More or Less

In honor of Little A's first birthday, I am digging back in the archives and sharing a piece I wrote before she was born. I wrote it in 2010. It's a little different from what I usually post and a unique window into my life before I became a mother--before I even knew if I intended to become a mother. Most importantly, it intensifies my appreciation for the direction my life has taken and the love I have for this wonderful and amazing little person.
It also serves as a eulogy to all of the houseplants that have died under my care over the years.
And before we begin, I would like to issue a formal apology to my childhood friend, Christine. The confession about your hermit crab may not come as a shock to you, but it is long overdue. I hope you can forgive me.

More or Less

It’s happening again.  My dracaena, the hardiest plant to survive my care, is committing slow suicide in the corner of my living room.  

I spied the telltale signs this morning as I brewed my tea: the once-emerald leaves singed with lifeless brown, drooping from the stalk like rotten banana petals.  A small bottom leaf lost its battle with gravity and drifted to the floor right before my widened eyes, a Kevorkian-esque ballet with more pathos than The Black Swan.  

How could this be?  It looked perfect yesterday!  

…

Didn’t it?

Well, I’m not one hundred percent sure, since I can’t precisely recall the last time I paid close attention to it, but I felt that we had a closer relationship than this.  To be completely honest, however, our home often functions as an end of life care facility for dead and dying plants.  Watching four basil plants wither into oblivion on our patio table one summer was like keeping vigil over a constant herbal wake.  I killed a cactus.  I lost a battle with a flowering ground plant that could purportedly thrive anywhere under any conditions.  

I had chosen this dracaena after our bamboo palm begin drifting toward the light, shedding corn husk yellow remnants of itself with such melodramatic regularity it seemed it was making a statement.  When I saw the potted dracaenas in Home Depot weeks later, their vivid plumes of thick leaves and scaly stalks reminded me of the trees in a favorite childhood book—Where the Wild Things Are—and I had to have one.  I shoved our indoor bamboo palm into a painfully sunny corner of our upstairs balcony to hasten its exit and gave the dracaena its former place of honor.  
“You know, you can’t do that with children,” my co-worker told me later over lunch in a voice that suggested she sincerely believed this was news to me.  “That’s why Not Everyone should have children.”  I was clearly starring in the role of Not Everyone.

I spring into action.  Mason jar of tap water in hand, I head to the plant and conduct a cursory forensics examination.  The soil looks dry, but the directions I left hanging from a bottom frond say to water the dracaena rarely.  The pot does look a bit undersized for the plant, but my attempt to transplant it would surely be a final death blow.  Bugs, no.  Fertilizer, yes.  I pour the water in circles around the inside perimeter of the pot.  I grab a mister from the kitchen counter and mist the dusty leaves for good measure.  Water dribbles down a drooping leaf like spittle on an invalid’s chin.

Thus begins phase one of Plant Grief.  Similar to the stages of the human grieving process, I have identified three stages through which I pass as a plant dies under my watch:  

Phase one: I become a frantic plant triage attendant.  I water it until there are standing puddles on the top of the pot.  I whisk it across the living room floor and shove it in a sunny window.  I dust it.  

Phase two: I wheedle, plead, beg, and bargain with the plant.  I assume that at the very least, the carbon dioxide I am emitting is good for it.  
Phase three: When the plant fails to respond to phases one and two, I spitefully turn my back on it.  I refuse it water, sunlight, and whispered encouragement.  I wait for it to die.  Or shove it on the upstairs balcony like the bamboo palm.  Both paths end in the parking lot dumpster.  Hell hath no fury like an armchair horticulturalist scorned.

I don't have a photograph of the dracaena--it's long-since died--but this current withering plant on our balcony will do just fine.

I burst into our dark bedroom and hiss in my slumbering husband’s ear, “The dracaena is dying!”  

“Mumph,” he mumbles from beneath a pillow.  How someone sleeps with a pillow smashed onto his face is beyond me.  How suffocating.

“We did everything the directions said to do.  Everything.”

Out of respect for the fact that he is sleeping because it is 5:50 in the morning and he does not need to wake up for another hour and a half, I whisper.  But it’s one of those stage whispers that you can hear from the other side of the house.  It begs for attention.

“Mumph,” the Zen Master repeats.  

“If we take it out to the dumpster, maybe one of the neighbors will rescue it.” I think of Nancy two units over with her hanging creepers swaying from a rafter, and her window boxes of immaculate geraniums.  Geraniums.  Humph.  I’m sure I could grow equally hardy blooms if I wanted to devote my time to such a common plant.  “We’ll have to take it to the inconvenient dumpster, though,” I think aloud.  “I left two diseased potted annuals by the front dumpster last week.  I’m worried about what the neighbors will think.  Although, if we take it out in the middle of the night—”

“We can just take it back and get a new one,” my husband says, pillow still over his face.

“This isn’t about getting a new one.  This is about making sure this one lives.  We took this plant from its happy home at Home Depot and brought it to Auschwitz for succulents.  We are its parents.  Surely we can do this?”  The stage whisper is gone.  We will figure this out.  Right here.  Right now.  I care about this little tree/shrub/cactus/whatever it is, and I will do right by it.  Even if that means shoving it in the neighborhood foster system.  My co-worker had no idea what she was talking about.  

A huge sigh escapes from beneath the pillow.  I do feel bad.  It was only a few days ago that I found a cockroach on our downstairs bathroom floor at 6:00 in the morning.  We keep a fairly clean house and had never seen a cockroach indoors before—nor have we since.  I don’t know what this one thought he was doing.  I screamed, charged upstairs, and demanded it be removed immediately.  Not killed, because I am considerate.  So Z rolled out of bed and shuffled downstairs, chasing the offending pest with a water glass and a paper plate, walking outside in his pajama pants in the dark to deposit it in a bush at my behest.  “Not a great way to wake up,” he muttered as he swept past me and went back to bed.  

What I am thinking is, I suppose it isn’t necessary for us to figure this out right now.  You need to sleep.  What comes out of my mouth is, “Although, the dracaena really does spruce up the living room, and it brings out the green in those Frida Khalo paintings.  I really don’t want to see it go, but I suppose we would need to replace it with something…”  

He pulls the pillow down and looks at me.  “There’s a year warranty on the plant.  The receipt is taped to the bottom of the pot.”  

“Sort of shows a lack of faith, doesn’t it?”  

His look says the conversation is over.  The pillow goes back.  I go downstairs.

You never really stood a chance, I think, as I drag the dracaena to the nearest window and mash its leaves against what will later be sunny glass.  I mean, how can anything thrive when so little faith is attached to its efforts to live?  Taping a Home Depot warranty to the bottom of the pot was like taking out a life insurance policy on a sick patient.  We were betting against it.  You knew your days were numbered, fella.    
I sneak a peek to make sure the receipt is still there and a year hasn’t gone by.  Good.

After researching dracaenas on the Internet, I discover the plant is poisonous to our dog.  
My co-worker’s words echo in my head.  Will I ever be responsible and selfless enough to raise a child?  Like plants, there are millions of websites designed to help people raise healthy children, but children don’t come with one year warranties.  

As I eat a bowl of cereal, I recall my friend Christine’s hermit crab.  The summer between fifth and sixth grades, I was asked to care for the pet crab while Christine vacationed in Europe with her parents, both professors.  I couldn’t appreciate the cultural depth of such a trip at the time, as my family’s biggest cultural tour de force was pointing out the old Greek man who wore speedos to the public pool.  

At first a novelty, the crab probably suffered too much attention upon arrival.  We let it crawl around on our arms, on the floor.  We made it houses with sticks and moss in the back yard.  A hermit crab compound.  He spent the rest of his time in a plastic terrarium on my dad’s work bench in the basement.  My mom did not find him endearing.

This image was originally found at http://4wminibeasts2012.wikispaces.com/Ben

That summer was especially busy.  My family was moving to a new house.  We were packing every day.  When my mom asked me if I had packed up Christine’s hermit crab, I recall thinking I couldn’t precisely recall the last time I had seen the hermit crab.  I went downstairs and found his limp corpse spilling out of his shell in the terrarium.  His food and water dishes were completely empty.  

Christine was supposed to meet me at my new house that afternoon to pick him up.  Too embarrassed to admit what I had done, I threw the terrarium in the back of the moving truck without a word.  Extended family occupied all of the corners of our new house when we arrived.  Aunts and uncles helped unload the truck, move boxes upstairs, and arrange furniture.  My Aunt Lynne got to the terrarium before I did.  Her eyes narrowed as she peered at the very obviously lifeless crustacean within.  Shaking her head, she set the plastic container on the kitchen counter.  

When no one was looking, I filled the hermit crab’s food and water dishes to overflowing.  

Christine showed up a few hours later with her dad and a thank you gift: a beautiful Italian fountain pen and a picture post card from the Capuchin Crypt in Rome, an ossuary filled with the skulls and bones of thousands of dead monks.  It was eerily appropriate.  

“He just didn’t survive the move,” I told her, shaking my head and looking at her dead pet in its plexiglass coffin.  “He had everything he needed.  I don’t know what else I could have done for him.”  Anyone with half a brain could tell this crab had been dead for considerably more than twelve hours.  Christine graciously exited with her dead crab and her questions.  

“I don’t remember there being food and water in there before,” my Aunt Lynne said after the door shut, looking me dead in the eye.  

Oh. Dear.  Am I utterly incapable of nurturing things?  Am I parentally inept?  Dependably poisonous?  Has the state of California made a horrific mistake in entrusting me with the safety and education of hundreds of teenagers every year?  
I sit back on my sofa and consider this.  I mean really consider it.  My dog jumps up next to me and stares me in the eyes.  At first I feel we are sharing a profound moment of connection--one of those Animal Planet type scenarios where the dog has a sixth sense about something significant. She is trying to tell me she loves me, she believes in me, I think.  I reach down and scratch her head right behind each ear, her favorite spot.  I see myself reflected in those big, brown, dewy eyes of hers—and realize I forgot to feed her.  

As I head into the kitchen with her food bowl, Scout trots along behind me.  I add a treat to her pile of kibble and set the bowl on the floor.  She snatches it eagerly and runs into the living room to chew it on the carpet.  I am so easily forgiven.  Despite sharing the living room with a plant that could apparently kill her, Scout is six years old, well-nourished, and happy.  We weren’t sure if we could handle the responsibility of a dog when we got her, but now life without her is unimaginable.

I think of the things in my life I have sustained.  Z sleeps peacefully upstairs.  For fifteen years we have kept each other happy and healthy and warm.  I try to remember the last time we had a significant argument—something that made us stop speaking to each other for a while.  A few weeks back we argued about the fact that he likes to keep his credit card and driver’s license floating loose in his back pocket when we go out, and I can’t stand that.  We got annoyed with each other. We stopped talking for a few minutes…and then it was over.  It was nothing.  In fifteen years, no warranties have expired; neither of us has ever tried to make an exchange for another model.  We have cared for each other through good times and bad.  We have never given up.  

Maybe, I consider as I sip my tea, there is a mother in me somewhere.  Maybe one day I will find out.  
After all, so long as I am able to be selfless and dependable where it counts, what’s one plant or hermit crab more or less?

Little A Versus the Most Expensive Chicken in the World

     

"You're dead meat," she said.  And she meant it. 

        
        In a desire to expand Little A's food repertoire, Z and I recently decided to add chicken to her diet.  A combination of factors including Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, guilt over my inability to breastfeed, an episode of Oprah I saw years ago, and our continuing quest to treat Little A like she's the kid in The Golden Child contributed to our decision that the chicken we fed her had to be blessed by the Dalai Lama or--in the event that he was unavailable--be purchased from the Mount Zion of healthy eating:

     

Image borrowed from http://upload.wikimedia.org

        I am not sure how widespread Whole Foods is.  I could check, but I just don't feel like it.  If you do not have this grocery store near you, it is the love child an organic farm and a yoga studio would make if that child was a store.  It makes Trader Joe's look like the Wal-Mart of conscious consumerism.  It is basically everything pretentious about food that you can possibly gather under one roof.  For just three monthly installments of a gazillion dollars and the price of your first-born child, you can purchase vegan banana muffins, locally grown kale, stainless steel baby bottles, and two days' worth of groceries.   

        Don't get me wrong: I love the products and mission of Whole foods.  I admire the hand-lettered signs and the fact that the produce department utilizes better interior decorating than my entire house.  During my pre-baby glory days when I had a steady income, a sense of style, and the time to read up on what parabens are, I stopped in on occasion and bought a half pound of organic, gluten-free, quinoa and lentil something-or-other from the deli and savored every last lentil.

        These days, however, Z and I feel like homeless people in a Chanel store whenever we walk through the doors of our local Whole Foods.  This is because five out of seven days of the week we eat frozen food for dinner.  Frozen chicken breasts, frozen pasta, frozen vegetables, frozen rice...anything that fits into my three-step meal preparation strategy will do:

           Step One: Open box or bag of pre-prepared food.

        Step Two: Heat pre-prepared food.

        Step Three: Serve.

The other two days of the week are a.) Chipotle and b.) leftovers from Chipotle.  Chipotle may actually be the closest we get to Whole Foods caliber these days because they are a somewhat socially conscious fast food restaurant.

        "If you are willing to eat flash-frozen food despite its sodium and plastic packaging and ingredients with more than fifteen letters, why does the baby get Whole Foods chicken?" you may wonder.  Because there is still hope for her.  We may be addicted to carcinogenic entrees, but the baby has a fighting chance at a diet intended for human beings, and we would like to nurture that.
     


       So back to this chicken.

       We planned our Saturday afternoon around a trip to Whole Foods, which I had determined to be the Holy Grail of poultry.  Of course, the instant we parked the car in front of the store, Little A wanted to be fed.  That poses a sticky situation for me because she is a bottle-fed baby.  For reasons outlined in a previous post, I am always timid about feeding Little A in public.  There is a lot of judgement out there when it comes to what and how you feed your baby. Combine that with a store that sells thirty dollar organic cotton onesies and customers who stroll around with babies snuggled in flowing wrap-around slings like the ones women in remote Andes villages wear but actually cost more than a semester at a community college...and you have a very uncomfortable experience.

Image borrowed from http://www.un.org

        I suggested we feed the baby in the car and then go inside.  "Feeding her a bottle of formula in that store is like sitting on a stationary bike in a 24 Hour Fitness and smoking a cigar," I explained.  "There is bound to be at least one woman in there who would argue it's worse."

        "How do they know what's in that bottle?  For all they know, it's breast milk," my husband pointed out.

        "They don't just judge the food; they judge the delivery system."

        "Pull your shirt over her head and feed her a bottle underneath," he countered.  We both paused to consider the logistics of doing that.  "Or," he continued, "how about we feed our baby however we damn well please, and if anyone says anything, we --"

        "--tell them to go to Hell?" I interjected, eyebrow raised.  This was pretty aggressive for Z.  I was impressed.

        "--tell them it is breast milk we purchased from a temple of lactating mothers on top of a mountain somewhere far away.  It can only be obtained by a sherpa who makes the trek up the mountain daily and then Fed Exes it to families overnight."

        "That's even better," I nodded.  "And the baby is adopted.  If you drop that one on them, it just messes with their entire mainframe.  They don't know what to do.  She's far better looking than either of us, so it's believable."

        "Agreed."

        We shook on it, mixed up a bottle, and headed inside.


        The meat department was in the back of the store.  Standing before the gleaming refrigerated glass, we studied an array of meats laid out like diamond rings at Tiffany's.  As customers contemplated engagements with slabs of beef and poultry, the butcher behind the glass moved patiently between them, answering their questions, gathering intimate details about their culinary habits, and wrapping their packages with care.

        "Where did this chicken come from?" a woman wearing what can best be described as a bathing suit cover-up and a large, floppy sun hat asked while pointing to a breast of chicken that looked remarkably similar to every other breast of chicken in the refrigerated case.  "This one, here," she elaborated, tapping a manicured fingernail on the glass.

        And this was where we were completely blown away: The butcher had an answer.  And it wasn't like a "That is a Foster Farms chicken, Ma'am.  It comes from Foster Farms.  Have you seen the commercials?"  It was more like "That chicken comes from a small organic farm in Modesto, California, population 203,547.  He was fed mixed greens salad, sunflower seeds, lentils, and fairy dust every day.  On Sundays he liked to play shuffleboard.  He lived a happy life."  Okay, maybe that's taking it a little far, but I swear it was close.  It reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from the show Portlandia.  Except it was really happening in front of me.

        "Which one should we get?" Z asked me, scanning the glass case.

        Whole Foods uses a 1-5 rating system for its meat.  It's all a blur for me now, but it went something like this:

Chicken Chart

        
        Those of you who have a child or at least a prized pet will probably understand the thinking that follows.  For any baby product imaginable, there are always at least five different brands/versions available on the market.  I remember the day Z and I went to the store to register for our baby shower and spent a half an hour just standing in the diaper aisle of Babies R Us, mouths agape, completely incapable of making a decision on which box of diapers to scan.  A nice man shopping with his toddler came over, gently removed the scanner from my hand, and zapped a few boxes for us.

         What we learned that day was the Goldilocks Rule for Baby Products.  You will want to buy the cheapest version of a baby product with all of your soul, but you will not buy it because you are afraid that it may kill your baby or at the least get you reported for child neglect.  However, you also never buy the most expensive version of a baby product because that's just ostentatious and will likely cause your baby to lose friends.  The best choice always lies somewhere in between. 

        So we bought three breasts of number three.

        We figured after all of the effort, everyone deserved to eat some of this miraculous poultry.  I won't tell you what we paid for it because it is just plain embarrassing.

        When we got home, I referred to my baby cookbook to determine the best way to prepare chicken puree for Little A.  I'll spare you the details.  Let's just say it exceeded my three-step program by a notch or two.  And just ask me what Little A did with her chicken.  Just ask.

   

        
        
       While I was typing this, the baby ate a ball of lint and a chunk of styrofoam with relish.        

         Instead of taking this personally, I will close with a visual that best explains what I have surmised about Little A's eating preferences.  My data reveals that our best course of action is to get Chipotle and drop parts of it on the floor for the baby.  Everybody wins.  

Want to watch that hilarious clip from Portlandia I referenced?  Here it is.  :)

Z and I are actually very impressed with the 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating Standards Whole Foods uses in its meat department.  You can read the details about this healthy and humane program here:

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/5-step-chicken-what%E2%80%99s-number

Finally, if you are interested in the directions for making your own chicken puree so that your baby can gag out of disgust and spit it all out, here is an excellent source.  To be fair, this blog has fantastic recipes for all sorts of ingredients.

http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/

     


   
     

The Knitwit

        I recently decided to learn to knit.  Or crochet.  I wasn't picky.  If it involved yarn and needles, I was willing to try it.  And let's be honest, I really couldn't tell the difference between the two.  

        We had planned a trip to visit family in Florida, and I knew it would be the perfect week to become a master knitter/crochet(-er?)/crafty woman.  There would be extra hands on deck to entertain Little A, and my sister from Minneapolis--Knitter Extraordinare--was also visiting.  Free lessons!  

        These days, every other woman I know seems to be fashioning knitted goods.  Etsy is saturated with kitschy online shops with names like "Bitchen' Stitchen'," "The Wicked Stitch," and "Smitten Knitten."  Friends on Facebook are pinning and re-pinning their favorite projects from Pintrest: mittens, baby hats, leg warmers.  So I'll admit, my outlook from the start was, How hard can this be?  

         The final push came when my sister Kelly brought a crocheted crocodile to Florida for Little A:

        It is the best use of yarn I have ever encountered.  I honestly don't think the baby is even aware that it belongs to her because I keep taking it places and treating it like my own acrylic pet.  I immediately knew I had to make something equally fabulous.  After pouring over Ravelry.com and several crochet pattern books, I decided my first projects would be an aviator hat for Little A and a stuffed snail for my new nephew.  

        "Maybe you should start with a pot holder or something simpler just to learn the stitches," my sister suggested after I announced my plans.  "These seem a little bit advanced for first projects."

        "Boooooooooriiinng!" I dismissed her.  "I want to go home at the end of the week with something cool."  

        "Okay, well maybe you should try just one cool thing instead of two.  That's a lot to accomplish in one week," she cautioned.

        "Maybe you should stop trying to crush my dreams," I replied.
        


        The following afternoon, we went to Michaels to pick up yarn and crochet hooks.  

        I will spare you the blow by blow of learning the initial stitches.  They are complex and confusingly named: the single crochet, the half double crochet, the cross treble stitch, the triple axle, the salchow jump, the pamchenko...you get the picture.  

        "I think you just chose a really difficult yarn to work with," my sister stated after I scrapped my third aviator hat attempt.  "Wool can be tricky.  Why don't you try mom's acrylic yarn and see if you can count the stitches better?"  I have to hand it to her: it was gracious maneuvering to blame the yarn instead of me.  We both knew that it was akin to handing someone a fountain pen and saying, "Now that we took care of that dumb mechanical pencil, you will write a much better essay," but I bit.  

        "You know," Kelly ventured later as I struggled to extricate my crochet hook from a hole that should not have existed in the first place, "I could just start the hat for you with the wool yarn.  The beginning is the trickiest part.  You could take over after that."

        "Sounds like a plan," I agreed.  "I'll just start my snail while you do that."



        So I received my the completed aviator hat in the mail the other day.  Like the crocodile, the strawberry hat, the quilt, the baby wash cloths, and all of the other beautiful things Kelly has made for Little A this past year, the aviator hat is perfection.  It is the crowning piece for Little A's Amelia Earhart Halloween costume next year.  When she is older, I will, of course, tell Little A that I made it because that is a far more nostalgic version of reality.  Just kidding.  I'll just crochet the little pilot scarf.  

        If we're really being honest here, I'll just pick up a white scarf at Goodwill.  

        Looking at this hat reminds me of my running list of Things I Believed I Could do Until I Tried.  Let's examine that:

        Were you wondering how my snail turned out?  It didn't.  My new nephew is getting a book instead.  (Not a book I wrote, of course.  See item #3 above.)  After an entire week of crafting with my sister, these are the final results:

        I know it must be terribly confusing who crocheted what, so I went ahead and labeled them for you.  I decided somewhere near the end of the week that I wanted to make a yamaka properly sized for a large fetus instead of an aviator hat, so in that regard, I succeeded.

        Below, you will see my sister's crocodile and what looks like a brown turd.  That is my snail.

        As soon as I get this whole crocheting thing under control, I'm sure I will be unstoppable.  Friends and family should expect a number of brown items, as I have a lot of brown wool yarn to burn through.

        In the meanwhile, I am going to go read up on baton twirling.  I hear it's pretty easy.

  
        

It's Okay...the Baby is Still Alive.

No babies were harmed in the making of this story.  

        If that disclaimer leaves a bad taste in your mouth, you may want to skip the rest of this post.  If you are perfect, please skip the rest of this post.  If you--like me--have been spared parenting calamity by the grace of some cosmic sympathizer, please join me in my pool of humility.  The water’s warm.

   

             I am that mother who has read my Baby 411 book forwards and backwards.  I signed my husband and myself up for nearly every class the hospital offered in preparation for Little A’s arrival, and I was the only parent taking notes on a yellow legal pad during the “How to Change a Diaper” tutorial.  During the nights I suffered from pregnancy-induced insomnia, I spent hours in the dark on my iPad reading about how not to accidentally kill my baby.  

            Some of the guidelines the powers that be in the baby-rearing realm provide have this oxymoronic quality of seeming both completely sensible and totally crazy at the same time.  For instance, it makes total sense that an infant should never, never sleep in a crib with loose bedding (a strangulation/suffocation hazard)...until you set your baby in her crib for a minute while you put away some laundry, only to turn around and see she has fallen blissfully asleep for the first time in five hours right on top of that blanket you were about to fold.  You look at her, with that blanket smashed squarely beneath her adorable little butt, and you know there is no moving that blanket without waking that baby.  Were you from your mother’s generation, this is when you would tiptoe out of the room, close the door, and enjoy a nice glass of wine.  

I, however, am afflicted by a special kind of neurosis that is most common in new parents.  We’ll call it The Six O’ Clock News Psychosis.  The way it works is that any time common sense or grown up intuition starts to tell me that the baby will be fine if I “break the rules” occasionally, I ask myself, “How would this sound on the six o’ clock evening news?”  If the answer is that I would sound like a sadist, an alcoholic, or an idiot, I err on the side of caution.  When I found myself in this exact situation, I grabbed a book and sat in a chair facing Little A’s crib for forty-five minutes while she napped, checking on her every sixty seconds to make sure she hadn’t somehow turned her blanket into a rope ladder, thrown it out the window, and started to escape.  All that happened was she woke up to me staring at her and looked visibly unsettled--not a common expression on a five-month-old.

           I alluded to this scenario in conversation with my sister-in-law one time.  She is finishing law school while raising her two little girls and does not have time to read what The Mayo Clinic has to say about how fitted a fitted sheet should be in a baby’s crib.  

         “I think someone is feeding you really weird advice,” she said.  

         “Probably,” I nodded while simultaneously crossing her off my mental list of possible babysitters.  

           I just can’t stand the idea of something happening to Little A that could have been prevented had I only listened to what they said on page 432 of Baby 411.

           I have a friend with a bunch of kids.  (I am not sure what the proper terminology is here...a gaggle?  A herd?  A brood?  A litter?  I am going to go with “a bunch” as in “a bunch of bananas” because it sounds much more manageable than “a herd of buffalo.”)  Anyway, she told me one time about a conversation she had with her rather serious-minded sister-in-law who also has a bunch of kids.  In trying to relate to her with some kind of motherhood bonding gesture, my friend mentioned that the way she found out each of her babies could roll over was when she heard them roll off of her bed.  

          “You know that sound you hear when one of your kids hits the floor?” she asked in an of course you do fashion.

          “None of my babies ever rolled off of anything,” her sister-in-law replied flatly.  Her sister-in-law has five or six kids, so that is truly astounding.  But more to the point, this is one of those instances where, my friend explained, you see yourself reflected back at you with extraordinary clarity--I mean really see yourself--and it’s disheartening.  

          I knew exactly what she meant.  I have committed this social faux pas on occasion, believing I had a like-minded audience only to discover my misjudgment the hard way.  I recalled a particular incident in middle school when I was generally being an idiot at the lunch table in order to get a few laughs, and this girl turned to me and said, “You really don’t take yourself seriously” in the same tone one would say, “You are incredibly annoying.”  I’ll admit, my first thought was, “You take yourself seriously?  We’re in seventh grade.”  But then I thought about how I had drunk an entire cup of pickle juice several days earlier of my own free will--I was not dared--and I saw a little bit of what she saw.

          Despite this memory, I still thought to myself, No way is this baby rolling off of anything.

   

This brings us to the other night, when Z and I were heading out.  We stepped out of the front door and began pushing Little A up the sidewalk in her stroller, sound asleep.

             I have this ritual before I close our front door.  I always check the knobs on the oven (our kitchen is very tiny, and a few times we have accidentally bumped them into the “on” position), and I always ask Z if he has the keys.  Every marriage has the responsible one who remembers to bring the keys everywhere and the one who locks herself out of the house all of the time.  Z is usually our key guy.  

           “Do you have the keys?”

           “Nope,” Z responded, patting his jacket pockets.  “I’ll go get them.”

           I was closer to the front door at this time;  Z was several sidewalk squares ahead with the stroller and Little A.  You may wonder why I did not go inside and grab my keys.  That is because you are assuming that I am a person who knows where my keys are at any given time.  Z knows better, so he headed for the front door without even bothering to ask.

Our stroller has a brake.  It is a simple foot pedal you push down when the stroller is at rest so it does not roll away.  We never use it.  When the baby is inside of it, the stroller always seems heavy enough to remain stationary on level ground.  When Z walked over to the front door, he just left the stroller standing a few sidewalk squares away.  I’m not going to level any blame here because I would have done the same thing.  It turns out, however, that our sidewalk is not as level as we thought.  

There are two kinds of people in this world: a.) the kind who, in the face of imminent disaster, like a bus torpedoing towards a baby buggy in the middle of the street, leap into action like superheroes and b.) me.  Over Z’s shoulder, I watched in horror as Little A rolled down the sidewalk and toppled over into a bush, the wheels of the stroller spinning dejectedly in the night air.  I could do nothing but point.

Oh my God...is she all right? I panicked, followed by, Did the neighbors see?  I hope the neighbors didn’t see.   

Of course we ran to Little A’s rescue the instant after anything useful could have been done to stop this from happening in the first place.  We lifted the stroller out of the bush and peeked inside.  She was sound asleep.  I kid you not.  The baby that woke up from her nap one day because my knee joint popped when I bent down to pick something up slept through her first human cannonball trial.  A cursory glance around the perimeter confirmed our hopes: no one witnessed any of this.  That’s when I realized that “We got away with it!” is never associated with good parenting.

Little A’s stroller is one of those travel systems where the car seat attaches to the top.  Had the car seat portion of her stroller been constructed like the one my parents used for me back in the day, she probably would have been decapitated from rolling over a small rock, let alone tipping over into foliage (see exhibit A):

Exhibit A

Thus, I see this story as a win for modern baby product engineering and a big fat loss for our credibility as parents.  

In the end, Little A didn’t get tangled up in a blanket or fall off of the bed, but she did go careening into a large bush.  

No pages in Baby 411 address that.  I checked.  

Sometimes life goes off script, and we don’t know how we will improvise until we get there.  In the meanwhile, I’ll think twice before judging someone else’s worst scene.   
                           
Goodness knows I’ll have a few of my own before this kid is eighteen.

You can thank Z for this video.  Please don't submit it to the authorities.