And it was written:  All will go well in the two-income family as long as the child can go to daycare.

Tuesday, July 5, 7 a.m. - Oh, the first day back after a holiday is always hell. It was exactly one year ago on July 5 that I returned to the working world, this time as a mama.  Do I regret my return to the workforce?  OF COURSE!  But I secretly desire to sit around and write novels all day, so I'm not really a good candidate for that question even without a child.  Oh, and in the midst of my navel gazing, I realize the little angel has an 102-degree temperature.

Tuesday, July 5, noon - The little angel, while fussy, has held out at 99 degrees for a few hours.  I think I'll take her to the Emerald City. 

Tuesday, July 5, 2 p.m. - Beloved calls to say he is at home with the little angel. He is not happy. Enter chaos.

Wednesday, July 6, 3 a.m. - The child must be held. The child will die if she is not held.  Hold me now, Mama.  No, this way!  No, that way!  You must hold this toe, right now!  No, not that toe!  God, do I have to tell you everything?  I hate you. I hate me. I hate the whole world.

Wednesday, July 6, 4:40 a.m.  - I lie, tossing and turning, certain we have given the little angel contaminated Motrin. I think I might be starting to lose it a little. My beloved slugs me when I wake him up for the fourth time to verify it was US who opened the Motrin last week, not a killer.

Wednesday, July 6 - 7 a.m. - Mother calls to see if we want her to drive down from Iowa to watch the little angel while we work. Her temp is normal. We refuse, proud we don't have to beg for help.

Wednesday, July 6 - 9 a.m. - Little angel has gone insane and is howling through my conference call. Co-workers asking for deliverables.  Sweat has soaked through my shirt.  I'm freebasing caffeine.  We are almost out of Diet Coke!  I shall die.  Call Supernanny service for sick children my friend C. told me about last week (that I swore I would never use - well, promises are meant to be broken).

Wednesday, July 6 - 10 a.m. - Supernanny has NOT come through.  Get off conference call, frantically try to update document. Try to put little angel down for nap. She screams for twenty minutes.  Feel her head - 102.  Very bad.  Feel horrible. Bad mama, bad worker.  Call own mother, beg her to come down after all. Call back Supernanny.

Wednesday, July 6 - 11 a.m. - Little angel still screaming.  Have updated two lines of document.  Lines of reality beginning to blur. Head throbbing. Sister Little calls to tell about new car - very exciting. Start bawling on new-car Sister.  She calls Mother.  Mother on way.  Call beloved, demand he come home so I can update the damn fucking document before my afternoon of back-to-back meetings at Large Corporate Telecom.  Beloved is mad because he will be chastised by not-understanding-because-have-stay-at-home-wives co-workers.

Wednesday, July 6 - 1 p.m. - Supernanny calls - she is coming!  Hooray!  Mother calls!  Is on way!  There will be free childcare on Thursday!  Today - only $60 for 3.5 hours!  On top of what we paid daycare that she is not using this week because she is banned!  Hooray!  It is so much fun to bleed through the eyes so we can work!  Fuck, yeah!

Thursday, July 7 - 7 a.m. - Mother is here.  Little angel wakes up with just 99 degree temp.  We are all very much hoping to go on our planned flight to Chicago tomorrow to see Sister Little, Rock-Star Boyfriend and New Car, not to mention 30-pound Kitty and Small Kitty.  I call the rental car agency. They tell me we have to cancel THIS MINUTE in order to not get charged if we are not coming.  Start crying, call Sister Little, wake her up to discuss.  Mother comes upstairs while I'm crying.  Beloved groans from behind the bathroom door.

Me:  "We can't come, everything is for naught."

SL:  "Why?"

Me:  "Little angel still has a fever. Car rental company has been taken over by wolves. Woe is me."

Ma:  "Her temperature is gone."

Me:  "What?"

I look down. The little angel is throwing my mother's white Hanes underwear all over the floor.  My beloved is adverting his eyes.  She does seem to be better. We decide to keep the car, get several pediatrician's phone numbers and plan to proceed with the trip unless her fever goes above 101.5 in the next 24 hours.  I frantically pray for low temps.  I NEED a vacation, people.

When did I become a grumpy old lady?  When I gave birth to a darling little angel whose sleep is easily disrupted by loud, booming noises in the next yard over.

Let me explain.  Before we had the little angel, we lived in a mostly Hispanic community in Midtown. I don't know if this is a generalization or a neighborhood-specific stereotype, but the folks in our old neighborhood liked their fireworks.  DAMN, did they like their fireworks. I've never seen anything like it.  I think they must have mortgaged one of the houses in order to buy them all - it was a four-hour extravaganza that left the entire side street so hazy you could barely see your hand in front of your face, and for once I am not exaggerating.

We thought it was great.

Then we moved to this neighborhood, which is tame, tame, tame compared to the fiesta we left in Midtown.  However, a few bottlerockets and M-80s have been known to grace our streets (and this morning, I found evidence of them in my yard, little bastards).  We still didn't care, until last fourth when the little angel was about three months old and trying to sleep just as the going was getting good.  "Oh, it'll be better next year," we said to each other.  "She'll be older then."

Fast forward to last night. Yes, she is older. She is also WORSE now about loud noises.  She used to peacefully nap right next to a loaded vacuum cleaner, and now she breaks into tears at the mere sight of my hairdryer.  So it was with trepidation that I cranked up her window unit air conditioner and her air cleaner (read: noise machine) as I backed out her bedroom door at 8:15 p.m., the first blast of the night echoing in my ears.

Fortunately, there was enough white noise in that room to rival a wind tunnel. We still sat on our front porch and glowered at the pirates next door.

"If they wake her up, I'm going to carry her over there so they can listen to her cry," I said, throwing back my third glass of wine for the night (hey, it was a national holiday, and we were sitting around on our own porch with no fireworks).

"It won't do any good to call the police," said my equally grumpy husband.  "They better not shoot them in our yard again."

But of COURSE they shot them in our yard, because we yelled at them last year. They are preteens. This is what they live for.  This is better than every other holiday rolled into one - this is a chance to lose a finger or shoot out an eye - the stuff that tween dreams are made of.

We survived.  I can't wait until the little angel is old enough to aim for their yard. We'll see what they are made of then.

Oh, it has been a long few days.  My stack of unreturned call messages is threatening to take over my desk, and I have a deadline today.  The little angel screamed and clung to my leg today when she realized she must return to the Emerald City after two days with Grandma and Mama.  I think she thought the Endless Summer had begun.  Life is cruel.

On Wednesday morning, we all got up at 5:45 a.m. to get to the hospital on time.  The little angel was a bit apprehensive as we pulled up to the children's hospital. We parked by the giant butterflies stuck to the entrance.  I pondered them upon our approach.  That's the right thing to do, of course:  Teach children that bad things are first marked by giant butterflies.  Butterflies = unexplained pain.  Ooh-rah.

I have to admit, though, the fact it was a children's hospital helped a lot.  The pre-op room, where the little angel changed into her orange gown (yes, it tied in the back, even for babies) had lots of toys, a bubble machine, and a bunch of toddler-sized plastic cars - the kind you usually see attached to grocery carts.  We immediately plopped the little angel in one of them and started driving her around the pre-op room. There were about seven other toddlers, who all looked longingly at her car.  The other parents plopped all their kids in the other cars, and soon the pre-op room looked sort of like 435-West on a Friday afternoon. 

This routine got old in about ten minutes, so we moved on to books, then toys, then just screaming as we waited the hour and a half before they called her name.  The entire surgery only took about ten minutes, but I still found myself sobbing into the December issue of Parents magazine in the waiting room.  When they called our name, we walked into the hall, where we heard the little angel wailing.

They handed her to me, and I thought she might have had a lobotomoy instead of ear tubes.  She was moaning and writhing and crying big crocodile tears.  She didn't even seem to realize we were there.  She cried all the way home and for about a half-hour more, until she realized the barnyard version of Baby Einstein was playing.   Halfway through that, she fell asleep in my arms, and when she woke up, she was the normal little angel again.  We snuck into her room at 11:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. to give her Tylenol, but she still woke up at 4 and 5 a.m.,  just to check for butterflies. 

Tomorrow is the little angel's first surgery.  She's getting tubes put in her little ears.  Despite hearing from my brother-in-law, the nurse who sees ten of these a day, plus everyone else to which I've ever spoken, that EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE, I'm still nervous.  They are going to put her under!  They are going to put foreign substances in her eardrums!  SHE WILL BE IN PAIN.  Agh - que horor.

I'm trying to decide if it would be appropriate for me to show up at the hospital with tequila. 

This weekend's ten-hours-round-trip car adventure with the little angel went relatively well. There were only two or three times when she just started howling in frustration and boredom and we couldn't get her to stop.  When she gets that bad, not even my husband's efforts at physical comedy (he hits himself in the head with an empty 16-ouncer, which makes her laugh - so sad) could overcome them.  Of course, those were the moments that made me seriously wonder if we should just stay put until she is five, but then of course I realized how boring my life would become if we never went anywhere.  About that point, she usually got distracted by midgets on motorcycles or a cow or some other interesting outside-the-car thing.

While the trip was lovely, it was of the visit-your-in-laws variety, so there weren't many hilarious-showstopper moments.  Probably the funniest to me was seeing the little angel and her two-year-old cousin, A., proudly wearing their horn hats from BW3.  They are like Burger King crowns, only they have horns instead.  So there they are, walking around the restaurant as though everything is normal, wearing horns.  I mentioned to my beloved that we should try to find every other ridiculous hat we could and put it on her head before she is old enough to protest.  After all, our days of being able to dress her however we want are sadly numbered. 

Today at noon we are leaving for a five-hour road trip to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  "The city of five seasons." The fifth season is "cereal."  There is a Quaker Oats plant AND a corn syrup plant in Cedar Rapids.  One smells like Cap'n Crunch, the other like burning rubber dog shit.  Still, they try to promote themselves as a city with an extra season in which to enjoy oneself. I only hope the enjoyment happens as far away from that corn syrup plant as possible.

I used to work in Cedar Rapids as a young'un, fresh out of the University of Iowa.  I was an assistant account executive (read:  one who faxes) for an advertising agency.  I did public relations.  Well, I did faxing.  This was before people really used e-mail a lot, or at least in Iowa, where we got the latest fashions at least six months after they hit the coasts.  Ever wondered why people in Iowa were the last to let go of mall hair?  Well, there you go.  I even know some ladies in my hometown who still have bangs that can touch the car ceiling's upholstery.  I'll pause to let that sink in.

We've taken the little angel a lot of places.  She's been to Chicago, Portland (OR), Minneapolis (twice) and Iowa City three or four times.  We also go back to my hometown, near Omaha, about four or five times a year.  She is what you'd call a seasoned traveler.   However, she was still a flesh purse for many of those longer trips, content to stare vacantly at a hanging toy for hours on end.  Those were the days in which we could take her to restaurants with cloth napkins. Oh, and she slept a lot.  She's a little different now.  Sort of insistent, easily bored, not fooled by "peek-a-boo" for more than five minutes.  If you eat something, she wants a piece, which means I have to stop snacking on toddler no-nos like cashews and chocolate.   She's kind of like me. I'm a wee bit concerned about her ability to sit in the car for five hours.

To compound this problem, my beloved got a speeding ticket yesterday for doing 77 in a 65.  He was mad because he had the cruise set at 75.  He has told me for years no one will bust you for 10 over. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.  However, this means we should probably not do our customary 85 (my sister recoils in horror - she thinks we should drive 45 with the child in the car, and well, she might have a point, but we still won't) all the way there.  We should probably go a reasonable speed.  I'm not allowed to drive for very long, because I'm a horrible driver. I admit this. I get sort of distracted by the people in other cars, cows, cute houses, license plates, the yellow line in the middle of the road, stuff like that.

So last night I broke down and did what I swore I would never do - I went to Target and bought the cheapest portable DVD player they had.  I'm ashamed to admit this. I want the little angel to enjoy books and spirited, backseat conversation. I will pull this thing out only as a last resort.  Oh, and I bought Finding Nemo, too. If you're going to surrender to materialism, you might as well go all the way.

Dear Microsoft,

Hi.  It's been a month since my last letter. Since then, I have taken your name in vain 17 times and have danced around my home office in fury twice. 

This time it's Word on my work laptop.  I don't know what's wrong with it. I'll bet you do, because with its last dying breath, it manages to send you an error report before vanishing into that ridiculous field your buddy Gateway put on my background.

Hold on, my other computer - yes, YOURS - is beeping.

Some other little Application Gnome that lives on my computer just told me there is a security breach in Word 2003.  I just clicked on something, and the gnome tried to fix it.  He took all evidence of the breach message with him. I wonder if he doubles as one of your handlers?  I do remember something about "if the user is logged in with administer capabilities, a hostile entity could use your computer to destroy the world."  Or something evil like that. 

I'm now on minute 47 of trying to download all sorts of updates the gnome recommended.  This better fix Word, Microsoft.  I've got shit to update.  I mean it this time.  Fix my computer, or face ye the wrath of a stressed Alpha Mother.

With love,

Dorothy

The little angel's class at the Emerald City has entered a new realm of kid-dom:  the banishment of the cribs.  Yes, Waddler B has hit the big time.

They sent a note home earlier this week asking permission to get rid of the cribs.  Now the little angel and her pint-sized colleagues will be snuggling up on...mats.  Doesn't sound as comfy as a crib, does it?  Still, I won't have to wash her Pack-n-Play-sized sheet every week, and I guess the slight reduction in laundry should be counted as a Major Milestone.  I feel sort of like the Other Parents and we have embarked on a new journey together.  Or else it's another sign of the newest rage:  parent peer-pressure.

Though I signed her permission slip with the heady joy that a parent feels when freeing oneself from yet another baby accessory, I am a little worried about her transition to the mat.  Will she sleep on it?  Will she start skipping naps altogether?  Will the waddlers band together in yet another Baby Mutiny?  Her lead teacher is taking the rest of the month off to travel with her husband, and her favorite teacher, ShaKeiva (or KaSheiva, when I'm drunk), is taking over.  Hopefully ShaKeiva of the Multicolored Cornrows will know just how to handle this new change.  I have faith in her mellow smile and easygoing attitude.

Still, the mat.  I'm not so sure about this one.  What's she going to want next?  A big-kid bed?  My beloved suggested this when he found out about the mats.  I'm still a fan of the Kid Cage and all the freedom it provides.  Hopefully the mat will not mean I next have to buy her a training bra.  Eek.

The little angel's class at the Emerald City has entered a new realm of kid-dom:  the banishment of the cribs.  Yes, Waddler B has hit the big time.

They sent a note home earlier this week asking permission to get rid of the cribs.  Now the little angel and her pint-sized colleagues will be snuggling up on...mats.  Doesn't sound as comfy as a crib, does it?  Still, I won't have to wash her Pack-n-Play-sized sheet every week, and I guess the slight reduction in laundry should be counted as a Major Milestone.  I feel sort of like the Other Parents and we have embarked on a new journey together.  Or else it's another sign of the newest rage:  parent peer-pressure.

Though I signed her permission slip with the heady joy that a parent feels when freeing oneself from yet another baby accessory, I am a little worried about her transition to the mat.  Will she sleep on it?  Will she start skipping naps altogether?  Will the waddlers band together in yet another Baby Mutiny?  Her lead teacher is taking the rest of the month off to travel with her husband, and her favorite teacher, ShaKeiva (or KaSheiva, when I'm drunk), is taking over.  Hopefully ShaKeiva of the Multicolored Cornrows will know just how to handle this new change.  I have faith in her mellow smile and easygoing attitude.

Still, the mat.  I'm not so sure about this one.  What's she going to want next?  A big-kid bed?  My beloved suggested this when he found out about the mats.  I'm still a fan of the Kid Cage and all the freedom it provides.  Hopefully the mat will not mean I next have to buy her a training bra.  Eek.