childbearing hipster

Then we'll only have Mad Cow and West Nile to worry about!

Dug and I have some of our best conversations while he's commuting to work, when something pops into his head and he calls home to share it while I'm running around trying to get socks on the kids. Here is a paraphrase of today's:

"Hey, I figured out what we'll do if the flu gets really bad!"

"Wash our hands and know that we were more likely to get salmonella when that whole peanut butter thing went down?"

"Well, yeah...but no. We'll go to Balsam Lake (WI)! We'll wait it out at the cabin!"

"[boring realistic point of view]"

"You know, we live in a really high risk area and it's good to be prepared, so now we have a plan! I'll have internet installed up there and I can work from the Minneapolis office."

"That area's kind of a hub for healthcare. Lots of sick people fly into Minneapolis from all over the world for treatment."

"But we won't be in Minneapolis, we'll be in Balsam Lake!"

"Will we fly into Balsam Lake International Airport?"

"..."

(It is at this point that I realize that actually, it sounds kind of fun. An escape plan for when Captain Trips hits. And since I'm pretty confident it's never going to be a real problem, why not roll with it?)

"It is an awesome plan. WOO! Balsam Lake!"

"Bye!"

"Bye!"

I almost think it would be worth it just to get internet at the cabin.

NYC Part Two: We're Here For The Food

Oh, how we ate.

Well, not Molly. And really, not Maggie much either, relatively speaking.

But oh, how Dug and I ate in New York.

There were numerous slices of pizza (Famous Original Ray's, specifically. Don't be fooled by imitators). I'm not a pizza snob, at all (at ALL, really, I will eat ketchup on a slice of wonder bread and call it pizza and be pretty happy about it). I don't quite get people who are committed to the "You can't get good pizza here" principle, no matter where "here" happens to be. But I do get why people rave about New York pizza, and there is something about it that just isn't quite matched by "New York style" pizza. My theory: everything tastes better in New York.

For one thing, the hot dogs, which are as much fun as you can possibly have for a dollar. The girls ate them plain, I ate them with ketchup, mustard, and onions. I must admit I prefer raw onions to the onion relish often available, because I really love the bite and the crunch in contrast to the rest of the dog. But the onion sauce is still pretty fucking good.

Dug says the soft pretzels are especially good in New York, and I'll have to take his word for it, I don't care for them and didn't taste them. The girls practically lived on them the whole trip, though.

Dinner is where most of our focus (and money) went. And here is how we dined:

Maggie slept through our arrival-night dinner at the Redeye Grill, where Molly enjoyed her first Shirley Temple and the first of many plates of buttered noodles that sustained her on her travels. Dug and I rocked a platter of oysters, and followed them up with seared ahi spring rolls and one of the best crabcakes I've had--served on a bed of celery root slaw, it was incredible. Molly had the most insane dessert ever--a S'more cake, made of chocolate mousse, graham cracker crumbs, and three flaming marshmallows on a skewer. She nearly shit her pants with joy when they brought it to the table.

We had a somewhat mediocre dinner at a restaurant around the corner from our hotel--I won't name it, because most of the reviews of the place are pretty good and it's a little mom and pop joint and they don't need bad publicity just because we were tired and not really feeling the love.

We had one of the greatest dinners of my life at Otto, a Mario Batali restaurant. I've been dying to eat there since Jeffrey Steingarten raved about it in Vogue a few years ago. Specifically he raved about the gelato, and I haven't been able to get it off my mind since.

Otto was a great experience--our waiter looked like a tall Jimmy Fallon, which to me is a good thing, the service was terrific, the food was outstanding. Dug and I started the ball rolling with a plate of excellent prosciutto and an arugula salad with an amazing peppery dressing, then followed with two of Otto's specialty pizzas: the goat cheese with chard, and the pancetta with butternut squash and shaved aged mozzerella. Fucking incredible. Molly (and Maggie, this time) had buttered noodles. And then the gelato...

So when Steingarten wrote about it, he talked about the unusual flavors--ricotta, olive oil. I just could not stop imagining how amazing these must taste. It's literally the whole reason I wanted to tag along on Dug's business trip: a chance to eat olive oil ice cream. And it didn't disappoint, I do believe that it might have been the best thing I have ever put in my mouth. Dug was skeptical, but the ricotta won him over. The girls had more standard flavors, which were also completely otherworldly. We followed that dinner with a little dancing, to the strains of a cellist playing under the arch in Washington Square Park.

The next night was Stage Deli Night. Grilled cheese for Maggie, a bagel with cream cheese for Molly (sigh), and a tower of pastrami and swiss, on rye, with a fresh pickle and a chocolate egg cream for me. Poor Dug, who had to watch me eat that glorious sandwich, and who couldn't join in because he had a business dinner at Le Bernardin later that night (I'm sure whatever he ate was just fine).

Our last night might have been the most special dining experience. We were expecting Dug to have a business dinner again, but it didn't materialize, and we had no plans. The concierge hooked us up with a reservation at Churrascaria Plataforma, a Brazilian rodizio-style steakhouse on the other side of the block from our hotel. It was noisy and crowded, but the maitre'd was incredible with the kids, so attentive to us and made it a perfect capper to the trip, not even accounting for the endless parade of delicious meats. The bread came in the form of tiny biscuits that reminded me of the Indian-style frybread my mom used to make, and the so-called "salad bar" was really a full side dish bar, with tons of sea food, pastas, risotto, and potatoes. The desserts were outstanding.

Molly didn't eat much of anything at all that night, but for some reason she kept tasting the crushed yucca flower, which was supposed to be a garnish for the meat. I just don't know.

I'm glad to be home, in my own kitchen, but man, was it a good trip.

NYC Part One: Molly at the Plaza Belvedere

(With apologies to Kay Thompson)

My name is Molly. I am almost four years old. I am a West Coast child. I am visiting New York City and staying at the Belvedere.

Ooooooh, I just love the Belvedere. The lobby floor is all different colors of marble and the blue is the ocean and the brown is the sand and the pink is the hot lava, and I put on my hot lava skates and skate right along and when the bellmen try to talk to me I get shy.

When we go in the elevator I get to push all the buttons.

Here is what you do in a hotel room in New York City:

Jump on the bed.

Here is what you don't do:

Sleep.

Mama and Daddy are tired tired tired and Mama says it might be rawther nice to have more than three hours of sleep in a row for Lord's sake and they have a lot of discussions about who gets to have Maggie kick them all night and who gets to have me, Molly, wake up and thrash around in their bed  every forty-five minutes, because they tried making us sleep together and it didn't work so well.

My mama uses a lot of under-eye concealer.

In New York City the buildings are called skyscwapers and they are so tall that you can't see the tops from the bottoms. When I went to visit the Empire State Building I was the highest little girl in New York. I smashed a new penny for my collection of pennies what are smashed and I bought a pen with a monkey and you tip it and the monkey goes up and down the Empire State Building.

Here is a list of what I saw in New York City:

Heckscher Playground
The toy store with the ballerina jewelry boxes
Dead Dinosaurs

Here is what else I saw:

A lot of tiny dogs. 

Mama took me shopping for important things such as umbrellas and striped tights and a skirt with ruffles like a tutu. I simply love ruffles. She brought giant piles of things to the cashier and said "Charge it, please".

Strollers are very good for napping.

When our trip was over Daddy said "Off we go" and off we went onto an airplane. Mama gets stressed stressed stressed when we fly because we're rawther energetic and she says she just can't knit with all that racket for lord's sake and stop kicking the tray table or I just don't know what I'll do.

Then we got back in California and Maggie and I are tea partying with the cats.

The end.

High Camp

Whew. Spent three days at Sequoia with friends and family and I don't think the girls have ever been so dirty in their lives (I know I haven't).

Despite anxious warnings from park rangers about bears, the only bears we saw were of the San Francisco variety (they had a bumper sticker, if you're wondering how I can be sure). But it was still a slightly pressured weekend of following Maggie around, picking dropped food out of the dirt so we didn't host the International Convention of Black Bears at our campsite.

It was cold, so cold the first night and the girls didn't sleep so well and I'm not sure if I would have either, even if they hadn't awakened me every half hour. But the next day it warmed up and the next night we all slept like people without babies ("sleeping like babies" being a misnomer, as you know).

I don't know why we didn't end up taking any pictures of Maggie, but here's Molly making her way across the creek that ran near our campsite:

.

The girls had a wonderful time, which meant the rest of us did too. They were careful around the fire, Molly at least was conscious of keeping our food and lip balm safely locked away from the bears, they were endlessly delighted by the chipmunks, and they were allowed to sit and dig for hours on end in the dirt. They cried when it was time to go home.

Thank goodness they like camping. I don't know what we're going to do when we come up against an activity we love that the kids end up hating. So far they're so content to just come along for the ride.

Home

I have trouble blogging after a trip. The whole trip, I think of things that need to be written about when I get home, and then when I'm back...eh. Next trip I'm going to have to experiment, maybe bring my laptop and type things out even if I can't post them immediately. Maybe I can try blogging from Dug's Treo phone. I don't know.

But it must be said, the trip was great. The girls as usual did not sleep well--good travelers, except they cannot sleep anywhere but their own beds and getting them to try is like pulling teeth. We always hope they'll do better, grow out of it, but they haven't yet.

I got a kayak this year, in the middle of the trip, and a couple times a day I paddled out and across and down the lake. It's one of the few athletic sporty type things that I've ever done in my life where I was immediately good at it, and immediately enjoyed it. A couple of times I took Molly out with me, and she nestled up in the front of the cockpit while I rowed us up and down.

We visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Pepin and played at the Little House Wayside north of town, where there's a replica of the original House In The Big Woods on the Ingalls' original land. Molly's so into Laura and Mary right now, and was fascinated by the fact that they were once real little girls, just like she is. It bothers her somewhat that they died, and we talked about it quite a bit--her first experience with learning about someone who used to exist in the world, and now only exists in stories.

I feel like there's much more to tell, but I can't think of what all it is. We're home now, and unpacked and settled back in, and the pictures are still waiting to be offloaded from the cameras and we're working on creating some sort of daily structure to get us through the weeks until preschool starts back up and provides us with a routine for our week.

And there, now I've at least written something, and that opens the door for writing more somethings, later. It's good to be back.

Easter in the Heartland

Dug and I both have grandparents in Kansas--his grandmother in Lawrence, my maternal grandparents in Pretty Prairie, in Central Kansas (but what my inlaws all insist on referring to as Western Kansas, no matter how many times I correct them). Every year we fly into Kansas City, rent a car, crash at Grandma Sally's in Lawrence for a night, drive down the next day to Pretty Prairie, spend an evening and a night and a morning with my folks, then drive back up to Lawrence, spend Easter Day, and head back to the airport.

It's always exhausting, always a blast. This year it had the added bonus of being warm and sunny, when home has been so cold and wet for so long.

Never mind chat. Here's pictures:

Warm spring night, Maggie on the merry-go-round

Molly won't be outdone.

With Great-Grandpa and with Great-Grandma

With my cousin, Brandon, who was the beneficiary of a grand concert performance by Molly, the lucky devil. She stood on the hearth and sang every song she could think of for him.

With the Nichols/Moore family in Lawrence on Easter Sunday after brunch. Molly's dress was hand-crocheted for me when I was her age, by my great-grandmother. Maggie's was purchased for me by my paternal grandmother when I was her age. My dress was formerly a square dancing dress, made and worn by Dug's grandmother, standing next to me in the pink jacket. Don't be fooled by the photo--I'm leaning down a bit, and that makes me look a little bustier and schlumpier than I really looked. Or maybe I'm just making myself believe that, but I honestly thought the dress looked great and I loved wearing it. Please to note the white shoes.

Miles to go before I sleep

And speaking of sleep, who the fuck called our house in the middle of the night and then hung up on the answering machine. Was it you? Don't do that. You woke Molly up, she came and climbed over me into the middle of our bed, Dug scooted over to snuggle with her, she felt like he was crowding her so she climbed on top of me to escape him, and I ended up having to carry her back to her own bed, only to return and find Dug in my spot. You could at least have left a message.

Tomorrow we head off on our annual Kansas Easter Whirlwind Adventure. I'm finishing up laundry, I'm trying to decide what to bring--word on the street is that it's going to be nice and warm, even hot, there. I don't even remember what the sun looks like anymore--is it still yellow? So for once our girls get to wear Easter dresses without thick tights and heavy sweaters.

Speaking of which--I have to finish sewing my own dress (a vintage one that I remade a bit). I also did something kind of odd--I bought white shoes to wear with it. My red mary janes are scuffed and not church-appropriate until I can match the polish, and my feet are in no condition for sandals, so I bought these:

It's only notable because other than a pair of Keds and a pair of Minnetonka Moccasins, I haven't worn white shoes since I was a kid. Even my wedding shoes were blue. Anyway, they were on sale. And I feel like I've broken some kind of major barrier.

I also stocked up on airplane activities. The new Laurie Berkner DVD, some Color Magic books. Snacks, all that. I've got a new knitting project to start on. I've got books, Dug's got books. Gotta update my iPod. Otherwise we're set. Happy Easter, happy Pesach, happy spring. Not necessarily in that order, of course.

Weekend Update

We spent a couple days with friends at their cabin at Donner Lake (a tinier, cuter Tahoe). I skiied and then skiied some more, Maggie slept badly, Molly wet her bed because I forgot to put a diaper on her (yeah, I'm a moron; no, she's not even THINKING about being night-trained, nor am I the least bit interested in trying). Nobody got altitude sickness (DUG). I did wrench my knee something fierce after stupidly thinking "Man, these green runs are for suckers. Let's go blue!". I would have been the one you saw sliding the rest of the way down on her ass. On purpose. I have no shame (TSYOWLIMH was positively apoplectic).

On the way home Molly mentioned that her eye hurt, and, TADA! Pinkeye! It was obviously bacterial, so I was able to treat it right away with antibiotic drops and she'll be good to go for school tomorrow. Both girls also have runny noses, though Molly's is hardly of note. Maggie's is lousy though and combined with a cough. Again, I don't get it. Molly lives on a multivitamin and milk. Maggie eats brussels sprouts. Nothing adds up.

I treat both of the girls with children's formula OTC drugs--they're cheaper and come in bigger bottles than infant formula, and there's nothing shittier than grabbing that teensy little bottle of Tylenol or cough medicine and finding that it's empty (after only using it a couple of times, too). Cleared it with our pediatrician, aka "Dr. Whatever", and I check everything against the dosage charts at AskDrSears.com, then write the correct dosage for each kid on the side of the bottle with a Sharpie so I don't have to look it up every time (or remember, which is not bloody likely to happen).

While Maggie napped today, Molly sat down and performed the forced labor of writing her first name twenty times on the backs of her Valentine cards. The first few were awesome. The second few, she didn't bother with the "Y", which is always a little bit of a challenge for her. The last few just had "M"s.

And I've started a side project, still in its infancy: my craft blog. It's boring as hell, but it might get better. Shield your eyes from the colors--I'm playing with templates, and it won't always be fuchsia.

One part "White Christmas", one part "Rocky Mountain High"

Two parts "Sloop John B".

I do not recommend traveling with Maggie. She's a rotten traveler. It could be the four teeth coming in at once, it could just be that Molly is an infinitely better child in almost every way (and to think, I had come to consider her the problem child!).

I wish we'd brought a computer along so I could have documented this as it all unfolded; now I've got to kind of remember it as I go on and hope I hit all the hot spots. Here goes nothing.

Because our trip had three legs (San Francisco/Minnesota/Colorado/back to San Francisco), we had to get paper tickets. Multiple airlines, a million plane changes. And after we originally booked it, one of the airlines cancelled their service from Minnesota to Denver and we had to work out an alternative, which meant an actual trip to the airport. Remember a few years ago when we were all still kind of freaked out by e-tickets? That "Oh jeez, what if I get there with my little printout and they don't really have any record of my reservation, and I'm screwed" feeling? Well, now that is how paper tickets make one feel. Go figure.

San Francisco graced us with so much fog and rain on the day of departure that all flights out were delayed by hours--this meant that we would be missing our connection in Phoenix for Minneapolis. So Grammy got a Christmas Miracle: we spent the night with her and she got to snuggle the babies. Then we got up at the asscrack of dawn and flew to Minneapolis, and I would just like to say that they upgraded us to First Class and it was possibly the finest three hours I have ever spent on an airplane in my entire life, and I am now going to be devoting my spare time to figuring out exactly who I need to sleep with in order to fly by no other means, ever. First class absolutely rules. The crew treated Molly and Maggie like princesses--first class kids who cry are apparently much more adorable than coach kids who sit quietly and don't bother anyone. My lunch was delicious, and the booze never stopped flowing. I must have been a terrible person in my past life, having had to fly coach all these years. I'm going to try harder to be a better person in hopes that karma will grant me upgrades on a regular basis.

Christmas in Minnesota was lovely. Santa brought excellent presents, there was wine and cheese aplenty, and the post-holiday sales were divine. We had a few extra days after the rest of the family left MN to play and relax and spend one-on-one time with Dug's parents. Molly has her Mimi completely whipped, and it's pretty entertaining to watch. Dug's mom, as the oldest child, is used to being the boss of everyone, and to see her bend to Molly's will is about as funny as it gets, although I don't really know how to describe it to people who don't know Dug's mom...it's a little like the Karen/Rosario dynamic on "Will and Grace", I guess.

The trip from Minneapolis to Denver didn't quite go off without a hitch, I'm afraid. They bumped us to a different flight and one of our bags didn't make the trip with us, and it happened to be the one with all of the girls' clothes in it. We had their snow clothes and a few random things that had gotten into other duffels, but none of their long underwear or socks. We were about a minute and a half from hitting up the thrift stores when the bag showed up.

Denver's a neat kid town, from what I could see. The girls had a blast at the REI Flagship, which has a playground, and Molly came very close to trying out the climbing wall there before chickening out. We had both dinner and breakfast at Jack-n-Grill, a great New Mexican restaurant. And we stayed in the lovely home of friends Mike and Maura, whose hospitality was greatly appreciated during our "layover" in Denver before the rest of the family arrived and we could head up into the mountains. They're terrific people, so if you are at all handbag-inclined check out Maura's handiwork at Red Camper.

We had New Year's Eve in Denver at Dug's cousin-by-marriage Jen's house, with the whole assortment of cousins, siblings, aunts, girlfriends and boyfriends and spouses, before heading up on New Year's Day to our crazy-cool rental house.

We all got our asses kicked by the altitude--Dug was really sick while we were in Denver, so it's probably a good thing that we stayed there for two nights before heading even further up. Even so, the high country is no joke: even drinking tons of water--SmartWater, no less--I woke up every morning so dehydrated that I was actually in pain. It got better by the end of the week, but MAN. Ouch.

We did all our skiing at Copper Mountain and since I have no basis of comparison, you can take my enthusiastic recommendation of the place with a grain of salt. Molly did two days of ski school, which is possibly the cutest thing you'll ever see in your life. I took one half-day private lesson and then winged it (wung it?) for the rest of the week. Generally I feel pretty good about my progress, although I'm still totally skiing in pizza form, rather than french fries (I certainly hope these terms are universal to skiing, otherwise I feel like a dork using them). I'm looking forward to doing it again, which is about the highest level of approval I am capable of bestowing on a physical activity.

The town we stayed in was also home to an outlet mall. That might have contributed to the excellent time that I had. We slept poorly though, between the dehydration and the very obnoxious nightwaking of Maggie (Every. Single. Night.).

The trip home could have been worse, I suppose. We were scheduled to stop over in Phoenix again (not overnight though) but managed to get on a direct flight instead, and it would have been okay if Maggie hadn't blown a gasket early on and spent most of the time headbutting me in the lip (which already had a blister from where I burned it on a fondue fork, thank you very much).

But in the end we got home in one piece, or four individual pieces anyway, and everybody slept through the night and the girls even slept late, which is especially awesome considering the time zone changes. The girls are clearly delighted to be home, especially Maggie, who must just be more of a creature of routine than Molly ever has been.

And I've forgotten all the funny things that happened.

Oh, Molly accidentally peed on her cousin Nick while he was giving her a piggyback ride. That was pretty funny.

Waaaaaah...Holiday travel.

We're gearing up for a major holiday travel extravaganza: a week in Minnesota, then another week in Colorado. We're joining Dug's entire family for Christmas, then shifting scenes with Dug's aunt and cousins, and his sister and her family for skiing.

I am, of course, quietly freaking out. Dug takes the travel commotion in stride, I don't. I'm responsible for packing for three, and while I've gotten fairly expert at that, I still have to constantly think of how best to make sure that nobody loses her shit on an airplane (and we'll be on quite a few of those, including several plane changes). I'm the one who has to decide what snacks and toys are going to be easiest to carry, and most likely to delight the angry bored toddler who really just wants to run around. I'm the one who might forget the One Great Thing that could have averted disaster.

I don't really know why I get like this. Really, I am an expert traveler-with-kids. I've even done it a few times on my own, and it's always worked out more or less fine. By now I should be able to take a Zen approach to it.

The thing about this is that as much as the girls adore their daddy, I am the one they associate most with home and routine. So when we are out of routine, they virtually crawl back into my uterus until they feel settled into our destination. And I think I also worry that, at this stage where both girls are whipping from new developmental stage to stage, that just because they were happy travelers a few months ago doesn't give me any reason to expect it this time.

There's also the fact that winter holiday travel requires So Much Stuff. Coats and mittens and long underwear and hats and presents and then packing it all up and...taking it somewhere else entirely before bringing it all home. Ugh.

We agreed on a holiday rotation years ago, and this was the year we were supposed to be at home. I can't pretend I'm not disappointed that we're traveling--I've bounced back and forth between "at peace with traveling" and "completely devastated". When I'm feeling sane about it, I'm glad that we'll be sharing our Christmas with four generations of Dug's family. That's something that won't be happening forever, and it's special and it's something that the girls will hopefully appreciate some day, even if they may not remember it.

I'm afraid to learn to ski. I'm not afraid that I won't be good at it--I don't expect to be. But I'm afraid I won't LIKE it. And it's a big part of Dug's life and of his family's life. This is the first chance I've had to join them on their cousins' ski trip, Molly had just been born the last time they went. This year, Molly's all signed up for ski school and I have no doubt that she'll be better than I am by the end of the week. I just hope I'm adequate enough, and that I like it enough, that I won't be a big buzzkill on the trip.

So much left to do before we leave on Thursday:

Sort out a few piles of long sleeves and warm pants and fleecy pajamas and mittens and hats.
Get some instructions together for the cat sitter.
Load my iPod with good stuff--including some for Molly.
Record some of the girls' favorite shows to watch on the plane.
Decide how many toys and books are the right number, taking into account the fact that they may get toys and books as gifts.
Decide what knitting project to bring to keep myself occupied.
Stop reading the book I was supposed to save for the trip.
Tidy up the joint, so we won't come back to mayhem.

Relax.

Relax.

Breathe.