Skip to main content

Baby talk



   Twenty five years ago when I began in the motherhood business, you were cool if you had one of those snuggie baby carriers to strap on. The carrier was helpful because you could put it on and get some ironing and cooking done – hopefully not letting junior get too close to the heat. They were especially useful at supper time when all of my kids went ballistic right when I needed it the least.
    I was leery of the sci-fi aspect of the baby monitors available in those days. Some of the other mothers had them but I thought they were a little intimidating back then. They looked a bit like the old portable telephone you see in Seinfeld reruns. Besides, I always wanted the baby in the room with me anyway so I could check on his breathing every three minutes.
   It’s incredible the amount of baby stuff out there today. The more they advertise it the more all the parents begin to feel it’s all a big must-have. Not only are parents supposed to provide a college education down the road, but they need to begin the education process shortly after birth with specially enhanced television and computer programs, or some kind of technologically-enhanced audio of womb sounds.
   I’ll admit I used Disney videos to keep the toddlers occupied while I made supper but we made our own fun the rest of the day. Thankfully I had worked at a child care center while I was in college and I remembered some cheap tricks – hammering nails into tree stumps, painting the driveway with old paint brushes and a bucket of water on a hot day, and fishing with a stick with a piece of yarn tied to the end of it. And a little bit of dress up always goes a long way. We would have some pretty big adventures without ever going to Toys ‘R Us.
   It seems now it’s about what contraptions you need to make your life easier when if you were interested in an easy life, you never would have decided to have children in the first place. I’m afraid keeping baby occupied with all that stuff leads to a baby that needs to have constant stimulation. Now that’s work.
    My idea of keeping baby entertained is a nice long rock in the rocking chair while I sing the three little fishes song. Now that I’m older, I’d easily drop whatever I am doing to hold a squirming baby. Everything comes full circle. When you’re a new mom, you love to hold that baby but your mind is running in a thousand directions wondering how you’re going to get everything done that day. It isn’t until much later when you realize that you should have just taken a deep breath and enjoyed that baby smell while you had the chance.
   I say stop what you’re doing and pick those babies up, no matter what size, and hold on tight every chance you get because before you know it, they’re asking you for money and bringing strangers into your house for you to feed.

Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.
Benjamin Spock

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I Like to Call Them Ow-Bows

   It’s a toss-up. Do I write about the fact that if you search “jobless goddess” in Google the dairy goddess and the library goddess come way ahead of me, or do I write about the fact that my husband is incapacitated due to a broken elbow? I guess I’ll go with the broken elbow. Besides, who the hell breaks their elbow anyway? My husband of course.    It started out innocently enough. I, in my desire to lose weight and become the wrinkly, thinner woman I was meant to be, decided we should start up the morning walks again. I prodded him while he was still under the covers. “Come on, let’s do it. You know we have to do this,” I said while tugging on my really sexy yoga pants (which, by the way, never get used for yoga).    To his credit, he got up, pulled on his pajama pants and went with me. We got about a 16 th of a mile past the driveway before he landed in the gravel. I’m talking a bed of gravel. Gravel embedded in the palm of your hand. Gravel ...

He sells sea shells, I wish

   So now rather than being obsessed with fake fingernails I can’t afford, I’m becoming obsessed with checking this blog. I’m pretty sure all 52 views were made by either me or my husband.   That leads me right into the current situation at hand. We need friends. We’re desperate for them. I’ve started handing out my telephone number to people I meet while doing my meager freelance work. They think it’s for the story I’m writing but really it’s in hope that someday they’ll find a reason to call and then I can hit them with, “By the way, do you play cards? Bingo? Gin Rummy?” If I wasn’t so arthritic I’d throw Twister in there.    It’s not so much for me, it’s my husband who likes to have people around. I have become hermit-like since moving here while he has become convinced we could die here and not be found for months. He had friends back in Syracuse but he chose to stay home at night with his loving wife. Now all of a sudden I get the impression he’d h...

Parish the Thought

     I love small towns. When I lived in Parish, New York, there was no end to the reverie, not to mention the constant parades.      We had a Halloween parade through town featuring people of all ages marching in costume along a rather abbreviated parade route. It all culminated at the fire barn where a couple of old draft horses would pull along a hay wagon. Most all town festivities featured the fire barn.       Monday night bingo held there. The caller was a volunteer firefighter prone to bringing on fits of laughter when he drew N 44…which he pronounced as "N farty-far," whereby producing great gales of cackling from the middle-aged women who showed up every week, I think maybe just to flirt with the caller and the other male volunteers who collected their money. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun. I spent more than a few Monday nights there myself.      The gas stations served as restaurants in Parish. You...