TeeBeeDee

That's our daughter's name. Cute, isn't it? I think it means "wait a long time" in Chinese....

Well, not really. But that is the name we put down on the day care application: Name: TBD
Date of Birth: TBD
Place of Birth: China - at least I could answer that one. We are not expecting to know anything about her until at least May and we won't meet her until sometime in July or August, but since this is New York City, we can't wait to apply because there won't be any room - we must apply now for the September 2006 school year. I'm just glad I am starting this whole process early because once she gets into this daycare, she can be there until she starts kindergarten, which happens to be in the public school that is literally in our apartment building.

New York is a very scary place to raise children. Not for the crime, but for the intense competition to get into the "right" nursery school. There are actually "Nursery School Consultants" that will assist you in the search for a place for your child. The most recent ad went like this:

"Thinking about kindergarten admissions testing? Get a leg up by attending the Smart City Kids Admissions Testing for Private and Public Schools workshop that covers:

• Understanding the Kindergarten Admissions Tests (Private, Public Gifted and Talented Schools)
• What to expect during your child's interview
• What IQ tests really measure
• Natural and playful ways to raise a smarter child
• A checklist for touring schools
• How your involvement positively affects IQ test scores and elementary school performance

Includes a free copy of "The Ten Best Ways to Nurture Your Child's Intelligence Before Kindergarten Admissions Testing."

We are not talking about 18 years olds getting ready for college, or even 13 year olds getting ready for high school - we are talking about 2,3 and 4 year olds!!!

Some parents hire people to help fill out the applications and write the essays. Yes, you read correctly. The parents have to write essays about why their 3 year old should be granted access to the hallowed halls of their nursery school and parents are actually paying them. And then there are the interviews for both parents and children. Kelsey just finished applying to colleges and that process wasn't as stressful as this can be, because here you are constantly being told it is so hard and so competitive and if you don't send your children to one of these schools, you will ruin their lives forever.

We wanted to avoid all of that. We picked this daycare because it is a wonderful, warm place and there are no "interviews" or "essays" required. Not like some others that we visited. And we plan on public school too. We happen to live in an area with really great public schools - concerned and active parents, lots of diversity in the classrooms, and enough resources to provide a great education. Plus, knowing Arny and me, she will be joining in on our nightly debates on everything from the current "totalitarian states" to "why John Stewart is brilliant" before we know it, so she will have an early start in thinking for herself.

I just wish all these parents paying $20 -25,000 a year for 4 and 5 year olds would take half that money and put it into the public schools. That way, every child in this city could get a decent education. Instead, a bunch of people with more money than sense feed into this "kid must have private school education" and if you don't feed into it, you really don't care that much about your child.

I care. I care that my child grows up with a wide range of friends from all walks of life - all economic classes - all races - all religions. I care that my child judge people by how compassionate and kind they are, not how much money they have. I care that my child not be so scheduled with activities up the wazoo that she needs her own appointment book.

I care that my child has the luxury of being a child.

"I'm So Calling 911"

Michelle said as we sat in our baby CPR class trying to breath life into the plastic babies on the desks in front of us. Is it one rescue breath and then five chest compressions or twenty chest compressions and then two rescue breaths? Should I adopt the 2000 standard procedure or the 2005, that our instruction admitted she herself had not been trained in, but was telling us anyway. Will I remember to:

1) tap baby to rouse, never shake!!
2) tilt head
3) listen for breathing
4) start rescue breath
5) look for signs of movement
6) repeat
7) Call 911
8) leave door open for EMS
9) Freak out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, I added the freak out, but seriously, how can you not? Is it really possible to stay calm and focused when your baby is bordering on dead? Am I really going to remember to do everything in order? Will my inner "ubermom" come out when faced with pending disaster?

And then, let's move to the "babyproofing". Do I really need to install a toilet seat latch? You know, those contraptions that lock the seat to the bowl that even rocket scientists can't open. The ones that fill you with fear when you see because you either have to figure it out before your bladder explodes or slink back to your host/hostess and say "Ummmm.....I need some help in the bathroom..." and then sheepishly follow them into the bathroom and watch the "I am superior" look on their face as they unlock in one easy press and turn to you and say "voila!!". The only way to avoid this humiliating experience is to "relieve" yourself somewhere other than the toilet - the bathtub perhaps??

Note to all of my friends and family: DO NOT DO THIS IN MY HOUSE!!!!!!!!

Seriously, I do not plan on purchasing the toilet seat lock. Socket protectors, yes. That, and I think I'll just wear the baby in my soon to be purchased hip carrier until she is 18.

Expecting

When you look at me, you do not think I am expecting. You don't see the bulge in my tummy, the cute t-shirt that says "baby on board", the expectant mother waddle in the later months of pregnancy. But I am expecting. Perhaps I am not nauseous from morning sickness, only from the expectation of hearing that my dossier made it to China safely. I may not be craving pickles or ice cream from the hormonal changes to my body, but I am craving wine and chocolate to take away some of the anxiety that comes from too many delays and revised "expected referral dates". You don't see the bags of baby clothes and boxes of supplies, but only because I don't know how old my child will be and what she will need.

But, make no mistake. I am expecting. You may not see the physical signs, I may act as if "all is well" and "when it happens, it happens", but - make no mistake, this child is on my mind every minute of every day. She is as much with me in spirit as if I was physically carrying her for these many months.

The question then is not "are you expecting" but "who are you expecting?". Who will this little person be? Will she be quiet and shy like I was when I was little? I know she won't have my curly hair or Arny's eyes. Will she have either of our sense of humor, or will she be a serious child? What has she experienced in her short life so far and what of that will she bring with her?

I wonder if all of the reading I've been doing, all the discussions and planning, all the decided "ways to do it" will make a bit of difference. It's all so unknown.

Will she turn my life upside down? I do know she has already turned my heart inside out.

Coupons of Love

Arny and I are having dinner.

Me: So, Evan was voted most evolved husband last night.

Arny: I'm not going to like this am I?

Me: I don't know.

Arny: Ok, so why was Evan voted most evolved husband?

Me: For Michelle's birthday, he gave her these coupons that entitle her to time off from the baby. He will stay with her while Michelle gets to go to yoga, or meet us for drinks, whatever.

Arny laughs hysterically for many minutes and then is silent for several more.

Arny: I don't want you hanging out with Michelle anymore.

I leer.

30 minutes later:

Arny: So how many coupons did Evan give Michelle?

I just love my husband......

To Ski or Not to Ski

Kelsey called the other night. She was somewhere where there is snow and is skiing for a brief pre-Christmas vacation. From the sound of it, she was liking the sitting around reading part more than the actual skiing part, kind of like what I would be doing if forced to go somewhere really cold where people strap skis on their feet and hurl themselves down mountains.

"Can I take our daughter skiing?" Arny asked after he got off the phone with Kelsey. "Awwwwww, that's so sweet" I said. "Of course you can take her skiing". Like he needs my permission, but that's what I love about him - he asks these things. "Will you come with us?" he said. "Oh No!!!!" I thought, picturing being carried off the kiddy slope being surrounded by 5 year olds asking "why was the old lady on our slope, anyway?". But, being the agreeable person I am said feebly "OK". I figure I have a couple of years to come up with a really good excuse....or, enough courage to actually do it.

Horoscope for December 20

Daily Sagittarius Forecast:

You'll soon get word from someone in a distant land. They want you to come visit!

Parental Toys

Sometime after the Toys"R"us adventure, Arny and I discussed the whole subject of toys and decided we would only buy for our child what we would want to play with. Not what we would have wanted to play with when we were one year old, but what we would play with now. Hence the Fisher Price alphabet blocks listed on our baby registry. Those things are so cool..I digress.

Shortly after that, we received the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, a cornucopia of adult toys, and we both found things we wanted - me, a race track, with little tiny Formula One cars and over 35 feet of track, and him, a flying remote control helicopter. Instant Christmas presents!!! Yes, we decided those would be our Christmas presents to each other. Except, my birthday happens to be December 12th (for all of you who knew and forgot, shame....) and Arny was so excited about the race track, he decided to buy it for my birthday present instead.

It is now set up and taking up our entire living room area - we have to step through and around it to get anywhere, but we are having loads of fun. It is a real test of the stability of one's marriage to jointly put together a track with 5 zillion pieces and not kill each other:

"Honey, pass me an "e" piece?"
"sure sweetie, just tell me which is the "e" piece"
"it's like the "d" piece, but shorter"
"ok, but what does the "d" piece look like"
"it's right there on the instructions"
"they look the same to me"
"here, use this one"
"are you sure this is the right piece"
"close enough"

Ok, so we had to put it together twice, but it works. But alas, it will only stay up until we leave to bring home the baby. Why, you ask? Because, silly us, we forgot about the choking hazard present with something that has 5 zillion pieces - some of which are quite small. Poo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps I'll have to go out and get those alphabet blocks a little early....

My Bible

Le Chapeau - part deux

Anonymous is one smart cookie...

"Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging onto a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments, I'm hurtling across space in between bars. Most of the time I'm hanging on for dear life to my trapeze bar of the moment. It carries me along at a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I'm in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers. But once in a while as I'm merrily swinging along, I look ahead of me into the distance and I see another bar swinging towards me. It's empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart-of- hearts, I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on the present, well-known bar to move to the new one.

Each time it happens, I hope and pray that I won't have to grab the new trapeze bar. But in my knowing place I realize that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar and for sometime I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. Each time I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing, I have always made it. Each time I am afraid I will miss -that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow, to keep hanging onto that old bar is no longer an alternative. And so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of "the past is gone, the future is not yet here." It is called transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs.

I have noticed that in our culture this transition zone is looked upon as a nothing - a no-place between places. Surely the old trapeze bar was real and that new one coming towards me, I hope that's real, too. But the void in between? That's just a scary, confusing, disorienting "nowhere" that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a waste! I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and that the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void where the real change, the real growth, occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored - even savored. Even with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out-of-control that can accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth filled, most passionate, most expansive moments in our lives."

And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to "hang out" in the transition between trapeze bars. Transforming our need to grab that new bar...any bar...is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening, in the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void --we just may learn how to fly.

--Anonymous