronounced j-eye-nis). My sister in law once explained to me that he actually should be calling it a "vulva", since that is the more accurate term for what he right now thinks is a vagina, but you know what? I'm cool with "vagina" for now. Hope that's okay, Emi!

So there I sat (well, squatted) and listened to the laughter start to ripple through the womens' restroom. Nothing like being the source of bathroom comedy at the hands of your almost 3-year old. I'll tell you, coming out of the stall was a treat. Ethan was, of course, giggling because he heard the women laughing. And then ALL the women had to carry on about how hysterical it was---"Did he just say, "is that your vagina?!" Oh, how cute!"

Anyone want to take a guess what Ethan talked about the ENTIRE time we strolled around Target? My vagina.

Awesome. Truly.

So great. We survived the "Target Vagina Incident" with everyone thinking that Ethan was the cutest thing ever. What's cuter than a little boy yelling "vagina!!"?? Clearly that skyrockets above baby puppies and cuddly newborns.

I had just about gotten past that in my head when today I found myself in the grocery store, pushing Ethan in the cart (I do not have the same problem at the grocery store that I do in Target. I can resist the "one of everything" mindset when pickled pigs feet and ground veal is involved).

To get Ethan to tolerate the shopping cart at the grocery store, I have recently had to start pretending that the cart is a pirate ship, he is the captain and we have to "capture" the groceries. It's loads of fun---lots of "argggg'ing" and capturing Annie's Pizza Bites. Good times.

What I got today, however, was a pirate who was preoccupied by the either real or imagined contents of one particular nostril. No matter how hard I tried, I could not convince him to remove his finger from his nose. Through almost every aisle. To the point where I thought perhaps he'd shoved something up there that would require medical attention. Most people chuckled when they saw me imploring him to take his finger out of his nose; a few went right on ahead and judged me as an unfit mother for not being able to control an almost three year old, but I'm guessing they either never had kids or were tyrant-parents to kids who don't really like them all that much.

Cut to the check out aisle. The cashier and bagging clerk were apparently not versed in the "if you want a toddler to stop a certain behavior, ignore it the best you can," method of parenting. As soon as I wheeled Ethan past the credit card paying contraption, the bagger asked, "Hey there, little guy---whatchoo got in your nose?! Whatchoo got there?!"

And it was on.

Ethan, gleefully realizing that someone is actually interested in his nasal excavation, pulls his finger out of his nose and says, "A BOOGER!" And the laughter began. And went on and on. As did the repetition of the word "booger". And not only Ethan said the word "booger" eleventy billion times. Laughy McGigglepants the bagger and Chuckles McGhee the cashier chimed in, too. "You got a booger?!" "Hey! Good job getting that booger!"

I have honestly never seen Ethan laugh so hard. So that part of it? Priceless. The eyes of every single person in that part of the store on us while my kid and two oversized toddlers laughed about boogers? Not so much.

And just for the record? No booger on his finger. But I washed his entire hand with a wipe, in full view of the front of the store, before leaving anyway.

I think we'll just stay home tomorrow.

Goodbye, So Long, Farewell, my friends...

If you have ever taken a Music Together class, or have listened to any of their eleventy billion CDs (whether it's the bongos version or the bells version--I have them ALL), you know that those words start the closing song for each class. It should go on to say, "We'll see you soon again, my friends, and make music together again."

But alas, we will not. Because of our pre-school schedule which has us starting another class of "transition" next Tuesday morning, yesterday was Ethan's very last Music Together class.

Ethan started taking Music Together classes back in Virginia when he was a wee eight, maybe ten, months old. My friend Carlin and I took our little ones to the music class mostly because the winter was dragging on and we needed something to do with them. I couldn't walk around the mall with Ethan in the stroller for one. more. freaking. minute., and the county offered really inexpensive enrichment classes. Perfect.

Ethan and Chloe were the two youngest kids there, in a multi-aged group that ranged from 6-7 months to 3 years. Ethan was barely crawling and Chloe wasn't yet walking. The smiled at each other and rolled around on the floor together, kind of clapping their hands and banging instruments together. I know at first we felt a little self-conscious because our kids could barely participate and we felt ALL kinds of dorky singing some of the more ridiculous songs (and believe me, there is no shortage of dorky songs in Music Together) when our kids were more or less oblivious.

But we stuck with it, took the class several times in a row and watched Ethan and Chloe crawl, walk, dance, clap, sing to the music, week by week, learning and growing. I never felt anything really special for the instructor--she was sort of the failed dinner theater type, with a bad perm and a soprano voice that made all the songs sound way more tragic and profound than they were ever intended to be.

When we moved to Los Angeles, my biggest fear was that Ethan was losing all sense of normalcy and routine in his life. His friends were gone, his home was gone, his classes were gone, his toys were on a truck somewhere in the middle of the country. He was adrift in routine-less unfamiliarity and newness. Not a place a toddler feels really cozy, you know?

Someone I spoke with briefly mentioned Music Together classes that they were taking in our new town and I jumped. Google, email, phone call, register. POOF!! Within the first week, we found ourselves sitting in a circle, albeit surrounded by new faces and a new leader, but hearing the same songs, and seeing the same shakers and sticks and instruments and scarves. I'm not sure who felt more pressure drain from their every cell--me, or Ethan. It was like being, just a little tiny bit, at home. I remember crying on our way back to the hotel that day, that even so far from home we were able to find something tiny piece of the familiar for Ethan to cling to. And then I think we probably went to Target and spent a shitload of money on new toys for him.

It's been almost a year since we walked into that church nursery room to sit down in Miss Saskia's circle and to listen to her play her guitar, dance around and generally captivate the kids with her calming and warm manner, and Ethan has been madly in love with her pretty much since day 1. During session breaks, he asks when we get to see Saskia again. He wants to play guitar like Saskia. He is the first to stand at attention to get his stamps on his belly, hands, feet, wherever, after class. When she plays the digeridoo, you'd think Ethan was watching G-d herself descend from the heavens just to say "hi" to him.

Next week, though, Ethan starts his second morning of pre-school and the only available opening landed on a Tuesday. And so, we had to say goodbye to Music Together. Clearly I was more upset than him---he really doesn't "get it", and I'm the one with the aversion to change and the preoccupation with being overly sensitive and sentimental. I managed to hold it together during class and was surprised that I didn't dissolve into a puddle as we drove away from class. This move to Los Angeles has forced me to tap into an area of resolve and toughness I didn't know I had---I'm finding that change isn't the saddest or scariest thing possible. So I'm excited for Ethan to move on from music class and start exploring pre-school more regularly. He likes it there just as much as he does music class, so for him, it's pretty much a wash. Maybe even better as there will be music AND running around like a lunatic outside. So it's all good.

But of course, we marked the occasion with a trip to Build-a-Bear, and we built a Saskia bear, complete with guitar. Ethan carried Saskia bear and her guitar around with him all afternoon yesterday, and insisted that I find him a digeridoo to play as well. The best I could do was a bendy straw. He seemed okay with that.

Ethan saying, "It's too bright!!! It's too bright!" when I told him to turn around and smile outside of our class. Stage mom Sarah says, "Who cares?! Smile! I need a picture for mah blooooooog!"

Ethan and Miss Saskia "cheers"'ing with the shakers. Afterwards, Ethan said, "Now drink!" and pretended to chug his shaker. I can only imagine what she thinks must go on at our house.

Choked up mommy takes picture of Ethan hugging Saskia.

Ethan at home later with his Saskia bear, her guitar, and his diaper and digeridoo. (And as an aside, WHAT is my deal with the color brown?! We need a stylist. Badly)

Saskia bear

Green bendy-straw as Aboriginal wind instrument.

The Butterfly Effect

or complete and utter lack thereof.

On Saturday, Husband, Ethan and I ventured out to the local Audobon park (Husband was heartily disappointed when he punched Autobahn into the GPS and I corrected him--sorry, dear), to participate in the 1st Annual Butterfly Census. We were meeting friends with kids Ethan's age and very excited to watch the kiddos chase little winged beings gleefully through the fields, ooh'ing and ahh'ing at the glory of spring and the wonder of innocence. Eh.

We started with a picnic at the front of the park; and by "picnic" I mean the adults ate while trying to cajole, bribe and trick the kids into eating anything while it was clear they preferred to throw sand into a storm drain and chase each other around. Fine. Pick and choose your battles--best lesson of parenthood, EVER.

When it was time to go count butterflies, we picked up our clipboards, illustrated census sheets and spear-pointed golf pencils; these census people meant business, clearly, which led us to believe we'd be swarmed by hundreds of brightly colored butterflies flittering all around us. And just as an aside, spear-pointed golf pencils? Really not an idea writing implement to have in the presence of pre-schoolers. Just saying.

We walked to the courtyard that led to the walking trail--the veritable gateway to butterfly bliss! On a bench they had a collection of pre-schooler sized butterfly wings which each kid had to have attached to his or her back before we began our walk. Very cute. How could our little human sized butterflies NOT attract a plethora of much smaller, real butterflies?

And so we walked. And walked. And walked.

And no butterflies. Three-quarters of a mile we walked with three toddlers, two of whom decided they needed to carry sticks with them (hello, potential eye-injury!!). We walked up little narrow pathways, rife with poison oak (which none of us really knew how to identify) and past one long-abandoned crashed car (we're talking Studabaker here), and yet, not one. tiny. freaking. butterfly.

Ethan and his friend Alex decided that digging holes (or stabbing their sticks into pre-existing holes, perhaps created by a small, potentially angry little animals) was way more important than counting butterflies. And who could blame them, when there were no butterflies to be counted?

We met several groups of people along the pathway who were equally confused as to where the butterflies might be. And we were forced to wonder: WHY have a 1st Annual Butterfly Census when there are NO butterflies???!!

So after letting the kids play in the mud by a little duck pond for a few minutes, we sadly concurred that there was no wildlife to be marveled at and that it was time to go home. Meh. As we left the park, we noticed that the big white dry-eraser board at the front entrance showed that a total of eight, EIGHT, butterflies had been counted all. day. And five of them were the same type of butterfly, so I suppose, if they were counted by five different people, they *could* actually be the same freaking butterfly. Bah.

So fine. No butterflies. But a cute kid. Lookie (and I apologize that Blogger loads these pictures, backwards, so you're looking at the pictures in the wrong order, but there's no "right" order for cute).

Ethan and his friend play a pre-schooler's version of Russian Roulette: what animal made this hole and just how much are we angering it right now by poking our sticks into it's home?

Um. What?

Your mom's got a cell phone to call 911, right? Because I'm about to poke your eye out.

Butterflies? We don't need no stinkin' butterflies....

Ethan diligently seeking the elusive butterfly....sort of. okay. not.

My name is Sarah and I'm a Cross-Poster...

In the true spirit of over-sharing, here's a post from my "weight-loss" blog...

http://nomorefatsarah.blogspot.com/

Give Me an "H!" Give Me an "S!" Give me a "G!"

Put them together and what do you get?! HYSTEROSALPINGOGRAM!!!! (cue: spirit fingers).

Oh yes, my friends. It was a banner day in my world. Shall I tell you ever little last detail about it? Hmmmmm? Okay.

I woke this morning knowing that I was going to start my day by driving insanely through Los Angeles rush-hour traffic with a specimen cup of, erm, let's call it "time-sensitive materials" that were donated to our cause by Husband. Thirty minutes, from collection to drop-off---that's all the time I had. Knowing what I know now, I SHOULD have had Ethan already in the car and standing at the front door like I was responsible for running the second leg of an Olympic relay race---I could start jogging as soon as I heard Husband running down the hall, brown paper bag in hand, shouting, "go! go! go!" and he could have tossed me the bag as I jumped in the car, threw it in reverse and tore down the street. Because having him hand me that brown paper bag, thanking him with a kiss and then getting Ethan's shoes on and leisurely going to the car and getting out of the neighborhood REALLY ate into my 30-minute time limit. We left the house at 8:10.

My GPS, not knowing that I was transporting said time-sensitive materials, and not having a human consciousness of what LA rush-hour traffic is actually like, kept trying to send me up to the 101 to get me to the lab. Um. No, Rhoda (this is what we call our GPS--get it? Rhoda? Road-a? We're wicked funny). I can't get on the 101 at 8:10 am! That is getting-to-your-destination-on-time suicide!!!! Stop telling me to make a U-turn and get on the highway! You just don't know!

So I wove through traffic on the surface streets and managed to get myself stopped at. every. single. red. light. ever. erected. in. Los. Angeles. I fear that Ethan perhaps learned some new words today. Words of the four-letter variety. Sorry, kiddo.

I pulled into the parking space doing my best stunt double impressionation (thankfully everyone was still stuck in traffic on the 101 because the parking lot was empty), grabbed Ethan and that damn brown paper bag and ran to the building. I was so flustered and rushing that a doctor saw me, with Ethan in my arms and assumed I was looking for the pediatric urgent care center in the same building. "NO!" I said, "I HAVE THIS!!" and held up the brown paper bag. Klassy.

He directed me to the lab. I walked through the door of the lab at 8:35. SUCK IT, TIME SENSITIVE MATERIALS!! Woo! Hoo! I beat your clock! I was so pleased with myself at having gotten 7 whole miles in the Valley in under 30 minutes, that it actually took me a few minutes of filling out paper work to realize that the lab tech was just letting that blasted brown paper bag (and it's contents) sit on her desk. HELLO???!!! THIRTY MINUTES!!!

Finally she came to get it (hopefully to put it into a refrigerator or something?!) and I filled out the paperwork (is it wrong that I still don't know Husband's social security number? Because I don't), and then we went on our way.

That meant I had 1.5 hours to drive all the way back to our house, drop Ethan off with one of my saint-among-women friends here who are always taking care of Ethan while I'm off being poked and prodded by medical professionals of all persuasions, and then get my infertile ass down to the local House O' X-Ray for my Hysterosalpingogram (which sounds more like a function of Twitter to me than a fertility test).

Fortunately I met very little traffic on the 101 (which leads me to believe that perhaps, just maybe, my earlier frantic drive through the valley wasn't really necessary, but whatever. I got to the imaging center and was able to relax for a few minutes. And by relax, I mean sit around a waiting room with a bunch of cranky, overly-perfumed old people, watching the local FOX morning news with no volume.

I have to say, watching the soundless segment of the Octuplet mom running into and out of her gigantic new home which will house her eleventy billion children while I sat in a waiting room trying to get information about why I can't get one more fetus to set up temporary residence in my uterus was SO not cool. I have seriously channeled all my rage about this situation into that woman and I've done everything in my power to avoid seeing stories about her because it's just not healthy or productive to feel that hostile towards someone you've never even met. But man, do I loathe her.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

So they called my name. I was instructed by a dorky male nurse to "remove everything. well, I guess you can leave on your bra. And your shirt. but take everything else off." Um. Awkward. So I remove only my shoes, pants and underwear (which would have been so much easier for him to say, but he had to go and make it all uncomfortable by asking me to strip naked. Ew. It's been a long time since I helped myself into a hospital gown, and I have to say, it made my palms a little sweaty to see myself as a patient again. I've been not-a-patient for so long now, the realization that I'm going down that route again kind of hits me at every turn. I'd love to be the woman who can consider her pregnancy "not a medical condition" and give birth in the privacy and comfort of her own home, but that is not to be for me. My pregnancies are UBER-medical. And this felt like the beginning of that.

But it's okay, because if that's what it takes to have another child, so be it. (See, universe???!!! I keep telling you I'm prepared for this!! Cut a girl a freaking break!)

And then I found myself in a ginormous, cold x-ray room with the male nurse who moments ago had asked me to take it all off. And the male doctor. I kept waiting for the female nurse---the one who in theory puts you at ease by being another woman in the room?--I kept waiting for her to show up. But she didn't. So I was stuck with socially (and, erm, professionally) awkward male nurse, and male doctor, who thought it would be appropriate to try to make jokes with me about how expensive it is to have kids these days.

Seriously? You want to pull on that thread?! Because I believe I'm lying here on this table, spread eagle, letting you shoot blue dye into my uterus for something like $750. You want me to start re-thinking the cost of raising a child NOW???!!

If I ruled the world, I would require daily sensitivity-training for all medical professionals dealing with a woman who is pregnant, trying to get pregnant or has just given birth because there's NO ONE in this world more sensitive and some of the people with the medical knowledge to help them have the bedside manners of a box of rocks. Seriously.

So there was that discomfort (both of the conversation and the industrial sized speculum that's required to find my useless speck 'o cervix). And then, on the x-ray machine, there it was. My cervix. This is where you picture Seinfeld and his greeting to his arch-nemesis, Newman. "Helllllo, Cervix," was all I could think when it showed up on the screen. The bane of my existence---the sad little door with the rusty hinges and busted locks. Sigh. There it was.

It looked pretty good---long, strong. Not at all like I remember it from my pregnancy days when it was all smooshed and tiny with the "weight" of my just-bigger-than-a-grain-of-rice baby. So maybe the "no transabdominal cerclage or bedrest" OB was right. But whatever, focus. focus. focus.

The blue dye went all the way through my tubes. More easily on one side than the other. But at least it went all the way through. and was very cool to see. The fact that anyone ever gets pregnant is absolutely amazing to me, after looking at the delicate little system that makes it happen. And I went, on some level, from being sweaty palmed with fear, to sweaty palmed with anticipation. I'm a sucker for seeing how it all works and this little peek back into this part of my body renewed that fascination, and the hope that pretty soon I'll be seeing a whole lot more of the inside of my uterus. Only in the near future, I hope I'm not looking at blue dye, but a heartbeat.

East Meets West

So, let's back up a little bit in the saga that is my reproductive funk (prepare for yet another example of the over-share).

Started acupuncture a month ago. Took herbs (in capsule form; acupuncturist says most people don't want to get pregnant badly enough to actually drink the stuff), and noticed that my post-ovulation temperatures soared like a pretty little pregnant bird all the way up to the high 98's, an excellent sign, and not something my post-ovulation temperatures usually do---they generally go up and down and up and down until they resemble what my acupuncturist calls a "saw-tooth" and what I call the jagged fangs of infertility (who's a drama queen?! not me....right?).

Last Saturday found me back in her office, fertility chart in hand (soaring pregnant bird and all), herbs consumed, and her hands taking my pulse. A smile swam over her face and she said, "I know I have only been seeing you for a few weeks and I don't know your pulse as well as I could, but that feels like a very pregnant pulse."

I took some deep breaths and gave myself for permission to believe, for just a minute, that MAYBE she was right (I mean, the chart and all), and then I dove back down into the "It hasn't happened in thirteen months--why should it happen now?" and all that fabulous negative self-talk. I mean, how could she just feel my pulse and know? And more important than that, how could my body let her, my acupuncturist, know, and not let me in on it?!

Turns out, four days and six negative pregnancy tests later, my wariness was confirmed, and it was made ever so clear to me that, soaring temperatures, "pregnant pulse" and all that fabulousness aside, I was still NOT pregnant.

It wouldn't be fair to say that my faith in acupuncture was shattered--actually, there's not a ton to shatter--it's only been three weeks; my verdict on it is still out. I know I feel better when I leave, in a more-connected-to-myself-and-more-centered-focused-and-at-peace kind of way. It is definitely good for my "Year of Living Mindfully" resolution, and for that, if nothing else, I'm grateful. Besides, looking at the wall o' babies collage in her office makes my insides warm and mushy. So, faith not shattered---but not too terribly enforced, either. I continue to look hopefully to the words of friends who either tell me about their own positive experience with acupuncture or relate stories of a friend of a friend, or their cousins' friend's sister, who got knocked up after only a few months acupuncture. So I will keep breathing through the placement of needles on my ankles, forehead, wrists and belly--hoping that the Eastern medicine will do what it says it can do and find a way to help my reproductively challenged body actually reproduce.

But I also had an appointment with a regular old Western OB this week, too. You know, the kind who scoffs at your own attempts to chart your fertility cycle, tells you to relax and just have sex, schedules you for fifteen tests and starts talking about clomid within seconds of walking into the room? Yeah, that kind.

In pure "Sarah can't get her act together" form, I have yet to get my various medical records transferred from my doctors in Virginia, so I spent most of our appointment reliving, in my own words, the experience of my last pregnancy and what my perinatologist expected from any future pregnancy. She threw an entire brain's worth of information at me in response to that not the least of which is that she doesn't do the transabdominal cerclage unless a second type of transvaginal one--the Shirodkar one--fails. My first cerclage was a McDonald stitch, not Shirodkar, so she would perform the Shirodkar stitch on me early on and hopefully have success with that. Also? No bedrest. So all of that sounds fabulous---far less invasive cerclage proceedure, no bedrest. Sign me up.

Oh. Shit. I have to actually get pregnant first. And that's when another barage of information came pouring out of her. Semen analysis, hysterosalpingogram, ultrasounds the day of ovulation, when to have sex, how often to have sex, maybe we'll use Clomid, blah blah blah blah.

So next week, I get to have blue dye shot up into my uterus and fallopian tubes while I lie on a cold X-ray table, and Husband? Well, he gets to look at porn and, as Costanza's mother would say, "treat his body like it was an amusement park." Seriously, even in infertility, men get the better end of the deal.

The Western way feels so cold, impersonal and one-size fits all--if your body doesn't do what it's supposed to do, pop a pill and force it. The Eastern way feels so much more intuitively grounded and respectful--if your body won't do what it's supposed to do, focus on the mind/body connection and work with your own energy to get it flowing correctly again.

I'm not sure which way, if either, will help me. Right now, I'm just about ready to pop Clomid into a Pez dispenser and take them every hour, on the hour, if the doctor tells that it might help my chances of conceiving. I'd walk around with needles sticking out of my belly all day. Because every month is starting to feel like a failure to me. Every time I wake up on the 30th day of a cycle and realize that I'm not pregnant, I find myself mourning that baby that might have been, that somehow wasn't, and that might never be. I hope that by putting some faith and trust in both the West and the East, we'll find a way to bring the best of them together and finally get this baby we're already in love with, made, once and for all.

So we've hit *this* stage...

File this under "something to embarrass him with when he brings home the ladies...."

I am in possession of one I MUST BE NAKED AT ALL TIMES child. This is how I found him after leaving him alone in front of Noggin for five minutes while I talked to my mom on the phone. Apparently Wubbzy inspires him to explore his inner nudist.

My Name is Sarah and I'm an Over-Sharer....

I suppose there's little revelation to that. Hello, I started this blog to tell the interwebs all about my girly parts not working right. Hard to claim I'm anything but a giant, walking"TMI" alert, barreling down at you with way more personal bits of information that you had any idea you wanted to know about me. But it is something that I'm just recently coming to terms with.

I wasn't always an over-sharer. As a child and teenager, I kept a lot to myself. I second guessed myself, struggled to maintain a shred of self-confidence and assumed that I pretty much blended into the off-white walls of class rooms and that few people really wanted to hear anything I had to say. At home, I spent most of my time in my room, after having grunted the obligatory answers: "Fine." and "Nothing." in response to the obligatory questions: "How was your day?" and "What did you do today?" Rarely, if ever, did I engage my parents in discussions about their lives or current events (as if most teenagers even have more than a passing knowledge of current events that don't involve who was making out at the last dance, or the cat-fight in the hallway between English and Algebra).

I think my days as an over-sharer started with a friendship I cultivated after college. I met my friend Pam, who is, in the most wonderful and loving sense of the word, an over-sharer, during the year I did an internship, teaching full-time, for no money, at a progressive high school in New Hampshire. She was living with one of the math teachers at the school, and after chatting with her at several parties, I was just in awe of her ability to share her thoughts, experiences and feelings with such an ironic mix of vulnerability and confidence that I fell completely in love with her.

We both found ourselves unceremoniously booted out of our respective serious relationships around the same time and became inseparable in our grief and our attempts to re-identify ourselves without the men we had assumed we'd be sharing our lives with. (And as a side-note, Thank GOD those relationships didn't work out. that is all.) After having stifled my emotions in said previous relationship, it felt fabulously cathartic to talk for HOURS about myself, recognizing my worth and having her "Hell, yeah, sister!!" me back into a place of sanity and groundedness. (Oh, and those two years of therapy were probably pretty helpful, too, right?)

Actually, therapy has to be more than a paranthetical comment in this, if I'm to be honest. Sitting across from someone who expected me to do nothing more than talk about myself?! In a world where talking about yourself is considered so gauch, narcissist and self-indulgent? Priceless. Initially I did little more than sit in the chair and weep (oh, the drama!!!), but eventually I left those therapy sessions with a throat dry and sore from talking, talking, talking. Slowly realizing that in my own voice I could hear not only grief, betrayal and disillusionment, but humor and passion and a will to pick up the pieces and go on as myself, not just as a broken piece of what was a sham of a relationship.

Back to Pam. Because there's difference between spilling in therapy and spilling in the world outside those safe walls. A real turning point for me was the night before I moved down to DC. My parents held a barbeque for me, invited all my friends and family. It was the last time we were all together before my grandparents passed away, and now I so wished I'd learned to over-share before it was too late to do so with them.

We sat on the back stone porch of our house, chatting and eating BBQ, when someone commented on the unseasonably chilly weather. My dad said, "The coldest night I ever spent, it was 72 degrees in Vietnam." Now, I knew my dad had been in Vietnam, but I also knew a lot of vets never wanted to talk about that time--wanted to protect their loved ones from the vulnerability of those memories and emotions. So I never once asked my dad about Vietnam.

Pam, with her open heart and an assumption that boundaries are for the weak, turned to my dad and asked, "What was it like being in Vietnam?" The entire world stopped spinning on its axis; I swear I felt it. I looked up, bite mid-chew and waiting for the world to implode. This was the unaskable question!!! The unshareable experience!!! What was she thinking??!!

I wish I hadn't been so freaking flabberghasted at that moment, because I really want to be able to remember what happened next aside from simply this: My dad started talking about Vietnam. He didn't go into a ton of detail, he didn't divulge any deep, dark secrets or talk about having post traumatic stress disorder or anything like that. He just talked about it. And I was too astounded at the sharing to even be able to remember what he said.

That moment marked a change for me. I realized that I didn't want to be such a closed book or allow my fear of being judged keep me from sharing my thoughts, feelings, experiences and beliefs. It is hard to change, though. At parties, I'd often need a drink or two before I could really let myself talk a lot to people or share anything personal about myself. When I would wake up the morning after a party, I'd spend hours kvetching over something stupid I might have said or something overly personal I may have shared. I often found myself apologizing with an, "Sorry. I'm drunk," if I spilled too much information. Most of the time, people reassured me that I hadn't said anything over the top. If anyone was put off by my willingness to talk, talk, talk, they never let on.

After setting into life in DC, it just became a part of my personality; I'd pretty much talk about anything with friends, new and old, and love the opportunity to get to know them better and let them see me for who I am. Starting this blog, spending hours on my back, writing about my stupid cervix and then my stupid post-partum depression (have I not covered that enough?!), I had to revisit what my boundaries are, and where my comfort level is in sharing this stuff not only with the anonymous eyes of the internet, but also with the friends and family who I know read my stuff. I found myself saying, "You know what, Sarah? This is who you are; if they love you for it, they love you for it. If they don't so much, that's okay, too. But this is who you are."

I've not thought about it for a long time. But moving to Los Angeles has made me aware again of this element of my personality. I find myself chatting with moms at Ethan's preschool while the kids are busy together and at the end of two hours, while I also know a lot about the other moms, I walk away, thinking, "gosh, they already know I've been trying to get pregnant for over a year, they know I had a hard time breastfeeding and that Ethan was colicky for 6 months. They know I went to an all-girl Catholic school (which, by the way, is an excellent topic of conversation while sitting in the parent-area of the synagogue) and that I have a horrible body image.....did I share too much????"

But the reality is, it doesn't matter. If I share too much for one person's taste, well, then I guess they won't want to be my friend or read my blog. That's okay. One thing I'm finding, though, is that over-sharing tends to attract more than it repels. Lucky for me.

Calling Dr. Freud...and other, more important things

So a few days ago, as we were getting ready for our day, Ethan asked where Daddy was (he generally does this on a Monday, after 2 days of unadulterated "daddy time"). I explained that Daddy was at work. Ethan was thoughtful for several moments, just watching me wash my face and brush my teeth, and then brushing his own teeth. As we were picking out his clothes for the day (hello--primadonna! "Not that shirt! That shirt. I don't want to wear brown pants. Blue pants!), he informs me that "Daddy's not daddy. Ethan is Daddy. Daddy's not daddy. Daddy is Ethan." Apparently our long list of potential names for Ethan when he was a fetus was missing one option: Oepidus.

Since I told Husband out this little revelation of Ethan's, he's been making the cats test his food before he takes his first bite...you know, just in case. I'm certain, though, given the words of Ethan's declaration, that he has no desire to actually do away with Husband per se, he simply wants to dress him in diapers and make him to go bed at 7pm.

******************

In other news, last Thursday was Ethan's first day of pseudo-preschool! I don't want to get all vklempt and wax too poetic about it, because it is 2 hours, one morning a week and I am on the premises the entire time. I'll save my hand-wringing and "where did my baby go???!!!"'s for mid-June when he starts going to school every freaking morning of the week. (I can't breathe. Where the eff is my brown paper bag??!! Every morning?! What are they trying to do to me??!!!)

Yeah, there'll be a lot more of that that come June, but for now, I'll simply tell you that Ethan was over the moon about going to school like a big boy. He made me pack his Thomas back pack with cars and trucks and books (and then forgot it in the car) and he smiled patronizingly at my camera every time I begged him to say "cheeeeeeeese!" Yes, I brought the camera into the class--I informed the teacher right away that I was, indeed, that mom. Fortunately, we were the first ones there (out of 4 kids, 2 of whom were sick and no-shows that day), so no one but the teacher and Ethan were privvy to my snapping photos.

Ethan's first order of business was to whip up some "meatballs and cupcakes" (at least they weren't meatball cupcakes) at the kitchen play station. Delish. Then he decorated a square of fabric with a picture of himself and a bunch of stickers (this is apparently going to be one square in the world's smallest quilt--the other 3 kids also decorated their own squares). After that, it was time to go outside to the play ground. Oh, how Ethan loves the play ground. Tricycles, trains, houses, art easels, sandboxes and shovels up the wazoo.

The class is called "Transition" (which calls to mind labor--isn't transition supposed to be the shortest and hardest part of labor? I wouldn't know, what with useless reproductive system and all and that whole c-section business, but that's what I've read). My understanding going into the class was that the parents would stay with their children in the class room until such a time when both parent and child (emphasis on child; I guess parents are expected to suck it up) are comfortable separating and then the parent stays on the premises, but is expected to go sit in the lounge area and read or chat with other parents. Fine. I figured that the actual "transition" would happen sometime mid-March. That until that time, I'd hang out with Ethan and help him do the activities, and slowly extricate myself from the situation, moving farther away each class until I could pop out of the door without him noticing.

Well, Miss C, his teacher, had other plans. As I watched Ethan run around the playground with his classmates, oblivious to my presence, she approached me and said, "Now would be a good time to separate." My heart caught in my throat. "Now???!!! Seriously?!! But it's the FIRST day!!! You crazy lady, you can't take my baby away from me that easily!!! He's mine!!! Mine!!!! I will cut you, bitch!!! Back off!!"

Is what I was thinking in my head. Like the crazy lady I am. But outwardly I squeaked, "really? okay," and proceeded to pick up my bag and shuffle to the lounge area across the parking lot from the class room building. The sound of toddlers' laughter receding into the background, Ethan's voice swirling with all the rest of them.

I sat down in the lounge, took some deep breaths and enjoyed the silence. I realized that this is the beginning of a huge part of Ethan's life--his academic life. This is the part of his life that will take him away from me for bigger and bigger chunks of time each year until I find myself packing him up for college. This year (and probably for the next few), he will be making me cute little art projects, playing in the sand and eating paste. And making friends. As time goes on, there will be homework (which, at least in terms of math, I'll only be able to help him with until about 3rd grade....maybe), after school activities, sports, music, friends, jobs, girlfriends. Slowly, he's going to start making his own way in this world and find his own identity.

I expected to find myself a puddly, weepy mess over this realization. Considering I was ready to go 10 rounds (in my head) with the teacher when she had the audacity to suggest I "separate," I figured this particular "me" time in the lounge was going to lead to a hyperventilating, sobbing mess of a Sarah. But it didn't. Instead, I felt so proud of him and so much happiness for him. Even more so than when he was growing in my belly, I felt the awe of having had a hand in creating this amazing being. And that fact that I get to watch him become who he's going to be? Well, that is just amazing to me.

So instead of reducing myself to a blithering pool of tears, I checked my email and Facebook and soon another mother joined me. We chatted about our kids, both colicky, both awful sleepers, both neeeeeeeeedy, and yet here we were, at 10am on a Thursday, sans kids, and basking in the glorious freedom of that time. We checked our watches frequently and asked each other over and over as 11:30 approached, "should we go back now, do you think?"

We found our kids, again outside (they manage to fit two outdoor play times in their 2-hour schedule--I love it), playing with jungle animals in the sandbox. While I was kvelling (and face-booking) in the lounge, Ethan had been, among other things, making a construction paper sun for the "weather wall" and listening to Miss C read stories and sing songs.

We go back for our second day tomorrow; Miss C said that sometime the separation anxiety doesn't kick in until the 2nd or 3rd day of class. So we shall see. But he's already talking about school again today, so hopefully tomorrow, I will find myself, coffee and book in hand, lounging in the lounge while Ethan gets to work on being Ethan.

I totally forgot to snap a picture of him before we got in the car to go to school....so here he is IN this car, ready to go to school.

His sun.

Preparing the table for a little "meatball and cupcakes" snack.

His cubby. My baby has his own cubby.

Sarah as Pincushion

Today was my first acupuncture appointment. To see if, you know, we can figure out why my uterus is an empty, useless husk of a thing, and to find out if perhaps we might be able to cajole her into carrying another baby for about 9 months, give or take a few weeks.

At the suggestion of my therapist (let's call her D1), I called the acupuncturist (she gets to be D2, mkay?). I made an appointment last week and was thrilled that unlike your garden variety western obstetrician, one doesn't have to wait 3-6 months to see an acupuncturist. Hurray for stepping outside the mainstream.

After dropping the one child my uterus has managed to gestate (and for whom I am eternally grateful, nice uterus, pretty uterus) at a friend's house, I languished in mid-day LA traffic for 45 minutes to go all of maybe 7-8 miles, to a small medical building in Brentwood. Turns out all that sitting in traffic would be useful in D2's explanation of the energy highways in my body and how if one of those pathways is jammed up, none of them can do their jobs correctly, "kind of like how the 101 gets backed up at the on-ramp to the 405". Hey! I was just sitting in that stalled out mess of frustrated energy!! Neat-o! Now I TOTALLY get why my body won't make a baby. Erm. Or not.

I entered the small office at the end of a hallway in a garden variety medical building (you know, the one with the marble-glazed lobby, complete with physician directory plastered on the wall and a "how are you still in business; haven't you heard of Target?" pharmacy across from the elevators). How to describe the reception area of this office? It was like stepping into a womb, shall we say (minus the mess of all that amniotic fluid). The space was small, almost cramped (two people couldnt' walk through the sitting area without an awkward exchange of bumping parts and "excuse me"'s), and very warm. Not uncomfortably hot, just toasty and cozy warm. The kind of warm you hope your baby is while it's sucking it's thumb in your belly at around 33 weeks. I could hear hushed voices in a couple of the treatment rooms and new age-y music was being pumped through the sound system at such a low volume I had to stop what I was doing to be sure there was actually music playing and I wasn't having some sort of weird "hearing music in my head" stroke (which, for the record, if I ever have a stroke, I hope it's that kind--at least it's entertaining).

Anticipating the very near future, during which I would be flat on a table with pins sticking out of various body parts, I asked the receptionist where the bathroom was and as I wandered my way there, I came to the wall o' babies. A collage of real pictures of babies I'm assuming these women have helped to create. Sweaty women in hospital gowns and their shell-shocked husbands holding tiny sleeping bundles of baby. It was a good thing I arrived a few minutes early for the appointment because after lingering a few too many moments at the giant wall o' baby, I needed to have a good old cry in the bathroom (which was, incidentally, perfectly set up for a good old cry--candles, tissues, framed articles on the walls about the value of friendship and positive mantras about self-worth).

Then I met D2. There are only two words one needs to use to describe her: Earth Mother. In a very un-cheesy way, she exudes love and positive energy and a "I will heal you" vibe that made my insides unclench for the first time in a long time when asked questions about babies and having babies and what was up with me that I wasn't having babies.

We talked for what seemed like a long time, about things I would never have in eleventy billion years imagined we'd discuss in relation to my fertility (what was happening in my life when I was 7 years old?! Apparently it matters. Go figure). We hit on a lot of things that are a smidge too private for me to share here (can you even imagine??!! You didnt' realize that was possible, did you anonymous interweb surfer?! I usually tell you everyfreakingthing). I began to see some emotional reasons why my mind might not be letting my body do it's "job". I began to see some things I need to work on to make myself more available to the process of creating and growing a new life.

And then it was time to become the pincushion. After a pregnancy during which I was poked and prodded with every type of needle imaginable, I wasn't too concerned about the pain of it. She asked me, as she was getting out the pins (which I never saw, by the way; she is that smooth), if I plucked my own eyebrows. Seriously??!!! I have heard from the Vietnamese ladies who have done my nails in the past that my eyebrows are a mess (not kidding--they are brutal), but I didn't expect to hear it from my acupuncturist while I was feeling quite so vulnerable. Turns out she was just trying to use the feeling of plucking your eyebrows as a frame of reference for what the pins might feel like to me. Silly me.

As I lay on my back, feeling like I was there more for a massage than any kind of real treatment, D2 began to tap in the pins. The first one, on the top of my left foot, felt like a fly landing on me; no pain, just an awareness. Then a tingle. A couple more pins, and the same reaction. Then she got to the soft space between the inside of my ankle and achilles tendon. That pin? Felt like a cattle prod.

I jumped and said somthing like, "okay, that one is bad. that hurts". D2 shot a glance to her apprentice (yes, my session was observed by a healer-in-training--the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned). D2 said to Apprentice, "Did you see that? That's the kidney to the uterus", but didnt' really tell me anything about it. She just nodded a lot after that, like I made perfect sense to her.

After the pins were tapped in, she put a small eye pillow over my eyes (careful not to disturb the pin. in. my. forehead.), turned a heat lamp on over my abdomen and bid me adieu for about fifteen minutes. Just me, the pins, and the plinky-plunky new age music. As she was getting ready to leave the room, I was overcome with an urge to giggle--not out of embarrassment or self-consciousness, but because somewhere in me I felt an overwhelming, momentary swell of happy. It lasted for about a minute, and then I was back to just experiencing my own breathing. And the intermittent tingles eminating from the pin points, radiating out like a stone throw's ripples on a pond. The pin in my "kidney to uterus" point ached and tingled, but not in a truly painful way--perhaps only in a "I am perseverating on you and way more aware of you than I need to be because she said the word 'uterus'" kind of way.

I didn't get the "floaty" feeling that a lot of people have described to me. She explained that she only used abou 12 pins on me this time because sometimes releasing the energy too quickly and creating too much of that floaty endorphin rush can freak people out and make them shy away from the experience. She assured me that next time, I'd "float".

Leaving the treatment room and heading back to the reception area, I found the place far less "womb like", but not in a bad way. It's just that my contact lenses were dried onto my eyeballs (note to self: next week, wear glasses), and I had to fork over money. As far as I know, the only currency traded in the womb is the contents of the amniotic fluid. So, that took away from it a bit. But still, money well spent, even if only to understand myself just that little bit better.

On an entirely different note: Ethan starts his first day of pre-school tomorrow (excuse me while my head explodes and I run around gathering it up). I'll get into all of that tomorrow, I'm sure (after a bottle or two of "where did mah baby go??!!!" wine), but if you read this before 9am PST on Thursday, send some "Have a good first day, Ethan!!!" vibes out there for the little man. He's excited. I have heart burn.

An FYI: Drumming Up Bloggy Biz

Well, not really business, because lord knows I don't know how to make a nickel off of this blog, but at least, drumming up readers. For my other blog. If you like to read, are looking for a good book, or are maybe minimally interested in what I've been reading, I've become more diligent in keeping up with my reading blog: Frustrated English Teacher (link over there ----> on the side of this blog).

I've been reading lots of other book blogs out there and can I say, "yowza". Some of these people are hard.core. about reading. And writing about reading. And challenging each other to read certain things, like books that have won certain awards or books that have the word "orange" in their title. Last year, I tried to complete a challenge of reading books that had won Booker Prizes over the years, but only got through two before my brain started to melt with the literary loftiness of it all. I LOVE reading a great piece of literature, but I was a bit overwhelmed by the "challenge" aspect of it---can you say, "homework"? Still though, I'm a bit envious of those readers and bloggers who can give themselves over to it all so enthusiastically and with such passionate abandon.

There are entire communities of readers who have daily and/or weekly discussions with each other via their blogs, through sets of questions or shared 'assignments'. I've decided to give in to my need to commune with fellow book nerds by participating in the Tuesday and Thursday assignments (you can see what they are on the left-hand side of FET), and I've added a whole bunch of new reading blogs so even if you couldn't give a rat's hairy butt what I'm reading or what I think of what I'm reading, you might find something someone else has to say of interest.

So feel free to pop over to Frustrated English Teacher, check it out and leave me a comment about what you're reading and if you're loving it or wishing you'd never picked it up. The English teacher in me needs a fix.

What the beast is up to these days...

Every once in awhile, I realize how quickly it's all going by and I wonder if I'll remember all the little thing. That's when I'm glad I've got the blog to chronicle all of these little moments and habits and lightening-fast phases that make up the content of Ethan's growing personality.

His new obsession with coins--pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters--they all fascinate him. He's desperate to have as many as he can get, either for his piggy bank or for his jeans pocket (like daddy). He will walk up to Husband upon his return from work and ask, "Do you have any coins, dada?" Of course he does, so Ethan lays claim to it, carefully examining each coin Husband gives him and then depositing it into his own pants' pockets.

Yesterday I made the mistake of jingling the change in pocket as I walked into the livingroom. His response was Pavlovian. His head turned to me. His eyes lit up. He asked, "Do you have coins, mama?" And when I responded that I might, he came towards me, saying, "I want them. All. I can have them all, mama." Have I mentioned that pushiness is one of his primary characteristics these days?

The problem with this new obsession is that it coincides with his stomach bug of two weeks ago. I realize that seems like a stretch, but let's keep in mind, my 32 month old child weighs a whopping 23 lbs. Or at least he did. After the stomach bug, I could tell he'd lost a bit of weight because pants that had finally been fitting him after months of my having to roll them at the top, once again needed to be rolled. So, take Mr. Skinnypants and then put about $3 in spare change in his pants pockets. Can you see it? My child running around the house, then falling over on his face because his jeans have fallen down to his ankles in mid-run under the weight of the coins in his pockets?

Poor little bean. It frustrates him to be so pants-heavy, but he won't give up the coins.

The other new thing he's doing is rambling. Suddenly, it is not enough to answer questions or ask them (I am unspeakably grateful that we've not yet fallen into the abyss of "Why? Why? Why?", although I realize that's got to be coming down the road soon); Ethan now needs to talk, at great, incoherent lengths, about everything we've done on any given day. I wish I could recall the exact specifics of any of these toddlerese narratives, but suffice it to say Husband and I are suppressing fits of laughter as he attempts to string together meaningful sentences that can be understood outside his own uber-busy brain. It's the sweetest thing.

Also? Random observations about his own physical self and the world around him are abounding. "I have a thunder cloud in my mouth, mama" was his explanation for the coughing he's been doing lately with this new cold. "I have an eyeball in my eye" was his gem of insight (no pun intended) this morning. And the penis? Let's not even get started on the penis. Every day Ethan has to go through the list of every single person we know and let me know if they in fact do, or do not, have a penis.

Then, as Husband and I enjoyed our coffee and Ethan sipped his chocolate milk and refused all other forms of sustenance at The Coffee Bean this morning, a man with 3-4 days old beard and a bandana around his head sat down next to us. In the first ever "crawl under the table and die of embarrassment" moment we've suffered at his hands, Ethan turns to Husband and me and asks, "Is he a pirate?" Thankfully scruffy bandana man had a good sense of humor and made a joke about leaving his eye-patch and parrot at home. Living in LA, I'm sure Ethan will have many opportunities to horrify me publically in this fashion. Everyone here seems to look like a pirate or a prostitute, so there are bound to be questions rattling around in his 2.5 year old brain that will make their way to his mouth and out into the air around us. Should be wicked fun.

So that's some of what the little beast is up to. Pictures? You'd like pictures? Sure, I can do that.

Not sure if he's singing or eating here, but it's cute...

Our first crack at rice crispie treats...pink for Valetines day. He liked making them, but he won't eat them.

Showing T-Rex who's boss...

just being preshus

Trying to feed me. He's such a giver...

Oh yeah, that's another thing he's doing these days...the never-ending quest for nose-goblins

Our little tree-hugger

cheeeeeeeeeese

This is the day after the stomach bug--that sippy has pedialyte in it. Of course, he never drank it.

Blowing bubbles. Or, standing around with the bubble blower and giggling....

And just because...KITTEHS!!! They are not entirely pleased with me and my camera. Oh well, they can deal.

Echo says: Woman! Again with the camera?! Seriously. You're crazy."

I Facebook, therefore I am...

Okay, perhaps that's a mite on the hyperbolic side, BUT, I do have a crazy mad love affair with Facebook. Not only because I can pop online for 30 seconds and see that my friend Kathleen, who works at the Smithsonian National Zoo in DC , has just let the zebras out into their yard, or because I can send 'get well' soon wishes to a high school class mate I've not seen in almost twenty years, but because Facebook reminds me of who I am, both past and present.

I'm probably like most people in that I've gone taken lots of different paths to who I am today. I've lived in a variety of places, taken up quite a range of interests, and held several different jobs. Along the way, I've encountered hundreds of people who have become little pieces of my history. Finding those people, or being found by them, on Facebook, has created for me a glimpse at my life story.

I look at Cristyn, my oldest friend, who lived down the street from me in Milford, NH. All of my earliest memories have something to do with Cristyn; either staying up late at her house while our parents played cards in the basement, or trying to sing the entire theme song to Laverne and Shirley without dissolving into fits of laughter. Her garage door once closed on my head as I tried to roller-skate under it. We fell out of touch by the time we were fourteen years old. But I typed her name in early on in my Facebook days and POOF! After decades, here she is, back in my life, and we're posting notes about silly things we used to do as children and finding pictures from those days, doing a whole lot of "do you remember this???!!!"

In some ways, remembering my own childhood through the eyes of this long-lost friend (who, incidentally, only lives about an hour away from me here in LA now), is helping me appreciate Ethan's childhood more. Who will his best childhood friend be? And what kinds of memories will he be laughing about should he have the good fortune of reconnecting with that person years down the line? Or even better, if he never loses touch with them in the first place?

High school wasn't necessarily the "best years" of my life, as many people claim it should be. I struggled to find a place to fit, and given the fact that my class consisted of forty-four girls, forty-four teenaged girls, it, shockingly, had the capacity to be lion's den of cattiness and back-stabbing. Fitting in wasn't always an option, even among the group of girls I considered to be my closest friends. I found one or two of them shortly after joining Facebook, but initially I cringed when an Alumae group was formed and suddenly my "friend request" box filled up with requests from girls I hadn't seen in almost twenty years; some, girls I hadn't really been all that close with back then. Some girls who had been, at one time or another, outright mean to me.

But what does twenty years do if not soften over the scars of adolescents? Now that many of us are mothers, we have found a new common ground on which to communicate. In adulthood, and given the passage of time and the spans of distance that separate many of us, there is no "in" crowd, there are no "nerds". We are all just women who have a shared history of those four years and an endless supply of hilarious pictures with which to utterly and totally embarrass each other in a good-natured way we could never have appreciated when our egos were so young and fragile.

The one thing high school did give me is the prerequisite "love triangle". The best friends in hot and heavy "like" with the same guy. And of course, it has to be the alternative dude with the groovy 80's hair, a la Pretty in Pink "Ducky". Yes, it is the cliche, the story for the ages. In high school, my best friend and I competed for the attention and affections of the same boy. Thank goodness we all went to different schools or it could have been a bloodbath of teenage angst and malaise. Best friend and I broke up over said boy. Said boy broke up with best friend for me. Then broke up with me for best friend. Then broke up with best friend for some other girl entirely. Best friend and I made up. Said boy comes skulking back. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And yes, both said boy and said best friend are on my "friends list", integral parts of my daily "what's up with so-and-so today?!" We've even had glib little back and forths, the three of us, laughing over those days and how ridiculous we all were. Not that any closure was really necessary, but I really believe that laughing at yourself is good for the soul. Having them both close at hand, even if only via a series of tubes (that is what the internet is, right?), makes my heart happy.

Scattered throughout my friends list, there is also the jumble of people who make up the memories of my professional life. Although, after over a decade of teaching, I sometimes have to think for a second--"is that a former co-worker or former student?" when I get a friend request. Receiving messages from people I still think of as 14 years old, to find out that they are now in their late 20's, married, with kids---wow. I guess, given that I was their English teacher, it does my heart good to see complete sentences and coherent thoughts (not that I can brag about always having those things in my own writing, but still...). It makes me feel old. But old in a good way (is there such a thing?)

As a teacher, you generally see the same 120 faces for 180 days and then they disappear--off into the world of either someone else's class room, or some other school, or college, or wherever their lives take them. As the years go by, those 120 students turn into 1000's of students whose lives move on without you and from whom you will most likely never hear again. It's been nice to get that rare opportunity to reconnect with the life of someone you hopefully inspired or influenced, or at least educated, in some way. And to see them as adults, having made whatever they have out of their lives, whether its a fabulous parent, or the head of a law firm, or a humanitarian, it is beautiful to see who they have become.

True, I mostly use Facebook to check on the status of playdates for Ethan or to touch base quickly with close friends both here and back in DC or even NH, but even that has woven it's way into my daily sense of who I am. Sure, it's just one more way of communicating in our technologically bloated society, and there'll probably be something that comes along in the next few years that makes us all chortle that we ever engaged in something as pedestrian as status updates and "friending" people. But for now, I'll happily pop on a few times a day and see what everyone is up to, maybe take a few minutes to comment here and there, and let anyone who's interested know what we're up to. And at the same time, I'll spend a moment or two to remember and appreciate all the paths I've taken to bring me to who I am today. I can find them all in that one little space.

Like a Rock...

My son's head, that is. This post was just going to be about Ethan's growing affinity for all things guitar-related (thus, how he is a "rock" star), but instead I have to tell you about how his hard-as-diamond noggin all but knocked a little girl unconscious at My Gym the other day. (I'll get to the rockstar stuff this weekend)

A month or so ago, my dad, here visiting for Channukah, accompanied Ethan and me to our weekly class at My Gym. It consists of your basic circle time hand-clapping and puppet shows, plenty of running around after giant exercise balls, climbing ladders and swinging from monkey bars. My father, who spent 40+ years of his life in hospital administration--you know when you go into an elevator and it says the the most recent inspection certificate can be procured at the office of the safety chairman? That's my dad. He's the safety man--was more than a bit hesitant about this place.

As Ethan scaled the ladders to lofty heights where only my hand on his butt kept him from plummeting to....the thickly padded floor below, my dad clucked and paced, surely questioning my competence as a mother. While Ethan charged up carpeted ramps to the "tree house" and then wanted to slide down into the ballpit, already swarming with the arms and legs of his partially immersed playmates, I saw my father's eyes sizing up the variety of ways in which a toddler might kill and/or maim himself or others, and I could see him running through the figures in his head. He never said anything, but I could see him thinking, Oh, the liability!

As we left that day, after an exhaustive hour of chasing Ethan from one death-defying stunt to the other, my dad, who looked himself to perhaps need a bit of a nap, said, "I wouldn't insure that place." And I laughed at him because that is my dad to a "t". Always outwardly encouraging and supportive, but always inwardly worrying about worst-case scenario. As we drove through the canyon, oooh'ing and ahhhh'ing at the ginormous villa-esque estates, massive homes teetering at the edges of cliffs, some of them literally propped up on stilts, my father's only comment was a repeated, "I wouldn't insure that house."

And you know what? Dad's usually right. I chuckled and shook my head as we drove away from My Gym that morning, loving Dad's caution and concern, but not really taking it to heart because, really, there's so much padding in that place, a kid would be hard-pressed to find a sharp edge or hard surface on which to inflict any damage.

Unless they are using their own body, or more specifically, their own head, as the weapon. Um. Oh yeah.

This Wednesday, at the "free play" hour at the gym, Ethan ventured where he rarely goes--the trampoline. He's not the world's greatest jumper, and he's easily intimidated by the bigger kids, so he generally stays away from the bouncing stretch of plastic and works more on the climbing and running options. But he was feeling adventurous on Wednesday and there was only one other little kid on the trampoline, a little girl with adorable blonde pony-tails in perfect little ringlets, sparkling blue eyes and a beautiful smile. Little did I know that Ethan was only moments away from turning her into a screaming, red-faced, black and blued shadow of her former self.

She was on her side of the trampoline, Ethan was on his. Happy happy bouncing. Giggling. I was holding Ethan's hand as he perfected his leaping skills. Pretty little girl laughing and jumping. All is great with the world. Then, big leaps. The world goes to slo-mo. Ethan's in the air, his hand slips out of mine. Little girl loses balance and falls to the trampoline, on her back. Ethan descends from great heights, and, like a WWE wrestler diving from the edge of the ring, lands on little girl, the back of his head, making contact with her forehead and eye-socket with a sickening "thud". And then the screaming.

Oh, the screaming. After the nauseating "thud", there was so much screaming. I'm only thankful he didn't land on her nose, because then there would have been "thud", screaming and blood. Two out of three is bad enough in this case.

Fortunately the My Gym staff is equipped for such a "thud" and came running with ice packs for the injured. The screaming lasted for. e. ver. Ethan cried for a bit, I think mostly out of fear, because the little girl was wailing to such a degree and Ethan just knew he'd had something to do with it.

When we left (the incident happened only five minutes before the end of "free time"), the little girl was still huddled up against her nanny on the floor, a giant red bump forming on her forehead and her hand still over her eye. Ethan has apologized to her in his scared little voice no less than a dozen times and I was all but tearing my clothes in atonement. The nanny assured me she was fine and the My Gym people said there was nothing we could have done, it was an accident, but JEEZ!!! It's like Ethan threw a boulder at this girl's forehead. Poor thing.

After the fact, as we drove away, Ethan found it quite thrilling and told me over and over again as the day went on, "I fell and hit her forehead. It was an accident, right? But it hurt. I didn't mean to hurt, but it hurt. I hurt her forehead." Yes, dear. You did. Let's just be glad Grampy wasn't here to see it.