The Final Fleeting and Relatively Insignificant Thoughts of 2007

All week I've felt like I should have something profound to say about the past year but it's escaped me. Mostly, I've just felt tired.

Tired and overwhelmed - by the holidays (whoops, forgot to send out cards), major work changes to contend with, a baby who still doesn't sleep, a pigsty of an apartment, an overwhelming to-do list (1. Get passports for the kids before Jan. 11 trip...), writing that feels totally uninspired lately, and a pair of hips that oddly seem to get bigger and not smaller postpartum.

I managed to get the girls off to grandma's so that Nate and I could have some semblance of a New Year's Eve, just in time for him to learn that he has to work tomorrow at 6:30. That's AM.

As I was sitting around feeling a little too mopey and self-pitying, I got the most wonderful, delightful email. A friend with some potential pregnancy woes got some most excellent, excellent, positive, best case scenario kind of news.

I sobbed in one big flood of catharsis. I cried for her. For me.

At almost exactly this time last year, I had similar kind of news arrive about a baby that I didn't know would survive to see the light of day.

And she's here.

She's sweet. And she smiles. She eats like a mofo. She's strong as a horse - a horse who can benchpress another horse.

And she has the most delightful, contagious giggle in all of babydom. Especially when she's bouncing.

I'd say 2007 has been a fucking great year. How about you.

---
Edited to add: I can now be less vague - feel free to congratulate Catherine on her great-so-far pregnancy news.

Christmas: The Photographic Highlights. (Also Video if I can Get it to Work)

12/24 5:45 pm
Thalia's first fancy restaurant. She behaves beautifully.
Maybe because we keep her drunk.

7:12 pm
Chocolate ice cream for dinner, cotton candy for dessert.
I'm pretty sure that's what the early disciples had in
mind with this Christmas business.

7:45

Sage is right at home on the Barcelona chair. Our little retro baby.

8:05
The very first glimpse of the Rock Center Tree. Yes, that tree.

8:07

Eat it, naysayers: NYC tourism rocks it during the holidays

9:02
The kids are in bed and time for the annual giftwrapping fight.
Nate's theme this year: "Crap Wrap." I was better off the year he hid
porn photos under little lift-up flaps on every box.
No, I'm not kidding.

12/25 8:05 am

Sage's first taste of Christmas: Made in Europe and lead-free.

8:18 am
Opening gift #14 of 696.

9:04
Where are my eggs, woman!

The official winner of the Christmas gift competition: A pair of toddler scissors.

Runner up: Semi-inflated balloon left from the day before. Sigh.

Sage's favorite gift: An afternoon with grandpa.

4 pm
Hot chocolate
4:05 pm
Wardrobe change

We are a classy, classy family and don't you forget it.

Well, It Is Almost Christmas

Me: Oh Jesus, Thalia. You spilled the cereal everywhere.

Thalia: Jesus, mommy. JESUS CHRIST.

The Spirit of Giving Strikes Again.

The binkie addiction is a frightening thing. It starts innocently enough--one for naptime, maybe the occasional car ride--and yet it grows with an irrepressible intensity that is almost beyond comprehension. One night you're tucking the little silicon nub between your slumbering baby's lips, blessing it for providing your child (ahem, you) such sweet nighttime solace...and the next you're frantically tearing up the house, digging through coat pockets and upturning couch cushions in search of the blasted things, while a teary two year-old beckons from her crib, mooooooooore biiiiiinkiiiiiiies!

I feared it would never end.

An intervention was called for.

A good sign that things were reaching critical mass

On Tuesday, inspired by the BFF who told her toddler son that it was time to "give his binkies to the babies," I made my move.

(Actually, her story is even better than that: Just before they all moved to Tanzania, she told him that the babies in America needed the pacifiers. It was a great twist on the old "starving children in Africa" schtick.)

Thalia and I had a little chat about how binkies are for babies, not big girls like Thalia. And that maybe it was time to give her binkies to babies who need them more. I expected a good fight. But remarkably, she loved the idea.

Thalia's a giver.

And so we ran around the house, gathering all the Nams and Nuks and Avents we could find, and dropping them into an aqua Bliss bag. The irony was not lost on me. Then we said goodbye to the binkies and thanked them for serving us well, then had some ice cream to celebrate.

She hasn't looked back since. And in fact, she tells everyone she meets how she gave her binkies to the babies. Also, how the 4 and 5 trains were not working but now they're working again. But that's another story.

Yesterday I rushed home late to relieve the sitter and discovered our dog, in a fit of excitement, had tried to dance with Thalia, ballroom-style, leaving two crimson clawmarks down her right cheek from her eye to below her lip. (She was fine, but of course all I could think of was this. Good God.)

While she cried, she never once asked for a binkie.

She did ask for ice cream. I can live with that.

One down, one to go

3 Things That Pissed Me Off Today and One That Should Have But Didn't

1. Every feel like your office is like The Office? But not in the having an affair with the cute coworker way but more like...

well,

yeah.

2. For some reason the candidates don't want to talk to BlogHer's 7.6 million female readers but hey, a couple of them have offered up their spouses. I will only take that offer from Senator Clinton.

3.This email came via the MIL (who I like) in, sadly, a non-ironic way, via some dipshit or another that I don't know, but evidently shares genetic material with Nate somehow.

This is too true to be very funny

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a casual manner, think about whether you want the "politicians" spending
YOUR tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend [blah blah stupid f*ckity blahblahblah]

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

[B-D blah blah blah not clever enough to reprint blah...]

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and
20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans. It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division...Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 BILLION [sic] to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number, what does it mean?

A. Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516,528.

B. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787. [NB: 204,400 homes alone were destroyed in Katrina so no clue where this number comes from.]

C. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington, D.C .. HELLO!!! ... Are all your calculators broken??

And then it goes on to rant about taxes, inflicted on hardworking 'mericans by (presumably) God-hating, family-hating, 'merica-hating, tax-and-homosexual loving Democrats.

Now here is where I look at the idiots who forward on a piece of crap like this on and refuse to be diplomatic.

I honestly can't believe that there are morons so devoid of critical thinking skills that they think, "Yeah! New Orleans! They suck!" instead of, "Hm, maybe that money will be used to rebuild schools and hospitals and infrastructure; used to reconstruct the destroyed wetlands and um, the levees; used to bring back culture and education and shops and senior centers and not actually HANDED OUT TO THE RESIDENTS IN CASH."

Cash which, clearly, will be spent on boozin' and whorin'.

How do people this stupid manage to survive from one day to the next? Aren't they the ones who end up memorialized in the annual Darwin awards, done in when they try to clean out their chimneys with grenades or work under their pick-ups using Schlitz cans for car jacks? Or is that just my own wishful thinking.

The only thing more infuriating than that email is how one of these asshat's votes cancels out mine next November.


4. When I got the Babble daily email highlighting a post called "The Grinch: Why I Won't Let My Child Believe in Santa" I was prepared to hate it. Really hate it. Of course it was set up to be provocatively snarky but in truth it was a thoughtful, smart essay by Shasha Brown-Worsham about growing up scared of Santa and trying to understand the line between innocent childhood mythology and outright lies. Worth a read.

As for me, I'm all about the guy in the red suit.

I've been having the best time fudging the Santa story with Thalia, who is sharper than she should be at 2 1/2. I see eyeing me suspiciously as I describe Santa bringing presents, all while I'm wrapping them myself.

Can he just be the guy who fills her stockings while mommy gets credit for the stick horse and kitchen set? The guy who keeps track of her wish lists? Or is that not enough work to earn all the cookies we have to make for him (unless we set out the ones Erin is hopefully sending us).

And of course, it's hard to explain the whole chimney aspect when you live in an apartment building. Maybe he comes down the trash chute?

Have you played fast and loose with the Santa stories? Or are you by the book with your childhood lies?

It's a Nasty, Cold, Miserable Day Out. And in Other News...Contest Winners.

Ya know...

A whole damn week of stalking Pitt and Clooney with paltry results and who does Nate just stumble into at work today? La Brad.

Answers:
-No he's not
-No she wasn't
-No idea who they were
-Pretty short

In far more important news (Well, to like six of us), the awesome caption contest entries have been judged by leaders in the lucrative world of humorous blog writing and tabulated by the accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers after their all-Martini holiday blowout late last night at Ghost Bar.


The finalists:
"At least I have my dignity. " (Marketing Mommy)

"...and I for one welcome our plastic animal overlords..." (Queen of Spain)

"Expend 1 to reroll dwarven spell damage." (Anonymous; and I'm embarrassed that I get it)

"I should have stopped at that second martini." (Zellmer)

"You there with the camera? You really need to get a job." (The New Girl)

"Very funny. But not as funny as Guess where I took a dump." (Grey Matter Matters and similarly, Kaleigh)


Third place:
"What are the odds that she tastes like chicken?" (Friend of Emily, who has to be one of my relatives but not exactly sure which)

Second place:
"Ever since that lead-paint-from-China scare, chewing toys just doesn't seem as appealing as it once did." (NG)

And the winner:

F*cking Humans.

Thanks Pixie!

A donation is being made in the name of, um.."Pixie," I guess, to help the victims in Washington State who could probably use a little more to laugh about these days.

Happy Monika

Each year I have the best Hanukkah intentions. I buy the candles--generally at the last minute and often with some difficulty--and light them. Most nights.

Okay, so some nights. I typically get some great momentum through about night 3, forget nights 4 through 6, come back strong with night 7, and then night 8 escapes me completely. And the one good thing about this is that the pack of candles, which is supposed to last for 8 nights, ends up lasting two years.

A Hanukkah miracle!

(Jews will get that one.)

But this year something different happened. As I was busy describing the joys of Christmas and tree-decorating and ornaments and caroling to Thalia (my dad always called us "Christmas Tree Jews" - I think it's a NYC thing) something latent and buried in my secular Jewish soul rose up within me and implored me to do this thing right for a change.

The first night of Hanukkah I ran out and procured some matzoh ball soup, a few latkes (potato pancakes for the uninitiated) and a little bag of chocolate coins which I set out on the table with the dreidels. I read Thalia a little book about Hanukkah which described it all better than I could. Who even knew that you're supposed to eat jelly donuts because they're fried in oil? I wonder what the Torah has to say about trans-fats.

While Sage simply squealed at the candles the way Thalia did in the two Decembers past, this year my almost 2 1/2 year-old was old enough to repeat after me, in the most heartbreakingly adorable, tentative, sweet way, the blessing over the candles, made only more endearing in that she can't quite say Hannukah and instead says Monika, her sitter's name.

This blessing business, this was the point in the evening that Nate the angry atheist folded his arms and looked away. And I had to explain to him that no, it wasn't particularly religious for me, even while the prayer mentions God, but it was tradition. Hard for him to understand, I pointed him here which helped me explain that this prayer, this series of rituals, make up the collective mythology and folklore that define who I am and where I come from and who our daughters are too. And I want them to know this. It's not about whether God is or isn't. It's about me. It's about family. It's about participating in something greater than ourselves.

We have to start here. We have to start with the traditional stuff and see where it evolves and how it becomes our own. Because to me, that's where holidays develop real meaning.

Maybe it becomes about a new dreidel game that we invent. (This year the rules were along the lines of: Spin the dreidel and...Thalia Wins! Thalia gets all the candy!) Or maybe it becomes about saying the prayer with Monika instead of Hannukah. Maybe it becomes about yelling at daddy to come back to the table for the blessing each night. I don't know. I won't know. Not yet. We're only just beginning. But I want Hanukkah to be a real part of our holiday traditions from now on if only in a small way.

And so we continued to light those candles, for maybe the first time in my adult life, every single night.

Except last night. Last night we forgot.

Last night we were too busy decorating the Christmas tree.

First thing this morning, it was Thalia who reminded me."Well what the heck," I said, scraping the congealed wax out of the Menorah as I sat Thalia down at the table next to her sister with a bowl of cereal and milk. "We can light them now and we'll eat breakfast by candlelight."

I emptied out the remaining candles purchased last year, and finding us just one short, I dug out the new pack that I never assumed I'd need this year. I retrieved one shorter, mismatched yellow candle and used it to light the others, before placing it right in the center of the Menorah, against all protocol.

The last candle flickered out about 8:40 this morning.

Funny enough, if we keep it up next year, remembering every single night, we'll be one candle short on the last night all over again.

I sense the beginning of a tradition.

...l'hadlik neir shel Monika.

Grrrrrrrr...andparents

For some time now, I've had this uncomfortable suspicion that my children's grandparents make better parents than we do.

I do understand that, in a way, this it the right of the good grandparent to be doting, loving, obnoxiously attentive, before sending the kids right back to The World of Parents Who Say No.

We cut the kids off at two books before bed, the grandparents can make it through a dozen, plus songs. We are the ones who say "no cookies before dinner" not even realizing that the kid is asking in the first place because Grandpa already gave her three.

It's a cliché, of course. Which is comforting. Because that's how I know I'm not alone.

But then there's my parents (all four of them) who put even stellar grandparents to shame.

I can hardly be bothered to find a clean baby spoon most days, all while my stepmother has made room in her small Manhattan apartment for an entire array of kids dishes, cutlery, sippie cups, and bibs to match any outfit or occasion. She even has kids placemats. Placemats! Do we have placemats? No.

Grandpa, or my dad, is willing to prepare a James Beard-quality dinner each time we visit, and at the same time, preparing an equally gourmet alternative just to suit Thalia's limited culinary view. We're talking homemade ketchup.

My stepfather has somehow, seemingly out of nowhere, developed saint-like patience, which he once demonstrated in a Guiness Book-qualifying swing pushing session so extensive, Thalia puked immediately afterwards.

And my mother - God, my mother. I don't know if it's an entire lifetime spent as a progressive early childhood educator, but she's always a chapter ahead of me, telling me that Thalia is drawing straight lines/identifying chipmunk sounds/eating red snapper before I even realize she's capable of it.

Am I insecure about this? No.

(Lies!)

Not at all.

(Liaaaaaar!)

Ugh.

Mostly I repress it all pretty well--especially on the days Thalia wakes up first thing and asks for one grandparent or another. Heck, in the end my kids benefit, I get a break, and we all win. But I admit a lump in my throat when this weekend, my own grandmother suggested that Thalia loved her grandma so much, she was more like a second mother.

"Yes," I agreed reflexively before realizing exactly what I was saying. "Um...no. Wait. Not a second mother. Like a grandmother. A terrific grandmother."

Not only do the grandparents do no wrong, what they do is extra-right. They can read more Sandra Boynton books to the kids, prepare more nutritious meals, endure more zoo and museum and germy bookstore visits. They actually talk to the kids the whole time on car trips--Look at the helicopter. Here comes a tunnel. Hey, how many different birds can you see?--and not just pop in a CD. They can get Thalia to eat ham, teach her about fat peas, show her the world through magnifying glasses and binoculars, clean up after her, get her to sleep on time, and still get Sage fed and the laundry done, all without relying on Dora.

Hell, my mom can carry the baby longer in the Bjorn than I can.

She's 64.

But this weekend, at last I caught one teeny little chink in the armor. One almost imperceptible bit of deception that made me sigh with relief that indeed, the grandparents are human and not some kind of super-robot nurturing machines that always put the needs and desires of their littlest genetic recipients ahead of their own.

From the den in my mother's house, I heard her describing a scene to Thalia that could have come from any of the many children's books occupying progressively more real estate on her selves: See that man? What is he wearing? Is he wearing a coat? Is that wind? What sound does the wind make?

As I peeked into the room, I noticed Thalia slowly backing away from them, shaking her head in uncharacteristic protest.

My mother continued: But what a big coat he's wearing! And do you see the scarf? What color is that scarf? Does it look cold here? Do you see that bird?

Thalia responded, "A different show, Grandma."

And that's when I realized.

It was not a book at all my parents were showing Thalia. They were not enlightening her about the change of seasons or teaching the science of snowfall or expounding on temperate zones or the effects of December wind on the animal kingdom.

They were trying to trick her into letting them watch The Weather Channel.

Weather's okay and all, but I'd rather watch Little Bear.

Making Fun of Poor Defenseless Housepets: Sport or Viable Career Path?

Give me your best caption for this photo I found on Nate's computer today--I know you have a good one in mind--and I'll donate $50 in your name to Daring Young Mom's admirable volunteer efforts to help the good folks of Washington State. Otherwise Nate's utter and complete disregard for any dignity that our poor little Emily might have left had will be for naught.

----

Meanwhile, thank you so much for the wonderful questions for the Toy Industry Association - the ones posted and the ones emailed to me. I'm so glad to see so many thoughtful, concerned parents who have more to say than just "Arggghhhhhh!"

Hopefully answers will be posted within the week.

----
Oh, and if this is true, it's awesome. Maybe Nate will get Trump at his table when he goes back to waiting tables next week.

Pie.

This is pie baking season. Which, on one hand, is totally awesome. Because of all the things I can cook, pie is one of them.

Let me rephrase that - of all the thing I can cook, that thing is pie.

I make a killer apple pie. Rockin'. Stellar. It's published, in fact. (Okay, so I co-authored the cookbook, but still. Published!) And every holiday season, I uncrumple that same recipe I've used since I was 12, each time with Nate pointing out that I'm a complete moron for not having it committed to memory by now, and start peeling Granny Smiths.

My memory jarred by this post from Binky, I was reminded of the Great Thanksgiving Day Apple Pie Debacle of 2003, the last year I resided in my small bachelorette apartment in the West Village. This was a place with a galley kitchen so narrow, when the oven door opened it hit the opposite wall. Needless to say, I cooked infrequently.

Unprepared for Thanksgiving at my mom's house as always, I woke up at 7am to start preparing my single contribution to the meal. I preheated the oven--and moments later was overcome with the most wretched, horrible, evil, holocaust kind of stench. It was worse than 9/11 and that's saying something.

The foulness sent Nate and me gasping for air into the hallway, even ten minutes after having turned off the gas.

At a loss, we called the building's handyman who pulled out the broiler pan (oh, the broiler pan! Never thought to check the broiler pan.) and declared, "Mice. You have a lot of mice living in your stove."

"Oh my God," I gasped. "Did I just...was I...did the oven...did we just cook the mice?"

Nate and I looked at each other in horror.

"Worse," the handyman said in his thick, Eastern European accent. "You cook about three pounds mice shit."

Every Thanksgiving from then on, we sit down to eat my pie at Thanksgiving and someone inevitably blurts out, HEY LIZ, REMEMBER THE TIME YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW YOU HAD MICE LIVING IN YOUR STOVE AND COOKED THE MICE SHIT?

Which of course, is awesome. And really whets the appetite for that pie.

---

If you have questions for the VP of toy safety of the Toy Industry Association--anything at all--you can continue to leave them through the weekend on my last post.

The Year of the Recall: Got questions? You're going to get answers.

Let me start by saying that this is not another "look what a dumb pitch I got" rant. I'll save that one for the woman who asked me to review a book by an evangelical preacher about how to talk to your kids about Jesus.

Oh by the way, Happy Hanukkah, fellow Moms of the Tribe. Remind me also to tell you about my blasphemous Atheist of a sigOth letting Thalia put Ketchup on her potato pancakes.

Anyhow, what did I want to talk about? Oh right, lead in toys.

Ugh, I know - how much more can we talk about it? Well, I suppose as long as we hear that lead-tainted Fisher-Price toys only get recalled in Illinois which has higher standards than the rest of the US. (Thanks, Fidget.)

Score 1 for the Prairie State, -600 Million for Fisher-Price.

Because of Cool Mom Picks, I get a whole lot of solicitations and information about safe and not-so-safe toys this year. Toy companies are leading their pitches with their manufacturing standards. It's really exciting to me because what it means is that moms, as consumers, are actually making a difference. In fact, so many of the amazing shops and artists we featured in our Safer Toy Guide can't keep anything in stock. So whoo for us, using our pocketbooks to vote against mass-produced, corner-cutting, potentially unsafe plastic crap for our kids this year. I'm proud of us. Love us. Us is awesome.

And then I got an email from a very nice PR flack named Rachelle, with the very unfortunate job of having to do damage control for the Toy Industry Association which--don't let that dot-org url or the cute stock photos of kids on their site fool you--is essentially the lobbying group for the asshats outsourcing all their toymaking out to the lowest bidders. They're also on the record as being just awesome with pthalates in toys.

I got feisty when I read through the press release and saw the old PR trick, "Hey, here's a Q and A with our grand poobah of toy safety and by the way she's a mom too!"

I know it's hard to believe, but yes, sometimes I do in fact get feisty.

Essentially the Qs were not Qs at all, but softballs gently lobbed by Fleishman-Hillard in the way that Sean Hannity asks George Bush things like, "So on a scale of 99-100, how much more do you love our country than John Kerry?"

And so I went off on a rather pissy rant describing how the VP of Toy Safety (hell of a title to have these days) took no responsibility for any of the issues, described no penalties for violators of our "very tough policies" and was incredibly vague about actions going forward.
The part that really stuck in the noggin was the following. Parentheses mine.

Everyone knows about the recalls of toys with lead paint. How big is the problem and should parents be worried about toys made in China?

The toy industry is very concerned that lead has been found in the paint in some toys. This is absolutely unacceptable. [But apparently it's acceptable to find lead in toys if it's not in the paint but in the PVC - see above Fisher-Price link.] We have a new initiative to ensure consistent testing and inspection of products so that this does not happen again. [Entirely unrealistic, but sure does sound good!] For now, two facts can help parents assess the relative risks of toys. First, parents should know that toys are statistically among the safest products in a household. [More than Windex? More than electric drill bits? Goodness, that IS comforting.] Toy recalls account for less than one percent of the 3 billion toys sold in the U.S. annually. [So if it's not recalled it's automatically safe? That's not what I've heard.] Also, all toys sold in the U.S. must conform to U.S. safety standards, regardless of where they are made. [And U.S. safety standards are...good? Better than Germany? Better than Nigeria? What's the continuum here?] Secondly, medical experts and toxicologists say that a child's exposure to lead from a recalled toy would likely be minute under normal use. [Under normal use presumably doesn't include a 2 year-old sucking on the head of her Diego doll.] They encourage parents to focus instead on the primary sources of lead in a child's environment – from paint in old homes, lead in old plumbing, and other environmental sources.

SO.

Anyway.

For someone in charge of safety assurance, I felt neither safe nor assured.

But the more I thought about it, big deal if I didn't like the press release. I'm just one person. Where does that get me?

And so, brilliant readers, Rachelle from F-H has quite bravely agreed to let a mob of angry, frustrated, anxious, but incredibly thoughtful, smart, and impressively critically-thinking moms ask the questions of the TIA's VP of Toy Safety this time.

Awesome.

Leave me the question you'd like to ask in comments. I'll cull down a few good ones and send it off by the end of the week or so and then post the answers - so you and you alone can decide whether the TIA is looking out for your best interests. That's all we really want, right?

Please feel free to pass this along, or ask your menfolk or grandmas or friends if they have question too. It's kind of like the YouTube Presidential debate where everyone gets a voice, only you don't have to make a video.

Although if you did, and you had a confederate flag in the background and a smartass question about it, I would totally accidentally put your full name and home address on there before releasing it to BET.

----

Update: Find the questions--and answers--here.

The Dubious Principles of Laundry and the Single Parent

There's brilliant book of short stories that Steve Martin wrote in the 70s called Cruel Shoes. I fell in love with the bizarre title story in about fifth grade, which essentially began and ended with the same thought: "Well, that's every shoe in the place. Unless, of course, you'd like to try...the cruel shoes."

Thalia owns a pair of pants known as The Crazy Pants. And that Steve Martin line echoes in my head every time we've scraped her drawers for the last vestiges of something clean and presentable and are left with this stupid pair of green and raspberry tropical print, flared leggings that I bought in a momentary state of delusion, coerced by an expiring credit from a store I generally despise.

Well, that's every pair in your drawer, Thalia. Unless, of course, you want to try...the crazy pants.

Friday, after two long weeks of no laundry, we were down to the crazy pants.

Saturday we were down to digging her jeans out of the hamper, smelling them, and justifying well - we probably won't run into anyone we know anyway.

And so Saturday night, a night I generally can be found slumming it at Soho House with SJP or snorting blow off a stripper's DDDs with Charlie Sheen, I committed to doing laundry.

I had two good hours before Nate left for work at 7:30 (Whoo. Night shifts.) and so I trod up one flight in our apartment building with two washers' worth of clothes and got bizz-ay.

I walked back into our place in time for Nate to say, okay well...have a good night. Sage is down and I have to go.

Wha-a? No! Wait! don't leave!

You suburban parents, you have no idea how lucky you are to escape this monstrous conundrum. Why, you can just leave your children in bed during naptimes, go downstairs one flight, maybe two flights to the laundry room. Or maybe it's a whole McMansion's width away. In any case, never once does some sanctimommy yell, BUT WHAT IF THERE WERE A FIRE? You take on static cling while your angels peacefully slumber overhead and never hear that taunting voice in your head, ARE YOU CRAZY, YOU COULD GET STUCK IN THE ELEVATOR. You can even fold an entire oversize load of clothes, doing battle with temperamental collars and demanding linens right on the dryer, all while feeling confident that no one in the playgroup would challenge your decision with OH MY GOD ISN'T THAT ILLEGAL?

Nate kindly agreed to wait ten more minutes, at least until I could get everything in the dryer. Worst case scenario, Nate grabs the clean, if wrinkled, clothes on his way back home at midnight and we pray that one of my creepier neighbors hasn't left them on the top of the machine as he (rightfully) commandeers it for his own.

But when I raced upstairs, I had no idea that the digital readout would taunt me by flashing the word IMBALANCE, and that 25 minutes of wash time still remained.

I returned. Nate left. And about 20 minutes later, I did the crazy New York parent laundry move. God help me.

With Sage snoring and Thalia cuddled up in front of some Elmo movie on the verge of sleep, I raced upstairs, two at a time, (OH MY GOD WHAT IF THE STAIRS BROKE DOWN WHILE YOU WERE ON THEM) and hurled that heap of wet tangled clothes from one machine to the next like I was a Fear Factor contestant flinging an armful of snakes into a tank for the win. And the whole time, I've got fellow Brooklynite Mr. Nice Guy's story in my head about how he not only left his kids while they slept one time, but got locked out of his apartment in the process. I figured at least that can't happen to me - I didn't even bother to lock the door.

Panting, I flew back into our apartment maybe 3 minutes after I had left. Thalia hardly even noticed my return. My laptop remained on and untouched next to her as I had left it, as I became aware I had done so semi-intentionally, with the fleeting (if entirely implausable) theory that my two year-old could bang on enough keys to trigger some sort of emergency signal to the proper authorities should the need arise. Oh common sense, why hast thou forsaken me in my time of need.

As I write this now at 8:48, both kid are sleeping. Nate is serving grilled baby octopus with shaved fennel to fancy people. And my laundry grows cold and untouched in the dryer.

Or so I hope.

I'm not going back up there to find out.