Year: 2011

A Song With My Son

Reedu 3 Comments

My husband Jason and my son Mylo have a song. When I saw them dancing around the room to it for the first time I was touched. Moved. And jealous. Mylo’s daddy’s best dance move resembles that of “a hold” on a football field. Mommy on the other hand, well let’s just say that I’ve been known to cut a rug. A damn pretty good one, too!

Because Mylo adores dancing and because I don’t want him to look like Lawrence Taylor on the dance floor, it was imperative that I find a song to dance to with my son.

There is the song that I heard over and over again when I was in labor for 30 hours: “Heartbreak Warfare” by John Mayer. The word “war” in the same sentence as my son? I don’t think so. And let’s face it, John Mayer’s a douche.

There’s “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” but that’s what I sing to him while I’m nursing him before bed at night.  I wasn’t feeling that one either.

I was at my friend’s store the other night in the city and there, over the Pandora radio waves, I heard it: “Starlight” by Muse. It’s upbeat, it’s fun and the words are poignant.

YouTube Preview Image

I hold my son in my arms and twirl around the room while his lips are pursed in a perma-smile. Then there’s our other move where I hold his hands and he shakes his hips while stomping his feet on the ground screaming with delight.

“You electrify my life…” That is for sure.

Dancing to Starlight with my boy.

Jonny Be Good

Reedu 5 Comments

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost a year. And today I am finally doing something about it.

It was late summer 2009. I was at Animal Care & Control in Brooklyn playing God for the day. I had just started rescuing and fostering for United Action for Animals, a friend’s New York City-based animal welfare group.

I walked past his cage, we locked eyes and I fell in love. His name was Jonny. He was the victim of an almost-overnight ban on pitbulls in New York City Public Housing Authority buildings (otherwise known as “the projects.”) Jonny was handsome, goofy and VERY strong. My dog Ella had just gotten out of being in casts though, and so it was imperative to pull a pit who would NOT want to rough house with her. Jonny didn’t make the cut.

Shortly after I walked away from being Jonny’s ticket out of a death sentence, I met a young man in my neighborhood who told me he wanted a dog like Ella. I took him to the shelter to meet the pitbull I was so drawn to and they hit it off. Because space and time is of the essence when saving an animal from a high-kill shelter, Jonny was adopted out to this man through my friend’s organization.

I always had a bad feeling about the adoption for many reasons that I can’t detail here. But at the same time, I take full responsibility for adopting Jonny out to the wrong home.

I was almost 5 months pregnant when we got the dreaded phone call from AC&C. Jonny had been picked up as a stray. He was emaciated and throwing up at the shelter. They rushed him to the hospital where he had surgery to remove objects that were obstructing his stomach and keeping him from digesting food.

Emaciated Jonny recovering in our Brooklyn apartment.

A couple of days later we picked Jonny up from the hospital, but we were not in a position at the time to do a long-term foster. Thanks to my amazing mother-in-law, she offered to take Jonny up to her home in Connecticut.

Days later while she was walking with him off leash through her secluded, neighborhood lakeside community, Jonny met the woman who would give him his third and final home.

The couple were from New Jersey and spent weekends at their house on the lake in Connecticut. Their dog had died the previous year and the wife was about to retire. When she saw Jonny and learned from my MIL that he needed a forever home, she called it fate.

I often think back to mine and Jonny’s first-chance meeting. How we locked eyes and something inside of me surged. I think about what his life might have been like with the young man, how he was loved but not properly cared for. I remember how hard I cried when we picked him up from the hospital. I think about how I stroked him and whispered “sorry” into his ears over and over and over again. I think about my petite and serene MIL with this massive pitbull, and how grateful I am that she extended her home to such a powerful dog.

He was the dog I wanted to save but couldn’t, and then ultimately did.

Jonny, now called Sunny, at home in Conneticut.

My Tsunami Dream

Reedu 3 Comments

I have always been a dreamer. I dream vividly and wildly when I sleep. Sometimes I remember every detail, other times I don’t.

Sometimes I laugh out loud in my sleep. The first time my husband Jason ever heard this he was convinced I was acting. But I wasn’t. When he finally got me to snap out of it I just rolled over and was deep in REM sleep once again. The next morning I had no recollection of it whatsoever.

Every once in a while I have a nightmare.

Last week Jason and I confided our deepest darkest nightmares in one another. Mine is about airplanes exploding and often feature my brother in them. Sometimes I am with him, sometimes I am not. The exact details of these nightmares are vague and for that I am grateful as they are always troubling and very disturbing.

Jason’s nightmares are based on a tragic tsunami that comes barreling down our street in Brooklyn.  It’s a frantic and heartbreaking race to usher his family, furbabies included, to safety.

Well wouldn’t you know that my husband recently gave me his tsunami dream.

Early last Tuesday I had a very upsetting dream about a tsunami that was heading right for the high rise building we lived in. It was our home but yet we were some place foreign, possibly Australia. Emergency alarms had been sounding in the distance and I frantically began to comb our apartment for things to bring with us although I don’t know where we were going.

I am certain the recent tragedy in Japan and the around-the-clock news coverage of it has played a part in my dream, as did Jason’s neuroses. The high rise building likely signifies the condominium we put money down on in 2008 but have been battling to get out of .

The fact that I contemplated packing jars of baby food in my dream but then realized I didn’t need to because I was nursing could go either way. Either I am grateful I am still nursing or I felt helpless that in the face of tragedy, I had to be a source of comfort and nourishment for my son.

My grandmother’s gold bracelet also had a cameo in my dream. When I went to put it on the latch wouldn’t close, my hands were shaking and it dropped to the floor. And then there’s The Bug, our cat. I cornered her in the bathroom to get her into the carrier but she fled. Gold bracelet. Black cat. Two things i love that I would have to leave behind.

The climax of the dream was when I looked out the window and saw the mother of all waves approaching. I was on the phone with my mom and Jason had his back to the windows and was dressing the baby. I remember screaming “hold the baby, hold the baby,” and then I woke up.

I can actually hear you all unsubscribing me from your readers right now. I promise though, I am not a dark person.

When I was pregnant I felt I was carrying a girl but dreamed it was a boy, three separate times. When I was nearing full-term I dreamed I gave birth to a black cat. See, I’m not the least bit dark I tell ya.

I apologize in advance if any of you have a tsunami dream after reading this. And of course if you dream you’ve given birth to a black cat, I apologize for that, too.

—

Do you have a nightmare of your own you’d care to share?

March 2011 Takeaways

Reedu 4 Comments

At the beginning of this year, in an effort to support my resolve to blog more, I started something new: monthly takeaways. Call it a recap, a reflection or a review. The monthly takeaways are one part blog therapy and two parts a measure of the growth and progress I’ve made in my life (or not). After all, a month left behind means my son is one month older, I am one month older and therefore, hopefully, one month wiser.

My hope is that these takeaways will be fun and interactive and that you will join me by posting about your takeaways from this past month, in the comments below.

So, here goes…

My March Takeaways

1. A Cotes Du Rhone in a plastic bottle. Yes, you heard me, wine from the Rhone valley in France in a plastic bottle. Even my French mother-in-law was horrified.

Yep. A French man holding French wine in a plastic bottle.

2. We are STILL failed gDiapers users.

3. The boy discovered the book shelf. I hope this means he’ll be an avid reader.

And there go the books...

4. Contrary to what my husband Jason says, taking a chunk out of Zinn’s A People’s History does NOT mean our son Mylo can’t wait to read it.

5. The iPhone 4= Happy Husband. Used Blackberry Tour= Happy Baby.

6. Meeting for beers with our babies is increasingly more difficult now that the babes’ have become mobile.

Some of the moms at a beers & babies meet-up.

7. Saying good-bye to a family member, even if it’s just an old cat, is never easy.

8. A year and a half out of casts and our dog Ella climbed the ledge to look out at Brooklyn and Manhattan and bathe in the sun, for the very first time.

"What goes up must come down" doesn't apply to this dog.

–

So, what are some of your takeaways from this past month? Please share them with me in the comments, I’d love to hear!

Blackberry for iPhone

Reedu 1 Comment

My husband Jason is a happy man but I miss my buttons.

Since the iPhone came out in June 2007 , Jason had been asking to get an iPhone. The answer was always no, though, not because I’m mean, but because we don’t have AT&T.

A self-proclaimed Apple-addict, Jason’s prayers were finally answered with Verizon’s release of the iPhone 4 this past February.

A week ago today we traded in our Blackberries for iPhones. Well, we didn’t exactly trade them, we had to upgrade and pay the hefty upgrade fees of course. Grrr.

I wanted to wait a week before writing a post about my thoughts on the big life change, and so here I am. I’m loving the iPhone but still missing my buttons. I adore the multitude of apps and the clarity of the photos but it’s a struggle to text or email typo-free with speed, something I was a whiz at with my Blackberry.

My new friend.

Perhaps THE BEST thing that has come out of replacing our Blackberries with the iPhones is that my son Mylo has no  interest in our new phones! (My thinking is that he misses the buttons, too.) I wrote in an earlier post here about Mylo’s obsession with my Blackberry.

I actually  bought Mylo a klunky, plastic, Fisher Price Smartphone to sate his appetite for phones. Let’s just say it became yesterday’s news five minutes after buying it. So, because I now have an iPhone, Mylo has inherited my former Blackberry. Which just goes to show that if you gnaw and slobber on something long enough, you can have it!

Swimming With Dolphins

Reedu 7 Comments

I decided to write this post after I recently came across a fellow mom blog who had a detailed bucket list of things she would like to do in her life before she kicks it. Swimming with dolphins was one of them.

I’m not linking to this woman’s blog, who happens to be a TV news reporter, as she doesn’t need to be attacked by animal rights activists. But as a fellow parent who’s job it is to teach our children compassion and as a fellow writer and sometimes journalist who’s job requires being a savvy researcher, I was disappointed to see that swimming with dolphins was up there with visiting another country and opening a 401(k).

I don’t think people understand that more harm than good is being done when you swim with dolphins who are in captive environments. So here it is folks…

For starters, the capturing of dolphins is traumatic and stressful and often results in injury and death.

Dolphins are trained to look as if they perform because they like it. This isn’t the case. Tailwalking and playing ball are trained behaviors that do not occur in the wild. Dolphins perform because they have been deprived of food. Hold food in front of me when I am famished and I too would jump through hoops to get to it.

Most captive dolphins are confined in minuscule tanks containing chemically treated artificial seawater. Dolphins in a tank are severely restricted in using their highly developed sonar, which is one of the most damaging aspects of captivity. It is similar to forcing a person to live in a maze of mirrors for the rest of their life – their image always bouncing back with no clear direction in sight.

Perhaps the saddest part of dolphin captivity is how short their lives are. The average life span of a dolphin in the wild is 45 years; yet half of all captured dolphins die within their first two years of captivity. The survivors last an average of only five years in captivity.

Wild dolphins can swim 40 to 100 miles per day – in pools they go around in circles.

The truth behind swimming with dolphins could help set them free.

These are simple facts that people and especially parents, should know. If you think it would be cute to get snapshots of your spawn swimming with dolphins during your next vacation to Atlantis in the Bahamas, please, think again.

Sleep Deprived Yet Again

Reedu 7 Comments

I want to write and blog so bad but I’m finding it difficult to grasp even the slightest coherent thought today. All I’m capable of is jibberish because my son Mylo decided to not let me sleep one iota last night.

It all started with putting him to bed, which is usually quite painless. My husband Jason was at work and I began his usual bedtime routine at 7:00. I bathed him, changed him, read to him, sang to him and then nursed him. I then put him in the crib awake, and he flipped out.

Before I could even collect his damp towel and leave the room he hoisted himself up the bars of his bed. (Jason recently lowered his crib to the lowest level since Mylo’s learned to pull himself up to standing.)

As I closed the door behind me he was holding on to the side of the crib, peering through the bars like a caged animal, protesting at the top of his lungs. I left the room and waited 10 minutes. Waiting, hoping, praying that he would settle down. He didn’t. I returned to the bedroom after 15 minutes and nursed him some more. I put him back down and he repeated his climb up the side of the crib followed by his freak out routine, yet again.

Defeated, I sat down at my desk in the living room questioning if I should have left and wondering if and when I should go back. Unable to write and unable to think after almost 45 minutes of what sounded like sheer distress, I picked up the phone and called my mom. An advocate for crying it out, she suggested I go in and hold him like Jason does on the rare night I am not home to put our son to bed.

Looking for any excuse to have my motherly instincts validated, I hung up the phone and ran right in to my baby.

It took a while but he eventually settled down with his head on my chest and the remnants of his hard-earned cries dissipating with each breath.

Getting him to sleep last night, which is usually the easiest part, was tough. Don’t even get me started about the middle of the night. I’m not so sure that will ever be a walk in the park.

I’m minutes away from his bedtime routine. If tonight is anything like last night, then rest assured that there will two of us screaming and crying at the top of their lungs.

The Evolution of Standing

Reedu 5 Comments

My son Mylo recently learned how to do something new. Pull himself up. Last week he did it with a great deal of shakiness and this week he pulls himself up more swiftly and with greater assurance and posture. My in-laws snapped these great photos of him. Check out the rise of the little guy…

On another note, I wish I could tell you that my husband Jason got him dressed on this day but only I am responsible for the above fashion disaster. I don’t know what I was thinking other than that it was really early in the morning and I was half way between taking his pajamas off and putting his day outfit on when I all about gave up.

It’s become increasingly difficult to get Mylo dressed because the boy refuses to sit still for even five seconds! I thought, ‘no big deal it’s just my in-laws who are going to see him today,’ and now, well, now he’s out there for the whole world to see.

Facebook Booed When it Comes to Boobs

Reedu 10 Comments

Facebook, it seems, is anti-boob.

This past January, Facebook deleted the page for The Leaky B@@b, a breast-feeding support group where thousands of women come to ask questions and exchange answers. It has since been reinstated but only after it was put back up and deleted a second time. Facebook has since called the deletion a mistake.

And now Facebook has shown breastfeeding the door, once again. The social-networking site put the kibosh on Boobie Beanie — a hat for your baby to wear when you are nursing in public. Their Facebook page was deemed offensive and has been deleted. Apparently even a hat, crocheted to look like a breast, is too much for Facebook.

The Boobie Beanie

Seriously? Yep. Facebook says a breast is a breast and a nipple is a nipple, and they violate the Terms of Service.

I’ve been breastfeeding my son for 7 1/2 months now and it makes me think back to my first and so far ONLY encounter with an offended bystander in public. And it was a woman no less. Yes, a grown woman sitting at another table across from mine in a restaurant told me to get a room as I was feeding my son underneath my sweater with absolutely no boob showing.

I posted my shock and outrage on Facebook and I got 44 responses, all of them supportive. Here are some of my fave:

I’ve also read reports that Facebook has a knack for banning women’s pregnancy photos too. Gasp! What’s wrong with Mark Zuckerberg? We’ve heard by now that the guy’s awkward, but is he really that bothered by two of the most beautiful things in the world? A woman who is pregnant and a woman is breastfeeding her child?

If you haven’t already heard, Zuckerberg has finally declared to the world that he is in a relationship. The bizillionaire CEO of Facebook officially changed his relationship status this past weekend to admit that he is involved with Priscilla Chan.

So if they ever settle down and make bizillionaire babies then I guess we can assume they’ll be formula fed, right? If not, THEN maybe he’ll change his antiquated Terms of Service.

Until then, someone should start a Facebook page called “Hey Zuckerberg: Breastfeeding & Pregnancy are NOT pornographic.”

Beers and Babies, My Guest Post on CafeMom’s The Stir

Reedu 1 Comment

The wonderful Michele Zipp of The Stir was kind enough to let me guest post about my beer drinking, breastfeeding forays around my Brooklyn neighborhood. She was a bit perturbed. Not because I enjoy the occasional beer while breastfeeding my son, but because she’s a breastfeeding mom of twins who happens to live just a few blocks from me. Small world, right?? Well you can bet who’s getting an invite at the next bar meet-up!

You can check out the post, here.