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Mourning Our Vacay

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Back to reality. We came back from vacation two days ago and I’m lamenting returning from this trip more than any other vacation I have ever been on before. And we only went to Las Vegas! We’re not talking the tropics here people (just the Tropicana).

Undoing my unpacking. Never even knew that was possible.

But this WAS our first real vacation with our son Mylo, and it was a family vacation at that. And by family I mean five other people and 10 hands who helped with all the demanding baby needs! And it is perhaps that which I miss the most.

But it wasn’t all easy-peasy. After all, we were hit with a time difference that took it’s toll on Mylo the first two nights. My husband Jason wrote about his late night forays on the Vegas strip trying to coerce our son to sleep. Did I just use the words “sleep” and “Vegas strip” in the same sentence?!

The boy has become a rapid ball of energy with fierce opinions, amazing physical strength and the stamina of a marathon runner. Every time I turn around he is disheveling the cabinets, jars, drawers and potted plants in our home. Yes it’s amusing but it’s also downright exhausting.

The peaceful days of cooing at my newborn baby, of holding him in my arms and planting gentle kisses on his face, are gone. These days, Mylo only sits still long enough to breastfeed and even then, usually has ants in his pants.

Sometimes I want to run away from home, if only for a second. Sometimes I daydream about cultures in which the extended family aids in child-rearing. Other times I just want to return to Vegas… with my family. Never thought I’d say that.

The family.

Why I Hate the Kentucky Derby

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It’s springtime. The air is filled with the sweet smell of flowers and fresh starts. But because the first weekend in May is marked by the Kentucky Derby, followed by the Preakness Stakes a couple of weeks later, year after year I find myself struggling to get through this season.

I loathe the Kentucky Derby. Correction: I don’t just loathe the Kentucky Derby. I hate the ENTIRE race horse industry.

But I didn’t always.

In college a somewhat dorky albeit really funny boy invited me to a Kentucky Derby party in Camden, Maine. I shocked all my friends and practically the entire campus when I accepted.  It was a chance to put on a pretty dress, get out of the tiny town our school was in and drink Mint Juleps for the day – all while laughing my ass off with this boy.

I sipped on minty bourbon alright and watched in awe as these gallant creatures darted around the track. A horse named Real Quiet won the grand prize, a lush blanket of 554 red roses for him and oodles of money for his owner, but it was the horses that didn’t win that I couldn’t get out of my head. “What about them?” I asked aloud. “They get turned into meat,” my date told me.

Buzzkill.

What I had learned made ME “Real Quiet,” and so we made the two-hour trip back to school in near silence.

That was my first Kentucky Derby party and also my last.

It’s not that I love animals, even though I do. It’s that as far back as when I was a toddler in Nigeria, I was acutely aware of the injustices done to them, and it has always haunted me.

The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, Belmont Stakes and all of  your local thoroughbred race tracks directly contribute to the horse slaughter industry.

Of the racehorse industry, William C. Rhoden wrote the following in the New York Times:

The most significant source of racehorse deaths is the slaughter industry, one driven by overbreeding and demand from the lucrative global meat market. According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, more than 100,000 American horses are slaughtered each year in Canada and Mexico to satisfy horse meat markets in Europe and Asia.

Breeding operations produce thousands of so-called surplus thoroughbreds. What happens to the excess, the often anonymous horses? Some are sold to owners who take them overseas. Some wind up racing in Japan. Some wind up in slaughterhouses.

I’d like to point out that thoroughbred race horse, Real Quiet, the same horse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1998 and forever changed my view of this brutal sport, died this past September at age 15. While he didn’t go off to slaughter, he also didn’t retire at pasture. Tired and broken down, he spent the rest of his life as a breeding stallion.

Real Quiet

April 2011 Takeaways

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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.

For one reason or another, there weren’t many things I learned last month. Either because I just plain didn’t have the time to jot stuff down and snap photos, let alone reflect on life. Alas, here’s what does stick out…

My April Takeaways

1. I am officially fertile again. No, I am not pregnant! In fact, the total opposite happened… I got my period for the first time in 17 months.

2. My husband Jason gave me his cold this past month and I passed it on to our son Mylo. Fluids and snuggles eventually did our bodies good. Coddling the baby to bed did our sleepless nights bad.

3. This takeaway deserves a post all its own, but I’ve yet to write it. After getting over our two-week colds, we decided to sleep train Mylo again. Only this time it required moving our bed into the living room. While sleeping on a mattress as if we’re back in college is not ideal, the sleep training has been a success.

Oh two bedroom, where art thou?

4. Mylo truly has a zest for anything physical. Toss him onto a bed of pillows and he bellows with laughter. Drag him around by his feet so his shirt “swifts” our hardwood floors clean and he snorts and giggles the entire time. He’ll cut a rug to Adele and Fuse until he sweats and he just ADORES being thrown in the air.

He’s an active one I tell ya.

5. Despite making no money this past year, Uncle Sam surprised us with an unexpected bounty. That or having a kid really does bode well with the taxman.

6. We moved our car out of the expensive covered parking garage we’ve parked in for four years to contend with the rat race of alternate side of the street parking. Not only is it one less bill per month, but it also ended a complicated situation we had gotten into by letting a homeless man and his dog sleep in our car at night.

7. Mylo went to his friend Gratia’s 1st birthday party in the park on a particularly blustery April afternoon. Mylo had his first taste of a cupcake and learned how to play bang on musical instruments. I learned to keep my mouth shut when it comes to the contentious topic of schooling your children. When I told a couple who is moving to an area of Brooklyn Heights that would have them zoned for the most desirable public school in the borough, they informed me that they’re actually “hoping to get into” Saint Ann’s where tuition ranges between 23 and 30 thousand dollars. Well didn’t I feel like a loser?!

Mylo taking in the festivities while watching the birthday girl celebrate.

8. My brother-in-law Damien flew in (like the wind) from California last week. He adores his nephew and has even offered to watch him while we step out for a couple of hours but is adamant about not changing diapers. Somehow I managed to get him to put a onesie on the baby, though. I told him, “It opens in the crotch, figure it out.” It took him seven minutes and a ton of negotiating to get the boy to sit still, but he did it. I feel a diaper change coming on in his near future!

A wise guy to my left and to my right.

9. I could care less about the royal wedding. Will and Kate are a charming couple but I was really disappointed to see my country’s extensive media coverage pre and post-nuptials. Especially when hundreds of people died following the tornadoes down south, just two days before the big day.

10. If there is anyone who cared less than me about the royal wedding it was my husband. So much so that when I told Jason we were invited to a royal wedding party a day AFTER the royal wedding on our friends’ roof deck down the block, he asked, “Can I sit this one out?” Uh, NO!! And yet look who had a ball parading around like the queen?

Queen for the day.

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

My Community

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We’ve been very fortunate in the childcare department. Since the day my son Mylo entered the world this past August, there’s been a gaggle of grandparents surrounding him and supporting us. And we honestly could not be doing it all without them.

I am so very lucky and so very grateful that I got to spend the first seven months of my son’s life at home with him. We made new friends, went to the movies, hung out in bars and most of all, we bonded. My time off with my son has not only enriched my life, but has affirmed my opinion of this country’s lack of  standard, paid parental leave for moms and dads — which pales in comparison to Canada and European countries.

Because we’re not ready to put Mylo in daycare and because we wouldn’t be able to entertain a nanny salary right now, we’ve relied on our families for help.

Even though I haven’t worked in over one year I’ve figured out that I don’t want to be at home full-time. Yet I also don’t want to go back to work full-time. I know, not a ton of options out there for moms like me, but I recently took on a new project (that I have yet to unveil here on my blog) that will allow me to do just that. But because of this new project and Jason’s freelancing work, our lives just went from somewhat managed to insanely busy.

Thanks to my mom who has a demanding job in academia, my father who recently retired and my mother-in-law who keeps a busy social life, we’ve been able to carry out our zany and changing schedules from week-to-week. Not only do the grandparents drive two to four hours round trip to see their grandchild, but they also come bearing food for us to stockpile in our fridge. They keep us sane and they keep us well fed.

Granna Dianna, Mylo and The Bug.

And while these three forces have been very present in Mylo’s life since birth, I have only recently seen the value in the special bonds that are being forged. When one of the grandparents comes through the door he squeals with delight at the sound of their voice – even before he sees their face. He reaches out to be held by them. They play special games. My dad speaks to him exclusively in Arabic. My mother-in-law speaks to him exclusively in French.

I should also add that this has been great for me. I am learning a lot about letting go and handing the reins over to someone else — which for a neat-freak and self-proclaimed perfectionist, isn’t always easy. It has been invaluable for me to leave the house a few times a week to go out and be “Reedu” and not just a mom with a ton of responsibilities.

Horsin' around with Sidi.

And yet I am reminded even more of how valuable these friendships are following the recent, back-to-back news of two of our family members being diagnosed with cancer. I was 22 when my grandmother died, with whom I was very close. My son would be so blessed to have one, if not ALL of his grandparents in his life for that many years.

Of being a grandmother, my mom told me once, “It’s everything I thought it would be and more.” Another time my dad asked me if I thought he’d live long enough to have a drink with his grandson. And my MIL yearns to show her grandbaby her beautiful garden in France.

First bath with Grandma Claire.

I am so touched the grandparents feel great happiness in having an active role in my son’s life. He is one lucky and loved little boy…

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What about you, are you at home full-time with your baby(ies)? If so, how do you find relief? And if you work full-time I’d love to hear how you manage it all. Please share!

My Blog’s New Look

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As you can see, I’ve unveiled a new look for my blog!

Around this time last year I posted an ad on Craigslist looking for someone to transition my blog from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress blog.

The move was successful but my blog-guy took the money and ran and offered little to no post-transition support.

Thanks to Google and YouTube I was able to make some minor changes but not before spending many days and nights banging my head against the wall. It was time for me to be realistic. Cracking code wasn’t exactly my thing.  After all, I majored in Journalism, NOT C++!

It was during a recent, nightly head banging that I asked on Twitter how to change the size of the # of comments, you know because I get SOOO many. No really, I don’t, but I do dig how it looks when the number is bigger. I didn’t expect anyone to respond but then Dave Clements of Do It With WordPress Tweeted me down from the ledge.

I never figured out how to change the CSS class even with Dave’s instructions but I did begin talking to Dave about going in a new direction with my blog. We decided to move to a different framework and I chose a theme which would allow me to control the majority of fonts, coloring and sizing.

So now I’ve got a second blog-guy, one who is extremely accessible and reasonable and I’m really hoping he’ll stick around! If you’re ever looking to do something with Worpdress, or well, Do It With WordPress, definitely contact Dave.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give the ultimate shout out to my husband Jason for designing my logo/header. The Brooklyn Bridge has a TON of scaffolding on it right now so Jason actually sat there in Photoshop and removed each iron bar after each iron bar. Tedious and time consuming and not at all easy in this demanding household. Not to mention that I drove him bonkers while trying to decide on just the “right blue” in Photoshop’s vast color palette.

The iconic Brooklyn Bridge is undergoing a bit of restoration.

I look forward to playing around with my new blog. Just bear with me as you see some things change, because as you may or may not know I am a bit decision-phobic and tend to change my mind more than once before settling. (I’m talking about my blog of course, not my husband.)

Failed gDiapers Users

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I wanted so much to love gDiapers. I really, really did.

When I was pregnant, my husband Jason did some research on cloth diapering. The fact that newborn babies soil diapers up to 10 times a day coupled with the fact that Jason does the laundry (I know, aren’t I lucky?!) made him not love the whole tree-hugging cloth diapering thing.

But then he told me about gDiapers. Hybrids. The insides are biodegradable and  disposable. You could either flush them down the toilet or throw them in the trash or garden compost where they would break down in 50 – 150 days. The gDiaper shell gets washed only if and when they get dirty.

We were sold.

We began to stockpile the inserts the way new expectant parents collect Pampers. When I was in my third trimester I even vied for gDiapers’ limited “New Baby Bundle” along with thousands of other pregnant and hormonal, internet-savvy women.

Eventually, I accumulated everything needed to catch our newborn baby’s pee and poop while being kind to the earth at the same time.

Everything that is, but a plunger.

There is a whole procedure to flushing the insert of a gDiaper down a toilet. The decomposable fluff on the inside needs to be peeled away from its lining, dropped in the toilet, swished with the swish stick, flushed and THEN the lining can be disposed in the toilet.

I’ll give you the play-by play as I remember it when our use of gDiapers came to a head. (Erm, no pun intended.)

Mylo was just a couple of weeks old. He woke up for what was probably the third time in the middle of the night. He ate. He pooped. He peed on me while I was changing him. Jason ran to the bathroom with the dirty g in tow. I put a clean one on.

Jason returns and informs me that we have a problem. The toilet is clogged. Very clogged. Beyond plunger clogged. Of course I blame him for not following the flushing procedures. He swears up and down that he did. But it’s 1 in the morning. I’m a zombie. A zombie who now has no place to go potty.

Relief didn’t come until 9:00 Saturday morning. I don’t know what was funnier. The fact that we had to relieve ourselves in the bathtub during this sleep-deprived toilet debacle or Jason explaining to our Hungarian Super that he flushed a diaper down the toilet.

After that experience we had written off gDiaper’s until Mylo was out of the newborn phase. When he began pooping less (about 3 months) we reevaluated and decided we’d wait to give gDiapers a second chance when he was pooping solid (about 7 months).

Things were going pretty well until I flushed a dirty insert down the toilet and sure enough… it clogged! I submitted a repair request through my building’s website and when our Super came up with his snake-a-ma-jiggy-thing I was sure NOT to tell him that the culprit was a diaper. I wish I could have contained the news from my husband but alas, I couldn’t, and so guess who had the last laugh?

While I don’t think gDiapers are practical for newborn babies, now that our son is older, we do use them occasionally. But for all the love gDiapers bring mother earth, it bestows little love on this here mother.

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Have you used gDiapers, or any other hybrid or cloth diapering? Did you fail like us or are you an earthly success?

Elephant Stomps on GoDaddy CEO

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Well, not exactly, but GoDaddy.com CEO’s recent killing of an African elephant DID stomp on his business.

I’ve always been looking for a reason to jump ship from the web-hosting company where I own eight domain names, including this one. And if their Super Bowl commercials featuring scantily-clad women wasn’t reason enough, then shooting an elephant sure as heck is.

The company’s CEO, Bob Parsons, recently shot an elephant in Zimbabwe and posted the graphic, misspelled subtitled footage in a video for the whole world to see, and then dubbed it a “humanitarian” expedition.

Note that I’m intentionally NOT linking to the video which shows the CEO and other hunters looking over a farmer’s damaged crops, shooting at elephants in the night. The subtitle which was evidently not spell checked reads: “Team waits until the elephant are close then turns on lights duct tapped to their rifles & opens fire.” Parsons is then shown smiling while posing with the dead bull. The video depicts “hungry villagers” the next morning stripping the dead animal of its flesh while donning GoDaddy.com hats. The most boorish part of the video is set to AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells,” and is nothing more than an unscrupulous, self-promoting plug for the company.

If only this poor elephant could rise from the dead and wipe that grin off Bob Parsons face.

Parsons, who’s second elephant hunt this was, told myFox Phoenix that he is not ashamed of what he did. “All these people that are complaining that this shouldn’t happen, that these people who are starving to death otherwise shouldn’t eat these elephants, you probably see them driving through at McDonald’s or cutting a steak. These people [Zimbabwe villagers] don’t have that option.”

While I don’t condone the killing of any animal for human consumption, whether it be cows at slaughterhouses to hunting elephants, what I think is worth questioning is the need for an American CEO to carry out this gruesome task for the African villagers while shamelessly promoting his company.

After reading that Namecheap.com, a GoDaddy.com competitor, recently ran a promotion to raise money for the endangered elephants in Africa I decided it was time to leave GoDaddy. Coupon code (BYEBYEGD) allowed up to 10 domain transfers at just $4.99 per domain, $1 per domain of which was transferred to Save the Elephants. Namecheap raised $20,433 for the elephants in Africa.

Even though I missed out on Namecheap’s promotion (and boy do I love a good deal), it’s still worth jumping. To join me in transferring your domain from GoDaddy.com to Namecheap.com, click here.

What Parsons does not know is that elephants are extremely intelligent, sensitive animals, and that there are strategies that exist to protect them which combine community and creativity. As Stephanie Feldstein wrote on Change.org last November, conservationists and farmers have devised plenty of clever and harmless methods of keeping elephants away from crops.

For example, draped fences made out of string first dipped in chili-infused grease (because elephants don’t like chili peppers), or elaborate cowbell systems that trigger wires to warn when the intruders arrive, are just two ways to preserve villagers’ crops and preserve an ancient species who is highly social and intelligent.

It’s doubtful, but perhaps next year Parsons will trade in his rifle for a cowbell.

A Song With My Son

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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.

My Tsunami Dream

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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.

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

March 2011 Takeaways

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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.

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