I guess I did a good job on Syria because today I was offered a project copyediting Israel, 2e from the same children’s publisher. Maybe after this one I’ll tell them what my hourly rate really is. In the meantime, they’re getting good value for their measly money.

I have a couple of strategy guides going: one full-size guide that’s almost done and another tiny hint book. I’m hoping another one to three guides will come my way soon.

The chapter on pet massage that I was told to research and write has been placed on hold. It seems the publisher for that textbook isn’t actually sure it wants to include that content. Now I’m supposed to do market research instead of writing research. Thanks for yanking my hours back, folks.

Related to work worries are my summertime worries, which have awakened rather early this year. Looking ahead just a hop, skip, and jump from now reveals twelve yawning, empty weeks until school starts again. Although summer has always been my favorite time of year, I now understand why my mother dreaded it, and why every time the words “I’m bored” were mentioned in her house, she went insane with rage. 

This summer I’ll have part-time childcare for Lucas and Asher. Today I registered Lucas for a weeklong, half-day camp at the Effie Yeaw Nature Center. The program is for first and second graders and  it’s called “Signs Along the Trail.” He’ll get to comb the trails near the American River with the group looking for evidence of animal activity, use binoculars, make notes, play games, do crafts, and meet some Nature Center animals.

I’ve recently found out that several of Lucas’s classmates will be doing a Waldorf-oriented Summer Art Camp and I’m wondering if we can swing that, too. It’s not cheap. Lucas is quite the artist nowadays and enjoys working with crayons, charcoal, beeswax, watercolors and other paints, and even pastels. I think he would really like this camp.

There will probably be more swimming lessons too.

But all this still leaves me with the challenge of working while caring for Asher nearly full-time. As he gets older and more mobile (meaning into more stuff), it gets harder and harder to accomplish anything during the day. I’m often wiped out by 8:30 p.m. and find it challenging to work at night, too.

All this sounds complainy—but today I’m really in a decent mood. I’m glad to have the new project. I love the fact that when I tell the Universe I need more work, something usually arrives in my lap. Hopefully my childcare challenges will resolve themselves in the same manner. 

So, thank you, Universe. And if you could figure a way for me to earn a decent living and still wrangle my kiddos, I’d really appreciate it.

A while ago I alluded to my recent crisis. The “crisis” turned out not to be one, so rest easy. I want to write about it because … well … because I learned stuff that other people might want to know.

I was recently sick with a cold; you may remember my bitching about it. The cold seemed to go away, then returned and settled in my lungs as a respiratory infection. This is what colds do in my body. It’s tradition. I relented and went to see my doctor, Dr. Chen on a Monday morning, now two weeks ago.

Right. No, I wouldn’t want that.

So, I left Chen’s office and drove directly to the pharmacy at Raley’s. I shopped for a few items while waiting for the pharmacy people to fill the scripts. While I shopped, I got more and more upset. I put a can of Earth’s Best organic baby formula in my cart and tried to imagine Asher happily taking a bottle. Or a cup. Or anything other than mama milk at bedtime. I bought the drugs, bought my other items, and came home. By the time I got home, I was crying.

Ian had been watching the boys for me while I went to the doctor’s office. He was naturally alarmed by my tears. We sent Lucas out into the backyard so I could fall apart and tell Ian what was wrong. I sobbed as I told him how I didn’t want to take the meds. I did not want to stop breastfeeding. I felt that Asher was old enough now that there was a serious chance that if I stopped nursing him, he would wean. Nursing is a beautiful symbiotic relationship: My body makes enough milk to meet the demand of my nursling. Without the demand, the body stops making milk.

I was looking at taking seven days’ worth of drugs, plus two more days of dumping my milk and using formula “just to be sure.”

Breastfeeding Asher is crucial to me for a lot of reasons. When he was first born and I got so shockingly sick with a uterine infection and then septicemia, my milk did not “come in.” In the hospital, they had me on something like ten different drugs to combat the infection and save my life (three different antibiotics—Flagyl, Levaquin, Vancomycin—steroids, an anticlotting drug called argatroban, two asthma drugs, potassium chloride, phosphorus, insulin, mucomyst (a drug I was told was supposed to protect my kidneys from all the other drugs they were giving me), guaifenesin, dilaudid as needed for pain, and Xanax).

It was only through great effort and single-minded determination that I eventually became able to breastfeed my infant: I had to pump every three hours around the clock for weeks. Following doctors’ instructions, I had to dump out my milk for six weeks before I was allowed to feed my baby my milk. 

Doctors have an incomplete understanding of lactation and medications. Drug studies are not done on nursing mothers or babies, therefore little hard evidence exists to prove that continued nursing when taking meds is safe. Serious research on breastfeeding and the nature of breast milk has only been done in the last 20 years. Therefore, to the established medical field, breastfeeding while taking medications is not safe. To the drug companies, it’s less risky simply to say “ask your doctor” or “don’t take while breastfeeding.” They avoid lawsuits that way. Same with the doctor. I gather from what I’ve read that very little time is spent on lactation in medical school, so doctors who may even be pro-breastfeeding don’t really know much about it. They take the conservative stance, as my doctor did: Don’t breastfeed while taking meds.

But, two of the biggest experts in lactation and breastfeeding, both MDs, say most medications are fine to take while continuing breastfeeding your baby. Only a very small percentage of most drugs makes it into breast milk, usually less than 1%.

Tom Hale, MD, (a lactation and drug specialist and author of Drugs and Mother’s Milk, 13th ed., and Drug Therapy and Breastfeeding), Jack Newman, MD, (researcher and author of The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS: The Transfer of Drugs and Other Chemicals Into Human Milk) all say its OK to breastfeed even when taking these specific drugs (prednisone and azithromycin) and not to worry about baby. The 2001 AAP publication (Table 7) says there is “no reported signs or symptoms in infant or effect on lactation.”

In fact, there are lots of medications that are safe to take while breastfeeding, but your doctor may not know that. Whether a medication is safe to take depends on a number of things, such as:

* maternal serum drug concentration

* whether the drug is absorbed through the gut; many medications are delivered in other ways, therefore almost none enters the milk

* whether the medication binds to protein

* the size of the drug’s molecules (“In the early postpartum period, large gaps between the mammary alveolar cells allow many medications to pass through this milk that may not be able to enter mature milk. These gaps close by the second week of lactation.”—Spencer, MD; Gonzalez, PharmD; and Barnhart, PharmD, American Family Physician, July, 2001)

* age of the infant (premature and newborn infants are more at risk if they absorb mother’s medication through her milk, as their livers don’t filter the chemicals out of their bodies as efficiently as older babies and toddlers)

* amount of milk the infant is receiving (young infants nurse more than older babies and toddlers)

* the drug’s half-life (drugs break down within the body, so if you time the medication well, such as by taking it immediately after a feeding or during baby’s longest sleep, the drug may well be out of your milk by the time baby feeds again)

* dosage and frequency of dosage (a drug that you take frequently is better than a longer-acting dosage; if you take it frequently, it means the drug breaks down relatively quickly)

* whether the medication is one that is normally prescribed to infants and babies if the medical condition were theirs and not mother’s

* whether the medication will affect the mother’s ability to make milk for her baby (oral contraceptives fall into this category)

Jack Newman, MD, in The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers, (published by Prima!) has a whole chapter on breastfeeding while on medication. He says, “The essential question in all this is: Does a small amount of medication in the mother’s milk make breastfeeding riskier than not breastfeeding? The answer … is almost always no. Breastfeeding with a small amount of medication in the milk is not riskier than feeding the baby formula, except in a few specific situations. It is almost always less risky. There are safer and less safe drugs for mothers who are breastfeeding, but the majority are still safe. Health risks exist for both the mother and the baby when the mother does not breastfeed. This may not just be a question of taking the baby off the breast for a week or 10 days. It may be a question of permanent weaning, since off the breast for a week often means, in practice, off the breast forever.”

Newman goes on later to say, “You should not assume that your doctor or even your pharmacist knows much about drugs and breastfeeding or that they are concerned with helping you continue to breastfeed. Often the information they may use to decide if a drug is acceptable during breastfeeding domes from the drug manufacturer itself, found in a book called the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties (CPS) in Canada and the Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR) in the United States. The manufacturer is concerned about its own medical legal liability, not the importance to the mother and baby of breastfeeding.”

Tom Hale, MD, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at Texas Tech University School of Medicine, has a website and a Q&A forum which discusses specific drugs. He answers the questions himself and specifically discussed prednisone and azithromycin, as well as many other medications:  http://neonatal.ttuhsc.edu/lact/

This site is a clearinghouse of info and links to many good online  sources: http://www.breastfeedingonline.com/meds.shtml

The American Academy of Family Physicians introduces the topic of breastfeeding and medications in this way: “Physicians receive little education about breast-feeding and even less training on the effects of maternal medications on the nursing infant. Yet, concern about potential harm to the nursing infant from maternal medications is often cited as a reason to advise discontinuation of breast-feeding. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates the benefits of breast-feeding and the deleterious effects that can result from premature weaning.” You can read the full article here: http://www.aafp.org/afp/20010701/119.html

Here is an easy-to-read table of drugs and their relative safety/risk when breastfeeding: http://www.ukmicentral.nhs.uk/drugpreg/qrg_p1.htm

La Leche League’s website (http://www.llli.org/) has three articles specifically about medications in mothers’ milk. One is written by Tom Hale and he says “In a 14-month-old breastfeeding baby, the volume of milk provided is often so low that the dose of maternal medication transferred to the infant is minimal to nil.” This is exactly Asher’s present age.

William Sears, MD, a huge proponent of Attachment Parenting and breastfeeding has a website, too. Here’s an article on the benefits of breastfeeding “from top to bottom”: http://www.askdrsears.com/html/2/T020300.asp

This is just a small sampling of the information that is available. It was enough to convince me and Ian that it was safe for me to take the medications my doctor prescribed to me and to continue breastfeeding our baby, with no interruption or big change in our routine. I made an effort to take my meds after Asher had nursed and right before his longest sleeping period of the day, but otherwise we continued life as normal. Within 24 hours, I felt about 40 percent better for having taken the drugs. The day after that, I felt enormously better and very grateful I had done my research and decided to take them.

We carefully observed Asher during this time. He didn’t change in any observable way, except for the better: He gradually got over his cold after a few days. His mood improved and he returned to his normal happy, healthy self. 

I’m returning that baby formula to the store unopened.

The moral of this story is this: Do your research before you take the advice to stop breastfeeding your baby, and don’t assume the doctor knows all the info. Don’t risk losing the most perfect symbiotic and health-promoting relationship two human beings can have. It’s too important to throw it away.

I’ve just finished a small copyediting project about Syria. It was interesting and thankfully short. Arabic names are a bitch; transliteration produces all manner of variant spellings. I did not make a ton of money on the book and worked harder on it than I’ve worked on most projects in the last … um … six months or so, but as my freelance work has been spotty over the last several months, I’m grateful to have had the project. Now I am more convinced than ever that peace in that region of the globe is hopeless, although that was not the message of the book. 

I’m experiencing a lot of internal conflict over work and what I’m supposed to be doing with my time. On the one hand, I have a voracious appetite for work. I like working. I find it stimulating and rewarding. I like concentrating and solving problems, unraveling knots of words into a single, easy-to-follow thread. I like challenging myself and learning new things, which is truly the beauty of the work I do: Every project is different. There is always something to learn. And getting paid to work on books that I wouldn’t normally pick up to read for pleasure has the added bonus of forcing me to learn about things I’m not necessarily naturally inclined to learn about. It broadens my horizons, so to speak. Whenever I speak to other freelancer friends, I’m impressed by what they are doing, by how many clients they have, by how much hustling, networking, and marketing they do, by how much they work/earn (although direct conversation about money is rare). I’m impressed by their drive and ambition and success. I yearn for the same. I yearn to do more, earn more, learn more, be more. My immediate impulse at this moment is to email all my clients and ask for more work.

And yet …

I’m equally motivated by the needs of my family. I have two small people who can’t get along five minutes without me (or so it often seems). I have thoroughly enjoyed Asher’s babyhood thus far. Sometimes I get to take naps with him. We look at books together. We listen to music. In the afternoons when Lucas is home and not at the babysitters’, we enjoy the outdoors, go to the library, visit my grandmother, take walks, do art projects. These things are fun and fulfilling. I know that my children will grow up quickly. I am not willing to miss these early years. I think they do best when they are with me, and I’m grateful to have a supportive (literally and figuratively) husband and a profession that allows me so much flexibility to be with my kids. I also know that I would be a miserable wreck of a mother if I had to ship my children off to daycare full-time. I wussed out at the prospect of part-time daycare back in 2003 and have never looked back since. Some days I am able to slow down my brain and watch the butterflies drift across the yard. Some days I can take great pleasure in washing the dishes by hand with Lucas. I try to cultivate patience and peace by watching good things grow—vegetables, messes, and boys. They grow slowly. I am unable (and unwilling) to speed up the time. And so, my world turns slowly. 

Sometimes that slowness—the drowzy and dizzying days of taking care of children—is a welcome balm. And sometimes it makes me grit my teeth and feel corralled.

There is a metaphor about marriage that is a better metaphor for raising children. Ian and I have “hitched” ourselves to a cart full of precious cargo. We did it on purpose. We must ensure the cargo’s safe delivery to (hopefully) a happy and productive adulthood. We must choose our path carefully and not deviate from it randomly or without consideration. We must go slowly and steadily so as not to jostle or damage the cargo, or bounce it out and leave it by the wayside. We must make frequent rest stops and potty breaks. And although we might wish to run off together without the cart and cargo, we basically can’t—at least not until the cargo gets much farther down the path, and then only for a short break. And the cart won’t travel nearly so well with only one of us pulling, so we are hitched. It’s a good kind of hitched.

*Sigh*

It’s been a hell of a Spring Break and I, for one, am glad it’s OVER! 

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here in the dark with my vodka and 7, while Ian suffers in the other room: On top of cold symptoms that he’s worked through all week, he appears now to have eaten some bad sushi.

Asher is still sick. He alternates between feeling reasonably chipper and totally lame. His nose is sometimes so congested it’s hard for him to breastfeed. Suck, suck, detach, breathe. Suck, suck, detach, breathe. Suck, suck, detach, breathe. It’s pathetic. He’s now whining a lot of the time, not crying, just complaining. I don’t blame him, but there is so little I can do to make him comfortable: menthol rub on his chest, hot showers to clear out the boogers, milk when he wants it, a sleeping companion, being held a lot. That’s about it.

Lucas is doing better. The antibiotics do the trick. I hate the idea that we’re wiping out all the beneficial flora in his system by giving him this medicine, but lung infections suck worse. Maybe. He’s got 6 more days of meds to take, but he’ll be back to school on Monday. (Otherwise, I may just end up in prison.) Fortunately, my son is mature enough to take his medicine without argument or fuss.

In 12 days, I have left the house only a few times and then only for a brief while. My nerves are completely frayed. Today I yelled at Asher because he wouldn’t sleep. Yeah, that’s stupid. I know. He would go to sleep, rest for 10 minutes and pop awake again. He did that three times. He only really took a proper nap when I calmed down and resolved myself to staying with him instead of working. 

I have work to do and can’t manage to do it. I have my first project to edit in a whole new software program. At the moment, I’m not sure how to do it, only that I’ve committed to doing it. 

Yesterday evening I split, engaged in some retail therapy, and (Thank God) dropped in on some friends who were kind enough to convince me that 9 p.m. was not too late. It was a dark moment when I was sitting in my car in front of Barnes & Noble thinking I had no friends and nothing to do and nowhere to go. Thanks, darlings. I really needed to sit in your kitchen and bitch for a while. 

In a (perhaps belated) effort to stay positive and be Zen about all this, here are some highlights from the last two weeks. There were some fun and/or funny moments, in between the SERENITY NOW! moments.

El Torrito Cilantro Pepita Caesar salad dressing. Lucas has been practicing pouring.

We took a walk at Negro Bar along the American River on March 26. Here are a few pics from that brief outing. It took Lucas only .5 seconds to get covered in wet mud.

It was a beautiful afternoon.

This was before we got sick. I like knowing how to take time-delayed shots! The camera is balanced on the stroller.

This is a cupboard in Lucas’s bedroom. Asher has taken to hiding his pacifiers in this cupboard. Now every time Asher enters Lucas’s room, he makes a beeline for this cupboard to check his stash.

My tulips are blooming and they’re fabulous.

I planted a multipack of pansies in the flowerbed by my front door a few weeks ago. They’re looking great now.

Some bath time fun. Asher kept sticking his tongue out.


And Lucas thought that was cool, so …

We have a book from the library called Hurry and the Monarch and another book all about the life-cycle of the monarch butterfly. Lucas spent two entire days being a monarch butterfly. I had to sneak this photo because he didn’t want one taken. He also had a monarch butterfly painted on his face—and it was damned good, if I do say so myself.

Lucas has also spent a lot of time pretending to be a mouse and a rabbit, which is more palatable to me than, say, pretending to be a Hells Angel or WWF wrestler. Even though small woodland creatures talk in unbearably high, squeaky voices and titter loudly enough to make your head explode.

To keep ourselves busy, we have also: 
* painted pictures
* painted faces
* made mobiles from tissue paper and sticks
* played board games
* played with dominoes
* drawn and colored
* cooked
* gardened and planted 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1 cantaloupe melon, 2 lavender bushes
* read dozens and dozens of books
* shopped online
* done many, many chores
* cleaned out closets
* and blogged.

I’ve just finished tucking my 5-year-old in for the night. We have an elaborate but working bedtime ritual (bath or shower, brushing teeth and hair, stories, candle prayer with all of us, lights out, songs and cuddles with mommy) that begins just after dinner and ends with me creeping out of the room in the dark. I sing the same eight songs every night. Then I choose from one to six others in a regular rotation—I’m just wacky enough to mix ’em up once in a while! (Yes, I am a rockstar.)

The second-to-last song is always “Rock-A-Bye Baby.” I used to not sing this song to Lucas, but he started asking for it about a year ago. I figured one of his teachers sang this song at naptime. The last song is always “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” This one is by far his favorite lullaby.

Tonight Lucas asked me, “Does the baby really fall out of the tree, Mommy?” And I was left momentarily speechless. Because … well, I KNOW! What a terrible thing to sing to a small child! This is exactly why I chose not to sing it for so long! 

I said, lamely, “Well, it’s a way of saying the baby falls asleep.”

The internet says:

The words and lyrics to this nursery rhyme are reputed to reflect the observations of a young pilgrim boy in America who had seen Native Indian mothers suspend a birch bark cradle from the branches of a tree enabling the wind to rock the cradle and the child to sleep. The rhyme also hold a warning on the choice of bough!

Wikipedia elaborates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-a-bye_Baby

(author unknown)

Rock-a-bye, baby
In the treetop
When the wind blows
The cradle will rock
When the bough breaks
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby
Cradle and all

Baby is drowsing
Cosy and fair
Mother sits near
In her rocking chair
Forward and back
The cradle she swings
And though baby sleeps
He hears what she sings

From the high rooftops
Down to the sea
No one’s as dear
As baby to me
Wee little fingers
Eyes wide and bright
Now sound asleep
Until morning light 

I think I’ll try to learn the two last verses.

So last night was weird.

And fun.

And this morning I’ve flip-flopped between feeling embarrassed and giddy.

I met my mother for coffee and a mini shopping trip. I took Asher along of course. 

I got him dressed. 

Well, I took him in the outfit he slept in. But I put socks and shoes and a coat and hat on him.

I got myself dressed. 

We drove to meet mom. We chatted and drank coffee. 

Asher cooed at the passing people.

They cooed back at him.

We shopped a bit.

I drove home and put Asher to bed for a nap.

I worked while he slept.

I crept around the house silently.

He woke.

We played.

We ate lunch at around 2 p.m.

I mused about last night while he ate dried blueberries and bits of lunchmeat.

I looked over to where I had removed and left my black boots earlier while Asher was sleeping.

Two.

Different.

Black.

Boots.

Oy.

Asher’s party yesterday was great! I think everyone had a pretty good time, considering there was no pole or booze and my great granny, great aunt, mom, and dad were all there chaperoning.  Actually, I kinda meant to serve champagne, but then I forgot. About 26 people were here, I think, which is a helluva tribute to a little person who can’t even talk yet. Thank you to everyone who took time out of your busy lives to witness the anniversary of my little man and our survival of Kid Two: Year One. It means a lot to me that our community loves our sons. Thank you!

The food we served worked out pretty well, I thought. The punch was a hit with the kiddos. I tried to get all Martha on the birthday cake, which kinda sorta worked out, but kinda sorta failed. I guess it depends on how you look at it. I baked an Apple Hill cake and sprinkled it with powdered sugar. But not before I placed atop the cake paper twigs and leaves that Lucas and I cut out. Then we powdered it, so we had a negative image of the branches when we took the paper off. I decorated the branches with marzipan flowers that I made myself. This is the funny part: It took me three tries to create decent flowers. They caught fire when I went to brown them in the oven on the first try. The wax paper the flowers were sitting on was too close to the broiler, so actually it was the paper that burned. On the second try, I let Lucas distract me in conversation for exactly one minute and the flowers burned again. The third try worked OK, and they went on the cake. Lucas and I had decorated a special beeswax candle with modeling beeswax: It had a yellow star and a little toddler boy holding a single, giant flower. Lucas painstaikingly molded each flower petal for the candle.

Asher was completely distraught when we tried to feed him birthday cake. The vanilla ice cream made him cry. Poor baby, it was a very stimulating day and he didn’t seem to like it much when everyone’s attention turned toward him.

I only took a handful of photos, but I think my dad took some. Also, Tate and Elisa arrived and took some family shots of us, which I am excited to see.

We have a ton of thank you cards to write. Asher received plenty of gifts: some of which will go and live at the grandparents’ houses for when he spends time over there. That’s just fine with me. Some clothes will go into the closet until he grows into them, as will at least one toy rated for 3-year-olds. 

We just returned from a lovely reunion of the core friends of the Working Moms’ Group that I was a part of and organized for two years when Lucas was a toddler. Deidre hosted it at her place and Kelly and Ambrosia, Karen and Toby, and Crystal and Kayla attended, as well as the four of us. Deidre has a 4-year-old (Alex) and a new baby (Jace) who is 9 months old. It was surprisingly fun to get together again, perhaps it was because of the long hiatus since our last gathering, or perhaps it was because it didn’t have the obligation of being an official Moms’ Group meeting. Or maybe it was because the whole idea of the Sunday supper was Deidre’s and not mine, and I didn’t have to bang a drum to get everybody on board. It just fell together beautifully and effortlessly. 

Asher and I had our first Mommy & Baby class today.

It’s really called Parent Child class, but I suspect it will be all mommies. Only one other pair was there as the class is still forming, but Peggy and Willow seem nice. The teacher is called Teacher Marie. She is intense, warm, strong, experienced, and has a lovely singing voice. I think we are going to enjoy our Tuesday mornings in the class. The babies played. The mommies and teacher chatted. We had a snack. We sang songs. We walked to the farm and visited the sheep and the llama. On the way, we watched the 3rd and 4th graders playing on recess. Asher liked the new toys in the classroom—all wooden and beautiful, many handmade. He liked the rattles and the dollies and the wooden animals and gnomes. He really liked a surprising item: metal disks from the ends of frozen juice tubes. They made a fantastic sound when they crashed into each other. The teacher said, “Yeah. I know. Funny, eh? These are some of the most popular items in the whole classroom.” Which, I gotta tell ya, was full of thousands of dollars worth of heirloom-quality toys. Kids are weird, and yet, I understand completely why these metal disks were so interesting to him.

He really loved Willow, a six-month-old. He wanted to touch her face, especially her nose. Asher can be a bit rough because he doesn’t know better, so I spent a lot of time right next to him trying to keep him from bopping her in the head.  One of the things Asher loves to do at home is look at his books full of pictures of babies. And here was Willow—a real baby in the flesh!

One of the things that mommies do, especially when they get together, is to share tricks of the trade, and figure out where each one stands on the GREAT PARENTING SPECTRUM, which basically goes from Attachment Parenting/EC/Waldorf/Organic/Raw/No TV/Hippy/Drives-a-Horse-and-Buggy on the far left and Traditional/Authoritative/Pro-spanking/TV/Junk Food/Republican/Drives-a-Hummer on the far right. So conversation meanders gradually through all these areas of choice. “If you do organic or all organic …”; “Well, I stay home …”; “He has been using the potty since …”; “We have a family bed …”; “I try to carry my baby …”; “These cloth diapers are so nice because …”; “I really have a problem with soy …”; “Back when I was raising my kids, I nursed ….”; “My poor husband was fed solids so early ….”; “This product is so good because …”; “I sew her clothing myself …”; “My mother made …”; “We avoid plastic …”; “Isn’t silk the most vibrant, warm fabric…”; “The infant and baby woolens are best…”; “Are you aware that you can get this here?” “It’s easy to make it yourself at home…” “We grew spelt…” ect., etc. 

This exercise is tedious because it happens among all moms that I’ve ever met. In one sense, it’s a competition: Who is the Best Mommy? Who is the Best “Natural Parent”? Which is extreme bullshit. But in another sense, it’s a way of feeling each other out so that you don’t say the wrong thing to someone or hurt someone’s feelings and possibly undermine their confidence as a parent. It’s a way to learn about new things that you’ve never tried or never heard of before. It’s also a way of vetting potential friends. Weird.

If we hadn’t done this sort of thing this morning, I might not have learned that the teacher lived on The Farm in Tennessee (and a sister community in Kentucky) during the 1970s and worked as a nurse in the clinic—with Ina May Gaskin. Interesting times, indeed.

We’re finishing eating lunch. 
Asher clearly has to poop. 
He is covered in pesto sauce: oily and dotted with bits of basil leaves.
I clean him up, but just barely.
I rush him to the potty.
We’re in time.
He does his thing.
From the backyard, we hear screams of agony.
It’s Lucas and he’s hurt himself.
I leave Asher on the potty and run outside to Lucas.
He is crying and limping.
He is dressed as a cowboy.
He tripped over a garden hose and fell and hurt his knee.
I pull up his pant leg to survey the damage.
No biggie: no blood.
I tell Lucas that we’ll get the booboo bag (ice-pack thingy).
I hear another scream and crying.
I rush back to Asher.
He has crawled off the potty toward the bed.
He is wedged between my bed and his co-sleeper. 
His bare bottom is hanging down and he's grasping onto the edge of the bed.
The potty is upturned.
I pick up the baby and place him on the changing table pad.
I look over at the co-sleeper.
It has Asher poops all over it.
I clean Asher’s bottom, dress him, and put him down on the floor.
He is fine now.
I clean the co-sleeper.
I clean the potty.
I clean my hands.
I clean up lunch.
I ask Lucas how his knee is now.
He says it is all healed.
I scrub the poop off Asher’s talking teddy bear.
I clean my hands again.
I sit down at the computer to write this.
Asher is chewing on the cord.
Cowboy Lucas is being eaten by a 5-foot-long boa constrictor.
It is a perfectly normal afternoon.
The End.