Packing

Things I'll be taking with me on our Hawaii vacation this time around that I have never taken with me on previous trips:

• Five dresses. FIVE. I am not a dress person. Every time I buy a cute summer sundress in Hawaii I come back to LA and think, "This dress is tiny and strapless. I have no business walking around with a strapless bra on anymore." And the dress gets shuttled away to the back of the closet. But this time? All I can think is that if I only have to worry about putting on one garment each day, that's, like, two other garments that I don't need to worry about putting on. And so the dresses are coming out to play. I can wear a bathing suit underneath them, and if the suit is dirty, well, Hawaii is just going to have to deal with either visible bra straps or my unsupported bosoms.
• A carseat that has a telescoping handle and so doubles as a stroller. File this under "things I never knew existed and will use probably once."
• An iPad containing thirty episodes of "Yo Gabba Gabba" and also, for good measure, "Bubble Guppies."
• Just say that out loud. "Bubble Guppies."
• A bag filled with cheap, tacky crap, the sole purpose of which is to amuse a toddler for ten precious minutes at a time. Said cheap items include a booklet of Lisa Frank stickers, a yo-yo, a set of plastic car keys with Disney princesses on them, and Post-Its.
• A base tan, because my old philosophy of staying the hell out of the sun has been difficult to maintain this summer. 
• An attitude of grim determination as I ready myself for a five-hour plane flight, which I'm POSITIVE will be followed by ten days of sheer bliss as Scott, Sadie, Yayo, Yaya, Auntie Kate and I enjoy spending time together in paradise. 

See you in September, y'all.

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily

Yeah, I can't keep up.

I get now why moms keep blogs throughout their kid's first year. It's freaking boring. Nap, eat, poop, nap, make a funny face, nap again.

But I can't keep up anymore. Every time Sadie does something awesome I think, "I should put that on the blog." But then she does something else. And then fifty more awesome things. And then she says, like, forty-six words in a row, and sings the words to "Don't Stop Believin'" and writes out Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech on her place mat in blue crayon.

I'm just kind of following her, in awe. Occasionally I stop to take video, but she's too smart to fool now, and immediately stops whatever cute thing she's doing to give me a look like "Bitch, please." Oh yeah, swearing is another thing she does. That's my fault. She knows "crap" and "Oh, shit." I can't tell her not to say them, because that only makes her say them more. I can't punish her for saying words that, to be honest, Mommy says all the time and couldn't stop saying if my life depended on it.

Then again, I'm probably failing all of the mom classes, and I don't worry about it anymore. I don't helicopter -- I don't have to, because I have a weird kid who enjoys sitting in one spot at the park, sifting sand through her fingers and occasionally noting, "I found trash." I fully endorse getting kids drunk on planes for overseas flights. I gave her a sip of my wine tonight because I thought it was funny. She asked for another sip but I said no, so please don't call CPS on me.

We have an amazing kid. She is hilarious, insightful and wise. When we have conversations over her head, she retains bits and tosses them back at me days later. When I sing a song in her presence, she remembers the cadence and the melody, even if the meaning of the words themselves are lost on her. Similarly, she can read a familiar book to herself and speak the lines exactly the way I say them. She is paying attention, all the time.

The thing I like best about being a parent is teaching her something new and watching as she files it away in her brain to retrieve for later. I taught her that the man on my Labyrinth tee shirt was named David Bowie, and now she knows that David Bowie is his name. She asks me what something is in passing, and I'll answer her absently: "shampoo." The next day she'll ask me again, but by the time I answer "shampoo," she'll have focused on something else. But the third time, I'll pause and point to it, wait until she's really paying attention, and I'll say, "this is shampoo. It's called shampoo." And wonder of wonders, the next time she sees my bottle of shampoo, she knows that it's called shampoo. And will, forever, until the end of time, know that this thing is called shampoo. That blows me right the hell away.

Sure, the responsibility wigs me out. Wouldn't it wig you out, too? It should. Everything you say is of ultimate importance. You can tell them anything, and they will believe it. If you tell them that a wind blew the door closed or that Tootie from "Yo Gabba Gabba" lives under the bed and snuck out to slam the door before running back under the bed to hide, these explanations are equally plausible. One may cause more nightmares than the other.

I'm going to stop trying to catalogue everything that happens, and just settle back to enjoy the ride.

Moms Baffle Me

I think I'm flunking Mom Friends 101. Warning: this is going to be a bitchy post.

First, let's get this out of the way: I have several absolutely fantastic mom friends -- and one good Dad friend. Sadie has a semi-regular playdate with her buddy Sam, whose parents have been friends of ours for years. We get together and gripe about feeding issues and in-laws and debate how one ought to amuse a toddler on long car rides, and all of that's great. Tomorrow, however, they will become parents to TWINS, in addition to their two-year-old. So our lazy, pleasant afternoon play dates are going to have to be put on hold for awhile.

I have a few other mom friends here and there -- but getting together with them is tough. One just scored a full-time writing position and suddenly she has no spare time anymore, for anything. Our weekly walks around Lake Balboa are no more. Another works in Santa Monica and lives in Hancock Park, which is hell and gone from Studio City, especially in traffic, so play dates have to be carefully coordinated days in advance. A third is great for get-togethers at the LA Zoo, but she and her husband and their daughter went to Europe for most of the summer.

All of this has made me realize an ugly truth: I am not good at making Mom Friends.

A lot of new moms complain about not having mom friends, but eventually they go and find them. I wanted to find some, too. So when Sadie was a few months old, I joined several internet meetup groups for new moms. I went to a couple of meetups. I hated them. These moms were SERIOUS about mommying. They wanted to discuss cloth diapering and sleeping in the family bed and the benefits of homeopathic medicine (hint: there are none) and the difficulties of having two year old twin boys WHO ARE STILL NURSING. Me? I just wanted someone to talk to about what good movies were out (even if we had no time to go see them) and how I couldn't wait to start getting manicures again, and is it really so terrible to have a glass of wine at four in the afternoon, if you're stuck at home and your kid is being extra screamy?

So, the meetup was not my scene. I began scouring kid-friendly places for groups of women who seemed cool, like the kind of women I'd LIKE to spend time with. I had no luck, until one day at The Playroom, I hit pay dirt. A group of women in their 30s, all with nice hair but food and spit-up on their clothes, were chatting and laughing and occasionally checking their email while their cute little kids played in the ball pit. Hey! I like to check my email while my kid plays in the ballpit, too!

I started talking to them immediately, and we hit it off. One, a woman named Michelle, introduced herself as a casting director. It was so refreshing to talk business rather than bottles. These women were like me -- they had help once in awhile so they could work and have their own lives, but they also loved being moms and spending time with their kids. When they left, Michelle gave me her phone number and told me to text her to set up a park play date for her daughter and Sadie.

Of course, I waited three days to text her. I didn't want to seem desperate.

When I did, it took her a day to respond. We finally set up a time and place, but as it often happens with baby play dates, it felt through -- Sadie had a bad morning and her nap ran long. I canceled and suggested we reschedule.

I never heard from her again. Sigh.

Being broken up with by a new mom friend feels bad, but it wouldn't be the last time that happened. I think my desperation is starting to show. When Sadie hit it off with another girl who attended the same physical therapist, I pretty much overwhelmed her mom with invitations to come over and play. We did a couple of times, but I haven't heard from her in months.

My mother-in-law swears that the preschool years are the era in which you start making your lifelong mom friends. I'm skeptical. I've met most of the moms that Sadie will be going to preschool with -- they're the same moms whose kids are in her toddler group right now. A couple of them are nice; others are, to be perfectly blunt, snobbish and unfriendly. I've yet to find a connection with any of them.

So what to do? My new tactic is just to wait for my pre-existing friends to start having kids already. Come on, girls -- we're all in our 30s now. Don't leave a bitch with a toddler hanging!