Let's get ready to TUMBLE!!!!

Maya at gymnastics class with her BFFs: twins Georgia and Jane to the left, and Kate (Maya calls her "Cake") to the right.

Maya & Kate hit Ikea

Here's how you have an amazing play date when every kid you know lives in a small NY apartment:

1. Grab a parent and get on the bus headed to Red Hook.
2. Text all your homegirls and boys (and their parent-for-the-day) to meet at Ikea.
3. Stop for cupcakes at Baked (IMPORTANT: do not skip this step).
4. Make a beeline to the second floor of Ikea for the children's toys, gear, and most of all: beds.
5. Jump, snuggle, bounce, and try out every bed in the place.

Without a doubt, it is the best bed-hopping in all of Brooklyn. There's plenty of room, you can make a bit of a mess, and it's FREE.

More Wooo-Wooo.

There are some things that, to a 2-year-old, must seem so universally underappreciated by adults. Balloons, for one. Bubbles, bouncing balls, blimps, bubble bath, candy, cartoons, ice cream cones, and poop jokes, to name a few more. I can just see Maya looking up at us grownups, dumb-founded that we don't jump up and down with sheer, unadulterated glee the moment we experience anything fun. This is photo shows just how excited she gets playing peek-a-boo, for example.

Yesterday, we were watching the news, and Al Roker was doing his thing on TV, walking into Rockefeller Plaza, working the tourists into a cheering frenzy. Maya jumped up from her breakfast and started clapping wildly and shouting "Wooo! Wooo!" right along with a family from North Dakota who were waving a homemade "Go Tomcats!" sign. But when the commercial break came, it just wasn't enough for Maya. She begged for "More wooo-wooo!" until I figured out how to rewind the weather segment of Good Morning America over and over. We then spent the morning cheering along passionately with the North Dakotans, clapping and shouting at the top of our lungs. (Hey, it beats Teletubbies).

Turning two

Then the little girl made a wish and blew out the candles.

"What did you wish?" everyone asked her.

"I wished for it all to happen again," said the little girl.

-- From my sister Diana's favorite book, Over and Over, by Charlotte Zolotow

Chillun'

Baby, it's cold outside. But that doesn't have to stop the fun.

All the fun they're having

Usually, this is dress-up day with Maya. We pretend to be fortune tellers, or ballerinas, or personal chefs. Whatever comes out of the box of used clothes, halloween costumes and dollar-store junk. Maya mostly likes to look in the mirror and speak toddler-ese, as if she's really telling a fortune, or preparing a souffle before a live TV audience.

But this week I've been freelancing at an office (in a cubicle, waaaah). It's the first time since Maya's birth some 22 months ago that I've freelanced on site. So throughout the day, our nanny and David send me pictures of Maya dancing at the Moxie Spot, or riding the bus to get cupcakes, or making a tent out of the sofa cushions. For me, it simultaneously makes the day better and worse. I miss her so much sometimes I feel itchy and claustrophobic. But hey, cubicles in agencies can do that to a person anyway. And when I get home at 7:00, she's all mine.

Double trouble

Why settle for just one binkie?

Does this look like the work of a flunkie?

Last week Maya had three preschool "interviews." This week, I'm laid up with a bad back. Could the two things be related? Maybe. Perhaps it's just me, but I hate the idea of anyone judging Maya. Did she A). play well with others? Demonstrate independence? Take direction well? Say please and thank you? OR: Did she B). cling to me the entire time, pulling at my shirt, begging for "BA-BA" (aka breastfeeding)? Okay, so it was B. The kindly old schoolmarmish ladies smiled politely and warned us gently that with only 25 spots and 150 applicants, Maya's chances were slim. Especially since we'd had to cancel her school interviews the week before because she had the flu.
So Maya, David and I came home and recited the Gettysburg Address, counted backwards from 100 (in Chinese) and then drew this picture in honor of Maya's muse, Jackson Pollock. So I'm thinking, forget preschool. Let's go straight for the majors.

Walking with Willy

The flakes were so soft they melted under our fingertips. Like flour piled on a baking sheet. As much as I tried to get Maya to wear her mittens, she insisted on touching every inch of white we passed until her hands were wet and red. I had to keep her from eating the snow. Who knows whether a dog peed on that fence or park bench? It was getting dark, but I took her to a tiny park across from the hospital down the street. It's just a stretch of lawn with a path that winds through it, on the edge of the roaring traffic of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. It's actually the very park that I looked out at when I was in labor, having my second epidural jabbed into my spine. I promised myself if I made it through the next few seemingly endless hours that someday my daughter and I would walk in the park outside my window.

Maya and I slipped inside the gate and stepped down on untouched, pristine snow. A guard suddenly appeared with his keys out, insisting it was closing time. But when Maya started to cry, he let us walk through it once, leaving footprints in the glowing stretch of white under the high street lamps. Maya seemed satisfied. How could she know she'd been cheated out of a real walk in the snow?

Walking home, I couldn't get Willy Nelson's "Moonlight in Vermont" out of my mind. And I can't help dreaming of vast snowy fields on the edge of little towns somewhere outside of Brooklyn.

Maya's Drum Solo

Sure, it was her cousin Em and Jack's Christmas present (the latest version of Guitar Hero). But that didn't keep Maya from grabbing the drumsticks and making her rocker face.

Date day

A few months ago, David and I decided that in order to ever speak to each other like grown-ups again, we’d need to take serious action. So we set up an every-other-Thursday date night. At first, it was bliss. We saw live music, ate sushi, smooched in the back of movie theaters, etc, etc, ETC.

But then we got a bit of sticker shock. After the $14 an hour in childcare, plus food delivery for our sitter’s dinner, plus her car service home to somewhere deep in Brooklyn, we were shelling out some serious coin--before purchasing a single overpriced movie ticket.

So here’s our New Year’s resolution: find a neighborhood teen who eats dinner at home, shows up after Maya’s in bed, and who lives close enough that David can walk her home at the end of the evening. All for about $10 a hour. (Currently, we’re still looking for such a dream scenario: we’ll keep you posted.)

Until we figure out date nights? We’re squeezing in date days. So today after a meeting with our accountant in Midtown (while Maya was with her nanny), David and I took the 6 to Grand Central and sat at the counter at the Oyster Bar. We split a cup of chowder, an oyster po’boy and crab cakes. It may not be as fabulous as when some parents hit the town. Nor is it exactly a candlelit dinner for two. But with enough PDA, it just might do the trick.

Anybody out there?

Everything is a telephone to Maya. This morning she made a very lengthy call (international, I’m afraid) on my photo card reader. Yesterday, she made several calls to I don’t know who on a soup ladle. I like how well she imitates us—so well that I’ve even started to feel a little self-conscious on my iPhone. Maya knows there’s always a good amount of dialing, a hello, plenty of meaningless babble, some nodding and gesturing, and occasionally even a good-bye. But since we use AT&T, even pretend calls typically end with no warning whatsoever.

A five-bear load

Today’s laundry has set a new record. Five—count ‘em—five pink bears in a single load. Mostly because Maya is getting a lot more experimental with her beloved bear. Pinkie is eating her French fries with ketchup and her Ikea Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam. Pinkie is swimming in sidewalk puddles and playing in the sandbox. Pinkie is taking baths with Maya more frequently. And now, as Maya’s vocabulary (and persistence) grows, she’s handing me a stinky Pinkie every night and saying, “Wash.” So I take the smelly bear and, while pretending to rub it clean with a bath towel, switch it with one of the 10 or so freshly washed bears from my underwear drawer (not the most ideal hiding place, maybe, but its one of the few drawers out of Maya’s reach these days).

I wonder if she still thinks Pinkie is only one bear?

Homeward bound

We just got back from a trip to my hometown, Lynchburg, VA. Highlights: Long strolls on the Blackwater Creek Trail. Yoga with my dad at the Y. Beers and fries at the Cav. Two dogs all the way at the T-Room. Jogging it all off on Peakland Place. And five days to do nothing but hang out with Grandma, Granddaddy, and Aunt Liz.

Babymooning

"Babymoon: A vacation couples take before their babies arrive and life as they know it changes completely.” But really? It’s the last chance to get busy before you start feeling like a beached whale with a bladder the size of a walnut.

Wikipedia further defines babymooning as “usually taking place at a resort that offers relaxing services like prenatal massage.” If only I had known! Our babymoon was on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. And even though I was as big as a house, it included daily Jeep rides down miles and miles of jungle dirt roads to deserted beaches. Hiking around jagged cliffs to find nudie swim spots. And jumping on and off a plastic kayak for a moonlight swim in the Bioluminescent Bay. (Believe me, I wouldn't have minded a prenatal massage or two.)

Some people think babymoons are overrated. But since these days our vacations basically include all the same rituals of home, including diaper changing, endless food prep, and plenty of sleepless nights (only somewhere sunnier)—I highly recommend it.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Maya fought putting on her Dorothy costume for Halloween. She refused to wear the wig (even when we explained it was really just a "hair hat"). She spent so long admiring the shiny red shoes it took us half an hour to walk a single block. And she ditched Toto for her bear, good old stinky Pinky. But somehow, she made the costume her very own, and people got exactly who she was. All the way to the Cobble Hill Park parade, we heard people calling out, "Hi Dorothy!" as Maya waved from her stroller like a Homecoming Queen.

Bosch?

What is bosch? I have no clue. Maya says it so often, and with so much determination, I know I must be missing something. Out of the 40 or so words that she says that I clearly understand (cat, nose, purple: that kind of thing), this one is a mystery. Not even her Nana or David or her nanny Heather can figure out what she’s talking about. “Bosch!” she says, and points out into oblivion. Maybe she’s asking for some nice pears. Or a really high-end kitchen appliance?

Girls will be girls

I don’t know why I’m compelled to raise a tomboy. Or how I think I could have control over such a thing. My sister likes to remind me (often) that when she offered to host my baby shower, I asked her to write “No pink, please” on the Evite. It seems funny to her now because we got loads of pink stuff anyway. And then, even I ended up buying Maya almost all pink clothes in her first year. (What can I say? She looks really good in pink.)

But even in pink, I wanted her to understand how cool boy stuff can be. So I’ve filled her toy bin with trucks of all shapes and sizes and brought her library books on trains. I’ve given her coloring books of tractors. And, until she recently met her new buddies Jane and Georgia, her playdates were mostly with little boys.

Then one day this summer she saw a toy stroller at the playground and suddenly, it was all very clear. She had to have one. Immediately. It’s the first toy Maya has ever really seemed to want. (In pink, of course).

So yesterday, on a whim, I got her a baby doll. Naturally: she loved it. She immediately cuddled it, fed it a bottle, strapped it into her beloved toy stroller and took off walking her new baby around the house.

And left her toy trucks in the dust.

Our budding thespian

I’m the one who got a college degree in theater and never did a damn thing with it (just as I’m sure my parents predicted). But my darling progeny doesn’t seem to need any formal training. Here, she throws herself into a bit of dramatic improv with the kind of emotion that would make Scarlette O’Hare look subdued. What inspired this afternoon’s performance? My simple but firm refusal to her drawing on our bedspread with one of my Uniball ink pens. I was able to distract her with washable markers within seconds, but still.

At 18 months, this seems early for the Terrible Twos, doesn’t it? Someone say yes. Or else, I am so screwed.

Deliver us from diapers

This fall, I’m not fantasizing about Marc Jacobs boots or Linea Pelle handbags but . . . potty training! Because now that the diapers--and their contents--are growing in size, I’d really rather it all end up somewhere that I don’t have to touch it. Is potty training possible at just 17 months? Once a toddler learns to walk, can't she just walk over to a toilet and GO? When I’ve asked my more experienced parent friends, they say potty training begins when the child can pull up her pants. Which means waiting at least another YEAR. And then there's this bit of advice from the Mayo Clinic:

“Many kids may not be ready for potty training until age 2 1/2 or older. If you start potty training too early, IT MAY ONLY TAKE LONGER.”

Which is why I've been surfing the net today for the scoop on potty training alternatives. Yesterday, David got an email from an old friend who joined a commune. He sent David a photo slide show of his new off-the-grid life with his girlfriend and their adorable newborn. In one particularly arresting image, the smiling girlfriend is nursing her new BOJ at the kitchen table and holding something that looks like a plate of gravy. But noooooo. That’s not gravy! You guessed it: they’re poop catchers, otherwise known as 100% diaper-free.

Fortunately, the art of poop catching has a lot more enticing names (thank goodness for marketing writers like me!), including Elimination Communication, Natural Infant Hygiene, and Infant Potty Training. David’s friend directed us to their favorite diaper-free site, where I spent a solid hour reading about options like practicing FTEC (that's Full-Time Elimination Communication), Part-Time EC (PTEC), or just Occasional EC (OEC). (Personally, if we're going the acronym route, I think ICUP is really catchy.)

And I gotta tell you, even as an environmentally conscious, stay at home mom in hyper-aware, uber-progressive Brooklyn, I couldn’t go the diaperless distance. Even OEC--which means letting Maya roam the house in the buff for a few hours every day--runs the risk of messy accidents on several pieces of mid-century modern furniture and a new rug that I'd prefer to keep poop-free. So for now, I’m sticking with my recycled, organic Seventh Generation diapers and no small amount of guilt.

Nonetheless, I have to give it up to these poop catchers. Thank you from the bottom of my nowhere-near-as-environmentally-committed heart for reducing the nearly 27 billion disposable diapers that end up in the landfill each year. I’m not worthy!