Candy Outlook Good

Allison Clare was cross when she woke up from her nap before Trick-or-Treat, and she didn't want to get dressed. I was sitting on the floor folding laundry, and when I'd suggest pants or combed hair, she'd run away saying, "No, I'm too busy right now" or "No, I need to go do X right now." Finally I said offhandedly, "Allison Clare, I bet you don't even know what trick-or-treat is, but I bet you're going to really like it . . ." (I'd introduced the concept in preparation over the past few days, but only vaguely as I didn't want her to think it was imminent until it was really time to go). She was still running from room to room, pantless, talking on about all that she was busy doing, and she didn't appear to pay any attention to my trick-or-treat monologue.

Then she appeared a few minutes after I'd finished, standing in front of me, hands in front of her mouth, asking with sweet, patient curiosity and this eagerness that showed she knew it was going to be something good, "Mommy, trick-or-treat what is it? What is it trick-or-treat, Mommy?"

Which of course made me want to say back to her, "Oh, do not ask what is it / Let us go and make our visit."

So I got my two little ballerinas into their tutus, and we gathered up Sam and we all headed out. I have to admit, Halloween was more fun than it had been since I was a kid. The first year we lived in this house, we gave out candy with our friends Andrew and Noel on our front doorstep, and that was really fun--Noel and I were both pregnant at the time, and Sam and I had only been living in the house for days, so I guess it was an exciting time anyway. But somehow, last year, I remember feeling kind of Grinch-like and irritated by some of the trick-or-treaters, primarily the teenagers who didn't actually say "trick-or-treat" or who were dressed in violent or overly sexy costumes. What can I say, I'm a prude, I guess. It just seems like a holiday for little kids, so it should be kept clean enough that you don't have to cover their eyes.

But this year, as we walked down our street, which for some reason attracts kids from all over the county and is therefore mobbed, we got to meet a lot of our neighbors for the first time. I find it kind of weird that in contemporary America, you can live a few dozen yards from people and not even know their names, so it was heartwarming to meet them and see that they were just as excited to meet us as we were them. They were all really kind to the kids, and maybe the reason that people come from all over the county is that a lot of our neighbors appear to be giving out full-sized candy bars, a standard we have not upheld at our house (we seriously give out 300 or so pieces of candy, so I don't think we could even afford to give out full-sized candy bars, and I am in awe of these people's generosity!). Allison Clare, predictably, loved it, even though she didn't even know what was really in the wrappers as candy is a relatively new experience for her--this was the first time she's really been able to have much candy.

Then today, she went to our church's Harvest Party, where there were lots of games, cupcake decorating, apple "picking," face painting (she informed me, "I need to get my face painted"--all business, like she was telling me she needed to get her oil changed), and a really cute little fall display where each family could get a photo taken to take home. She got to make a leaf rubbing onto a bag, and the bag was filled with even more candy, so she was delighted and went home to show Daddy (who was home trying to recuperate from a bad cough) her purple kitty face.

Here are some pics of our Halloween:

"What has she got?"

(Brenda, I think she looks a lot like you in this one!)

Gillian's first Halloween!

I think she likes it.

AC's after-party look: face painted, then smeared; hair undone; chocolate all over happy mouth.

Chronometricals

Since we've had Gillian, something strange has happened in my personal mental universe. I have finally become synched with clock time. I look at the clock and think to myself, I have six minutes to do X; I do X, and then I look back up at the clock, and I have indeed completed the task within the allotted time. Occasionally, even when working with segments of time as small as 3 minutes or 75 seconds (the amount of time it takes to warm a cup in the microwave), I actually have time leftover.

I can honestly say that this has almost never happened to me before--certainly never routinely. Throughout my life, my basic mental state has been intermittently focused on a task at hand but generally absorbed by my own thoughts; I might accomplish something, or even a number of things, but it was all while thinking about something else, so I was used to losing minutes and even hours with helpless constancy.

A memory from childhood: I was often assigned the task of flipping the filmstrip to the next frame when we would watch them in school. You remember, right? There would be a recorded story, with a chime, and when the chime dinged, the person manning the little machine (which was supposed to be a reward) was supposed to turn the knob (?) to make it move to the illustration. I vividly remember that not only would I space out and miss the chime--not only would I fail to notice that we'd been on the same frame for way, way too long--not only would I fail to hear my classmates beginning to fidget and complain--but I would only be brought back to the space of the classroom by the whole class of other third-graders chorusing my name in irritated dismay. And even as I was rapidly flipping to the end of the film to try to catch up, I would know with dire, ashamed certainty that it would happen again the next time because there was no way I could keep focused on a task so repetitive and boring for the entire length of a filmstrip. Even as an adult married woman, I would set the oven timer, but not hear it when it went off; I would absently say to Sam, "I wonder why the oven timer hasn't beeped . . ." and he would say, "It's been going off every five minutes for the last fifteen."

But I have been somewhat brought down to earth, at least in the sense that I check in there more frequently and don't lose such huge swaths of time constantly, by having children. I have not wandered around the grocery store and discovered that nearly two hours have passed since some time before February 29, 2008, and I have not even lost much time at home since Gillian was born. There just isn't time to lose. I am suddenly realizing how other people can be so much more efficient than I am about certain things (JS and Sam, for example). I am realizing that if I stay focused, I too can become someone for whom time is predictable.

I think I may become somewhat less productive--I read not long ago about how disorder can be the most efficient organizing tool in the sense that it permits natural order to emerge, as when you don't organize your files but end up with the most frequently used ones at the top of the heap. But then again, that system wasn't working out as well for me since we've had kids because entropy seems to have accelerated, and my efficient disorder would rapidly become complete and utter chaos (un-ordered tasks would pile up because I couldn't return to them).

So perhaps this adaptation will allow us all to survive. I don't know; I would need some time to drift off into space and think about it.

Four Squares

We've gotten Gillian up to four solid food feedings a day, and last night she slept from 6:15 p.m. to 7:30 a.m., waking only once at 3:00 a.m. for a feeding. Ahhhhh . . .

Or, We Could Stop Starving Her

Last night was really bad again, and I called the pediatrician today to speak with the advice nurse. She said I should not need to feed Gilly at night at her age, and asked how much we were feeding her during the day. When I told her, she said, "Oh, she definitely needs more food than that."

Cue the Mommy-guilt, especially as a memory emerged from the hinterlands of my brain of having had an almost identical conversation with her at some point in Allison Clare's babyhood . . . probably about this stage.

Argh. I just can't keep up with how fast these little girls grow! Is this why AC is so tiny?

The Kiddie that Never Sleeps

Gillian has largely been a self-soothing baby; she started putting herself to sleep at a self-selected bedtime at about seven weeks old, and though she didn't sleep through the night yet, she didn't usually cry when put down to sleep and her night wakings were very manageable.

Until a month or two ago. We went to visit family, and Gillian quickly got accustomed to my feeding her right away when she woke up (to keep her from waking up the whole household). When we came back home, I intended to get her sleeping through the night again and then move her from her bassinet by our bed to her crib in her own room.

Gillian, however, had other plans. She liked waking up in the middle of the night and (I flatter myself) having Mommy all to herself in the quiet wee hours of the morning. And, hours it became. She would wake up at 3:00 a.m. and I would attempt to soothe her and put her back into her bassinet. She would wail. I would wait it out for a few minutes. She would appear to go back to sleep. I would fall asleep. Within 5 or 10 minutes, she would jerk awake with the realization that she had not had the meal she had come to expect, and express her outrage. Repeat, repeat, repeat every 15 minutes until 5:00 or 5:30 when I would give in or just fall asleep with her lying next to me, nursing at will.

Side note: I'm not a big fan of co-sleeping (for myself and mine) because I am a pretty sound and occasionally violent sleeper. Plus, when something in my sleep disturbs me, I simply write it into the content of my dreams and continue on. Rolling onto my husband (who is 10x my baby's size)? Not a problem: I simply shift gears in my sleep and dream that I am flopping over onto a raft after a nice swim. I don't want to do that with my baby.

Anyway, things continued to disintegrate. Gillian quickly acclimated to our new routine and wanted to play for the couple hours in the middle of the night. She would cry (or sleep, cry, sleep, cry) if laid in her bassinet, but if held, she would smile and coo and pull on my face and generally enjoy the time while being charming beyond belief. I mean, she almost had me--I was almost ready to accept this as my lot in life. But she was also waking at other times in the night, usually around midnight or 1:00 a.m. and sometimes at 11:00 p.m. too, so I was getting less sleep than when she was a newborn.

So, now she's in her room and the last few nights have been brutal . . . she wakes a lot and cries out (and it does kind of kill me not to just go in and feed her, since it's what we both want, but not a good habit for her sleep). She has gotten better at putting herself back to sleep, and I think she's getting used to not feeding all night long, but oh my goodness, if this continues . . .